Take my money, HBO - <AUTHOR> http://takemymoneyhbo.com/ <comment><USER4> I just don't understand what some people are thinking when it comes to this issue. In my mind, HBO is offering people two options:

1) Premium price, instant gratification. If you're willing to pony up for cable TV + a HBO subscription, you're able to watch Game of Thrones the instant it comes out. Yes, you're paying a lot (~$100) - but - <USER2> that's the price you have to pay for a premium service.

2) Pay a reasonable price, get it digitally, but I have to wait. If the $100/month subscription is a problem for you - no problem! You just have to wait. You can legally gain access to Game of Thrones on iTunes or BluRay for ~$40 for the whole season... about 10 months after it finishes airing.

When I hear someone say, "Why can't I just pay HBO directly for access? They're dumb! I'll just pirate it instead." - What they really mean is, "HBO charges too much for my tastes, and I don't want to wait... so I'll just download it." If that's your mentality, fine... but please don't think you're doing it for some higher reasoning. You just want the show now, and you don't want to pay what HBO is selling it. In every other medium (physical goods, food, dinner, cars) - you'd be SOL. But.. just because it's digital, you can copy it for free.

<comment><USER5> You're correct. HBO is offering people two options.

However, there seems to be a significant amount of people who want a third option, which HBO considers itself structurally prohibited from providing.

It is precisely no one's fault but HBO's that HBO has painted itself into a corner.

<comment><USER4> You're exactly right - there is a vocal set of people that want a third option. My point is, however, no business has to offer the "third option". Just because they don't offer the third option doesn't make downloading them for free OK.

<comment><USER6> Why not?

To assure you I'm not trolling... read this first: [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves- Gabe...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell- Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem)

<comment><USER4> I've read the article - and I completely agree with Gabe. From a business point of view - you (and Gabe) are probably right. It might be absolutely, completely stupid of HBO to not offer GoT online, 24/7, for a reasonable price.

However, just because they may (or may not) be making a poor business decision, it doesn't excuse what people are doing: illegally pirating content.

<comment><USER7> >However, just because they may (or may not) be making a poor business decision, it doesn't excuse what people are doing: illegally pirating content.

Look at it from the other direction. Pirates are gonna pirate and there is _fuck all_ anyone can do about it. Moralize about it all you want, it doesn't change the fact that people will get the content for free, and MORE people will get the content for free if they feel ripped off or cheated (regardless of how legitimate those feelings might be)

HBO can make a relatively simple change to capture a good deal of that market, or leave money on the table. Currently they're pursuing option #2 due to poor positioning.

<comment><USER8> They can't make a relatively simple change and capture that market (read the dcurtis article linked above).

<comment><USER7> I just read that. Interesting. One quote stood out at me though:

>Our content, exclusive. It's the only place you can get it. And we believe there is value in exclusivity.

You say value, others say needless and overpriced hurdles. And there's nothing exclusive about the average torrent site :)

<comment><USER9> What they're really trying to say is that their's value in scarcity. Unfortunately there is, in reality, very little scarcity thanks to the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was a good write-up of an interview with the HBO co-CEO: <http://dcurt.is/hbo-forbes-journalism>

Worth reading before spouting the typical "I don't understand why HBO doesn't want my $5 a month."

<comment><USER11> Very good blog post. Not sure I'd watch the full video interview, but it was worth the time to read.

What I took away from it is this: A lot of our paying subscribers don't actually watch HBO, and we don't want to compete against the sources that deliver those subscribers to us.

(Every single discussion about this should always include a mention that Time Warner owns HBO, saves a lot of mental hamster wheeling.)

<comment><USER12> Also, every single discussion about Time Warner should always mention that Time Warner does not own Time Warner Cable.

<comment><USER11> That one passed over me. Time Warner spun off Time Warner Cable in 2009. Someone knew what was coming, HBO has a better shot than I thought. HBO Go was fantastic when I used it last year, when I still had Uverse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "We pirate Game of Thrones, we use our friend's HBOGO login to watch True Blood…"

Yeah I am not associating myself with that. Perhaps something like "We don't currently pay to see your content".

Honestly as an Australian I don't see this happening here, the cable here is an effective monopoly and unless they get a cut of the profits they're not going let HBO do this. It might be completely against their business model as well due to the fact GoT has received more publicity here than any other cable show in some time. This has likely been driving sales for them and so would be bad for their business.

<comment><USER14> Interestingly GoT seasons 1 and 2 are available on iTunes in Australia. The latest episodes only take an extra week to show up from when they're first screened in the US. Even so, Australians apparently pirate the show in greater numbers than elsewhere.

Could be because it's $3/episode or it's only standard def or it's a week late. My guess is people find it just as easy to torrent it so don't even bother to look at paid options.

So if Australia is being used by HBO as a test market (quite common for US companies in the past), the stats on offering a paid online option in parallel to cable to reduce piracy don't look compelling to me in this case.

<comment><USER15> Can somebody confirm if GoT Season 2 is available in Australia iTunes? US will not get Season 2 until the disc release next year.

<comment><USER14> If you were really determined to buy it outside Aus I suppose you could buy an iTunes gift card from here and then login to iTunes via an Aussie proxy. Happens surprisingly often in the other direction.

You really would be paying the 'gold price' too as the $AUD is pretty strong due to the price of gold and other commodities mined here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's not pirating if you download Game of Thrones -- it's paying The Iron Price

<comment><USER17> I'm willing to pay the Gold Price but I don't want to wait several months until they decide to air it in my local country.

<comment><USER18> > until they decide to air it in my local country.

Dubbed, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's ironic that the amount in the form is in US dollars.

In much the rest of the world, it's already pretty much game over. A whole generation has learned to "pirate" these shows because it's the only available option.

This is the reality in 2012 outside the US: ordinary people in offices and on schoolyards are discussing TV shows _that aren't legally available in those countries_. It's not considered anything special anymore, it's no longer just a small "secret" club of geeks. It has become so common it's hard to imagine "legal" services will ever get a foot in the door after over a decade of neglecting these markets.

<comment><USER20> Where is this? Where I live, most people don't know English nearly well enough to watch the shows without subtitles, and community created subs are very hit- and-miss, both in availability and quality.

<comment><USER19> The Netherlands, but I think the same goes for most of Western Europe, especially the Northern half. Which unfortunately for HBO is also the primary potential market outside North America, both in terms of disposable income and the kind of audience that watches their shows.

HBO is actually now starting to enter the local cable market. Great offering: "pay a premium price to see shows your friends talked about 6 months ago at an inconvenient time". I suppose there's still a market for it, just like there's still a market for getting yesterdays news printed on dead trees...

You have to remember that the practice of pirating TV shows started about _ten years ago_ now. That's a whole generation that grew up watching their favorite shows that way. Any time, anywhere, and for free. Try selling those people premium cable subscriptions that offer no practical advantages whatsoever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I certainly understand the motivation for this but HBO is actually in a difficult position.

\- HBO drives a lot of cable purchase

\- Some of that money goes to the cable companies for data carriage

\- The cable companies know HBO sells cable

\- Any alternative distribution means risks the cable companies losing income

\- Cable companies losing income means that HBO risks either being dropped from the cable companies or having to offer them a bigger slice of the pie (since distribution is now non-exclusive)

It is a huge risk for HBO to jeopardize their cable subscriber income with a direct-to-market model.

That being said, I won't pay $100+/month to watch just HBO so do the math on that.

What really annoys me is that this goes so far as affecting, say, iTunes releases. HBO only releases shows on iTunes (if they release it at all) just prior to the next season starting to drum up more interest. That's a trap and I'm not falling for it.

This all goes back to why a la carte cable will never happen (given the current power structure and regulatory environment). It either means people will spend less on cable or things will be more expensive so it won't be worth it. Either way the cable companies lose. Content creators also lose because no one wants to take the risk of losing what is otherwise guaranteed income (a slice of every cable bill).

Years ago, Hollywood went through a shakeup splitting content creation from distribution [1]. It's really time for the same thing to happen with all content industries. We need to separate:

1\. Content creation: studios like HBO;

2\. Distribution: cable companies like Time Warner and Comcast; and

3\. Infrastructure: the actual last mile, cable or fibre infrastructure.

Of course the political likelihood of that happening is essentially zero.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pict...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc).

EDIT: to clarify this point, I don't believe cable companies would pursue the nuclear option of dropping HBO. However what the cable companies have now is essentially an exclusive arrangement with HBO. With implied or otherwise, HBO earns a premium for this in terms of how big a cut the companies get. Providing a means to bypass the cable companies would sooner or later result in a higher cut being paid to them, less marketing of HBO by the cable companies to its customers, etc.

Basically there is an economic cost to breaking exclusivity whether it is explicit or not.

<comment><USER22> I will not buy cable tv. Any information service (tv, voice, whatever) is only interesting to me if it's delivered over internet protocol.

If a lot more people made this decision, there would be no problem here.

<comment><USER23> But, given that many of the larger ISPs (at least those available to residential customers in my area -- Comcast and Verizon) are owned by companies that also provide cable (and telephone) services, what's to stop them from simply bundling cable service with your internet service and charging a bunch extra? I realize that not everyone has this problem, but in many areas there's almost an "information monopoly" with regards to web service.

<comment><USER22> That is a problem, I'd agree. In my case at least, those companies provide the option to buy internet without having to buy the other crap.

Also, here's a moble MVNO which does a lot of things right:

<https://ting.com/>

Now if only you could easily bring your existing phone onto their service...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd planned to buy Game of Thrones when it came out on iTunes a couple months ago but I realized that even that still indirectly supports the buzz around this property and the way it's primarily delivered.

Instead I'd suggest fellow cord cutters just skip Game of Thrones entirely, don't pirate it, don't even watch it. Instead spend your money and leisure time supporting content that's provided online.

When your friends talk about GoT you'll need to have a few canned response- pivots like "is that about orcs? Lawl, hey did you guys see Lilyhammer? It was totally not godawful."

<comment><USER25> "Nah, I'm not really into Pokemon."

<http://xkcd.com/178/>

(Am I the only one who still doesn't give two fucks about four fucks about television shows?)

<comment><USER26> I don't really get the anti TV people. Like any medium there is good and bad. TV definitely has its share of bad, but there is also some pretty good entertainment. Books, magazines, websites, etc... there is always going to be more crap than not, but for some reason I never read about people bragging about giving them up.

<comment><USER27> I hardly watch TV. Basically because my entertainment demands are asynchronous. I need entertainment on-demand when I need it. I can't adjust my schedule to the TV's schedule.

TV is for people who can sacrifice something else for the sake of a show. I can't and I won't because my time is worth doing something else. And when I need entertainment there are other things that fill that need.

Its like the radio, I turn it on when I need it. If something interesting is playing I hear, else I have a whole hard disk full of songs to hear to.

Also the ads and breaks between shows, movies and songs. When uninterrupted entertainment is available at dirt cheap prices. Who likes to waste their time watching/hearing ads.

TV is becoming the new radio, basically.

<comment><USER26> DVR has been out how long now? I can't remember the last time I adjusted my schedule to something on TV. The few shows I do watch I'm not even sure when they air. No auto-commercial skipping is annoying, but DVR helps with that even if it's a manual process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The message I get from posts like these: "I am entitled to watch show X right now. If the owner of show X won't sell it to me instantly, then I have the right to pirate it."

Is there money to be made here? Sure. I might even say that companies who don't offer popular shows on demand are making a dumb move. But nobody has the innate right to take whatever they want _right now_ just because they can't wait until it's available legally.

<comment><USER29> > has the innate right to take whatever they want

You aren't taking it. You are copying it. The only reason not to be allowed to copy it is if it damages the copyright owner.

But since the product has zero economic value to the owner from you (they refuse to sell it to you), you are not causing them any damage, and therefor you can not make any argument about why it's wrong. (i.e. it makes no difference to the owner whether you copied it or not.)

One of the criteria for fair use is "the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work".

And if you also include "the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes" you have met 2 out of 4 of the criteria for fair use, so you could make a strong argument that it's actually fully legal.

<comment> jack-r-abbit > _You aren't taking it. You are copying it._

If we want to get into semantics we should really pick some words that are more neutral. So.. you _consumed_ it and did not _compensate_ them for it. Better?

It is kind of funny when you think about the term _leech_ used in the torrent world. If you download something and don't make it available for upload, you are leeching. You are taking but not giving back. So to consume someone's product and not compensate them for it... I guess that makes you a leech?

<comment><USER29> > So.. you consumed it and did not compensate them for it. Better?

Not really. Why do I need to compensate them? You give a creator money to encourage them to do more, not to compensate them. Compensate implies they loose in some way and you have to make them whole. That doesn't apply here.

In this case the author of the post want to encourage them to do more, but they refuse because they believe they can do better without his money. At that point his moral duty is complete, and they have no right to complain if he consumes (I hate that word since it implies destroy) their product.

You don't seem to get the point of copyright. You have it reversed - you think copyright lets creators prevent people from doing stuff - not so. The idea of copyright is to encourage creators. (It's right in the US constitution - <USER3> if you don't believe me.) If you try to encourage them, and they refuse, then you can do what you want and they can't complain (morally anyway). The restrictions only exist to serve the purpose of encouragement. If encouragement isn't possible then the restrictions are meaningless and are ignored.

A leech is only a leech if he doesn't try to give back, but in this case the author of the post tries, but his offer was not accepted. Even in the bittorrent world that is not called a leech, it's called a seeder.

<comment> jack-r-abbit > _Why do I need to compensate them? [snip] Compensate implies they loose in > some way_

Compensate only implies that if that is the only way you choose to see it. If you have a job, the money you earn is compensation.... paying (someone) for work performed. Compensate means so much more. Also, consume means more than to destroy. But since those other definitions do not serve your purpose, it is convenient to turn a blind eye to them.

> _A leech is only a leech if he doesn't try to give back, but in this case > the author of the post tries, but his offer was not accepted._

But the author does not have the authority to dictate what offers must be accepted. If a creator is offering you a product and gives you Option A or Option B. It is not reasonable to assert that if you counter-offer him with Option C and he refuses that it gives you a right to still accept the product and neither of his chosen options.

Also, I didn't bring up anything about copyright. So I'm not sure how you know I have it all reversed.

<comment><USER29> > If you have a job, the money you earn is compensation.

It's compensation for the time you spent - they give you money, you give them time. The relationship to creative work is you give them money, they give you more. You do not pay for the existing work - you pay to encourage more work (not necessarily by them, also by someone else who sees that it's possible to make money this way). That's directly from the constitution of the USA.

If they don't want your money, then you can use the work (morally). What reason would there be to prevent you from using the work? People do not own creative works despite a lot of people really really really wishing they could. People simply have the right to demand encouragement, but if they refuse that encouragement then that was their choice.

I am well aware of the current usage of consume - I still don't like the word for this purpose (using something, where the original continues to exist). Check the dictionary - I will quote: "To destroy, as by decomposition, dissipation, waste, or fire; to use up; to expend; to waste; to burn up; to eat up; to devour." That was the only definition given, if you have others feel free to quote them.

> But the author does not have the authority to dictate what offers must be > accepted.

Missed my point. Why does the creator of the work get to dictate that I can't watch it? He can't. He can only expect money as encouragement to create more. Once that is refused he doesn't get to tell me what to do.

> Also, I didn't bring up anything about copyright. So I'm not sure how you > know I have it all reversed.

So do tell, besides copyright what give the creator of a work any right at all to tell someone else what to do? It was a reasonable assumption, if it's wrong then I have no idea what you are talking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sigh. Not this ultimatum again...

Hurting 'Game of Thrones' Through Piracy Won't Change HBO's Business, It Will Just Get the Show Cancelled:

[http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/hurting-game-of- th...](http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/hurting-game-of-thrones- through-piracy-wont-change-hbos-business-it-will-just-get-the-show-cancelled- rfure.php)

<comment><USER30> The most popular show on HBO will get cancelled because people are pirating it? Definitely disagree. It's not just critically acclaimed, it's among the most popular HBO original show in the network's history.

Pirating, of course, won't change their business. But even if I really want to watch the show (I don't watch it), I wouldn't sign up for Cable TV, and sign up for HBO on top of it just for one show. I see this as less of an ultimatum and more of a "hey your business model is fucked so you're not getting my money" thing.

<comment> jack-r-abbit To be more correct... it is more of a "hey your product kicks total fucking ass... but I disagree with you business model. I'm going to consume your kick ass product anyway... but you're not getting my money" thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I actually discovered that I am able to pay HBO for Game of Thrones. HBO decided to air GoT here in Brazil simultaneously with USA. I called my television provider, added HBO for R$ 30,00/mo (around $15.00) and after the end of the season 2 I just called there and removed HBO again. I am planning to do the same for season 3. Is it so hard for people around the world to do the same? (real question, not being sarcastic)

<comment><USER4> Well, this season of GoT was 9 episodes. If you wanted HBO over the whole run so you could watch them live - you would need it for 3 months. However, if you're willing to hold off until last month, you could get by with waiting for the last episode to come out, buy one month, watch all episodes, then cancel.

<comment><USER32> Season 2 has 10 episodes: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones_%28season_2%29>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Have you guys thought about how many people are already paying for HBO ? Is HBO hurting for money?

Or is it just a bunch of geeks trying to get hbo for cheap? I know anti-piracy is not always popular but they are creating popular and original shows, why not support them?

<comment><USER34> The trouble is not that HBO is too expensive, but rather that there is no _way_ for this "bunch of geeks" to pay HBO directly.

If you look at the current tweets, people are offering up anywhere between $8 and $20, which I imagine is considerably more than HBO's take based on their current revenue model.

The whole point of this website, I gather, is to convince HBO that their product is worth _considerably more_ to the end user than what they're currently making, and that they can tap into a lot more revenue if they let people subscribe to their products directly, without the cableco middleman.

[edit] My impression of HBO pricing is completely wrong. It doesn't seem like HBO would stand to gain a huge amount based on how much people are "pledging".

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> As an American I'd rather sign up for "Take My Money BBC."

<comment><USER10> Would you pay $225 a year? That's how much it costs a Briton. ("The annual cost of a colour TV licence is £145.50")

<comment><USER36> Does $225 include radio, or is that a separate license?

And is a black and white teevee cheaper?

<comment><USER37> Not sure about radio, but black and white TVs are cheaper (£49 vs £145.50).

[http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/about/media- centre/news/black-a...](http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/about/media- centre/news/black-and-white-tv-still-going-strong-NEWS22/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> HBO will gladly take your money...through cable. Just because you don't like the delivery method doesn't mean there isn't a way to access the content you want.

Compare this to movies. Is it the responsibility of studios to make sure you can watch the movie at home the very instant it comes out? No. You go to the theater and watch it if you want to see it as soon as it airs. Otherwise, you wait.

HBO is following the same path: use cable subscriptions as the avenue to get the content immediately, On Demand available soon thereafter, buy the DVDs or download at a later date.

I'm really tired of this self-righteous attitude that you are owed something from HBO. If you want to watch all of your TV through the internet, that's fine. But you have to live with the tradeoffs. HBO is one of them.

</comment><comment><USER39> I worked on several commercial digital music projects in the time span between early napster and entrenched itunes. One regularly repeated meme of the era was that people didn't want to pirate music, they just wanted it "as easy" or "no drm" or "ala carte" or "all you can eat".

While statistically these were all guaranteed to be true for at least some users, in aggregate they were red herrings. The industry was in the process of significant decline due at least in part to online infringement. Over the course of several years mainstream services that more or less broke down all these barriers appeared but they failed to reverse any of the macro trends.

While many of the reasons are nuanced and disputed, a number of observations are relatively uncontested. Online sales severely cannibalized physical sales but failed to significantly cut down on online infringement. ASP dropped much faster than production and distribution costs. New, powerful intermediaries formed that dictated sales practices to the labels instead of the other way around.

Anecdotally, among friends and colleagues no one I knew significantly shifted their behavior. Everyone bought at least some music, and I don't think I knew anyone who refused to touch anything pirated. 12+ years on that really hasn't changed much, I still get emailed songs from rights holders or people who sell music and my friends with shared raid 5 arrays with all_the_music still buy downloads from their favorite bands.

The thing that did change is the reasons for piracy. Instead of the previous concerns people were now unwilling to support the majors, or wanted higher quality encodes, or simply thought that IP sales were outdated and believed that music acts should shift to solely making their money through touring and merchandise sales.

Whether these are reasonable new barriers or not I'm not at all interested in debating. I've thought many of them were compelling at various times. Rather what I think is interesting is that some number of objections always seem to exist.

There was an interview with a researcher on NPR yesterday that I caught. The discussion was on cheating (on things like taxes, etc.) and how in controlled settings almost all of us are small time cheats but few of us are huge cheats. The researcher attributed a key part of this to the idea that we all want to be the good guy - and that cheating within a tolerance allowed us to continue to view ourselves that way, but cheating too much made it hard for us to view ourselves that way.

While he didn't make any connection to reasons or extenuating circumstances, it seemed to jibe well with my own unscholarly impressions. That many of the reasons for intellectual property theft are constructed to allow a person to continue to see themselves as the good guy while doing something they consider immoral.

"Well, I want to pay them, but [barrier X] won't let me" is almost the perfect storm of this type of mental construct - pretty much unassailable, at least until barrier X is removed.

<comment><USER40> I'm only one data point, but:

I used to pirate (all of my) music. I have bought a grand total of one CD ever. Now I happily consume most of my music through a paid subscription to Rdio.

Similarly, I pay for netflix. I (grudgingly) go to theatres occasionally. I don't own and have no desire to own a dvd player, and pirate movies occasionally when they're not conveniently available.

Similarly, I pirate Game of Thrones, but would happily pay up to $5 per episode if it were an option. I will not buy the DVDs, as I have no desire to see it again. If I could buy the DVDs at the same time as the show airs (without getting off my couch), I would happily do so.

It is quite literally all about convenience for some people.

<comment><USER41> > Similarly, I pirate Game of Thrones, but would happily pay up to $5 per > episode if it were an option. I will not buy the DVDs, as I have no desire > to see it again. If I could buy the DVDs at the same time as the show airs > (without getting off my couch), I would happily do so.

How about when you pirate the episode, you put the $5 aside, and when it's released on DVD, buy the DVDs, regardless of whether you want to watch it again? This has essentially the same result as buying the DVD "at the same time as the show airs".

This is what I have done with shows that are cable-exclusive. And as a perk, I end up with the DVDs.

<comment><USER42> Having stuff you don't want cluttering up your life is a perk?

<comment><USER43> Then donate the discs to someone who likes to collect physical media.

<comment><USER44> Assuming the pirate bought the disc as a penance/feelgood/whatever for downloading the media, this totally negates that whole motivation. To the studio/network, two people got to see the content for the price of one. Ironically, the giftee becomes the beneficiary of the piracy, but with none of the risk. And the pirate, who assumed all the risk, was the person who paid for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> HBO is already taking my money: [http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Complete- Season-Blu-ray/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Complete-Season-Blu- ray/dp/B003Y5HWMW/ref=sr_1_3?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1338949273&sr=1-3)

</comment><comment><USER46> I'd rather see people put their money where their mouth is, in a non- hypothetical way.

For example, pick some otherwise random date a few weeks after the DVD set will be released and organize a concerted buying effort amongst "pirates" on that specific date.

<comment><USER47> As a purchaser of the season 1 blu-ray... lets get to the secondary issue of buying.

The packaging of the videos is SHIT... there are ads, I have to sit through FBI warnings, I have to sift through bad menus to get to the content I want, and I have to deal with trying to find features when everything I select says "please insert disc X"

I paid $70 CND and with the exception of the actual quality of the picture (blu-ray is fantastic), the whole experience is VASTLY inferior to the piracy route.

That said, I'll still be purchasing the Season 2 Blu-Ray when it comes out, because I very much want to support the production of this series.

<comment><USER48> buy the dvd, leave it in its box, and pirate the show. everyone wins.

<comment><USER47> But why? Why couldn't they have just made a good Blu-Ray boxed set? Why does disc three have nothing but one episode on it (no extra features... everything I click while using disc3 says "please enter disc 5", while disc 4 has three episodes on it? Why do I have to sit through an FBI warning when I dont even live in the states? Why do I have to see ads for other HBO shows when I put in disc 1?

I spent good money on the fucking thing? Why couldn't they have given me a BETTER experience than the people who steal it?

<comment><USER48> yeah, i fully agree with you, and i have for the most part opted out altogether - i don't pirate and i don't buy the dvds due to the fundamental brokenness of the model. however, if you _do_ want to watch the show, and if you want to support the creators in some way (and, sadly, support their multifarious parasites as well), the only real way to do it is to buy the dvd (so you have paid your money to the smallest possible superset of people who deserve it) and then pirate the show (so you actually have something watchable).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Let me get this straight because I think this is what other sources are implying: HBO sells a license to their channels to the cable companies for a flat fee. The cable providers then recoup this by selling subscriptions to HBO or pushing more customers to subscribe to cable. In that way, cable providers actually pay more than the cable providers collect from consumers for HBO subscriptions. This really makes the question not would you pay the same price as HBO costs on cable for Game of Thrones access, but would you pay more? The cable provider's contracts may even preclude directly collecting from consumers. If this is true, I think the community needs to realize this remains a lost cause and instead encourage Netflix's model of creating high quality content directly for streaming.

<comment><USER50> HBO charges per-subscriber, not a flat rate. But the cable company deals with billing, customer support, equipment costs, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> There is a difference between people saying they will pay for something versus all of those people actually handing over hard currency for it.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, the market works in such a way that unless you build a mechanism for people to pay a reasonable price for a game at launch (see Steam vs Piracy), then you lose out. Example: [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves- Gabe...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell- Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem)

Even a trial run, like pay $5 and watch S03E01, would be a really great test to see if the market is telling the truth here. (But the availability could NOT lag behind HBOGo or broadcast, it'd have to be simultaneous.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Simply tweeting the intention is an empty gesture. How about setting up a publically auditable escrow account with the recipient set to be HBO/Time Warner. Deposit $20 (or whatever is fair compensation) and then go ahead an acquire a copy of the video. That's what I thought this would be when I saw "Take my money, HBO": a realizable offer of money.

Is there any legal precedent for this, i.e. attempting to pay for a product or service, being ignored and then paying and taking it anyway?

<comment><USER53> I attempted to buy your Porsche for $20. You ignored me so I took it anyway.

Obviously it's illegal.

<comment><USER54> Theft and copyright violation are not comparable. Both may be illegal, but they aren't the same. Would it be illegal to build a replica of the Porsche for myself?

The GP's example was bad because he mentioned taking a product or service, rather than making a copy of something and keeping it. I'm assuming he didn't mean it the way it reads.

<comment><USER52> The part I tried to stress was "fair compensation", but perhaps that's not the correct legal or contractual term. The closest real-world analogy I can think of is this: you want to by a DVD but cashier is ignoring you. So, you slap a $20 bill on the counter and walk out with the DVD. Of course, the analogy fails because we're not talking about a physical product and the way copyright is set up allows the copyright holder to decide who can and can't get access to the media, even if two parties are offering practically the same price.

<comment><USER53> > _The closest real-world analogy I can think of is this: you want to by a DVD > but cashier is ignoring you. So, you slap a $20 bill on the counter and walk > out with the DVD_

Wrong. In your scenario, the DVD in question is for sale, and is clearly listed as such with a price and all. You know exactly how much it costs, and you give that much money. And the transaction occurs in a place that is designed for this very purpose. There is no confusion or grey area here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Did HBO ever consider asking some fixed price per simple download? No streaming, no complicated subscription services. Just payments per files. There can't be any logical reason not to offer it, if it's so widely pirated already. They can only convince some of those who pirate not to do it, if they provide the same level of simplicity and convenience. In any case, it can't make it any worse for them, than it is now. It can probably only make it better.

<comment><USER56> HBO is ~$15/month or ~$180/year if you don't cancel. A season of Game of Thrones is $30-39 on iTunes. It seems pretty obvious.

<comment><USER55> I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to compare. Rather try to compare those who simply pirate the stuff as soon as it's out with anything of the above. I think if they'd offer something around $2-$3 per episode right away (without any iTunes), they could gain more from those who don't pay anything to them now.

<comment><USER56> I'm comparing the amount of money HBO would get from people who only watch Game of Thrones. If you could get it without subscribing, a lot of people _would_ cancel HBO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> HBO (and others) should put a donation button, publicize it to pirates and report findings. If money starts pouring then we get a win/win, HBO needs not to invest in streaming technology / bandwidth / DRM / whatever and the pirates can compensate the producers/artists.

What would be done with the money should be specified upfront and held to high transparency levels and of course involve the artists.

</comment><comment><USER58> Perhaps the issue is that with their business model they want people to pay $x per month for years on end?

Since people who are paying a sub are way less likely to cancel than people who make a 1 off purchase are willing to come back?

Perhaps they don't even care that much about piracy because their money is already in the bag from cable subscribers?

Once everyone stops using cable they will change their tune.

</comment><comment><USER59> Next step: Take my European money, HBO.

</comment><comment><USER60> Or if you absolutely can't offer it standalone; what about as an option off service(s) more reasonable and likely to already be in my pocket, as an anti- cable viewer. For example, why can't I get some premium options off the back of my Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, Xbox Live, etc service(s)?

There are mentions of HBO having to foot the infrastructure if going away from Big-TV providers, but the above can handle that now. Charge an extra $5 over Big-TV, if these other services want you to foot some of their transport bill; I'd be willing to pay more, while still paying less than needing a cable sub.

I'm already paying those other guys. Are they not playing ball? Tell us so, and we can start focusing some of our internet hate at those greedy suits, as well.

<comment><USER56> That has the same problem. For every Netflix+HBO subscriber gained, they could lose several cable+HBO subscribers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Not going to work IMHO. HBO is partly so successful because of its exclusivity. It is THE premiere channel to get, and will give that away only when the fall of traditional TV is apparent.

</comment><comment><USER62> The "recent tweets" widget shows people tweeting numbers like $10. Isn't HBO as an _add-on_ to an existing cable subscription generally significantly more than that?

<comment><USER63> customers with internet > customers that pay for cable

Volume wins?

<comment><USER8> Actually it is:

customers that pay for cable + HBO > customers with internet only.

Hence why they have no current desire to alienate big cable to cater to the small number of users who loudly complain they can't watch HBO online when they want.

<comment><USER63> You are definitively right. But I meant to group the users with internet and cable in with the internet only users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> HBO as an add-on to cable packages costs ~$20. If HBO were to offer it as a standalone service, they would have to handle billing, subscription management, increased marketing budget to make up for marketing that cable/sat currently offers for them, etc. So unless a critical mass of people are willing to pay AT LEAST $30 per month, this is a lost cause.

<comment><USER65> They cost around $20, but do we know what HBO's cut is?

<comment><USER64> HBO's cut is very small (< $3 I think). But the cable and satellite cos pay a fixed fee per base cable/sat sub to HBO but then upsell their own customers and recoup that cost. Using the $20 as a proxy for about what HBO gets, even though it's a lot more complicated than that in reality.

<comment><USER66> HBO gets around $8 per subscriber, ESPN for reference gets around $4 but its on the basic tier so it has many more subscribers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Great and sound idea! But the pain is already aching if this kind of thing get through: posts will be made, bootstraps distrubuted and sources will be opened and the start of the era of "Please, Take my money whatever" will have began. Lets hope for the best, take all our money HBO.

</comment><comment><USER68> I pay $30/month to watch Starcraft 2 tournaments on GomTV.net.

I pay $0/month to watch Game of Thrones, Veep, Girls, and True Blood. I will continue to pay $0 until there is an option that does not involve enriching evil cable executives.

Your move, HBO.

<comment><USER69> How can you possibly claim some sort of moral high ground when you're saying "I like the content you produce but don't agree with the methods you use to charge for it so I'm going to steal it!".

If you don't agree with their distribution methods then DON'T CONSUME THAT CONTENT.

<comment><USER70> Nope! Why would I do that? What good comes of it? Moral high-ground? Fuck that, I'd prefer to watch the show.

I think this is what goes through most people's heads. When it's a choice between benefiting nobody and retaining moral high-ground and benefiting nobody and watching the show, they choose the latter, because they don't see any real rational reason not to.

Now, how about pirating the show, then buying the DVD when it comes out? Gets trickier, doesn't it...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> This is the tweet showing on the page: @sgbakerr I would pay $0 a month for a standalone @HBOGO subscription and pirate all my @HBO programming takemymoneyhbo.com #takemymoneyHBO

</comment><comment><USER72> HBO is a Time Warner subsidiary. Until that's not a thing, this just simply won't happen. I'd like it to, but the business realities just make it unfeasible.

</comment><comment><USER73> We pay around 100 USD/mo in Brazil for cable + 10Mbit internet, and HBO has always been a premium I don't have access.

</comment><comment><USER74> Love it. Pre-fill the field with hint text like "10" and you will increase the number of tweets posted.

</comment><comment><USER75> Why isn't HBO's business failing a palatable option? Businesses fail all the time, why can't HBO?

<comment><USER76> I'm not sure if this answers your question, but HBO produces incredibly high- quality content that a lot of people fear would go away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Kind of off-topic, but it's really use for HBO to bring this entire operation down if they want: the domain name contains their trademark, "HBO". In these cases it's much better to have a generic domain name (i.e. "takemymoneycable" or something like that), than to do trademark violations.

I've had to learn this the hard way, unfortunately ...

<comment><USER78> From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_infringement>:

 _Infringement may occur when one party, the "infringer", uses a trademark which is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark owned by another party, in relation to products or services which are identical or similar to the products or services which the registration covers._

How is this a product or service similar to what HBO is offering..? Merely invoking the name of a product/service is hardly a trademark violation -- otherwise every single HN commenter who has griped about Apple/Google/Microsoft/Facebook products would be infringing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I want Game of Thrones on airplane trips.

</comment><comment><USER80> Also, take my money, Showtime!

<comment><USER81> showtime has pretty good content but i'd definitely pay less for it. have you seen hbo go? full seasons of all hbo content + great collection of new release movies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> i can't tell hbo because I don't have twitter.

i hate twitter.

my voice shall go unnoticed.

</comment><comment><USER83> I wouldn't pay a single cent to HBO.

I would, on the other hand, pay $40 via iTunes per season of Game of Thrones.

Networks are outdated. Stop trying to change them and adapt like the rest of us.

<comment> jack-r-abbit For an outdated network they sure have managed to create a product that is so awesome that sane, rationale people can't even wait to get it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Nice try, HBO.</comment>


Bootstrap 4: A Visual Guide to What's New - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/wdstack/bootstrap-4-whats-new-visual-guide-c84dd81d8387 <comment><USER2> Great! Now I can see very fast, what has changed...</comment>


Why does Gmail hate my domain? - <AUTHOR> https://bitbin.de/blog/2015/07/gmail-hate/ <comment><USER4> Hi, I'm Nicolò and I work in the deliverability team of Qboxmail.com. We have run into similar problems in the past. The reason of the behavior of Gmail with your domain is not easy to understand, a theory could be that in the past someone has used it for sending spam, and even if it was not your server, you are paying for this.

The solution we have used, it was bring Gmail to understand that your emails have been sent from a real user. You can simulate a conversation between your domain and other Gmail accounts. Send a first email, with a realistic text, to a Gmail account, if it goes in spam, mark as safe (remove it from spam), and reply to it, always with a realistic text. Continue to simulate a normal conversation, sending 4/5 emails between the 2 account. Re-do the operation from another Gmail account, but this time do the opposite: start from the Gmail one.

It not bulletproof, but it has worked in the past for us.

<comment><USER5> So the way to get off from spam blacklists is to send spam mails between two addresses? Looks reasonable.

<comment><USER6> Sending about 250,000 emails per month for over a year now (all double optins), we found out that both gmail and yahoo has what we call "do you listen" rule.

Basically even if user expressly add you to their contact list and pull you out of spam, etc, if you sending them just your email ignoring what they reply back to you, eventually you get back to spam. I think this is very clever and is based on simple human rule that most follow when conversating over email: when people reply to email the do not start a new email, they hit reply and previous email from their convo lands on the bottom of this new email.

Once we started emailing new emails with adding content from addessee previous email to the bottom, our emails start getting back to addressee major mailbox.

And this make perfect sense on how to detect a real conversation (gmail has your sent items so if incoming email contains something you wrote before, its an indication you have a real live conversation with someone)

<comment><USER4> You are right. In the end, it always a problem of volumes and proportion between spam emails, conversation, ecc..

If your numbers are low, so even small change can make a big difference

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Notice the comment on the story:

 _" I had the exact same problems in the past. For me it helped just to register and immediately cancel a trial of Google Apps for the domain. It's annoying to have this as a necessary step but at least it was like that done in just a few minutes (after I tried to find a contact email of Google for a much longer time). I tried it because I had other domains on the same server which didn't had this issue. All domains which weren't filtered had a Google Apps account in the past. So I thought it's worth a try, and yeah it was solved._"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, may have to pay Google the $5 (or thereabouts?) to host my mail for a month and consider it a cost of freedom from them long term.

After 2+ years of hosting my domain myself, it doesn't seem possible to build up enough reputation with them personally.

<comment><USER8> If the Google Apps anecdote is true, it's likely to be a design flaw in their anti-spam systems - think of the number of spammers who could register domains, associate them with a $5 google apps account, and spam millions of Gmail recipients. If you think about the kind of metrics/outcomes the Gmail anti-spam team uses to measure success, it's hard to imagine a scenario where that would be good for them.

What this looks like to me is a reputation problem with one or more domains, either in your headers or your message content.

From a domain reputation perspective, you don't generally need to 'build' reputation in the same way you often do with IP reputation; rather, Gmail tends to tag domains with negative reputation only when they've observed unusually bad behavior associated with the domain.

Sometimes this can happen due to domain forgery or spoofing. Sometimes it's because a sender is doing overly aggressive email marketing. Sometimes it's just because your domain shows up in someone else's bulk email.

With full authentication, spoofing is unlikely; I also don't see any indication you're doing email marketing here, and your IP 22.214.171.124 doesn't appear to generate much more than a trickle of volume. So - perhaps the latter? Has anyone included a link to one of your blog posts in an email newsletter, for example?

It would also be helpful to see full headers and content; it's great you're doing SPF/DKIM/DMARC, but they're not going to prevent all issues - <USER2> might be something elsewhere in your message that gives us a better idea where the problem is.

Finally, keep in mind that anti-spam systems are highly dynamic, and results can change - sometimes in as little as a few minutes - based on the latest data feeding into the system. If you're lucky, you might see this resolve on its own fairly quickly.

<comment><USER9> you are absolutely right, and this will most likely be fixed tomorrow morning as a result of this thread.

<comment><USER10> There's a difference between

>anti-spam systems are highly dynamic, and results can change - sometimes in as little as a few minutes - based on the latest data feeding into the system. If you're lucky, you might see this resolve on its own fairly quickly.

and

>this will most likely be fixed tomorrow morning as a result of this thread.

How was she 'absolutely right'?

<comment><USER11> I didn't take Boris' comment at face value. I took it to be a joke.

I think he understands that it's different. He was humorously implying that the issue will be resolved by a Gmail person seeing the thread, as opposed to some AI spam filtering.

<comment><USER9> yes but not totally joking, I've definitely seen that happen with G a few times in the last few yearsq

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If the domain is bitbin.de and the mail server is hosted on the same server, it's probably Hetzner being scorched-earth for deliverability, just like any other major hosting provider will be. Email from AWS, Rackspace, Heroku etc. get a drastically higher starting spam score because people fire up servers there to spam.

Running the email through something like Amazon SES or Mandrill would probably be helpful. Both have generous free tiers.

<comment><USER13> This seems to also be the case with DO, I setup a mail server on an instance there and can't escape people's spam boxes.

<comment><USER14> Check the IP against the spam blacklists: [http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx](http://mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx)

You might have to spin up a bunch of servers to find one which doesn't have a blacklisted IP. Then you have to build the IP's "reputation" with the various providers before you can send a significant amount of email through it.

<comment><USER8> These days, there are only a handful of IP-based blacklists where a listing result in more than low single-digit impact to your delivery rate; moreover, among industry insiders, Gmail isn't known to use any public IP-based blacklist for deliverability.

<comment><USER14> >Gmail isn't known to use any public IP-based blacklist for deliverability

Good to know! I bet they have their own internal ranking system which is far more accurate than the public blacklists.

<comment><USER15> I'm curious to know why you think they'd be any more accurate than public blacklists. About a fifth of the spam that hits my domains _originates_ from gmail servers, and the majority of people I know complain (when asked) about gmail's tendency to spam-bin legit mail.

<comment><USER14> I would wager that Google handles a large enough cross section of all email traffic such that their internal statistics on the trustworthiness of domains/ips would rival any other blacklist system.

I've never had issues inboxing on gmail accounts using SPF/DKIM/DMARC + Sendgrid, even when sending 125,000+ emails (legit!) per day.

<comment><USER8> Accuracy in spam filters is a difficult thing to measure, particularly if you don't have access to internal metrics on filter performance.

The primary limiting factor for most blacklists is not scale, but simply the fact that most of them have no more than a few data sources - most commonly spamtrap data. It's useful, but it's not a comprehensive enough data point to accurately evaluate mail.

Having dozens or hundreds of data points available - things like how many recipients open a message and spend time reading it, how quickly they seek out a message when initially opening their inbox, or a sending domain's pagerank - gives Google a considerable edge in assessing overall mail quality.

(Caveat: outbound filtering is often more difficult than inbound filtering - perhaps in part because there are fewer data points available when assessing outbound mail.)

<comment><USER14> Agreed on all points!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I send a LOT of emails each month (email newsletter business - yes, legit!) and ran into an separate but topically related and amusing problem recently.

My newsletters are aimed at developers, and one issue went out and was considered by Gmail to be a 'phishing' attempt. I couldn't figure it out. Several issues later, another one was picked up the same way and I figured it out.. In both issues, one of the items was linking to domains that looked a bit like this "www.0x10abcdef.com" (this is NOT the actual domain) - <USER3> a domain that looked like a hexadecimal number. I ran numerous tests and Gmail always considered mails with links to domains like this to be phishing attempts.

I reported this as a bug (since nothing was wrong or reported with the domains in question, it was basically Gmail's filter being in error) but no idea if it was ever resolved.

<comment><USER14> It's probably specifically penalizing anything matching /https?:\/\/0/ because you can specify an IP address using hex or octal in most common browsers.

hex: [http://0xD83AC02E](http://0xD83AC02E)

octal: [http://033016540056](http://033016540056)

That's my guess, at any rate.

<comment><USER17> OT: What does the red-flower-on-the-sun doodle mean?

<comment><USER18> Argentina National Day 2015

Edit: You can usually find out what they mean by going to [https://www.google.com/doodles](https://www.google.com/doodles)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Part of the gmail's spam filtering appears to be "crowd-sourced". People clicking on "Report Spam" or "Not Spam" on your emails in their gmail-inbox.

How about asking a few of your friends to select your emails in their gmail spam folders and click "Not Spam". Hopefully that gets the ball rolling and the situation improves...

</comment><comment><USER20> I've had the same problem myself.

My best guesses as to why my domain has been dinged:

1) It's on a VPS, that IP may be flagged already

2) I often use a VPN, and sometimes send emails out through my server using it. This probably raises the red flags.

3) It's a non-standard TLD, .co

4) I don't use any Google services with that email address/domain (I assume doing so adds some level of measurable trust)

5) I'm not in the address book of a lot of gmail users, because this is my private server, that I use only for job seeking, and personal communication.

This has really done damage in the past. I've applied for jobs, and heard back weeks after they hired someone, letting me know, woops, I ended up in their spam folder.

Trying to meet with a friend? I can't email them, I need to use Facebook or Gmail... welp.

This is super annoying. I kind of understand why it happens, but it's just a little sad that building your own fort, so to speak, is so impossible.

Things I tried to do to mitigate this:

1) Made my web domain https only (why not?)

2) set up DKIM and SPF (didn't seem to have any effect)

3) proper SMTP authentication, secure port only

4) Reached out to Google via the typical forms they offer, and heard nothing, obviously.

</comment><comment><USER21> That's all a bit presumptive and inflammatory for what amounts to pure speculation on the part of the author.

Google stands to lose a lot more from a potential PR disaster for burning former customers who move away from hosting than they do from trying to convert a tiny portion of users to a free mail hosting service.

<comment><USER22> My own cousin blackholed my gmail because gmail sends so mych spam. I had to ask him to configure an exception just for me.

If you dont want to receive spam use lafn.org. I dont know how one gets an account there but I expect it doesnt cost anything.

If you want a full VPS use [http://prgmr.com/](http://prgmr.com/) \- "we dont assume you are stupid.". Its a hosting service operated by neckbeards for the benefit of their fellow neckbeards.

Quite cheap, I get mine for free because I help them with their marketing.

<comment><USER23> Sort of off topic, but I saw an ad for prgrmr.com on a Safeway checkout conveyer belt divider in Mountain View, CA On Shoreline road near Google. I was wondering how effective this advertising has been.

<comment><USER22> I am going to give Luke The Smackdown.

I have devoted years to beating a clue about marketing through his pointy skull but then he complains that he has to take contract comouter janitor work to pay his data center.

I expect he shops at that dame Safeway.

The way he needs to market was established in the 1960s by the stanford alumni association but Luke refuses to Read The Fine Manual.

He knows all about Open Source though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I hit a similar problems when sending automated internal emails to a Google Groups address at my company. The problem was fixed by adding the following footer: "To unsubscribe, email <my-email-address>."

<comment><USER25> Uh oh. I created an "unsubscribe" filter a while ago to get rid of spam. It's been great for keeping my inbox clean but I just don't see stuff with an unsubscribe line anymore.

<comment><USER26> It's not a good idea to manually create filters that 100% block. You can't think of all the special cases like this.

<comment><USER25> I just filter it into a separate folder and skip the inbox but I've definitely missed some emails because of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Anecdotal information:

I run my own mail server and manage a number of small business clients who have mail servers. Email trust is getting more and more tedious.

Recently I was resolving a domain registrar issue with Network Solutions. They required forms filled out and signed, a copy of a utility bill from my client, a copy of my ID...

I bundled up everything and emailed them the scans. I contacted them 5 business days later, they claim to never have received it.

I sent it again while I had a rep on the phone, it went into their spam hole, probably due to size of attachment.

They helpfully suggested I get a GMail account to send the same message.

They are my registrar, they host my DNS, including my MX record. I have an spf record...

I thought it was pretty farcical, and a sad statement of digital trust/authenticity.

Some of my clients are giving up and just going with the flow, I have had several conversions to Google/Microsoft cloud-hosted solutions for email...

<comment><USER28> An spf record only helps preventing emails sent from phishing servers. It is inherently meaningless to spam filters if the trust with the domain owner itself is misplaced.

<comment><USER29> True but if they're raintrees' registrar, they should already be able to connect the domain with the person/company who registered it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm very curious about that as well as I am thinking of moving my personal domains away from Gmail and it would really suck to start landing in spam simply on the basis of not being with a major mail provider.

I hope this story gets traction and someone on the Gmail team finds it and comments.

</comment><comment><USER31> The author jumps to an unfounded conclusion which is pretty irritating and probably will make everybody who could help him not want to help him.

That said I've never seen a DSN like the one in the screenshot. It certainly is not generated by the gmail spam checking system, because gmail does not bounce spam. Gmail either rejects spam at SMTP DATA time, or delivers it to spam folders.

<comment><USER17> > Gmail either rejects spam at SMTP DATA time, or delivers it to spam folders.

This is a million times better. Meanwhile, microsoft accepts it, sends it at passed on DMARC reports, but discards the mail silently without it even reaching the spam mailbox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I've had mail sent via my own server rejected by gmail because of a missing Message-ID header. The 550 reject message was the standard "Unsolicited Mail detected" text, the same mail was accepted without causing any fuzz once the Message-ID was added.

<comment><USER33> Why on earth wouldn't your mail server add that for you?

<comment><USER32> Because I'm writing my own ;)

[https://github.com/cmail-mta/cmail](https://github.com/cmail-mta/cmail) if you're interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm still wondering how does it happen that I never ever had as many problems with spam as I have with anti-spam systems and goddamn google in the first place. Actually, at this point it well might be _only_ google. And it's hard to ignore when more and more emails in your contact book have "gmail" in them. Makes it seem that something as simple and fundamental as e-mail now belongs to google. Just ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER35> Seems like author hasn't done enough troubleshooting and has jumped to a conclusion. My recommendation is to run through google's troubleshooting steps on the issue:

[https://support.google.com/mail/troubleshooter/2920052?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/troubleshooter/2920052?hl=en)

Also make sure a DMARC record is setup.

<comment><USER36> At the end of that, it asks about whether your server passes "the diagnostic tests" \-- but I didn't see a link to which tests it was talking about.

<comment><USER29> It's MXToolBox[1]. To be fair to OP, it's very popular.

[1] [http://mxtoolbox.com/diagnostic.aspx](http://mxtoolbox.com/diagnostic.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Spam filtering/tagging is more annoying than outright bans. Microsoft banned my IP from their email services, but helpfully sent bounces so I could appeal. This is the email equivalent of hellbanning.

</comment><comment><USER38> I know that on HN "me too" comments are not well seen, but I just have to this time, because I am really frustrated by this as well (as said before: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9812157](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9812157)).

This part sums up as I see it as well:

I can only think this is intentional on Google's part – they have a near monopoly; the vast majority of mail I send these days goes to Google – and if a small company is running their own mail server is too much of a hassle, then maybe they'd buy Google Apps. It's bad, anti-competitive behavior on Google's part. Shame on them if its true. I don't know if it is, I can only guess, but they certainly have an incentive to make it difficult for the little guy.

I'm just a geek that likes running my own servers. My pleas to Google's impersonal forms fall on deaf ears, and I'm getting tired of telling everyone I e-mail to check their spam folders.

<comment><USER39> I just tell people I email that their free email provider is fucking them out of their legitimate messages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I have the same with my own server and Yahoo, after my first announcement of switching from Gmail to my own server Yahoo sent me a message that I was blocked forever. I have SPF set up but not DKIM. I also don't have a valid cert (I'd have to renew every year). Gmail never gave me any problems though.

Yahoo apparently has procedures to deal with this but they are difficult to find. The annoying thing is that now I'm not even receiving any notification of the blocking anymore. The mail just disappears.

Btw, mail from my Drupal system also always ended up in spam. But I kept removing the spam tag and now it is just goes into regular mail.

</comment><comment><USER41> Network effect. Google blocks non-GMail email, eventually you are forced to use them as your service provider. Can either be deliberate or happy unexpected outcome for Google.

<comment><USER42> I use Google for my email, and they still count some as spam. Hell, it is sent from Google's own servers! It still doesn't help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I've had similar problems over the last year or two with Gmail and with Outlook/Live Mail.

Our 2 person small time company sends a few hundred mails a month at most. We replay to someone on Gmail and get spam-binned. They whitelist us, we reply again and get spam binned. We send the mail via a major provider and it gets through.

On Outlook a website mail form sending emails to a hotmail.co.uk address was getting blocked - the server has the same IP it's had for years, the form has been used for years, the recipient has whitelisted the email address. I forget what eventually fixed it, think it was addition of a reply-to address; quite ridiculous.

In both cases they are long term domains with real ID info that hasn't changed, the domains have been on the same IP held by the same ISP for at least 3 years and owned by the same owner used for the same businesses for at least 10 years. Both domains are long-term registered in (Google|Microsoft) analytics.

Yes I can see that such domains could be purchased by spammers and the prior owners may not change their ID info and the new holders may be able to purchase space on the old server and so keep the IP address (despite the established ISP having strong anti-spam policies) and may be able to then send out spam emails, but who would whitelist those emails???

IMO on either Outlook or Gmail if you whitelist something, even if it were spam from a known spammer, then they should let it through (sanitised if needs be). If they wanted to they could add a "99.999996% of others blocked this but you have whitelisted it, do you want to block emails from email@example.com in the future?".

/rant

</comment><comment><USER44> I've had and still have similar issue like you do. I have my own smtp server, which sends some alerts to my google apps account. I've setup my Google Apps account to white -list all email arriving from my mail server, whitelisted source domain, added spf records, etc - but my mail still being blocked. First, Google told me that's because I use IMAP and I should stop using it - only webmail, or exchange on iOS devices - fine, still blocking. Then I was told, that I can't attempt connection to the second MX server if first fails - done, still have problems. Two or three month later, they confirmed issue on their end with firewall blocking DDoS by blocking whole /24 subnet, with no fix in sight.

Remember, I am paid user and I went through rounds of bs with their support.

I feel sorry for those, who have to send email to Google Apps/Gmail as part of their business.

(I've posted this as a comment on original story, but decided to duplicate here, if someone will find this info helpful)

</comment><comment><USER45> >What can I do except move to a hosted provider ?

To answer your question about what you can do, you can send mail to Google legal asking them to accept your mail gmail users - just copy your whole blog post, I'm sure they'll action it right away:

Antitrust is serious business. (They already have trouble in the EU for it - [https://www.google.com/search?q=antitrust+eu+google](https://www.google.com/search?q=antitrust+eu+google) \- by the way I think it's completely unfounded.) It takes them seconds to whitelist you, and this really is a "15 seconds could save you $15 million on your next antitrust case" and anyone in Google legal can probably see that.

EDIT: I don't see how this got downvoted. This literally answers OP's question about what else he can do.

<comment><USER46> Antitrust is serious business, but seeing as there is no clear antitrust issue here, I'm not sure what you think getting lawyers involved will accomplish other than making it impossible to help you since your case is now an impending legal action.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I've had similar, unfathomable problems with Gmail delivery for a long time, until I added a PTR record for reverse IP lookup _for the IPv6 version_ of my IP address. That did the trick, I haven't had delivery trouble since, even without DKIM (but with SPF).

</comment><comment><USER48> Google just posted [http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-mail-you-want- not-...](http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-mail-you-want-not-spam-you- dont.html)

"but sometimes these wanted messages are mistakenly classified as spam. When this happens, you might have to wade through your spam folder to find that one important email (yuck!). We can help senders to do better, so today we're launching the Gmail Postmaster Tools."

[https://gmail.com/postmaster/](https://gmail.com/postmaster/)

</comment><comment><USER49> Some years ago I ran a mail server on a dynamic IP. I basically contacted Google and had them white-list me. And at the same time, some small providers totally refused to accept mail from me because I used a dynamic IP :P

Check-list before you attempt to get white-listed/ban-lifted on Gmail: Send bulk with "precedence: bulk" header. Use spf and dkim (optional). Always send from the same domain. Have your users "opt-in" to receive mail. Have a public e-mail policy. Basically, don't require users to enter their e-mail address.

</comment><comment><USER50> My 2c: I know it sucks when your mail doesn't get through, I've had the same issue with att.net, but gmail.com has never been a real problem for me.

I have a lot of mail that gets forwarded to gmail, including from cron that goes to my own mailbox at gmail. I sometimes have to unmark it as spam, but not too often. My IPv4 doesn't even have a custom rDNS -- only provider- specific one -- nor have I bothered to implement DKIM, although I do have SPF and am also registered for Webmaster Tools (although I somehow doubt that really matters).

</comment><comment><USER51> I had a problem when I sent a message to about 20 associates and used BCC. Google apps for business then just marked me as spam. I would get lots of rejected email messages. The people I sent to were all people I knew who were attending an event. Just gmail being a dick about BCC. So now I send email through sendgrid from within gmail. Have you tried using an external smtp relay? It's more likely your IP address than your domain that is flagged.

</comment><comment><USER52> I feel your pain. I have had similar problems over the last 15 years that I have been running my own mail server, but mostly with hotmail when they were the gmail of their time. (they would accept the mail and then silently drop it)

I would maybe change the SPF record to fail instead of soft-fail (~all to -all).

I have a @gmail.com account that I use for testing whenever I change something.

</comment><comment><USER53> Please make sure that your domain or email address is not blacklisted by Spamhaus. You can check the status here: [https://www.spamhaus.org/](https://www.spamhaus.org/)

It is the blacklist removal center. I removed my email address from this list and since then, everything seems to be working perfect.

</comment><comment><USER54> > _A few days ago, I attempted to e-mail a company regarding an online > e-commerce order I had placed, from my personal address._

What? How does e-mailing a company end up with a bounce from ... Google Groups? (See attached screenshot of the bounce.)

Maybe the original outbound message had something funny in the To: or Cc: recipient lists.

</comment><comment><USER55> The problem might be the IP address of the mail server and not the domain. Where are you hosting the server? Is it is your personal server? If so, what is the ISP and is it a residential connection or a business connection? If it is hosted by someone else, what is their reputation as a source of spam.

</comment><comment><USER56> I never had an issue with gmail blocking my mail server, but I was getting flagged as spam by AOL every sixish month because my server wasn't sending them enough mail... The company I work for resells an antispam solution with outbound filtering, so I just relay through that now

</comment><comment><USER57> What network are you hosted at? Perhaps your netblock is notorious?

</comment><comment><USER58> Of course it's deliberate, it's part of Google's ongoing business model of ring fencing the internet.

People tell you not to run your own mail server as it's a nightmare to keep on top of all the security aspects, and yes that's a thing. The greater problem is getting your mail delivered to the vast majority of people with gmail/hotmail/yahooo mail.

</comment><comment><USER59> I always wonder how companies like Mailchimp stay out of Google's blacklists.

<comment><USER43> Money?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." \-- Spock.

I'd rather have a few geeky people like me not have the fun of self hosting an e-mail server, than waste millions of man hours round the world because of people dealing with spam.

If you must hack, however, use something like Mailgun. It is more hacky in a way that you can program your incoming mail the way you want, not just install a mail server with a few commands.

<comment><USER60> That...doesn't make any sense. The author doesn't appear to be spamming or doing any kind of mailing list traffic. He is an individual communicating with other individuals. That's kind of the whole point of this Internet thing we have going here. Besides, he's only being singled out by Google; no other providers seem to have a problem with his domain and Google's own headers show that everything is fine.

<comment><USER28> First, it's about triggers. You are not allowed to carry guns on an airplane. "But I didn't shoot anybody." You didn't, but the people who do, carry guns. It's a negative trigger.

Second, when a technology becomes extremely mainstream, it begins to generate federation and structure around it. It's called evolution. This is higher in services where stakes are higher, and where giving an individual excess power can screw up other individual's lives. It is the same reason you cannot install your own cell tower. You can start a tiny in-house telephony service, but you cannot complain if AT&T declines to integrate with it.

Third, the openness is a wild, wild west concept. If openness allows him to install mail server, it also allows Google to block it.

Fourth, you underestimate the amount of turtles the spam cave has. A _lot_ of very smart people, leave mail servers on for years sending only a few emails before using it as a spam weapon. These servers can be rented for high price on the black market. If you were a measly C++ program, it is impossible for you to distinguish his good motives from a bad person. From what Google knows from 99% cases, this server will start sending spam any moment now.

Fifth, you underestimate the effect spam has. This guy suddenly starts sending out phishy Apple looking emails, asking people to change password. Next thing you know, Jennifer's pics (or your wife's, or your daughter's) are online.

We, as hackers, drink way too much Kool-Aid.

<comment><USER43> >You are not allowed to carry guns on an airplane. //

I don't think that's a good analogy. It misses the crucial point that the emails are being whitelisted by the receiver but still get blocked. A better analogy IMO would be that you invite me in to your living room for a chat, I say I'll bring the gun you wanted to see, you say that's fine. Then Google come along and muscle me away at your door because I have a gun. Then another day I ring and say can I come over for a chat, I say I have the gun you wanted to see, you say that's fine and that you've let Google know you want me to come over. Then Google meet me at the door and say I can't come in because I have a gun - I don't even get to knock, they don't ask you if you want to see me despite me having what you requested, they pay no attention to your request to them to let me in.

In case it's not clear what is happening outside the analogy is that I'm sending a message with content (the gun) that Google thinks is harmful. You want that content (to see the gun). You tell Google you want that content (whitelisting my email address, marking my email as not-spam) but they continue to block the email. What's worst is they block the email now without notifying and ignore the whitelist (they meet me at the door). You never get my emails that you want (never get to see the gun), because Google have made an erroneous assumption based on generalities and ignored the interventions of their customer.

Meanwhile - inside the analogy - a third party can bring a gun to your friends house but they happen to hire Google doorstaff themselves ...

It has the complexion of a protection racket: "Wouldn't it be a shame if you used some other supplier and your emails didn't get through, oh no. /s". Then as soon as the "you paid Google" flag is raised [eg by giving them access to all your emails] suddenly the exact same messages get through to the exact same people.

Google may be completely innocent but it stinks real bad.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best way/resources to learn Excel? - <AUTHOR> I am an average Excel user.  Work and whatnot necessitate that I need to get closer to expert level, particularly with regard to pivot tables and pulling data from one sheet/column/row And feeding it into other places as a sum, percentage, ratio, etc.<p>I would prefer an actual course with structure and a coherent curriculum instead of random YouTube videos.  I know there was a startup here about 8 months ago touting Excel training.  Any suggestions?   Thank you. <comment><USER2> You Suck at Excel with Joel Spolsky [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nbkaYsR94c)

</comment><comment><USER3> Search for ExcelIsFun You Tube Channel. This guy is a truly incredible teacher, thousands of videos from basic to guru level. I suggest you learn: Excel Tables, Index Function (lookup and reference versions) Match Function, SumIfs, CountIfs - inside out - better than Pivot Tables - plus how to write UDFs and Macros in VBA - then maybe PowerBI now part of data tab in Excel 2016.

<comment><USER4> ExcelIsFun helped me so much! Working with Excel and trying to make more complicated solutions is what got me interested in programming and led to the job I have now.

I've also really enjoyed "Excel 2013: Power Programming with VBA" by Walkenbach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know anyone who has learned it well via a course. It's almost always a group activity, looking at how peers solve problems in their spreadsheets in Excel. Perhaps the courses are worse than programming courses because they tend to assume a lower starting point, and can be too abstract without trying to solve a specific problem at hand.

</comment><comment><USER6> The first chapter of "Data Smart" ([https://www.amazon.ca/Data-Smart-Science- Transform-Informati...](https://www.amazon.ca/Data-Smart-Science-Transform- Information/dp/111866146X)) gets into some more advanced but practical tasks in Excel. The material is accessible to the beginner and assumes little prior knowledge of Excel.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://chandoo.org/](https://chandoo.org/) taught me a lot. It's a pretty intensive repository :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Lynda.com has some tutorials. This crash course at wallstreetprep ([https://www.wallstreetprep.com/self-study-programs/excel- cra...](https://www.wallstreetprep.com/self-study-programs/excel-crash- course/)) looks to cover many of the basics. I haven't taken it though.

</comment><comment><USER9> This isn't strictly a recommendation because I've never used it, but this always looked helpful to me. They have some self-contained tutorials and courses that are all within an Excel workbook

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

</comment><comment><USER10> Excel couses on EdX are good if you are interested in Excel pivot & BI features.

<comment><USER11> Look for Dany Hoter. He will take your skills to a complete different level much above all others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Took a look the dummy books or at udemy?

</comment><comment><USER13> Check r/excel and youtube - excelisfun.

</comment><comment><USER14> Pluralsight has a couple of videos that are ok. But they mostly focus on vba.</comment>


Firefox 4 beta 7 released with Jaegermonkey and more - <AUTHOR> http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/4.0b7/releasenotes/

<comment><USER2> Cons: I don't like the new status bar, and the bookmark manager appears to have disappeared.

Pros: I like the tabs on top, and random hiccups that were occurring on OSX appear to be down. Personas are fully working now with the title bar in OSX.

Note: I'm just taking a break from Firefox 3, but I'll probably be switching back for addon support such as a fully working copy of Firebug and Greasemonkey. I haven't spent enough time to notice speed increases, and I haven't tested it.

What are everyone else's thoughts?

<comment><AUTHOR> Recommendation: disable the 'addons bar' (status bar) - it probably only showed up because you kept your old profile. Also, you might have to add the bookmarks button back to the toolbar if you migrated your profile as well (it still exists!)</comment></comment>


The Brain's Autopilot Mechanism Steers Consciousness - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-brains-autopilot-mechanism-steers-consciousness/ <comment><USER2> When this topic is discussed using common speech, it becomes confusing. `Consciousness' is used to describe so many things: the state of being conscious (as opposed to unconscious), the feeling of awareness (as opposed to an automaton that responds to its environment), being aware of oneself as an individual (as opposed to just aware of the world), those thoughts on which you are focusing as opposed to automatic thinking, choices of the will as opposed to unwitting biases, etc. I really don't see all of these as equivalent.

Even if we accept that the article is talking about conscious vs unconscious thinking (focus vs automatic), the hypothesis doesn't seem to explain things we choose to do (which are selected by conscious thoughts/focus), which don't arise because they are something unexpected or unpredicted.

Sure, if you are about to commit a war crime, the matter may be brought to attention by the conscience, which somehow signals that something unusual is about to happen. But when I decide to take an extra bath today because I like the sensation of warm water, it's not happening because of some odd stimulus that wasn't predicted. Or at least, I'm not conscious of what that stimulus is.

Some of the situations where we make conscious choices seem to arise because of habit, morality, suggestion, and any number of other triggers. Another thing that seems to trigger our attention is the need to conduct an ordered set of movements that have not been previously rehearsed, in order to accomplish some desired outcome.

And that also extends to things where there are states of mind that must be progressed through in order in order to accomplish the desired outcome, such as arithmetic, or doing a brute force search of potential solutions to a problem, or solving a logic puzzle. All these also demand our attention/focus.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a fascinating and very persuasive view of how the mind works. And while the article focuses on a causal flow from the unconscious to the conscious, it also mentions actions that the conscious mind can do to influence the unconscious, like the example of putting a picture of loved ones on one's desk to motivate work.

I would like to add something else that the conscious mind can do. Unconscious cognitions often show up in consciousness as vague feelings, like when you feel uncomfortable around someone but can't say quite why. In this case it often works to sit and just attend to the feeling, ask it a question like "what is making me feel this way?" and wait for an answer.

And then when some words appear in your mind as answer, check them back against the feeling to see if it affirms it. This last step is like when you have forgotten someone's name and have only a feel of it, and then when you remember the feeling changes to one of affirmation, and that's how you know you remembered it correctly.

This process will make it possible to find out what is motivating you, and so you can think about it consciously, like figuring out a better way to reach a goal. Beyond that, it often leads to an automatic process of changes such as emotions reducing and irrational beliefs correcting themselves.

In fact, we all know this sort of process from talking with people about problems. A large part of what is going on here is that in the process of talking we put vague feelings into more precise words, and this leads to intelligent thinking and automatic changes in feeling. Other forms of symbolization such painting or composing music can have a similar effect.

A good book on this process of attending to unclear feelings is _Focusing_ by the University of Chicago psychologist and philosopher Eugene Gendlin.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know how to access the ~Friston & Solms article cited here? i cannot find a DOI and i have not been able to break through with [https://sci- hub.tw](https://sci-hub.tw)

~Friston & Solms

How and Why Consciousness Arises: Some Considerations from Physics and Physiology. Mark Solms and Karl Friston in Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 25, Nos. 5–6, pages 202–238; May/June 2018.

[https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2018/00000025...](https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2018/00000025/f0020005/art00009)</comment>


Show HN: Codeblox.io – Connect your code with anyone else's via drag and drop - <AUTHOR> https://codeblox.io <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

I built Codeblox to allow developers to connect code together like building blocks. This makes it easy to build sequences (series of blocks) to do all kinds of things.

Every block and sequence gets an API endpoint (POST api.codeblox.io/username/blockName) and you can also schedule them to run daily.

Each code block specifies an input and output type (text, number, location, etc) and you can build sequences by combining blocks that fit together.

How it Works:

\- CLI tool packages up your directory as a ZIP file, and uploads it to S3 \- That filename is stored in the DB \- When someone invokes your code from the website, the back-end (Node.js) creates a Lambda function pointed to your ZIP in S3, invokes it and returns the result \- For sequences, do the same thing, except the client handles making each sequential call

Stack: FE: React/Redux BE: Node.js, MySQL, AWS, Redis

I'd be really interested to hear any feedback or feature requests.

I'm also looking for a co-founder to work on this with (NYC or SF area), so if you like the idea just reach out at info [at] codeblox [dot] io

Thanks! Alan

<comment><USER2> interesting idea. what sort of license is applied to the code i upload?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The plan is to let the author specify the license type in the codeblox.json file, similar to what you would do on GitHub or with an NPM package.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Now a question: have you thought about just running code blocks on the client? It would have limitations, but I guess most tasks could be accomplished, and the backend running costs would be enormously smaller.

There's also the problem of executing other people's code in your visitors machines, but maybe that isn't so bad -- or could be solved by running a better language than raw Javascript.

I know this sounds like a silly idea, but what do you think?

<comment><USER4> this is what I built actually, though not active anymore. Users can upload functions with defined parameters and output, which can be strung together. Very ETL oriented. Each of the function will run as a web worker.

An example that I did with the platform was, parse Skype chat log (500MB ish) of it, and look search for specific strings and dump it back as CSV by stringing 3 functions together, all running inside web workers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ok, just one more quibble: I have the impression that since blocks are small this system is ideal for small pieces of code and has already a great a web interface for input/output, why not let us edit blocks online and test them live with hand-inputted values while we edit? Glitch.com, for example, has a web editor by default, but it is so cumbersome to try the app while editing it -- the contrary is true on Codeblox.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a nice concept. It seems like making coding more social and I am excited to see people making interesting things with collaboration.

Right now we can assemble blocks sequentially. It would be awesome if those can also be arranged conditionally (by some programming language- a programming language to arrange blocks of code,eh).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I agree about conditional logic - maybe also loops - and will be thinking about how to incorporate something like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think this would be very useful for non-coders. For example, some days ago a friend of mine was struggling to get just the emails addresses from a list of names+emails he had in an Excel file.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I think so too. Long-term I'd like to have a extensions (Chrome, desktop, etc) that give access to running blocks from anywhere. I think this makes code much more usable to non-developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wouldn't using a typed language would be better suited for this? Why not?</comment>


Fully working Posix-like x86-64 OS in Crystal - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/sdogruyol/status/1185352475727015937 <comment><AUTHOR> Crystal is a Ruby inspired compiled language, it's blazingly fast with a very low memory footprint. It uses LLVM for emitting native code, thus making use of all the optimizations built into the LLVM toolchain.

Website: [https://crystal-lang.org/](https://crystal-lang.org/)

Github: [https://github.com/crystal-lang/crystal](https://github.com/crystal- lang/crystal)</comment>