The Commons Clause doesn't help the commons - <AUTHOR> https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/51177.html <comment><USER3> Stepping back, this gets into the bigger questions of "What is commercial use?"

If you take an image that's Creative Commons BY-SA-NC and you use it as the title image in your article and display the photographers name and even link to his or her website/original image, but your site is filled with ads you use to make money off your writing ... have you violated that license?

This is why Wikipedia doesn't allow NC works and why we have the "Open Culture" classifications for licenses types.

I feel like the Common Clause supporters are in this spot where they want to monetize and survive of their software, and I can respect that. But the spirit of the GPLv3 camp of devs is that "Fine, let other people make money off my works if they want. But they need to contribute their improvements back."

I feel like the Commons Clause is kinda a half-and-half approach that really fails on both sides of the camp. Most BSD licensed tools can be used in GPLv3 software, but (and correct me if I'm wrong) it doesn't look like Commons Clause is compatible at all.

It's kinda sad how licensing hinders using the best tools in open source development. An excellent example is Hunspell, which is a god awful spell checker that's used in everything. Aspell if superior in almost every case, and yet it can't be included in anything due to licensing:

[https://penguindreams.org/blog/aspell-and-hunspell-a-tale- of...](https://penguindreams.org/blog/aspell-and-hunspell-a-tale-of-two-spell- checkers/)

<comment><USER4> > If you take an image that's Creative Commons BY-SA-NC ... but your site is > filled with ads you use to make money off your writing ... have you violated > that license?

Other examples: Is the BBC commerical? It's technically a public service broadcaster, owned and "controlled" (ish) by a government. But it has managers and offices and directors (and sorta) CEO, and HR departments and employees and will sell products, and it buys many things, and competes in the same space as many commerical TV stations and producers.

Is the US Department of Defence commerical? No. The US Army? No. What about Deutsche Bahn, the German train company?

Imagine a tiny worker owned co-operative, it's 10 local indiginous farmers who are barely self suffecient, but they made a co-op selling their products. It's a democratic organisation, controlled by it's members. That is definitly commerical.

Doe "Non-commerical" exclude who you want?

<comment><USER5> > Is the BBC commerical?

In my experience BBC asks permission to use anything. I have an open source game (GPL), and they asked me for permission to use a footage of their own gameplay. So, even if this would fall into "fair use", they still asked.

<comment><USER4> The BBC might do this, good for them. But other similar organisations might not.

This happened in Germany over a Creative Commons NC licence. [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140326/11405526695/germa...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140326/11405526695/german- court-says-creative-commons-non-commercial-licenses-must-be-purely-personal- use.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The author continues: > > "Our view is that open-source software was never > intended for cloud infrastructure companies to take and sell. That is not > the original ethos of open source." > > which is a pretty astonishingly > unsupported argument. Open source code has been incorporated into > proprietary applications without giving back to the originating community > since before the term open source even existed.

It depends on who you ask. The GNU AGPL certainly was intended not for cloud infrastructure companies to unconditionally take and sell. And as for non- cloud software, some projects like Wine used to be licensed permissively until they realised certain companies like Cedega [1] were making money off their work without contributing anything back, and switched to the LGPL instead.

Then OTOH you have permissive fundamentalists from parts of the US west coast that are already rich and whose livelihoods aren't dependent on money, and then of course are very happy to gather favour and reputation from giant tech monopolies by giving it all away for free with no pesky "reciprocal altruism" conditions for the lawyers to have to reason through.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedega_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cedega_\(software\))

<comment><USER7> If you ask the people behind the AGPL about the ethos of open source, you're asking the wrong people. They're pretty explicit about having a different ethos:

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the- point....](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the- point.en.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm probably not thinking this through, but here goes anyway...

Ignoring the "free software developers" for the moment and only focusing on "open source" developers...

There are essentially two classes:

1\. Those who truly believe in the spirit of 3-clause BSD license, plus the small number who believe in the spirit of the GPLv2.

2\. Everyone else who "chooses" 3-clause BSD license because that's the default open source license and they just want to spend their time dev'ing.

I'm guessing group #2 is _vastly_ bigger than group #1.

So for group #2, why not _default_ to AGPLv3 plus selling proprietary licenses to companies that want to use your software?

The companies' lawyers won't let them touch the AGPL with a ten foot pole. If they want to use your software they will pay for a reasonably priced proprietary license.

For group #2, this is not that much different than defaulting to 3-clause BSD, _except_ for the following:

* companies will _pay you money_ before using your software

* there might have been some companies which would have downloaded and used your software under 3-clause BSD which will not use it under AGPL _nor_ pay for the proprietary license. But those companies are the ones _least likely_ to support you under the 3-clause BSD license anyway, either by donation or even giving back patches

So if the premise is, "I just want to dev," choose AGPL. Then when _anyone_ tries to bikeshed about the license kindly offer to sell them a reasonably priced proprietary license instead.

If they accept, eat. If not, keep dev'ing.

If it doesn't work at all, you've _still_ got an open source project available to the public under an open source license.

<comment><USER9> If you don't care about licensing, you should absolutely not default to a copyleft license. You should only ever use a copyleft license when you intentionally and explicitly want copyleft behavior.

The truth is, unless you're spending a significant amount of time building a high-quality, highly-useful piece of software, as well as marketing it, no company is going to pay you for your open-source software regardless of its license. If you are spending the time and effort necessary to produce something a company will go through the trouble of licensing, then you should be giving a lot of thought to the license you're using already instead of just going with a "default".

As far as actually making money off of open-source work, by far the best way to do that is to leverage your open-source contributions into getting a highly-payed job at one of the big companies. For these purposes, the actual license of the work is pretty much irrelevant, except that using a more permissive license is likely to result in having more users of your component, which in turn gives you as the author more prestige and therefore makes you a more valuable hire.

So basically, if you don't want to give any thought to the license you should use for a particular project, you should default to a permissive one. You can always relicense it later if you decide it's turning into something that might actually be valuable enough for companies to pay for.

<comment><USER10> I think you described the trade-off between permissive and copyleft licenses well, but the argument that you shouldn't default to copyleft is weak.

If you care about developers, you should use permissive license, if you care about end users, you should use copyleft license. The final decision is completely determined as who you see yourself more as a maintaner - <USER2> of the software or end user of the software. The choice depends on the nature of software, and if you expect that you will be paid on either developing it or at least using it in another paid project.

Unfortunately, there is no middle road. The middle road will just mean more free loaders.

<comment><USER9> That's a fair argument, but the counterargument is that permissive licenses are good for users because permissive licenses allow more software to incorporate your component, thus (presumably) increasing the overall quality of software, and it's good for users to have good-quality software.

<comment><USER10> That is an argument which only works, however, when you're writing a component.

Almost exactly dual argument can be made to defend end-users.

And it is what we actually observe in the real world. Components that concern developers, such as libraries, often have liberal licenses, while finished programs often have copyleft licenses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think a solution that actually helps the commons is to time-bomb the "Commons Clause" for a 3-5 year period, after which the software reverts to full open source (similar to the GPL Time bomb discussed some time ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12459492](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12459492) ) This way, the developers get paid fairly, for what they actually deliver, but they can't lock the users in. If the developer dies, goes bankrupt or falls into a predatory phase where it milks the product for cash without reinvesting sufficient back (Adobe), then the project can be salvaged as open source by those who use it. An even better option is to allow any commercial developer, after the 3 year period passes, the option to fork and develop it's own version with similar licensing conditions.

This will ensure a healthy, competitive environment where the software can be monetized traditionally, yet the 4 freedoms are (eventually) satisfied. As a user, this is what you care about above all else; you will pay the commercial license fee to get the bleeding edge product, knowing you are in a way "leasing to own" the software and you will be able to fork it in-house if the way you use it diverges from what the publisher will want in the future.

</comment><comment><USER12> Am I correct in thinking that what we're missing is an "ALGPL", a version of the AGPL that only requires modifications to be distributed and not everything linking to it? At the moment the AGPL seems to be the only common license that requires modifications behind a corporate firewall to be published but the copy left nature makes it corporate cancer.

<comment><USER13> You don't have to make it available to the public if you only use it internally. You only ever have to share it with the people who use it. If it's only internally used that means you don't have to share it.

Even if it's externally used that doesn't mean it has to be freely available. If you require a paid subscription to access the AGPLed software then you only have to provide the source to those that have paid for the subscription.

<comment><USER14> > If you require a paid subscription to access the AGPLed software then you > only have to provide the source to those that have paid for the > subscription.

While true, there's no restriction on the subscribers making the code public.

<comment><USER15> True (and one can't add it, as the license procludes doing so), but in my experience working for a company that distributed most of its software under the A/LGPL licenses to paying customers only, they aren't really interested in doing that. We never had one of our modules being publicly distributed by a third-party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >Well, no. The GNU Affero GPL has a clause that covers this case - if you provide a network service based on AGPLed code then you must provide the source code in a similar way to if you distributed it under a more traditional copyleft license.

This is definitely not true.

[https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html)

>Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software. This Corresponding Source shall include the Corresponding Source for any work covered by version 3 of the GNU General Public License that is incorporated pursuant to the following paragraph.

There are two things here:

1\. People only get access if they access the service. I don't know how this has been tested in court, but to my IANAL ears it means opening a socket to the service.

2\. You only have to distribute it if you modify the software. This is nothing to do with using AGPL code as part of the collection of services. And if you don't let users open a socket to the AGPL part then you don't need to release those parts.

<comment><USER17> Doesn't "collection of services" constitute a derivative work which should be under AGPL if other services depend on AGPL part?

<comment><USER16> I'm not a lawyer, but my belief is no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Commons Clause is there to _remind_ the commons of their subordinate relationship to the vendor.

</comment><comment><USER19> I only use open source libs that's apache, mit, or BSD licensed. To use anything else you must be crazy (as this article proves). I'd rather write my own code if it's not available under one of those licenses.

I am more flexible with the software as it doesn't really matter (like databases).</comment>


OpenSSL Security Advisory: 0-byte record padding oracle - <AUTHOR> https://www.openssl.org/news/secadv/20190226.txt <comment><USER2> Previous discussion of the issue in general which affects many TLS implementations:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19256553](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19256553)

> _We evaluated the Alexa Top Million Websites for CBC padding oracle > vulnerabilities in TLS implementations and revealed vulnerabilities in 1.83% > of them, detecting nearly 100 different vulnerabilities._

</comment><comment><USER3> > This issue does not impact OpenSSL 1.1.1 or 1.1.0.

> OpenSSL 1.0.2 users should upgrade to 1.0.2r.</comment>


Show HN: Interview Questions to Ask Your Interviewer on Software Interviews - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ferrerluis/software-interview-questions <comment><USER2> Thank you for this, I always struggle with what to ask when given the opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER3> keyvalues.com has a really nice bunch of topic and ideas that are worth asking during an interview

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! I love how they make you select what's important to you before showing questions!

Very personalized</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's a fair equity share to ask for dev co-lead of an internet startup - <AUTHOR> I got approached by some people with an internet startup business idea. they have no product, customers or code yet, they want to start by building a website first and they are proposing i lead the front end development in return for a 2.4% equity share. they said they received a 100k in funding, so i guess it's valued at that. i've never been involved in such a thing before, but 2.4% seems little to me. do you think that is a fair share? is there a way to determine what a fair share might be? <comment><USER2> If they only have 100k in funding, and no customers, I'd suggest that you ask them to prove to you that they have an idea worth working on by finding a customer who will pre-pay.

And then they can pay you a salary and some equity.

If they have nothing but 100k and an idea, don't invest your time for equity, it's worthless. The working capital isn't enough, and you'll do all the work for no money.</comment>


Show HN: A curated list of Chrome DevTools tips and tricks - <AUTHOR> http://devtoolstips.com/ <comment><USER2> Some nice tips in here. I had no idea multiple cursors were supported. I now live in the future!

Would be good to know the cross-platform support for these features without testing them though. No "cmd" key in Linux :( (though, the ctrl key works as expected)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback, I will do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.briangrinstead.com/blog/chrome-developer-tools- mo...](http://www.briangrinstead.com/blog/chrome-developer-tools- monitorevents)

I didn't know about monitorEvents, it's really nice! This link has more details about what events you can monitor.

</comment><comment><USER4> Chrome Devtools has basically become my main tool when I do web development. I honestly can't imagine what I did before Chrome was around.

<comment><USER5> You probably used Firefox + Firebug and couldn't believe you used to do development without them.

Before Firefox + Firebug though? Well, you probably have suppressed the memories about using alert() calls for debugging through your tears. :-)

<comment><USER6> You nailed it.

alert("1"); alert("2"); alert("we got here");

Ah, I don't have fond memories of those days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice.

FYI: I infrequently post some of these tips to Google+: [https://plus.google.com/+UmarHansa](https://plus.google.com/+UmarHansa) with detailed descriptions. Also on Twitter: [https://twitter.com/umaar](https://twitter.com/umaar) with less description.

</comment><comment><USER8> The second item, Command + Click on CSS, isn't showing your example image: [http://devtoolstips.com/image/99439992616](http://devtoolstips.com/image/99439992616)

This is on both Safari and Chrome on OS X.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats odd. Removed for now, I will create a smaller gif or video. Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just uploaded a new smaller gif, it's working now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> monitorEvents is really awesome.

Would really like a little writeup on each of these to accompany the gif, couldn't quite figure out the "copy an object to the clipboard" one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I will work on it.

<comment><USER10> In general, some very brief text describing things beyond just an animated GIF would be really helpful. I spent a long time watching the eyedropper one over and over, trying to figure out what exactly you did to get the eyedropper to show up. It doesn't help that this is apparently a feature that's only in canary for now (I'd avoid that, or at least call it out explicitly), but even ignoring that, trying to get instruction by watching a dot flick around unpredictably in a screenshot is difficult/inefficient.

edit: great idea for a site, though. I've subscribed to your RSS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Anyone know of a better way to get proper JSON out of something emitted to the console? The "store as global variable" \+ copy($_) is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't see a way to suggest a tip or trick.

My ah ha moment was when i discovered the usage of :' debugger; ' in a.js with inspector open

<comment><AUTHOR> Added to my todo list, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My personal favorite is debug(function_name). Creates a breakpoint at the beginning of the function. I use it almost daily.

</comment><comment><USER14> That one where you click on the curly braces to auto-de-minify is awesome!

</comment><comment><USER15> Why does this page use .gifs instead of HTML video? :'(

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. I will try to convert everything to video on the next week.

<comment><USER16> You can also try using gfycat.com to do this automatically.

<comment><AUTHOR> Amazing, great tip! Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Write a Good Business Plan - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204830304574133501980701202.html

<comment><USER2> I've written business plans that have raised a lot of money, won grant applications for my business plan type writing, and I'll tell you the honest truth.

It's pretty much impossible to write a good business plan. Business plans are by nature boring. What you can do is write well, follow general business plan guidelines, and be writing about a good idea. But that's the best you can do.

A good business plan won't get you very far in my experience, and you won't get funding based on a good business plan. A business plan is sort of like business cards. You need it, but it won't make or break the game as long as you spell everything right.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems like the theme of this article is "be honest and self critical".

That sounds pretty reasonable, but I'd be interested in hearing anecdotes from HN/YC-ers in the absence of hard evidence. Anyone care to share?

</comment><comment><USER4> Get real. Don't write one. Make a job board. Sell a book.</comment>


Ellen Pao: The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/we-cannot-let-the-internet-trolls-win/2015/07/16/91b1a2d2-2b17-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html?postshare=7391437061068212 <comment><USER4> I'm going to disagree. I've been in IRC, Forums, Newsgroups, lurked 4Chan, Reddit, and Slashdot for years. It has actually been evolving to a point, especially among the younger crowd to get bent out of shape about essentially nothing. Maybe that is because more of our lives are online than before, but if you were to go through Twitter and Tumblr and just browse around it is a huge mess of people constantly being offended and wanting an apology. I'm not defending the Redditors that legitimately harassed Ellen Pao.

However, modern media (like Gawker, Vox, Salon, Slate, etc) can somehow turn 3 tweets from anonymous people with no followers into a national shit storm. These media outlets feed the trolls, because it gets them clicks. So, it is of my opinion that the "trolls" aren't "winning" the battle, they just haven't left, and never will. The news outlets are click junkies and know they can foment faux rage by enticing people who otherwise we would have just ignored 10+ years ago. Of course they look large in numbers if you're putting them under the microscope. The thing people who have little online experience miss is that they are making things worse by giving people attention and trying to "silence" them.

<comment><USER5> Does "Just don't feed the trolls" continue to work in a world where trolls know that SWATting someone is as easy as picking up a phone, and doxxing someone can have significant long-term consequences?

<comment><USER6> Should we repeal the first amendment because people sometimes used racial or ethnic slurs? Or they deny the moon landing? Or say things that your preferred political party happens to disagree with? Or maybe only things that YOU disagree with?

<comment><USER5> Nobody is recommending a repeal of the First Amendment. At best, the conversation is about whether orgs like Reddit have any obligation (moral, business, or otherwise) to allow people screaming racial or ethnic slurs to stand on (metaphorically speaking) their property and use their megaphones.

Usenet still exists, and nobody is stopping people from using it. It's just not where trolls go to be heard anymore, because nobody is there to hear them. ;)

<comment><USER7> "Nobody wants to take away your right to free speech, we're just trying to create social norms that discourage, or hinder, the freedom to express views we don't like. Ignore the fact that social norms inevitably become codified in law."

<comment><USER8> Reddit does not owe you free speech. You can say whatever you want, and they can choose not to broadcast it to millions of people.

<comment><USER9> Or does it? Now, no company would owe you freedom of speech just for existing, but in the previous promises Reddit made, it did promise to be a bastion of free speech. It wasn't an explicit contract that they can be taken to court over, but do we really want to say that, unless there is an explicit contract, there cannot be any agreements?

<comment><USER10> Can't they change their mind?

<comment><USER9> Can you change your mind on a verbal agreement? That a court is likely to not find sufficient evidence to enforce it doesn't make changing you mind about it right/ethical once you've gained benefit from the agreement.

If I get the community to help me build a orphanage, it is wrong for me to decide I rather do something else with the building once built.

<comment><USER11> I believe you're conflating laws which are objective and shared with morals/ethics which are subjective and personal. Something legal to you and me can be unethical to you while being ethical to me. Something illegal to you and me can be unethical to you while being ethical to me.

<comment><USER12> I believe you are confused about the law. Laws are not objective. There are many, many cases brought before the courts where the facts are not in dispute.

<comment><USER11> Can you clarify?

<comment><USER12> Which part isn't clear?

<comment><USER11> All of the parts are unclear. I'm confused because the objectivity of a law depends on the facts in court cases being in dispute?

When I use the word subjective, it means that an individual personally gets to decide the truth of something. You can't make something illegal just by changing your mind, but you can make it immoral. We probably have different understandings of subjectivity and objectivity.

<comment><USER5> Inconveniently, juries (and judges in non-criminal cases) do, in fact, make something legal or illegal by changing their minds. It is the function of a jury to decide questions of fact, because determining absolute objective truth in a courtroom scenario (from a scientific sense of the word) is often functionally impossible. So you're left with the situation where the plaintiff and defendant provide evidence that their respective versions of the truth are the objective reality, and the jury's subjective opinion of their case determines what the law agrees upon as objective.

This interface between objective and subjective is the "magic" of the legal system. If you can argue in a court of law, successfully enough to convince a jury (or judge, depending on the criminal / civil nature of the case), that, say for instance, a corporation is a person in the same sense as an individual human being, then as far as the law is concerned it is now an objective truth that corporations are people.

<comment><USER12> I'm not even talking about deciding questions of fact. If you take a set of facts as a given, it's still often not clear if something is legal or not. Legislation is often written in broad strokes and it is up to the courts to fill in the details. There are always new cases coming up that don't fit the same fact pattern as existing cases and hence no one is quite sure what the law says on such matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anybody remember when trolling was a term used to describe an activity in which users wielding enough understanding of other's perspectives would attempt to give other's cognitive dissonance?

It seems that one of the most powerful online political classes have lumped hatred and abuse in with disagreement, mockery and satire.

I don't think it's good for the conversation between the group of user's that dislike where Reddit and other big social media sites are headed and the people that are taking them there.

<comment><USER14> I miss those days when I was proud to be a troll, when it meant tricking people into thinking in ways that they normally wouldn't. People used to love trolls! Of course, it didn't just mean that. There were also troll raids when friends would get together and make silly comments on every thread they could find, crashing the party but having fun with it. The incendiary ones used to be called flamers, but I think that term is too trollish to use against trolls these days.

<comment><USER15> > People used to love trolls!

No they didn't.

> crashing the party but having fun with it.

I'm sure you and your friends were having fun with it. The people whose parties you crashed? Probably not so much.

<comment><USER16> This is starting to look like a debate similar to "where does tagging stop and graffiti begin?".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From what i've seen on reddit, twitter, and sometimes even on hn, some are quick to label people whose opinion differs from theirs as trolls. It doesn't matter if it is a polite or well-though out comment, they are quick to shout the word harassment or whatever -ist allows them to hold some moral high ground.

<comment><USER10> Pao had thousands of people calling her a ching-chong cunt. Why do you think your comment is relevant to this thread?

<comment><USER18> "Pao had thousands of people calling her a ching-chong cunt."

Is this a known/established fact? I see in the article a paragraph about how she received thousands of positive notes/emails but nothing about the # or volume of hate. It may not be documented here, but I'm curious if it was actually as widespread as implied.

<comment><USER19> The front page of Reddit was littered with derogatory Pao posts for days on end following the shutdown of /r/fph and firing of Victoria. I'm sure she also received a large amount of private hate messages too.

<comment><USER18> I saw the front page, and many (most?) were not of the "ching-chong cunt" variety. I witnessed a lot of misplaced hate (we now know is "misplaced" after the fact) but there's a difference between "flaming" someone and using racist/bigoted language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> [http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~cristian/Antisocial_Behavior_file...](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~cristian/Antisocial_Behavior_files/antisocial_behavior_trolls.pdf)

tldr; heavy moderation actually causes trolling on sites like Reddit.

>taking extreme action against small infractions can exacerbate antisocial behavior (e.g., unfairness can cause users to write worse). Though average classifier precision is relatively high (0.80), one in five users identified as antisocial are nonetheless misclassified. Whereas trading off overall performance for higher precision and have a human moder- ator approve any bans is one way to avoid incorrectly blocking innocent users, a better response may instead involve giving antisocial users a chance to redeem themselves.

The whole thing with Pao got out of control because somebody was routinely deleting comments and shadowbanning people who mentioned the trouble her husband was in. Whether it was her, another admin or a moderator doing the banning _that_ was what fueled the fire.

Moderation on Reddit is insane, a single basement dweller with sociopathic tendencies (99% of forum moderators everywhere) can control the conversation totally, they constantly ban discussion that they don't agree with and there is absolutely no transparency. It happens to be a wonderful way of incubating hate groups by eliminating cross pollination of ideas, but it also tends to piss people off.

</comment><comment><USER6> The trolls won the war for usenet too. It didn't destroy the internet. Just because trolls are making reddit unpleasant doesn't mean that they will destroy the internet. reddit isn't the whole internet, not even close!

Furthermore, supposing that reddit users revolting against the clamping-down of reddit management constitutes the "biggest trolling attacks in history" is a little disingenuous. What about all the people who got internet famous for dumb stuff like the mustard guy or folks that got pranked by Sacha Baron Cohen or the jackass guys? Those were arguably trolling, and they got made into major motion pictures that got commercials and put into theaters!

Reddit trolls just post nasty comments on reddit, a place that probably half of America barely knows about and definitely doesn't care about.

I'm not saying that the nasty stuff that happened to her didn't happen, or that it's somehow not a big deal. It obviously is a big deal to her, and a great many other people as well.

But that doesn't make it the "largest trolling attack in history"

<comment><USER21> _> The trolls won the war for usenet too. It didn't destroy the internet._

It sure as hell destroyed Usenet, though. I remember, because I was there when it happened.

At least when we lost Usenet there was somewhere else for all those discussions to migrate to: the Web. If they destroy the Web, where are the discussions supposed to go then?

<comment><USER6> Please remember that just because someone says a thing, that does not make it true.

Reddit is not the WHOLE internet. Just because trolls are causing havoc at reddit doesn't mean that they're winning everywhere.

Further any one website isn't the whole internet. Usenet was a unified system, the myraid websites that people troll on right now are not. Facebook is different from Reddit which is different from slashdot which is different from HN which is different from etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > The Trolls Are Winning the Battle for the Internet

Does anyone honestly believe this? Even Ellen in the op-ed says

> As the trolls on Reddit grew louder and more harassing in recent weeks, > another group of users became more vocal. First a few sent positive > messages. Then a few more. Soon, I was receiving hundreds of messages a day, > and at one point thousands. These messages were thoughtful, well-written and > heartfelt, in stark contrast to the trolling messages, which were usually > made up of little more than four-letter words. Many shared their own stories > of harassment and thanked us for our stance.

I think most people see trolls as just trolls. People are going to be jerks sometimes - whether under their real name (facebook / youtube) or anonymously.

<comment><USER5> The major issue is the notion that "jerks sometimes" is evolving into "jerks all the time."

Not yet sure how much of this notion stems from the focus on the problem and how much is actual increase, but it's a problem nonetheless. Why do we tolerate as much trolling as we do? Why do we continue to see trolls as just trolls when we have evidence of people being bullied to suicide via the signal-magnification effect of online interaction?

<comment><USER22> > The major issue is the notion that "jerks sometimes" is evolving into "jerks > all the time."

I would doubt that. I think it's an outgrowth of more information created (so the trolls, if you're looking for them, will have more trolling as well).

It's just like how the news is claiming things are always getting worse. They're not. Things are better than ever, we're just getting much better at hearing about the outlier cases of when bad things do happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I just posted this in the earlier submission[1], but I'll put it here too:

I really worry that if we don't find a way to fix the abuse problem, pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood.

Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online. Platforms need to take a stand and find a way reduce hate and abuse, or public opinion (and my own) will turn against support of privacy. If it turns out pseudonymity is fundamentally incompatible with safety of the abused online then I'll take the latter, but I'd rather search for a way to have both.

Platforms banning abusive subcommunities seems like a good start.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9898366](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9898366)

<comment><USER24> Why are you posting anonymously? [EDIT: no, I don't go around clicking on profile links so some SJWs can accuse me of stalking.]

<comment><USER25> Clicking on the profile link:

"Co-founder and CTO at Whirlscape, makers of the Minuum keyboard [http://minuum.com](http://minuum.com), firstname.lastname@example.com"

I'm not sure that's really "posting anonymously"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Misquoting Bart Simpson "If you never experience the abuse, you'll never get desensitized to it", and with that in mind, and talking here only about written abuse, these are my favorite three outcomes for, let's say, my daughter:

1) No one abuses her online 2) People abuse her, she dismisses it as noise 3) People abuse her, and she reacts and attempts to control it

I think we should be aiming for number 2.

<comment> jon-wood Why do you believe it's better for your daughter to receive abuse and dismiss it than not to receive it in the first place? If we're aiming for ideals, let's go for the ideal of a world in which people aren't subjected to so much abuse that they just filter it out as background noise, because that sounds like a shit future.

<comment><USER12> It can't be a great idea to aim for the "ideal" situation if it's impossible to do. So much wasted time. Surely it's a better idea to aim for something that one can control, and is obtainable, even if not easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The situation at reddit is appalling and the death threats and egregious harassment against Pao were wrong, and likely illegal in some cases.

That said, my opinion of her is that she is far from the champion that this battle needs. I believe that the most common view of Pao is not too savory, between her husbands ponzi scheme, the details that came out of the KPCB trial and the plethora of other poor decision taken by her, she has made it easy to find faults with her character.

<comment><USER28> shorter: Pao is subject to appalling abuse but she brought it on herself because of her supposed character faults and the things her husband did.

I think that nicely proves her point. Even if you don't care for her decisions, she _still_ shouldn't be treated the way she is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Trolls used to mean (and I think still does mean) a person who attempts to voice an opinion they don't hold with the intent of invoking a negative reaction out of someone else. Most of the folks spewing bile at Ellen Pao probably don't actually hate her, but can't help seeing their actions have an effect.

Trolls don't win if you ignore them -- the shitshow that's been Reddit this past month is almost entirely because Ellen and co. can't/won't stop reacting to short-sighted outcries from Reddit's userbase.

Yishan, Ellen, Alexis, Steve, even Sam, and everyone else involved needs to shut the fuck up (publicly) about Reddit for a few weeks. This whole "airing of grievances" is actually what's killing Reddit, not the trolls.

What I want to see is legal action taken against Yishan for fueling this well beyond its natural life. He _had_ to violate an NDA of some kind with all the extra fuel he's been throwing onto this...

<comment><USER30> [http://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/troller.htm](http://www.flamewarriorsguide.com/warriorshtm/troller.htm)

It referred to trolling the way fishermen troll for fish.

It didn't really have anything to do with the "ogre" definition of troll, but that's what it means in most people's minds now.

<comment><USER31> That's kind of what happens when you noun a verb that is already a noun with a very different meaning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> i just think its dumb how people want to "change" the internet, or anything for that matter. its not a tamable creature, its anarchy and chaos and humanity in all of its glory, good or bad.

it bothers me when people say we need to take something off the internet... no really, we dont, it was put there for a reason, no matter how misguided that reason may be. hate speech, no matter how distasteful is still free speech. dont want to see it on reddit, dont look for it! i mean quite frankly, if you are fat and self conscious, going to a "fat haters" forum is probably going to end poorly for you.

as for her statistic about 40% of internet users saying they have been bullied... welcome to the real world lady! run that same quiz in a random highschool and i'd bet its double that percentage... people are mean. why should the internet not reflect real life? art imitates life.

it also bothers me these people saying we need to change hiring practices and other such nonsense. many things self regulate, leave them alone.

</comment><comment><USER33> "I have just endured one of the largest trolling attacks in history" I don't know enough about what Ellen went through to comment on it, but I find this comment very funny, and it made it hard to take the rest of the article seriously.

</comment><comment><USER34> Rule #1: Never feed the trolls. She has just given them a feast. I miss FidoNet, it used to be so easy to shut down abuse and the conversations were so much more thoughtful. I wonder if we can ever get that back.

</comment><comment><USER35> Reading all of this has given me the beginnings of an idea. Although I'm not a machine learning/NLP expert the idea is obviously non-trivial to an extreme (maybe impossible, currently): What if there were a forum similar in style to reddit that had a form of auto-moderation that identified logical fallacies and other irrelevant information and then highlighted those within arguments.

For example if there was an ad hominem attack "Fuck you Ellen Pao." The auto moderator would allow the post but would highlight the text red with a small bubble identifying it as ad hominem, users could react appropriately.

Or, maybe you have a long well thought out argument that has a straw man in it. The auto-mod could highlight the straw man to point out that it exists and maybe even format the post to show the point from which the rest of the position is based on that.

Maybe this wouldn't have to be actively presented but just a tool that comments were run through so users could be warned prior to their submissions. Obviously the complications with this would be ridiculous and you could never stop training the algorithm that was processing your text. But the implications of having such a thing seem pretty incredible.

</comment><comment><USER36> There are a few underlying issues here.

There is a lot of denial about the nature of the intellectual bell curve. The majority of people are not that smart and cannot make thoughtful contributions to most discussions. The majority of people will at least some of the time lose decorum and make vicious personal attacks when they perceive themselves as being threatened or as being wronged. Upvoting and downvoting is an action, and action requires motivation. Thus, unless an audience is especially smart and valuing of rationality, comments are most likely to get upvotes when they provoke an emotional reaction.

To have a high quality discussion board you must have a critical mass of reasonable, smart people. You must avoid letting in the hoi polloi. And you must quickly ban users who make dumb comments or violate decorum.

However, most internet business models are based on advertising. Advertising revenues are based on eyeballs. And a normal stupid person's eyeballs are worth just as much as smart person's eyeballs (perhaps more, the smart person probably has adblock installed).

Thus the central conflict. Business models are based on making it as easy as possible for normal people to get engaged in the platform. But the result of normal people getting engaged will be vicious and unsavory content. Also if it is easy to create account, then it is easy to switch accounts if one account is banned. So it becomes impossible to silence the unsavory users.

I think that ultimately Reddit will end up as sort of the Wikipedia version of a newspaper. All pretense of being free speech or democratic will be dropped in the major subreddits. Rather it will be a media site on a variety of issues that is mostly top-down, and controlled by the actions of entrenched, established users and moderators.

</comment><comment><USER37> People like to gossip and trashtalk. We can act like it is not human nature and philosophize about ideal conversation, but one look at the afternoon TV programme will quickly convince you otherwise.

Imo the way forward is not demonizing either social group, but to give each their own forum for expression. The word 'troll' is an extremely slippery slope...

</comment><comment><USER38> She's still a millionaire executive. Obviously nobody deserves the kind of abuse she's gotten, but I think I could put up with a whole lot of nobodies saying mean things about me on the internet in return for being in her position.

<comment><USER31> > She's still a millionaire executive.

I would presume she's still a millionaire, though I don't have access to her current finances. Of what is she still an executive?

<comment><USER38> Fine, she's technically between positions. You know as well as I do that she will shortly be made an executive or a board member of some other firm(s). She is part of the executive class.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I am afraid that she is right. The few times I have tried dipping my toes into Reddit, I have been attacked by users so filled with bile they seemingly could not communicate without spewing it up.

It left me just flabbergasted by how little provoked them, or how they somehow thought their behavior was appropriate or justified.

These scattered but blessedly brief experiences have been so horrible that I have completely given up on it. I wish it were not the case -- Aaron Swartz is one of my heroes - but I am afraid this particular legacy of his has just spoiled.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm not sure that the solution is to completely prevent trolling rather than to inoculate ourselves against it.

Part of 'trolling' (in the sense being talked about here) is knowing what to use against the victim for maximum shock value or impact. I don't think Pao was hated _because_ she was a woman or asian. I think that she was hated, and therefore they found an easy way to disparage her by throwing slurs about her gender and race. It's shocking to see such words and that's precisely why people use them.

I don't think that the world would be a better place if it we cloned it as is and scrubbed all negative references for race/gender/other protected characteristic. I think people will be just as nasty. They'll be nasty using different words to strike at different vulnerabilities. The problem isn't "racism" or "sexism", it's people being plain, old-fashioned _mean_.

</comment><comment><USER41> Unfortunately we can't trust the intentions of this piece. She might not actually care about trolls at all, just brushes them off like I do. It's an image piece, designed to fulfill specific purposes, and I doubt the purpose is merely to spread the message of the positive potential of humanity on the Internet.

</comment><comment><USER42> Ugh.

 _But that balancing act is getting harder. The trolls are winning._

The success of the original balancing act was that there wasn't one--it was an open platform, it was a loose federation, and it was decentralized. By creating these massive walled gardens and trying to monetize them, companies like Reddit have suddenly had to take a stand.

Short surprise that they're running into problems that didn't exist before they decided to create these massive platforms. If you democratize access to mass point-to-point communications, guess what? By definition, half of your users are of below average empathy and responsibility.

 _But to attract more mainstream audiences and bring in the big-budget advertisers, you must hide or remove the ugly._

Gentrification of the Internet.

 _As the threats became really violent, people ended their messages with "stay safe."_

Threats can be graphic, not violent--if they're violent, they're not threats.

</comment><comment><USER43> Definitely an interesting read. Mostly I am with Pao. But I do feel Reddit has been in the business of supplying a troll friendly environment that is just interesting/safe enough to monetize for quite some time. So, in my opinion, nobody truly "anti-troll" would have stepped into the situation.

</comment><comment><USER44> Trolling is not a new thing. As long as hateful and/or sociopathic and/or sadistic people exist there will be trolls and trolling. You can only manage trolling, you can't eliminate it. That's the mistake Reddit made, they thought they could eliminate it, or at least hide it, and that isn't something that anyone knows how to do. In their efforts they make some basic mistakes.

They removed areas where the trolls had self segregated (ex. fatshaming) forcing them back into the rest of the community. They failed to properly ignore the trolls and reacted to them up to the extent of claiming that the resignation of a member of their executive had something to do with their actions.

I predict that the Reddit troll problem is going to get much worse before it gets better.

</comment><comment><USER45> Many of responses I read here are infuriating because many are deliberately ignoring the issue of harassment by claiming it's a free speech issue. In the US you do not have 100% freedom of speech. If you deliberately incite violence against another person through speech, you can be charged with a crime. You can face a lawsuit for assault without touching the victim. You can be charged for, say, harassing others in the workplace. You certainly have the right to speak your mind, but if you think you have the right to deliberately cause severe mental distress, not through mere discussion of your points, but through repetitive and abusive language and getting your cohorts to join you in the assault, you are absolutely mistaken. Even if we were to assume some enshrined right to harass individuals, perhaps it's not the best way to go about a disagreement.

Further, people are choosing to get angry over the false binary of freedom vs harassment, and choosing to ignore the third option of choosing empathy, tact, or clear and fair discussion over slinging barbs at others.

I'm reading comments along the lines of 'well, it couldn't have been _that_ bad' or 'I don't know enough about the extent of the harassment, but I'm going to comment about semantics or the 100 percent accuracy [as opposed to, say, 90 percent] of her claims anyway!' Your comments are pointless and dance around the actual issue of abuse. You fail to feel any sort of empathy because you yourself are not the victim.

I hear people making fun of the concept of 'microaggression' because they fail to adequately understand its meaning. The point is that it's really easy to throw a one-line insult to someone, but in aggregate it can cause great distress, because the throwaway comments of a thousand people can feel like one very persistent stalker. People dismiss this by saying 'oh it's normal' and recommend they just ignore it. Frankly, the point is that it should not be normal, and some people have difficulty ignoring it.

And I know some will deliberately choose to misconstrue what I'm saying here. No, I'm not saying that we should censor the Internet and ban all controversial discussion. I would just hope that more people become aware that it is a real issue that people face, and that commenters should be aware of their own actions and reevaluate how they choose respond to conflicts.

</comment><comment><USER46> > Reddit is the Internet.

That's an insane thing to say. I know she's the former CEO but anybody saying this is losing perspective. There are countless communities not on Reddit and they can't be represented by Reddit. I know it's probably a conscious exaggeration but it's getting hard to tell, people take this forum shit so seriously.

</comment><comment><USER47> Given her past, Ellen Pao is not very credible. Her opinion seems part of her self serving rhetoric that is now focused on presenting herself as a martyr.

Incivility has always been a problem in human society--it's magnified by the internet, because of the lack of consequences.

</comment><comment><USER48> The Internet?

They are gaining ground everywhere. Winning the argument is more important than being right.

</comment><comment><USER49> What I really care about: Who gets to decide who is a troll and who isn't?

<comment><USER50> People have been trying to automate moderation and make it perfectly fair for a long time now. It's basically impossible. If you do it at all, you have to use people, which makes it suck.

If you don't do any moderation, you get a sewer, and then you get shut down. You can try to exclude only illegal stuff and stand on free speech, but in terms of content you still have a sewer. To be fair, most of the stuff that moves through sewers is not deadly poison, just crap and water. Some people like sewers, so sewer cities continue to be built for people to live in, but most people find them unattractive, so they never take over the world.

To make something more attractive out of all the crap people emit, you need a modicum of moderation, which always comes from other people. Which means it is essentially unfair, capricious, and creates incentives to endless mediocrity and pandering. But even if we accept that rather than going back to the sewers, one man's perfect moderator is the other man's little Hitler. So maybe we should just crowdsource moderation! Brilliant! But "democratic" crowd moderation is essentially a way of diffusing responsibility for censorship. The censorship of _whoever_ happens to brigade your posts (maybe with sockpuppets, or external links) is not any more free, or pleasant, than any other censorship. Meanwhile, upvoting and downvoting takes on a massive life of its own and creates arenas for endless meta-gaming like subcommunities trying to push each other out. This takes over the site. If you manage the site, have fun managing all that effectively, and try not to get sucked in.

If what you want is fairness, all you can do is publish explicit policy (NOT legal ToS) so people know and agree to what they're getting into - <USER2> enforce that policy universally to the letter. That will be fair only in the limited sense that everyone agrees to it the same, like the rules of chess. But human-based moderation will never be fair.

<comment><USER49> That's not really what I mean. I have no problem with, say, reddit deciding that a "fat people hate" forum is not fit for its site. It's their site, they get to decide that.

Rather, what I am concerned about is the broader conversation which takes place in articles like TFA, by prominent people such as Pao, and by journalists. This broader conversation uses the word "troll" \- but who gets to decide which opinions are in that bucket, and therefore not acceptable?

It is easy to say racists are trolls, it's uncontroversial for the most part. But what about, say, gender-critical radical feminists? These are people who challenge certain received beliefs around what gender means, or should mean. They are not hateful, and they are 100% serious about making the world better for women, yet are often accused of transphobia (and worse) for what they believe. They get death threats (from other people who also call themselves feminists) and the rest of it. And it would be _so easy_ to place them in the "troll" category.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Where can you actually still have an uncensored discussion on the internet?

<comment><USER5> USENET, via email, via your own server, via a blog you host on your own server.

But those solutions (a) take effort and (b) implicitly decrease your potential audience because you aren't piggy-backing on some other organization's social networking. So it's understandable why people who get their jollies on upsetting other people would prefer an easier solution for them, like Reddit letting them say whatever they choose to unhindered because "Freedom of speech."

I'm 100% in favor of people who want to talk about topics Reddit has rejected setting up their own competitor. Maybe it will even become as big as Reddit. It's happened before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The trolls are a small, small percentage of users but some of the loudest.

</comment><comment><USER53> Reminded me of this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co5jTvGlt6Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Co5jTvGlt6Y)

</comment><comment><USER54> > The trolls are winning the battle for the Internet

The trolls aren't "winning" because "the trolls" aren't an organization. They don't have an ideology that they're pushing, or some end-goal that they're hoping to achieve. They're a byproduct of free speech that we all have to deal with.

But most importantly, they're not even able to be categorized uniformly. What is trolling to one person, may be comedy, satire, or even just _disagreement_ to another.

</comment><comment><USER55> I've been following the Ellen Pao debacle on Reddit, and her misuse of the term "troll" in the article illustrates her ignorance of Internet and Reddit culture that led to her stepping down as CEO.

I'm sure there were many offensive, harassing, and vitriolic comments and directed at her, however they were a result of her incompetent actions and failure to understand the culture that caused the problem, not due to trolls or trolling.

</comment><comment><USER56> may be, yet it is still doesn't help them win in court ...

Without any reason, just as a fishing expedition for millions of dollars, she basically publicly labeled a bunch of men as sexist pigs. Talking about trolling, ehh..

</comment><comment><USER57> Don't like trolls.

Don't visit reddit.

</comment><comment><USER58> I wish that there was some sort of Internet-wide 'reputation system' that would accumulate one's reputation across all websites they use - <USER3> preserving their pseudonymity on each site.

As an analogy, Steam and Battle.net and other gaming platforms have something going for them, maybe by accident: by using one account across lots of games, the risks incurred by cheating are amplified. If you cheat (or harass) in one game, your account can be banned across all games. This means that if you care about your account on one game still existing, you're disincentivized from cheating in other games, even if you don't care about them.

I play League of Legends regularly, and Riot Games has put in huge amounts of work in figuring out a way to discipline abusive players that will actually induce them to reform. They have shown that most people, when _branded_ as abusive, will often reform their behavior immediately - as if they did not realize (or did not internalize) what kind of person they were being. See, for example, [http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/6/7500045/riot-games-league- of...](http://www.polygon.com/2015/1/6/7500045/riot-games-league-of-legends- bans-rewards-behavior) . But it's saddening that all of Riot's work in reforming players or banning them if they can't get along with others cannot be used to weed out these toxic players in _other_ games. I love gaming, but, for me, the absolute worst thing about this hobby is how awful everyone is to each other, and I would love to see a systematic solution.

I wish something like Steam's centralized identity existed across online forums. I wish we used one account everywhere, and the use of a widely- connected account was required to sign up to things - but the details of who you are, and how to associate your identity on one site with your identity on another site, is totally masked to everyone. Site owners and users cannot tell that userA on reddit is also userA on, say, some Disqus blog. But your _reputation_ would still be preserved across sites: if you were reported as a spammer or a bully or a cheater on one site, it would be visible to the other sites you were on. And if those sites wanted to ban you based on your common reputation, they could.

This puts a large burden on the identity management platform. They have to handle everyone's privacy and security, deal with accounts being hacked and used for spam or abuse, provide mechanisms for people to prove their behavior has improved and remove black marks from their records, deal with websites that submit false abuse claims, etc. And (hopefully) they have to be resilient to law enforcement trying to use these records to complete expose users on every website. But at least they could do it in _one place_ , instead of every website having to solve all of these problems independently.

It seems to me that good behavior in 'tribal' human society was enforced by having to, well, remain in one's tribe, and having to convince everyone to put up with you if you want to survive. It also seems that being labeled, with numbers, as a 'bully' or a 'cheater' can have a positive effect in reforming people's behavior. We would need a centralized reputation system like what I've described to do this.

This is on the list of "things I would like to build".

[edited for awkward phrasing]

<comment><USER59> "A lot of times I wish that there was some sort of Internet-wide 'reputation system' that would accumulate one's reputation across all websites they use - while preserving their pseudonymity on each site."

There is. Unfortunately, it's the NSA that operates it.

<comment><USER58> Well, that doesn't accomplish any of the things I want, so I don't think it counts for my requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Maybe they shouldn't have started the war in the first place. Stop trying to gentrify the internet.

Also, people who disagree with you == trolls? Nice.

<comment><USER50> I'm seeing a lot of this meme that the internet is gentrifying, and I think it's worth discussing. I'm certain the internet isn't getting more gentrified over time.

The internet was extremely gentrified when it was populated only by a relatively tiny elite which tended toward prestigious academic affiliations and higher status. Even the old BBS scene, though a little more populist and accessible to people at home with phone lines and home computers, looks pretty genteel and exclusive by modern standards.

The internet sure felt a lot more democratic when issues like DDOS, doxing, spam, child porn distribution (just to name a few) were not that hard to avoid, so measures against them did not feel that urgent. But that atmosphere is _directly_ related to the selective nature of the audience. Things as small as the introduction of AOL users to USENET caused massive upheavals back in the day. The "barbarians" were at the gates.

It's not coincidental that Facebook built traction against Friendster, etc. largely by restricting to people with academic affiliations, Reddit got its start from a userbase that was more "selective," etc. But then the floodgates are gradually opened to the "barbarians" who were very unlikely ever to have patronized USENET, a BBS, or even an early-2000s phpBB.

In reality, that ratchet only moves forward, and the internet population gets more and more like the general population. Pervasive commercialization is actually part of that trend away from gentrification. It's not gated communities, it's Wal-Mart, payday loan joints, low-end casinos and hawkers in the streets. It's not Singapore, it's a developing country. And for better or worse, nobody can do anything about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> > I have just endured one of the largest trolling attacks in history.

I feel bad for Ellen and have nothing against her, I don't really go on reddit much. I am aware that she was more or less a scapegoat. But still, for some reason, AND even though the second sentence of the article almost saves face, this statement still bothers me. Sure, she got picked on by reddit quite a bit for lack of transparency, and got thrown under the bus by other high-ranking officials at Reddit.

But to come out and make yourself seem like a champion still illustrates her inflated sense of importance - she's a millionaire exec in an interim position who made mistakes, and got called out in an online forum.</comment>


Unlocking the commons - <AUTHOR> https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/01/unlocking-the-commons/ <comment><USER2> Very interesting article.

>> The most economically powerful thing you can do is to buy something for your own enjoyment that also improves the world. This has always been the value proposition of journalism and art. It's a nonexclusive good that's best enjoyed nonexclusively.

I think there's a lot of wisdom in that.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author seems to be describing something like a multi-stakeholder cooperative. Instead of members just insisting that you give away the content free, you could also directly involve members in the governance of organization, giving them a say in the editorial direction of the outlet. A democratically run media cooperative has the potential to solve the two-sided problem of legitimacy and funding, if you could get the model right.

<comment><USER4> I completely agree. Legitimacy and funding go hand in hand. What I'm wondering is how to design a democratic system capable of running such a cooperative, not just in theory, but in practice? There are many ways to implement democracy, and a lot of research on the topic. I'm not an expert so I don't know if there's a canonical "good answer".

For example:

\- Would members vote directly on issues, or elect representatives to decide on their behalf? Or perhaps a combination of both? If so, what is the threshold?

\- How would voting be implemented? Rank-choice? Quadratic voting? Some other system I'm not aware of?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's something simple that I don't understand.

Imagine someone comes up with a better funding model for online content creators. At first glance it seems like it should make creators better off. But there's a basic econ argument saying that won't happen, or will happen to a much smaller extent, because online content creation is an industry with free entry and exit. If you pour more money, more people will enter, until it equilibrates with other industries again: the total money+popularity+fun someone can get as a content creator becomes equal to the money+popularity+fun the same person can get in their next best occupation. In short, their livelihood won't improve much. Could even get worse, if the new funding model attracts even more people by publicizing its successes more than failures.

That's not to say a better funding model won't have any effect. It will certainly increase the total amount of content. But we don't have a shortage of content now, we have a glut, and adding more will only make it harder to stand out. So why do content creators call for better funding models? What am I missing?

<comment><USER6> I think the aim of better funding models is to allow more specialised content that is of higher value to people with an interest in that niche to be viable. In theory that allows more creators that are focused on a niche to thrive, rather than just creators that have generically good production standards and reach a wide but non-committed audience who just have to provide "eyeballs".

Therefore I would assume there isn't homogenous enthusiasm from all content makers for new funding models. Niche providers want it while mainstream ones are happier with the status quo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Patreon exists for a long time now. Judging from youtubers, it s not enough, they have to seek sponsorships too. And it only works in rich countries</comment>


PhoneGap vs RubyMotion - <AUTHOR> http://iconoclastlabs.com/cms/blog/posts/phonegap-vs-rubymotion <comment><USER2> One thing that really put me off about this article: the giant header that scrolls with the page. Vertical real-estate is already limited on a wide- screen monitor. I hate it when CNet does it, I hate it when news sites do it, I hate it all around. I understand I might not be speaking for everyone, but a nice thing would be an option to stick the header to the top. It could scroll by default until you click a button, where it would lock to the top of the screen.

As is, though, I find myself judging a site/article/company based on how many elements of their site irritate me. And it's a giant header.

<comment><USER3> buy a better monitor jj. Good point, we'll add an unstick on our todo list.

<comment><USER4> > we'll add an unstick

 _NO_. This is just as bad. I loathe sites that require me to take action to make browsing sane just as much as the current situation. Each site that does this has its own way to make it unstick and I won't even bother looking 15 seconds how to hide that crap you're sticking through my optical nerve to read some content I may or may not even be interested in.

 _Solution_ : show your header for a second or two, then roll it up, leaving the bottom rounded part shown as a hint. If the user wants to show it again he will reach for that middle rounded part, upon which you could react to a hover, a click/tap and/or a drag. Why does it suck less? The animation builds expectation and explains the behavior, while the hint explains how to take action. Zero thought needed, and no friction to 100% content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Phonegap is useful when you want to get a quick and dirty one off application launched. It lets your designers work in CSS which is very familiar territory. Most one off apps are more informational than interactive (Think conference schedule app) and phone gap is more than responsive enough. It supports enough basic api calls to do simple things like take a picture and stuff and does it well. Ruby Motion seems like what I wouid use for a stable long term code base for a new application. The difference being the product. The small one offs are usually supporting a bigger product (like a conference) and the long term code base is a product itself.

</comment><comment><USER6> The article isn't necessarily a far comparison: PhoneGap is cross platform, RubyMotion isn't. But it's nice to see someone holding up the different tools against one another.

His conclusion is more than correct for PhoneGap: PhoneGap feels like half- assing it.

<comment><USER7> Disclaimer: I'm Matt, the other half of Iconoclast Labs.

That platform limitation of RubyMotion and the cross-platform nature of PhoneGap is acknowledged multiple times in the post.

From a business perspective, the cross platform nature of PhoneGap may make it a better choice for some projects but from our short comparison of the PhoneGap version of the app deployed on both platforms, iOS appears more promising* so that's why we chose to write a native version for iOS (plus, coming from more of a Ruby/web background and having no Obj-C experience, RubyMotion lowered the barrier to entry for that). It's been an interesting learning experience for sure.

[*] [http://iconoclastlabs.com/cms/blog/posts/chatoms-app- store-e...](http://iconoclastlabs.com/cms/blog/posts/chatoms-app-store- earnings-report-month-1)

<comment><USER8> Can I include a C source file in RubyMotion project, compile it, and call the C functions directly from Ruby? That can be done easily with Obj-C.

I was looking for its answer for some time now. Our projects include a lot of C code.

<comment><USER9> Yes, you can vendor pure C libraries and use their APIs in a RubyMotion project (assuming the C interface is simple enough). Here is an example that uses the OpenGL C APIs: [https://github.com/HipByte/RubyMotionSamples/tree/master/Hel...](https://github.com/HipByte/RubyMotionSamples/tree/master/HelloGL)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I can understand PhoneGap will be handy when requiring cross platform compatibility and you are not a multi platform expert. The experience is always going to be underwhelming. RubyMotion is much more ambiguous, on one hand we have beautiful XCode and Objective-C environment which is a pleasure to use, and then this command line monstrosity! And it do not save you from learning cocoa libraries - So if you want to develop for iOS, try to use Apple tools - period.

<comment><USER9> Well, there are folks who don't find Xcode or Objective-C beautiful and prefer using the command-line. A lot of folks, actually. :)

<comment><USER10> Well - try developing a pixel perfect app on command line and see! And by the way Objective-C is the fastest growing language out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> In my experience, the text-editor/command-line path is the _only_ way to be truly "pixel perfect". Visual tools can get you most of the way there, but it seems you always inevitably have to touch the drawing code if you want true accuracy.

Oh, and as for Objective-C being a fast growing language? The rise of Objective-C is _directly_ tied to the rise of the iOS platform. If iOS had been written in any other language, Objective-C would still be a mostly forgotten language today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Having just spent the weekend doing an iOS app in PhoneGap and jQuery Mobile, I can say that PhoneGap can get you to the first 80% really fast and it can look/feel native, but the devil is in the details and the last 20% is going to take an extra 80% for sure.

Native vs HTML/PhoneGap is about tradeoffs. With a little bit more experience I'll be able to easily ship a working app in a weekend using PhoneGap, but there are plenty of use cases where native would be a much better way to go (games, photo filter apps, etc.)

It's not about what is better in all cases, it's about what is better for your project.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand the apparent disdain here for phonegap. I'm currently working on a freelance project to convert a blackberry app to a phonegap app. Everything they want to do they can do using phonegap. I don't feel held back or like I'm half-assing it. I have access to CSS for, in my opinion, easier UX designing, and jQuery for things like posting or modal dialogs. Why aren't more people excited about developing once and it working on multiple platforms?

<comment><USER13> I think it comes back to the idea of "jack of all trades, master of none." No matter what PhoneGap does, it will never do everything superbly, and sometimes (often, even, I'd say) the trade-off isn't worth it.

There's also probably an ego play, too. I see the "Objective-C isn't that hard. Learn it." argument a lot, but it does have a steep learning curve. For one, it's syntax is confusing if you don't recognize the brackets and messaging. Second, it's a lot closer to C than something like Ruby or Python, so you have to learn about types and memory management.

<comment><USER12> I thought it might be the jack of all trades issue. I find phonegap to be a great framework when it is appropriate to use. In the project I mentioned, it fits the client's needs perfectly. I wouldn't use it to develop an app that needs tighter access to the api or hardware than what phonegap offers. I have another project using audio units - phonegap would be a bad choice there.

It's a mistake to compare these frameworks to native apps, not that you did but several posts are. They are different, and that's good. It's like complaining that C isn't object oriented. Find the right hammer for your nail.

<comment><USER3> That's the attraction to phonegap, but what happens when your "nail" changes? Your client might ask for a small feature that the API doesn't support, which renders your entire solution useless, or cumbersome.

One of the points in the article is that the second you want something phonegap doesn't provide, you're stuck back-peddling, or over-engineering your fix. We've already come across such a situation with one of our upcoming projects that requires camera overlays.

Ultimately, it's important to compare options, whether they be frameworks, native, or toolchains. They're all avenues that need to stand their ground against other avenues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems kind of an odd comparison to make. I see RubyMotion more in competition with something like Titanium. The question then becomes whether you want to use JavaScript or Ruby, as well as the support.

Personally, I just bit the bullet and spent time learning Obj-C, and found it to be much more pleasurable (especially when you don't limit yourself to just using XCode).

<comment><USER15> Titanium uses it's own methods and translates that code into Obj-C (you can actually see the * incredibly insane* trans-source when you build the app) -- RubyMotion is a direct interface with Cocoa and Obj-C. If you know Obj-C you can immediately start experimenting with RubyMotion --comfortably-- and if you know Ruby and can "read" Obj-C you can immediately pick up the iOS cookbook and get started, like the authors did. Think of it as a dialect, similar to CoffeeScript, where all the same rules apply, but things are just... better. Having zero Obj-C experience and, I admit, no desire to go into the realms of byte-sized memory management, I avoided it for a long time, but after just a few weeks with RM I feel like I have a very strong grasp on both Ruby and Obj-C, and can read and write both interchangeably, including interfacing with Storyboards and Interface Builder. Two languages for the price of one, IMO, and that was well worth the $150 dollars I paid, aside from any products that I may release with the toolchain.

But yeah, in short: there's no comparison between Titanium and RM.

<comment><USER14> Not a fan of Ruby (which pretty much nails RM's coffin for me), so really can't comment. You appear a fan of Ruby, so I take what you say with a grain of salt.

> there's no comparison between Titanium and RM.

Well, there is. As much, I guess, as there is between PhoneGap and RM. I really just saw RM and Titanium having more in common then what PhoneGap had to offer, and saw the comparison as a bit odd. PhoneGap's goals are different then RM or Titanium. That's all I really meant.

<comment><USER15> Well, I'm now a fan of Ruby; I learned it via RubyMotion :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm still waiting to see _one_ app made in PhoneGap that doesn't look like complete rubbish.

For my nickel, I believe your best bet is to either make a native app, or a mobile website. These "cross-platform" tools just make apps that feel like junk.

<comment><USER5> [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/michigan-danger-on-our- roads/...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/michigan-danger-on-our- roads/id465543077?mt=8)</comment></comment>


The clock is ticking: Today is the last day to apply to YC - <AUTHOR>

I know there are some YC startups which decided on the very last possible day to apply (that's today!) to apply.<p>Thought about doing a startup this summer at all? Make the leap of your life. It doesn't even take an idea, just the enthusiasm. <comment><USER2> I have submitted the application. I can't wait until the 9th to hear back from them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think I'll just leap on my own. And if I funding was based on enthusiasm I would have been a millionaire years ago. It takes a little more than that to get a spot.

<comment><USER4> It's a bit crushing to put forward your best and not get in. However for those who get in it is way better then going it on your own.

<comment><USER5> don't worry, it's not personal.

i've seen similiar dynamics in conference program committees:

if you receive a lot of high quality submissions you just have to throw (often truly excellent) stuff away till you're down to a manageable size.

and that's not even a judgment of the individual submissions - often it's just a matter of making a balanced program.

<comment><USER4> >if you receive a lot of high quality submissions you just have to throw (often truly excellent) stuff away till you're >down to a manageable size.

According to a post by pg on HN accepts all applicants that they feel can make it through the program (ie the idea and team are ok). Therefore they are not going to exclude good applications because they have reached an arbitrary limit.

<comment><USER6> I theorize that downward pressure on group size is actually applied at the application level...since they set aside a single long weekend for the interviews, and there are only so many hours in a day...they can't possibly interview everybody, and they may (consciously or otherwise) prune while reading applications in order to avoid having too many to interview. That's just a theory, of course, and the size has been creeping up each cycle (to the point where I found the dinner I attended from WFP08 too crowded and noisy for comfortable conversation). It could be that they'll eventually switch to having two interview weekends, or a whole week of interviews.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Lightweight lossless file minifier/optimizer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/JayXon/Leanify

<comment><USER2> I feel a warning is appropriate for JPEGs. Removing EXIF data would definitely not be considered lossless by most photographers.

Same goes for comments in all file formats.

Neat idea but I'd be happier to use it if I knew it was an unqualified benefit rather than having to think about whether it might strip data I need.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for being the first one to comment. I understand EXIF is important to photographers.

The initial goal of this tool is to reduce software release size. Most of the formats it supported for now are likely to be part of a software. Software don't need comments, only human needs them.

Maybe I'll add an option to keep EXIF and comments later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> But does it know how to compress 3D video files, because if not Nucleus is way better.

Joke aside, congrats on releasing this as open-source.

<comment><USER4> Haven't used (and first heard) of any of these tools, but from reading the description it sounds like that you can apply each of these tools in any order.

<comment><USER5> Nucleus was good for a while but these days Pied Piper can pull off an insane 5.2 Weissman Score. Hooli is going to have to come up with something better because a 2.89 just doesn't cut it today.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Are there any benchmarks to compare to other "format" (compress and retrieving time, efficiency, CPU usage, etc.) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not a new format, the result is still the same format as before.

If there were any benchmarks, they should compare this to other minifier/optimizer, not other format.

<comment><USER6> Ah, thank you for pointing that out. I realize now I actually missed the point.</comment></comment></comment>


Tweakstyle: A new code editor in beta - <AUTHOR> https://tweakstyle.com/

<comment><USER2> Only way to find out about this 64€ editor is thru trailer or downloading beta? Did anyone try it?

If they are going to sell this, they should make a comparison chart against free products like Atom and VS Code (which is still quiet immature).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not affiliated with this in any way - just saw it today, and it looks kinda cool (and offers a bit of fun, if you like to beta-test products). I'm sticking with notepad++, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> so now people are not satisfied with merely creating their own js framework - they want their own fork of atom as well?

</comment><comment><USER4> Looks like they are mainly targeting designers. Hard to call what they show in the video "code".

</comment><comment><USER5> For about $100 bucks I expect a LOT more than this.</comment>


Your Brain Scan Looks Different on Mac and PC - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5919149/your-brain-scan-looks-different-on-mac-and-pc

<comment><USER2> The original article (freely accessible via PLoS One):

[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0038234)

</comment><comment><USER2> And interestingly, this appears to have generated no discussion on the Freesurfer mailing list:

[https://mail.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/pipermail//freesurfer/2012-...](https://mail.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/pipermail//freesurfer/2012-June/thread.html)

There was a single post dated June 2nd that didn't receive any replies:

[https://mail.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/pipermail//freesurfer/2012-...](https://mail.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/pipermail//freesurfer/2012-June/024179.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> A few versions back Mac OS X changed to use the same default gamma as Windows. I wonder if that's what they're seeing.

ie, Mac gamma vs. Windows gamma, then Mac gamma vs. new Mac gamma.

<comment><USER4> No, this is about computed values (of e.g. volume) rather than human measurement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's like a QA report wrapped in the cloak of a research paper!</comment>


Make Sticker App – Create iOS Sticker Apps Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.makestickerapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

I've created an online web-service www.makestickerapp.com - You can upload an icon, and a bunch of images and it will generate a complete Xcode project.

If you have a animated sequence of images, it even puts them in the project if you have a good naming convention.

I'd like honest opinions on it please.

Thanks

Chris</comment>


Ask HN: Converting USD to EUR for max gain - <AUTHOR> I'm a Spanish dev working for an US company. Recently my stock options vested, and I sold everything getting USD in return. I used an USD account instead of converting to EUR the same day because the USD/EUR change was pretty bad (now is getting better). Those are money that I will have to use for my family for the years to come, but unfortunately I'm not exactly a market expert. Here there are people that are good not just with code, but also with this matters. Please, could you suggest me a simple strategy in order to avoid doing a mess while exchanging to EUR? For instance I could convert 20% every time the EUR looks weak, like today, or should I wait for months before changing? I understand noone has the magic answer here (otherwise you would be rich), but probably there are rules to follow to avoiding doing the worst conversion ever. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Maybe just convert it all if the USD/EUR exchange rate on a given day is under n-day average, or dolar-cost average on a weekly basis. But I think holding on indefinitely to $ may cause devaluation of your capital because of inflation, and you might be better off putting some % of it in ETF's.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks jxub, I need a short term strategy indeed. In about one year I'll pay a large amount in taxes to the Spanish government so anyway I need to exchange everything within the next 12 months or so. The ETF looks like a good idea, but if you look at the oscillations there are currently in the USD/EUR exchange rate, it is possible to make the same you make with ETF in one year in just a couple of days. This is why I think to have some decent strategy is useful in this case.

<comment><USER2> I see what you mean, go with it if you think you can pull it, be aware however that if your order is quite large you might influence the market, you could sell it in batches though to minimize risk. If you want to make a profit it's already active trading, and I'd be wary of doing forex with this sum of money. Anyway this stuff is quite far from my area of knowledge... Just never trust the market completely. Good luck!

<comment><USER3> Unless you're trading >$1M you're not going to move the EURUSD market, and even then you're almost certainly fine. It's big institutional 9 figure orders where you need to worry. EURUSD is one of the most liquid markets in the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It depends on when you need that money and for what without which it's difficult to give you any advise.

<comment><AUTHOR> Pay taxes within one year (a large part unfortunately), and investing to counterbalance inflation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://transferwise.com/tools/exchange-rate- alerts/](https://transferwise.com/tools/exchange-rate-alerts/) has a tool that can email you when a certain exchange rate hit a two-week high.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this can definitely be useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is no winning strategy. If there was one, you could use it in both direction and get infinite money.</comment>


Bash is coming to Windows - <AUTHOR> Just anounced at Build! <comment><USER2> More details would have been nice ... looks like this is real though:

[http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-show-bash-on- linux...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-show-bash-on-linux- running-on-windows-10/)

Screenshots: [http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/30/be-very-afraid-hell-has- fro...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/30/be-very-afraid-hell-has-frozen-over- bash-is-coming-to-windows-10/)

<comment> TD-Linux The title bar shows bash.exe. So probably not a Linux binary executable, but a Windows port, like Cygwin or msys?

EDIT: Here's another source that claims they are unmodified Linux ELF binaries: [http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/03/ubuntu-on- windows.htm...](http://blog.dustinkirkland.com/2016/03/ubuntu-on-windows.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wonder if it's one of the newer GPLv3 Bash releases, or an older GPLv2 Bash release. The Bash version on OS X is quite outdated due to Apple's avoidance of GPLv3 software.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wondered if it will provider better/native support for fork? It will be great if this is the case, since the fork implemented by Cygiwn is somewhat slow.

</comment><comment><USER5> Probably a huge "hope" but it would be cool to see Microsoft move towards releasing some sort of windows/linux hybrid O.S. to rival ubuntu that could run linux and windows software. -- Perhaps make it foss but have some sort of premium app store with fee/split for devs like Apple to pay the bills instead to get it out there.. -- that could make me go back to Microsoft from ubuntu (as I abhor using WINE, so just don't use MS software - but I'm a developer and linux just works better for me.. ).

</comment><comment><USER6> See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11388418](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11388418)

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this announcement related to cmder.net? If so, yeah ... cool. Having this tool since months now. Works.

</comment><comment><USER8> 2 days early?

</comment><comment><USER9> Lol, KSH was announced to be running on windows a long time ago. And it was a scam (according to Mr Korn)

[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?KornShellStory](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?KornShellStory)

Let's wait to see if it has all the horrible features making it a security hole.</comment>


Improving Our Laravel Nova CRM - <AUTHOR> https://nick-basile.com/blog/post/improving-our-laravel-nova-crm <comment><USER2> Just discovering these tutorials now! I definitely want to try "build a blog in Nova."

I might even livestream it on [https://twitch.tv/megajustin](https://twitch.tv/megajustin) ;)</comment>


The IGDB.com Top 100 Games (The IMDb of Gaming) - <AUTHOR> https://www.igdb.com/top-100/games <comment><USER2> I haven't played any games in a long time. Just looking at the top positions I have a feeling the list is largely based on nostalgia? I'd expect current games to be seriously better than games from 15+ years ago?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Do you agree/disagree with the list?</comment>