Traffic Wouldn't Jam If Drivers Behaved Like Ants (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/-traffic-wouldnt-jam-if-drivers-behaved-like-ants <comment><USER2> Ants walk. They live near their necessities, and they move the entire colony/city, as a single unit, when the local economy goes bad. They only own what they can carry: their larvae and their next meal. Their payload ratio is legendary, but within the range of a bicycle + trailer. When there is a big problem, they physically band together to solve it.

We have so much to learn from the ants, but 2 ton personal vehicles, four lane city roads and a 1-2 hour daily commute, are not a part of that picture.

<comment><USER3> "They only own what they can carry"

Individual households in tightly packed neighborhoods EACH have garages full of items they only use a few times a year. Some may share, but communal living is hardly there.

Then we need more jobs and more factories to replicate more of those same random items (ladders, wasp spray, yard tools, etc) so that they be stored away and not shared. Then there is more traffic for people to get to work where they participate in production that goes largely unused.

The system has enabled far too much excess, and it's a collective educational issue.

<comment><USER4> >random items (ladders, wasp spray, yard tools, etc) so that they be stored away and not shared.

Are there any community sharing apps? So that I could loan out my ladder, etc.?

<comment><USER5> Make a facebook group for your neighborhood if you want, I suppose.

There's no way I'm loaning out my tools, equipment, or anything else I own except to people I trust _very_ highly. I like my possessions to A) be readily available and B) in good working condition when I need them.

<comment><USER2> A reputation system might help alleviate those concerns; it might even result in your tools being better maintained. I've never tried a car-share, but the general idea seems legit.

The primary motive for you to join, would be the opportunity to use the best specialized tool for every job, every time. If not even that would convince you, then you must have a truly awesome lab/workshop, and therefore you are out of our league, so to speak. Congratulations on your success, I hope to see your work on Youtube.

<comment><USER5> There's a difference between belonging to a sort of tool club, and paying with both time and money to keep things going well, and loaning out my personal possessions. I've been thinking about joining a local makerspace specifically to get access to large tools I don't have space for right now, and I have no problem with that idea. That's no different from joining a gym, in principle. (That doesn't mean I _prefer_ using communal tools. I means right now, that's what's best for my situation. Once I have space, I absolutely will be buying a lathe, mill, etc.)

However, there's a clear difference between that and loaning out my _personal equipment_. I would never belong to a car share because my car is an intensely personal possession. It doesn't sit bare and empty when I'm not driving it--I keep things in my car--and I _never_ want it to be unavailable to me. And the same goes for my tools. Even something as simple as a ladder or a socket set is personal, when it's something you selected and bought yourself.

I wonder how many mechanics you know? Machinists? Other skilled tool-using professionals? Ask some of them how they feel about loaning tools sometime.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I wouldn't be loaning out my Bergeon lathe, but maybe the 99% of people who aren't machinists might be willing to contemplate loaning out their $30 aluminum step ladder to their neighbor for an afternoon? Or maybe not, but I'd be interested in trying it out.

[http://www.ofrei.com/page_205.html](http://www.ofrei.com/page_205.html)

<comment><USER5> I'm not speaking hypothetically. I have loaned many tools, and many other possessions, to people in the past. Other people rarely treat my possessions with care, and sometimes they can't be bothered to return them unless I badger them. If I loan you a tool, and you not only don't return it in good shape and in a timely manner but make me come get it from you, I'm certainly not loaning you anything else.

There are certain things I just won't loan. Books? Hell no, unless they're textbooks. If I think someone would enjoy/benefit from reading a book, I'll buy them a copy. Tools? Probably not, unless it's about my third spare and I don't care if I lose it--and I'd probably just give it to them then. Vehicle? Maybe, depending who they are, but I'm more likely to just give them a ride. And of course, that's the thing, isn't it... I'd rather _help someone myself_ than just hand them my gear and wish them luck. And I have done so many times in the past, though I am becoming more selective about who gets my time.

Liability is not to be ignored either. Loan someone a ladder they're too clueless to use properly and you might find yourself getting sued. Besides the fact that I don't want someone else wandering off with my $300 Werner multiposition ladder--sorry, I don't have a crappy ladder I keep around just to loan out--the thing is not exactly foolproof to use. 16 feet off the ground is not the best time to realize you didn't lock the pivot correctly. I wouldn't let someone whose competence I was not sure of just borrow a chainsaw, motorcycle, or firearm either.

FWIW I don't like borrowing things myself either. I've broken friends' possessions before and even though I fixed/replaced them, it's still an awful feeling breaking someone else's stuff.

Here are some opinions and experiences related to loaning tools, if you're interested:

[http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37765](http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37765)

[http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=355714](http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=355714)

It's interesting that the 2009 thread had a lot more people who were happy to loan tools, and who had good experiences doing so, than the 2017 thread. That mirrors my experience with loaning things to and generally helping people over the last decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The problem is that what is most efficient for getting a car from point a to b is not what is best for society overall.

There are many articles online where people on residential streets got flooded with traffic because of apps like waze.[1]

In the valley we only seem good at solving single isolated problems, and we are remarkably tone deaf to the effects these 'disruptions' have on the rest of society.

1\. [http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/shortcut-app- waze-1.346300...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/shortcut-app- waze-1.3463004)

<comment><USER7> A good argument can be made that using the residential streets is best for "society overall." The amount it disrupts those who live in the neighborhood could very well be outweighed by a large reduction of wasted time by all those stuck in a traffic jam.

<comment><USER8> Streets are made for driving upon. If people don't like people driving on their streets, they should vote to get rid of them.

To boot, most people in those neighborhoods SHOULD be going to work anyways, so they shouldn't notice people going up and down their streets for the most part. We haven't hit Japan's retirement-age population level problem, yet.

<comment><USER6> Don't tell people what they should do. Maybe they work from home, maybe they don't work at all, what the heck does work ethic have to do with it?

<comment><USER8> "Don't tell people what they should do."

The pure irony of your statement.

<comment><USER6> There is no irony[1]. I never told people not to use waze, just pointed out the consequences of doing so at scale on existing political arrangements made in society.

1\. Perhaps hypocrisy, is the word you really meant. Nobody knows what irony means anymore.

<comment><USER8> Hypocrisy and Irony are very closely linked hand-in-hand, so closely in fact that the words can effectively be substituted for each other in this instance. It is hypocritical for someone to tell me to not tell someone what to do (and in fact, my 'telling someone what to do' was a suggestion, since voting is not a mandatory thing in the USA where I post from) since they are doing the same thing in effect, and it is ironic since they are effectively performing the very behavior they're wanting me to not do.

I had the last vestiges of a 'good' education, where one could use good logic to explain the usage of a word not commonly used in such a manner. I attended the 4th best independent school district in the nation at the time. That district no longer exists and hasn't in true form for over 20 years. The students are now meth and heroin addicts. My hometown has the title of heroin capital of the USA because the amount of black tar exceedingly overwhelms the COMBINED shipments (calculated) of powder and crack cocaine FOR THE NATION, and has done this consistently since it was featured on Channel One news twenty years ago.

<comment><USER6> Still no irony, sorry. Nor hypocrisy either.

Your initial comment is being down-voted, perhaps because your post contained an irrelevant prescription for what people should do, and a broad generalization of what streets are 'for'.

Should we all consider the matter settled now that you have told us what streets are for, and informed us that we should all be working?

<comment><USER8> "a broad generalization of what streets are 'for'"

Streets are designed for the flow of traffic. There has never been any other reason. Source: Former Memphis Civil Engineer.

and I didn't mean should as in "Mandatory" but as in "should be at work at this point and time given typical work days."

But people seem to be too quick to voice their opinion with a click instead of vocalizing it. Oh, yet here on the front page is an article trying to espouse the very virtue of LETTING SOMEONE SPEAK.

That's pretty backwards and pathetic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ants are physically incapable of getting into "anto-accidents" though, and they are not physically relegated to a thin, poorly maintained, and often at times, poorly planned/engineered, two dimentional ribbon that does not have their best route at heart.

Cars are only like ants in that they are discrete objects moving along set paths, but similarity in capability ends there.

Every car has a completely different universe of goals, objectives, plans, destinations, etc from each other and they lack the ability to communicate, inform,or teach other cars anything.

Further, ants do not posses the ability to get frustrated with heavy ant traffic triggering ant-rage, they simply re-route as required.

Humans driving cars can act irrationally based on nearly infinite input possibilities...

Autonomous vehicles driven by AI which mimics ant movement logic can do well for traffic, but so long as a human consciousness is directing the vehicle... not going to get better any time soon.

<comment><USER10> Street automobiles are essentially limited to 1 dimensional ribbon not 2D. To get 2D you need wilderness and ATVs, or a horse.

Also look at their performance stats, zero to 90% of top speed is a good fraction of a minute in my commuter car whereas for an ant its about a footstep ditto turning performance.

A better analogy to ant behavior than car driving would be humans wandering about a park, perhaps one of the concerts in the park series that I attend. Or maybe humans wandering about a uni campus or around a sporting event. Or a riot.

Many have commented on how well ants cooperate. Well, not all species cooperate across nests and some of the more predator like ants are kinda brutal to smaller insects.

Likewise humans part of the same "family" like a large military convoy seem to cooperate reasonably well.

<comment><USER11> > Street automobiles are essentially limited to 1 dimensional ribbon not 2D.

Well...a graph of 1D ribbons, connected in such a way as to approximate 2D.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem isn't training people to behave like ants for efficiency reasons. That shouldn't be difficult. The problem is people not planning ahead which translates to slamming on the brakes to make a lane change to exit, not speeding up quickly enough to merge smoothly with traffic which translates to the braking shockwave effect on the cars behind them, and finally, people's self-serving attitudes that translate to cutting other people off/weaving in and out of lanes/not letting others merge/etc.

TL;DR - This has been rehashed over and over but the same results are these: Ants do what is best for the colony. People do what is best for themselves.

</comment><comment><USER13> And with well-designed self-driving cars, pretty soon they will.

<comment><USER14> Assuming each self-driving company doesn't implement adversarial behavior, only cooperating with their own kind. This would both help reinforce the benefits of operating at scale and give their vehicles faster than average speeds. Interesting times ahead once we transition to self-driving more fully.

<comment><USER15> I would imagine if car vendors were creating cars that intentionally cut off or slow down their competitors the regulators would step in and do what they do best... regulate.

<comment><USER14> Sure, but let's say it would be globally optimal to slow down and let you in. You could imagine this only being done for cars of the same brand, which is different than explicitly attacking competitors. Regulation is likely that answer, but I have my doubts that "behaving like ants" will be the default behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ants only know about problems at the location that previous ants encountered them. That is, they can't look ahead to problems, and can only report when coming back over a path.

A good example of this is the ant colony in a Polish nuclear bunker - the ants consistently fall into a ventilation pipe, because there's no pheromone warning signal of the dangerous fall.

[https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/bizarre-ant- colony-d...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/09/bizarre-ant-colony- discovered-in-an-abandoned-polish-nuclear-weapons-bunker/)

And as a side-effect, there's an ant colony with no queen, no larvae, no males, but a continual supply of adult workers.

</comment><comment><USER17> At some point all the cars physically don't fit on the road. (Especially keeping safe distances between them)

At that point no behavior would eliminate traffic.

</comment><comment><USER18> This article reminds me of: If my grandmother had wheels she would be a bike

</comment><comment><USER3> If everyone started driving the moment they saw the light turn green, the collective traffic would move forward like a train. Granted, there needs to be a buffer zone between each car. But that zone often gets diminished because everyone wants to drive until they have to stop behind someone, rather than driving while looking ahead at the traffic sequence.

The tortoise/hare metaphor is relevant here: sometimes slowing down without braking within a couple hundred yards of an intersection can get you through quicker (and use less energy). The idea is to avoid complete stops (sometimes inevitable).

But there are attitudes in mental software that must be modified. "I'm in a hurry and I have to get there RIGHT NOW." "Everyone is in MY way."

Individualism can be an inefficiency of the collective, and that will be a tough lesson to teach.

<comment><USER5> 'But there are attitudes in mental software that must be modified. "I'm in a hurry and I have to get there RIGHT NOW." "Everyone is in MY way."

Individualism can be an inefficiency of the collective, and that will be a tough lesson to teach.'

Indeed, all you need to do is rewrite human nature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The issue isn't that humans don't behave like ants. The issue is that we have an aversion to public/shared transportation and promote commuting as a given.

Personal car culture needs to die for traffic to be reduced. For that to happen we need better transportation options for rural areas or more remote- work opportunities.

<comment><USER5> Why do you assume people embrace "personal car culture" just because there's a lack of public transportation? People like having their own vehicles. It's freedom and independence.

Even if I lived right on a bus line, and my workplace was on that same line, I would still drive or ride a motorcycle to work (or bike, if it was close enough I suppose). I got well over being on the bus's schedule by my senior year of high school and I have no interest in going back to that.

I do absolutely agree we need more remote work options but that's up to employers, and they don't seem to like the idea much in general, so... not holding my breath.

<comment><USER19> > It's freedom and independence

This is why I assume people embrace it. Is it really freedom and independence when 90% of your time spent in the car is in traffic to get to work and home?

Freedom to me is not wasting 5-10 hours a week on getting to work, unpaid. Even if that means sacrificing my 'freedom' to drive around the countryside on weekends.

<comment><USER5> I don't see how having a long commute somehow diminishes the benefits of having a personal vehicle. For most people, having a personal vehicle means, partly, being able to live _where they want_ instead of having to choose a home based on accessibility to public transportation, or alternately, to be able to take a job that may be lucrative but _totally inaccessible_ by public transportation. A personal vehicle offers a good deal of flexibility and antifragility that I think you're ignoring here, given the way the real world is set up.

And perhaps all _you_ do is drive around the countryside on the weekend, but that is hardly the only use for a personal vehicle. At least half the really interesting things I've done in my life would not have been possible without my own vehicle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Behaved Like Ants". You mean walked everywhere? traveled at speeds that make collisions irrelevant? Without regard for trespassing? And be so immune to terrain barriers as to be able walk upside down?

Ants really just have more choices for paths than they need.

</comment><comment><USER21> What if ants drove cars, would they still avoid accidents? Or is the problem different at scale?

</comment><comment><USER22> Ants also climb over each other from time to time: something a car is not recommended to do.

</comment><comment><USER23> Yes, in the example of ants and citronella, slower is better if you care about overall suffering. But faster is much better if you care about _your_ suffering _AND_ if you happen to quit the room before the jamming starts.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ants aren't big enough that inertia matters and have zero turning radius.

</comment><comment><USER25> Yeah but we aren't ants, we're primates. And primates are either equally competitive to cooperative or perhaps slightly more so competitive. Ants don't compete, they only cooperate.

</comment><comment><USER26> Sure, but what is an ant going to do with the time it saves by cutting in line?

</comment><comment><USER27> Sorry, when I drive I can only look out for myself.

</comment><comment><USER28> Ants drive manual transmissions and humans are getting cars that do more of the thinking for them(?)</comment>


Show HN: Tabber – Mac OS Windows/Apps Switcher. See Windows Contents Real-Time - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tabber-window-switcher/id1484581119 <comment><USER2> Simply does not work on my install of Catalina.

This app crashes every time I try to configure a new keyboard shortcut.

There are no apps or windows showing up in the switcher.

What's with the low res menu bar icon?

I will be requesting a refund if an update is not issued after my purchase is moved from pending.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey thepaulstella. I have sent you an e-mail regarding the issues. Tabber shows only the visible windows, not the hidden ones. If you have hidden windows it will not show them. Regarding the shortcuts, please let me know the shortcut that you are using because it might be a special case since in my case it seems to work and also Apple did not report any crashes while testing Tabber. Let me know about the shortcut.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Tough crowd! Congrats on launching. Not a tool I personally need (already have all the keyboard shortcuts I need), but I'll try to keep it in mind in case the occasion arises.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanx man! Hope you find the app useful if you'll get it. It's great btw xD Cheers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Or, you know, there's always HyperSwitch, which is free...

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey qmarchi. I have made Tabber to be really intuitive and customizable, also to handle the apps/windows switching and handling in the easiest and most useful way. Tabber also has other features like Activate all windows when switching app, Close app after closing last window, and some others. I made it to do a thing and do it 'good'.</comment></comment>


California Startups: Legislative Emergency - <AUTHOR> WTF?
This post is for California based startups - you may still want to read to get more info on what is going on because laws like these are cropping up in other states.
WHAT IS HAPPENING:
Last night I was informed that Governor Brown will sign into law the California state budget, including trailer bill ABX1 28 (text here: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/asm/ab_0001-0050/abx1_28_bill_20110615_amended_sen_v97.html )
This bill is commonly known as an "affiliate tax"; it establishes "nexus" (an in-state presence) for online retailers that are out-of-state if they are working with affiliates in the state of California.
WHO IS AFFECTED BY THIS:
This bill will get you if you qualify for any of these points:
1. You gain any revenue from an affiliate program such as Amazon Associates, any merchant out-of-state in Commission Junction/LinkShare/GAN, etc.
2. If the total amount of sales you have generated for the merchant in the previous 12 months before the bill is signed exceeds $10,000 OR the merchant in total has sold over $500,000 of merchandise to California customers period.
3. If you do not have a fixed IO (Insertion Order) where the merchant specifically asks to advertise on your site and does so with a fixed budget and amount to be spent (this is still shaky, I'm currently getting advice from my lawyer on this).
There are more factors I'm getting from my lawyer today, I'll post them as they come up.
WHAT IT WILL MEAN:
This bill will be signed into law on Friday apparently. As California is under a Fiscal Emergency, the law will take effect IMMEDIATELY. The moment it is signed, any merchant that has a relationship with you that qualifies in the points above will be immediately subject to fines and/or legal action.
This will result in the immediate loss of any further revenue you would gain that qualifies.
WHO SPONSORED THIS JUNK?
This trailer bill is the roll-up of three separate bills introduced in the California legislature this year:
1. AB153, Sponsored by Nancy Skinner, Berkeley. She has tried this bill every single year for 3 years. She has no grasp on the effect this will have on her own constituents (startups in Berkeley) and doesn't care. Bill text: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/asm/ab_0151-0200/ab_153_bill_20110627_amended_sen_v97.html
2. AB155, Sponsored by Charles Calderon, East LA. This is another version of the bill above, the guy who put it forth has no clue about how the internet works from what I can tell. Bill text: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/asm/ab_0151-0200/ab_155_bill_20110502_amended_asm_v97.html
3. SB234, Sponsored by Loni Hancock, Berkeley. This one is the worst of all, as it could qualify any manner of online presence/contracting/advertising as nexus. This thing is nuts and Loni Hancock has literally no clue how this works and doesn't care a whit about the effect it will have (she said as much). Bill text: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_0201-0250/sb_234_bill_20110209_introduced.html
These bills have been heavily lobbied by Wal-Mart, Target, Best-Buy and Home Depot. They created the "alliance for main-street fairness" to push these bills. The irony, that they helped kill main-street and profess to be helping it, is sickening.
OH HELLS BELLS WHAT CAN I DO?
Get the word out. There is literally no time to waste. Every single startup that relies on income that qualifies can be affected horribly by this. Tell everyone, I don't care how, just spread the word.
Write it on your blog. Make phone calls. Get to the tech blogs if you can. Do anything and everything in your power. The situation is dire and while we only have a whelks chance in a super nova to change this, we have to try. <comment><USER2> I like Amazon a lot. (Currently a Prime customer and have a California-based site that makes a small trickle in affiliate fees.) I want taxes to be low or non-existent.

But the cross-border sales-tax exemption is broken in the modern era. There's no reason to give such a big de facto price advantage to distant retailers. The infrastructure that makes a state's residents good Amazon customers – high-paying jobs, spacious homes in attractive communities with full utilities, roads for overnight deliveries – needs to be paid for with broad, low taxes on all who benefit.

Amazon benefits. And Amazon has multiple California subsidiaries.

Amazon hasn't argued against 'Use Taxes', so it's not like they're making a principled stand that states have no legal right to this 8-10% of the purchase value. Amazon just doesn't want to collect it, which essentially helps their customers evade a legal (but usually-ignored) Use Tax.

<comment><USER3> All fair points, but let's get out of the clouds of idealism and look at the actual effects of the law.

This law will move start-ups out of California without raising a single penny in new revenue. It may actually decrease the tax base by moving income out of the state!

So, yes, if you want CA to 'make a stand' to prove a point, fine -- but it makes no pragmatic sense for anyone.

<comment><USER2> Many states are now acting on this same issue, so the number of places a start-up could flee to is rapidly dropping.

New York, Texas, North Carolina, Colorado, and Illinois are definitely out. And Amazon already collects sales taxes for North Dakota, Kansas, Kentucky, and Washington.

So if your start-up is so sensitive to affiliate revenues you'll avoid all those states, have fun wherever you wind up. I suppose Portland remains a nice spot – no Oregon sales tax at all.

<comment><USER3> I think you're confused -- Amazon has affiliates in both Washington and New York; affiliates in those states are fine. And so are affiliates in the states that already collect sales tax that you list -- which makes me think you don't understand the issue at hand.

Add in the 5 states that don't charge sales tax, and there are plenty of great options to locate a business.

<comment><USER2> You're right that I was confused about the effect of being in a state where Amazon already has to collect sales tax. (I was thinking of tax-minimizing consumers, rather than the affiliates). When Amazon has a presence that requires them to pay sales taxes in any case, they have no credible threat to end affiliate payments. So, it's safe to remain an affiliate in those places. A happy result for Amazon, affiliates, and the States, apparently.

California and others want that same deal.

In New York, Amazon threatened to pull out but is temporarily paying sales tax (some reports suggest into escrow) and maintaining the affiliate program pending a legal challenge. Amazon may yet wind up losing their challenge, in which case they would have to decide whether to treat NY like other states where they collect sales tax – which would render being an affiliate safe – or to follow through on their affiliate freeze-out.

New York has essentially chosen the same course as California, so it will likely be resolved the same way in both states. Other states, likely including Texas and Massachusetts pending current legislative battles, are following this approach as well.

My point is: this isn't just a California-shooting-itself-in-the-foot situation, and a company can't just jump to anywhere-but-California to get back into the affiliate program. Many states, including many other top tech and business centers, are treating Amazon the same as California.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We were expecting this and were already preparing to relocate out of California. Since our team is largely virtual, switching to Washington as our primary place of business is very easy -- just a few documents and a new address. California in no way benefits from this -- in fact I think they just did Seattle and other tech communities a big favor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. I pivoted my business away from being an affiliate successfully and now plan to eventually leave this state. No sense in staying in a state that is blatantly hostile to it's own economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Amazon will cancel their Affiliate program for California if this happens, just got this email:

<http://pastebin.com/yRLUf0Zg>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the affiliate termination notifications are already rolling in today. Got a bunch already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So I realize this opinion will be unpopular, but the tax nexus issue is huge and really is unfair. California residents are legally obligated to pay sales tax on online purchases from out of state, but of course, no one does because Amazon et al have gone out of their way to avoid having to collect it. They effectively get a free ride, tax-wise, which just forces the taxes to go higher everywhere else.

The big box stores you mention obviously have an interest in all this, but it genuinely does hurt the local mom and pop's too.

It really needs to be fixed federally, though, or you get the kind of nose- cutting behavior you see from Amazon. Losing California from their affiliate program would hurt more than the states that came before.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with the federal point - it needs to be solved there. The mom and pop businesses that get hurt though are hurt far more by Wal-Mart et al, not Amazon.

<comment><USER5> Yes and no. In some places, certainly. In lots of urban California, not at all. Not a Wal-mart in sight, but lots of local shops and plenty of Amazon customers. As a rational shopper, your best course of action for anything over $100 that you don't need today is to check it out in the local store and then buy it from Amazon. Kinda sucks for the folks stuck maintaining storefront and inventory to have to do so with an almost 10% handicap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Today, California forced Amazon to terminate its advertising relationship with me. Today, I lost 26% of my advertising revenue. Amazon will not suffer as a result; California will not benefit either.

Unfortunately, we've known this was coming for several weeks; it was included in the budget partly to placate local booksellers and big-box retailers (Wal- Mart, etc.), but primarily to falsely claim $195 million in additional revenue (as part of about $4 billion in "smoke and mirrors" revenue claims).

Of course, everyone knows that won't happen: as expected, Amazon terminated its advertising relationships with California web publishers today, so the $100 million of sales taxes that the state "expected" from Amazon is gone. The remaining "expected" revenue will follow, as Overstock and a hundred other out-of-state merchants terminate Californians from their affiliate programs.

It's wrong that Amazon and other out-of-state retailers don't collect sales tax in all states with sales taxes. But this law doesn't address that problem at all.

This topic has been widely discussed on ABestWeb.com over the past three years as similar laws were enacted in New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Illinois, and other states. Except for New York, none of these states have collected additional sales taxes from the laws.

My blog post today: [http://blog.lessonindex.com/2011/06/california-forced- amazon...](http://blog.lessonindex.com/2011/06/california-forced-amazon-to- stop-advertising-here/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Can someone explain this for people who are not familiar with the way these affiliate programs work? Were people not paying taxes on affiliate revenue and would now have to start? Or is this a tax on the end customer buying from Amazon (which would be forced to collect CA sales tax)? How do either of these impact startups in CA? Does this impact businesses registered in DE that have an office in CA?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the way it works:

You have a startup and part of the way you monetize is by having affiliate links on your site or in your product.

Affiliate links are given to you when you join an affiliate program. The merchant you work with agrees to pay you a percentage of every sale or a fee for some action. When someone clicks on one of the links on your site and buys something, you get paid a commission.

The US constitution commerce clause basically says that the merchant is not obligated to collect sales tax if they do not have a physical presence in the state (otherwise known as a nexus). That means that if you live in Utah and sell to a customer in California, and you don't have any physical offices or presence in California, you don't have to collect sales tax.

The responsibility of reporting sales tax for online transactions falls to the citizen of California who is obligated to report it on their tax return. They seldom do.

The law about to be passed in California would designate any affiliates as a nexus for out-of-state retailers, requiring sales tax to be collected. This violates the commerce clause as it is not specifically included (in short violates the spirit of the law and is not defined clearly in the letter of the law).

This impacts startups and businesses in California that make revenue from any of these affiliate programs. Two high profile startups I know of are TheFind.com and Shopobot. A big affiliate (I went with one of the founders to lobby to help kill these bills) is Ebates.com. Each of these has offices in California and would be hurt by this bill. Apparently Shopobot is headed out of state (someone from there posted today about it), as is Ebates (to my knowledge). There are about 25,000 businesses that are going to be really harmed by this legislation and they really have no choice but to leave.

I believe this bill will qualify even if your company is registered in Delaware but you have an office in California. I'm still getting legal advice on this, but it doesn't look good.

The general result of bills like these is that the affiliates or businesses leave the state to protect their income and the state loses out on the tax revenue. Net effect is typically a dive in the tens to hundres of millions in tax revenue. Illinois is a great example where several companies with hundreds of employees left the state.

Hope this helps you get a clearer idea :)

<comment><USER8> Minor correction: Congressional authority for taxation derives from the "Welfare Clause", Article I, § 8.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the note :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can you post the phone #'s for these reps? This is awful. I want to personally contact all their offices and voice my complaints.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's Nancy Skinner's contact info from her web site (she sponsored AB153 and has pushed for these taxes for 3 years in a row):

Capitol Office: State Capitol P.O. Box 942849 Sacramento, CA 94249-0014 Tel: (916) 319-2014 Fax: (916) 319-2114

District Office: Elihu Harris State Building 1515 Clay Street Suite 2201 Oakland, CA 94612 Tel: (510) 286-1400 Fax: (510) 286-1406

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> __UPDATE __

Brown just signed the budget trailer bills, including the affiliate nexus tax. I just went into effect immediately.

That's that I guess.

</comment><comment><USER10> Affected companies will end their affiliate programs so they don't have to pay the tax. This means that the state won't collect the tax revenue anyway. It's obvious that this is just a ploy by competitors (Walmart) of companies with successful affiliate programs (Amazon).

</comment><comment><USER11> Is anyone aware of what smaller online-only merchants are intending to do (smaller players on CJ, Linkshare, etc.)? Have they followed Amazon's lead in other states where this was an issue (e.g. Illinois, Colorado, etc.)?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, a lot of them are terminating affiliates as well. The legal risk is generally too great so they go with the safest route.

Can't really blame them; the fines for violating are pretty nasty.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What's this "Amazon doesn't collect sales tax" thing? I'm in NYC and I pay sales tax on items purchased from Amazon.com.

Total Before Tax: $47.99 Estimated Tax To Be Collected: $4.26

If that's not NY sales tax, it sure looks a helluva lot like it.

<comment><USER13> You may be buying from a merchant located in NY state. Does the item you're looking at say "sold by XXX"? XXX is probably located in NY.

Amazon collects sales tax on behalf of merchants who do have a physical presence in the state.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sort of. Amazon must collect sales tax for transactions where they sell a physical product to a customer located in states where they have "nexus" (a physical presence). These bills extend nexus to include affiliates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Thank you, Silicon Valley, for voting overwhelmingly Democrat and bringing this and other business killing legislation here in California and countrywide.

<comment><USER15> That's kind of silly. Shall we thank you and other Republican voters for the recession?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "She has no grasp on the effect..."

"...the guy who put it forth has no clue about how the internet works..."

"...has literally no clue how this works and doesn't care a whit about the effect it will have..."

Really? Is e-commerce so weak that it can't compete on a level playing field with physical retail? Even if you think it is that weak, is it really so outlandish for people to think it can that it's worth a page of venom-filled invective? Yeah, Amazon's cutting off its nose to spite its face here, but doesn't that mean you should be mad at Amazon, not the state government?

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't that e-commerce is weak at all. The playing field is skewed in e-commerce's favor because it is often offering a better experience and price.

A lot of mom&pop retailers have figured this out and started selling online. They sell on Amazon and eBay and reach the entire world. Many successful major online retailers started this way.

Also, it is hard to not be upset when you go to the effort I have; I went to Sacramento and met with the politicians. I tried to change the course of this legislation. I stood up for others to try and keep this from happening. I can see the damage this is doing and how it won't gain the state any revenue at all.

I don't blame Amazon and the other retailers for what they have to do. The are faced with a decision where they can be on the hook for something that is specifically designed to muck with them. The legislation forces them to do this, not the other way around. There is a definite fiscal incentive for them to terminate affiliates; and also one for affiliate to leave the state.

In the end, tax revenue is lost by the state and the bill just forces businesses out :-/

<comment><USER16> This ignores the critique that the "better experience and price" online retail offers comes about because Amazon doesn't have to pay sales tax. This makes everything Amazon sells 10% cheaper in California, which means that even a totally equivalent experience offered by WalMart would be seriously disadvantaged.

That said, this is a very sub-optimal solution--it's lose-lose-lose. It comes down to the fact, though, that one of Amazon's key competitive advantages is being able to avoid sales tax, and no solution which is (a) genuinely achievable and (b) levels the playing field will be supported by Amazon.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, it is a sub-optimal solution. However, Amazon does support the streamlined sales tax which would achieve both points. There needs to be some federal solution to make reporting easier and the streamline seems to be the best way put forth so far.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bashar Assad emails leaked by Anonymous - <AUTHOR> http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/bashar-assad-emails-leaked-tips-for-abc-interview-revealed-1.411445

<comment> mike-cardwell These sort of mass email leaks _can_ be prevented by deploying PGP, and configuring the incoming mail server to encrypt all incoming email with the recipients public key, ala [https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_E...](https://grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_Email)

Of course, they can also be prevented by people just deleting their email after they're read it, instead of compulsively hoarding it.

<comment><USER2> They can also be prevented by not using passwords such as "12345".

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's the kind of password people use on their luggage!

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K95SXe3pZoY>

<comment><USER4> Silly mikecaron, you know HN doesn't appreciate any kind of humor...

<comment><USER3> Guess I should have made that comment on Reddit!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Finally! And I thought intelligence services would never grab that opportunity to paint their activities on Anonymous. Got to give them kudos for coming up with that password thingy as the "convincer".

<comment><USER6> You don't get points in intel by giving information away. This is the critical juncture of a realignment in a critical region of the world. Not a made for tv movie. I suspect no one is playing fast and loose with this particular situation.

Highly likely it was actually Anon that did this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm looking at some of the images in that slideshow in the middle of the article. It's showing rebels with rocket launchers and AK-47s. Then it's also showing destroyed armoured vehicles that I can only imagine belonged to the government. I'm not denying that Syrian government is being very brutal in how it's dealing with protests... but if the "Occupy" protests here in Canada and in the States took up heavy arms, I would not be surprised at all if the government's response was very swift and deadly.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but did they take up arms before or after the brutal response and is the Syrian government legitimate? (my understanding is after and no).

<comment><USER7> I mean either scenario is possible but yeah I don't know for sure.

I'm not sure how to think about the legitimacy of the Syrian government though. Is any government legitimate? I know a lot of people don't like Stephen Harper or Obama, but they deal with it until the next election. Presumably the Syrian government was elected at some point too so they must have some kind of support in the country. Indiscriminately killing peaceful protesters would certainly destroy that legitimacy, but the images I mentioned make me wonder if the army's response is totally unwarranted.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't take long to look up that the Syrian government was formed as a result of a coup decades ago, especially if you're going to make a comment about it.

EDIT: Actually I think there is a good point in your post, but I still think that familiarising yourself with the history of the country is necessary to understand where they are now.

<comment><USER7> I knew about the coup and I realize how ridiculous and meaningless a 1-party regime can seem (I've lived under one myself) but that doesn't exclude elections and political process from taking place. I did actually look up "Elections in Syria" on Google and read through the Wikipedia entry here <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Syria> and also this article came up where the opposition was apparently boycotting the elections (which is understandable if you think the system is corrupt and don't want to participate in the farce - hey it's how I feel about the Canadian elections sometimes but I still go) <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle- east-16135298>

Also when I lived under said 1-party regime I have never seen people more politically and socially engaged - and not just in a rebellious way. I live in Canada now and most people are totally indifferent as to what happens in their own community, let alone further afield.

I hope no one is reading my posts thinking "This guy is defending Hitler! Stone him!" For all I know Syria could be far worse then anything I've ever experienced. And in the end we kicked out our president too! (Although no bazookas or AK-47s were involved) So this could just be a natural progression of any authoritative regime.

<comment><USER10> _Also when I lived under said 1-party regime I have never seen people more politically and socially engaged - and not just in a rebellious way. I live in Canada now and most people are totally indifferent as to what happens in their own community, let alone further afield.

I hope no one is reading my posts thinking "This guy is defending Hitler! Stone him!" For all I know Syria could be far worse then anything I've ever experienced. And in the end we kicked out our president too! (Although no bazookas or AK-47s were involved) So this could just be a natural progression of any authoritative regime._

Okay, I just don't get the reference. From your name, I'm guessing you originally come from ex-Yugoslavia, just like me. Now, the only time I remember the country was truly under 1-party regime was when the Communist Party was in power. However, that didn't end in "kicking out our president". If you're referring to Slobodan Milošević, by that time Yugoslavia (or what was left of it) had multiple parties. True, Slobodan seized the power, but there were other parties opposing him. And the only reason why "no bazookas or AK-47s were involved" was because things didn't have the chance to get there, because the army decided not to support him any more.

The whole point -- and I'm not the first one to point this out in this thread -- is that resistance to dictatorship (or any deprivation of liberty) gradually evolves from peaceful protests to violence.

<comment><USER7> Under Milosevic there were opposition parties but they had no real chance of assuming power in elections (whether because of election fraud, or because Milosevic had real support, or a little bit of both). All official media channels were controlled by the government and the only choices for opposition at that time had was to either get in bed with the Milosevic and reap some benefits or to organize rallies and protests. Protests were largely peaceful and lasted a long time. The main surge of protests that resulted in Milosevic's downfall was in the fall of 2000 but I can assure you we were in the streets for YEARS leading up to that. It wasn't swift by any means.

<comment><USER10> That's precisely the point I was making. Resistance starts with peaceful protests and gets gradually more violent. The "main surge of protests" you're talking about was a lot less peaceful than the initial peaceful protests. It never got to the point of armed resistance, for two reasons: 1) Milošević didn't go around killing ordinary people indiscriminately and 2) the army decided to withdraw its support when he ordered them to disperse the protesters.

What do you think would have happened if general populace started getting slaughtered left and right? Sure, the vast majority of the people would've shut up and bent down their heads, because shutting the hell up is a lot better than having your kids shot or growing up as orphans. But some sort of armed resistance would have surely sprung into existence.

I don't want to be unfair or rude here, but to me it seems that you are either deliberately ignoring what people are trying to say in this thread or you're having reading comprehension problems. It has been pointed out several times that things in Syria started out as protests and turned into armed resistance due to use of lethal force to suppress protests. By now it should be clear what we're all trying to say. Using Milošević and his regime as a counter- argument doesn't hold up, precisely because Milošević's dictatorship was quite "benign" compared to extremes such as Syria.

<comment><USER7> I am not arguing against anyone's opinion and concede that in Syria it is perhaps too late for "peaceful protests".

But as an outsider I have to rely on "unconfirmed reports", "third party accounts" and "anonymous youtube videos". Watch any newsreel and this is exactly how every report from Syria is prefaced. I'm just trying to remain objective.

Maybe my paranoia has reached unhealthy levels as result of propaganda in my own life but I don't think it's unreasonable to consider exactly how the conflict escalated to this point.

It's a little scary how people are quick to turn on you unless you blindly buy into unconfirmed reports of government snipers indiscriminately taking out civilians. Taking part in this kind of group think puts you on a fast moving train towards a single resolution... when in fact there might be 2 or 3 forks in the road that might result in less collateral damage.

And finally to re-iterate.. I am not arguing that Assad is not a bastard who ordered the troops to shoot on civilians: so far he seems to most definitely be that kind of bastard. I'd just like to retain my ability to keep an open mind and consider all sides of the story. Ok now downvote away.

<comment><USER10> Now, _that_ I can completely understand and agree with. This is precisely the source of... frustration, to use a mild term, a great part of the world feels towards USA and, to a lesser degree, NATO.

From what I've seen over the years, it's _incredibly_ easy to get people convinced that "we need to send our troops to fight for democracy and freedom". Yes, the world has been peaceful compared to the World War 2, but instead of a great world-wide war, we've been having lots of small wars all over the place. The important thing is that it's "far from home", so everyone can feel both safe and righteous.

And when it turns out that things weren't really the way media reported them, people can have a round of "boo, shame on you government" and cheerfully move on to the next target.

You call it "paranoia", I call it "a healthy dose of skepticism based on empirical evidence", but I've been told it's merely "bitterness" :-P

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The leaked passwords <http://pastebin.com/uaYDfCz0>

<comment><USER12> It's not a single person or two who had a password 12345, it's like a half of the office?!

<comment><USER13> Wow, when you count 123456 too, it is a big chunk of the office. Not to mention the others that had 12345 as part of their password.

I wonder if this is an IT policy gone bad. Perhaps the guy who set it up used 12345 as the default and, of course, nobody ever changed it.

I learned a long time ago to use a somewhat complex password when setting up new accounts, because otherwise 3 years later, they will be using the insecure temp password you gave them.

<comment><USER14> Or force them to change the password on first logon? And disallow weak passwords?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I dont get it, they say hundreds of emails and they only link 2? I would like to view some more, most news sites link back to Haaretz which again only 2 documents

</comment><comment><USER16> The links to the pdf documents containing the emails are timing out. Does anyone have a mirror?

</comment><comment><USER17> Where are the leaked e-mails, has someone translated them?

<comment><USER18> They're linked inside the article:

* [http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/images/galery/assad/mail2.pd...](http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/images/galery/assad/mail2.pdf)

* [http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/images/galery/assad/mail1.pd...](http://www.haaretz.co.il/hasite/images/galery/assad/mail1.pdf.pdf)

<comment><USER19> They are not so shocking frankly.

They were addressing the common concerns Americans have on Syrian situation and answers to those.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Encrypted pastebin with Bitcoin ad network - <AUTHOR> http://binbox.io

<comment><USER2> $5 per 1k US visitors? How do you do that?

<comment><USER3> Thats not possible.</comment></comment>


Stupid Patent of the Month: A Drink Mixer Attacks the Internet of Things - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/08/stupid-patent-month-drink-mixer-attacks-internet-things <comment><USER2> No problem. Back in early 2005, we built a robot bartender that could take orders over the web (or from PDA) and would automatically mix them. This was our undergrad capstone project, so there is probably "official" documentation on file somewhere at the university. I still have our final report around too -- plus a video (shit quality, sorry: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RzoeacsXrQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RzoeacsXrQ)).

I'd be happy to make an expert declaration pro bono to get this tripe invalidated (contact info in profile).

<comment><USER3> That project must be a classic or something. I recall a team in the cohort a year ahead of mine in college doing the same thing, also for their capstone (in 2010).

<comment><USER2> It's definitely a right of passage for roboticists. Now there are BarBot competitions and bartending robot startups -- so it's definitely an old idea! There's no way that ours from 2005 was the first, but ours definitely predates the patent (ie. is sufficient prior art).

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some sort of Victorian-era steam powered machine that read mixing instructions off one of those paper wheels player pianos used. Actually, that sounds like a pretty cool project; no wonder so many people make these things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 0\. Patent something, stated as generally as possible, and shut up about it. 1\. Wait for several years until someone comes up with the same idea. 2\. Deliberately wait for several more years until 20 more companies make billions of dollars from it. Don't say a thing until the reward is big enough. 3\. Sue and claim "damages" from each company.

Given that this mode of income is made possible in the US, people can and will exploit it.

<comment><USER6> You aptly summed it up. The 'stealth mode' is the key to patent success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The whole patent system is mindbogglingly stupid. How this extremely obvious abuse can continue without any meaningful reform is beyond me.

<comment><USER8> >whole patent system is mindbogglingly stupid.

The patent system serves a purpose: In the case of drug patents, it _enables drug research to exist at all._

It's crazy expensive to bring a new drug to market. Unless we're going to have the government fund all new drug research, we need patent protection for drug development. I'd be happy to mass-invalidate all patents that don't actually have serious R&D dollars behind their creation (the idea of the patent protecting the small inventor hasn't been true for many years), but that becomes a difficult threshold to quantify.

And as the EFF points out, this patent _is not valid under current law._ It doesn't satisfy the most basic criteria of "novelty." No matter how much we improve the PTO, there will still be stupid patents that leak through. What's broken is that, once issued, such a patent is hard to tear down (and there are probably thousands of such patents already issued).

We need a vastly simplified and streamlined way to tear down obviously bad patents like this. The PTO has reached out in the past to get help from experts in judging patents; extend that to reviewing existing patents, and give the PTO an explicit mission to seek-and-destroy such patents since they are measurably hurting the tech economy.

Cut out the bureaucratic obstacles to destroying patents that show no novelty. Make a patent challenge a process that takes no more than a month, and that reliably invalidates or limits the scope of broad-reaching patents, so that if you get a bogus letter demanding payment for some patent that never should have been issued, you could potentially drag out the negotiations long enough for the patent to be rendered null and void.

That would destroy the Patent Troll business model.

<comment><USER7> > ... this patent is not valid under current law.

Yet it was approved. And with the current system, it will cost more to fight it than to give in to the extortion of the patent trolls.

> In the case of drug patents, it enables drug research to exist at all.

You should wonder if this is a good thing, if government should not be involved in this. At the moment, the decision what research to fund is economically driven. Diseases that aren't profitable are ignored.

<comment><USER8> >You should wonder if this is a good thing, if government should not be involved in this. At the moment, the decision what research to fund is economically driven. Diseases that aren't profitable are ignored.

I think both should happen. That we _want_ both to happen.

I fully support government subsidized programs, including research (and a safety net, and highway repair, and...). I'd love to see the government spend more on researching less profitable diseases.

 _However_ , capitalism, for all its faults, is _very efficient_ at some things. One of those things is the allocation of capital in research projects for those diseases that _are_ profitable.

With government allocation of money, we _might_ get the same results, but odds are good that the money would be allocated less than optimally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Alice v. CLS Bank wiped out a bunch of silly "do it on a computer" patents. Hopefully a sane judge will look at this and decide it fits under that umbrella. Otherwise we'll end up waiting a decade for the Supreme Court to come down with a decision that <trivial concept> \+ "do it over the internet" is not patentable.

It is a bit sad though that the USPTO has abdicated their responsibility and left it to the legal system.

<comment><USER10> These cases are in the Eastern District of Texas. EDTX allows plaintiffs to choose their judge. Judge Gilstrap does not believe in the precedential validity of Alice v. CLS Bank and prohibits defendants from making motions based on it unless he specifically invites them, which he doesn't do.

And that judge gets about one fourth of all patent cases in the country.

The Federal Circuit abolished the law (still on the books but null and void) that required patent litigation to be brought in the district where a defendant was accused of infringing and allowed cases to be brought anywhere the plaintiff likes. Rep. Gilmore in the House of Representatives has introduced a bill, the Innovation Act, that would restore a weaker version of that statute, until the CAFC abolishes it again.

<comment><USER11> > Judge Gilstrap does not believe in the precedential validity of Alice v. CLS > Bank

Surely the truth is a little more nuanced than a federal judge simply not believing in the precedential validity of binding precedent.

> the law (still on the books but null and void) that required patent > litigation to be brought in the district where a defendant was accused of > infringing

What law is that? I thought the general rule was that (subject to certain constraints) the plaintiff has some latitude in this.

<comment><USER10> >the truth is a little more nuanced than a federal judge simply not believing in the precedential validity of binding precedent

Not much more nuanced. The EDTX judges have a tradition of making millions for themselves and their families through patent abuse in their courtrooms. Judges cannot be forced to apply 'binding precedent' honestly if they don't prefer to. The appeals court has the same problem.

>I thought the general rule was that (subject to certain constraints) the plaintiff has some latitude in this.

That is the general rule, but it leads to abuse in IP cases, so Congress set a different rule.

By law, IP cases must be brought where the defendant resides. (28 USC §1400) The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit -- the patent appeals court, as is its usual practice, nullified the law in the service of growing the patent troll court in Eastern Texas.

<comment><USER11> It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway--nothing I write here should be construed as legal advice. Anyway...

> The EDTX judges have a tradition of making millions for themselves and their > families through patent abuse in their courtrooms.

If there were even the appearance of impropriety here, the judges would be facing consequences. If you don't like the way they rule on things and manage their dockets, that's fine. But it doesn't make them corrupt. If you have any evidence for the judges "making millions for themselves and their families through patent abuse in their courtrooms," I'd love to see it.

> That is the general rule, but it leads to abuse in IP cases, so Congress set > a different rule.

> By law, IP cases must be brought where the defendant resides. (28 USC §1400) > The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit -- the patent appeals court, as > is its usual practice, nullified the law in the service of growing the > patent troll court in Eastern Texas.

Your memory is essentially backwards here. _Congress_ expanded the language of § 1391 ([http://patentlyo.com/patent/2007/04/patent_jurisdic.html](http://patentlyo.com/patent/2007/04/patent_jurisdic.html)) and the Federal Circuit then interpreted that new statutory provision, along with § 1400, according to its plain language in VE Holding ([https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=372999894064465...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=3729998940644656498)).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Check out the profile and philosophy of the guy behind this: [http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventor- network/invento...](http://www.intellectualventures.com/inventor- network/inventor-spotlights/leigh-rothschild/)

> In order to make money at inventing, Rothschild has started a few > businesses, including BarPoint.com, which provides on-line and wireless > product information and shopping services. There was just one problem—he > figured out quickly that getting into "business mode" was not his true > passion.

> "Setting up and running companies around my inventions has been cumbersome," > he explained. "I'm not a 'runner'; I'm an inventor. I ended up selling two > of my companies so that I could spend less time in business mode and more > time in invention mode."

</comment><comment><USER13> The very same "inventor" has a patent on sharing routes [https://www.google.com/patents/US20130332076](https://www.google.com/patents/US20130332076)

</comment><comment><USER14> This gave me the inspiration to finally patnet my idea:

Doing a thing to a thing with another thing. On the internet.

</comment><comment><USER15> In France one mobile operator (Orange) attacked another one (Free) with patent violation and the judge told them something like this : "software cannot be patented: you loose, pay 200k€ of damage".

I'm quite happy about this outcome but that's only a first level judgement and it was this week so it can still be appealed..

Now what would be even better is that the patent office which accepted this software patent (illegal here) should be held responsible for this mess, but I'm not holding my breath..

</comment><comment><USER16> _1\. A system for customizing a product according to a user 's preferences comprising: a remote server including a database configured to store a product preference of a predetermined product for at least one user; and a first communication module within the product and in communication with the remote server; wherein the remote server is configured to receive the identity of the predetermined product and the identity of the at least one user, retrieve the product preference from the database based on the identity of the predetermined product and the identity of the least one user and transmit the product preference to the first communication module._

[https://www.google.com/patents/US8788090](https://www.google.com/patents/US8788090)

So, this seems to be a claim on sending a message to an automated system that contains a data store of products, saying what is wanted and who it is for.

I wonder how much effort will end up being misdirected into having to deal with just this one stupid patent.</comment>


Apple's new Chicago store wasn't designed for snow - <AUTHOR> https://www.spudart.org/blog/design-flaw-apple-flagship-store/ <comment><USER2> I live in Chicago, and this is a bunch of fuss over nothing. The 'watch out for ice' signs are everywhere and a ton of places get cordoned off in the winter. This is not unusual or unique to the new Apple store.

Have also been to the store and the blocked off area doesn't impact egress/ingress.

The real flaw of the new Apple store is its glass walls and their tendency to trick birds into flying into it. The ice thing is a non-story.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whilst I'm not going to apologise for Apple's building designers, last time I was in Chicago (March '17) I couldn't walk half a block without tripping over a "watch for falling ice" sign. So it seems very few people can design for snow in Chicago. Is this a local problem, or are these "falling ice" signs common throughout all snowy US cities?

(I'm a UK resident, we handle snow by bringing the country to a standstill for 48 hours and complaining a lot...)

<comment><USER4> Yeah, this is a much harder problem to solve than most people realize, particularly in areas that see a lot of snow. In Stockholm you see these signs as well, and in fact on winters with a lot of snow you'll see people literally shoving snow off the top of buildings in order to minimize dangers and reduce weight on the rooftops.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They could easily mitigate this with a de-icing heater around the perimeter of the roof.

<comment><USER6> A heated gutter around the perimeter with heated drainage duct would be needed for egress. If they just heat the perimeter and let water drip off the roof, it'll immediately form ice piles below.

At first it seems like a design flaw, but then how did the city zoning and building permit process not catch it? Maybe they don't care or there is no ordinance and therefore Apple's architect and builder doesn't care either. It may be entirely intentional and by design.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Kind of amusing blunder but the snarky tone of this was gratuitous.

</comment><comment><USER8> Like with the new Apple campus, the first day it was open, visitors such as John Gruber noted there were signs everywhere warning about how slippery the ground was because apparently it wasn't designed with the idea of dealing with being wet from rain which made it very slippery, or how the showcase room while beautiful was not practical for it's intended purpose. Apple's builders do seem to have an issue with designing for use versus appearance.

</comment><comment><USER9> I live here, and am not surprised that design took precedence over functionality. Not planning to visit the store anytime soon, but people say it's neat.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sheesh, why the hostility?</comment>


Is Ad Avoidance a Problem? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/is-ad-avoidance-a-problem.html

<comment><USER3> I use ad-block.

Ads are polluting my brain. I'm thinking of something while traveling on the bus and suddenly I catch myself reading some silly slogan on a board. Now it's stored somewhere and I might think about it later again. I never wanted to read that thing and feel like it has been forced upon me. How many hours of collective thinking power have been lost to ads processing ?

Ads publishers treat us like a free resources that they can tap into. They hire psychologist and sociologists to know the best way to trigger emotional responses into us. They track our every move on the Internet. TV shows are especially created to dumb us down and make us more receptive to the ad-break. And ads are so omnipresent that they are virtually unavoidable. I don't remember the last time I got convinced to buy by an ad but it must work since they keep doing it.

So yes, I don't feel bad and ad-block the hell of everything and wish I could do it in the real life too.

EDIT: Actually my biggest grief is that the price of ads is not clearly exposed. I need to know upfront how much of purchasing influence I'm expected to spend on average otherwise how can I choose what is cheaper ?

<comment><USER4> I am torn how I feel about ads.

It seems that they work for web and app publishers, because it's a way to collect micropayments, while making people feel like they are not really paying anything. Instead of asking someone to micropay you $0.001, you ask them to waste brain cycles to tune out the ad + cause some increased chance that they'll overpay for a brand name later. This might end up being more expensive than the payment would have been.

I must admit I would behave the same way. If you gave me a way to pay $5 / month that would be split among the sites I visit based on the pageviews I generate, I probably would not do it. I wonder if there would a way for such a system to be set up, so that it could offer something more than just installing AdBlock would. I doubt it, but would be happy to be wrong.

It seems that ads are the only realistic way for this to work for publishers, while adding an unfortunate mental tax for everyone not savvy enough to install AdBlock. I hope one day we will come up with a solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use ad-block, and this was only a recent development for me. At first, I didn't really mind ads since I mostly ignored them. I'm pretty sure there is a study somewhere about the long-term impact of web-based ads compared to billboards and TV ads, and I'm pretty sure that study would say that the long- term impact of web-ads would be much lower than TV ads, and basically forgotten in 5 minutes, and if not so soon, probably vaporized within a week.

The problem became too much when advertisers and webmasters decided to use other means to gain my attention. An ad in the corner of the page is no big deal. When the page starts to look like a Nascar event with no meaningful content, this is irritating. Since this apparently wasn't in-your-face enough, they added in pop-ups, scrolling ads, and most confoundedly, ads that talked. I listen to music when I am browsing, and I can't describe how disrespectful this is to me. I sometimes browse with my computer muted, but some of these ads have figured out how to turn my volume on! This is no longer an symbiotic relationship between buyer and seller, but a one-sided fuck you. This is in plain terms, abuse, and it is wrong and these assholes don't deserve a dime from my clicks or my views.

But the problem gets worse because showing me ads is no longer good enough. Now I have a few thousand companies tracking my every move. I dealt with slow- loading sites via iframes and gigs of cookies on my computer. So now, I turn on Disconnect or Ghostery.

I used to earn money from ad revenue on my sites, and I am going to put ads up on my current sites. It would be foolish for me to depend solely on ad revenue, and I certainly don't hold any ill-will toward people using ad-block, so I would have to think of other ways to monetize my content. Book review? Here's a link to Amazon with my affiliate code. It isn't as invasive and it offers my users choice without invading their privacy, their ability to see my content, and doesn't effect my site-speeds.

It is all a tough balance. Sure you want some analytics and you want some revenue, but depending solely on invasive ads and trackers doesn't serve your users. Once you lose sight of the users, you lose sight on usability, content quality, and many other aspects. I want to create a great product first and a revenue machine second.

<comment><USER6> I am happy to look at ads - if they are maintained and a hosted on the site serving them.

Far more than the intrusion into my awareness (and that's what I initially started resenting) I resent the cross-site tracking that is implicit with any hosted ad or third party ad provider.

If someone wants my attention, all they have to do is ask for it - themselves. Because while I'm willing to pay for my consumption with my attention to what is being sold, I am not willing to pay for it by sharing my browsing and viewing habits with third parties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Talk about moving the measurement to create concession. Ads are a problem. Never have there been more advertisements. Not only do people have Billboards, TV ads, Radio Ads, and Newspaper ads like we've had in the 20th century (all of which are still pervasive and virtually unavoidable), But we're not talking about a problem in avoiding all of the new types of advertising only really initiated in this century.

Perhaps the problem isn't Ad Avoidance, but Ad Overload. People will either find a means to limit their exposure, or the Ad industry will see effectiveness drop to a level that isn't profitable to the cost.

I understand that jingles and subconscious inserting one liners are impossible to ignore and extremely valuable, but I think the question rests on how many of these virtually empty platitudes a human mind can carry.

<comment><USER8> I've always found it interesting that prior to us paying for services with our private data, we paid for it with our attention. All of these implicit value transmissions are harmful to audiences, but the effects tend to be distant in time or space.

<comment><USER7> > All of these implicit value transmissions are harmful to audiences, but the > effects tend to be distant in time or space

Well I see harmful effects now. The word "consumers" for one. Children being manipulated for profits. Over-sexualization. Creating the idea that things will make you happy, and make this one of the most popular concepts in society. Dividing people through the message of "Individuality", even though that only really means buying things your neighbor wants.

> I've always found it interesting that prior to us paying for services with > our private data, we paid for it with our attention.

And now we pay with both our private data, and our attention, as both are extremely related when you want to either control, convince, or confuse someone.

<comment><USER8> I agree that they're visible—I spoke too soon. I mean more psychologically that they have distance which means that we apply a lot of value discounting. Even if I know that funding all the things I enjoy via advertisement will eventually dehumanize me, I still get to enjoy them today.

Disincentivizing local consumer gain is, if I were to wage a wide bet, something society will need to figure out. Our current values are clearly aiming at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The concept that no ads leads to cultural wasteland is so ludicrously wrong it makes me angry. First ads __are the wasteland __. Second advertising is relatively new. Somehow culture was able to flourish without ads for thousands of years.

</comment><comment><USER10> What is the point of advertisement?

Capitalism is an interesting trick. It is an artificial game, which exploits people's selfishness to benefit the world.

But selfishness doesn't usually work like that, so humans naturally try to find loopholes which would make them rich.

Instead of spending money on improving their services & products, corporations find it more profitable to spend _huge_ amounts of resources on patent trolling, tax evasion and advertisement.

Sadly, ads will not go away any time soon, because they are much more difficult to get rid of then other loopholes I mentioned above.

<comment><USER11> What if you've built an amazing, revolutionary product but no one knows about it? You make it seem like the concept of advertising at it's core is inherently bad; it isn't.

<comment><USER12> If it were truly amazing, people would hear about it. Journalists would write about it, existing customers would tell all their friends, and you would notice more and more people using it.

With advertising, a revolutionary new product from a creator without an advertising budget can't compete with the established companies that have hundreds of millions to spend and drown out awareness of others. Think about political reality: It costs millions to hundreds of millions of advertising to run for office. What kind of politicians does that give us? And what chance does a fresh, clean and honest upstart have?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use adblock, but I try to disable it on sites that

A) have solid content that keeps me coming back.

B) Do not have ads that open new windows or popups when I do disable adblock.

I actually appreciate ads when they particularly useful and focused. 99% of the time this happens when an ad network is not used and the ads are provided by the content provider intentionally (jobs in my area on StackOverflow) or banner ads on small blogs where the vendor has most likely personally contacted the writer because the market is dead on. Ad networks have a close to 0% success rate on showing me things I actually want, so I tend to disable those unless I am just trying to support the content creator with a few cents of impression money.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ad avoidance is as much of a problem as periodicals that won't rely on their readers to make money. How come magazines are ad-sponsored but books aren't? What's the difference?

(I was glad to hear the Times makes money off of subscribers. I never feel bad about blocking ads, but I felt it was my civic duty after I started paying $13 a month or whatever it is to read it.)

</comment><comment><USER15> And there's the Google stock (a company which, last time I checked, made most part of its revenue through ads) sky rocketing to prove once and for all that ads are a thing of the past...

I see this more as a crisis of the "old" media than a global ad avoidance phenomenon. Brand avoidance, consumer activism and anti-advertisement movements are real, but their size and impact on our culture (at least in Brazil) is not that big for the time being.

</comment><comment><USER16> > _But the funny thing is that advertising spending is actually increasing, > both in the United States and globally. Moreover, it has grown three years > in a row, reaching more than half a trillion dollars in 2012. This is true > even of live-television ads, which are the most intrusive and the easiest to > avoid, yet are nonetheless growing at a healthy pace—by eight per cent last > year in the United States._

For every $1 one company spends on advertising, another has to spend $2 to steal your attention. Inevitably this means the industry will continue to grow infinitely as companies continue to try to buy your attention. Look at PPC, it's a perfect example of an openly efficient market to buy your attention.

My favorite quote that illustrates this is from Seth Godin:

 _Attention is a bit like real estate, in that they 're not making any more of it. Unlike real estate, though, it keeps going up in value._

[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/07/paying- atten...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/07/paying-attention-to- the-attention-economy.html)

<comment><USER17> "For every $1 one company spends on advertising, another has to spend $2 to steal your attention. Inevitably this means the industry will continue to grow infinitely as companies continue to try to buy your attention"

It sounds more like the industry will grow to the maximum that the economy can sustain, and no further. It may appear to be unlimited _now_ but that probably means that the economy can sustain far more advertising than we are seeing today. Every time a new communications system is developed, the market will shift -- and we have so many systems now that the market is just catching up to all the ways we have to advertise.

I also suspect that there is another game occurring, which is the ads-versus- ad-blockers game, and that will also reach some equilibrium. As advertising becomes more aggressive, defenses against advertising will become stronger.

<comment><USER16> > _It sounds more like the industry will grow to the maximum that the economy > can sustain, and no further._

Fair point. I would argue that as long as (1) globalization exists (2) the population increases, it can sustain growth. In other words as long as the number of eyeballs increases so too will the people try to farm them up.

> _Every time a new communications system is developed, the market will shift > -- and we have so many systems now that the market is just catching up to > all the ways we have to advertise._

Regardless of communication medium, in theory it doesn't mean the market spends any more or less on advertising. The goal is all the same, grab attention and convert to buyer. So I'm not sure what you mean by "the market will shift".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you read far enough, the article actually suggests ad avoidance isn't so bad.

Another point to Bettridge: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines)

Also, I really liked the linked article on gaze aversion, which argues that smartphones are a bigger threat than DVRs: [http://adage.com/article/adagestat/smartphones-a-bigger- dist...](http://adage.com/article/adagestat/smartphones-a-bigger-distraction- dvrs/227725/)

Or on the internet, it's not really ad block, it's the fact that I can't remember the last time I watched a show on one screen at home without easy access to a second screen to flip through cat pictures or whatever during (muted) commercials.

Guess I'm not the only one.

> Anyone who can reach the unreachable for even a moment has their hands on > gold.

Is targeted door-to-door sales the next big thing?

</comment><comment><USER19> Sometimes I wonder how the web looks like without a ad-blocker, for example if there are ads on HN. But I never was brave enough to surf the web without one after I got my first one back then.

</comment><comment><USER20> Underlying the issue of attention and ethics is the fact that most ads are not benign static elements. They are accompanied by increasingly complex, increasingly opaque, increasingly ubiquitous, and increasingly intrusive forms of commercial (and therefore also government) surveillance.

<comment><USER21> Not to mention overt manipulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I use an ad blocker. I used to use it without a filter list and would manually block any ad I found intrusive (e.g. Flash ads, ads that pick words out of the page content and highlight them, animated image ads), but then it simply became too much work. The tipping point for switching to filter list was spending two hours trying to figure out how to block YouTube video ads.

I want to support the sites I browse, but ad networks that host intrusive ads give all ads a bad name. Even worse are the irresponsible ad networks that allow advertisers to execute JavaScript, embed PDFs, embed Java applets, or even embed an entire iframe with a URL of the advertiser's choosing.

</comment><comment><USER23> " _Back in the twentieth century, people were roughly equal in their power to avoid advertising. Only desert hermits and commune dwellers could truly live ad-free._ "

In the 20th Century it was certainly possible to avoid ads on TV. You could use the remote to mute them (or temporarily switch channels), leave the room to do other stuff while they were on, or tape your TV shows on a VCR and fast- forward over the ads.

Avoiding ads in print media was pretty easy too: just turn the page. Since print ads don't flash or make noise, they can be ignored pretty easily.

<comment><USER24> Well, but they were roughly equal in their power to do so and in how much they did it.

Currently, it's closer to "all-or-none" switch, where the majority see all ads, while many see nearly no ads at all - and it's a quite different situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> _The argument is pretty simple: if you destroy the advertising revenue that content depends on, we'll end up in a cultural wasteland, or, worse, a culture plagued by advertising that masquerades as content._

Isn't this true for things that are already paid for anyways? The car from Transformers seems to ring a bell.

The argument that advertising kills content doesn't really hold its salt for me, if people are not willing to pay for content is it that great anyways? The argument really only eliminates niche content.

<comment><USER26> Its not whether people are willing to pay for content, its can people really afford premium content? Ad-less content isn't very attractive when you have pay $99 per episode.

Essentially advertisers have been subsidizing content for years and the question is can people really afford premium TV content and in what capacity? I'm not sure what the exact numbers are but its something to consider when thinking about the " if people are not willing to pay for content is it that great anyways". People may like the content but might be priced out.

The next thing is consider is in the TV industry, you don't pay per content. Consider the film industry which is relatively ad-less, but they make most of their money from theaters. Imagine the backlash that would occur if comcast said it would remove ads, but you had to pay $13 for each show you watched.

<comment><USER19> Excuse my ignorance but where do the advertisers get the money to pay for the content? They get it from me if I buy their product. So instead giving my money to the advertiser who then gives it to the artist, why wouldn't I just give it to the artist myself (like with Netflix, etc.)?

I don't have the numbers but I am quite sure that movies at the theater woudldn't be that much more expensive either. The advertisers don't invest their own money, they invest the money they get from us the customers obviously. And they only can invest as much as we buy, not more.

Wouldn't cutting out the middleman save some bugs too?

<comment><USER26> I'm just speculating here but I could think of some reasons why advertising is a better revenue model than direct charging for a studio (also I think the theater model doesn't depend on ads. For ads I mean tv/cable/ota).

1.) Better price discrimination. Instead of 3 people paying $5.99, I could convince an advertiser to advertise 3 different products at different price points. If the advertisements were 100% effective and I got a 10% commission, it could result in one person buying a $500 Louis vuitton bag and another buying a Macy's store brand bag at ($50). That gets me a revenue of $55 compared to $18 if I sold direct. (I know that TV ads don't actually work this way, as you can't track whether a commercial led to a sale of a product)

2.) The advertiser may be willing to pay more for the ad spot than you are for the content. Again speculating here, but if an advertiser is willing to pay $20 per view and you will pay $10, then the studio is incentivised to go the ad route. (I think this is most likely, as people were livid when Netflix had to increase price of their streaming package meaning consumer could be more price sensitive).

All in all, I have to believe that advertisers haven't been pissing their money for decades, and that studios aren't so consumer hostile that they would bend infinitely for advertisers. If the charge-the-consumer-directly model actually worked I don't think studios would be so hostile to Netflix, and HBO would likely offer a streaming package that didn't depend on the cable package.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author reflects how much we've all bought into the utter bullshit that advertising makes things free. There is no free lunch, and there is no free web. In truth ads actually make things much more expensive, as I'll explain below. In addition most ads are fundamentally manipulative if not dishonest, and thereby undermine democracy and rational free markets.

Advertising simply shifts the cost of the "fee lunch" to the price of the advertised products. In other words we still end up paying. It may even shift costs regressively, toward lower incomes and the less educated, in which case the poor are subsidizing the better off.

BUT IT'S WORSE...

We end up paying a lot more than if we just paid for our content and services straight up. Not only are you still paying for the costs of the "free website", you are paying for all that advertising overhead, the costs of advertising technology and infrastructure (huge, btw), the agency and creative costs (Don Draper and company have to pay for the hookers and scotch somehow, not to mention what's-his-name who basically just lounges in his office barefoot thinking Japanese), and big marketing departments that often outnumber the people who actually write or make things.

You are also paying the opportunity cost of inferior product, because that's what happens when websites have to design to please advertisers over pleasing us, the users. Dalton Caldwell makes this point comparing Sourceforge to Github: [http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious- proposal](http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal).

Our identities and privacy are bought and sold to the highest bidders. So we foot the bill for those bids AND we pay the cost of lost privacy. A double whammy! It's personalization? Bullshit. Personalization means optimizing something for me, not optimizing for the advertiser. Again, who's the real customer?

IT GETS EVEN WORSE...

Think of the social costs of advertising. The web is infested with misinformation and manipulation. Beside the lying ads themselves, relying on a revenue stream entirely dependent on how many ads are seen severely affects the moral choices of those who decide what gets produced and how its presented. What are the costs of a misinformed and variously manipulated citizenry, of distortions to the free-market?

Knowledge and discourse are the lifeblood of both democracy, free markets, progress. The web, from the little scammy websites to the big brand ones that so many blindly trust, has a huge influence on who we vote for, what we buy, and most importantly, what we believe.

<comment><USER27> You are correct in saying there's no free lunch. However, I disagree with a couple things.

1) We, as consumers, do not pay for the ad tech infrastructure - <USER2> publishers do. Their purpose is to make the inventory more valuable and allow publishers to get more money than they normally would. Better targeted ads mean less ads.

2) The Dalton Caldwell argument doesn't hold up. Do television programs design for advertisers? Yes, but they also need to design for consumers. A television show that has commercials all the time will get less views and so will an ad infested website with a terrible experience. That fear of alienation is why Facebook isn't a giant display ad.

3) Websites aren't necessarily backed by the purchase of products through ads. There are such things as "brand recognition" ads that do not rely on instant action. After all, most television ads are not informomercials or "buy now" ads. I think we'll see more brand recognition ads online in the next couple years and online ads will become more mainstream. You'll see less scummy ads as the internet continues to grow more influential and the social cost will diminish.

<comment><USER12> 1) Where do you think publisher's get the money to pay for the infrastructure? Where do you think advertisers who pay publishers get that money?

2) Sure, they can't totally treat consumers as tools. But the product is _less_ than what it would be if it were purely designed for users. Have you heard the argument that advertisers are Google's true customers, that we are the product? Google's once famous clean and neutral search results are now cluttered and biased (see [1]). From a Wired article [2]: _" Lloyd made his pitch, proposing a quantum version of Google's search engine whereby users could make queries and receive results without Google knowing which questions were asked. The men were intrigued. But after conferring with their business manager the next day, Brin and Page informed Lloyd that his scheme went against their business plan. "They want to know everything about everybody who uses their products and services," he joked."_

3) See #1 above. Why do brands spend money on brand recognition, and where does that money come from?

You say you agree that there is no free lunch but your disagreements contradict that claim.

\---

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/new-banner-ads- push-...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/10/new-banner-ads-push-actual- google-results-to-bottom-12-of-the-screen/) [2] [http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/computers-big- data...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/10/computers-big-data/all/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> TV ads are still a growing business according to TFA. Mm...

In other news, people still go to the bathroom, fetch a snack, walk their dog, etc. during TV ads. And more recently, browse their tablet or smartphone.

Try this poll around you: You watch TV with:

[ ] No other screen on hand

[ ] One other screen (e.g. tablet, smartphone or laptop)

[ ] Two screens

[ ] Three or more screens

Then consider the price advertisers pay for "your attention" and have a good laugh.

<comment><USER26> Its hard to laugh unless you know the financials. If advertisers are paying 10 million dollars for super bowl ads and getting a 15 million dollar return then they are the ones laughing at your naivete.

<comment><USER28> Or not... Assuming your figure is even remotely correct, it's a pittance -- especially considering the budget to make that ad. And a dozen years ago they'd have gotten a lot more. Plus, it's not exactly easy to trace those $15M now, is it? It's not as if they were placing a cookie or a but on those TV viewers. They're spending it blindfolded.

Admittedly, there's more to ads than just selling. There's also a brand factor and a "you made the right decision to already buy this" factor.

Still, ever noticed those ads at bus stops, next to which virtually every bystander is busy using their smartphone? Methinks the returns in those, like on TV, are getting lower by the day.

<comment><USER17> "Still, ever noticed those ads at bus stops, next to which virtually every bystander is busy using their smartphone? Methinks the returns in those, like on TV, are getting lower by the day."

Maybe, but I think those ads tend towards the "effective if people see the logo many times per day" sort of ads. You are likely to see the ad for a moment before pulling out your phone, or while you exit the bus, etc. So maybe a major fast food chain will put its logo there, just to remind you that they exist and to increase the chance that you eat there for lunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't use an adblocker but I am real close to doing so. Why? Because of the jerks who think it is okay to run a bunch of animated graphics, moving images, or videos. I am also not happy about the pervasive tracking of users.

</comment><comment><USER30> Someone should make an app that aggregates a list of companies that pay for advertisements which are especially disruptive or annoying, so I can be extra sure that I'm not supporting their behavior.

<comment><USER31> You could just surf the web and note the ones you see, but, oh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think the problem is that some ads are so heavy-weight. I kind of wish there were an ad-block tool that would only block ads that are too large (data-wise) or that take too long to load.

<comment><USER33> There is. Adblock Plus allows plain and unobtrusive advertising out of the box. For example, Reddit was recently whitelisted, which I'm sure helps their bottom line.

[https://adblockplus.org/en/features#acceptable](https://adblockplus.org/en/features#acceptable)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I may just be paranoid, but I'm convinced that when wearable passive cameras (glass) are culturally acceptable the first thing Google et al will be pushing for is an option to "pop in", and analyze your environment.

Imagine you could see through the eyes of your customer interacting with your brand or a competitor's. Imagine being able to see how your customers shop, what they're eating today, and more importantly a view of their network from their eyes.

It doesn't have to be that creepy, merely an agreement to let Google collect information while you shop based on GPS data seems innocent enough.

Advertising will get more insidious, someone convince me I'm wrong please (I'm being sincere, I don't want to hate technology).</comment>