LiChess: Learn from your mistakes - <AUTHOR> https://en.lichess.org/blog/WFvLpiQAACMA8e9D/learn-from-your-mistakes <comment><USER3> lichess is legitimately one of the most impressive web applications I've seen and used. I've never been a big fan of playing chess, but I discovered the site several months ago, and it allowed me to get into the game in a way that I thought I never would.

It started with the tactical puzzles. They're derived algorithmically (using Stockfish analysis) from games actually played on the website. This alone is fascinating:

[https://en.lichess.org/blog/U4sjakQAAEAAhH9d/how-training- pu...](https://en.lichess.org/blog/U4sjakQAAEAAhH9d/how-training-puzzles-are- generated)

My favorite thing about the puzzles though is that I can easily explore suboptimal solutions using lichess's analysis tools. If I ever got a puzzle wrong, my first question wouldn't be what the right move was, but rather why my move was bad. This is trivial to answer with the analysis tools. You can even see the game that the puzzle was derived from and see what moves the players actually made.

The site is just a goldmine.

<comment><USER4> Very cool project, I was blown away by this feature.

Did stumble upon a bug though. I had three puzzles which I thought were buggy. I forgot the URL and details on the first one (so it may or may not been buggy), and I was flat out wrong about the second one (a bishop was making sure a horse couldn't move which I thought could be used to take the piece supposedly causing checkmate).

My third one though is clearly buggy: [https://en.lichess.org/training/61461](https://en.lichess.org/training/61461)

Its not over when the game says victory. Black has 4 (! EDIT: 3, but still) ways to avoid the checkmate, and Stockfish also suggests these moves.

Nevertheless a very nice project, including Stockfish integration. I can't repeat that enough! App of the year for me.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the goal of that puzzle is to achieve checkmate. "Victory" just means you solved the puzzle, not that the game is over.

The goal is just to find the most optimal move given the board configuration. In that particular position, white can use its knight to simultaneously attack the black king and queen. Since the king is more important, it must be moved, effectively forcing black to sacrifice their queen. So the goal of that puzzle isn't to checkmate black, but to use a temporary check against black to capture the black queen (at the cost of a white knight -- still a worthwhile exchange, since the queen is much more powerful than a knight).

<comment><USER4> Yes, I was wrong, and I concur. I have since my post completed puzzles which do _not_ have the goal to reach checkmate. For example, I had the goal of 'deflecting' an attack where I was in severe disadvantage. Its refreshing to have different goals, and forces the player to think outside of the box for such a goal thereby increasing the difficulty.

FWIW, I do not agree is (always) more powerful than a knight, but generally they are (while a queen is more powerful than a rook or bishop which is almost always better, a knight has a unique utility).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> LiChess is one of the most amazing hosted platforms out there, it's very fast, it has a minimalistic design, it has no ads and does the thing that it does very well.

Furthermore they sympathetically state: "Lichess mobile is developed and translated to 80 languages by volunteers. Just like the website, it's 100% free forever, and there will never be advertisements. This is humanist software, made open source for the love of chess and user freedom."

But there are two things on my wishlist 1) make the website work off-line 2) new variant to change the chess rules to accommodate a smaller board 5x6, 4x5 or 6x6 for even shorter games.

<comment><USER6> >new variant to change the chess rules to accommodate a smaller board 5x6, 4x5 or 6x6 for even shorter games.

That makes no sense. You can have games as short as you want. Just play using a different time control. I play 1+2 (minute plus seconds) and those games last 2 to 3 minutes at most.

BTW with variants, you're not really playing chess anymore. You're playing a different game with chess pieces. Not all the strategy and tactics transfer well if at all.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but variants are supported in the application, anti-chess, horde, atomic, three-check etc. Agreed, those are not really chess, as the rules or end conditions are significantly changed. But it's like chess960 chess, the pieces are on a different position or there are less pieces and a smaller board. The reason for my wish is that I want to play a small chess game with my son before bed, it should be a bit less daunting then a complete chessboard and only use a few pieces, so it would be both quick and easy. A time constrained regular chess game would be quick but less easy or usable for a young kid.

<comment><USER7> Can't you just make this yourself? Why does it have to be a part of the lichess platform?

<comment><USER8> Why do any rule variants have to be a part of the lichess platform?

<comment><USER5> Hi Derrick, I gave my personal answer and lichess gives this answer: "Chess variants introduce variations of or new mechanics in regular Chess that gives it a unique, compelling, or sophisticated gameplay. Are you ready to think outside the box?"

[https://en.lichess.org/variant](https://en.lichess.org/variant)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If your interested in cool and unique features, try resetting your password:

[https://en.lichess.org/password/reset](https://en.lichess.org/password/reset)

<comment><USER10> This is clever but it can't be a good captcha. Computers are really good at understanding a visual chessboard and even better at actually finding the best move.

<comment><USER11> I had the same thought, but on further reflection, while it's very doable to get a computer to figure it out, it still seems like quite a bit of work to have it read, parse, analyse and play the move for this specific page, on this one website for a low value payout. Additionally there is natural language question that has to be understood for what you are supposed to do - <USER2> doesn't necessarily have to be mate.

Since security is fundamentally increasing costs enough to outweigh the prize, I feel like this makes it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> lichess.org and the corresponding open source project[1] are really quite something. If you're at all interested in chess or code, I recommend following it -- their great execution will inspire you.

[1] [https://github.com/ornicar/lila](https://github.com/ornicar/lila)

<comment><USER13> This may sound naive, but what are the incentives and/or how are the developers of Lichess making a profit. The site is one of the best executed webapps I've ever used. What motivates the creators?

<comment><USER14> Thibault simply wants to deliver the best online chess experience. Period.

It's purely donation driven and he pulls a small salary from whatever's leftover after buying enough servers to keep the site up.

<comment><USER15> detailed cost breakdown

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CGgu-7aNxlZkjLl9l-Ol...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CGgu-7aNxlZkjLl9l-OlL00fch06xp0Q7eCVDDakYEE/edit#gid=0)

( link came from here [https://en.lichess.org/patron](https://en.lichess.org/patron) )

<comment><USER16> I'm supprised that they get $47 mn in donations. Rarely see the patron icon when I play.

<comment><USER17> $47k, not million. Amounts in that spreadsheet aren't in thousands.

<comment><USER16> Apologies, thanks for clarifying

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The Lichess author gave a tech talk last year where he discussed the design of the client and server.

[https://www.infoq.com/fr/presentations/lichessorg-open- sourc...](https://www.infoq.com/fr/presentations/lichessorg-open-source- success-story)

</comment><comment><USER19> My big problem with lichess is that you are allowed to pick white when you set up your game request and/or if someone starts a match with you and they have black pieces they can cancel game after you make your first move with no penalty. If you query the top players games in blitz or lightning their ratio of white/black games is ridiculous.

<comment><USER20> I agree it's annoying. But at least if you use the new "Quick game" pairing system there is no option to choose a color.

<comment><USER19> So now it's just people who quit half the quick games they start with you?

<comment><USER21> There is anti-boosting logic that disables your account if you abandon too many games

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's interesting that even the best chess engines are still worse at analyzing openings than humans.

<comment><USER23> Is that actually the case, or perhaps humans try a lot of sub-optimal opening lines?

<comment><USER24> Sub optimal from the perspective of the AI, some positions that seem easy for an AI looking 10 moves ahead might be tricky for your opponent.

<comment><USER23> If your goal is to win, wouldn't you want to play the move that always leads to a win 10 moves ahead, rather than a move that looks immediately tricky but is actually escapable for the other player?

And given that you want to become a better chess player, isn't it better to start learning the _best_ lines from the start?

<comment><USER13> > If your goal is to win, wouldn't you want to play the move that always leads > to a win 10 moves ahead

Sure, but the King's Gambit is just an opening, and you'd have to rely on lazy mistakes to guarantee a win 10 moves ahead that early in the game.

<comment><USER23> Right, but game theory tells us that for every single position, perfect play either leads to a win for one player or a draw, and for every position, there is a best reply.

To the extent that an AI approaches perfect play more closely than a novice or masters from the 19th century, shouldn't we go learn from the AI?

One interpretation of Stockfish here is 'I don't think this is a very strong opening'. To the extent that it's correct, stronger players will not play that opening very much, so spending time to learn it seems potentially wasteful.

<comment><USER13> Chess engines (I suppose that could be called AI) as well as databases of games have developed opening chess theory very significantly because of these reasons.

For perspective, Bobby Fischer created a version of chess which randomized the game because even in his day, he was annoyed that some players that he felt were far inferior at playing chess, could actually better memorize opening lines and enter the mid game with an advantage.

So the answer is that players very well have been learning from AI.

>To the extent that an AI approaches perfect play more closely than a novice or masters from the 19th century

AI has become better than even the top chess players of today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Lichess is so awesome, it really changed my life. The features I use most: 1\. The tactics trainer is incredible and fun. You get tactics ELO and the tactics stem from real games. Hence you can replay the game and see how this position arose. 2\. The new tactics trainer from your own games is wonderful (but many other desktop programs had this before). 3\. The analyse game function using stockfish is wonderful. Even continuously with a few lines + arrows in the game, you get immediately what you have missed. 4\. The study section is awesome. I tried to build up a complete new opening repertoire with it in parallel to the leading chessbase tool. And guess what: It's free and a nice competitor to chessbase. All study pgns can surely be exported and imported to chessbase. 5\. I really like the simul section. You find many dozen simuls a day. 25-50% of players are with 2000-2500 Elo. 6\. And if you watch the lobby in the diagram mode you always find your right partner, right time, right chess variant. 7\. And of course, the mobile version is also great. Keep on guys! We love you.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'd like to have similar tool for the game of Go!

<comment><USER27> I was thinking precisely the same. I love both games, but I'd love to see the equivalent for Go.

<comment><USER28> Many Faces of Go has some analysis tools that might be helpful: [http://www.smart-games.com/manyfaces.html](http://www.smart- games.com/manyfaces.html)

I found it worth the price. And the lower kyu AI was actually fun to play.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm a big fan of lichess. Great UX and analysis features. The only issue I have with it is that disconnection auto-forfeits the game. Would love 30 seconds grace to reconnect (like they give you on chess.com).

</comment><comment><USER29> The future grand masters who are 10 years old atm will be far in front of the current crop of grand masters due to improvements like this.

</comment><comment><USER30> Gotta ask and I ain't trying to start a flame war here.... how's the community compared to say, ICC? I was a big time user of ICC back in the day simply because the average player was high caliber after FICS started to become a bit of a dead zone for standard players (I like 45 5 or higher timed classic games )

<comment><USER31> There are more high level players on ICC because that's where the high level players are. Chess.com also has a decent interface, but they particularly excel in chess news, event coverage and community support.

<comment><USER18> > There are more high level players on ICC because that's where the high level > players are

It appears this is not the case, anymore. I logged in to both servers this afternoon, and counted the number of players rated over 2350. Lichess had 50, ICC had 6. I logged in again tonight and saw roughly the same ratio.

<comment><USER32> WHAT ratings though? Ratings are not comparable across different player pools.

<comment><USER18> My Lichess & ICC ratings are typically within 50 points of each other. It's the same for a friend of mine who plays on both servers, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The LiChess guys are just the best. The BEST!!!!

</comment><comment><USER34> how does this compare to chess.com ? that site also has a post-game analyse feature which presents alternative lines

<comment><USER35> LiChess analysis is free and better. I don't know what the Chess.com paid analysis is like, but on LiChess you can just run Stockfish on your games and analyze different lines as you like. On Chess.com you have way less flexibility (at least with the free option).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Most of the times I get this message when I open lichess.

Your connection is not private

Attackers might be trying to steal your information from en.lichess.org (for example, passwords, messages or credit cards). NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID

This resolves after 2-3 days and then within a week it again reappears.

<comment><USER37> That is suspicious. I play on lichess frequently and have never seen an invalid cert there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ha how ironic that this was just mentioned in another thread! +1 to you sir!

Now with that said, this looks quite good and really broaches chess in a modern way in terms of learning. I sure have stacks of books that I wish were just software, mostly on studying chess tactics

<comment><USER38> I haven't tried it yet, but there's an app for "running" chess books, i.e. you can play the positions described in the book right in the app. No need to have a chess board. According to the site, there's a big list of books that have been converted to work for that app.

[http://eplusbooks.com/](http://eplusbooks.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> _> I tested the new feature on my favorite opening: 1.e4 e5 2.f4!, a.k.a. the mighty King Gambit. Stockfish hates it, and asked me to review it like it was a mistake! Yet it's considered playable. Actually Carlsen played it against Arionian in 2015.

Not acceptable, Mr Stockfish!_

Actually, the King's Gambit has been (essentially) solved: [https://en.chessbase.com/post/rajlich-busting-the-king-s- gam...](https://en.chessbase.com/post/rajlich-busting-the-king-s-gambit-this- time-for-sure)

There is only one move that doesn't lose by force after 2. ... exf4, and that is the strange-looking 3. Be2. Does that mean this opening is a "mistake"? Well, maybe not, obviously a human wouldn't know the perfect lines, but personally I wouldn't play it :)

Either way, I'll certainly be using this feature a lot. Kudos to the folks at Lichess.

<comment><USER40> The King's Gambit hasn't been solved nor is it likely to be solved any time soon. That article was one of Chessbase's annual April Fools posts. [https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-chebase-april-fools- revisi...](https://en.chessbase.com/post/the-chebase-april-fools-revisited)

<comment><USER27> I've been under the impression for years that the King's Gambit, despite it being the best variation/opening of all (IMO), was obsolete at the highest levels. A chess master/instructor once assured me of this, despite it being his favorite too. He referred to it as "romantic" and said it was almost never played at GM level.

<comment><USER41> It is rather rare at high levels because someone who knows the book lines will equalize fairly easily as black. That said, it isn't losing for white, nor is it particularly easy to play as black if you've never studied it in depth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wrote something similar a while ago. [http://blunderchess.sf.net](http://blunderchess.sf.net) . Actually, the portion which broke down PGN games into FEN positions is what took a while.

</comment><comment><USER43> I found a good way to improve myself is to play against myself in my head.

</comment><comment><USER44> Can someone recommend excellent books and/or tutorials to learn chess? I know only basic rules, but no tactics/strategy/opening/etc.

<comment><USER45> For tactics I've never seen anything better than chess tempo [0], which is free, or for a small yearly subscription you can absolutely go nuts breaking down tactical themes and combinations of themes, and the tracking is _very_ good. I did several thousand tactics puzzles there and it helped quite a bit.

For books, Beginners Mind by Jeremy Silman is pretty good, as is his endgame book. Logical Chess by Cherenev is also a great introduction to how skilled people think about games but takes a different approach than Silman.

[0] - [http://chesstempo.com/](http://chesstempo.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I just poked around on this site. I think this is what I need to take my chess game to another level.

</comment><comment><USER47> Can this only be used for games played on LiChess?

Or can I upload a PGN from, for example @fbchess?

<comment><USER35> It says it works on imported games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I actually just signed up for this last week.

</comment><comment><USER49> Nice to see lichess.org on here. I'm a huge fan of the iPhone app. I usually just try to solve the puzzles of the day to and from work while on the train. It has helped my chess game a good bit.

It can be rather addicting, also. On more than one occasion, my wife has gotten annoyed with me just sitting on the couch for hours trying to solve the puzzles :P

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm not a chess player and I lose 9/10 games I play on lichess, yet I still occasionally go there when I don't feel like playing mahjong, partly because the website is so pleasant to use.</comment>


LastPass Acquires Xmarks - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lastpass.com/2010/12/lastpass-acquires-xmarks.html

<comment><AUTHOR> More people are familiar with Xmarks and this gives LastPass the buzz and the exposure. LastPass is one of the rare companies the really figured out the freemium part. Also considering that Xmarks were going out of business outright, this probably didn't cost that much. Lastpass is so far ahead of everyone and have such a superior product that the traditional browser competitions are not a match to their offering.</comment>


A chat room inside the browser console - <AUTHOR> https://console.chat/ <comment><USER2> You got my hopes up, thinking you'd discovered some esoteric way of overloading the console to behave as a chat box itself. Manually calling a global function from the console and having messages logged to it… I guess it is clever, but I hate to admit it's a bit of a letdown.

Also, long polling when websockets exist? Reeeeeeeeeeeeee

Edit: It's even worse than that! You pull in the entire chat history every 5 seconds! Reminder to everyone on limited bandwidth not to leave this open lol

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey it's Dalton Edwards the creator of Console.Chat! To whoever shared my project - thank you! And to everybody enjoying it - thank you!! I know it's silly and could be improved upon (that's why it's open source)! I code silly stuff like this all the time just to experiment.

<comment><USER4> That is what is required. Great work! Keep experimenting. Never get discouraged no matter what anybody says. And keep collaborating :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Anybody claiming to be me (Dalton) or an admin/moderator is lying. Anybody can set their username to anything and I advise everybody to exercise caution as impersonation is very easy. Thanks

<comment><USER5> Your censor doesn't work on unicode fonts.

<comment><USER6> and I wonder how easy it is to make people type the British slang for cigarettes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of hackmud, which is annoying as hell because you gotta use programming language styled commands to do anything, instead of a more shell friendly typing language... This isn't as annoying as Hackmud at least, since it's just username("") and send("") you use to talk / set your username.

</comment><comment><USER8> After typing cc(), nothing I type works:

Firefox: Uncaught SyntaxError: Invalid or unexpected token

Chrome: Uncaught SyntaxError: Invalid or unexpected token

<comment><USER9> type "send("message","color in hex"(optional))

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Does anyone know if you can exploit the CodeMirror instance that's installed with every download of the Chrome browser? Fun fact: you can inspect the web inspector if you have it in a separate window to confirm that it does indeed use CodeMirror. Very meta.

</comment><comment><USER11> I really enjoy Cabal ([https://github.com/cabal-club/cabal- cli](https://github.com/cabal-club/cabal-cli)), which is a decentralized chat client at the terminal (built on DAT/Hypercore).

</comment><comment><USER12> Fixed it in my fork: [https://github.com/MrStonedOne/console.chat](https://github.com/MrStonedOne/console.chat)

Swearword filtering removed.

</comment><comment><USER13> Oefh, this apparently doesn't page the messages, and instead loads all of them for the given domain at once at an interval—over and over again. Besides that, cool!

<comment><USER14> The 'read' api is incredibly simple.

[https://github.com/DaltonWebDev/console.chat/blob/master/api...](https://github.com/DaltonWebDev/console.chat/blob/master/api/read.php)

<comment><USER15> Make it a habit to always filter user input. Eg. Variables put into paths and SQL.

<comment><USER3> I have patched the path traversal security bug in production, just haven't pushed to GitHub. This project was coded upwards of 6 months ago I've learned a lot since then.

<comment><USER14> I would recommend never running code in production that you haven't commited into git.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 4 things: 1\. It doesn't use p2p discovery 2\. It uses php 3\. It polls 4\. We have to call functions

Nonetheless, this is a good idea and the first version works! That matters :)

<comment><USER3> Yeah it's not really possible for it to work without calling functions, as that's how the developer console functions. Thanks for the feedback! I coded this ages ago and was surprised to see it on Hacker News!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Should set background color to something that contrasts with the text color as not all browser consoles are a solid white.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is there a demo? I turned off UBlock and HTTPs everywhere. Still nothing. (FF67 on Linux)

<comment><USER18> It's in the browser console. In chrome, that can be accessed by menu->more tools->developer tools

<comment><USER15> Ctrl+Shift+I should work in most browsers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm a bit disappointed, I did domain = "news.ycombinator.com" and no one showed up to the party.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is cursed since the mods are totally overwhelmed right now but it's super funny

</comment><comment><USER21> I love everything about this.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why the swearword filter ? Already got some toxic conversations here ?

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there a way to get the browser console on mobile?

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not really sure what's special about this. Instead of showing chat messages in an element on the page, they are emitted via console.log().

<comment><USER25> It's nothing fascinating engineering wise. It's just clever and interesting to see.

It's a cool toy project people can play with. I'm surprised nobody ever did it before. It's so clever.

<comment><USER26> I wouldn't say nobody ever did it before... as it's not something incredibly novel... but it's still fun.

For example, while playing Airmash (an web game posted here around Dec 2017, now dead but another implementation still exists in starma.sh ), some of us were using a private chat (it used websocket though)... and this chat could be loaded and used via the console from any site....</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker News Kansai #5: January 25 in Kyoto - <AUTHOR> http://hnkansai.doorkeeper.jp/events/2295

<comment><AUTHOR> By the way, we've been having a hard time attracting Japanese audiences to the past meetups, in part because I'm not very familiar with the Japanese tech ecosystem yet (and not speaking Japanese doesn't help…).

So if any of you Japan HNers have any suggestions to reach more locals (blogs to contact, people to follow on Twitter, etc.) they'd be very welcome!

<comment><USER2> I did a write-up of my advice on the topic here: [http://www.doorkeeperhq.com/event-planning/organizing-an- int...](http://www.doorkeeperhq.com/event-planning/organizing-an- international-event)

For a good overview of tech events going on in Japan, see [https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=fvijvohm91uifvd9hr...](https://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=fvijvohm91uifvd9hratehf65k%40group.calendar.google.com)

One thing you could do is try to support some local events. Some ideas:

* Give a presentation at a local event (English is fine; I can introduce you to event organizers in the design / Ruby community) * Serve as a mentor for a startup weekend - <http://startupweekend.jp/> * Participate in this event for event organizers: <http://devlove-kansai.doorkeeper.jp/events/2338> (I'll be presenting in [broken] Japanese)

Feel free to follow up with me if you have any more specific questions.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> More info here on the HNKansai site: <http://hnkansai.org/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Damn, I just came back from Japan, would've loved to go! Really bummed I missed the Tokyo meetup too. I really fell in love with Japan on my trip and would've loved to find out more about the tech scene over there.

</comment><comment><USER4> We will also be doing an event with Github cofounders!

<http://github-onlab.peatix.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool, I _might_ be able to come!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know what Japanese programmers use for social network, but try making a mixi group for hackers and see if you attract any people.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hello from SFHN! We hope to see more from HN Kansai!</comment>


Wall Street Is Giving Up On Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-02-10/wall-street-is-giving-up-on-revenue-challenged-twitter <comment><USER2> Twitter is so powerful. When Paul Graham wants to say something, he takes to Twitter to do it. Not Facebook. Not Hacker News. Not reddit.

The same goes for many of the most influential people in the world.

Twitter has incredible utility for powerful people but very limited utility for average people. Maybe the exact opposite of facebook. On Facebook, my friends interact with me. On twitter, I speak into the void.

<comment><USER3> It's interesting to see how the power and reach of every word on Twitter by politicians or journalists, yet Twitter is unable to profit from it. On the other hand, nobody cares about the power of a Facebook posting or an instagram, yet Facebook makes so much money of the frivolity.

<comment><USER4> >yet Twitter is unable to profit from it.

Twitter could front run wall street on Donald Trump tweets.

<comment><USER5> It does seem like having early access to all tweets would be immensely valuable, even if it was only a second of lead time. (Sure, Trump tweets are valuable on their own, but market info has to be encoded into coarse-grained info about individually useless tweets as well.) Unless they have an explicit policy against it, Twitter must be selling this, right?

<comment><USER6> New business model: For $1M per tweet, you can have a 50ms head-start on tweets from Trump. Just Trump, just one tier of headstart/pricing. You prepay for the next N tweets. You can set time-ranges (like, "when the markets are open") for when you want to pay for the headstart.

I bet they could get a few tens of millions of revenue there. Probably HFT firms would at least experiment with it, right?

Might get them into some serious regulatory crosshairs.

<comment><USER5> What regulation? Insider trading requires actual insiders; non-insiders are generally allowed to trade on non-public information.

<comment><USER7> A non insider that posseses material, nonpublic info is not allowed to trade on it until it becomes public.

<comment><USER5> The sources I can find say there is only a violation when the person trading is an insider or is purposefully tipped off by an insider.

[http://www.sandstormgold.com/_resources/policies/SSL_Stock_T...](http://www.sandstormgold.com/_resources/policies/SSL_Stock_Trading_Policy.pdf)

[https://www.sec.gov/answers/insider.htm](https://www.sec.gov/answers/insider.htm)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Definition_of_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insider_trading#Definition_of_.22insider.22)

The most direct version is here:

> In 1983, Switzer was sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission > (SEC) for an alleged civil violation of the laws prohibiting "insider > trading" of securities. He defended himself as having innocently overheard > the information while lounging on the bleacher behind some corporate > insiders—at a stadium where Switzer was watching his elder son compete in a > track meet. The case was tried in Oklahoma City United States District Court > (before a special U.S. District Judge appointed from Kansas). The case was > dismissed at the conclusion of the Government's case for its failure to > demonstrate that there had been any purposeful disclosure to Switzer.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Switzer#After_coaching](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Switzer#After_coaching)

[https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/1986/062086grundfest.pdf#pag...](https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/1986/062086grundfest.pdf#page=09)

Do you have a source that says otherwise?

The situation is even more clear for Twitter. If I'm a marine biologist making the world's most detailed measurements of the ocean, I can clearly use this info to buy or sell stock in a fishing company, even if I don't release that info publicly. Likewise, I can sell that info to someone else who makes the trades.

<comment><USER7> After reviewing the info you provided, I beleive you are mainly right. The only exception i can think of would be a situation where trump possesed inside information due to his position, then shared it via twitter early. That would be a violation, but it gets complex, and im having trouble formulating the exact line.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for your response!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've never seen a company in such an advantageous market position as Twitter, do so little with so many employees. They benefit from so much free advertising through self-promotion where people proudly display their twitter handle on TV or at the end of news stories and articles yet they're still unable to achieve any growth or noticeably improve their product.

From the outside it looks like they're at a virtual feature freeze and stand- still meanwhile all other Tech giants are firing on all cylinders with a continuous stream of new features and products.

Meanwhile Twitter struggles at implementing the most requested feature for many years - to edit Tweets. They're also in a prime position to benefit from Live video which they still can't capitalize on, there's no discovery and you can't even subscribe or get any notifications to the shows you're interested in, instead all you see is a tiny animated gif in the corner that's easily ignored as an Ad to show you what's playing.

I don't see how Twitter can continue as an independent company, the best thing that can happen to them is to get acquired and get some new blood in charge of product development, unfortunately there's so many trolls and hate speech on Twitter that no-one wants to touch them - another area they continue to flounder on.

<comment><USER9> > Meanwhile Twitter struggles at implementing the most requested feature for > many years - to edit Tweets

I thought that the immutability of tweets is a feature, to be honest.

<comment><USER10> git style version control would be ideal: retain the old but allow for minds to change; goog's cloud office suite already does it

personally i find the editing almost as important as the content(o)

seeing what people change and when can illuminate context that would be hidden from a first thought best thought adherence

(o) [http://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/yal.00049.001_...](http://whitmanarchive.org/manuscripts/figures/yal.00049.001_large.jpg)

<comment><USER11> When a tweet is reported on the TV news, people only see a screenshot. People aren't going to know if it was edited, when it was edited, or what was edited.

Many would also be pissed if after they retweet something, the original tweet changes in a meaningful way.

<comment><USER10> yeah, you'd have to have a visual cue.. even an option for displaying a commit message alongside the message

allow respeak an immutable quality, keep the respeak as is and have a flag signaling the original underwent an edit

the interest is in more clarity and transparency

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1) Open up to third party developers.

2) Charge developers for API access based on usage.

3) Incorporate some sort of single payment solution to facilitate ease of charging users for payment without users needing to give credit card details to developers (e.g. like Apple does with the AppStore).

4) Let third party developers worry about how to get users to pay by providing things of value (for various definitions of value).

You're welcome.

<comment><USER13> I think this could actually work in a few years. Developers will have long forgotten about the last time Twitter crushed everyone relying on their API. Then, once their revenue is up the power will go to their heads and they can repeat the cycle all over again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Twitter's operating expenses are on par with Tesla's. Not to diminish how hard it is to manage Twitter's load but their spending is way out of proportion. And their revenue is on the order of 2 bn/year; there's no fundamental reason they can't be profitable.

</comment><comment><USER15> <rant>

I really like(d) Twitter. I feel it has played a huge role in democratizing public opinion, so that I don't just create my opinion based on what media houses throw at me. For me, it narrowed the gap between so called "celebrities" and normal people. It made possible for me to interact with and get insights from people whose work I care about.

I feel so bad about the poor execution on their product side. They get free marketing - they are all over the tv, news websites etc. So many popular people use Twitter to share information. What more can they ask for?

There are so many things that Twitter could've done first just because it was in a position to like no-one else:

1\. Media sharing: absolutely ridiculous experience to the point that people share images/video on some other platform and end up posting the links in tweets. Even then, for an consuming user, the browsing experience is shit. WTF twitter?

2\. Content sharing: twitter as a platform has way more relevant content (URI's, first person messages etc) than any other news/media platform. What do they do with it? They do nothing. Twitter can learn so much about my interests from so many signals that I (used to!) give them - they do nothing to help me read content that interests me.

3\. Live: there is no better place than twitter to potentially learn about what's happening right now. How do they facilitate live content sharing? By having a completely different app for video (periscope) which creates a fragmented user experience.

4\. Fun: they had vine - they kept it as a separate app (again creating fragmentation) and eventually killed it. How are you going to attract young users if you don't keep on trying new, fun, cool stuff?

5\. Spam: for all the attention that fake news is getting right now, Twitter has been in a unique position to innovate in this area. Unfortunately, afaik, it has done nothing.

</rant>

<comment><USER16> > How are you going to attract young users if you don't keep on trying new, > fun, cool stuff?

This is definitely true. They don't at all try to get the young demographic while FB always makes small changes to keep it fun(video profile pics, reactions etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> | Om Malik is the most recent of many people to ask why Twitter is such a big deal.

| The reason is that it's a new messaging protocol, where you don't specify the recipients. New protocols are rare. Or more precisely, new protocols that take off are. There are only a handful of commonly used ones: TCP/IP (the Internet), SMTP (email), HTTP (the web), and so on. So any new protocol is a big deal. But Twitter is a protocol owned by a private company. That's even rarer.

| Curiously, the fact that the founders of Twitter have been slow to monetize it may in the long run prove to be an advantage. Because they haven't tried to control it too much, Twitter feels to everyone like previous protocols. One forgets it's owned by a private company. That must have made it easier for Twitter to spread.

\- paul graham 09'

<comment><USER18> Has anyone explored the design space that Twitter is a member of? It seems like it's just a cut-down version of publish-subscribe with a couple of eponymous channels (write, read) per user (and then the complexities of message threading).

The invention of hashtags was an attempt to add adhoc pub-sub channel support (not, as they are seemingly sometimes assumed to be, a metadata/folksonomy thing or an opportunity for a pithy closing phrase.)

All this is easy to duplicate. Is any of it even patented by Twitter?

<comment><USER19> [http://blog.app.net/2017/01/12/app-net-is-shutting- down/](http://blog.app.net/2017/01/12/app-net-is-shutting-down/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What Twitter should do is extraordinarily obvious.

They should get very lean. Their platform has real value, which is why they're not disappearing in terms of use. There is also no replacement for what they provide and how they provide it, as of now.

At $2.4 - $2.6 billion in annual sales, they should be generating $600 to $800 million in net income. It's an absurdity of mismanagement that they're not. Their margins should be extremely high. At that level of net income, they can sustain a ~$20 billion market valuation and remain fully self-sustaining while they focus on growth + product.

They built Twitter as if it was going to be a juggernaut with high perpetual growth. They've been scaling back that structure very slowly, which is a mistake. They need to pull the band-aid off a lot faster, the crazy growth days are over.

If Wall Street doesn't give them a reasonable multiple on their new highly profitable structure, they should then work with perhaps a Ballmer + private equity + other insiders, to take Twitter private, where it can get out from under the Wall Street quarterly rat race.

<comment><USER21> I keep wondering about their part-time CEO. That has got to have some impact on the company culture. Just imagine how you would feel if your CEO couldn't be bothered to commit to the company full-time; would you in turn make suboptimal decisions through apathy? And then multiply that by everyone in the command chain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Given the choice between believing stock analysts and stock prices, I err on the side of believing the price.

The price is set by people betting their money based on all available information INCLUDING stock analyst opinions. Any stock analyst's opinions are ALREADY factored in the price. Unless you have a reason to believe either that the market is irrational or that you have a more informed opinion, there is no more reliable prediction that you can make of future stock prices than current ones.

And remember, there are many, many, many billions of dollars looking for any market irrationality or lack of information so that investors can profit off of mistakes in current stock prices.

<comment><USER23> The market may not be irrational, but I think that's only because the concept of rationality doesn't apply to markets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> at what point do we all wake up from the momentary lapse of reason and admit that Twitter is not a good idea? it's not a good way to communicate (unless propaganda and vicious harrassment is what you're going for). it's not a good way to make money. it's not a good way to advertise. it's not good for anything really.

<comment><USER25> Those trying to further a cause such as the Arab spring my beg to differ.

Twitter is an important platform for open communication.

<comment><USER24> > Arab spring

oh? and how did they turn out for everyone?

<comment><USER26> It tutned out good for Tunisia

<comment><USER24> how about Libya, Egypt, and Syria?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think Twitter's business model should be to charge users based on the number of followers they have. Give them a free threshold of say 10K followers, and then charge them a fee after that. Users clearly benefit, and often profit, from their large follower base. Twitter should profit from it too.

<comment><USER28> > _Give them a free threshold of say 10K followers, and then charge them a fee > after that. Users clearly benefit, and often profit, from their large > follower base. Twitter should profit from it too._

Interesting idea, in theory. In reality, the "thought leaders" will simply move to another platform that is "free". Is Twitter markedly different than Facebook/G+/Instagram/Snapchat/email?

<comment><USER29> Wouldn't it be _more_ social (in the sense that human organizations are often hierarchical/weblike) in this way?

You are a thought leader - you'd want to have your immediate 10k followers to retweet your message to their groups.

If you absolutely needed more leverage, you'd pay for the privilege.

<comment><USER30> The 'thought leaders' are the product. They're the reason new people sign up. It would probably be better to implement something like twitch where you can 'subscribe' to someone with lots of followers for a small fee that twitter can take their cut of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think of Twitter as free multicast SMS on the internet. There is no business model in that.

<comment><USER32> WhatsApp is 'just SMS' but it was bought for 20+ billion.

Twitter has a multitude of opportunities to monetize their user base. Their management has just done a poor job.

<comment><USER33> WhatsApp was bought because it was popular in India and Brazil, markets that have historically been weaker for Facebook Messenger. Together, they ensured that Facebook would get a nigh-insurmountable lead in marketshare over Google in the messaging space [1].

Twitter in neither a threat to anyone, nor a strong candidate for a defensive purchase [2][3][4]. The two companies are hardly comparable.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13465483) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11914620](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11914620) [3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420732](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420732) [4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12083975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12083975)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I just want Twitter to die as soon as possible so that people move on to a better (and hopefully a decentralized) alternative.

<comment><USER35> Like Micro.Blog?

[http://micro.blog/about](http://micro.blog/about)

<comment><USER36> Thanks for the tip.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Twitter is the perfect case of a technology company that should have never gone public. They should have followed their valley peers with inflated valuations and no actual business and take private equity and foreign investment. Wall Street calls bullshit when they see it, and smart people short these types of companies. Silicon Valley doesn't provide a way to short these propped-up companies, they just continue to self-promote themselves on private equity and foreign investment. Wall Street is the most perfect market in the world.

</comment><comment><USER38> Twitter is useful, but needs to be smaller as a business. If they focus on their core business, tweets, and get rid of at least half the employees, they'll be profitable. They just have to accept that they're no longer a growth company.

</comment><comment><USER39> Between the censorship, the "banning people for reporting child porn" thing, and the lack of new products and features (what are they spending so much money on, they spend as much as Tesla for crying out loud!) I think it's well deserved scorn from Wall Street.

</comment><comment><USER40> > _When analysts start to throw in the towel on a company, that is not a good > sign._

I've been led to believe that is the exact opposite of the truth. Isn't the consensus most bullish at the top and most bearish at the bottom? Its almost self evident that a stock is most hated when it is low and most liked when it is high. That's not to say that it can't go lower and so from a short term trading perspective it might not be good, but at some point the sellers will be exhausted and shorts will have to be covered and the trend will reverse. Unless Twitter they are so broke that they are going out of business, at some point it will become a good buy.

<comment><USER25> I was eyeing up the chart for evidence of this, because my knee-jerk reaction was similar to yours.

I'm still not sure how to judge this. The stock is essentially at the same place it was last year. There was some growth through Sept, Oct (hmmm...election??) but then it came back down to the mid-teens.

At this point, the stock is trading higher than expectations, which I think could be a good thing.

I didn't know about the earnings call when somebody mentioned Twitters disastrous stock price yesterday, I took some of that to be due to Snap filing, and investors looking at the market realising that much of Twitter's revenue will be moving over to Snap. That has probably already happened, but putting an IPO out likely raises a few eyeballs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Lofty valuations are based on expectations of a lot of growth in subs and $/sub.

Even though they have a lot of users and some $/sub - without the growth it won't justify the valuation multiple.

So they have to get priced more like a normal company, with normal growth rates.

Which is the 'bubble burst' that so many post-IPO companies have to face. There's a few that can keep it going, or make up for it in other ways ... but not Twitter.

I feel Snap may be in the same category: their offer at least today is somewhat nichy. My mother uses Facebook, but will never use Snapchat as it is today.

<comment><USER42> Please, what are "subs" and "$/sub"? I haven't heard of these. Thank you.

<comment><USER41> 'sub' is the business shorthand for 'subscriber'.

$/sub is revenue per subscriber.

$/sub, sub growth, 'cost of acquisition' of each sub, (and assumptions about margins) is what 95% of the valuation is based on.

Now that they are 'going IPO' they're not going to be judged so much on 'lofty ambitions' and 'intangible market opportunities' \- they are going to be judged mostly on 'how much free cash flow' they can generate over time.

So, $/sub (minus the cost to acquire each sub) and some assumptions about operating margins gives you the how much free cash flow per customer they can expect. This is widely different on different platforms.

Sub growth tells you how many customers investors can expect over time.

Hence profits.

Obviously it's very crude, and there's a lot more to it - but that is the most essential, basic economic equation that investors will look at to determine a valuation.

Snaps $/sub right now is negative at the 'net' level - i.e. after R&D, etc. - but the key metric people will be interested in is the 'gross' revenue (and profits) per subscriber. The idea being - one day, 'R&D' costs will stop growing so much, and customer base will still grow quite a lot. R&D and Operational costs are spread over an ever increasing user base, which will put the per-subscriber net margins into the positive.

<comment><USER42> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The board was wrong to allow Jack Dorsey to be the CEO of two public companies at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER44> Free Twitter business plan suggestion:

Given Twitter's utility to the rich, famous and powerful why not introduce a follower limit of say 1000?

If you want to allow more people than that to follow you then Twitter will sell you an increase in that limit.

</comment><comment><USER45> of course, it's barely growing.

<comment><USER46> this is the sad truth.

Twitter is a perfect example of something that could have worked as a small company with moderate expectations and a tight budget. Instead they presumed that "eventually" the money would catch up to their Fortune 500 ambitions, if they could just get enough eyeballs.

Welcome to the new "real world" of the "Long Tail," Twitter. Turns out that being the #2 social network, just like being the #2 music streaming service, the #2 ride-sharing network, or the #2 search result means a big step down in importance, reach, and profit potential in the Long Tail world (and being #50 puts you in a completely different zip code altogether).

Twitter created expectations that it cannot meet.

<comment><USER47> Agree that Twitter could have been great with different expectations.

However, I don't even think they're number 2. Depending on how you count it, that's got to be WhatsApp, Instagram, SnapChat, or LinkedIn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> 1) Make a better version with extra features tailored to celebs and businesses. 2) Charge for the better version.

</comment><comment><USER49> I don't even think the product is bad...they just haven't been able to discover a successful business model.

</comment><comment><USER50> Will we see the same fate for other low interest capital fueled profits-are- so-yesterday unicorns? Dare I say Facebook even?

</comment><comment><USER51> Short Facebook, Buy Twitter

</comment><comment><USER52> HN folks, does _every_ post about Twitter need to be made about the president? The unwarranted injection of politics into every single discussion is getting very, very tiring.

The article didn't mention him. He's not even in the top 25 most followed or active people on the site. Obama had more influence as #3! And yet, as I write this, _every single comment_ in this damn thread mentions him. [1] Enough already! This is the first time I've wanted to flag an article for its comment section rather than the article itself.

[1]: [http://i.imgur.com/cHEV2ww.png](http://i.imgur.com/cHEV2ww.png)

<comment><USER53> This kind of comment, though surely well-intended, unfortunately doesn't push us in the right direction. The best move is to just post civilly and substantively on the topic at hand.

Edit: do flag unwarranted injections of politics, because you're right that we're not here for that either.

<comment><USER52> What would you suggest I do?

Given the comment score over the past few minutes, this is a contentious issue, and not one I'm willing to risk my flagging privileges (or other backend consequences like slowdowns or post throttles) for.

"Commenting substantively" about Twitter does nothing about the political flamebait that always winds up in threads about the subject, yet the only tool I have to combat it could blow up in my face.

<comment><USER54> To be fair, at this point the overwhelming majority of the comments for this submission are politics-free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> forget twitter, gnu/social is the future [https://gnu.io/social/](https://gnu.io/social/)

<comment><USER56> While I would like to see this as the future of social relations, I doubt it in just about every aspect.

The reason services like twitter and snapchat are so dominate is because they're so easy to use and uniform across everything. It's why everyone now prefers slack/discuss to IRC and other legacy channels (among features aswell). Typical users don't have time to research and setup software, they simply just want to use it.

I understand that there's federated signup and all that, but the second you have to explain what any of that means to a user, you've basically lost them.

On the first listed GNU site:

      This is the place for you who are tired of private companies controlling your conversations and contacts and selling them for profit.

While I care deeply about what this statement has to say, I don't think my ideals fall in line with the average twitter user. They simply don't care about who's profiting off of it, as long as they get to announce their next vlog.

<comment><USER55> of course, this isn't going to happen by itself. foss is famously bad at user acquisition and ui/ux. the interesting thing about federated (or federate- able) social networks is that they aren't designed as silos.

i'm in the very early stages of building a meta-social network[1] thing on top of matrix that gives you bi-directional access to gnu/social, irc, reddit, nntpchan, &c.

 _while I care deeply about what this statement has to say, I don 't think my ideals fall in line with the average twitter user. They simply don't care about who's profiting off of it, as long as they get to announce their next vlog._

put your money where your mouth is and help us[2] fix it.

[1]: [https://source.heropunch.io/bbnet](https://source.heropunch.io/bbnet)

[2]: [https://riot.im/app/#/room/#bbnet:matrix.heldscal.la](https://riot.im/app/#/room/#bbnet:matrix.heldscal.la)

<comment><USER56> I'll take a look tonight and see if its something I can contribute to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Punishment? Wasn't Twitter missing from transition team meetings?

</comment><comment><USER58> I think twitter needs to be saved. It obviously needs a lot of work especially with language and spam tweet filtering and fake accounts. But it is totally doable.

Why can't twitter charge a certain fee to official verified accounts of famous people who do use the platform to engage with their followers. And to justify their fee they can provide them with more tools at hand. I am not a very heavy twitter user but it is one social network product that has the power to do good and bad in real world.

<comment><USER58> What was the negative point for?

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Here's something from a heavy Twitter user that could save Twitter:

1) Offer ad freedom. Twitter has IIRC 300M users - if only 10% of these pay 1€ a month, that's 30M a month or 360M a year. Way more than enough to keep the lights on, and maybe even enough to replace lost ad revenue.

2) Open up the app ecosystem again - allow third party clients features like DM pictures and polls. Many people are fed up with the official mobile client.

3) Donald J. Trump. About 25M people follow him, and ad slots on his account should fetch a boatload of money. Not to mention that people sign up for Twitter just to read his latest brain f.rts... these could all be "upconverted" to full-on engaging Twitter users.

<comment><USER60> I doubt that 10% of Twitter users would pay 1 EUR / month (=> 12 EUR / year!) for an ad-free experience.

Here is one survey I found, which states that ~10% of people said they would pay at least 10$ / year for ad-free Facebook: [http://marketingland.com/survey-ten-percent-would-pay-at- lea...](http://marketingland.com/survey-ten-percent-would-pay-at-least-10-per- year-to-remove-ads-from-facebook-19885)

Surveys greatly overstate such figures because it is much easier to say "yes I want to pay" than to actually hand over money. Also, I would argue that Facebook is more important for most users than Twitter (their central problem).

<comment><USER61> In reality most people who want "ad free" anything will just install an ad blocker - it's free.

<comment><USER62> The ads on social networks are native content though (in the feeds). Much more difficult to block.

Not to mention most use in in native mobile apps, a further hinderance to ad blocking.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Plane dreaming? Welcome to air travel in 2075 - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/plane-dreaming-welcome-to-air-travel-in-2075/story-e6frfq80-1226177250247 <comment><USER2> It's like a reprint of Popular Mechanics from the 1950s. Just need to mention a flying wing and a large ground effect vehicle for cargo.</comment>