Driverless Cars Tap the Brakes After Years of Hype - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/driverless-cars-tap-the-brakes-after-years-of-hype-11547737205 <comment><USER2> I wouldn't trust an autonomous vehicle at all unless it wasn't networked; in fact I've made sure that my car isn't networked at all due to the fact that autonomous or not they can be hacked by cutting power to everything except power steering, the radio, and the car outlets. Networking and control of the car being linked is asking for trouble, not to mention that somehow they fucked up the non-autonomous cars so that it's possible to hack those and drive them with a laptop too.

Link for the lazy: [https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and- tech/ne...](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and- tech/news/computer-hackers-control-car-deliberate-accidents-national-security- issue-a8066466.html)

<comment><USER3> Having driven very new cars, rentals mostly, there are few compelling features that I can't just add to an older, not smart car.

And that is exactly what I plan on doing for some time yet. Frankly, the bright nav screens, menus and other gunk prove quite distracting. I really hate most of them. A few can be dimmed, or turned off, but none seem to remember that state, always eager to display some warning or other.

Seems to me, if it always needs a warning, I really don't need it in the car.

I feel we are way over hype on self-driving vehicles. The tech is advancing nicely enough, but the problem scope still seems very large relative to what we've solved for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess I missed the predictions where people thought we'd have fully autonomous vehicles by 2019. It seems to me that we're on track for having something in a 5-10 year timeframe. Yeah, it won't be perfect, but it doesn't need to be. In the meantime we'll see more and more driver assist technologies which will slowly transition us to fully autonomous driving.

<comment><USER5> I don't have specific references, but yes, for several years I have been reading about how we are on the cusp of autonomous driving. For long enough that I got bored of discussing it maybe a year ago.

In support, this article says "Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk in 2016 promised to demonstrate a vehicle traveling in fully autonomous mode from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017."

Is it possible you don't remember the predictions because you weren't reading about autonomous driving a couple years ago? It seems like trends and popular obsessions come and go very quickly these days. If you blink, you can miss it, like the rise and fall of bitcoin.

<comment><USER6> Or it could be that you were looking to techno-optimists for your predictions while others were looking to those that actually were involved in the tech.

<comment><USER5> I was a skeptic all along, because it seemed like the "techno-optimists" failed to grasp the difficulty of writing software in general. I'm sure the people that engaged in most online discussions that I remember were not experts.

However, I don't see why you point to people actually working on self-driving cars as if they would have been pessimists - why work on such things if they didn't believe it was feasible?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are tons of technical problems but the fundamental issue is our expectations.

Driverless cars can't just respond as well as a human would have - they have to be better.

They have to "know" the black ice was there. Or the pothole was there. Or the construction was there. And then they have to respond "reasonably", which is tough because computers are fundamentally "reasonless" machines at the moment.

If our expectations were driving during the day on a few defined streets in nice weather, perhaps going a bit slower and with the understanding that things may get a little jerky, I think we would be ok.

In other words...we need to give self-driving cars permission to be like we once were: not amazing at driving.

We need to give the cars a learners permit.

<comment><USER8> That's why they are deploying driver assitent technology now and human co- pilots for any cars with autonomous driving capability.

Unlike with humans, the learning is transferable with driverless cars.

<comment><USER9> The drivers provide _instruction_ in a form that will be retained by the software?

<comment><USER8> Yes, via recording and labeling what the human does when it's not engaged and during any take overs when it is engaged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm sure it will be 5 to 10 years away 5 to 10 years from now, just as they were saying 5 to 10 years ago.

I do think it will happen someday but this is an insanely complex problem with enormous danger and risk. I am most impressed with the AI hucksters who convinced investors that the tech was close and then commanded 7 figure salaries to work on it. An impressive feat!

</comment><comment><USER11> I have never believed that we will get fully autonomus cars suddenly. But each year cars will be able to do more on their own. It will be a gradual transition. Where the driver's will let it park on it's own, drive on the freeways/highway on it's own. To allowing it to go from the highway to home or work on it's own on a regularly used routes. I feel people that dismiss autonomuos cars completely and people expecting them to be perfect in the next few years are both wrong.

</comment><comment><USER12> Driverless cars are a much harder problem than driverless trucks.

Once the latter become day-to-day reality on highways, I'll become cautiously optimistic about autonomous cars in cities.

<comment><USER13> I've read somewhere that driverless trucks are pretty much as hard as driverless anything, because there's always that last mile in a city. It's impossible for the ride to be 100% automated, and anything less is pointless at the moment.

I think we'll need some extremely standardized "pre-last-mile" highway exits/transfer points across the whole country to have the beginnings of a new solution. And I doubt the Teamsters will be onboard with that.

<comment><USER14> > ...there's always that last mile in a city

But what if that's the only mile driven by a human? Trucks drive autonomously on highways in good conditions, then a human takes over for the last mile?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There will be, and have been, people on both sides of the SDC debate, bulls and bears, for years going back and forth. There are good talking-points for bulls in that the technology improves yearly and there are local roll-outs, there are great talking points for bears in delayed national-scale roll-outs, and taking on the overoptimistic estimates of years past.

</comment><comment><USER16> What astounded me talking to people working in self-driving car start-ups and spin-offs from incumbents, is that how little they care about simulation. The last accident from Uber confirmed that yet again.

The fact is absolutely difficult to comprehend, when Waymo has allegely done a huge amount of simulation.

</comment><comment><USER17> they should focus on mastering mundane routine driving and have a backup to switch to remote controlled operation for risky or unusual situations.

<comment><USER18> I am not convinced you understand this problem space well. The very notion of defining two such states is extremely elusive.

<comment><USER19> Might want to look into Toyota Guardian before dismissing the approach.

As it's exactly what they are planning to roll out in the short to medium term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Almost all technical problems of self-driving cars are solved by current algorithms once we get 100x faster HW, i.e. processing at 1000 fps instead of 10, making things like tracking, collision avoidance, vision, etc. trivial; the only problem left is path planning (down to inch resolution with dynamic vehicle models), which is coincidentally NP-hard and there is very little hope to get it to human level in reasonable time (Waymo is still orders of magnitude worse than an average human).

<comment><USER21> >Almost all technical problems of self-driving cars are solved by current algorithms once we get 100x faster HW,

That sounds off to me, because my understanding is that the computer is a small portion of the cost and the mass of the self-driving car. If you could solve the problem by just filling up the back seats with computers, someone would have prototyped it, and probably even brought it to market as a way to drive large vehicles.

(I mean, unless you were on some non-parallelizable process, but my understanding is that most image processing tasks are massively parallel.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Driverless cars are IMHO a classic example of technology looking for a problem to solve. Improving road safety, the biggest reason for them (again IMHO) can be achieved with existing technology by implementing smart roads with sensors and cameras as well as vehicle datalinks which can predict and warn when a car is about to blow through an intersection in front of you or whatever, and instantly alert authorities when a driver speeds or is driving erratically (you might call this dystopian, but I would argue you have more freedom here than with an autonomous car you literally cant drive over the speed limit). The second major reason is automation, which I agree is nice, but if you analyze the cost of trucking [0] you see that drivers wages and benefits account for only 20%-40% of the operating costs in the trucking industry. If you use the typical startup cliche that a 10x improvement is necessary to really change a market, the economics of driverless vehicles just dont add up. It seems like a great idea to rich east-coasters who wish they could work on their daily commute, but outside of certain bubbles I don't think they make any sense. IMHO.

0 - [http://atri-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/ATRI- Opera...](http://atri-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/ATRI-Operational- Costs-of-Trucking-2017-10-2017.pdf)

<comment><USER23> Oh c'mon, let's not be silly. One thing is to say it's unpractical to do now, or maybe ever, but the problem is very real. Having the ability for a vehicle to drive itself reliably on normal roads would have a transformational effect on society, first of all the end of car ownership as we have it today.

<comment><USER22> But of you tackle the problem first, and not the technology, it makes more sense to just build automated road systems. Dumb pod-like cars which are driven by roadside controllers. If we decide to go down this route it can be achieved with existing technology, today. This is the ultimate scenario most people imagine with self-driving cars anyway, a future where hardly any of the cars on the road are driven by humans. We should just go straight there.

<comment><USER24> That would be nice, but it would also require infrastructure investment on a massive scale before it could even begin. Self-driving cars as currently conceived function on existing infrastructure with zero changes.

<comment><USER25> But cars are already broken: see LA, SF, NYC. Why double down rather than invest in infrastructure?

<comment><USER26> Because being easily deployable is a very important part of a technology.

<comment><USER25> Only to short term business interests. Long term the costs of cars to society are absolutely abysmal compared to bulk transit.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: WhatFreeWords: Open-Source Geocoding for What3Words - <AUTHOR> https://whatfreewords.org/ <comment><USER2> What3words is patented[1]. If you compare the explanation of their free implementation[2] with the claims section of the patent, it seems very possible that it breaches the patent. In particular, the equations that are described in claim number 7 of the patent are exactly the same as in their explanations.

I'm not a lawyer so I can't talk about whether it can be enforced in practice. But still, the fact that this open-source implementation doesn't reference the patent anywhere suggests that they didn't consider the legal implications properly.

[1] [https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2014170646A1/fr?oq=WO%2f...](https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2014170646A1/fr?oq=WO%2f2014%2f170646+)

[2] [https://whatfreewords.org/about.html](https://whatfreewords.org/about.html)

<comment><USER3> It's open source. Good luck enforcing patent claims against something that can be copied endlessly for free. Ask how that turned out against ffmpeg.

<comment><USER4> Codec IP owners usually grant royalty-free rights to software video players.

They make money licensing IP to hardware manufacturers.

<comment><USER3> MPEG-LA does not. [https://www.mpegla.com/programs/avc-h-264/](https://www.mpegla.com/programs/avc-h-264/) is their license scheme - while they allow a certain threshold below which cutoff isn't required, there's a lot of companies (such as Blizzard Entertainment!) whose primary distributed product is solely for video playback. H.264 requires a license for personal, at-home playback of encoded files. You have such a license if you have a Windows OS, an Apple OS, if you're using Chrome, or if you use a set-top box, or other "single-use" device which can play back H.264. You do not have such a license on linux with mplayer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What3Words is a horrible idea.

It's primary use is as a rent extraction device for its owners, if they can gain sufficient market share.

It is utterly useless without their app, uses a non-universal language (English vs math) and provides zero information about geography. The 3-word identification strings provide not the slightest clue whether two identified points are corners of the same building or literally on opposite sides of the planet (vs LatLong making it obvious that e.g., 42.36N 71.31W is relatively near 41.92N 71.48W).

It provides zero value to anyone trying to actually navigate, without using their app, and if you are going to navigate with an app, why not use any implementation of OpenStreetMap, or even the nearly ubiquitous Google or Apple maps? Hell, we're even better off with old paper postal maps than this scheme.

A slight about of temporary convenience for innumerate people is no good reason to implement a rent-extractive proprietary system.

<comment><USER6> I wholeheartedly agree with your assessment.

In contrast, Google's plus codes([https://plus.codes/](https://plus.codes/)) provide the same functionality but avoid the most of the pitfalls you mention.

If you wanted to encode the same data using words instead of alphanumeric characters (which is a debatable goal), then you could just combine it with WCodes ([https://wcodes.org/](https://wcodes.org/))

<comment><USER7> Plus codes are also unencumbered. Their main disadvantage is being saddled, branding-wise, to the Google Plus fiasco.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's a list of other alternatives to w3w

[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/What3words#Alternatives](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/What3words#Alternatives)

</comment><comment> m-chrzan The javascript implementation defines deg2rad as

      deg * Math.PI / 360

It's been a while since high school math, but shouldn't that be divided by 180? Looks like the numbers in the docs are based on this incorrect conversion.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, thank you. This is a mistake. This will be corrected as quickly as possible.

ETA: This has been corrected. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment> jon-wood Sadly this is likely to get shut down by What3Words, who are very protective of their algorithm.

<comment><USER9> The authors know that: [https://whatfreewords.org/faq.html](https://whatfreewords.org/faq.html)

<comment><USER10> A subpoena will figure out who they are.

<comment><USER11> And then extradition orders in every country they're in?

<comment><USER12> You don't have to extradite the authors if they live in countries in which patent protection is strong and the legal systems are functional enough to impose due process upon them and enforce injunctions/damages. Extradition is typically a last resort, typically for criminal proceedings.

Moreover, an injunction is much more likely to be sought than damages, in which case extradition is unnecessary - all the patentees have to do is get an order from a judge forcing the hosts to take their code and site down.

<comment><USER13> Many countries don't recognize software patents, and the ones that do have some strict rules about what patents are valid. So, are you sure that this is a slam dunk? You don't seem to have any concept that it might be ruled invalid.

<comment><USER12> It's a lot easier to accomplish this under the conditions I outlined above. That's all I'm saying. People have gotten away with worse.

<comment><USER13> Many countries have strong patent protections and no software patents. If you wanted to say "have software patents" instead of "strong patent protections", it would make a bit more sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have only ever heard of What3words in internet tech forums etc. Is it a well known company for the general public in some countries?

<comment><USER15> [https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-49319760](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk- england-49319760)

Apparently some emergency services recommend & use it.

<comment><USER7> No emergency service should use something patent-encumbered - but W3W markets to them all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Independently of the fact that I'm thoroughly against the use of proprietary algorithm for encoding, there's an interesting problem of the implementation of a range of similar problems to which somebody here maybe knows a nice effective solution:

(from their FAQ):

"The JavaScript library is about 2.4 megabytes. Almost all of this data is encoding data about how regions of the Earth are mapped to n values. There are over 300,000 regions. The raw data for the regions is 1.8 megabytes, and getting the data encoded in a JavaScript file raises this to 2.4 megabytes even after compression.

The Go library is about 2.6 megabytes of source code, for similar reasons, and produces executables of at least about 5.7 megabytes.

If you can shrink any of this data or make any other improvements, then please contact us and we will be pleased to use your improvements."

<comment><USER17> For the go executable to be so much larger than the source code, when he majority of that is data, there must be something going wrong...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hello, I am Ujjwal - the inventor of WCode. Please checkout this page: [https://wcodes.org/patents](https://wcodes.org/patents) and [https://wcodes.org/location](https://wcodes.org/location) And my webapp: [https://location.wcodes.org](https://location.wcodes.org)

</comment><comment><USER19> It's been shut down already.

</comment><comment><USER20> I find the fact Steve Coast (the founder of OpenStreetMap) has worked for what3words pretty grotesque.

[https://www.spatialsource.com.au/latest-news/founder-of- open...](https://www.spatialsource.com.au/latest-news/founder-of- openstreetmap-joins-what3words)

It's a shame that he didn't have enough charisma and vision to become OSM's BDFL a la Python's Guido von Rossum. Having a single person could help transcend the current "continue status quo" and "lean OSM Foundation that does absolute minimum" paradigm which partially stem from from the fact that every change would meet with some opposition (which is hard to override if there's no clearly dominating power).</comment>


End-User Probabilistic Programming [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/summerschool/summer19/lecture_notes/DRAFT___Probabilistic_Programming_for_End_Users.pdf <comment><USER2> Guesstimate [1] (cited in this paper in footnote 6 and previously discussed on HN [2]) is a really nice implementation of some of these ideas.

Has anyone come across other good implementations?

As a side note, I've been doing more probabilistic programming with pymc3 recently, and it's pretty incredible how leaky the abstractions can be. I'm not saying there's a way to do better, just that at present there's a huge gap between the beautiful vision of "the inference button" and the current tools.

[1] [https://www.getguesstimate.com/](https://www.getguesstimate.com/)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18785371](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18785371)

<comment><USER3> We're working on something like this: [https://causal.app](https://causal.app) :)

Guesstimate is awesome, but their team sadly stopped working on it a while back. It's definitely early days for automated inference, but I think giving people the tools to build "static" (non-learning) models that can account for uncertainty is hugely valuable in itself. You need serious gymnastics to do this in spreadsheets right now, and I wouldn't wish Excel's probabilistic plugins (Palisade @RISK, Oracle Crystal Ball) on anyone.

But progress towards the "inference button" dream is starting to accelerate:

\- Tensorflow recently got its own PPL [1]

\- The first international conference on probabilistic programming was held (PROBPROG 2018) [2]

\- Lots of PPL development going on in tech companies: Uber, FB, Google, Microsoft, Stripe, Improbable, etc.

[1]: [https://www.tensorflow.org/probability](https://www.tensorflow.org/probability)

[2]: [https://probprog.cc/](https://probprog.cc/)

<comment><USER4> Microsoft recently released a probabilistic programming library for .NET named Infer.NET [1]

[1] [https://github.com/dotnet/infer](https://github.com/dotnet/infer)

<comment><USER5> They recently open sourced it. It was previewed in lectures from Christopher Bishop more than 10 years ago.

1) [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/infernet/](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/project/infernet/) 2) [http://videolectures.net/mlss09uk_bishop_ibi/](http://videolectures.net/mlss09uk_bishop_ibi/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's nowhere as sophisticated as this, but I wrote a little utility for Monte Carlo analysis of spreadsheet models with Python and Xlwing:

[https://github.com/asemic-horizon/stanton](https://github.com/asemic- horizon/stanton)

As a bonus, since the spreadsheet model is exposed as a Python function, emulating complex spreadsheets with simple ML models (decision trees...) is easy.

<comment><USER7> Nice. The Excel/Python combo is very powerful. Microsoft has kept Excel in the dark ages, and could have implemented such better analytics than it currently offers. If they could integrate Python in lieu of VBA and make it compatible with their Form designer, it would become very popular. The ability to quickly knock-up desktop interfaces, closely integrated with powerful analytics and the user's data source is priceless in certain environments (e.g. capital markets).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting but hardly novel. In certain fields, 'end users' have routinely employed probabilistic tools via Excel or other spreadsheets for decades. Wider adoption has been limited due to the knowledge base that is required to either (a) confidently build such models, (b) communicate probabilistic results to stakeholders.

@Risk and CrystalBall were some of the earlier Excel add-ins which simplified simulation-based spreadsheet development.

As someone else mentioned, the Excel/Python combination is really powerful, although lower-level. DataNitro comes to mind, as well as a product by Resolver Systems (?) which was essentially an IronPython powered spreadsheet interface.

</comment><comment><USER8> Dead link for some reason: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190619190008/https://www.cs.uo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190619190008/https://www.cs.uoregon.edu/research/summerschool/summer19/lecture_notes/DRAFT___Probabilistic_Programming_for_End_Users.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Let's say i want to predict an output `C` by multiplying two distributions `A` _`B` = `C`.

Assuming I am just guessing at the distribution of `A` and `B` (Uniform? Bernoulli? Geometric? Log-Normal?), would I get a better estimate by just multiplying `mean(A)` _ `mean(B)` ?

Point values suck. However, predicting the mean is often possible/realistic. And I feel like I am taking wild guess when describing a distribution of a data set to be honest.

TLDR: What results in better prediction/guestimate? multiplying incorrect probability distributions? Or multiplying more-correct means/point values?

<comment><USER10> I don't have a good answer. But I wonder if there are some realistic situations where we would have a good guess at the mean, but no clue about the distribution.</comment></comment>


Learning how to build a community amongst giants - <AUTHOR> http://www.BriteHat.com <comment><AUTHOR> How do I convey to people that what I am building is to help people find their dream job or a better job. What I am doing is free and just trying to reach out to the tech community. How can I reach out without a million dollar marketing budget to ask them to embark on my mission with me?</comment>


Show HN: How Do I Look-Random response generator to the question women always ask - <AUTHOR> http://architv.me/howdoilook/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all! I've always been a fan of random generators and I wanted to try making something like [http://greatfuckingstartupadvice.com/](http://greatfuckingstartupadvice.com/). So here we are! Post your best response below and I'll add the good ones into the app.</comment>


Facebook chooses DIY servers over Dell, HP options - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-chooses-diy-servers-over-dell-hp-options/3543

<comment><USER2> The last time I ordered servers for my employer, I was incredibly annoyed by Dell's website because it doesn't show prices on key pieces of hardware to business customers. The result is that you can't really plan anything until you start taking calls from extremely annoying Dell salespeople who eventually send you an offer with prices in it - an offer that may of may not contain the products you actually wanted. The worst part is that you just know you're getting totally ripped off (otherwise they'd have prices on their site) and that after this stuff finally arrives at your door the same obnoxious customer service reps keep calling you to sell you more stuff. So that was the first and last time I bought something from Dell. What an ordeal.

<comment><USER3> > The worst part is that you just know you're getting totally ripped off > (otherwise they'd have prices on their site)

Then offer to pay less. Sales people are annoying, but they can work to your advantage if you play ball.

<comment><USER2> No. I just want to order stuff at a transparent and reasonable price. How hard is that? I want a simple online shop with a few products to choose from. Click and order, done. I don't want to negotiate. I don't want to be on the lookout, constantly defending myself and my company from service reps who are trying to shaft us. I just want to buy stuff, not jump through hoops and be harassed.

There is no justification in having those sales people around. They have absolutely zero technical information that I need, they're just sitting on the price. I know that my interaction with them and their skill in ripping me off is paying their salary - but I want them gone. Send them home, they are completely unnecessary legacy cruft. They are costing companies like Dell real money in lost sales. A few days ago I was talking to a sysadmin friend of mine, he feels the same way. I know I'm not alone in this.

While we're talking about Dell and parasitic cruft, they should reconsider their mandatory commercial operating systems policy as well. It's nearly impossible to buy many of their servers without an OS already on them.

<comment><USER4> This is certainly the right move for google, facebook, etc, and maybe even for startups who for some reason want to avoid the cloud and run their own couple of one-off servers. For the rest of us in the great middle, direct from manufacturers like HP and Dell is the best option.

I have not had the same experience as you with Dell; we have an established "medium business" account and get pricing online that generally reflects our base discount. We can sometimes get more off by dealing with those salespeople (especially if it's near a quarter end), but in general we get a fair and predictable price, visible on the web site. Servers show up (sometimes later then I'd like) configured as ordered, and just need put into a rack and powered on.

Our "server specialist" certainly isn't the most technical guy in the world, but he knows the hardware line in and out, knows what works, and what other people are using for similar projects.

I regularly buy servers with no OS (if I'm reusing an old MS license), or with Redhat (my standard OS) at a price competitive with others.

<comment><USER2> If I understand you correctly, you're implying that an industrial-grade server company like Dell necessarily _has_ to work like this. But I assert that they don't. I believe there is a niche in the market just waiting for a modern, transparent, fast new startup that gives you these products at a transparent price, with minimal fuss, no tricks required. Configure a blade rack online, order it, next week it's in your office. It works like that for consumer stuff, let's bring that kind of convenience to businesses.

<comment><USER4> No, I'm suggesting that in my experience Dell operates more like what you're proposing then what you're originally describing. I get (generally) transparent pricing, flexibility, and the servers show up at my datacenter next week as ordered.

I'm done defending Dell though; and don't think I'm arguing there is no room for improvement. At the very least, one's experience with Dell seems to vary wildly depending on account reps and established agreements and processes. There is no reason our experiences should be so different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"People want to be able to build it their way. They kind of want a Burger King: 'I don't like pickles — why do I have to have pickles?'"_

The big gain in outsourcing something like this/buying an "off the shelf" solution is that you don't get _exactly_ what you want, but you get it cheaper because the people you buy it from are doing it at volume.

When you _need_ a solution as specialized as Facebook, it doesn't surprise me that the big players are unwilling to break their service offerings/support model (at a competitive price), because they are more concerned with keeping their own costs down. They don't want to have to hire people to support a special infrastructure for just one customer...

Thus, Facebook gets what they _need_ and at a better price by doing it themselves.

<comment><USER6> >but you get it cheaper because the people you buy it from are doing it at volume.

Since I've been buying computers I've never seen this to be the case. I have yet to see a single time that buying a prepackaged computer of any brand was cheaper than buying the parts on e.g. pricewatch and building it myself.

Dislcaimer: I've always built machines with an eye towards gaming so maybe at the very low end this isn't the case. I'd be surprised even then.

<comment><USER5> Parts and labor are built into that price. You are also paying them to build it and for support. Again, you might not need that support and you might not need to have them build it for you, or you might need something that isn't offered in a prepackaged configuration... just like Facebook in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Google have been doing this for a long time. <http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10209580-92.html>

</comment><comment><USER8> "Don't worry, investors. Most companies put much dumber people in charge of buying servers, and those companies are still buying our overpriced equipment."

</comment><comment><USER9> I wish they went into more details about the customization. Their description sounds like something that could be generally applicable. Who doesn't want leaner server with maximum airflow with a minimal amount of fans? Google's customizations make more sense, as they're integrating it with their racks (not doing DC conversion in the power supply).

<comment><USER10> Not in the article, but they open sourced the specs <http://opencompute.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I kind of figured this was implied when Facebook revealed the Open Compute Project a few months back...

<http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/07/open-compute-project/>

</comment><comment><USER12> At most (smaller!) companies I have worked, middle management seem to have chosen to buy servers from the suppliers that provide the biggest kickbacks - with Dell, PDAs or Laptops usually made a nice little sweetener to maintain loyalty.

</comment><comment><USER13> Can anyone tell me the original source of this article? Is there a Facebook blog post or something?</comment>


Up close and personal with an active volcano - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2011/04/close-up-and-personal-with-an-active-volcano.html <comment><USER2> The shockwave towards the end was quite a scene as it travels through the ash cloud.

<comment><USER3> Indeed. I wonder what that would have felt like to have been hovering over the crater at that moment...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Volcanos are pretty awesome. I live a few miles from a very big, active one but it hasn't erupted yet while I've been here.

<comment><USER5> We live pretty close to one, as it hasn't erupted in _quite_ a long time people have taken the opportunity to build a nice castle and city where it used to be:

[http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/cache/offonce/education/resour...](http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/cache/offonce/education/resources/rockcycle/page3675.html)

Not sure I would want to live close to a live one!

<comment><USER4> It makes for some awesome views when I'm traveling through this country (Nicaragua): [http://imagenes.viajeros.com/fotos/z/zc/zcanimxa-1241380835-...](http://imagenes.viajeros.com/fotos/z/zc/zcanimxa-1241380835-bg.jpg)

That's the one about 10km from me. The third largest city in this country and it's still got colonial buildings so it can't be _too_ dangerous.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Crist%C3%B3bal_Volcano#Erup...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Crist%C3%B3bal_Volcano#Eruptive_history)

<comment><USER5> One of the most spectular places I have visited is Santorini - which is basically an island formed from the caldera walls of a large volcano. There are entire villages perched on the edge:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorini></comment></comment></comment></comment>


LastPass Learns the Wrong Lessons About Price Increases from LogMeIn - <AUTHOR> https://www.brucebnews.com/2019/06/lastpass-learns-the-wrong-lessons-about-price-increases-from-logmein/ <comment><AUTHOR> I just have to say going from $12/year to $36/year in the span of three years on auto-renew is more than irri-tating, it was cancel-ating.

So what is the best alternative for me?

<comment><USER2> I switched to using KeePassXC on MacOS, Linux, and Windows and MiniKeePass on iOS with the database synced via iCloud. Exporting my password database from LastPass to CSV and importing to KeePass was easy. If you use a cloud sync to copy your database around you might want to manually backup the database on a weekly or monthly basis in case the sync corrupts the file.

(If I added an Android device I would use something else to synchronize the database across devices but I'm not sure off the top of my which is the best KeePass app for Droid.)</comment></comment>


Scientists discover cheap material that can remove mercury from water - <AUTHOR> http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2015/10/20/accidental-discovery-reveals-orange-peel-saves-thousands-lives/ <comment><USER2> The full paper is at [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201508708/fu...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201508708/full) and titled 'Sulfur-Limonene Polysulfide: A Material Synthesized Entirely from Industrial By-Products and Its Use in Removing Toxic Metals from Water and Soil'.

> In conclusion, we have explored the properties of a polysulfide synthesized > entirely from the industrial by-products sulfur and limonene. The > polysulfide is easy to synthesize on a large scale and requires no exogenous > reagents or solvents. The polysulfide removes PdII and HgII from water and > soil and turns yellow when exposed to mercury(II). This response is > selective for mercury, a discovery that may find use in sensing > applications. We plan to develop the sulfur-limonene polysulfide as an > inexpensive material for environmental remediation, where it will be used to > sequester toxic metals from complex mixtures. More generally, this research > is part of a growing effort to identify new and useful properties of > materials with high sulfur content6 and to synthesize them in an efficient > and sustainable fashion.

</comment><comment><USER3> If they can come up with a variant on this that is specific to arsenic, the implications for Pakistan are _huge_.

[http://www.dawn.com/news/356241/lahore-high-arsenic- concentr...](http://www.dawn.com/news/356241/lahore-high-arsenic- concentration-in-potable-water-study-isposal-of-untreated-industrial-waste)

<comment><USER4> If you can come up with ANY variants that remove ANY other heavy metals the implications for EVERYWHERE are huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Huh, sulpher-containing food (garlic, onion, cabbage, etc) has long been recommended to aid in the flushing of heavy metals as it's believed that they aggressively bind together to make much more bio-mobile compounds.

<comment><USER2> While mention of that possibility appears in the literature, the only tests I can find are on animals, and they don't seem all that conclusive to me.

To be a useful recommendation, I would like to know the dose. That is, if the water has a 50% higher lead concentration, how much garlic (etc.) should I eat to mitigate the possible ill effects? Is a clove/week enough? 20 bulbs/day?

For example, if I go by [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4279617/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4279617/) which tests "A. sativum extract (400 mg kg-1 ..." on rodents, then that's equivalent to someone weighing 100 kg eating 40 g of garlic. A clove is about 3 grams, so 40 grams is a bit over a head of garlic per day. Which is rather a lot.

I would think the garlic (etc.) growers would be all over this, since if they could convince the millions of people living in areas with high lead concentrations to eat an extra head or two of garlic (etc.) per day, then that's an economic boom for them.

I would also worry that it depends on the _kind_ of food. Does it exclude Vidalia onions? What other onions should we avoid? How should they be labeled?

I also can't help but think of scurvy treatments. The British Navy first used limes. Quoting from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scurvy) :

> West Indian limes replaced lemons because they were more easily obtained > from Britain's Caribbean colonies[18] and were believed to be more effective > because they were more acidic, and it was the acid, not the (then-unknown) > Vitamin C that was believed to cure scurvy. In fact, the West Indian limes > were significantly lower in Vitamin C than the previous lemons and further > were not served fresh but rather as lime juice, which had been exposed to > light and air and piped through copper tubing, all of which significantly > reduced the Vitamin C.

That is, is it really the high sulfur in garlic (etc.) which helps, or is it something else?

I tried to find this information, but was overwhelmed by people saying they are traditional medicine, with pointers to others who then point to etc. I didn't find anything like a dose/response curve, even for rodents.

<comment><USER6> Well, the sulfur-limonene polysulfide compound worked on mercury (Hg) and palladium (Pd). So if you want to use it to remove lead (Pb), you might have to add dyslexide as a side-group to the polymer.~

EDTA will chelate almost any positively charged metal ion in the body, including arsenic and lead, but will also grab stuff like iron, zinc, calcium, and magnesium, which are rather important to keep. EDTA has two amine ligands and four carboxylic acid ligands. But the metals you really want to get rid of --like lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic--are attracted to amine, thiolate, and sulfhydryl groups.

So peptides containing multiple cysteine groups are often used in biology to bind and transport toxic heavy metals. Methionine, as another sulfur- containing amino acid, is also useful. So N-acetylcysteine and S-adenosylmethionine help clear heavy metals from the body without also sucking out the metals you would prefer to keep. If you can come up with a better, more selective chelation agent, you're likely to get a few prestigious prizes.

I don't think eating enormous quantities of garlic is likely to be a great solution. I'd probably just go with a N-acetylcysteine supplement--which also has the beneficial side effect of helping with hangovers--and use lead testing strips (if red, there's lead) to avoid chronic exposure. Also, no allium- halitosis.

Vidalia onions are mild and sweet because they are grown in low-sulfur soil. Tangy, pungent onions are the ones that will have higher levels of organosulfur compounds, so they're the ones you want if you're worried about heavy metals poisoning.

But then again, those organosulfur compounds can also help carry heavy metals _into_ your body, so if the onions are grown in high-sulfur, high-arsenic soil, for instance, you're probably just making things worse.

<comment><USER7> I'm curious if this is common knowledge or not. A quick look at the wikipedia page for acetylcystine does not mention using it as a chelating agent, although it does seem to have a variety of other uses. Is this an oversight of the Wikipedia editors, or is this not a common recommendation?

<comment><USER6> It doesn't work very well by itself as a chelating agent. But it does have an amine group and a thiol group, and can form complexes with heavier metals. Having only two ligands, that aren't positioned very advantageously relative to each other, it just doesn't "stick" very well.

It's primary usefulness would be to replace the raw materials that the body uses to make the larger peptide molecules that it uses to detoxify heavy metals. Most of these require cysteine or glutathione, for the thiol.

I think NAC is mostly known to broscience as a hangover remedy, as it helps clear acetaldehyde in the liver.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's a useful result, I jokingly thought they were going to say Tuna since its been such a challenge in the Pacific. The next step I suppose would be to turn this stuff out in bulk and line drain pipes to see how well it works passively?

I didn't pick up if it was reversible, do you discard it after it has become saturated?</comment>


Why we're changing Flickr free accounts - <AUTHOR> https://blog.flickr.net/en/2018/11/01/changing-flickr-free-accounts-1000-photos/ <comment><USER2> While I understand why they are adding a limit, the concept of just deleting the photos over the 1000 limit just unsettles me, and will almost certainly cause link rot, which is both sad and annoying when I encounter it.

I don't know what my dad will do, he's been using Flickr for quite a few years now, he used to pay for pro, but then stopped doing so after Yahoo bought Flickr and started breaking the UI. He has over 1000 photos, but I am not sure if the pro features are worth the price for him. Fortunately he has local backups of every photo, but it does feel like his photos have been held to ransom. He probably would be willing to pay some money (but less than the current pro) just for the extra storage (and none of the extra features), from what I understand.

To conclude this wall of text, I understand why they're doing it, and hopefully it will make Flickr sustainable, but I feel the way it was done will cause problems when it happens (if it only stopped an account from uploading if it had too many photos, that would help a lot to avoid link rot), and might also cause problems in the future (while morbid to think about, if a pro user dies, they won't be able to pay and a bunch of their images will just get deleted, which could be bad for their families)...

EDIT: fix a few spelling errors and tyops

UPDATE: my dad's response to this is that he will pay for pro to keep his images online. In general, he doesn't feel like Pro is intended for him because it has features he doesn't really care about, he only cares about the storage and community stuff, not the statistics and software stuff.

<comment><USER3> I didn't see any mention of deleting photos that were over the limit. Hopefully they do what Flickr used to do, which is make only the last 1000 photos publicly visible.

<comment><USER4> "Free members with more than 1,000 photos or videos uploaded to Flickr have until Tuesday, January 8, 2019, to upgrade to Pro or download content over the limit. After January 8, 2019, members over the limit will no longer be able to upload new photos to Flickr. After February 5, 2019, free accounts that contain over 1,000 photos or videos will have content actively deleted -- starting from oldest to newest date uploaded -- to meet the new limit."

From the home page.

<comment><USER5> What I find amazing is how quickly they are doing it. You'd think they would have 12 months type thing after the 'no upload' before they delete to maintain good will. What if someone is ill or travelling. Seems there will be a bunch of people who lose photos before they realise.

<comment><USER6> They waited quite long. 1tb is not nothing and I have backuped to Flickr for that reason but I'm not doing anything there

Yahoo might have been able to afford it.

Otherwise pro user still paying for it. Everyone else didn't. Why should they care what people think of them who didn't pay anyway?

<comment><USER2> Well... It would have been nice if they warned people earlier because it is quite a big thing to happen.

A possible reason why someone running a website should care about keeping stuff up is to avoid link rot, to me it feels like part of bejng a good Internet citizen is to ensure that a change to your website doesn't break other websites or links where possible and reasonable. (if people want stuff removed, then that's fine though).

However, it might be that it's too expensive to even just keep stuff up, so fair enough, but if that is the case, I feel more warning would have helped a bit here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> SmugMug is really bringing back sanity into Flickr, good to see this after the Yahoo fiasco.

I created Talegraph [1] as a platform to tell stories with your pictures, and it has been hard for us to explain to users why paying for the product is the only way to ensure your pictures will stay online and private. Paying for what you use & privacy is not something normal people are used to, but this is the only sustainable way imo.

[1] [https://www.talegraph.com](https://www.talegraph.com)

<comment><USER7> This looks like just the product I need to move away from putting my travel snaps on Facebook. Instagram isn't suited for albums and Flickr is hard to build a narrative with. Looking forward to trying it out after my next trip!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is exactly why we started working on Talegraph :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> They're giving 3 month's notice of the automatic deletion of any photos over the 1000 allowed free ones. Not much time and sure to catch out people who don't log in/check their email frequently (including their spam folders) or who have technical problems (crap upload speeds, no capacity to download and store gigs of what might be the only existent copies of photos). I wonder if they'd be better of holding onto the soon to be deleted content for a lot longer, as they're hardly likely to go bust continuing to host it a little longer. I guess moving them to a non-free account would feel a like like extortion but surely this is worse - photos which were uploaded many years ago lost forever.

Much as I try and avoid using Google, I stick with them for the free email and unlimited photo storage.

<comment><USER9> > _Much as I try and avoid using Google, I stick with them for the free email > and unlimited photo storage._

I'm actually quite fearful of the day when Google will end its generous offer... We often see cloud providers struggling to cope with "unlimited" free plans, perhaps we should take all of them with a grain of salt and rely on local backups precisely to avoid the quasi-extortion that comes when the "unlimited cloud" mantra goes downhill.

<comment><USER10> AFAIK -

1)Gmail is free but does have a storage limit.

2) You can have an unlimited # of photos but not at full/original resolution. If you want full/orig you have to pay.

p.s. "...perhaps we should take all of them with a grain of salt..." Do you mean you haven't been doing this already? :)

<comment><USER9> Indeed, Gmail does have a limit, but Google Photos still lets you upload "unlimited" photos on that lower quality plan — which is more than enough for a vast majority of users.

I've began noticing the issues of large-scale cloud storage with the OneDrive fiasco, so I learned my lessons the hard way over there. But unfortunately too many people remain invested in such ecosystems and have no idea of the risks involved...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So in summary Flickr is giving free users hosting for 1000 photos of unlimited quality vs. 1TB of free storage to refocus on photography vs. data mining for advertising. Makes sense to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> When you look at the comments on Reddit, you can see that unfortunately it does not make sense for many people who put free as their first priority, versus privacy/sustainability/data concerns. Very brave for Flickr to make this move and face all those critics, even if this is for the best on the long term.

<comment><USER12> Arguably the people who value free over everything else aren't good customers and aren't a good foundation to build an actual sustainable business on.

<comment><USER13> Arguably, free tier users are _potential_ customers, not customers.

<comment><USER14> I'd say if you offer a service and someone takes you up on the offer, they are your customer.

<comment><USER15> They are not customers if they don't pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Stopped paying for pro a few years ago because of arrogance and hubris that was common in the web darlings of the last ten years. Couldn't get a simple customer service request answered without snark or condescension. Garbage redesigns of the layout and refusal to listen to feedback meant you were paying for storage and nothing more (pretensions about "community" notwithstanding).

On the other hand, my limited interactions with Smugmug have been stellar. I really like those guys and wish them luck.

The joy of Flickr was exploring the random pictures from ordinary people. I could care less about the heavily Photoshopped "prosumer" stuff that seems to be more popular on the platform. I liked seeing natural skill at composition instead of digital post-processing.

Unfortunately, it looks like SmugMug wants Flickr to be more like SmugMug, so I don't see myself buying back into pro.

Flickr to me was mostly about sharing my photos with friends and family before facebook killed that use case. I don't use facebook much any more, but no one else in my circle uses Flickr either.

Deleting photos over the limit is a bit annoying though. I seem to remember in the past they just made them temporarily inaccessible if you let Pro lapse for a bit (while travelling or whatever).

Time to whip up something that will compare what I have uploaded on flickr (4000+ photos over 12 years) to what's on my local backups so I can download what I have to and forget about the rest.

<comment><USER17> For what it's worth, we definitely don't want Flickr to be more like SmugMug. Flickr is amazing and different and that's great. We want Flickr to be Flickr and that's what we're investing in. We'd be thrilled to have you back as Pro, and I promise we'll work hard to keep you.

<comment><USER18> One thing that's scary to me as someone who will be affected is the thought that one day, so much of my work could be just _gone_.

I am not a full-time photographer; there are runs of time every year where I spend a lot of of time shooting (e.g. live music gigs), and then long periods of inactivity.

I have over 1000 photos on Flickr. I've been a user for _over a decade_. And _I found out about this change from this post_ , because I haven't been reading the associated Yahoo email that often.

So, leaving my account alone for 3 months = losing most of my photos forever.

Great.

Just the service I want to pay for.

I understand the business need, but perhaps could you take it easy on _irreversible changes_? Sure, make the photos over the 1K limit unavailable even to the account holders -- but let them _buy the access back_ long after the change.

Not only you might get more subscriptions from _that alone_ , but there's also this:

Unlimited storage might not be feasible for a fixed pricd. Photos are growing larger, dollar is getting cheaper - we're betting on HDD costs going down, but that's not a given.

You might need to have a change in the future.

Again.

And I don't want to lose data because I'd have missed _that_ announcement - just like I missed _this_ one.

How you treat your free users indicates what the paying attention ones can expect.

Please, for the sake of everything that's holy, give your devoted users _some goddamn peace of mind_ that they can camp in the mountains for a year and _don 't return to see their data gone_.

Yahoo! screwed up there - but two wrongs do not make a right.

Not all of us use the service every day. Take it easy on annihilating work and memories.

TL;DR: every account whose data you keep is a potential subscription. Every user whose data you deleted is a _guaranteed_ loss of business and eternal scorn. _Please_ take care of your intermittent, but devoted users.

<comment><USER16> I actually don't have any email about this in either my linked Yahoo account or my "primary email" in Flickr which is my main gmail account.

So reading your email apparently wouldn't have helped you at all.

Great job, SmugMug.

<comment><USER17> It takes time (as in, many days) to notify >100M people. We're working on it. The blog post and assorted spontaneous coverage, like Hacker News, is faster.

<comment><USER19> Even then, targeting the most affected ones (those on free plans with more than, say, 900 photos) first is, I assume, a much simpler job that might save you from a bit of a public scrutiny and give those people an extra jiffy or two to act.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have been using Flickr to archive my photos since 2013 when they announced a 1TB limit for free users, and have been paying them $50/year since 2016 when they limited availability to Pro users for their first-party auto-upload tool ( [http://flickr.com/uploadr](http://flickr.com/uploadr) ).

It did seem like the 1TB limit was too good to last when it was announced 5 years ago.

Still, it's a relatively inexpensive extra archive for my photos (400GB) that supplements other backups. The archive is sorta searchable and kinda good for sharing with family and friends.

I haven't really used their social or community features (the Explore experience, the magic donkey, and the pandas are all alien to me -- [https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/361974994](https://www.flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/361974994) , [http://code.flickr.net/2009/03/03/panda-tuesday-the- history-...](http://code.flickr.net/2009/03/03/panda-tuesday-the-history-of- the-panda-new-apis-explore-and-you/) ).

<comment><USER17> Thanks! I'd love to know how we can improve on "sorta searchable" if you have some feedback?

<comment><USER21> @onethumb Flickr Pro user here since 2007. There used to be an "Archive" view that had a calendar you could click through and see pictures taken or uploaded on a specific date. I haven't been able to find it since the Camera Roll feature launched.

Camera Roll is certainly useful, but I'd love if I could just quickly click on a calendar and see photos from a certain date rather than waiting for Camera Roll to load up and scrolling/filtering through the huge list. I realize Camera Roll has this feature as well, but I miss the old "Archive" version.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for being a customer, and thanks for the feedback. I'll look into whether we can revive this or not. Were you using it to find your own photos, or photos from the community, or... ?

<comment><USER22> I've been a Pro user for a long time before Yahoo started to screw things up badly. Flickr is only alive today because of the communities that use it. A lot of bloggers used and still use it to share pictures that are freely licensed (CC-BY-*), you should at least consider to keep those in some form or another or provide the means to redirect the links from the search result.

<comment><USER17> I love Creative Commons and I'm actively involved in thinking about and solving this problem. See their blog post today: [https://creativecommons.org/2018/11/01/flickr-2/](https://creativecommons.org/2018/11/01/flickr-2/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is the death knell for Flickr. I've relied heavily on Flickr advanced search to find nature photos of particular plant and animal species. This new policy will undoubtedly results in many photos being deleted, and therefore limiting the search results. Their large archive of photos is/was a real asset, albeit one they haven't been smart enough to monetize effectively. Deleting these photos is just another small step in the slow disintegration of the site, sadly.

<comment><USER22> I wish they would at least leave creative commons licensed pictures, so many will likely disappear - it's such a shame.

<comment><USER23> My thoughts exactly, those are the images I typically search. Wikimedia commons does seem to have a bot (and/or some kind of manual process) that collects some of the creative commons photos from Flickr, but not all of them, even if they are good photos that are well-tagged. I usually search both sites, so I have a good sense of how often a photo appears one on site and not the other. Incidentally, it would sure be nice if Wikimedia commons allowed you to filter by license type.

I do hope some bot out there is collecting and archiving Flickr's creative commons photos before they disappear for good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > In 2013, Yahoo lost sight of what makes Flickr truly special and responded > to a changing landscape in online photo sharing by giving every Flickr user > a staggering terabyte of free storage

Well, that's one way to make the only remaining feature of your product sound like a bad thing...

<comment><USER25> Flickr's main feature is being a service that prioritizes photography as a portfolio, rather than photos as a visual social blogfeed. Limiting free users to 1,000 photos effectively kills the ability to use it as a clunkier Instagram. As long as there's enough revenue from ads and the pro accounts, this may be the best way forward for Flickr as a long-term service.

I've been a pro user for awhile. I guess the downside of this is that I now feel locked in, having well over 1,000 photos. I think previously, had I downgraded to the free version, I'd be able to keep all my photos but no longer provide them as full-size downloads. I don't have a particular complaint with Flickr as a service, it's just I don't do a lot of photography other than casual uploading to Instagram these days. That said, that Smugmug is committed to taking a different, coherent direction provides me with a lot more confidence than the years of Yahoo doing virtually nothing.

edit: maybe I'm grandfathered in for unlimited photos, if I were to downgrade to Free? The wording in the announcement is unclear.

<comment><USER26> Do you have more than 1000 photos that are portfolio level quality?

<comment><USER25> No, I probably have a 100 if even that. But the other ~9,900 are a nice archive of living in New York, and I get occasional requests from people (who can't find the buried download button) to use or copy a photo from some random street.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am quite happy about this. I have been a paying user for a long time, after verizon bought yahoo, I scrambled to figure out an alternative plan. Flickr was my sole backup after my laptop.

Summary, use flickr/smugmug to host and share pics that are curated (get rid of unwanted pics when uploading there). Use iCloud (paid), Google(free) and client side encrypted amazon drive to backup all pics (yes 3 backups and I do not trust amazon's free picture tier not sure what they will do with it, already bitten by them changing plans). Yes, I know Google gets what it wants ability to process my pics.. sigh.

I want to have an honest relation with my service providers, I pay them for a service they give me and I am their customer. Not going to reiterate what has been said numerous times about not being a customer if the service is free..

Flickr is giving up on "growth at all costs and monetize later" model to "we have a good quality focused service but you have to pay..". I would rather pay. The only problem I am now paying for both flickr and smugmug..

<comment><USER17> Thanks so much for being a customer and for the vote of confidence. We should figure out something for Flickr + SmugMug, pricing wise. Any ideas?

<comment><USER28> Business and pricing are not my areas of expertise, so feel free to ignore or improve on this idea. My suggestion is to use Flickr to upsell Portfolio and Pro SmugMug plans (maybe with a nominal discount of $1/mo for Portfolio and $2/mo for Pro). Flickr could be the place where photographers get feedback on their photos and improve their skills, and then SmugMug is where they build a more curated portfolio of photos to sell based on what resonates with people on Flickr. When a photographer has reached a tipping point of positive feedback on Flickr, they may feel ready to start selling their photos, and that's your opportunity to upsell an appropriate SmugMug plan.

Or if you're confident that you can identify photographers whose photos will sell based on engagement with their photos on Flickr, offer an introductory rate for the first year so they can test how well their photos sell. If they sell enough photos to cover the cost of an upgraded plan, paying for an ongoing plan is a no-brainer.

At least, that's my use case as a hobbyist. I currently pay for a basic SmugMug plan. I daydream of upgrading to a Portfolio plan to sell some photos (just for fun), but I don't know that I would manage to sell any. I'm now thinking Flickr might be a better place for me to start testing the water.

As an aside, thank you for removing the Yahoo login. That's been more of a barrier than you would expect for me every time I've wanted to use Flickr in the past. I don't use Yahoo for anything other than Flickr. I think I have more than one account, but I'm not sure, and I don't remember which account has my Flickr albums. It's just a mess. I'll definitely be giving Flickr another chance in January.

<comment><USER17> Thank you for the thoughtful and detailed feedback. Lots to think about.

And you're welcome on Yahoo login. Hard at work, but should be soon. Definitely want to let people access Flickr in whatever way they prefer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm a fan of Flickr, and for me the community is the reason I upload my photos there. If this makes Flickr sustainable and lets the team invest in improving the product and fostering the community, I think it's a great move. Plus, seeing highly curated feeds is what people want, not just a dumping ground for every frame in your roll/SD card.

<comment><USER30> Yeah, same here. I was fairly active on it > 10 years ago but haven't really kept up with it since I got locked out of my original account once they switched to Yahoo. I can only imagine the amount of trash that would get uploaded with everyone getting essentially and unlimited amount of space. I always enjoyed the quality I could find there and it seems like they are trying to get back to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> _" First, and most crucially, the free terabyte largely attracted members who were drawn by the free storage, not by engagement with other lovers of photography. This caused a significant tonal shift in our platform, away from the community interaction and exploration of shared interests that makes Flickr the best shared home for photographers in the world."_

I don't have a problem with their decision, and I'll certainly upgrade to pro in the next few weeks. But I also don't use Flickr for "community interaction and exploration of shared interests" \- I just want to be able to create albums and put photos in them. So the storage was useful and the ostensible reason for the change (reversing the "tonal shift") doesn't entirely convince me.

But this isn't unexpected, and I think the purchase by SmugMug was a good thing. I just hope they can stop randomly losing my photos after this...

(Edit: s/convince/entirely convince/)

<comment><USER32> > So the storage was useful and the ostensible reason for the change > (reversing the "tonal shift") doesn't convince me.

What are you not convinced about? They were pretty clear that people who use Flickr as a storage space rather than a photography community are not their target audience, and therefor will not be the focus of their efforts and goodwill.

<comment><USER31> > What are you not convinced about? They were pretty clear that people who use > Flickr as a storage space rather than a photography community are not their > target audience, and therefor will not be the focus of their efforts and > goodwill.

I suspect that the change is more to do with the cost of storage than with re- creating some photographic community that may have existed before 2013. But I'm also happy to be proved wrong.

Yes, I am just using Flickr for storage. And while most of my albums are public, my photographic skills are fairly average compared to many on Flickr, so they are unlikely to be able to monetise my efforts. But I'm not interested in being part of a "photographic community" because, while I enjoy photography, I don't do it to be in a community. And I suspect that they see community participation as basically user-generated content creation, and I'm not into that either.

I'm happy to accept that I'm not a user they can support for free. I like Flickr, wish it well, and am happy to pay for pro.

<comment><USER32> > I suspect that the change is more to do with the cost of storage

I think you're right about that, but they did address it up front:

> Second, you can tell a lot about a product by how it makes money. Giving > away vast amounts of storage creates data that can be sold to advertisers, > with the inevitable result being that advertisers' interests are prioritized > over yours.

 __*

> I'm happy to accept that I'm not a user they can support for free. I like > Flickr, wish it well, and am happy to pay for pro

That's great! And I want to say that I highly respect the maturity and understanding you demonstrate here. I wish more people adopted this attitude.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I really like this. I want to have an honest relationship with a service provider. I pay them for their service and they don't steal my data or reuse it in any way.

</comment><comment><USER34> So I've had a Flickr for a while, and not just for the free terabyte - I just started using that about a year and a half ago. But it's now a pretty ingrained part of my life, particularly using the Flickr app pretty much like my photo gallery. I've got tens of thousands of photos there, and I've encouraged my friends to use it too because it's a great app, the uploading works fast and well, and it's better designed and easier to use than other photo apps in my opinion.

The rapid phase-out period unnerves me, personally. If I hadn't seen it, and bam, all but 1000 of my tens of thousands of photos were deleted, I don't know what I'd do. Yes, I know, have backups - but moving and organizing tens of thousands of photos takes time and energy. I've also got miscellaneous friends and family that I now have to tell about this change, to download their photos and keep them somewhere else.

I just wish there was a cheaper option for those of us who want to keep our photos on Flickr. $50/year is pretty high; you can get a 1TB hard drive for $38 on Amazon. If there was some kind of intermediate tier I'd really appreciate it.

I know that you want to increase community engagement, and I think that's a noble goal, but consider this: you've got a great photo tool, and some people want to use it for their own personal photos without engaging in the community. In my experience, the uploadr works faster and better than Google Photos or other apps I've tried, and I prefer the interface to other apps. Why not just charge what it costs to run? According to Backblaze [0] disk space now costs them about 2 cents/gigabyte. So about $20 for a terabyte. Now I realize there are costs associated of course - bandwidth etc, maintenance, whatnot - but I'm sure you could profitably offer a limited plan for less than what the current Pro plan costs.

In any case, good luck with Flickr, I'm rooting for you guys.

<comment><USER35> Regarding pricing: you rate $50/year as pretty high in comparison to a USB backup drive. I think a better comparison might be to other cloud storage services.

Quick survey of cloud storage pricing:

Dropbox personal 1TB: $120 / TB / year

Google "One" 2TB: $100 / TB / year

Microsoft OneDrive 1TB: $ 70 / TB / year

Apple iCloud 2TB: $ 60 / TB / year ($120/year)

Flickr "unlimited": $ 50 / year

So, I think Flickr pricing seems in-line (and significantly cheaper than Dropbox.) Of course it depends a bit on what unlimited really means in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm an active free user with over 10000 photos. Not had intention yet to upgrade to pro. It's simply more cheaper to buy two-three external hdd-s for multiple backups than paying annually for a backup service.

I somewhat expected this decision, because 1TB free storage sounds to good to be true from the very beginning. I know, I will loose all my edited photos, geotags, edited descriptions and all my additions on flickr. I've uploaded publicly thousands with them of points of interest and with free to use licence, but seems that there is nothing to do. All the photos will remain buried in a forgotten hdd, somewhere in the bottom of a case.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm all for these changes and went to go sign up for Pro (was since Flickr started until about 2 years ago)

But, .... it seems like they're jumping the gun here. I went to go resign up for Pro but you still have to do it through your Yahoo account!!!

I don't want yahoo even associated with my flickr account but I could find no way to disassociate the yahoo account.

Shouldn't they fix that before rolling out this change?

(or maybe I missed how)

</comment><comment><USER38> $50 annually just to store and share photos is a bit too much for _my_ use case. Half of that would definitely justify it. But I am a very light user.

But other than that I am 100% on-board with this strategy. Get done with the "free" accounts already.

Haven't bother to go through the T&C but I hope they have clause that say they are _not_ allowed to use your data for data-mining/advertising.

<comment><USER39> This was my thought exactly. There are hundreds of services out there that make your life just a little better or easier, and I can't afford them all. $50 just isn't worth it.

I think there's a strong case for creating an intermediate tier. $10 a year for 10k photos, but none of the other pro perks would be a pretty fair offer, I think. I'd sign up (well, not right away... I don't and won't have a Flickr account until I don't need a Yahoo address to get one.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> As a hobbyist photographer 1000 photographs is not a whole lot and I can't justify a pro account when I mostly just use it for storing my edited photos. A terabyte on the other hand is too much to give away to free users.

Then again, from a business standpoint I welcome the decision. I'd rather have a free place to host a 1000 photos than no Flickr at all. I welcome their stance alleged stance of treating users as priority rather than as just advertisement data generators.

I say alleged because I don't know how well these promises of users first are applied in practice but I'm hopeful.

At least they are upfront about it so kudos to Flickr for that.

<comment><USER41> I guess I won't have any option but to pay for Pro but I wish they had am intermediate tier that just gives expanded storage.

I have no interest in their Pro Statistics or the list of 'partner discounts' they bundle into Pro. Nor the ability to upload 10 minute videos.

Strip out that crap and just sell a Flickr Subscriber account for less money, please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I have to admit around the time they went to 1TB free, I stopped taking serious pictures and just used Flickr to be the default backup for my phone camera.

Now whe I go to Flickr I see a lot more photo plagiarism by throwaway accounts, to say nothing of dank memes.

If Flickr offers better integration of their photo storage with blogging platforms and the like, it would be very well worth the Pro account. And by concentrating on helping peopel who gather photos for public presentation, they'd be offering a service that isn't quite like the shutterbug demographic they want, but is still on the same tenor.

</comment><comment><USER43> Personally I have put on Flickr thousands of photos from my seven years of travels in Asia which are very dear to me. And suddenly I had been given a month's notice to leave or pay.

I had sympathy for Flickr as community like 8-10 years ago but haven't been using actively Flickr for couple of years - as it became slowly unusable. I had to write my own scripts to import all my photos as their tools stooped being developed 10 years ago. [1]

At the moment Flickr webpage is quite unusable (if you block aggressive tracking from Yahoo and other 3-rd parties on DNS level), Flickr app is unusable for privacy reasons - installation on Android requires access to identity, contacts and microphone) and logging to Flickr requires giving some weird permissions to Oath (whoever it is).

So with all the sympathy for the new owners of Flickr I think it is a bit premature to ask loyal users for ransom before putting it's house in order and showing what the new Flickr would be. It is just asking me to pay for the development in unknown direction.

I got the message and I will not be using their services in the future as they cannot be considered by me as serious and trusted.

[1] [https://github.com/chew-z/Flickr3](https://github.com/chew-z/Flickr3)

<comment><USER6> 5$ per month on a monthly plan.

Sry but that is not 'ransom'.

And srsly you used it and never paid? Do you think they want you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I commend the Flickr team for making this move. It takes courage to make this kind of change, when you know you'll take some flak for it (e.g. this very HN thread). At the end of the day, you'll piss off some people, but you know that the decision makes sense and you forge ahead.

<comment><USER17> Thank you! (Disclaimer: Blog author, CEO & Chief Geek here). I clearly believe, deeply, that focusing on photographers who care about photography is the right path forward, and I'm excited to see others feel that way, too. Please feel free to ask any questions I might be able to answer, and thanks again.

<comment><USER45> I just want to express my gratitude for finally, fully embracing wider gamuts. I've been eagerly awaiting this day (and have a group all set up to show them off - [https://www.flickr.com/groups/2234658@N22/](https://www.flickr.com/groups/2234658@N22/)).

Questions:

1\. To the extent reprocessing is necessary, will that be done automatically (e.g. as it is for photos originally uploaded at full resolution, and now being displayed at 5K)?

2\. Do all mobile OSs provide the color profile management necessary for the app to properly display photos? I know this was a challenge in the past.

3\. Will there be any indication a photo is outside of sRGB, aside from EXIF?

P.S. - I'm sure you're aware, but there's a (closed) group of alpha/beta users ([https://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrbeta/](https://www.flickr.com/groups/flickrbeta/)) always eager to help provide feedback.

<comment><USER17> 1\. Should be automatic. Still testing, but looking fantastic so far.

2\. The coverage across modern OSes, browsers, and devices is incredibly high, and increasing daily, or we wouldn't be finally pulling the trigger. (I've wanted to do this for 16 years!)

3\. Hmm, hadn't thought about this. What did you have in mind?

<comment><USER45> That's all great to here. I was thinking that the color space could be listed within the little section below the photo summarizing the EXIF data (with little pictorials for aperture, lens, shutter speed, flash, etc.). That would make it a lot easier to know if you're seeing a photo as intended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If community == accounts with fewer photos, and revenue == people willing to pay for more photos, how does getting their revenue from the people who use Flickr in a way Flickr is trying to pivot from support furthering the goal of community?

</comment><comment><USER46> I really like Flickr. There's a wealth of beautiful images, great groups (even though a lot of the ones I used are dead/dying), and I really like that I can upload uncompressed images. A lot of what this post says rings true, and hopefully they can right the ship on the engagement front, because right now it feels pretty dismal. When I post to Instagram, I get 20 times the engagement. I'm not sure how they fix that, but I'll stay on board as long as they keep trying to improve things. I'd have no problem going pro if I hit the 1000 image limit (right now I'm at 574).

</comment><comment><USER47> Well-written product announcement! clear explanation of "bad news" for a lot of users, but encouraging for target customers. I hope when I grow up I too can write something like this. :)

</comment><comment><USER48> @Onethumb: I have ~150k photos on Flickr and a 10 year paid account but I stopped using it ~1.5 years ago when I got sick of their video upload timestamp issues. I have not checked recently if fixed.

When I upload photos, Flickr looks at the taken date of the photo and sorts them that way. When I upload videos from the computer (using the upload tool), Flickr does NOT look at the metadata to set the taken date. Instead, then taken date is set to the current date meaning the videos are out of order of the photos.

<comment><USER17> Thank you so much for being a customer! I would love to help track this down and fix it, especially since I'm writing the new photo & video services. :) I will add this to my list.

[http://blog.flickr.net/en/2018/10/31/putting-your-best- photo...](http://blog.flickr.net/en/2018/10/31/putting-your-best-photo- forward-flickr-updates/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> WIth the auto upload feature of flickr I can imagine people using flickr as their main photo storage/backup.

And if they happen to not pay attention to announcements like these they might find their photo's irreverably gone in a few months.

Moves like this, so soon after the acquisition, with 0 lenience for existing users makes me not trust Flickr/SmugSmug anymore. What will be the next step when they will randomly delete your photo's?

<comment><USER43> The $5 is OK but a month to decide is too short. Plus I would rather see what am I paying for before I decide. At the moment Flickr isn't much of use to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> If I remember correctly, Flickr used to hide free user's over 200 photos and they'll show up one upgraded to pro. But now they'll delete exceeded photos.

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm not going to complain about a company refocusing their profitability and adjusting things - good for them.

but i think this was horrible messaging. I would have much rather appreciated a more straightforward approach, instead of trying to get me to be excited for being limited to 1,000 images and video. I think it shows flickr still has a ways to go in building trust - because being disingenuous in messaging doesn't build it.

</comment><comment><USER52> Flickr was probably the first service I paid money for. I seem to recall shelling out $5(?) a month years back - maybe around 2009, possibly earlier - when I hit the 200 photos limit. I was more than happy to pay that back then, because they were doing something I valued. It was a frictionless way to share photos, and the community was nice. I used to actively go and flick through people's photos, spending a few minutes each day looking at beautiful photography. I've not even attempted to log in to Flickr in years. Yahoo made a royal mess of it - in particular when the Flickr ID had to be tied to a Yahoo ID, I just gave up even attempting to log in. Rubbish. Will I pay again? Probably not. The web has moved on and there are easier ways to share photos now. The communities that were once those little communities like Flickr, united by a common passion and desire to show something special have been poisoned by the meme-driven, glib-comment-ridden everything-in-one-place race to the bottom of bigger social networks. Flickr was the product of a gentler, more innocent time.

</comment><comment><USER53> funny guys, so instead 1TB of space you are giving me now roughly 5GB on par with dozens of free cloud storages and you think for the money you ask for pro account i won't rather set up my own paid cloud where i have complete control over my content instead of some smugs?

flickr app it's absolutely horrible, impossible to organize or share photos which i would like to do, but it's pretty much impossible so i just used it as backup, so good luck with your business if you think you will turn those free users into paid with this strategy and i will keep my public photos there for people to see, just going to delete account (10yo+) and finally get rid of yahoo account (at last one benefit from this mess), because apparently photographer enough if i am not willing to pay for sharing few photos andyou think 1000 photos it's enough for years

and if someone is into real photography they are already long time on 500px, so once again who needs paid flickr? might as well shut it down instead of this slow death and blackmailing users who dunno any better how to transfer photos and set their own cloud

</comment><comment><USER54> I wonder how many people even use their Yahoo accounts any more. This thread was the first that I heard about flickr changing T&Cs. I don't ever log in, I just have some scripts that add particular photos to my photostream -- I.m up to 1,700 now. These then get shown on particular web pages on a web site that I run.

I'll probably end up paying for a couple of months of Pro before deleting everything (as it'll take some time to migrate onto another service).

What frustrates me is that this is the second service that I use that changed it's T&Cs on me this year which needed a lot of work to redo my websites (the other was Google Maps which went from free to $2k/month).

Flickr needs to make money, but I'll bet the fallout will be bad as this change affects a bunch of users who have no idea that it is coming. Presumably the 3% of free people with more than 1k photos are causing significant costs and Flickr wants to dump them.

</comment><comment><USER55> It took me awhile to figure out my old Yahoo login for Flickr. But I finally found it! (had to dig way back into my gmail archives). I definitely will be switching my login when that is rolled out.

As a paid SmugMug user, is there is discount for signing up for a paid flickr account? I saw that there is a discount to become a SmugMug user listed on Flickr Pro Perks.

</comment><comment><USER56> Hope they'll be contacting archive.org before deleting those pictures of the free users with more than 1000 photos.

</comment><comment><USER57> I think this is a positive step forward, actively planning to keep the service sustainable is a solid game plan.

Having more than 1000 pix means I'm now a pro member again, which I let lapse when storage went to 1 ter. Though, my ~38,000 pics only take up 5% of that terabyte. Some of those 2004 pictures are really tiny. Photography may not be as much of a focus for me now, but those early days were really engaging, here's hoping SM brings some of the magic back.

Having lots of pictures, and albums has made sorting, managing them much harder with the Organize browser tool. I'm interested how Smugmug will be improving the experience of managing photos and albums.

Will Organize be getting some of the new direction focus?

</comment><comment><USER58> As someone with way more than 1000 photos on Flickr, I hope they provide an easy way to export the photos and metadata out.

I mostly agree with the direction they want to take, I just don't want to be part of the journey and so want to get my photos out.

<comment><USER59> In the time it took to write this comment you could've logged in and spotted the big "Export my data" button right there on the Account Settings page...

<comment><USER58> Does it include the metadata too?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> It's actually a good idea. It forces the user to do some curating of their images, encouraging them to only put their best images online. Which in turn should result in more browsers engaging with the site and photographer.

</comment><comment><USER61> I am fine with going to Flickr Pro but this is also in the price range of a regular SmugMug account. Does anybody know how to decide between the two?

Also: this is is not the only criteria, but do any of them allow a custom domain?

<comment><USER62> Smugmug allows custom domains, including support for https. It also allows for custom branding and layout design (your name here, powered by Smugmug).

I wasn't able to get a bare domain (e.g. domainname.tld) to work directly, so i set up a redirect to www.domainname.tld from there and it's been good for me. I don't know if that has changed since I set it up.

<comment><USER61> Custom domains only seem to be available from the "Power" plan upwards as as I can tell.

Besides custom domain: what are the pros/cons of Flickr vs SmugMug?

<comment><USER62> I guess it depends on your use case. I'm interested in having my own gallery I can share, rather than a Flickr page. I prefer "my photo gallery site" to "my pictures on Flickr", so for me the custom domain and branding is important. I don't particularly care about the community aspects beyond viewing the photos of some of my friends, so that piece of Flickr holds little interest to me. Of course when I set it up I was also very disillusioned about Yahoo and wanted to get away from that and into something that felt more sustainable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I love everything about this announcement.

I've been a Flickr Pro user for ages. Flickr was one of the things that got me into photography and improved my skills. I learned how to take better pictures by looking at other photos and seeing what kind of feedback mine got.

Then Yahoo aquired it and Flickr just fizzled out. I kept taking pictures but it wasn't the same without a community to share them with. It really made me sad.

I truly hope Flickr can return to the fantastic site it used to be and everything about this announcement reads like they have their head on straight.

</comment><comment><USER64> > you can tell a lot about a product by how it makes money. Giving away vast > amounts of storage creates data that can be sold to advertisers, with the > inevitable result being that advertisers' interests are prioritized over > yours. Reducing the free storage offering ensures that we run Flickr on > subscriptions, which guarantees that our focus is always on how to make your > experience better.

If one thing were to make me want to consider Flickr's services, this statement alone would be it.

</comment><comment><USER65> Paying customer for years. I got 7000 photos up there -- memories of the best times of my life. Extremely worthwhile service. All these folks talking about "death knell" should maybe think about paying for it if the feelings are so strong. They must really value what is on offer, and how about showing appreciation for what is valuable in your life?

</comment><comment><USER66> I wonder if the comment about "selling our users" is a swipe at Yahoo!, Google ([https://www.google.com/photos/about/](https://www.google.com/photos/about/)), or both.

Does anyone have data on how Google Photos generates revenue? Is it just a mechanism to upsell Google Drive storage quotas? Or are they also mining the photo meta data?

<comment><USER67> _" The information gleaned from analyzing these photos does not travel outside of this product — not today. But if I thought we could return immense value to the users based on this data I'm sure we would consider doing that. For instance, if it were possible for Google Photos to figure out that I have a Tesla, and Tesla wanted to alert me to a recall, that would be a service that we would consider offering, with appropriate controls and disclosure to the user."_

\-- Bradley Horowitz, Google VP of Streams, Photos, and Sharing (2015)

So yes, using info from the photos is definitively on the table. But I doubt they made Photos with a specific income stream in mind; they want to know everything about everything and everyone. The possibilities (for monetization and much more) are tremendously higher when you can leverage the connections between datasets, even if they are kinda lame by themselves.

<comment><USER66> "if it were possible for Google Photos to figure out that I have a Tesla, and Tesla wanted to alert me to a recall, that would be a service that we would consider offering"

That sounds terrible. He attempts to soften it by using an example that seems very important/critical (a vehicle "recall") instead of saying something like "If Google Photos can tell you like Starbucks and Startbucks wanted to show ads to you, that would be a service that we would consider offering"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> As much as I'm bummed about this, I do have to admit I'm getting what I paid for. I'm currently anaazon prime member so I'll probably migrate to that solution for added photo backup.

</comment><comment><USER69> Pre-2013 Flickr was a really fun place and I want to go back to there. So I love the initiative and direction here.

However, I lost the thread of the argument at the penultimate paragraph. If the "vast majority" of current free users will still qualify, why will this change the community in a significant way?

<comment><USER25> The users in the free tier are now given a hard ceiling of 1,000 photos, so it would seemingly dampen their future ambitions to use Flickr as a social stream or bulk archive.

<comment><USER69> I get that, but apparently they weren't hitting that limit anyway. So is this a purely psychological tactic? That's fascinating...kind of leveraging the psychology of an "unlimited" cellular plan but in reverse.

<comment><USER25> It might be psychological on Flickr's end too, as developers no longer have to propose new features that have the requirement of scaling with a high- resource-consuming free tier.

<comment><USER69> But that's my point — how is the resource consumption changing if hardly anybody is kicked out? Is there a tiny number of people storing a terabyte of photos each? But if the number of people is tiny, how can that be affecting the community feeling?

<comment><USER70> Those few people who store petabytes of videos was enough for even Amazon to boot them off their storage product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Well honestly, any service for which one derives value from should have a monetary value for one. $49.99 per year, or about $4 per month is about the cost of 2 cups of coffee. Totally reasonable if you ask me.

<comment><USER72> $4 is more than 16 cups of coffee here. Would you pay $32 a month for the service?

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Is there a way to download all of my photos? I have 25k in a bunch of albums, and it seems like albums over 5k photos in size they wont zip up to download...wtf? Come on Flickr.

</comment><comment><USER74> I'm glad I got grandfathered in with my UNLIMITED storage. Wondering when it's going to end ;)

<comment><USER75> Is it still a grandfathering policy? This says that paying professional accounts get unlimited storage:

[https://www.flickr.com/lookingahead/?utm_campaign=flickr- loo...](https://www.flickr.com/lookingahead/?utm_campaign=flickr-lookingahead)

<comment><USER8> Whoosh.

<comment><USER74> Ah, but my pro account is for free, forever :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Goodbye Flickr. :(

</comment><comment><USER77> Raise your hand if you use Flickr today. :-)

</comment><comment><USER78> Tl:dr: storage is expensive, and we aren't going to be giving it away when you're not giving us enough revenue

<comment><USER79> I think this is a bit unkind.

Maybe: Storage is expensive, and we'd rather collect money from you, rather than sell you to advertisers.

<comment><USER80> Are we sure they still won't sell you to advertisers in addition to subscription fees?

<comment><USER17> I promise this won't happen. I hate customer-hostile business models. (Disclaimer: Blog author, CEO & Chief Geek here)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> Wow, Flickr is still around

</comment><comment><USER82> Flickr's stupid front end is what turned me off from them in the beginning. I built my own sites and hosted my own photos because it was cheap and easy.

</comment><comment><USER83> And that's why you don't use (free) cloud services as your only backup. I thought about storing all my family photos on flicker a few years ago... Would have been useless now.

<comment><USER84> I did that and I am happy about this announcement b/c I had lost faith in Yahoo a while ago and Verizon deal sealed it for me. I have over 80K pics there and no easy way for me to delete them, now they will do it for me.

<comment><USER17> Flickr is under new ownership (mine). We would _love_ the opportunity to keep your 80K photos safe and let you share them with those you care about most. Please let me know if there's something we can do to help with this.</comment></comment></comment>


The Puzzle Mastermind Who Designs Def Con's Hackable Badges - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/08/defcon-2014-badges-revealed/

<comment><AUTHOR> Any one got their hands on one of these badges yet?

</comment><comment><USER2> Does DEFCON pay him to run these?

<comment><USER3> Not sure about this year (I doubt its changed) but in the past no.</comment></comment>


China's Strategic Thinking on Building Power in Cyberspace - <AUTHOR> https://www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity-initiative/blog/chinas-strategic-thinking-building-power-cyberspace/ <comment><USER2> I won't pretend to intimately understand the Chinese sociopolitical atmosphere, but it's clear to me that China wants to establish some form of international hegemony. This isn't an initiative focused on improving the country itself either through parity or bleeding edge advancement, which is the tone in many European countries and societies that have no aspirations to significantly influence world politics. For example, Czechoslovakia doesn't want to dominate the world culturally, economically, or politically. They mostly stick to making their country and people happy and prosperous.

China sees its 1.4 billion person population, and wants to extend itself across the world with a similar magnitude to the British Empire of old, or the American world order of the past 70 years. The translation of this Chinese publication is full of buzzwords and phrases that read like a McKinsey white paper, but with a distinctly Marxist bent (the Chinese are REALLY fond of their pithy phrases, they have many more phrase "memes" with significant time spans).

This is the difference between China and the late Soviet Union. China understands that the way to global power isn't a particular ideology - it's all about being big, big, big. Some choice quotes stand out to me: "Online positive publicity must become bigger and stronger, so that the Party's ideas always become the strongest voice in cyberspace."

"The online and offline worlds must form concentric circles, and, under the leadership of the Party, mobilize the people of all nationalities, mobilize all aspects of enthusiasm, to jointly realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and the struggle for the China Dream."

The Chinese Dream in particular is something everyone who is interested in Chinese society should understand. It sounds like the American Dream, but it's markedly different. Global hegemony is an explicit goal. The Century of Humiliation is thought of as something that should be left in the past, yet is still repeatedly brought up whenever Western powers are perceived to have done something violating Chinese rights. China deserves to be great, from both hard work and its numbers.

Whether or not this works, time will tell. The internet as a practical invention is American. The production of silicon based computers, the microcodes they interpret, the languages that compile down to microcode, its all English. Global trade language is English. International politics is in English. To become a superpower in cyberspace implies that on some level, the default conversation and framework should be set by China in Chinese. They've got a long way to go.</comment>