How US software ended up powering Chinese assault helicopters - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/how-us-software-ended-up-in-chinese-assault-helicopters/ <comment><USER3> I think all this does is illustrate how ridiculous US export controls are, and how hypocritical the West's stance vis-a-vis China is.

First, the idiocy of the export controls: maybe they made some sense when the US was a sole source for certain technologies, but right now, the US is not even the leading technological power in many fields in which it insists on export controls, let alone the sole supplier. If Turbomeca is standing in line to supply China with engines with FADEC, which can be put on civilian or military helicopters as China wishes, then what do these export controls do, other than impose paperwork and misery on anyone who is dealing with any US supplier? Not to mention that China will shortly be producing these engines by itself.

Second, the hypocrisy: look, either the West can decide that the Chinese regime is evil, and refuse to do business with it, or it can do a trillion dollars a year worth of import/export with China, and stop trying to hide behind the microscopic fig leaf of not allowing military exports. With the world rushing to sell any piece of technology to China in order to counterbalance the Chinese exports, and with China being more than sophisticated enough to adapt technology for military use, this is fooling no one.

<comment><USER4> > then what do these export controls do, other than impose paperwork and > misery on anyone who is dealing with any US supplier?

They make the French supplier the only supplier, granting them a monopoly and making it impossible for china to source the parts at current market rates. Do you know how difficult it is to get ordinary, commonly-available stuff shipped to your door in a friendly country like Saudi Arabia? Think about that hassle, but on a governmental level.

It's not a national security goal. It's a diplomacy goal. Now it's fine to ask whether or not private US companies should be roped into doing the state department's dirty work, of course, but that's a different conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why is there an implied assumption that Russia and China have no ability to develop this stuff on their own?

And an even bigger question is why do Russia and China think it too. I've never heard of the US trying to steal technology at a national level - <USER2> wouldn't even occur to them.

So why do Russia and China do it? They have tons of engineers, there is no way that can't invent this stuff too.

<comment><USER6> > I've never heard of the US trying to steal technology at a national level - > it wouldn't even occur to them.

What exactly is the CIA then? I'm pretty sure it occurs to them. Just because a) they aren't caught or b) it isn't reported. Doesn't mean it's not happening.

Even if you suspected your tech was more advanced, you would still steal your opponents in order to gauge where they were at.

<comment><USER5> I assume the CIA looks for intelligence, i.e. plans, advancements, capabilities, stuff like that. Not engineering plans to actually make a product.

> Even if you suspected your tech was more advanced, you would still steal > your opponents in order to gauge where they were at.

Kinda missed my point there didn't you? I'm talking about stealing tech in order to use it. Stealing tech to find out about it is not the same thing.

<comment><USER6> I don't think I missed your point. I suspect the CIA do a multitude of things, encompassing what we've both said.

I was simply illustrating that just because you haven't heard about it. Doesn't mean it didn't happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 4 or 5 years ago, fedex was fined because it shipped a flight simulation game to a Chinese student in Bejing University of Aeronautics.

US always complained about CN export/import imbalance, OTOH it simply doesn't want to export any high tech products.

</comment><comment><USER8> The part that struck me as most ridiculous about this was that the technology export was legal as long as it was "dual use". If China had just done a better job of covering up their true intentions, then UTC wouldn't have broken any laws in the first place.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an aerospace engineer. I imagine that some of the required "customizations" would have been difficult to request without revealing the true purpose of the aircraft. Still, the Chinese are pretty good at reverse-engineering, and something that does 90% of what you need has got to be a good starting point.

</comment><comment><USER9> WOW and too think alot of people were worried about playstation PS/3's going to china as they were super powerful processing chips at one stage and at the same time well, just read the article.

The whole aspect that you can sell something for non milatary use and it has a milatary use is crazy if you have a ban. A ban should be blanket or non. Allowing obvious abusable loopholes is just a silly position to be in.

What next - they purchase a load of nukes on the pretence there to be used as christmas tree ornaments. Crazy.

</comment><comment><USER6> China (as usual) painted as an evil villain to the righteous U.S.

A great startup idea, would be a media outlet that didn't push such a massive point of view on everything...

Likely, a lot of media outlets probably started that way...

<comment><USER10> You mean the high-quality unbiased news we can get from CCTV?

China has a fairly opaque government that is not very sensitive to public opinion (and especially international opinion); that they are often painted as the bad guy has nothing to do with bias.

<comment><USER6> > You mean the high-quality unbiased news we can get from CCTV?

No, I didn't mean that. I never mentioned such a thing... :\

> China has a fairly opaque government that is not very sensitive to public > opinion (and especially international opinion); that they are often painted > as the bad guy has nothing to do with bias.

I'm curious where you got this view from, from the varied news sources I've read, the Chinese govt is VERY sensitive to public opinion... hence why it runs 24 hour propaganda platforms like CCTV.

But regardless, is it 'bad' to be a non-democratic government? Why?

What is the 'bad guy' view based on, if not bias? (Of course in the context of how the U.S itself operates, given that was the basis of my comment).

<comment><USER10> Just for the record, I'm not downvoting you (only have 200 karma points, can't downvote) and disagree that you need to be downvoted.

The CCP is not sensitive to real public opinion since they censor/hide/or simply ignore facts. They are very much vested in shaping opinion, of course, but they care nothing about honest opinions. Consider that they don't even want to perform scientific polls (or have them performed by third parties), since they don't care about the results and would find them embarrassing regardless.

That China is the bad guy has nothing to do with them being non-demecratic, and everything to do with just being overtly dishonest about world truth. If the CCP tomorrow started being honest about everything, good and bad, we would see them in a much more sympathetic light even as we contined to disagree with them and bad things continued to happen (we want clarity, not perfection). But the CCP contines to see face as being much more important to their continued existence than truth, and so I doubt this will end very soon.

<comment><USER6> But there are not many nations that operate in a "honest about everything" way. I mean wikileaks highlighted a whole lot of stuff about the U.S. that was very far from 'honest about everything'.

Are we holding China to a higher bar than the U.S? Or do we have blinders on when viewing the U.S's actions?

<comment><USER10> Its one thing to get your hand caught in the cookie jar, and another thing to claim the sky is hot pink when its really blue (or that the air is clean in Beijing when its obviously not). Certain parts of the US government lie, yes, but they get caught (and a handslap), don't do it all the time, and don't come off as insane.

<comment><USER6> I don't know, I'd much prefer the lies to be obvious "Beijing isn't polluted" than "No, that Apache isn't gunning down civilians". (Hmm, I realise, that is possibly inciting a whole other discussion).

That aside, I still reckon, that article was biased for no reason, other than to continue the 'us against them' mentality that gets no where.

And a non-biased fact/data based media outlet would be a great addition to the the world/national (which ever level) media.

<comment><USER10> But the article wasn't biased, it was talking about a company who broke the law of the country they were operating in, it wasn't talking about so much the "evil" Chinese government as much as it was talking about the "evil" American company breaking American laws that just happen to export restrictions to China. It could have been export restrictions to France and they would still be breaking the law.

Chinese get sensitive about any article that mentions China, whether they make value judgements about the Chinese or not. I've seen even the most fact-based empirically-evidenced articles posted from the most reputable unbiased international news agencies get shot down by wu mao dang commentors as being unfair.

<comment><USER6> There are whole paragraphs from that article that basically says Chinese lie, cheat, and steal to get technology. But without any evidence, E.G:

"The prototype J-20 Chinese stealth fighter unveiled last year, for example, appears to be based on technology recovered from a US F-117 stealth fighter..."

Appears? It also appears to be a self-developed piece of technology? Why the negative bias? (For no reason).

It's worrying that people can't even spot the bias when it's sitting right in front of them.

wu mao are essentially a product of the CCP's propaganda machine. So of course they shoot down any and everything that isn't pro CCP.

> most reputable unbiased international news agencies

I'm curious which agencies these are? From my own reading, I've found every agency is biased, and the only way to get a useful picture is to understand where their bias lies and read multiple sources.

<comment><USER10> So you are worried about that one sentence? Does it even cast China in a bad light? It seems smart of them to learn from whatever wreckage they recovered in Serbia. Yes, I don't see much bias there, definitely not the opinion shaping kind of bias that would affect reader thinking. Maybe there are some insecurities that Chinese readers would be sensitive to that would completely escape westerner notice.

I should have said "most" unbiased, of course bias is impossible to completely avoid. An article with facts as numbers, which is just reporting observations and not making value judgement, is as unbiased as you can get!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thank God they didn't include software for downloading movies, or someone would be in Guantanamo Bay right now.

</comment><comment><USER12> Humanity has the ability to destroy all life on this planet many times over. As intelligent as we all think we are it is a sad note to realize that we are still in the caveman mental state of wanting the bigger stick. Will we ever turn the corner? Haven't we seen and caused enough death already?

The problem isn't export controls. The problem is that we need to finally break away from the animals we think we evolved away from.

<comment><USER5> > Humanity has the ability to destroy all life on this planet many times over.

Yah, that isn't even remotely true. It's often said, but completely false.

And without competition there is no life. And competition often results in war.

Notice how companies that trounce all competition then go on to completely stagnate. It happens to humans too. Once you have nothing you need to fight for you don't bother doing anything.

Look what happens to every major artist once they no longer work - they have lots of money, and no need to work, so they destroy their life. Look at what happens to rich kids who got their money via inheritance, with no need to work for it. Or the prototypical story of a retiree that dies within a year.

It's is essential to human survival to always have to fight.

I know what you are thinking: Fight for good things, and stop war. But that isn't possible, you can't split human nature that way.

(Plants are the same way: Prune a plant and you will trigger massive growth.)

<comment><USER12> >> Humanity has the ability to destroy all life on this planet many times over.

> Yah, that isn't even remotely true. It's often said, but completely false.

Really? You don't think that the nuclear arsenal in place around the world has the capacity to cause massive life loss on this planet? It's only a matter of time until the "bad guys" (whoever you choose to crown as such) escalate things up to bio/chem weaponry. Bio weapons are actually scarier than nukes.

Don't say it won't happen. We have a proven capacity to cause untold death and destruction. The world wars and various genocides are proof enough.

<comment><USER5> Compare:

"destroy all life on this planet many times over"

vs.

"cause massive life loss on this planet"

Not exactly the same thing, yet you said both. Which is it?

> It's only a matter of time

i.e. doesn't exist right now. So you agree with me.

> Bio weapons are actually scarier than nukes.

I agree.

> We have a proven capacity to cause untold death and destruction. The world > wars and various genocides are proof enough.

In the entire history of the world the death rate from wars has NEVER been lower than it is right now.

Lookup total war to see how bad it was. Compare the death rates (as a ratio of soldiers involved. Include civilians if you wish) in Iraq vs. Vietnam or WW2.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Useful Python Libraries for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://blog.instavest.com/three-useful-python-libraries-for-startups <comment><USER2> Not sure why these recommendations are start up specific. Nothing here seems particularly 'startup'. These are just good simple general purpose web related python libraries.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can see that perspective. My thoughts were that each of these were not the "best" way to do things, but provided a great effort/benefit ratio. For example, if you have a very high traffic website, then you're better off using a CDN for static files instead of Whitenoise.

<comment><USER3> If the effort difference between installing nginx and using Whitenoise makes a significant difference in the success of your business, there are much larger hiccups down the road which are going to put you out of business, so you might as well give up now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> [https://github.com/vinta/awesome-python](https://github.com/vinta/awesome- python)

<comment><USER5> Not a fan of uncurated, kitchen sink lists like that. Almost worse than no list at all. I know, I know, I don't have to look at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Regarding dates, I would have mentioned Arrow - [http://crsmithdev.com/arrow/](http://crsmithdev.com/arrow/)

</comment><comment><USER7> python-requests is a must have!

Requests: HTTP for Humans [http://docs.python- requests.org/en/latest/](http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/)

<comment><USER5> I seem to do fine with httplib/2 and generally prefer core libraries. Am I really missing out on much?

<comment><USER8> [https://gist.github.com/kennethreitz/973705](https://gist.github.com/kennethreitz/973705)

I would say not much, but it's much more pythonic.

<comment><USER5> Interesting but contrived with the authentication part which is rare in my experience (I've never seen it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Python-dateutil is unintuitive as all get-out in my humble opinion, so I recommend dateparser instead (recent release has many great improvements over dateutil, but check it out for yourself to decide [0]).

[0] [https://github.com/scrapinghub/dateparser](https://github.com/scrapinghub/dateparser)

</comment><comment><USER10> Since a lot of startups use AWS, boto ranks up there.

[https://boto.readthedocs.org/en/latest/](https://boto.readthedocs.org/en/latest/)

<comment><USER11> remember that boto3 was released separately - [https://github.com/boto/boto3](https://github.com/boto/boto3)

<comment><USER12> Does boto3 becoming 1.0 last week mean that everyone should be moving to it or will boto3 merge into boto?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Disclaimer: I am one of the developers that built this.

Try Frappe Framework ([https://frappe.io](https://frappe.io)). We have received feedback that it is really good to quickly build internal projects or prototypes.

Also ERPNext ([https://ERPNext.com](https://ERPNext.com)) is an open source erp that is feature rich and has a good UI. It can help any startup to manage their business without resorting to complicated excel sheets based management.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am curious about why you have to parse dates in different formats. Is it part of a web crawler?

Once I switched to python 3, datetime has been sufficient for my needs as timezone is also handled.

<comment><AUTHOR> We worked with a third party API for a data source which had inconsistent formats for dates. Also, we A/B test inputs and its awesome to be able to change how users input dates on the front-end without server-side code changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I expected more libraries.

<comment><USER16> Agreed, but I hadn't heard of the first two, so worth the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Hi @zallarak, nice to see you on HN! Not sure if you're doing any text analytics yet, but NLTK is designed to be super-quick to get up and running.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, Thanks for the suggestion! I will look into it. Hope you're having a great summer in SF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If only for testing I would agree with whitenoise, but in case of startup and you are already serving static files why do you want to replace NGINX with Whitenoise? any specific reason for Whitenoise, maybe it is better/simpler/efficient than NGINX?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. We were not using nginx to begin with (rather, serving it through our app server). It was an alternative to nginx and is super easy to set up: [https://github.com/evansd/whitenoise#quickstart-for-other- ws...](https://github.com/evansd/whitenoise#quickstart-for-other-wsgi-apps)

<comment><USER18> If you are using python code for serving static files, probably you are not seeing lots of traffic yet, I guess you should reconsider your decision and watch "Simple made Easy"[1] talk by Rich Hickey

[1] [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made- Easy](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy)

<comment><USER19> Looks like Whitenoise can gzip your assets, add a hash to the filename, serve them with far-future headers, and then selectively serve the gzipped version based on Accept-Encoding headers.

Put that behind Cloudflare and your origin server is only hit when an edge location is warming its cache.

Sounds Hickey-tier simple to me, especially compared to your advice of "just use and configure Nginx".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When I needed a Python generation, I created abstractions between Python and LaTeX. The documentation is far from finished, but it should be fairly understandable with the examples.

Docs: [https://jeltef.github.io/PyLaTeX/](https://jeltef.github.io/PyLaTeX/)

Code: [https://github.com/JelteF/PyLaTeX](https://github.com/JelteF/PyLaTeX)

</comment><comment><USER21> Dependency injection: [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/injector/0.9.1](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/injector/0.9.1)

For Flask-- it removes the dependency on a global request context: [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Flask- Injector](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Flask-Injector)

</comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone have any non-python alternatives to these libraries? A lot of them seem very useful to me, but I rarely work in Python.

</comment><comment><USER23> Every startup gotta deploy stuff. I remember Fabric a useful tool for quickly deploying and automating various tasks - [http://www.fabfile.org/](http://www.fabfile.org/). Also not a library, but Gunicorn is pretty quick easy way to setup a quick decent HTTP server over your Python WSGI app.

</comment><comment><USER7> Another useful library is vatnumber Python module to validate VAT numbers: [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/vatnumber](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/vatnumber)

</comment><comment><USER24> An alternative to phonenumbers is [https://www.twilio.com/lookup](https://www.twilio.com/lookup)

<comment><USER25> API call vs code not really the same.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why is "222-222-2222" not a valid phone number?

<comment><USER27> The phone numbers library isn't just counting digits; it has a database of which area codes exist (as well as other lesser-known rules, depending on the country). This makes it more effective at filtering out invalid/fake phone numbers, but it does mean you need to stay on top of the latest version as its database changes over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is extremely subjective.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. My goal was to share what I thought were solutions to generally common problems, and were't incredibly easy to find (i.e. > 3 google searches to find). The three libraries I selected were general tasks that lots of developers end up having to re-invent (especially phone number parsing).

<comment><USER29> Is parsing phone numbers really a common task for startups? (I've never needed to do it). Is the use-case just validating that the user didn't accidentally type their phone number incorrectly? (Seems if the user _wants_ to give you the wrong phone number, they can just pick one out of a directory...)</comment></comment></comment>


I love Trunk Based Development (or pushing straight to master) - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/why-i-love-trunk-based-development-641fcf0b94a0 <comment><USER2> I dont think that pair programming removes the need for an independent review of the code. 2 developers doesn't mean no bugs, and it can mean bugs^2</comment>


Tesla leak shows Model 3 with 100 kWh battery would have over 400-mile range - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2020/06/15/tesla-leak-model-3-100-kwh-battery-pack-400-mile-range/ <comment><USER2> It's great that Tesla is making EV with better autonomy, but it's sad we still talk about EV in that way, since it's their weak point, a big expense but more importantly it (at some point) doesn't matter.

IMO the best way to talk about EV is with time of (fast) charge for 300 km (approx 200 miles).

Let me explain, 300km correspond to about 2hours of driving, at which point it is recommended (if not mandatory for professional drivers depending on countries), to stop and take a break.

The perfect EV (still IMO) has a fast charge bellow 15min (the recommended pause time) for those 300km (and obviously an autonomy over 300km).

Sure more autonomy might be useful in some cases, but it just drive the price up without real benefit to the average consumer (individual and expecially professional still they often legally have to stop after 2h). Also, extra automony will make 300km charge faster since the charge is fastest for low battery.

But autonomy alone is not a good metric. It's just comparing EV to thermic vehicules in an unhelpful way, and reinforcing the perceived benefit of autonomy of thermal vehicules that do not really useful to the consumer and makes driving significantly more dangerous.

<comment><USER3> Well it depends. For people who don't have a way to charge up slowly, like at home or at work, fast charging is crucial. But for those who do have a slow option and rarely go long distances, fast charging is a low priority.

But beyond that, Tesla and everyone else is making steady progress with fast charging, so it is no real block to ev's replacing ice's.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The evidence for this is pretty weak right now. This "greentheonly" posted in February that Tesla removed the KWh rating from Model S/X battery labels though. Considering previous occasions with Osborne effect it'd be a smart way for Tesla to switch to newer batteries ahead of "Battery Day".

</comment><comment><USER5> Since the model S is bumping up to 400 mile range right now, the smaller more energy-efficient model 3 would easily surpass it.

If 75kwh gets 322 miles, using dumb math gives 429 miles from 100kwh.

Now ludicrous... I wonder if the model 3's permanent magnet motors could handle it or would they need to be upgraded.

<comment><USER6> Model 3 motors could handle it. It's what they swapped out the front motors on the S and X Raven powertrains for.

<comment><USER5> The front motors were added to the S and X for efficiency, not power.

<comment><USER6> Yes, but they still handle Ludicrous mode on both platforms.

<comment><USER5> The raven model s long range does not have ludicrous.

I'm also uncertain of the raven model s performance has the permanent magnet front motor - I've never seen it confirmed anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish that they would install proper display and controls instead of this cheap PC monitor in the middle of the car.

</comment><comment><USER8> Wouldn't it be smart to switch all models to the 100kWh battery and thereby lowering the cost of unnecessary manufacturing complexity?

Isn't Tesla using the insight of the big O notation to reduce manufacturing complexity by keeping the BOM parts as low and as simple as possible?

<comment><USER5> I think two things:

\- The battery packs are already created of modules.

\- battery manufacturing capacity might be the limit to growth of tesla as a company (cars, trucks, semis, utility power)

<comment><USER6> Cell manufacturing is currently the limit, especially for utility storage (which Musk said demand for is tremendous on the last earnings call), but Tesla has a new battery partner (China based CATL) that has the capacity necessary for the Class 8 Semi project.</comment></comment></comment>


I'm on the FCC. Please stop us from killing net neutrality - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-rosenworcel-fcc-net-neutrality-repeal-20171122-story.html <comment><USER2> Nick Gillespie: Your plan will, according to a write up in Politico, and I think this is accurate, it quote, "will jettison rules that prohibit internet service providers from blocking or slowing web traffic or creating so called paid internet fast lanes." Question for you, do you think fast lanes will become a thing? What is the value of a internet fast lane?

Ajit Pai: The answer to the first is we're not sure. We've never seen them before and that's part of the reason why I thought the rule in particular was, that was adopted in 2015, was very premature banning something that's simply didn't exist.

I took the time to read Ajit's argument here. It's completely mislead. If murder hadn't happened in a certain area yet, would it be "too preemptive" to outlaw it? Fast lanes DO exist in other countries _right now_. This is outrageous.

<comment><USER3> > "If murder hadn't happened in a certain area yet, would it be 'too > preemptive' to outlaw it?"

But even with murder, the law doesn't stop murders before they happen, but rather only acts retroactively (and that is for good reason).

> "Fast lanes DO exist in other countries right now."

But this is ignoring the whole debate: proponents of net freedom don't consider fast lanes to be a problem.

<comment> loup-vaillant Wait a minute, the opposite of net neutrality is called "net _freedom_ "?

This is sick (the lack of net neutrality is more likely to _reduce_ freedoms than to promote them). If you remotely support net neutrality, please never use that term again. This is self defeating.

<comment><USER4> I'm pro-net neutrality and I'm against dishonest marketing, but I think overall it's important to take the higher ground and remain intellectually honest. Doing otherwise results in a mud-slinging contest.

Existing regulations are a restriction on the freedom of service providers. That is undeniable. There many cases where we restrict freedoms for the greater good, but I don't like to pretend we are not doing so in those cases.

I'd also add that freedom is not the right to demand other people give you something you want. I wouldn't say that I've lost my freedoms if there are no good ISPs left after the regulatory change. Everyone involved can still either choose an existing provider or set up their own. We have monopoly/anti-trust laws when that ceases to be the case. Of course, this may not be the efficient path to a world that a huge majority of people want - which is why I slightly side with net neutrality.

<comment><USER5> > Existing regulations are a restriction on the freedom of service providers.

Then go ahead and call it "corporate freedom". The network isn't getting any more free without neutrality.

<comment><USER3> An ISP doesn't necessarily have to be a corporate entity. It could be a municipality (e.g. city of Chattanooga) or hypothetically owned by residents directly.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _An ISP doesn 't necessarily have to be a corporate entity._

In practice, they are. There are exception, but they remain exceptions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >Reach out to the rest of the FCC now. Tell them they can't take away internet openness without a fight.

How?

As this article mentions, their comment system had issues (spam and DDoS) and the only other avenue I've seen is to beg our representatives (who aren't part of the December vote) to do _something_.

It was a clean and concise piece, but I was hoping that an insider would provide a new course of action.

I've seen action across online media from users (reddit, Twitter, etc) as well as among peers. But not as much from the platforms themselves. Remember SOPA? Do those pushing for this really not hear the public's outrage yet?

<comment><USER7> This may be about the Internet, but doing online "protest" will get us nowhere. Real protest means people going to the streets and making the government afraid of real violence. Other than that I don't see any way out.

<comment><USER8> Real protest means going to your local government to fight the internet access monopolies and duopolies. It means voting with your wallet and not supporting the companies pushing for this. It means showing up to vote next time instead of staying home. It means educating your neighbors about what this will mean for all of us.

Don't pretend we've exhausted all alternatives to violence -- we haven't. We've barely done any of the things that have been successful in the past at causing change. Suggesting otherwise reduces our power, it doesn't enhance it.

Sometimes we lose ground before we make progress. But that doesn't mean we've been defeated.

<comment><USER9> When I only have one option for Internet > 5mbps and my job depends on it how do I fight with my wallet? I would happily pay 3x for municipal fiber but it'll never happen.

The monopoly of ISPs is what makes this whole free market argument completely unbalanced.

<comment><USER10> Halve you looked at gathering like minded people and starting a WISP?

The problem with specialist isps is they tend to attract expert users, who are currently subsidised by the average Joe. If your ISP has a 1G port upstream for $3k a month, and 100 customers, you'd be paying $30 for 10mbit each, excluding the rest of the isp's costs, which we'll put at $30/month/customer.

So they should charge $60pcm for 10mbit, but instead they sell 500 customers at $32/month, and offer up to 20mbit. This covers the upstream port, but one gives you 2mbit, but it sets the expectation that bandwidth is far cheaper than it really is.

Start up a fair ISP and you'll have to win customers who see your option at $60/10mbit // $90/20mbit, or the competitor at $32/20mbit. You'll need to attract 100 customers to pay for your uplink for 3 times the price. You'll then realise those numbers don't really work for a small isp - with 100 customers at $60/month minus upstream you'll have $3k/month for running costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is how China "blocking" web site from most of the world other than China. When many sites are blocked out right, many more are accessible but painfully slow. On the other hand, if you go to any major Chinese site, it would be lightning fast. By doing this, those foreign sites are rendered almost useless.

<comment><USER12> China has net neutrality. You are quite naive if you think NN is a solution to censorship. Browse eff.org for more than a few minutes to see that NN doesn't even scratch the surface of underlying issues. I don't want NN because then everyone will think the internet is just fine, when NN is a joke of a solution that doesn't even cover anything more than the FTC already covers.

<comment><USER13> I am a Chinese and I am curious starting when we had net neutrality? Every major sites has to pay all major ISPs to connect into their network so that all ISPs' customers can access the site. When you rent a server, you need to make sure that the server is connected to at least two of the major networks otherwise ISPs will throttle traffic from other competitors. It is also true that connecting servers outside the country is terribly slow if it even accessible

<comment><USER12> Wow so a nicely named govt policy has the opposite effects it's intended to have? I'm shocked!

<comment><USER14> But it's not result of Net Neutrality, but the lack thereof... What makes you think that China has NN?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I feel helpless. In this and in many things that this administration has brought on.

Vote? Yeah, right.

Sign a petition? Yeah, right.

I feel like unless there are real ramifications to the people doing this stuff, nothing we do matters.

<comment><USER16> You're a dope if you don't vote. It's impolite to mention this, but it is not a political problem, but a _Republican_ problem. A Democratic administration's FCC enacted Net Neutrality, a Republican one is attempting to dismantle it. Vote for Democrats at every level of government, in every election possible.

This will change some day, but today the Republican party has lost its mind and morals.

To be clear, I'm not calling you a dope.

<comment><USER17> both parties don't make decisions i consider sane or particularly clever yet those are the only two parties i may vote for with any chance of success. the voting system is broken by outmoded/gamed structures (gerrymandering, an electoral college), and all-or-nothing outcomes (if i vote for one candidate and they don't win, i may make no second or third choice with which then to put my voting power behind).

i simply feel an unrelenting despair when engaging in the realm of politics. it's two devils on a stage lording over minions who condemn and pollute the miracle of human life daily with short-sighted greed and a stunning lack of ethics.

a revolution is out of the question because the very tool that was meant to fight back against such sloven corruption no longer disbands after war but simply persists against an invisible Enemy none of us can touch, see or feel. what is this insane existence we find ourselves in where the only choice i have is to acquiesce or ineffectually protest?

<comment><USER18> That's because you have an unrealistic and naive view of the world and politics!

Abandoning politics because you're... too "moral" to deal with such things just leaves the field to those who do not feel that way. Those people you may not be wishing to represent you, eg: the current head of the FCC.

Secondly, yes there are only two parties and a suboptimal outcome, but that's what is happening. Your lack of a vote doesn't help, and in fact hurts.

Thirdly, you don't have to be fully 100% on board with everything, you just have to pay attention to (a) what are you able to do and (b) what are the likely outcomes.

Revolution is hardly a great idea. How would the US civil war work with nuclear weapons? Not well. I have a friend who lived thru a real revolution, and yeah, you don't want that.

The reality is simple. We have gotten to where we are by incremental changes, and we can get back via incremental changes. It's not sexy, it doesn't make for good front page articles. But that's the reality.

Politics doesn't get better if people opt out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> In Switzerland, any legislative action can be put on the ballot with enough signatures. Citizens can actually block what the Federal Assembly does.

In the US, we get to comment on it. And they get to say "That's nice."

<comment><USER20> No, actually. If comments are largely against what a regulatory body is proposing to do, it can be used in court against the regulatory body in court to block the action. That just very, very rarely happens. When captured, regulatory agencies tend not to try to pass measures that very obviously go against public opinion, or are too complex to arise public wrath. This is a special situation that's only happening due to arrogance of the Trump administration, and the fact that he simply does not care about appealing to voters outside his base.

If and When this passes, it will be immediately challenged in court, and this will be one of the things brought against the FCC. That's why the FCC conspired with ISPs to flood their own public opinion pages with comments from ISPs several months ago.

Again though, this is all not normal. Its a damn important thing to remember in Alabama and in 2018, however.

What I haven't been able to find any good articles on, however, is how strong those safeguards actually are.

<comment><USER21> > _This is a special situation that 's only happening due to arrogance of the > Trump administration_

Pai was nominated by Obama on McConnell's recommendation [1]. Trump only elevated him to Chairman.

I'm curious about his personal motivations. Is it as simple as him having served as associate general counsel at Verizon? Is it a legalistic interpretation, that the FCC doesn't have the authority to regulate this? Or about the role of government in general?

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

<comment><USER22> It's possible that he actually believes Net Neutrality is bad policy.

I'm for net neutrality but I at least recognize that it's possible to disagree in good faith.

<comment><USER23> it is. I can't recall seeing a well reasoned argument against it, but one can presume there is one.

but this process seem pretty perfunctory. in this corner the open exchange of ideas and the free market, and in the other...the idea that if we allow service providers the ability to package and toll all the content in the world, somehow that will be better for all of us.

maybe this decision is too important to delegate to appointed commissioners.

<comment><USER24> Here's one: getting rid of net neutrality increases the freedom of ISP's to monetize their control of your internet connection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I dont necessarily agree with the following but its a devils advocate argument I rarely see shared, and it has a lot of merit. Like everything, this issue is shades of grey.

Bandwidth is a limited amd expensive resource. When government mandated price controls are in effect ("Net neutrality" is a marketing meme) this expense is effectively socialised across the entire country. It is illegal for a telco to go to a hospital and offer a dedicated nine 9s reliable robot surgery link (technically its just illegal to charge a fair economic price for it but same/same). So the cost gets divided up, averaged out, and smalltime users end up paying a big chunk of the cost while people above the magic median point get massive benefits. YOU subsidise the cost of the BigCorp. video conference call between Sydney and Tokyo every day. You subsidise the cost of your neighbour streaming The Bachelor every night, and make it illegal for me to pay a higher price for the quality of service I need to work. Its a total mismanagement of resources. If the consumer was forced to bear the true economic cost of their internet usage then of course heavy users (like Netflix subscribers...) would end up paying more. Not directly to Netflix but the true cost of their product still goes up. This is obviously bad for Netflix/Youtube/the top 1%, who are the ones _extracting_ wealth from this thing we call the internet. These whales love having their infrastructure costs socialised. You dont even have to be a Google customer for you to be giving them money, no wonder they're so rich!

Blocking freedom of people to publish on the web doesn't have much to do with net neutrality. This is big company lobbying and public propaganda from the tech industry. Tech companies are the new oil barons, in 80 years when the bio lobby is pushing for access to proprietary databases and end "Data detention" (you heard it here first) we'll look at tech giants the way we look at oil companies lobbying for clean coal now.

<comment><USER26> Boy... I guess I'll go one piece at a time here:

> Bandwidth is a limited amd expensive resource

No, it's not. Bandwidth has been and still is throttled so that it can be perceived that way. Where it gets expensive is in rural america where you have few customers per mile, but those customers have long been subsidized by everybody else and mostly are STILL underserviced. Despite the subsidy, and despite repeated large public investment handed over to providers.

> When government mandated price controls are in effect

There are no mandated price controls. What is mandated is a lack of interference.

> this expense is effectively socialised across the entire country

Infrastructure has, in large part, been laid at public expense on public land. Communication providers always cry poor when they are forced to invest in less profitable areas, but they have repeatedly and consistently charged exorbitant amounts to the public to provide communication services. They have done so to such a degree that stopping these practices has required repeated congressional attention and sanctions.

> It is illegal for a telco to go to a hospital and offer a dedicated nine 9s > reliable robot surgery link

It is not illegal to provide high availability service to anyone. It is not illegal to charge a fair economic price. There are highly available connectivity solutions all over the marketplace.

> So the cost gets divided up, averaged out, and smalltime users end up paying > a big chunk of the cost while people above the magic median point get > massive benefits.

Low bandwidth users are given lower cost service today. High bandwidth users are given higher cost service today.

> YOU subsidise the cost of the BigCorp. video conference call between Sydney > and Tokyo every day. You subsidise the cost of your neighbour streaming The > Bachelor every night, and make it illegal for me to pay a higher price for > the quality of service I need to work.

False. BigCorp pays significantly more for high quality service, support, and reliability. If I don't watch streaming video, I have a lower cost service plan than my neighbor that does.

> Its a total mismanagement of resources.

It's a completely fabricated and misinformed argument.

> If the consumer was forced to bear the true economic cost of their internet > usage then of course heavy users (like Netflix subscribers...) would end up > paying more.

ISPs would love for customers to pay more, especially considering the popularity of Netflix. They would love to make Netflix pay as well. The fact is that Netflix has found a price point that works for them. Changing the dynamic changes the business model. Their profitability and popularity are not unlimited. The model that ISPs are demanding is that they be inserted as legally required middlemen into an existing marketplace, with the ability to skim profit from every popular online business model. Of course they want it. Of course they lobby for it.

> Not directly to Netflix but the true cost of their product still goes up. > This is obviously bad for Netflix/Youtube/the top 1%, who are the ones > extracting wealth from this thing we call the internet.

The top 1% of businesses are profitable entities that will suffer a loss of revenue which in the end will be passed onto the consumer, but they will also be provided with the protection of decreased competition and increased cost of market entry. Today, anyone with the gumption can walk into lionsgate and come up with a "Netflix for ..." business. Tomorrow, it will require significant venture capital simply to deal with the connectivity issues. Today that business can prove itself and then seek out investment. Tomorrow, that business needs investment in order to prove itself. That's a huge dynamic shift that knocks out MANY would be innovators of the kind that formed the world wide web into what it is today.

> These whales love having their infrastructure costs socialised. You dont > even have to be a Google customer for you to be giving them money, no wonder > they're so rich!

Google has paid and will continue to pay plenty of money for bandwidth. Just like consumers already pay plenty of money for bandwidth. The cost that we pay has NOTHING to do with infrastructure or maintenance costs. It has nothing to do with the cost of running that infrastructure. Comcast for example has had significant revenue and profit increases for the last 5 years. While internet usage has steadily increased and the usage of high bandwidth content has steadily increased. There is no resource limit they are running into. There is no financial constraint preventing them from doing anything. They aren't struggling to pay their workers who are frantically trying to squeeze more network out of the network at no cost.

> Blocking freedom of people to publish on the web doesn't have much to do > with net neutrality

It has everything to do with net neutrality. So Netflix pays a big chunk to Comcast. Does pornhub? Do they pay more because they are porn? What about SnapChat and other user-to-user video sharing services? What about all the youtubers, camgirls, streaming game players, twitch streamers? How does that all change? What segment of them is going to be cut off because the cost model doesn't make sense or because Comcast has arbitrarily decided that they either must pay a different price or that their content should not be allowed?

> This is big company lobbying and public propaganda from the tech industry.

There is certainly a lot of lobbying going on. And plenty of propoganda. Oddly, though... the lies, misinformation, and nonsensical arguments seem to be all coming from the telecoms and ISPs. Like there's some sort of concerted effort to do what the internet community has repeatedly and loudly expressed that it does not want.

> Tech companies are the new oil barons, in 80 years when the bio lobby is > pushing for access to proprietary databases and end "Data detention" (you > heard it here first) we'll look at tech giants the way we look at oil > companies lobbying for clean coal now.

We _should_ be a long way off from that. If we stagnate today, maybe that will be so. Maybe we have a 75 year future of pop-up ads and click-farms while communication is relegated to single sentence slang laden snippets that are designed to be provocative.

I see a stronger, better future for the web, technology, and communication networks. There is innovation happening all around the world. There are fantastic ideas that are being nurtured and others that have yet to be discovered. Don't advocate for stagnation. We can do so much better than this.

(I can't believe I spent an hour on this. I've been trolled and it totally worked. This was the top comment when I hit reply.)

<comment><USER25> Not a troll, thanks for the good dialogue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's probably futile, but you might sign this "Do Not Repeal Net Neutrality" [0] petition on the White House petitions site. It already has over 100,000 signatures -- the threshold at which the White House is supposed to, at minimum, respond to it.

Since we can't vote on this and our representatives aren't voting on it either, it's worth a shot.

[0]: [https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/do-not-repeal- net-...](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/do-not-repeal-net- neutrality)

<comment><USER20> battleforthenet.com and democracy.io are two much more direct alternatives.

Battleforthenet will be over the phone (and therefore be a bit more influenential), so I recommend it. But democracy.io (from the EFF) will have you contact all of your representatives directly, via email, within a minute or two.

I highly recommend them.

<comment><USER27> I don't understand the "contact all of your representatives". As I mentioned in the comment you replied to, "our representatives aren't voting on it".

You think that somehow we're going to cause our reps to put pressure on or "sway" the FCC? No, their votes have already been bought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> NN is an excellent example of framing by naming. Imagine if it was called the the "More Internet Regulation Act". Prima facie it's a more accurate name.

Since this is going to happen (reverting to the way it was for ~25 years), I'll point out that an echo chamber forms by default because most of us who might spend time arguing about it don't see a good reason to.

Aside... the largest cable provider decided it would be a good idea to edit a cleartext page on the way to me ('helpfully' inserting a JS popup about upcoming metering changes), I called and canceled my decade old ~$90/mo acct on the spot when the refused to put it in writing that they would not edit my inbound data in the future. Consumer reaction is equiv to voting. See NFL. Spare me variations on the 'normies don't care' arg.

<comment><USER29> > ... I called and canceled my decade old ~$90/mo acct on the spot

So... what do you do for internet access now? Oh, you have more than one legitimate option in your area? Lucky you. Many people don't.

<comment><USER28> Tethered my ATT acct for now. Prob go with my local microwave provider here in Tucson. Why arg for 'NN' when the real beef when you get down to it is the lack of competition?

<comment><USER30> Lack of competition often comes from municipal governments granting local monopolies. Good luck fighting that out city by city.

<comment><USER28> So argue for federal NN instead? It's so odd, can you not think of some alt universe where local monopolies are preempted regarding physical internet access? You are arguing for the logical (data) FCC parallel (or you think you are, I disagree that NN means that but lets not go there).

When local monopolies block data, they get sidestepped. It's not like water gas or electricity. 4G is fast. Heck I'm happy here tethered to my old 3G phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If you're wondering, how the wonderful invisible hand of the market would use "net freedom" \- say hello to Portugal.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/rokhanna/status/92370187109244108...](https://mobile.twitter.com/rokhanna/status/923701871092441088)

I don't see how this benefits anybody besides the ISP. It just makes them find a multitude of reasons why $everybody should pay double and triple to get a proper connection.

<comment><USER32> Khanna's original tweet implies that Meo is blocking or limiting certain "packages" unless you pay for them, the way that you can't watch HBO without the right cable plan. But that's wrong.

It's an add-on to general-purpose mobile subscriptions, which let you access any service — including the ones above. The idea is apparently that if you're into apps like Snapchat and Facebook (or... LinkedIn, I guess), you pay around $8 a month to specifically get more "Social" data, so you can use your regular allotment for everything else. It looks a lot like the "Vodafone Pass" service in the UK, where subscribers can pay for unlimited access to a similar stable of services.

<comment><USER33> >if you're into apps like Snapchat and Facebook [...] you pay around $8 a month to specifically get more "Social" data...

Ugh. This kind of cable plan confusopoly is so annoying.

I hate how marketing creates all these plans and promotions, then expects us jump through hoops to figure them out.

What a waste of time playing these silly games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If what is happening now is that the 2015 vote for net neutrality rules is to be repealed, couldn't a later FCC vote again to return to the 2015 rules?

<comment><USER35> I've asked myself the same question. But back in 2015, when the rules were put in place, there was a controversy (Netflix and a court ruling) and people cared. When will the next time people "care" to put it back in? Just how politics work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's amazing how the FCC can go against the American people when there is such overwhelming support for net neutrality.

<comment><USER37> Mob support for NN does not justify it. There's a reason we let domain experts make technical decisions.

<comment><USER38> ...And you believe that's what is happening with this decision?

<comment><USER39> Well, people who are anti-NN would never voice their opinion in this climate. They will get downvoted to hell.

<comment><USER40> I recall trying to argue against NN years ago here and getting down voted.

It's interesting that economists largely are against NN as well.

[http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/net-neutrality- ii](http://www.igmchicago.org/surveys/net-neutrality-ii)

<comment><USER41> See my other comment, that's not what those charts say. Less than half of those economists surveyed think that net neutrality is bad policy.

<comment><USER40> There's a significant number of uncertain ones but those should be excluded, and then the ones against NN significantly outnumber the ones in favor. I don't see any other reasonable way to spin that.

<comment><USER29> > There's a significant number of uncertain ones but those should be excluded

That's not how polling works. Well, unless your plan is to twist the results to fit your desired narrative.

<comment><USER40> Assuming you're building a policy off of poll responses, how would percent of uncertainty change the policy? It's not clear to me that it should. If it's possible to test, then maybe higher uncertainty should mean you spend more on testing before rolling out policies, but otherwise I don't see what else you'd do with it. Could you enlighten me on what you would do?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> We don't have a group that scares the hell out of politicians like the NRA. This crap comes up every year no matter what the party in power is. Until we find people with a killer instinct and skill, we will keep loosing. No one fears the EFF.

Someone with some clout needs to form a single-issue (no other politics allowed) net neutrality advocacy organization that effectively frames anyone who opposes net neutrality as an evil villain.

</comment><comment><USER43> I think the best possible investment one can ever make is politics. These people have probably got paid million or less dollars and they would generate the reruns of literally 10s of billions of dollars. Nearly guaranteed 10000X returns in just year or two is unheard of anywhere else. I wish politicians were available as ETFs.

<comment> loup-vaillant > _I think the best possible investment one can ever make is politics._

It's not an investment. It's a birthright —at least at the top levels. Good luck being a politician if your family doesn't already have ties with this caste.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "There is something not right about a few unelected FCC officials making such vast determinations about the future of the internet."

Is she talking about 2015 or 2017?

<comment><USER44> Bullshit is so easy to spread. People willing to peddle falsehoods often end up winning if they can just repeat the lies until everyone else gets tired of repeating themselves.

Network neutrality started in the early 2000s because some ISPs started blocking VPNs and other services. Network Neutrality was simply how the internet had always worked prior to that. The FCC wanted to take a light hand toward regulation but preserve neutrality so they imposed NN regulation. Verizon sued to overturn the regulations. The battle went back and forth several times. Eventually the courts said the FCC had the authority to impose the regulations but had to reclassify ISPs as common carriers to do so. That's what the FCC did in 2015. Because the courts said so. Because Verizon sued to block network neutrality and overturn the way the internet had always worked up until that point.

The telco and cable companies all have handshake agreements not to "overbuild" - that is to lay lines in each other's territory - because that would trigger competition. They hijack DNS queries to serve ads for mis-typed domain names. They hijack HTTP responses. They're rolling out bandwidth caps.

If you think they aren't going to exploit the rollback of NN for rent-seeking purposes then you're naive at best.

P.S. they couldn't exist without right of way to lay cables on other people's private property! The internet and WWW were invented using government research money. ATT, Verizon, Comcast, et al are the ultimate welfare queens who exist thanks to suckling on the government teat.

<comment><USER12> Who is spreading "bullshit", the person who knows that NN never existed until 2015 when it barely did, or someone who is trying to claim that 2015-style NN was necessary resolve issues in the early 2000s and is using FUD to push for NN?

<comment><USER45> The enforcement actions taken against the carriers in the early 2000s only went through because they wanted to avoid an explicit legal ruling against them. Thus NN has implicitly existed since the beginning of the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Seriously? You are on the FCC and expect other people to fix your problems? What are you doing, playing Solitaire all day?

 _YOU NEED TO BE DOING STUFF RIGHT NOW_ , not tomorrow, not next week. Now.

Call ISPs which are against NN repeal. Tell them to pull all the strings they have available. Call senators. Do counter-lobbying, aren't you americans big fans of lobbies? I don't care what you do. DO SOMETHING. The internet is in danger.

And you come forward and tell us that _we_ have to do something. Wow. We really are doomed.

<comment><USER47> Alas, that's not how policy making works. She doesn't have the votes. But if you/we bring the heat, the other commissioners will see the light. Then opponents of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness will wait until the heat cools off, and then try again while no ones looking.

Been there, been done like that.

<comment><USER46> Yes, and they will keep trying. Corruption won't be stopped by seeing the light I am afraid.

But I have no solution to the problem, I admit. Still, whoever can help should help, like right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> What is the most effective avenue to voice my concerns?

<comment><USER49> I'm working on composing letters to my state representatives for a contingency plan(city broadband). I read on reddit, that it might be more effective than directly contacting my federal representatives(I plan on doing that too.) I'll post my letters if there's any interest in them.

Would these letters be of any use?

<comment><USER20> Yes. All elected politicians monitor public input on major issues.

It usually goes something like this:

1) Comcast lobbyist: Hey politican, we'll donate 10k to your campaign this year, and another 100k+ if it becomes a tight race, just promise you'll vote against net neutrality if that ever happens, ok?

1a) Comcast, that's a deal.

2) Office Aid: Hey politican, after the FCC announced today, our phones are ringing off the hooks. People are really upset about this Net Neutrality thing.

2a) Okay, poll our constituents, and figure out just how many votes I'll lose if I vote for this thing.

3) If the number of votes > than the amount of votes the politican thinks (s)he can buy via the lobbyist's money, they change their position.

So your letters greatly affect step 2. Of course, its less cut and dry than above. Democratic politicans by and large believe in NN. Republican politicans these days rarely do. And polls are expensive and slow, so sometimes step 2a is skipped entirely and the politican makes a gut call based on the amount of feedback they receive.

But the point it, yes, your letters matter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Would someone outline the pros and cons of the FCC vs FTC overseeing regulation of the internet?

<comment><USER51> You could make the valid argument that no matter how beneficial net neutrality may be it isn't within the regulatory authority of the FCC to define or enforce such according to the agency's definition per their charter. This is perhaps the best argument for killing net neutrality.

The common consideration is that killing net neutrality poses a direct and immediate harm to consumers of potential discriminatory practices from a small industry of commercial entities operating in a capacity similar to utility providers. That said it would fall squarely within the regulatory confines of the FTC.

I think something like net neutrality is important and necessary, but I also think there is something more immediately important. I want the FTC to regulate the online advertising industry. I am tired of slow websites even though I get 900mbps up and down at my house. I am also tired of the excessive spyware and occasional malware that comes from online ads. Online advertising really is most horrid part of any online experience.

<comment><USER52> [https://www.fcc.gov/about/overview](https://www.fcc.gov/about/overview)

> The Federal Communications Commission regulates interstate and international > communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable in all 50 > states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. An independent U.S. > government agency overseen by Congress, the Commission is the federal agency > responsible for implementing and enforcing America's communications law and > regulations.

I am _real_ curious why people think that the Internet, which is a communication medium, is not within the regulatory authority of the FCC.

<comment><USER51> > I am real curious why people think that the Internet, which is a > communication medium, is not within the regulatory authority of the FCC.

Despite the name the FCC does not regulate communications. The FCC regulates spectrum and interstate commerce thereof. Despite the definition on the FCC.gov site and the Wikipedia page the FCC cannot regulate cable even if they wanted to as mentioned by both Pai and Wheeler.

<comment><USER52> I'd like to know more about the decisions that led to this then. It seems to me like that's _exactly_ what the FCC is supposed to be regulating.

<comment><USER51> Then you would be wrong. The FCC was created to regulate and license access to the RF spectrum, because radio frequencies are a natural finite resource.

<comment><USER52> Bits sent across a wire use radio frequency transmission to do it.

Bits processed in a routing system are a natural finite resource.

<comment><USER51> > Bits sent across a wire use radio frequency transmission to do it.

No, they are either electrons pushed across metal with voltage or light bouncing around fiber. This is absolutely not part of the RF spectrum.

<comment><USER52> They are pushed across at a specific frequency.

Regardless, it is still communication. It's very clearly the domain of the Federal _Communication_ Commission. If not, then the FCC is simply named wrong.

Then whose domain does it belong a part of? FTC has clearly rejected the ability to solve neutrality issues.

<comment><USER51> It was named in 1934, and at that time the naming was fully appropriate. Ignoring history, inventing your own terms, and sticking your head in the sand could explain why you are confused about what the FCC is (as opposed to what you wish it were).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> What indication is there that the current FCC would ever change course, no matter how loudly the constituents complained? Is the only goal of all the current outcry simply awareness?

<comment><USER54> There's value in taking away a tyrant's velvet glove, if you'll pardon me the hyperbole. Don't let them hide behind doublespeak about how this is what people really want and it's just a few malcontents making noise. Make it very, very abundantly clear that they're ignoring the desires of the people they claim to represent. It may not change anything now, but it gets the attention of on-the-fence voters and unites and galvanizes the opposition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Ajit Pai is an abomination. He is on the same level as Trump in shamelessness and probably more corrupt.

</comment><comment><USER56> I was kind of confused why many big tech companies are for net neutrality. As someone who doesn't trust big tech companies, it made me doubtful.

But I guess it makes sense; big tech companies have a lot of power right now because of net neutrality and they don't want it to fall into the hands of ISPs...

Big internet companies that currently have direct guaranteed access to users don't want to be forced to make deals with middlemen who work for ISPs.

Getting rid of net neutrality will allow ISPs to claim a piece of the pie. They will be able to cut into the profit margins of the most profitable companies while allowing the least profitable ones to get a discount.

Getting rid of net neutrality would be similar to how it works in commercial real estate; if your business isn't doing well, you can make a deal with your landlord to get a discount on your rent... The rent prices are inconsistent. But if the landlord always sees a long queue of customers outside your shop, they may be tempted to increase your rent.

The main concern I have with removing net neutrality is what would happen to peer-to-peer services... Maybe some ISPs will attempt to block them.

</comment><comment><USER57> Google et al want the infrastructure to be dumb pipes so they can direct traffic by manipulating search results. Ending NN is bad _for them_ but it is yet to be shown it will be bad for the consumer.

You're your ISP's _customer_ but Google's _product_.

<comment><USER58> Ending net neutrality is, while not in their longterm interest, just fine for Google & Co. - they are already established players that are able to afford the bandwidth and overcome whatever other barriers ISPs might come up with. It's the future services and companies that might challenge Google, Facebook and Netflix someday. They won't be able to enter the market due to not being able to afford access to the fast lane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> It seems each time lobbyists and lawyers achieve to pass a law against democratic will, it generates a lot of efforts to cancel it. This means many years of mess and fights where lobbyists and lawyers will make a lot of business. Bad behavior is rewarded.

</comment><comment><USER60> I am in favor of net neutrality. But the way you win this argument is not to support it en masse, or to blindly ask your representatives to support it because you think it's good. You have to craft an argument that overcomes the "This is not the government's right or responsibility to control" response. This is what the conservative talking heads are spouting, this is what average Americans believe in and stand behind, and changing this argument is how you win.

<comment><USER61> I see very little reason to think that persuading people by rational argument is an effective way to make policy happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> They seem hell bent on passing these new rules regardless of what anyone else says or does.

I'm afraid that it will have to come to lawsuits after the fact to stop this course of action.

</comment><comment><USER63> Nationalize the internet.

I'm not kidding. We paid for it in the first place, and if it's such a critical piece of economic infrastructure that market intervention needs to be mitigated, the solution is to nationalize it.

How? Take the municipal broadband idea, and scale it up. It's not really hard. Net neutrality only privileges one set of multi-billion-dollar corporations over another set of multi-billion-dollar corporations. Nationalize the lot of it.

<comment><USER64> There's a problem with that idea, which is that then the internet is at the mercy of those in congress who want to shut down the government all the time, because they won't pass a budget unless we go on a governmental starvation diet, while at the same time giving tax breaks to the rich.

<comment><USER65> Then let's replace the government with open source AI and ML algorithms. End corruption!

<comment><USER64> Given how well that works for YouTube at the moment, I'm not so sure that's a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I see a lot of the discussion revolving around price, but I don't think this is the issue at all.

Wiping net neutrality would give ISPs - and by extension their shareholders / backers - leverage over any online content producer who cares about the US market.

To me the most worrying scenario is "hey guys, we might want to moderate our content more heavily, or we might be taken out of Comcast gold package next year".

</comment><comment><USER67> If you thought foreign (aka Russian) interference via social media was bad, imagine your internet service provider having discretionary control over the priority of your news and information feed.

It would be like telephone companies being allowed to decide which calls to allow through and relegating the rest to busy signals.

</comment><comment><USER68> Bottom line: This gov. is looking for more control. Comcast, Verizon, AT&T... are looking for more profit.

<comment><USER69> It's not like NN would make them have more competition, either. Which, if they are greedy bastards that make anything for a profit, would make instead of charging to access some websites, get that same money from raising prices to everyone, easy as pie.

<comment><USER68> Fairly sure the prices are already set at max for the existing system, so yeah, more competition needed. Corporations are for profit. Governments are for control. No mutual exclusivity in this one. Fast lanes lead to more money through a system change, and are a simple way to facilitate control, entrench existing controls, and contain dissent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Can this be realistic stopped? What if FCC just don't give a fuck and proceed? Serious question

<comment><USER71> the fcc already said that they won't be swayed. nothing will be changed by NN being repealed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Wasn't sure what being a "member of the FCC" meant:

[https://www.fcc.gov/about/leadership/jessica- rosenworcel](https://www.fcc.gov/about/leadership/jessica-rosenworcel)

<comment><USER73> So is Ajit Pai her superior? Must be an interesting workplace with her being so vocally against it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> This is just one step to internet becoming a utility. If the companies take it too far and mess with sites people like, the next set of politicians will make it a utility like water or power.

</comment><comment><USER75> _> I think the FCC needs to work for the public_

Unfortunately Pai and Co, think that FCC needs to work for ISP monopolists and not for the public...

</comment><comment><USER76> The obvious way to reinstate net neutrality is via legislation. Congress has the power to do this.

</comment><comment><USER77> EME supported by the same racket that wants neutrality. What is going on?

</comment><comment><USER78> I used to support net neutrality. Then I did my homework on the issue and realized so many of the arguments in favor of net neutrality rely on fear- mongering and a false history of the internet.

<comment><USER79> Could you explain what false history are you taking about?

Internet from the beginning treated all traffic the same, this was because:

\- lack of technology to do deep packet inspection at large scale

\- competition, during dial-up times anyone with a phone could become an ISP, the phone did not discriminate due to regulation, then ISDN and DSL came and due to regulations telcos were required to lease their lines to anyone keeping the competition

During those times Internet was neutral and all sites were treated the same.

In last decade we switched to cable which has regional monopoly and doesn't have such regulation. They already were used to control what we could see and for how much. Earlier we had to deal with cable because we had no choice. High speed internet came and caused wave of "cord cutters" because people hated how the cable companies treated them. The cable companies do not like that movement, because with Internet they are losing control.

So why not make Internet like a cable? Provide basic access and allow paid access to premium sites. Perhaps consumers wouldn't have to pay, maybe the sites would? And if the users don't like it what they going to do, switch from Comcast to Comcast?

There is also another issue that no one talks about and is even more important. Current cable companies are also media companies and already have power over traditional media (did you wonder why they never talk about NN?).

This change essentially gives them freedom to perform censorship. They can alter/slow down/block sites they don't agree with. This gives them power to decide which sites users will see and which sites will survive and can and will be used for political gains. Imagine replacing ads and cutting income for the site, or replace ads with messages that contradict articles. It slowing down the site to be practically unusable.

I can't believe anyone would be ok with giving power to companies (ones that have monopoly and consumer don't even have choice to vote with their wallets) what sites we are allowed to see or not.

<comment><USER78> For ~20 years the internet somehow functioned well without title ii regulations. So yes, I agree with you that "Internet from the beginning treated all traffic the same" and "During those times Internet was neutral and all sites were treated the same". Ajit Pai's proposal seeks to roll back these relatively new title 2 regulations.

> I can't believe anyone would be ok with giving power to companies (ones that > have monopoly and consumer don't even have choice to vote with their > wallets) what sites we are allowed to see or not.

Likewise, I can't see why anyone would give more power to government (especially those who don't support the current government) to decide what is "fair" and "neutral".

<comment><USER79> > For ~20 years the internet somehow functioned well without title ii > regulations. So yes, I agree with you that "Internet from the beginning > treated all traffic the same" and "During those times Internet was neutral > and all sites were treated the same". Ajit Pai's proposal seeks to roll back > these relatively new title 2 regulations.

In US Internet was classified as a telecommunication service, so it was following similar restrictions. Back in 2002 FCC reclassified it as information service, with lesser restrictions. Since then companies violated net neutrality multiple times[1], but each time they backed out after FCC got involved. Not until Verizon sued them and won in 2014. The court ruling essentially stated that FCC has no control over ISPs anymore until the Internet would be reclassified. Because of that FCC reclassified it under Title II.

So no, what happened in past ~20 years is just small taste what's will happen. The 2014 ruling got the cat out of the box. Now all ISPs know that if Title II classification is removed FCC no longer has any power over them. And worst of all since there's monopoly, we can't just vote with our wallet, without regulation we as customers are simply screwed.

> Likewise, I can't see why anyone would give more power to government > (especially those who don't support the current government) to decide what > is "fair" and "neutral".

The decision what's fair and neutral is very simple to make. ISPs are just there to provide Internet access and can't control what we can access and what not similarly as an electric company provides electricity, but can't tell me what brand of a dishwasher I can use.

Regulations are there to protected a consumer, would you also be ok if FDA would allowed companies to add poison to our food if that would help them save money, because they will (especially when they are public companies when number #1 goal is to make profit) if they were able to. Before you answer that, know that requirement of labeling what's in the food is also imposed by the FDA.

I know that you're thinking that FCC planned is not an issue, because free market will solve this. The problem is that there's no free market right now. Vast majority of people have at most 1 viable ISP, if you have 2 you're really lucky.

It's extremely hard to enter the market right now, the best example is Google Fiber, a company which almost has unlimited resources (they can afford to work on projects like self driving cars, or photograph streets all over the world so they can improve one of their products (not even a core product) that they offer) is giving up. If they can't who else do you think could enter that market?

When cities want to provide a municipal network they get sued by these ISPs.

The FCC plan to repeal also wants to prevent states on implementing own rules in that area.

How can you be ok with this? It's not just other people who are affected by it, you will be too.

Also, and it is sad that this is not mentioned, it's not just net neutrality that is at stake here. Once that change is made, there won't be anything preventing incumbent ISPs from filtering content that they don't like. A small example is Telius from Canada blocking site that was supporting labor strike against them. Imagine that this could also be used for political control.

[1] [https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality- vio...](https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-violations- brief-history)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Maybe it's time to have national referendums...

</comment><comment><USER81> They buried this on reddit.

<comment><USER82> It's the very first post on my home feed. I don't think it's being buried (the one I'm seeing is /r/politics).

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> CSS / JavaScript challenge: remove whatever is blocking you from scrolling on that page. I could not figure it out for the life of me after 20 min messing with the it in the dev tools. Deleting the paywall is easy enough, but what is stopping the scrolling?

<comment><USER84> body gets a class ".bx-client-overlay" that has "overflow: hidden!important" which hides the scrollbar

<comment><USER83> Yeah I saw that, but even after I removed it and the scrollbar showed back up, I still couldn't scroll with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> nope. Small ISP's need to thrive against monopolies.

</comment><comment><USER86> Just for the record I support Ajit Pai on this issue. Putting this comment just to show that not all on HN disagree with FCC.

</comment><comment><USER87> Ajit Pai's home address is: 4868 Old Dominion Dr Arlington, VA 22207

That is public information.

</comment><comment><USER88> Further thoughts on why the end of net neutrality will be fine: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15765461](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15765461)

</comment><comment><USER89> Sorry I'm not buying into the panic.

Between wide scale TLS deployment and larger swaths of bandwidth available, I'd rather see free market solutions so these regulatory powers can't be abused. Net neutrality only matters if your ISP can decrypt your traffic and there is a limited share of bandwidth available.

<comment> brian-armstrong You are probably a little bit ignorant of how the internet works to make this comment. The big players are already peering with residential ISPs. That means there's a fiber line that connects Google to Comcast, to use an example. They pay for these arrangements.

The little guys have to use transit. They don't have enough clout or money to peer. Without net neutrality, ISPs could start severely degrading those connections. And there's nothing TLS can do to stop that.

<comment><USER90> Users need to get directly involved in protecting the content they desire. In the long run we need a cross between TOR and bittorrent to create a distributed cache to avoid throttling. Local "metropolitan" bandwidth is very fast, hard drives have expanded 10x in 10 years. An alternative is to use WiFi mesh networks.

<comment> brian-armstrong What makes you think this peer-to-peer network wouldn't be throttled?

<comment><USER90> It has many peers. Even if it's throttled on each one, they could distribute the load.

<comment><USER91> How much of that load is carried by Comcast-approved hosts?

<comment><USER90> It will be a cat-and-mouse game.

<comment><USER91> All Comcast has to do is not whitelist any of your peers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Studio.js – Micro-services framework for Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ericholiveira/studio <comment><AUTHOR> I've been working for a while in this framework and using it in production in the company i work for. It enforces good pratices of service design in node js, and make it really simple to use. With his plugin system you can even distribute you services across different machines, without changes in your code among other options like timeout and retries on services and reatime metrics.</comment>


Mozilla might revoke trust for Dutch CA because of "local dystopian law" - <AUTHOR> https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/mozilla-wants-to-distrust-dutch-https-provider-because-of-local-dystopian-law/ <comment><USER2> Apparently not. [https://twitter.com/certsimple/status/925682092322754560](https://twitter.com/certsimple/status/925682092322754560)

</comment><comment><USER3> There is an easy circumvention for this: make a digital passport coupled with the distrusted root CA. To have any official means manually installing the root CA.

</comment><comment><USER4> I realize that "dystopian" is in the original title but it's pretty clickbaity.</comment>


Why Women Make the Best Co-Founders - <AUTHOR> https://www.engineerbabu.com/blog/2016/12/10-reasons-women-make-best-co-founders/ <comment><USER2> Carly Fiorina, Marissa Mayer, Ellen Pao... seriously? These women are poisoning the barrel. Let's not even mention Mrs. Theranos.</comment>


Google Will Eat Itself (2005) - <AUTHOR> https://www.gwei.org/index.php <comment><USER2> As per Wikipedia[1]: >> Page and Brin remain co-founders, employees, board members, and controlling shareholders of Alphabet Inc.

Forbes article referenced by Wikipedia:[2] >> At Alphabet's annual meeting in June, multiple shareholders criticized the fact that Page did not show up given that he and Brin have more than 50% of the company's voting power, thanks to Alphabet's multi-class stock structure. That structure will not change despite the management shift, the company said.

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

[2] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jilliandonfro/2019/12/03/larry-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jilliandonfro/2019/12/03/larry- page-steps-down-as-ceo-of-google-parent-alphabet/#475ec9733aa3)

<comment><USER3> Is lack of attendance something that happens regularly?

Can control ever be wrested from majority voting power owners? Page and Brin, Zuckerberg, et al.?

<comment><USER4> Page and Brin are not married to each other, as far as I know (which would make the shares their common property). You can always try to drive a wedge between them, have one of them turn on the other. With Zuckerberg, no, no chance.

<comment><USER5> They are both basically retired so there's not much to wedge about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting, the page info is out of date (if it was ever a real thing) from their "how much do we own"

       How much do "we" own Google

       Google Shares owned by GWEI: 819
       Amount of USD: 405.413,19
       Adsense-Clicks: 1.556.361
       Adsense-Page Impressions: 37.538
       Adsense-CTR: 2,41%

       Google Ownership Counter
         202.345.117 Years until GWEI fully owns Google.

       Google Share Price*
         Current Google Share Price : 495.01 USD
         Symbol: "GOOG"

Current price is over $1,400 so either they have over a million dollars of Google stock or this experiment has stopped?

There is an interesting question here of how much money is someone willing to let "sit there" which is growing slowly vs taking it and doing something with it.

<comment><USER7> This question comes up a lot when people find Bitcoin wallets that haven't been touched in nearly a decade and have millions of dollars worth of the token associated to them. Is someone just being incredibly patient?

<comment><USER8> Or lost their wallet/password

<comment><USER9> I lost a Bitcoin wallet with ~50BTC back when it was priced at pennies. I was so young then. Oh well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Google cache version of Google Will Eat Itself: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.gwei.org%2Findex.php)

How far will the recursion go?

</comment><comment><USER11> Unpopular opinion but this sounds like a half baked idea that will never amount to anything. Imagine some other equally silly parallels:

 _We generate money by selling iOS apps on a network of hidden developers. With this money we automatically buy Apple shares. We buy Apple via their own app store! Apple eats itself - but in the end "we" own it!_

 _We generate money by selling goods on Amazon on a network of hidden affiliates. With our profits we automatically buy Amazon shares. We buy Amazon via their own marketplace! Amazon eats itself - but in the end "we" own it!_

If your goal is to takeover a public company, just start a GoFundMe and let people donate money to you using any source they want. That is a far better way of achieving your goal, as compared to accepting "donations" only via AdSense. Though I suppose that is far less "hip", so it'll never catch on.

<comment><USER12> I read the OP as a tongue in cheek thought experiment (or satire), rather than a sincere effort to subvert, cripple and destroy a multibillion dollar company by running advertisements inside their platform.

As a result, I suspect that a "half-baked idea that will never amount to anything" was the author's intenion, and that your opinion probably is no more unpopular than those who doubt the chicken _really_ wanted to get to the other side.

<comment><USER11> Based on everything I've read, it isn't an idle thought experiment at all. The artists are genuinely trying to take down Google. Check out the press links:

[https://www.theregister.com/2008/08/13/google_will_eat_itsel...](https://www.theregister.com/2008/08/13/google_will_eat_itself/)

Reading more, it actually gets even worse. Apparently the artists were using a bunch of click bots to inflate their ad revenue, and they were boasting about gaming Google's anti-fraud systems to do so.

<comment><USER5> This reminds of the Spotify thread where posters were desperately failing to comprehend what it means for a musician to be an artist.

<comment><USER11> I'm not familiar with that thread. Care to elaborate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The artists behind this: → [https://www.ubermorgen.com/](https://www.ubermorgen.com/)

Their website doesn't seem to load well so WP: → [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubermorgen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubermorgen)

They also caused quite a stir with a satirical website called Vote Auction where people could sell their votes to the highest bidder. → [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voteauction](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voteauction)

<comment><USER14> > Deephorizon - Deepwater Horizon, Oil-painting on Ocean Canvas, 2008

That's the funniest thing I've seen in a long time. The "paintings" in the series are just the number of liters dumped in the spill:

> 34_MILLION_LITERS

[https://www.ubermorgen.com/deeeeeeephorizon.com/](https://www.ubermorgen.com/deeeeeeephorizon.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this from 2005? Earlier discussion with an identical title / URL on HN (2019):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19784400](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19784400)

<comment><USER16> Also 2011: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2628328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2628328)

2008: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=273337](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=273337)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> HN hug of death :-(

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200720232040/https://www.gwei....](https://web.archive.org/web/20200720232040/https://www.gwei.org/index.php)

<comment><USER17> Yep.

Does anyone remember when this was called the Slashdot effect? Being Slashdotted.

<comment><USER18> I sure do. As a small web hosting provider AtlantaWebHost.com it was one of our proudest moments when our FreeBSD servers handled the Slackdot effect without complaint. This was the Pentium 3 Dell PowerEdge server era.

I am no longer affiliated with AtlantaWebHost.com. The company was bought in 2005 and is still running as a boutique provider.

To this day, I'm still pretty handy with crimping ethernet cables :-) I mostly just do it in my own home and homes of friends if asked for help.

<comment><USER19> > the Slackdot effect

Supposing this was a typo, I'll trade you for one "rear window defrogger" and half a "string loaded door".

<comment><USER18> Hahaha! You caught me. Didn't even notice that slip :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > 202.345.117 Years until GWEI fully owns Google.

Clearly a European, because of the use of "." instead of "," for thousand separators.

It almost looked like an IPv4 address.

Well, neat idea. Only ~200M years to go. Good luck!

<comment><USER21> And because of the name :p

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> GWEI is one of the smartest web.art project i remember.

HN is in love with the old web lately!

And I understand, the "new" web is just a boring, commercial and "colorfully" grey. Also, too much JS.

<comment><USER23> I've actually been working on a browser extension this year that is directly inspired by the older web (early 00's for me) where you can chat with the other people on the same domain or page as you called Sidewalk.Chat

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewalkchat/denbp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sidewalkchat/denbpdkchnadclbjgpdgaclebnghkfna)

People seem to want to return to that sort of more innocent time since we just crossed 1K users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I love this bit:

Google Ownership Counter 202.345.117 Years until GWEI fully owns Google.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm surprised that someone hasn't set up some kind of autonomous Etherium blockchain controlled organization that buys miners to mine more Etherium to buy more miners...

</comment><comment><USER26> A version of this that might actually work would involve investing dividends in additional ad serving properties.

</comment><comment><USER27> > We generate money by serving Google text advertisments on a network of > hidden Websites. With this money we automatically buy Google shares. We buy > Google via their own advertisment! Google eats itself - but in the end "we" > own it!

I thought websites _paid_ Google to have their ads on their ads network. Isn't that how Google makes the bulk of its revenue?

<comment><USER28> Advertisers pay Google, which then pays publishers (people who own websites) to have the ads displayed on their sites. This display ad network was largely established when Google bought DoubleClick, and should not be confused with Google's search ads (where ads are displayed in Google's own search results).

<comment><USER29> But don't you need certain volume of visits for Google to want to display their ads in your site? What stops me from creating 300 random sites and putting google ads in them and just let them sit?

<comment><USER30> No minimum traffic, but they have a minimum payment threshold of $100. I have some legacy adsense ads, mostly on an old abandoned blog, which last sent me a payment three years ago. My current balance is $14.82. One of these days, I'll get around to doing what's necessary to resume serving the ads on a wiki I run which used to generate around $5–10 a month, but I'm in no rush.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This shit is not working, and I guess it never did.

</comment><comment><USER32> Anyone else click subscribe?

</comment><comment><USER33> Very confusing numbers:

> Amount of USD: 405.413,19

Is that ~$405 or ~$405413?

What about the hosting costs?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's $405413. Using Spanish formatting I believe. (comma as a decimal point and the dot for thousands)

<comment><USER34> A lot of the world uses comma separators actually including basically all of Europe minus a few. The whole wikipedia article is kind of neat; never figured California would have a weird system for a while where decimal parts on signs were expressed as super scripts (eg 3^7 meant 3.7).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#/media/File:...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator#/media/File:DecimalSeparator.svg)

<comment><USER35> Superscript decimals are pretty common in the US for handwritten money amounts (like on checks or price tags) but outside that context it does seem weird!

<comment><USER36> Some examples of this on price tags:

[https://4.imimg.com/data4/VV/RV/MY-3648905/price- tag-250x250...](https://4.imimg.com/data4/VV/RV/MY-3648905/price- tag-250x250.jpg)

[https://www.coloraccounting.com/uploads/2/4/8/0/24801950/pub...](https://www.coloraccounting.com/uploads/2/4/8/0/24801950/published/p1_60.jpg?1527788559)

[https://encrypted- tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQu8D...](https://encrypted- tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcQu8Dmw4hD8Az6VSydG1sq4Sr6ra_kHyuoFkw&usqp=CAU)

On gas stations, the superscript is indicating tenths of a penny, rather than pennies.

That latter practice is not exclusive to the US. This sign is from Germany or Austria I believe (LKW is German):

[https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D3XKHG/price-board-a-gas- station-w...](https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D3XKHG/price-board-a-gas-station-with- high-gas-petrol-prices-D3XKHG.jpg)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Startup Blink – Global Startup Ecosystems Ranking - <AUTHOR> http://report.startupblink.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here is a report ranking the strongest startup ecosystems globally in 2020. What do you think?</comment>


Notes on 4 years of starting up - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@krishnannair/notes-on-4-years-of-starting-up-5bed58226a55 <comment><USER2> +1 on your point about marketing. I also deeply undervalued how much goes into a great/thoughtful marketing plan, all the way from choosing the broad messaging and distribution channels through the "tiny" details like nailing the copy on your landing page (this may seem easy or straightforward, but it took us a while to truly understand what worked).

At TechLoaf, we experimented with a lot of different, elaborate, shiny landing pages that expounded on how amazing our newsletter was, etc...

And after falling flat on our face for months, we realized that an incredibly simple, borderline-mysterious landing page converted users far more effectively.

About 30% of all visitors to our site end up subscribing, which is drastically higher than what we saw earlier iterations do.

(For the curious, this is the landing page: [https://techloaf.io](https://techloaf.io))

<comment><USER3> Interesting. Curiosity beats dazzle I guess. Will beta-test something like this. Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Agreeing so much with 1) the days you don't know what to do next despite having an endless list of tasks and projects to work on ranging from fixing a typo on the website to fixing a long-lasting bug only visible to you and 2) marketing... gosh this is a world I did not know much about, and still don't, but it's fascinating to see what people react to... Quite surprising.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. After 4 years the only thing I know for sure about marketing is that you have to spend more every year. Everything else is a shot in the dark.</comment></comment>


Researchers debunk 'five-second rule' - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/5076.html <comment><USER2> It was debunked years ago. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five- second_rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-second_rule) . In addition to the links given there, [http://www.aston.ac.uk/news/releases/2014/march/five- second-...](http://www.aston.ac.uk/news/releases/2014/march/five-second-food- rule-does-exist/) .

Though as this new paper points out: "The rule has been explored by a single study in the published literature and on at least two television shows. Results from two academic laboratories have been shared through press release, but remain unpublished." That second URL is not peer-reviewed, and may be one of those press release results.</comment>