Internet Archive Never Forgets - <AUTHOR> https://theringer.com/internet-archive-wayback-machine-brewster-kahle-undeniables-6c1aaf0cc486 <comment><USER2> Except for when someone gives them a robots.txt instruction. Then they forget whole websites.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, which is the Internet Archive's biggest issue. What site uses a domain name at one time isn't what site might use the same domain name at a different date.

If the archive had more common sense, they'd note down when sites and robots.txt files change and only block pages by the site owner with the offending robots.txt file. So if say, Google went under and a new company started up, a robots.txt file from the latter would only block files added since the site switched over.

That would solve 99.99% of these issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Except for when someone's government asks to remove content. For example, this link [http://web.archive.org/web/20150618110931/http://ozpp.ru/pam...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150618110931/http://ozpp.ru/pamyatka- potrebitelyam-pri-poseschenii-okkupirovannyh-territoriy/) was removed from Internet Archive machine by Russian government request It worked this way: Russia blocked IA for Russians => IA removed content for everyone => Russia unblocked IA for Russians.</comment>


Emoji in SQL – Using Emoji as SQL Identifiers - <AUTHOR> http://baldi.me/blog/emoji-in-sql <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, author here. Sorry if I am posting from a new account but I forgot the password to my old one (crisbal) and I didn't set a recovery email.

Let me know if you have any question.

<comment><USER2> Have you tried it in production? It would be nice to have a feedback from a DBA

<comment><AUTHOR> There is not a single reason to try this in production, or even for a side project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> tldr; Emojis are Unicode entities, and as such, can be used within a SQL statement. Do not try this at work.</comment>


World's first smart tennis dampener in final hours on Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/laviesak/shot-stats-challenger-make-your-tennis-racket-smar

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm one of the founders at Shot Stats and here to answer any questions.</comment>


Who needs a case? The 3D Printed Mil-Plastic is here - <AUTHOR> https://back7.co/home/back7co-mil-plastic <comment> tedd-the-tiger I absolutely hate it when a blog doesn't have a date or has incomplete dates. When was this posted?

Someone else here posted a link to a related post ([https://back7.co/home/raspberry-pi-recovery- kit](https://back7.co/home/raspberry-pi-recovery-kit)). A "related article" has the title "Project Retrospective: Raspberry Pi Field Unit from 2015". No idea which year this was posted either.

Too much whitespace and too much scrolling.

<comment><USER2> I agree with you in general.

In this case, though, the article talks about "a few months over the quarantine" and "including a 3 month break due to life and COVID impacts". That makes it pretty easy to date!

<comment><USER3> But it won't in four years.

<comment><USER4> Are we going to get another COVID?

<comment><USER5> Another outbreak is possible, possibly meaning more quarantine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does the author of this blog, anywhere, detail which 3d printer was used for these parts ?

Unrelated:

Very happy and satisfied to see Macmaster-Carr store links for several of the parts in the materials list. MC is _the best_.

EDIT:

In this post[1] the author mentions the Pruse MK3S[2] but I am not sure if that is what is used for all of the projects on the site ...

[1] [https://back7.co/home/learning-to-scale-small- manufacturing-...](https://back7.co/home/learning-to-scale-small- manufacturing-with-enclosures-amp-big-blue-saw)

[2] [https://shop.prusa3d.com/en/51-original- prusa-i3-mk3s](https://shop.prusa3d.com/en/51-original-prusa-i3-mk3s)

<comment><USER7> McMaster Carr is pretty great if you're American.

For the rest of us, there's Misumi!

<comment><USER8> They're both great! Mcmaster is the greatest website of all time. Sometimes the premium is 200% above other sources, but nobody cares because they can save so much time using Mcmaster. Misumi's configurable products that are machined to order are also a gamechanger, particularly on the Japanese site which has a lot wider variety. And they are hiring robotics engineers which should give interesting results.

<comment><USER9> MC could really use a shipping estimator. I remember ordering a $10 thing and getting charged $40 after shipping, which I didn't m or would happen until after it shipped. Other than that I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _"This is part sculpture"_

Hear hear. Ten out of ten for functional and appealing aesthetics. Industrial design is the best kind of design.

 _Exit, to go hug a Mellor traffic light_

</comment><comment><USER11> This is really excellent. I was recently introduced to ApolloX filament and I'm looking forward to doing some parts for my engine bay.

Tangential, but I have a really hard time finding projects like this to print, Thingiverse is really difficult to filter through the misc bits and bobs to find cool projects.

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to discover truly interesting projects to 3D print?

<comment><USER12> As a tradesperson working in metal fabrication and driving a 4kW laser cutter as my primary role at work where I have the ability to cut up to 20mm carbon steels, 20mm stainless, and 8mm aluminium, and 10mm copper & copper alloys. Our other workshop can cut much thicker carbon steels with CNC oxy and up to about 50mm stainless with a CNC plasma cutter.

All these tools are pretty much just glorified files and coping saws.

Kinda need something you actually want to build in order for them to be of any use. They tie in nicely to creativity in general.

My advice would be to pick up some other hobbies, wouldn't really matter what it is you'll soon start seeing things you could replicate or do better with customer design.

<comment><USER13> This is really good advice for basically any creative endeavor. If you want to learn, then by all means do tutorials and popular projects, but when you want to get inspiration for new projects, there's nothing better in my experience than having other hobbies and joining other communities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What am I looking at? A 3D-Printed Raspberry Pi case?

<comment><USER15> I had the same problem with the article. The article gives me vibes like a shady Indiegogo campaign:

\- Very professional looking photos, full with filters. Still hard to figure out how it exactly looks. For example how big is it? 10cm? 20cm? The studio setting with nothing else in the background makes it hard to guess.

\- strange-non existing buzzwords like "Mil-Plastic"

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fantastic aesthetic for all their projects. Mil-industrial-retro-future.

</comment><comment> jay-anderson Nice. It'd be fun to have a military connector: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Military_connector_specif...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Military_connector_specifications)

<comment><USER17> In case you didn't see the previous version of this: [https://back7.co/home/raspberry-pi-recovery- kit](https://back7.co/home/raspberry-pi-recovery-kit)

<comment><USER18> The devil always lurks in the _details_.

1\. Choosing 5015 spec: as if this deprecated standard's threaded mating interface isn't super annoying to handle, you'll likely only encounter select insertion patterns of this circular interconnect spec on well-designed modern systems for high power interfacing, whereas this toy uses it for...low voltage GPIO.

2\. Choosing AlCd olive drab finish: likely for no other reason than it looks "mil spec". Cd is a heavy metal useful as a sacrificial corrosion inhibitor that allows the interconnect to satisfy a 500 hr salt spray performance requirement...but Cd is toxic and can be absorbed through the skin via contact. You won't be seeing much of this once preferred finish on new designs these days.

3\. Choosing front side receptacle mount: makes disassembly and servicing more difficult than it needs to be, especially given solder cup termination...made even more difficult to access by a seemingly nonfunctional spacer plate.

4\. Interconnect spacing: clearly unfamiliar with 1472 human engineering requirements...I'm liable to suspect the designer has never actually attempted to mate both plugs simultaneously...may be in for a surprise, and if they happen to clear, it'd be by a gnat's ass and a significant encumberance to do so.

<comment><USER19> All good points. Reach out to me on social media and I'll send you a few stickers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is awesome! I prototyped a similar device for my (now-zombie) startup targeted at the military market, but I only used regular ABS plastic to print the case. This makes me want to revisit that project....

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if the PETG case is as strong as a pelican. They are well proven pieces of equipment with good market, bring able to 3d print something of equal strength is a game changer.

<comment><USER22> PETG is slightly less strong than PLA - PETG has a bit of flex. I use PETG for raspberry pi cases because they get quite hot. Though having said that, PETG is fast becoming my favourite thing to print with.

<comment><USER23> Isn't PETG much more durable than than PLA? PETG is less strong in the sense that is can flex, but it is much more impact resistant and less brittle than PLA I thoguht. Also, in something like a case with screw holes, even slightly too big screw will crack the case, while PETG will usually be okay. I could be wrong–I'm pretty new to 3D printing.

<comment><USER22> Ya. Strength usually refers to static tensile strength, of which PLA scores pretty damn high.

There's a YouTube channel called CNC Kitchen which does regular testing of filaments. He measures various kinds of strengths (tensile, compressive, impact, young's modulus etc). I highly recommend it.

But when people say strength they usually mean static tensile strength.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Forgive my ignorance, what is _mil-plastic_?

<comment><USER24> In this case, olive color and ribs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sidebar: If you scroll down on Android the address bar disappears as expected (which can cause lots of problems for height measurement and other effects but that's another sidebar), however if you click on the hamburger menu and scroll it doesn't, anyone know why?

</comment><comment><USER26> This is dope. Might make one for myself...

Wonder why separate each fins? Outer frame looks like it can be printed in one go. To allow sanding after print?

<comment><USER27> They mentioned they didn't want any supports, so presumably it means single fins?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> My understanding (not having used a new one) is that current RaspberryPis get pretty hot.

I'm sure it's not as hot as a printer head (~200c) but I'd worry it might be enough on the inside of an enclosure made of lower-temp thermoplastic to cause warping.

</comment><comment><USER29> _" Yes, this is closer to a desk toy than a field computer."_

That's disappointing. The boating crowd can't use this.

It's not that hard to get watertight USB connectors.

<comment><USER30> A person in the world makes a thing, shows you the thing, and even nice enough to give you enough info so you can also make the thing if you want.

Turns out the thing is not useful for something you picked out of thin air and that makes you feel disappointed? Where is this entitlement coming from? Why would it need to be useful for the boating crowd? I know a person who builds grandfather clocks. Absolutely useless on a boat. The cabinetry would warp in no time. Does that too disappoint you?

Furthermore, the nice person who shared this design now, also shared previously a real watertight design. Your boating crowd can still use that. It wasn't removed or invalidated by this newer thing at all.

> "It's not that hard to get watertight USB connectors."

I really don't understand what you are saying. Are you saying that the author should have used watertight USB connections because someone might read their post later and that someone might have a boat?

Please tell me that I'm misunderstanding what you wrote.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Capital market analysis app - <AUTHOR> Sharing a MVP for visual interactive analytics of capital markets. At the moment it works on most liquid 500 stocks in NSE (National Stock Exchange India) and sector indices published on the exchange.
Please visit http://www.nirvana.market/ on a computer preferably as interactive elements don't render too well on mobiles at the moment.
I would really appreciate any feedback/suggestions/brickbats.
Thank you <comment><USER2> The first page loaded super-fast for me, when I went into the "Explore" area I felt overwhelmed with text that seemed well-written and was meant to be good documentation and also explain the value proposition but I just wanted to jump past the tutorial and start analyzing.</comment>


Illegal streams, decrypting m3u8's, building a better stream experience (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jonlu.ca/posts/illegal-streams <comment><USER2> One of the pirate tv/movie streaming websites I look at from time to time also switched from storing their videos directly in googledocs to encrypting it first. Couple of years ago they simply used unlisted YT uploads for their pirated material. Talk about zero cost hosting.

<comment><USER3> I noticed a very interesting method one used recently where they stored video segments (2-5MB) on google with the extension ".text.png". Interestingly the files have valid PNG headers.

<comment><USER4> On google as in on one of the various google hosting services or something less intened-by-google like stuffing data in the "image" and somehow getting it cached by the crawler?

<comment><USER3> On google. And this is not using any of the proxies. Here is one such segment: [https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/12xIEN- mfboq4CSYJS8tKq4H...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/d/12xIEN- mfboq4CSYJS8tKq4H9xmMIjDeL) ... And guess what, I just googled that URL to check which service `/d/` is associated with, and lo and behlod, someone's already explained what I was going to: [https://medium.com/@laurentmeyer/deep- dive-in-the-illegal-st...](https://medium.com/@laurentmeyer/deep-dive-in-the- illegal-streaming-world-cd11fae63497)

<comment><USER5> The dude ventures out to torrent a video, gets interested, and then in conclusion wants to tell Google engineers where he found it ??????????? That's great ass covering on the end bit there.

<comment><USER3> These sites are used to takedowns, whether it be because the Google account got banned or abuse was detected. Pointing out a segment is not going to change anything, if I can find this a hundred Google engineers can

<comment><USER5> Not you, the person in the article. It just seems comical that they'd intentionally go out of their way to torrent IP then turn it over to Google.

<comment><USER3> Ah sorry I misunderstood

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Unfortunately most common desktop players do not allow you to customize the cookies and headers sent with your request." I would have thought to set up a proxy and then to connect VLC to the proxy server.

They also mention encrypted servers. Can VLC make these authentication with your own keys?</comment>


Ask HN: What kind of sample Vim plugin should I build in LVSTHW? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on Learn Vimscript the Hard Way[1] and I've been making pretty good progress.
I need advice on the third section of the book.  In the third part I want to walk through writing a Vim plugin from scratch.  I want it to be something significant that touches a lot of aspects of writing Vim plugins, but I don't want to just make something arbitrary that no one would ever use.
Right now I'm leaning toward writing a plugin for a language that doesn't already have one: Potion[2].  A plugin for a language can touch on syntax, folding, compilers, ft-specific mappings, and tons more.
If you have ideas for a good example plugin that's not too complex (it has to fit into one third of an already short book) but touches lots of aspects of Vimscript and isn't completely contrived, I'd love to hear them.
[Learn Vimscript the Hard Way]: http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/
[Potion]: http://www.runciter.net/potion/ <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable:

[Learn Vimscript the Hard Way]: <http://learnvimscriptthehardway.stevelosh.com/>

[Potion]: <http://www.runciter.net/potion/>

<comment><USER2> [shameless plug] If you are tired of non-clickable links in the description/comments, try my Chrome extension:

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/anmdmfcnlenkjbiffg...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/anmdmfcnlenkjbiffghfjglgjpchneeo)

It also does sorting and moves the search bar to the top of the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Something I've always wanted but haven't got round to creating is a command that would convert from camel case to pascal case to uppercase with underscores.

It would be awesome if you were able to yank text in one case and it would paste in a different case if it was being pasted on top of exiting text.

for example if you had the code: #define USER_NAME_LEN const int userNameId; class UserName { };

if you did a search and replace for userName to replace with clientName it would update all cases correctly.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't have a specific idea at the moment, but...

I've often wondered why emacs seems to have these plugins and modes that make one want to learn emacs, and vim doesn't. For instance, org mode. I don't think there something inherent to emacs that makes a mode like that work better there, and I'd love to see info on how to write plugins like that.

In fact, perhaps a simple org mode clone would be a good example project; it would certainly touch a lot of vimscript.

<comment><AUTHOR> <https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode>

I think part of the reason emacs has better plugins is that it has real support for talking to external processes, where Vim has a bunch of ugly hacks that barely work.

Emacs users have embraced the "do everything in Emacs" philosophy whereas Vim users tend to use a specific tool for a specific job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was going suggest something similar to fugitive for Mercurial, but it looks like you've already considered that in 'Coming home to Vim.'

I think you're correct in how many different facets you can show through a language plugin, so I vote for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, and Fugitive for Mercurial would be really big and twisty. I want something fairly easy but still useful/illustrative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What about HTML Indentation that Doesn't Suck, as you wrote in "Coming home to VIM?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, I finally figured that out actually. There were 2 problems:

* Some of the elements aren't considered for indentation, but they should be. You just have the edit the HTML syntax that comes with Vim to add them to the list.

* I was actually using Django templates, and the tags weren't being considered for indentation. I wrote a little syntax file for those based on the ERB one: [https://bitbucket.org/sjl/dotfiles/src/1b6ffba66e9f/vim/bund...](https://bitbucket.org/sjl/dotfiles/src/1b6ffba66e9f/vim/bundle/django-custom/indent/htmldjango.vim)

<comment><USER7> You should update your post with this information unless it's there but I didn't notice it.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What software do you use to run your RESTful API? - <AUTHOR>

Tomcat? Node? <comment><USER2> How about Restler developed by Arul Kumaran. One of the finest piece of software available for RESTful API. [https://www.luracast.com/products/restler](https://www.luracast.com/products/restler)

You can learn more about the Author of Restler here, [http://www.cloudways.com/blog/arul-kumaran-restler- interview...](http://www.cloudways.com/blog/arul-kumaran-restler-interview/)

And you can test how it works here, [http://www.cloudways.com/en/restler- hosting.php](http://www.cloudways.com/en/restler-hosting.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> At PK4 Media we use Node.js with Express and BookshelfJS.</comment>


Show HN: Airdyme.io – A Community Project to Map Global VC Ecosystem - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
Over the years of launching and pitching multiple startup ideas to VCs, my co-founder and I encountered quire a few problematic issues:
1) Where to find the right investors for our business 2) How to verify their legitimacy 3) Where to learn about their process, stats like industry preference and cheque size, and outstanding fund capacity 4) Finally, how to get introduced to this particular VC or Angel investor.
What followed was realization that entrepreneurs that meet these same investors would probably be best equipped to answer these questions.
More importantly, their recently acquired knowledge would be extremely beneficial to other entrepreneurs who are embarking on the same path.
Without further ado, introducing Airdyme -  a place where real founders exchange information about investors they meet.
Here is a demo link: http://bit.ly/hn-launch
It's a simple excel sheet at this point, but is aiming to be a starting point for entrepreneurs to discover smart money investors for their business ideas – investors that would understand the problem, love the product, respect the founding team.
We are hoping that this will also become a place where founders can find smart-money investors, share information about them with other entrepreneurs, and in the process, create a community that helps one-another keep their entrepreneurial dream alive.
I think it has some potential. What do you guys think? <comment><USER2> Are you modelling after Wikipedia?

It's actually pretty brilliant to let those closest to the source keep investor records accurate and up to date.

Interested to see what the business model is like?

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting...

Have you thought about approaching VCs and asking them to use this platform to keep their info updated?

<comment><USER3> In a sense that they probably spend thousands of dollars promoting their new fund each couple of years, doing talks and presentations at conferences..

Wouldn't it be easier to just be on a list of some sorts that is constantly being scouted by entrepreneurs, and keep that info updated.</comment></comment>


DIY: Switching a light bulb with an Arduino - <AUTHOR> http://www.paramaggarwal.com/post/29066939241/switching-a-light-bulb-with-an-arduino

<comment><USER2> Hmm, simpler with a solid state relay [1], $5 qty 1 from Digikey, 5mA activation, can turn on/off a 100W light bulb (does 1A of current @ 120V) Oh and its solid state so no 'clicking.'

[1] [http://www.digikey.com/product- detail/en/ASSR-1511-001E/516-...](http://www.digikey.com/product- detail/en/ASSR-1511-001E/516-2191-5-ND/2211246)</comment>


File patching using data compression with flushing - <AUTHOR> http://richg42.blogspot.com/2015/10/file-patching-using-data-compression.html <comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was interesting because most languages have compression bindings that at least support flush, and I can think of a huge variety of use cases even where a small (32k) window would be sufficient. For example all Python installations have a zlib binding, whereas getting access to something like bsdiff requires a third party library and binding to be installed on both sides of the connection.

</comment><comment><USER2> I hsd good results with versioned compression dictionary.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a fascinating idea!</comment>


Format Your Elixir Code Now - <AUTHOR> https://hashrocket.com/blog/posts/format-your-elixir-code-now <comment><USER2> I'm starting to like the Elixir development methodology more than the language itself. The Elixir team is quick to adopt useful features from other ecosystems and make them first class. This specific formatter will help a lot of people that are learning and writing the language.

Similar to it is the proposed property testing and data generation library[1], which may or may not be part of the language someday but it is "officially" supported.

[https://github.com/whatyouhide/stream_data](https://github.com/whatyouhide/stream_data)</comment>


10 Futuristic Materials - <AUTHOR> http://lifeboat.com/ex/10.futuristic.materials <comment><USER2> Nice read and layout with no adverts or banner ad's, I like this.

I was not aware of metal foam, and from how it is made, I do feel it will be one of those materials used sooner rather than later. If it is as good as they say.

Also Scotty will be pleased as Transparent alumina made the list.

Wonder how long until they make turbine blades out of diamond, a long way of, but maybe a future future list.

</comment><comment><USER3> What are your ideas on how one can break into one of these materials businesses in an evangelist / sales / management capacity?</comment>


Django 1.8 alpha 1 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2015/jan/16/django-18-alpha-1-released/

<comment><USER2> The release notes don't fully cover the story, but the internals of the ORM are getting some major refactoring. Lots of string wrangling code is being pushed down into expression nodes, which should make it a lot easier to build new features, fix bugs, and actually understand what's happening in the ORM.</comment>


Trump Administration Might "Re-Examine" Climate Modeling - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-administration-might-re-examine-climate-modeling/ <comment><USER2> Good. Climate models have huge uncertainties in their "subgrid physics", particularly cloud formation.

Subgrids physics deal with microphysics the fluid models cannot capture. The typical kilometer scale grids cannot capture physics and turbulence which operates on tiny scales, "butterfly effect" and all that.

The standard way they deal with this uncertainty is by adding "hand tuned" parameters which are back fit to earlier imperfect climate data. Then they extrapolate to the future. But the physical basis of these terms is hand wavy at best.

<comment><USER3> This sounds an awful lot like the problem of modelling the turbulent reacting flow inside a rocket engine. SpaceX did some neat work on this and presented it at a GPU conference. They did some unconventional things with the GPU, allowing variable-resolution modeling. Previously, it had not been possible to accurately model an engine because the scale required to cover the whole engine could not express the detail of the microphysics.

<comment><USER4> I remember that. Fluid dynamics is a very tricky thing to model and the work they did was really cool. There's a good video presentation on it here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYA0f6R5KAI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYA0f6R5KAI)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is my prediction. The new models will either agree with the old models or show things are worse than IPCC reports. They will then bury and "Try Again". Just like the koch funded study done by skeptic (now turned believer) Richard Muller which confirmed the science. Woops

<comment><USER6> Unpopular question, what if we are keeping the next ice age at bay with increased green house gasses? Are there any viewpoints where this is considered beneficial?

<comment><USER7> This is somewhat nonsensical, though. We don't have evidence that we are preventing a decline in temperatures. We have evidence that we are seeing a rise in temperatures. Those are two very different things.

So, it is not that the question is unpopular. It just doesn't make sense. You are begging the question that things could be worse under alternatives. The plight is to improve the one we are in.

<comment><USER8> >We have evidence that we are seeing a rise in temperatures

For the majority of the earths history, the poles have had no ice on them. Their current existence is a holdover from our last ice-age.

Wouldn't it be rational to conclude that earth's temperatures are meandering back to its natural state?

<comment><USER9> > _Wouldn 't it be rational to conclude that earth's temperatures are > meandering back to its natural state?_

Perhaps, but it is a strange coïncidence then that they've been going up since the Industrial Revolution, which also happens to be when humans started releasing a whole bunch of carbon (a greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere.

It took a while for us to develop the science of climatology and then start noticing natural climatic cycles as well as then noticing anthropomorphic climate change (ACC):

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Terminology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Terminology)

Natural cyclic oscillations are known and have been taken into account:

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation) * [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_multidecadal_oscillat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_multidecadal_oscillation)

The possibility of being wrong is there, but here's the thing: if we're wrong about ACC being real, then the worse that will happen is that we move towards more efficient and renewal infrastructure (which isn't a bad thing in itself). If we're right about ACC being real, and do something about it, then we (may) save human civilization.

There's not much long-term downside to assuming ACC is real and doing something about it.

<comment><USER8> >then the worse that will happen

But that's not the "worse that will happen". Go tell a starving 3rd world family that their $300 per month salary will now only buy $200 because you decided its a "risk worth taking".

<comment><USER9> The carbon use of a family making $300/month is minimal and I would hazard to guess any carbon pricing/capping scheme would effect them minimally.

* [https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en/news/information/information-d...](https://www.mcc-berlin.net/en/news/information/information-detail/article/climate-policy-reduces-inequality-in-lower-income-countries.html)

* [http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2018/07/how-a-carbon-tax...](http://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2018/07/how-a-carbon-tax-could-fight-poverty-and-climate-change-at-the-same-time/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Death by a thousand likes: Facebook and Twitter are killing the open web - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/545048/death-by-a-thousand-likes-how-facebook-and-twitter-are-killing-the-open-web/ <comment><USER2> Facebook and Apple News might be "killing the open web", but Twitter? I'd say Twitter is a great champion of the web. Linking is so fundamental to the Twitter experience. Half of Twitter is links to other websites.

<comment><USER3> Exactly! Which is IMO actually one of the reasons why Twitter is having such a hard time monetizing. I see them more like a router protocol where people are pointed towards consuming content outside of twitter instead of on the twitter platform.

My guess is that they will change exactly that sometime soon. First allowing you to write longer texts as attachments and first then might join FB and Apple in "killing the open web"

<comment><USER2> Getting content directly through Twitter and being linked to it through Twitter wouldn't change all that much from a monetisation standpoint. The value of Twitter is in the interest graph.

<comment><USER4> Is there no value also in how millions of people stare into its feed day and night? Or the vast amounts of content created for free by its huge amount of users who include both the influential and the aspiring?

<comment><USER3> Not really because they stare at the feed only to find something that then lives somewhere else.

It's like being that guy the girls hang out with because you are good friends with the handsome guy in school. You might get to hang out with them but in the end they go home with your friend.

<comment><USER5> People only stare at Google to find content that lives somewhere else. There is alot of value of linking users to content they are interested in.

<comment><USER3> Thats not at all how Google works.

Google works because it give you a selection of what you are looking for right now. It knows whats top of your mind and.

Twitter gives you things other people are interested in or find interesting.

They are in no way comparable.

One is letting you find things you are looking for, the other is mostly showing things you don't care about sometimes things that are interesting to you.

<comment><USER5> I'm only pointing out that you don't need to host content to provide value.

<comment><USER3> Yeah but you are using the wrong example since twitter is not a search engine.

<comment><USER5> Both Twitter and Google help you find information you're interested in. The internet is massive so sorting and serving useful content to a user is valuable.

Google finds this information based on keywords. Twitter finds this information by looking at conversations and people you are interested in.

Saying Google and Twitter are in no way comparable isn't helpful. They are comparable though certainly different!

Google has better information on your preferences and exactly what you're interested in. That doesn't mean Twitter doesn't have good information.

If you follow a ton of yoga instructors then Twitter can feature yoga ads in your feed. While not as targeted as Google ads they still provide value to the user and the advertiser.

I don't want to get into an argument, just wanted to explain where I was coming from.

<comment><USER3> No

Twitter lets you discover what happens in areas that you might be interested in if someone wrote about it. It's a newsfeed for that specific reason. It require a tweet to happen.

Google allow you to find exactly what you are looking for whether someone tweeted it or not in all the content they can get a hold of including twitter.

Your search term on twitter does not show you intent, search on google does.

You are comparing two completely different things here.

Furthermore EVERYONE who uses google search use it to find things they are looking for when they are most interested in it. Only some people use twitter search terms to figure out who on twitter has something to say, mostly about themselves.

People don't use twitter as a search engine but as a discovery engine the difference is hugely different for so many reasons I am not sure why you keep insisting on them being the same.

<comment><USER5> I haven't insisted that they are the same! And I agree with your descriptions of both companies. I didn't mention twitter search, I was actually only thinking about the Twitter feed.

All I'm saying is that at a high level both services let you find content you're interested in. That's it. It doesn't contrast with what you've said above. They do it in very different ways and for very different use cases.

<comment><USER3> You said and I quote:

"People only stare at Google to find content that lives somewhere else."

Thats not what people do. They search google and then stare as those results.

Thats a completely different concept from staring at a twitter feed with random things.

It's comparing apples and cars.

<comment><USER5> A twitter feed isn't random though. You choose who you follow on Twitter, if the links they provide are unhelpful you unfollow them. It is more random than Google but still tailored to your preferences.

I think you're hung up on the "stare at" wording. I interpreted the words to mean "use" \- hope that clarifies my point.

<comment><USER3> People use twitter in many different ways. You are assuming people carefully select who they follow. Many people dont, they follow all sorts of people often based on one tweet. You have no way of knowing what other stuff they are going to write about because it's people. Furthermore a lot of people follow thousands or hundreds of people and are simply not able to follow everything thats going on in their feed.

Compared to a google search result it is completely in the opposite end

I am not hung up on anything. I am saying that your comparison is as wrong as comparing DuckDuckGo with an RSS feed. There is so much noise even with the things you carefully select.

Compared to a google search where I am going specifically for something and is showing my intent.

I don't go to google to see whats going on, I go there to find something very specific.

<comment><USER5> I feel as though we've gone off topic here.

You said that twitter doesnt provide value "because they stare at the feed only to find something that then lives somewhere else."

When you search Google you're finding things that live somewhere else. I'm simply pointing out that you don't need to host the content the user is looking for to provide value.

I'm not saying the companies are the same. I'm not saying Twitter can be successful the same way Google has. I'm agreeing with all your points besides the fact that you need to host content to provide value.

<comment><USER3> No I said their problem with monetization for twitter was that people don't spend enough time on twitter but instead on the places that tweets lead to.

In other words they provide plenty of value they are just not able to make a living from it.

Instead they should get more people to stay on their own platform by allowing more content to be created there just like Facebook is.

<comment><USER5> I agree getting more content on twitter is an good option for montetization. It might even be the best one.

I brought up Google because time spent on a site doesn't necessarily mean a whole lot more ad revenue. What matters is serving up useful ads that provide value to the user and advertisers. Google is great at that - Twitter isn't because of many reasons you've stated.

So maybe twitter should be trying to improve their ad program to serve better ads. If they can't do that well (no way they could do it as well as Google) then perhaps increasing time users spend on Twitter is their best option.

I only wanted to point out that the solution is not self evident. Just because people are using a service to find content hosted elsewhere does not mean it can't make money. The problem might be that Twitter is bad at finding ads people want to see.

<comment><USER3> You brough up google because you claimed that google was making money on what twitter wasn't able to and thats simply wrong.

<comment><USER5> Ok

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Disclaimer: I like twitter over facebook, which I don't use that much, and my comment history will show that I'm a twitter 'lackey', so to speak.

Does anyone else feel that the facebook moment is fading away? People have compared information to food, and I can see the similarities. When you come from a place where there's little or no food, you want to hoard all you can -- why yes, I would love to see your babies pics every day, of course, post three dozen photos of the same party from different angles, I love it, why yes, this memory from seven years ago is exactly what I need. When you're saturated with information (in this case, social media information), it doesn't feel as special anymore. Soon, you realize that while looking at Christmas photos from people you went to high school with, was fun for a while, there is only so much space in your head and social energy. The marginal value of that extra bit goes down, and averages start leveling off or going down. There's too much food everywhere, you don't want to be forced with another plate of who-gives- an-eff-about-your-fifth-Halloween-in-a-row. What was originally curiosity and genuine excitement about other people's lives becomes social courtesy: of course you will like your almost-friend's child's photos because that's what good friends would do. Social networking (in facebook form) becomes ritualistic.

So the solution is social networks that (artificially) limit your access to information, such as snapchat and twitter. You want to only share a few things, with a few people at a time, and perhaps that shared thing will disappear in a couple of days/hours/views. To me that sounds like the long- term future of social media.

Anyone have any thoughts?

<comment><USER7> There's a pretty big difference between communicating in and about the present vs. communicating about the past. I think what you've identified is the beginning of a distinction between those two activities in the technologies we use.

My grandparents have a large collection of photos, each captioned with the year, location, and the reason the photo was taken. Looking through these photos is a great experience because it's a curated history of their lives. For better or worse, the practice maintaining photo collections in that manner has been made obsolete by technology. The equivalent now is to upload everything and have technology curate it for you, filtering out the mundane and saving the important or otherwise memorable content. That's what the Facebook timeline attempts to do, and it's a feature missing from the other social applications you identified.

I don't think it's a failure of Twitter or Snapchat that they lack curated timelines, though. That's not their purpose. They are aimed squarely at communicating at and about the present. If they do take over in-the-present communication from Facebook, though, then Facebook will have a hard time constructed the curated timeline.

All that being said, I don't use any of them.

<comment><USER6> >There's a pretty big difference between communicating in and about the present vs. communicating about the past. I think what you've identified is the beginning of a distinction between those two activities in the technologies we use.

That's a great observation. I had not explored that line of reasoning. That gives me something to chew on. Right off though, I'd say that... I suspect we used to value communicating about the past more because it was so difficult to do so, but as facebook makes it easier, the value has gone down.

How's this sound: before long epics were written down, the oral tradition of reciting them kept them alive, and thus the entire process was valued. Once they were written, it got easier to 'remember' the epics. S, writing was not as valuable as orally remembering/reciting because it was easier/more common/not as important? This is not the best comparison, but sounds right to me at the moment.

<comment><USER8> Well,famously the Greek elders complained about the laziness of the modern technology of writing the philosophy down rather than rote learning!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A big part of the problem is that "content" insists on being wrapped up in "interactivity" that is confusing and subtracts value (or adds cost) in other ways (image carousels with ads, articles broken into lots of small pieces to generate impressions), and the internet routes around cost.

The central thesis that "pretending that content is free" is the underlying problem is interesting. Perhaps part of the problem is bad pricing. E.g. content that _ought_ to be cheap (e.g. e-books, streaming video) tends to be more expensive or certainly insufficiently cheaper than content that ought to be more expensive (e.g. physical books, bluray disks).

Perhaps a big part of the problem is publishers "pretending" they add value.

Some publishers definitely add _some_ value, but then they subtract value in other ways -- it's great that the movie studio figures out who the good writers, directors, and actors are and risks its own money to make a good movie, but it's bad that it's provided on a bluray disk with annoying copy- and-other protection in a hard-to-open package, and that it's more expensive to buy the cheaper to distribute and generally more convenient electronic version. Similarly, newyorker.com has great writing (and I pay for it) but the actual presentation layer (the website) subtracts value from it.

</comment><comment><USER10> > But the larger point is that the logic of efficiency on the internet will > always favor scale—which is to say, platforms—over publishers.

I call bullshit on this one. It's unclear what the author means because they use such a meaningless term in "logic of efficiency", but the last time I looked, it was a lot more financially efficient to set up a website than a print publication. There is nothing at all inevitable about 'the biggest will win' online, as can be evidenced both by the disappearance of several former behmoths, and by the failure of several pre-Internet companies to 'make it big' online despite having unlimited capital to invest.

Maybe, just maybe, the author is referring directly to advertising revenue here, as in "the more popular sites can make more money from advertising, and thus will grow and grow". Of course, that's totally dismissing the fact that many of the 'platforms' being discussed simply offer a far better experience, regardless of what content they offer or how big they already are. Here's a hint for the author and any other publishers reading: there is far greater variation in the packaging, delivery, and experience of content online than there is offline. Take advantage of that. Don't, as we've all been telling you for the last 20 years, just try to replicate your newspaper online: that makes for a horrible experience. Don't try to do advertising in the most obnoxious manner you can get away with; that may have worked in print, but it's been demonstrated pretty categorically now that it fails online.

Or, you know, just carry on regardless, blame platforms for seizing the opportunity that you choose to ignore.

<comment><USER11> I think you are wrong to dismiss that point so harshly, when all empirical data shows it to be true. Engineering, Hosting, Marketing, Monetisation, all those things are massively cheaper when done by one big player. There is a reason publishers outsource advertisement to those shitty networks: They would be overwhelmed by the cost to operate, let alone create those beasts. And even when this problem would magically go away, they still lack the access to the petabytes of data the big platforms enjoy. Without this data, the advertisement will necessarily be crude and lacking focus.

<comment><USER10> I'm not saying those things aren't cheaper for bigger players, but that the playing field is more level online than it is off, at least in part because the production cost per unit is much, _much_ less. I have yet to see the advertising that benefits from petabytes of data such that it isn't 'crude and lacking focus'. A lot of it has _a_ focus, but it's often a nonsensical one.

<comment><USER11> > I'm not saying those things aren't cheaper for bigger players, but that the > playing field is more level online than it is off, at least in part because > the production cost per unit is much, much less.

I don't see how this is a relevant metric. The only thing that matters in that regard are how much economy of scale favours the big players. It might be cheap for anyone to start offering books online, but there is only amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A link recently discovered was blocked by facebook (and I had no idea they were actively blocking the posting of links by users!): eulawanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-partys-over-eu-data-protection- law.html

<comment><USER13> Wow. Facebook actively blocking links discussing Facebook in a critical way is very bad. Are you sure?

<comment><USER14> Multiple users reported it here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10385612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10385612)

<comment><USER15> I find it strange that people are so quick to conclude censorship. Do they really think Facebook cares what some blogspot blog thinks? Facebook erroneously blocks links for a lot of reasons such as if many people report the link or if the link gets more shares than the domain usually gets.

<comment><USER12> "erroneously blocks links for a lot of reasons" is also a problem, whether it's incompetence or conspiracy.

<comment><USER15> With billions of links being shared on Facebook every day I suspect that they error on the side of caution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Slightly related: I only found out recently that The Guardian has a subscription option in their app (the 'Premium' tier, Euro 3.61 per month) that removes all ads:

[https://www.theguardian.com/info/2013/aug/12/1](https://www.theguardian.com/info/2013/aug/12/1)

It's great to see that at least some publications are experimenting with models outside the traditional paper and the obvious plastering content with ads.

<comment><USER13> Does that mean they expect to extract 3.61 from the ad viewing portion and they've set that price for parity? Interesting. That's rather a lot more than one would expect.

<comment><USER17> One of the biggest perceived problems with this business model is that the sort of person who would be willing to pay to remove adverts is the sort of person advertisers most want to reach, since the people who won't pay for a better experience are also less likely to either be able to or to want to spend money on whatever is being advertised. I don't know if any data supports that, but many people in the advertising industry have that opinion.

As such... I don't know about the numbers, I know very little about mobile advertising in general, and while I am a Guardian reader I don't use their mobile app - but my vague overall opinion is that it wouldn't surprise me if they priced it higher to compensate for losing a higher quality segment of their ad-viewing audience.

<comment><USER18> >sort of person who would be willing to pay to remove adverts is the sort of person advertisers most want to reach

People who wish to buy shit also exist. Some of them might actually want info about their options.

Then there are people who are not annoyed by commercials and who are easily manipulated to buy almost whatever. They ruin the adds for the rest of us. They are probably poor, because advertisers already got all their money.

Personally I would love someone to advertice books to me. I've even subscribed to goodreads for that, but their recommendations suck big time. (Though it's still good for bookmarking what I want to read and reading reviews.)

<comment><USER17> Certainly there wouldn't be a 100% match between "would be worth advertising to" and "would pay to remove adverts", but the problem is nobody (afaik) has any data on to what extent it might correlate, and so are scared by it.

I wonder if companies like the Guardian have thought about trying to compare between the two audiences, i.e. how people who now subscribe interacted with adverts before subscring vs. audience that doesn't pay. Thinking of some of the tracking tools that could be used... it wouldn't be impossible (though wouldn't be imperfect data either), but it would be a rather complicated thing to set-up so it wouldn't surprise me if they don't have it in place.

<comment><USER18> Yes, your point still stands.

Further problem is that most people would probably prefer adds, but only in very narrow subset of all products. And they might not want to share that subset, not with modern privacy concerns and rogue advertisers. So you would have almost infinite amount of groups and no way to find them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Irony is [http://imgur.com/mivdSRC](http://imgur.com/mivdSRC)

</comment><comment><USER20> I do have to say, my experience with Apple News has been very nice. These apps seem to affect publishers more than the 'open web' and at that they are little more than nice RSS readers that don't ruin your experience with ads even though there are still ads there.

I don't particularly see anything wrong with separating publishers from content producers. It now seems more appropriate to think of news magazines and traditional 'publishers' as content producers who rely on the new 'publishers' a la Facebook, Apple, Twitter to distribute their content because they cannot and should not be focused on building an enormous infrastructure to do this.

Print media is 'open' in that anyone can print something and distribute it but the ability to do so effectively has pretty much been consolidated into the hands of very few for a long time. Now a days you can publish your own music, your own books, and your own news and its popularity will be determined by the masses, not some worn out talent scout trying to please a boss who is using focus groups to figure out what might make him a buck.

Ultimately I think we will see a more open and democratic future for publishing, not the death of the open web. Control is shifting hands to a new set of publishers, one that puts the visibility of content into the hands of the readers in the form of likes and tweets.

Maybe the news produced by these traditional outlets just doesn't have as much value as it once did. That is what likely scares them in my mind.

</comment><comment><USER21> > Mostly, I get my news from Twitter.

This should be the first thing to read in this article. The author seems to not have any preferred publisher anyway. He can consider and write why not, I'd also like to know.

Then don't be surprised with the statement in a paragraph before:

> And that's why so many articles kinda sound the same these days.

</comment><comment><USER22> I find the author's argument regarding "publications losing their voice and not focusing on the preferences of their audience to meet the preference of the platform's audience" self-contradictory. Is it not your own audience that is following you on these platforms? More so, the platforms give you real-time feedback and allow your audience to tell you which issues are most important. I find this to be the real issue here. The author is most interested in telling you what is important, instead of allowing you to decide for yourself. …And this is why certain publications struggle with these platforms.

<comment><USER23> >platforms give real time feedback..

Unfortunately often it's not completely honest feedback about your content. It's feedback filtered / deformed by the fact that other people on the platform will see the likes, retweets, comments etc As a result it's not the best content that becomes popular. It's the one used to impress others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't need an ad-blocker. I need a like blocker. When I go on facebook I want to see personal things my friends share, not a bunch of shit they saw and clicked "like" on. And I'm guilty of "liking" crap too. Maybe they could prioritize personal plain text posts, since those are actually the most relevant to me. But that is least relevant to advertisers.

If they don't focus more on the users, a distributed replacement will eventually come out and there will be zero ad revenue to be had from that social platform. I've got some ideas in this space, but no time and no team.

<comment><USER25> FB Purity does a pretty good job of this

<comment><USER24> Thank you. I was not aware of that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Completely OT: You know that phenomenon that when you hear a word for the first time in a long time or first time ever - and then you suddenly hear it again and again? Just happened to me with the word "Fungible". I happen to know what the word means, coming from a financial/trading background but don't recall hearing it for some time now. Then 2 completely unrelated Hacker News articles I read, almost in a row, had the word "Fungible" in them - neither of which had anything to do with finance/trading!

I know it is just random chance, but it feels really strange!

<comment><USER27> Good ole Baader Meinhof phenomenon. True story: I learned about it after hearing "Baader Meinhof" thrown around one too many times. :) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader- Meinhof_phenomenon#Freq...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader- Meinhof_phenomenon#Frequency_illusion)

<comment><USER28> That page doesn't explain it properly. Try this one:

[http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/theres-a-name-for- tha...](http://www.psmag.com/books-and-culture/theres-a-name-for-that-the- baader-meinhof-phenomenon-59670)

> Stanford linguistics professor Arnold Zwicky coined the former term in 2006 > to describe the syndrome in which a concept or thing you just found out > about suddenly seems to crop up everywhere. It's caused, he wrote, by two > psychological processes. The first, selective attention, kicks in when > you're struck by a new word, thing, or idea; after that, you unconsciously > keep an eye out for it, and as a result find it surprisingly often. The > second process, confirmation bias, reassures you that each sighting is > further proof of your impression that the thing has gained overnight > omnipresence.

> The considerably catchier sobriquet Baader-Meinhof phenomenon was invented > in 1994 by a commenter on the St. Paul Pioneer Press' online discussion > board, who came up with it after hearing the name of the ultra-left-wing > German terrorist group twice in 24 hours. The phrase became a meme on the > newspaper's boards, where it still pops up regularly, and has since spread > to the wider Internet. It even has its own Facebook page. Got all that? > Don't worry. You'll hear about it again soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is simpler than most people think. If there is no ad time/place, the platform won't be able to monetize it. Google makes people go away, but right before that people look at their search result where the Ads are displayed.

Why it doesn't work twitter, probably nobody follow the news link and bother come back to strike a conversation on twitter. Mostly the conversation takes place right below the news article and with the author not the tweet.

Most online conversation took place right where the content is at, on Youtube, on NYtimes, on Forbes, unless compassion with twitter but now we that passion is going down.

There is also a subtle difference of the social relation where the news feed is from, which is why facebook news feed is a BAD idea. Why would I have my mother in law in my facebook circle yet sharing the latest Intel acquisition news, or even makeing comment.

Never mix life and work, even hobby or side projects, that's social network 101, or platform 101. I know a friend who has 9 facebook Ids, I personally have 3,4 twitter accounts, for the purpose explained here.

From a news consumption standpoint, iOS news is a joke, facebook news is meaningless, twitter is inconvenient, therefore I use Zite, which connects to my twitter.

From a conversation standpoint, Hacker news format is idea, but lack of twitter's networking.

Something has all these together would be a hit.

</comment><comment><USER30> The article doesn't define the "open web," and platforms like Facebook and Twitter would seem to mostly follow the dictates set out in Tantek's original definition.[1] So it's hard to guess at what the author means -- Facebook and Twitter aren't "the open web" by tautology, basically. It's really hard to engage with the author's arguments that way.

What is trivial to understand is that the author's proposed remedy doesn't work:

> The answer is simple, but it isn't easy. We need to stop pretending that > content is free. Publications need to ask readers to pay for their content > directly, and readers need to be willing to give up money, as opposed to > their privacy and attention. This means that publications will have to > abandon the rapid-growth business models driven by display ads, which have > driven them to rely on Facebook for millions of pageviews a month.

The fundamental problem with this is that siloing content the way the author suggests (publications with strong identities and paywalls to get readers to give money in exchange for content) breaks hyperlinks. It breaks sharing. Paywalls work when there's a marginal benefit to knowing something that someone else doesn't -- say, it helps you pick stocks better than the next guys. Otherwise, all else being equal, the article I can share with my friends, link to in my blog post, that I can engage with and respond to and have other people able to read the same article I am -- that's far more valuable than the article that I can read but can't share. We didn't get here because we're all stupid, or because people are unwilling to pay for anything ever. We got here because we were trying to come up with a model that allows people who make content to be compensated for it without betraying the fundamental thing that made the Web the Web -- the hyperlink. If your proposed alternative business model doesn't even TRY to engage with the question of linking and sharing, it's not going to work.

1) [http://tantek.com/2010/281/b1/what-is-the-open- web](http://tantek.com/2010/281/b1/what-is-the-open-web)

<comment><USER31> What is a page view on an article worth these days? A couple cents? Less? If the micropayments implementation was right, and if paying for content became a more mainstream idea, I don't think you'd feel that you "[could] read but [couldn't] share" an article just because it charged a nickel to continue past the intro paragraph. I don't see how that would break hyperlinks.

<comment><USER30> Behavior economics suggests that you're wrong[1]. Users do not like metered useage even when it benefits them. An anecdotal illustration of this at work:

> What was the biggest complaint of AOL users? Not the widely mocked and > irritating blue bar that appeared when members downloaded information. Not > the frequent unsolicited junk e-mail. Not dropped connections. Their > overwhelming gripe: the ticking clock. Users didn't want to pay by the hour > anymore. ... Case had heard from one AOL member who insisted that she was > being cheated by AOL's hourly rate pricing. When he checked her average > monthly usage, he found that she would be paying AOL more under the flat- > rate price of $19.95. When Case informed the user of that fact, her reaction > was immediate. 'I don't care,' she told an incredulous Case. 'I am being > cheated by you.'

The transactional friction between "free" and "not free" is high, even for very small values of "not free." This has been backed up by experiments[2]:

> In his book Predictably Irrational, Ariely describes a series of simple > experiments that offered subjects something desirable – chocolate – at a > variety of prices. Two types of chocolate were used – a Hershey's kiss and a > Lindt chocolate truffle. While the kiss is an inexpensive and common treat, > a Lindt truffle is a far more tasty confection that costs an order of > magnitude more than the kiss.

> The first experiment offered subjects a truffle for 15 cents (about half its > actual cost) or a kiss for 1 cent. Nearly three out of four subjects chose > the truffle, which seems logical enough based on the relative value of the > offers.

> The next experiment reduced the price of each product by one cent – the > truffle was offered at 14 cents, and the kiss was free. Although the price > differential remained the same, the behavior of the subjects changed > dramatically: more than two thirds of the subjects chose the free chocolate > kiss over the bargain-priced truffle.

It's not about getting the right micropayment system, it's about overcoming something about how humans understand and deal with price signals. You can either sit around trying to rewire people or you can come up with a business model designed for people. Micropayments as a business model for web content is wishcasting.

1) [http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/case.against.micropaymen...](http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/case.against.micropayments.pdf) 2) [http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/the- power...](http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/the-power-of- free.htm)

<comment><USER32> The Case anecdote doesn't address her desired usage (at least not as presented in the pdf). Maybe she ends up using the service a great deal more at the flat rate, with it's significantly lower marginal price.

It'd be nice if it laid out her perception of what would be fair (we have roughly one data point, that the hourly rate at the time the conversation happened is unfair) and what the economics looked like for AOL (perhaps they could have substantially reduced the hourly price but were good at math and figured that a flat rate was the more profitable path).

<comment><USER30> The flat rate would have been a guaranteed higher monthly bill that what she was paying at the time, for as you point out potentially higher usage. But if her desired price to pay was $20, and her average monthly bill was n, where n is below $20, why wasn't she already using the service more, at the rate of $20-n?

And, again, the AOL anecdote was an illustration, not evidence. See the truffle study, we know more about this than your response suggests.

<comment><USER32> Her stated reason was that the hourly price was unfair. This suggests that it was a couple dollars an hour:

[http://ask.metafilter.com/101477/Cost-of-the-intertubes-a- de...](http://ask.metafilter.com/101477/Cost-of-the-intertubes-a-decade- ago#1473308)

So we have an anecdote about marginal pricing going from $1 or $2 (or more) to $0 being used as an illustration that people don't like metering.

If AOL had costs of $0.20 an hour, her perception that their pricing was a ripoff probably wasn't ridiculous.

(I'm not trying to refute you, I was making the perhaps not very useful argument that the anecdote was not a good illustration, because it left too many loose ends. It's compelling because AOL is famous and her behavior is easy to cast as ridiculous, but it wouldn't be real surprising if it was told in a way that was useful to AOL.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Apps are doing much more to kill the open web than is any browser-based service.

</comment><comment><USER33> I never understand these articles. No they're not. You're not required to use these two (out of billions of) websites.

Vote with your time and attention. For better or worse, the majority of people vote for these sites.

</comment><comment><USER34> Remember how we were talking last week about how people seem to desire crowds and crowd-thinking, even if it literally kills them?

Well that makes sites like Facebook and Twitter predictable and the power they wield.

</comment><comment><USER35> Also slightly related:

Facebook is actively blocking a rival community that "pays" users by passing ad revenue to users (users get incentives to post content and invite friends)

[http://www.wired.com/2015/11/facebook-banning-tsu-rival- soci...](http://www.wired.com/2015/11/facebook-banning-tsu-rival-social- network/)

<comment><USER36> Tsu is basically a pyramid scheme where the investment is your time. The "payments" they would give to their users are _tiny_ , not enough for people to actually get any money out (except some outliers), and all what people are talking about on Tsu is: getting referrals to Tsu, making money from Tsu.

Somehow, Morocco was among the countries that used Tsu the most, and being Moroccan I was myself continuously spammed by people posting referral links to Tsu... so it's understandable that facebook blocked them.

<comment><USER37> The pyramid scheme analogy only holds true if you are paying in with money, not time. Other social networks are investments of time too.

Testimony: I registered for Tsu and have been active on it a for a few days after reading that story. There is nothing within the site that pushes monetization at you - there is a tab for payments, but it does not direct you there, and I didn't look at it until just now. When I did, I was presented with a terms of service, and then a "no spamming" click-through agreement.

Therefore I have to conclude that all of the hubbub is generated by some combination of early external marketing efforts and the natural tendencies of wishful thinkers. They've decided to stop pushing that angle, most likely because they hit their critical mass targets and can move on towards more sustainable growth options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "It only really makes sense if you view writing as a fungible commodity"

I have no sympathy for writers here. You view us readers as fungible commodity. I use Reddit, HN, Facebook and twitter to weed out the worst bullshit. There are lots of articles around just to keep me comfy long enough to show me adds. One of the worst these days is New Yorker, beautifully written articles about stuff people don't really care about. (Or atleast I don't care about.) Currently it survives on elitism. Web platforms are problematic. But lot better than ordering magazines at random, or paying for New Yorker monthly for that yearly gem.

"Go where the readers are"

It's more important to write what the readers want to read. I click stupid shit. I read mediocre pieces. I'm willing to pay for good stuff.

I think there should be ordering/crowd funding service solely for written media. So that authors don't just babble nice sentences inside their comfort zone, but actually tackles things people are interested in.

The real problem is that author doesn't know if s/he gets paid before the article is written, but also the reader doesn't know if the article is worth anything before reading it.

I think the author of this piece has many good points, he just needs to dig deeper. This bleak context free future the author is painting is probably not true. People like context. Any social meeting is often first superficial introductions, then shallow gossip and only later dvelves into deep stuff. Internet is probably going to mirror that, but with more inertia.

</comment><comment><USER38> The article seems to be confused over content viewed by way of advertisement and content delivered by users actively seeking content.

When I want to read up on some news, I go to the publisher's site directly or to a preferred aggregator, which is not going to be facebook/twitter/etc.

Advertised content is typically very poor, and really not worth defending.

</comment><comment><USER39> On mobile, this page has a sticky banner at the bottom of the screen with a Facebook "like" button and a message asking me to "stay connected."

</comment><comment><USER40> Just like cable and CB radio, we need the government to reserve a section of the internet for non-commercial open access.

<comment><USER41> Why does the government need to do such a thing? You're free to set up your own corner of the Internet, unless the _government_ itself tries to stop you, which does happen to some people in this world.

<comment><USER40> brb, digging along the highway to lay my fibers.

srsly, it depends on the medium. With Citizen's Band radio, the government only had to step out of the way. With Cable public-access, the government had to require cable companies to give access to communities to equipment such as a cameras, studios, video players, etc. Public access internet's needs are much closer to those of community access television than Citizen's band.

<comment><USER41> >With Cable public-access, the government had to require cable companies to give access to communities to equipment such as a cameras, studios, video players, etc.

I don't even see why public access cable was forced on any company to begin with. The only reason that comes to mind that the public would even be entitled to free access to the company's facilities is the monopoly status that telecoms have often enjoyed in North America. In that case, a bit of give-and-take might be expected. But otherwise, I don't see much of a case for forcing a company to let people use its facilities for free.

> Public access internet's needs are much closer to those of community access > television than Citizen's band.

This seems like a dubious "need". I can rent a VPS for a few dollars a month and generally do with it whatever I'd like. The barrier to entry is surprisingly-low, in that regard.

<comment><USER40> > I don't even see why public access cable was forced on any company to begin > with.

That's a great question... and the fact that we have to consider it is a testament to how thoroughly the corporate-state has succeeded in refiguring our concepts of natural resources and democratic participation.

The justification is that natural resources are the property of the people with the government managing them as an entity where distributed individuals can not. The key is to realize that not only clean, safe, air and water are resources, but also the wireless spectrum is a resource and the infrastructure to support cable television. Hence entities like the FCC to manage these natural resources. When the cable television infrastructure was set up, it was clear it was going to be an enormous windfall for the corporations at the cost of public and private land.

It was also going to divert attention, including sources of information necessary for running a democracy, such as the ability to organize communities, away from existing media. They were afraid we would become an isolated nation of television-watching dummies. (Imagine that!). Furthermore, access to these public resources is not free. You have to pay, further limiting the ability for everyone to participate. So in negotiation with these industries, our government from several generations ago gained us the right to participate for free in the communications process through community access television. It wasn't perfect, but it was a serious attempt at democracy, the town hall process through which everyone gets a say.

As opposed to the market sense of democracy, in which expression and participation in governance is cheap, but still costs money. That's what you're talking about when you say "I can rent a VPS for a few dollars a month and generally do with it whatever I'd like." The issue here is that while "noarchy," a Hacker News reader for over five years, who could probably be considered an expert and well beyond the top 1% of skill level in their field can express his desires, that's cool and the gang, but that doesn't further democracy, the ability for everyone to take part in the governing of their lives and country for free.

It's worth pointing out that the effect on cable companies has been absolutely minimal. They've never been burdened by this requirement, just look at the billion dollar mergers. Also, the FCC has finally pushed off the corporate forces of NPR and allowed Low-Power FM radio for community organizing.

I hope my discussion has been persuasive to you. You seem bright, but maybe just a little overtaken with the notion of pure meritocracy - in this case meaning that people get to express themselves once they've earned enough money to produce the media to do so.

If you look at history over the last century, you'll notice that the cellular bandwidth allocation, with absolutely no concessions to the public, as resulted again in overwhelming corporate success and greater community isolation. It's a shame, I wish we could get back to the days of CB radio, but I have high hopes for Low-Power FM.

<comment><USER41> I just wanted to mention that I did read your reply, but I've yet to take the time (and some time would be needed) for a proper response to what is a bit of a wall of text (in the context of HN, at least, I'd say). I may eventually do so, despite the somewhat patronizing tone of your message.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I think this is hyperbole. I rarely use either and the open web seems fine.

<comment><USER43> How's your blackberry ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> No, no. Not Facebook and Twitter. This is coming from everywhere. Because you can't sell the open internet as a branded experience. (And you can't force people to look at ads on it either)

</comment><comment><USER45> Beautifully written article on articles.

</comment><comment><USER46> Probably not a dumb hypothesis, but this author turns this into a lament about the changes in publishing. Next.

</comment><comment><USER47> Gotta love the Facebook and Twitter buttons at the bottom of the article :)

</comment><comment><USER48> I wish that every ISP was required to collect a "Distributed Content Fee" that every domain would get a portion of according to the number of visits they get. I think that would really help level the playing field. A lot of good content goes unrewarded (or uncreated) b/c their is no good way to monetize it.

<comment><USER49> You mean your ISP tracking every move you make? Seriously?

<comment><USER50> You think your ISP doesn't already know exactly where you're going on the Internet?

<comment><USER49> That's why I use HTTPS and an independent DNS server with encryption. It's not exactly hard.

<comment><USER51> I don't get why you're so dismissive. Your ISP still sees that your IP connects to the IP of some server, at what time, for how long, how much data, etc. That's plenty of information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Facebook is for closed networks. Twitter has literally no effect on the real world and is only cared about by the people on twitter.

Neither are really a problem.

<comment><USER53> Twitter is tough because it's so useful and cool in one sense, but the majority of its use is keeping "social media managers" occupied with something the appears to be work.

I've rarely seen non-IT people using it.

<comment><USER54> IT people and politicians in my experience

And by politicians I mean not just those already established but also those in youth organizations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Killing the open web? Not hardly...

> I had a blog once. It wasn't big, but I loved knowing who I was writing for. > I loved knowing that the same couple hundred people would come back again > and again...

Had a "blog once"? And your a writer? Why did you stop writing for it?

This is the same article that could have been written by musicians 12 years ago or the MPAA 8yo...yes yes existential threats to the fundamental nature blah blah fucking blah...

Don't get me twisted tho...I don't even _like_ Facebook and Twitter anymore due to their obscene popularity, but whining about them "killing the open web"?

Please just stop the hyperbole.

<comment><USER56> > your a writer?

Amusing.</comment></comment>


Do you like my little typing analyzer? - <AUTHOR> http://fierce-sea-1625.herokuapp.com/

<comment><USER2> It's horrendously horrible.

Like any typist, if I make a typo, I immediately hit the backspace key, and that exits your site and brings me straight back here. So it's completely useless.

Apart from that, it's a pointless exercise. Nobody sits and types sequences of very obscure words, and it's not a useful skill. Which is why normal typing programs get you typing typical English (or whatever) sentences.

Sorry if this sounds harsh. I can't imagine why you did the program that way, but I'm willing to listen to reason ;-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice. You need to start the counter once the first letter is typed.

</comment><comment><USER4> It measures a skill very different from ordinary typing, so, no.</comment>


This is how Social Media really works - <AUTHOR> http://a.wholelottanothing.org/2009/03/this-is-how-social-media-really-works.html

<comment><USER2> Though this seems really obvious, it feels like just building a really awesome product is occasionally lost in all the marketing hoopla. Apple's marketing is great, but I wonder how great it would be without a killer product at the center.

</comment><comment><USER3> > just make awesome stuff that gets people excited about your products

and sell one to the president of the US</comment>


We've worked months on this - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Floown/floown-is-live-c0bab0e91f88#.vbqyvxkiw <comment><USER2> Please keep the title of submission/blog post. "Floown is LIVE" says more about the content than "we've worked months on this".</comment>


Blooming lovely: medieval texts that reveal the activities of English gardens - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2017/04/blooming-lovely-in-early-medieval-english-gardens.html <comment><USER2> > Losing a job can be a sharp blow, one that causes a bigger drop in life > satisfaction than being widowed

Really Bloomberg? You're going to insult everyone who has lost a spouse like that? I'm getting tired of the comparisons to "worse than being widowed", and am extremely skeptical of the "study" they cite. Making a blanket statement like that is horrible, particularly for a well known media company. You wouldn't tell someone losing a job is "worse than getting cancer" or "worse than losing a child", would you? Then what makes it alright to say "worse than losing a spouse"?

<comment><USER3> Looks like you meant to post this over at 14214401 (Bloomberg on why losing a job is allegedly worse than, at least, getting divorced).</comment></comment>


India's ID project catches fancy of US lawmakers  - <AUTHOR> http://business.rediff.com/report/2009/jul/23/india-id-project-catches-fancy-of-us-lawmakers.htm

<comment><USER2> The UK government have been trying this for some time with no joy - people are dead against it (I'm ambivalant myself).

I suspect getting it done in the US will be even harder - how many people dont even have/want/need passports (I know it used to be 60% but that could well have changed)?</comment>