LinkNYC's 5m Users Make 500k Phone Calls Monthly - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2018/09/29/linknycs-gigabit-kiosks-hit-1-billion-sessions-and-5-million-users/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Two years after the deployment of prototypical kiosks in Manhattan, Intersection — a part of the aforementioned CityBridge, which with Qualcomm and CIVIQ Smartscapes manages the kiosks — is ready to declare them a success. The roughly 1,600 Links recently hit three milestones: 1 billion sessions, 5 million users, and 500,000 phone calls a month."</comment>


Separating advertising's wheat and chaff - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/2015/08/12/separating-advertisings-wheat-and-chaff/ <comment><USER2> There are so many technical challenges here, but the payoff is worth it, at least for consumers.

I'm not convinced that advertisers or the companies which pay them will be willing to make the changes necessary to enable the world outlined in this article.

</comment><comment><USER3> Outstanding & thought-provoking, thank you.

</comment><comment><USER4> (Disclosure: I've spent most of my career in digital media)

Taking a step back with this article, I think there's a few things going on here. There's clearly frustration with the extent to which people are tracked (often without their knowledge), and I don't disagree with that at all. Then there's the point of "well, is that extra data actually paying off to be worth the negative brand perception and invasiveness?" And the answer there totally depends on whom you ask and how you ask that question.

Taking an even further step back I can say that the entire point of advertising is and has always been to get a message in front of a target audience, whether it is driving sales, retaining customers, fending off competitors, promoting a non-profit cause, etc.

There are many channels to do that these days, and advertisers constantly struggle with the question of "is this meeting our objectives?" The joke about not knowing which 50% of your ad spend is being wasted is very much alive and well today in a world the availability of data has vastly outpaced the mainstream advertiser's ability to harness it. So I'd say overall, the answer to the question around whether the extra tracking is worth it is largely a question mark when you get into the nitty gritty of it.

If someone asked me what the hardest part of my job was, I would say it is determining what the contribution was of a given channel/campaign/placement/keyword/ad/etc. to my end goals, ie. attribution. The display industry is massive and make no mistake, we've come a long way in terms of understanding effectiveness. Ultimately though, most advertisers who do any sort of branding campaigns will tell you that they don't know definitively what value that contributed if you hold their feet to the fire on questions around attribution. Did the personalized ecommerce retargeting ad really remind them to buy or would they have done so anyway? What's the value of a view-through conversion? If a video pre-roll unit autoplays without sound, what is its value compared to a user-initiated play? Etc.

I say all of this not as an excuse (our industry has many issues, make no mistake), but to highlight the fact that as an advertiser, I honestly wish at times that it was as simple as the old glory days of Madison Avenue where the creatives ruled the roost. Heck, I'd even be ok with the days before people realized the shortcomings of last-touch attribution what with ignorance being bliss and all that.

As an advertiser, I don't want to spend my dollars where they are not effective. I also don't want to piss people off with it. I recognize that is a hard line to walk and you can never please everyone. That said, I don't see things going away or drastically changing on the data collection side. There are enough companies who have conclusively determined that this is a more effective approach for them than not using the data. It will take either some revelation that their data is a lie and it is NOT in fact working, or it will take policy and legal action to get them to stop.

The broader question should be around finding other business models that work, and trying to find new approaches that remove ads from the picture. People will vote with their wallets figuratively and literally, even if they disagree with you.

For those that hate people like me and my industry on principle, the current approach of finding technological solutions to limit data is a great start, and I can't blame people for using them one bit. I can't say we'll ever see eye to eye, but I can say that I respect your opinion because the industry as a whole has not done a great job of earning your trust. I wonder if people felt the same way back in the days of Madison Avenue when ads first started encroaching on more and more media channels (despite the fact that many media channels only grew to their current popularity BECAUSE of advertising).</comment>


Pin-pointing China's attack against GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://blog.erratasec.com/2015/04/pin-pointing-chinas-attack-against.html <comment><USER2> To say that the "Chinese government" is involved I think understates the situation. We know as fact that their army has invested considerable time and money in a cyberwarfare unit. And that the company that operates the Firewall is a military contractor.

When Sony was hacked a few months ago, the media couldn't wait to label it a "terrorist act" by North Korea.

I just now searched Google News for "github terrorism".

1\. [http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/24319/github-falls-victim- to...](http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/24319/github-falls-victim-to-possible- chinese-cyber-attack)

2\. [https://grahamcluley.com/2015/03/github-ddos- attack/](https://grahamcluley.com/2015/03/github-ddos-attack/)

That's all, even though the evidence appears more clear that the Chinese government is involved. Whereas North Korea's responsibility was in doubt. The silence speaks volumes.

But is "terrorism" even the correct word for this? When Saddam invaded Kuwait, was that a terrorist act? Consider this quote written by a Chinese military analyst 30 years ago:

      those who take part in information war are not all soldiers. Anybody who
      understands computers may become a "fighter" on the network. Think tanks
      composed of non-governmental experts may take part in decision-making;
      rapid mobilization will not just be directed to young people; information-
      related industries and domains will be the first to be mobilized and enter
      the war..

(From [http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/chinarma.htm](http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/chinarma.htm))

However, the Chinese may respond by claiming this was a preemptive defense. That GreatFire.com was designed to weaken their security and they were justified in taking action to protect the sovereignty of their computers. Haven't western nations done the same when they were threatened by terrorism or nuclear arms?

It seems to me that we have officially entered the era of a weaponized internet.

<comment><USER3> _> But is "terrorism" even the correct word for this?_

Don't use that word. It's barely even a word any more, its become one of those weaponized magic symbols used for mind control. See also "freedom", "globalization", "sharing", "choice" and so on.

Instead, you can just use words like "murder", "destruction of infrastructure" and the like.

<comment><USER4> You forgot 'communism'.

<comment><USER5> And what about "hackers"? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "blocking GitHub is not really a viable option" he said. Tell that to the world's craziest democracy - India, which banned GitHub, Vimeo, Pastebin and a bunch of others in December last year. Some bans were lifted later. Source : [http://www.zdnet.com/article/india-blocks-32-websites- includ...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/india-blocks-32-websites-including- github-internet-archive-pastebin-vimeo/)

<comment><USER7> Agree with this. Anyone who thinks blocking GitHub is not really a viable option has never been on the other side of the GFW.

The Chinese government will happily block any site they want to and they have little/no regard for the popularity or usefulness of the site in question, and often they will block popular foreign sites to help copycat local versions thrive.

Off the top of my head they block Facebook, Twitter and Youtube entirely and Wikipedia selectively (used to be permanently also). I can tell you they don't care about blocking GitHub.

The also have the ability to dynamically block sites based on page content rather than just entire domains, so it would be perfectly feasible for them to block just the project pages and not the entirety of GitHub.

<comment><USER8> You can't selectively block content on an SSL connection w/o having a back door to the encryption keys used to secure the connection. A man in the middle attack would be detectable unless the root certificates were compromised.

<comment><USER9> That's where CNNIC comes in. All they need to do is issue their own fake certificate for (insert blocked site here).

<comment><USER7> Isn't it wonderful to have your own certificate authority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I have a question with the method, hypothetically, if I am the attacker, I know the ttls of each packets tha tis passing through, right?

So when I get a packet with ttl so small that won't survive long enough to reach the target, instead of altering, I just leave it along. So the probe will never know where I am in the route.

<comment><USER4> But upstream providers within the TTL range will. And during a DDoS like this you can bet that everybody in the chain that is on the good side is in constant communication.

<comment><USER11> A sufficiently sophisticated man in the middle can be anywhere between origin and destination and have arbitrary distribution. Proving that a particular node is responsible for a particular alteration requires using a trusted trust computer to send packets into the great wall on their first hop.

The experiment in the article required trusted trust of packets destined for the great wall passing through US infrastructure. That this infrastructure can generally be considered neutral is no guarantee that it was in this case. Any router or switch can use arbitrary tables and conditional logic on any packet. The purpose of the experiment was prosecuting a particular suspect not arm's length analysis.

<comment><USER4> So that experiment would need to be repeated in a distributed manner from as many points of origin as possible.

A friend of mine runs a honeypot service that uses servers all around the planet, someone like him would be in a good position to run analysis like this.

<comment><USER11> Logically, sufficient distribution of testing doesn't negate sufficient distribution of evil demons. Practically, if the evil demon has state actor level resources, it is more likely to have sufficient distribution than an ordinary commercial or private interest.

On the other hand, I don't think it's really necessary to prove with technology that the 中國人民解放軍 is behind this. Diplomatic logic is sufficient. The behavior is simply an internet equivalent to jamming the Voice of America.[1]

Github is broadcasting. The 中华人民共和国 has a sovereign's policies regarding broadcasting. The 中國人民解放軍 executes those policies. Github operates with a business model that ignores sovereigns at its own peril. Calling one sovereign for aid when dealing with another sovereign also carries peril.

Allowing political content in an online community always comes with the risk of trolling and flamewars. A hands off editorial policy only means Github hasn't made a tough decision about what the Github community is _not_. Decision day can only be put off so long.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America)

<comment><USER4> That's the odd thing, they could jam it instantly if they so chose to. The GFWs primary purpose is to limit access to certain urls from within China.

Now of course those repos are intended to circumvent that but once someone has them they are out of reach of the GFW. So blocking those urls at the GFW would seem to be all that's really needed.

Tools like these should be accessible from as many places as possible.

<comment><USER11> Diplomatic logic suggests Github is serving as an object lesson:

      1. 中华人民共和国 has laws.
      2. 中华人民共和国 is well connected to the internet.
      3. 中华人民共和国 can project its interests
         around the world easily in rather nasty ways.
      4. 中华人民共和国 can project its interests from
         within its borders.
      5. 中华人民共和国 has an interest in controlling
         commerce within its borders.

I believe this is an act of foreign policy, not domestic. It's not about unplugging citizens from the internet. It is about achieving some parity with other state level actors in regard to what is and isn't allowed on the internet.

中华人民共和国 's interests are orthogonal to those of the US and UK. It is not so much interested in the internet as an organ of a surveillance state or as an alternative source of foreign intelligence in lieu of boots on the ground.

The mechanics of the attack are entirely within the realm of sanctioned internet behavior: visiting a site places javascript in the browser without explicit approval of the end user. The javascript may do something not in the user's interest. The javascript may generate unnecessary internet traffic. The purposes for which the javascript does so are solely the purposes of the site injecting it.

The great wall comes with terms and conditions.

<comment><USER4> > The great wall comes with terms and conditions.

I don't consider myself subject to those terms and conditions and attacking github affects me in a very direct way. As such this is not acceptable and I hope that sufficient work will go into un-ambiguously determining who did this.

<comment><USER11> Github is a commercial interest. 中华人民共和国 has in recent years worked with commercial interests to mutually acceptable solutions. From 中华人民共和国's standpoint, what the internet's surfs want is Github's concern and they can make their business decisions accordingly.

Consider it a DCMA takedown notice.

<comment><USER4> Why do you use '中华人民共和国' instead of China?

<comment><USER11> Besides being batshit crazy?

For the same reason I use "Github" instead of saying "distributed version control ddos'ed" or "git unavailable on the internet". It picks out a more precise set of attributes and methods and limits the likelihood of slipping into anthropomorphisms such as "The Chinese." In particular it limits the range of what is historically relevant: ground combat against the US Army in the 1950's is, against the USMC in 1900 not so much.

Since I believe this is a matter of foreign policy and international trade, the sovereign and the corporation are the appropriate level of abstraction for analysis and language should reflect that in order to be clear.

Was it the 中國人民解放軍 or the 中华人民共和国?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> While this is a very interesting read (learned a thing or two), the author's conclusion is a bit suspect.

 _Using my custom http-traceroute, I 've proven that the man-in-the-middle machine attacking GitHub is located on or near the Great Firewall of China._

Although suspicious, it seems one would need to know a lot more about China Unicom and their infrastructure to say this conclusively.

<comment><USER13> I think the thing everyone is forgetting is that if it isn't state sponsored/approved then why hasn't it been turned off (as far as I am aware the attack is still ongoing).

If it was a hack, surely China Unicom should have fixed it by now?

<comment><USER14> Hasn't it stopped as of March 31? Github system status now shows green, whereas they previously said "We will keep our status at yellow until the threat has subsided": [https://status.github.com/messages](https://status.github.com/messages)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _> While many explanations are possible, such as hackers breaking into these machines, the overwhelmingly most likely suspect for the source of the GitHub attacks is the Chinese government._

Correlating the circumstantial facts that China has a giant firewall, the content being blocked is getting around China's firewall, and an attack came from somewhere deep in one of China's largest backbone providers, does not make an 'extreme likelihood'; it makes a weak correlation. Likelihood requires reviewing known outcomes to determine a likely result. What other known evidence of specifically these three behaviors by the Chinese government are you basing this conclusion on?

 _> This is important evidence for our government._

You've taken a massive leap in logic from a machine inside China manipulating global traffic to attack servers in the US, to conclude that _it is more likely to have been the Government than anyone else_. This is exactly the same as saying any attack originating from the US which appears to be related to US interests must be from the US government. If this was the basis for how we concluded all investigations into illegal actions, anyone who 'looked like' they did it would be found guilty, sans evidence. That may be how other nations' justice system works, but not ours.

Furthermore, in no way is either Github or Baidu's analytics considered 'key US Internet infrastructure'. I mean, Git is even a decentralized system - people can still get work done if it's down!

This is not evidence of the Chinese government's complicity, and pretending it is creates a dangerous logical fallacy that could improperly shape public opinion.

</comment><comment><USER16> When TPB was pretending to be in North Korea, someone proved that they weren't, [1] because of how quickly they responded to a ping. Could someone narrow down the physical location of the firewall similarly?

[1]: [https://rdns.im/the-pirate-bay-north-korean-hosting-no- its-f...](https://rdns.im/the-pirate-bay-north-korean-hosting-no-its-fake-p2)

<comment><USER17> You can really only use a method like this to say where a server is not (it can't be halfway around the world because the speed of light limits it), but this is assuming you're communicating directly with the server. The method used to inject these packets on the wire makes this sort of analysis even harder to do this sort of analysis (and if there was concern, appropriate amounts of random delay and noise could be added).

<comment><USER16> >The method used to inject these packets on the wire makes this sort of analysis even harder to do this sort of analysis

I was under the impression that this was a man on the side attack, so they'd sent a bogus SYN-ACK back to you the moment that they saw a SYN. Theoretically, you should still only be dealing with one RTT.

>(and if there was concern, appropriate amounts of random delay and noise could be added).

I don't think China cares if it gets traced back to them.

<comment><USER10> > I don't think China cares if it gets traced back to them.

No they don't, and when time arrives, they deny whatever the accusation is, and claims it's a defamation.

<comment><USER18> They already did this a couple days ago when someone asked them about it [http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/251...](http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/2511_665403/t1250354.shtml)

"On your second question, it is quite odd that every time a website in the US or any other country is under attack, there will be speculation that Chinese hackers are behind it."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _This is important evidence for our government. It 'll be interesting to see how they respond to these attacks -- attacks by a nation state against key United States Internet infrastructure._

It seems a bit of a stretch to say that Github is "key US Internet infrastructure"...

<comment><USER20> If GitHub were down for two days that's a metric shitload of projects that can't get deployed. There's a significant number of software projects with dependencies on Github-hosted stuff.

<comment><USER21> If github were down for two days, you're probably right, those projects can't be deployed.

But if github were down for two months, the nature of git suggests that deployment for those many individual projects would shift either to the originators' infrastructure, or some other aggregating service.

<comment><USER22> This is true but very limited as well. GitHub isn't used for just git now, it's also an issue tracker, a wiki (yes, those are repos as well, but you don't usually have them sync'd), Github-only services (e.g. Travis), package managers (e.g. Cocoapods and Crates).

There is a lot riding on GitHub that developers use. Hell, even closed-source companies sometimes use empty GitHub repos so they can use Issues for openly available tracking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There's absolutely no proof in this.

The fact that a request with a TTL smaller than 12 does not trigger a response does not mean the responder is the host after 12 hops. Assuming none of the previous hosts misbehaves (they could be increasing or at least not decreasing the TTL) you can only conclude that it is none of the later hosts, but it can still be any of the previous ones.

That leaves you with Comcast AND China Unicom hosts and, considering that the replies you see in the traceroute results can easily be spoofed, it can be any third party as well.

Possible scenarios include (I don't say they are more likely):

1\. Comcast is producing the responses, but only does so if the request TTL is large enough to make you blame China Unicom.

2\. China Unicom hands the packets over to a third party after just a few hops in their backbone. The third-party sends ICMP Time exceeded messages looking like they are from other China Unicom hosts to make you blame China Unicom.

Conclusion: This is either an obvious attack from within the China Unicom backbone OR a more sophisticated attack where the attacker wants to a) hide his identity and b) blame China Unicom for it (I can't think of a scenario where b) would be a by-product and not on purpose).

Just saying. The sentences in the post that include the words "prove" and "proven" are simply wrong.

</comment><comment><USER11> The article is titled:

       Pin-pointing China's attack against GitHub

</comment><comment><USER24> Is there a statement from github what they think who did the ddos?

<comment><USER25> No and there probably won't be. Them publicly saying they were being attacked by the Chinese government would put them on some seriously questionable legal ground. They definitely went the right route by not saying anything.

<comment><USER26> Which laws would they be violating by announcing they were attacked by China?

<comment><USER27> A number of Chinese laws, or executive orders or whatever, actually might be violated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't get it. Why doesn't GFW just block those github pages in particular? A lot of people can fork these repos but they won't be anywhere popular to the current pages.

<comment><USER29> HTTPS. They can't tell what URL a user is requesting.

<comment><USER30> > HTTPS. They can't tell what URL a user is requesting.

I am sure they have a private key of some of the CAs shipped with major browsers lying around somewhere...

<comment><USER31> I believe the chinese government actually operates a CA. But it isn't worth it to them to expend such a valuable asset on an operation like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> That's cool, I didn't know how traceroutes work. Is he planning on releasing the http traceroute tool?

<comment><USER33> Here ya go: [https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/masscan](https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/masscan)

        @collinrm I just took masscan, changed the HTTP request,
        then tweeked the code to generate a small TTL.

Source: [https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/583433175302479872](https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/583433175302479872)

<comment><USER34> On OSX, it's available via Homebrew, brew install masscan

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't agree with author's conclusion, having a server in a chinese ISP does not mean it's orchestrated by chinese gov. Also, I don't suppose MITM attack organizers have no clue about how TTL works.

<comment><USER36> They didn't have a clue about $.ajax with a 'script' data type did they?

<comment><USER35> So they should be chinese gov, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> In the end, I wonder if the purpose of the great firewall is not for China to defend itself against foreign cyber attacks or because "free internet" might not benefit China currently.

I'm sure computers are now mainstream enough that it would matter for any country to put cyber warfare as a key strategy. The US and the west dominate through open trade and easy communications and free speech. Maybe that makes China vulnerable, and they're trying to defend themselves economically.

You can accuse China all you want, but if you're an american, it's harder to listen to those accusations.

<comment><USER11> The US spent more than 50 years protecting its residents from Cuban sugar and Cuban cigars and sunburns on Cuba's beaches. Such are the absurdities of powerful sovereigns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> That the server is located in China doesn't proof anything.

<comment><USER39> This analysis doesn't just prove the attack orriginated in China, it shows that it takes place immediately inside the first Chinese network the connection reaches on it's way into China. The second piece of analysis shows that this is the same network layer in which the network blocking performed by the Great Firewall occurs. So the great firewall and this attack are both being implemented at the same point in the network infrastructure.

<comment><USER40> I think an interesting question is how likely it is that some of the great firewall is compromised.

(It could be by some party outside of China, or by some group inside of the Chinese government that does not have an official mandate to use it for things like the Github attack)

<comment><USER41> Extremely unlikely. GFW is, ironically, considered "critical infrastructure" and is closely monitored.

<comment><USER42> Ironically? How is it ironic that a centerpiece of the he Chinese Government's control and monitoring of information is considered critical infrastructure and closely monitored by the Chinese Government?

<comment><USER41> I was saying "ironic" as this article classifies GitHub as important infrastructure. But anyway I totally agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> China is the second most powerful country in the world. Do people really think they are that stupid ? They are not going to attack an American company using infrastructure that anyone can track back to them. This Github DDoS has got to be the work of someone trying to frame the Chinese government. Has _anyone_ considered that angle ?

<comment><USER44> Take a look at this brand new executive order authorizing economical and financial sanctions against global "cyber threats": [https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/04/01/our-latest- tool-c...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/04/01/our-latest-tool-combat- cyber-attacks-what-you-need-know)

This GitHub business looks more and more like a false flag operation.

<comment><USER4> How does 'economical and financial sanctions' equate to 'Whitehouse gives order to start false flag operation against github'?

The more that comes out and the more silence there is from the Chinese government the _less_ it looks like a false flag operation. Usually the victim of a false flag operation (China in this case, not github) would be very adamant about its non-involvement and would work very hard to expose the originator.

<comment><USER44> Yes, just like if Glenn Beck really did not rape and murder a young girl in 1990 he would be very adamant about his non-involvement and would work very hard to expose the actual culprit: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beck_v._Eiland- Hall](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beck_v._Eiland-Hall)

<comment><USER4> I'm sorry, I _really_ do not see the parallel here.

A parody is just that, we're talking about a several day long real attack here.

And if you read that article you'll see Beck sued to get the domain. So it's not like he ignored it, and besides it was obvious from the beginning that he wasn't the one that registered the domain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This mouth-breathing Bullshit really needs to stop.

 _the overwhelmingly most likely suspect for the source of the GitHub attacks is the Chinese government._

Why would the "Chinese government" carry out an open attack against an american company for absolutely no potential gain at all?

Do you really think they are stupid enough to believe such an attack could remove these two software packages from the internet?

<comment><USER46> What is the diplomatic downside for china exactly? If China can occupy & claim other countries territory in the face of international pressure without a problem, what makes you think a convert op to DDoS github is out of the question?

<comment><USER45> _what makes you think a convert op to DDoS github is out of the question?_

The fact that this attack doesn't pass even a most cursory risk/reward analysis.

Anyone with the technical smarts to carry it out must be well aware that there is zero upside potential for China. The targeted projects are not gonna disappear, github is not gonna disappear.

All possible outcomes are negative; The targeted projects get extra media attention (Streisand effect), the "Cyberwar" narrative in the west is fueled (cf. this HN thread), in the worst case there could even be a minor diplomatic quarrel with the US.

What do they have to win here?

<comment><USER46> I see several wins for china, the first one is showing off the offensive power of their "great firewall". Not everyone has the ability to withstand such an attack, the chilling effect is real.

<comment><USER45> What chilling effect?

Github is up and running after all. Both targeted projects are online:

      https://github.com/greatfire
      https://github.com/cn-nytimes

Looks like if you want to mess with China then all you have to do is put your material on Github. You think that is the lesson China wanted to teach the world?

<comment><USER46> You dont see a chilling effect when the choice is either host your content on github or be blasted off the internet?

Lets not forget this wasnt an easy thing for github to handle. Their service still isnt running at 100% normal. Not to mention the cost burden they're currently dealing with.

<comment><USER45> _You dont see a chilling effect when the choice is either host your content on github or be blasted off the internet?_

Was there any doubt about China's ability to blast sites much bigger than Github off the internet to begin with?

They're the second largest economy in the world. They don't need to play painfully obvious MITM tricks on their own infrastructure to carry out an attack - which then doesn't even have enough oomph to make a dent on a large but probably not particularly hardened site.

 _Lets not forget this wasnt an easy thing for github to handle._

That doesn't change the message that this random, half-assed neck-slap sends.

If this was really done by Chinese authorities and if I was a Chinese dissident then I'd be thrilled rather than chilled. Who knew keeping my stuff online could be as easy as uploading it to Github!

<comment><USER47> Nobody ever said China couldn't run DDOS tools. This is a deterrent signal sent to businesses outside of China. It publicly demonstrates that China has the will to punish businesses for serving certain kinds of content. Although it's obvious who benefits, it's just deniable enough that they have avoided international censure; today nobody can reasonably think "China wouldn't do that because they fear reprisals," since they just did it; which helps China maintain a credible threat to businesses. They aren't trying to destroy GitHub, just to exert control over businesses which are out of their regulatory reach.

<comment><USER45> _It publicly demonstrates that China has the will to punish businesses for serving certain kinds of content._

Do you really think anyone concerned with these things (activists, VPN providers, companies doing business with China) needed a half-assed, unsuccessful Github attack as a "deterrent signal"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Is this April fool joke? Or are you guys really taking this whole Chinese government theory seriously? If you were leading a 1.6bn populated country how much you would care about a programmer's code site?

To give all those conspiracy theorists a clear picture, what really happened is merely the scale of problem you have never worked on or dreamed to be working on outside China.

This happened year ago when a Chinese state funded train ticket booking website accidentally deployed to production with a opensourced Javascript vendor file still linked to github. And first day that site went live, 30 billion visitors tried to secure a ticket for coming Chinese New Year, when took down github for a good while. Yes it was a DDOS attack from China, by train ticket buyers.

Last November, Chinese online c2c marketplace TaoBao.com, saw 16.7bn transactions in one day, with more than 1 billion CNY settled in a minute. If any of the web dev responsible for even a small promotion page left a link of cool jquery plugin from GitHub, you could have written another holy crap evil government attack post here.

<comment><USER13> I made a similar comment elsewhere in the thread, but lets assume it's not the Chinese government and it's something accidentally deployed or a hack by some unknown entity.

Why is the code still running a week later? It doesn't take that long to find the offending server/s code and remove it. Especially as it is making the Chinese government look bad, there would be added incentive to fix this pretty quickly.

<comment><USER49> If it was an "accident" that made the Chinese government look bad, we would be hearing about the "unrelated" murder of magistrates by now.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Learned iOS, launched Photopoll - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/photopoll/id456863839?ls=1&mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> After trying to learn iOS, and OS X programming before that, I finally decided to make it my full time job. No more excuses for not having time, and no loss of focus either. Six months and many iterations later, Photopoll got approved yesterday and is finally on the app store. After years of Ruby development, I find Objective-C to be a very refreshing change.</comment>


BMW Is Turning Its Electric Vehicle Batteries into a New Business - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/bmw-energy-storage/ <comment><AUTHOR> This article is similar to "Why Used Electric Car Batteries Could Be Crucial To A Clean Energy Future" [http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/09/3775606/used- sec...](http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/05/09/3775606/used-second-life- electric-car-batteries/).</comment>


Compromised Keylogger-aaS exposes network of Nigerian 419 scammers - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/09/spy-service-exposes-nigerian-yahoo-boys/

<comment><USER2> I'm a Nigerian studying for a PhD in the UK.

Confidence scams have always been a problem even for other Nigerians. We tend to be very suspicious of people on average.

A couple of years back my father, who teaches at a Nigerian university, got a call from his head of department who was in Europe at the time. He needed help clearing some important items that were being held by customs who were demanding payment to release a moderately valuable shipment into the country while he was away.

My dad was put in contact with an agent who requested some money to sort things out. At first, it was a token amount, but things escalated gradually to the point where he was considering "borrowing" money from both my sister and myself (we were both on scholarships while at university). My sister was home at the time and grew suspicious from the outset but my dad was totally convinced that the voice was authentic and that the caller simply knew too much. It was actually offensive for my sister to presume that he was that naive.

Fortunately, he fought the need to save face by not disappointing his boss in a crisis and told the agent that he couldn't send any more money. The numbers were disconnected immediately afterwards and his Head of department had no idea what he was talking about when he eventually returned. He didn't push the matter any further as it would be embarrassing to admit that he was conned.

This was a well calibrated psychological attack designed to take advantage of his personality and reputation as a man that can be relied on. It also preyed on his need to maintain his social standing among his peers. He had nothing to gain from this other than gratitude and an appeal to greed would have set off red flags immediately.

My conclusion was that this was probably engineered by some students who knew them both fairly well.

419 scams are fairly common in Nigeria and you become a target if you are perceived to be wealthy or recently come into some money. The "Yahoo boys" are ridiculous though because they are fairly easy to spot and are only marginally literate. It is part of a foreign condescending attitude to assume that that level of poor presentation is an acceptable standard for an educated Nigerian. Most of us think people who are scammed are suckers but it's an evolutionary game and some of the scammers are really efficient predators.

<comment><USER3> > _" The "Yahoo boys" are ridiculous though because they are fairly easy to > spot and are only marginally literate. It is part of a foreign condescending > attitude to assume that that level of poor presentation is an acceptable > standard for an educated Nigerian. Most of us think people who are scammed > are suckers but it's an evolutionary game and some of the scammers are > really efficient predators."_

My understanding is that the poor grammar in classic 419 spam emails is at least sometimes intentional. Only stupid uninformed people will fall for something that has all the traditional hallmarks of a scam (spelling errors, ALL CAPS, poor grammar), and those are the only people that the scammers want to invest time in.

<comment><USER4> That's also why there are many references to religion in those texts. Religious people have self-selected for being gullible and acting on belief rather than on facts and so are presumably easier to prey on. For the scammers this is part of their cost/benefit analysis, if they have lower hanging fruit to pluck they'll definitely concentrate their efforts there.

<comment><USER5> Indeed, "God will oversee this transaction and make sure everything goes smoothly for us faithful." Ka-Ching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Another level of this is referred to as 'Yahoo Plus Plus,' which…. involves the use of human parts and may need kidnapping other human beings for rituals, which is not necessary in ''Yahoo Plus.'' In Yahoo Plus Plus, the use of things such as their finger nails, rings, carrying of corpses, making incision on their body, sleeping in the cemetery, citing of incantation, using of their fingers for rituals, and having sex with ghosts are common. A few of the informants, however, denied that they use voodoo in the business, whereas others affirmed their use of voodoo."

I wonder what Yahoo's stance on Yahoo Plus Plus is.

</comment><comment><USER7> A comment on the article from the site:

      Chris Thomas
      September 9, 2013 at 5:44 am
      A wonderful insight about some aspects of male African culture. Phew!

As someone whose parents & wife were born & raised in Lagos, Nigeria... I just want to say 419scams are not at all part of the the "male African culture"(whatever that means). They are just scammers, like scammers you'd find anywhere else.

<comment><USER8> I think in general if anyone mentions "African culture" as if it's one single thing, you can safely assume they don't have a clue.</comment></comment>


Streaming Video Will Soon Look Like the Bad Old Days of TV - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/22/opinion/netflix-hulu-cable.html <comment><USER2> For me this future has already arrived. Yesterday I cancelled Netflix because I realized that even if I pay money each month for legal content, I still have to pirate the content that is not on Netflix. Asking people to subscribe to multiple streaming services is not just expensive but also crazy inconvenient.

By contrast the music industry manages to cooperate and get their content available across the various streaming services and consequently I haven't pirated music for a long long time.

<comment><USER3> And Plex is just getting better and better:

\- Netflix-like UI with integrated IMDB ratings, cast, description, cover, etc

\- support for many devices and TV players/dongles

\- unlimited concurrent stream count and full control over the streaming bitrate (as long as you have the bandwidth)

\- remote access from any location/country

<comment><USER4> According to one of Jaron Lanier's books, the 'musician as a middle class job' has pretty much vanished because of all the piracy and streaming services. Plex is wonderful, but its nice that people can make a good living making the content too.

<comment><USER5> I'm going to have to agree with the other people who have commented so far. Music has never really been a middle class job. But I'm going to disagree with the entire premise that streaming and piracy have killed the middle class musician. I'm going to argue that streaming and piracy _created_ the middle class musician.

Are there people living middle class lives in the music industry? Sure. Probably more today than ever before, and streaming (and possibly piracy) has a lot to do with that. Musicians don't make money from album sales, they make money from live shows. The middle class musician tours constantly because that's their full time job. It's not a 9-5, and you're not home with your family at night. I'm absolutely positive that _this_ is the reason more people don't live middle class musician lifestyles.

Vanished? Nah. Never existed, at least not in any significant way. It's only now due to the Internet that small time niche musicians can make _any_ money and get _any_ sales without major labels. And major labels aren't in the business of making middle class musicians, as Jaron Lanier pointed out.

I'm also going to detour to your source... Jaron Lanier is famous for writing the story "Piracy is your friend", and a few years later writing "Pay me for my content". I would take Jaron Lanier's music industry opinions with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER6> Define significant. Session musicians were definitely a thing that earned a middle-class lifestyle during the last century, at least in larger markets. Of course, samplers and sample libraries likely had a larger impact on reducing the viability of that lifestyle (no need to hire everyone necessary for the string section on these three tracks when Kontakt and the one intern who knows his way around automating expressions will do), but shrinking studio budgets due to the impact of piracy helped put the nail in the coffin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One upside to streaming services is how easy they are to cancel and resume.

I regularly suspend and resume Netflix, HBO Now, etc. based on what I'm currently watching. It's very easy to do this, especially if the service is paid for using Google Store / Apple Store subscriptions.

Compare to the hell you go through trying to contact Comcast and cancel service.

<comment><USER8> I picture a meta-service that manages this. When you click to play a show, it quickly and automatically signs you up for whichever service, and if you haven't watched a show on that service for more than 2 weeks, it cancels your subscription. Presumably the problem would be that streaming sites might not like customers canceling their service 4 or 5 times per year.

<comment><USER9> It's a better alternative than consumers turning to piracy. Let's be real, it's making a comeback because of this. The market is getting too saturated for everyone to charge $15/mo. Prices have to drop or another option is needed, or else we'll again see the piracy that Netflix "destroyed".

<comment><USER10> I would much prefer a blanket ban on production and distribution in the same company.

We would have none of these problems if Netflix couldn't produce its own shows and Disney couldn't make its own streaming service

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_P...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures%2C_Inc).

<comment><USER11> Would you also be okay if software developers couldn't distribute their own software?

<comment><USER10> There aren't problems with shops selling their own product as long as their core competence is making that product.

There is a problem when a store with significant market share starts paying to produce product it controls.

<comment><USER12> There is always a problem if a shop has exclusive right to sell a non- commodity product.

<comment><USER11> In that case all software vendors should have to use third party resellers? No one should be able to exclusively sell their own products on their own site?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Netflix has reshaped the whole industry for the better. Netflix by itself at $13 per month is nearly as much content as you'd get in a small cable package in the "old days of TV." Of course, in the future, if you actually tried to watch everything available, you'd be paying for some crazy mega-bundle like the old cable days. Otherwise, things are clearly better as Netflix runs away with streaming and forces the other media companies to compete.

<comment><USER14> Eh... it's turning out that Netflix just introduced a new medium for cable.

Now that every content owner is starting their own services, we're losing the thing that made Netflix revolutionary: loads of quality and diverse content under one subscription.

Personally, the shows I'm interested in are spread across a half dozen services... and only one or two really warrant full engagement (versus "background entertainment")... so obviously it's back to bittorrent for me.

<comment><USER15> i'm wondering the same. currently a Netflix subscriber. but back in the day i had a NAS box hitting a preconfigured rss feed with the shows i watched. was pretty convenient and the NAS could stream to every device on my wifi

<comment><USER16> [https://sonarr.tv](https://sonarr.tv).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> With old TV, you at least had a unified interface - channel numbers or DVR - to access everything. You were also a bit limited with devices - TV of course worked, but being able to use a pc, tablet or phone was only for the few of us savvy enough to run something like mythtv.

Removing price and commercials from the discussion, the big benefit streaming brought was a way to overcome the technical limitation that meant there was a broadcast schedule. Instead, you can watch any show at any time.

The new services are much worse about several of these. Let's again assume price is a non issue so you subscribe to everything.

First, you have annoying problem of remembering which service or app to use for each show. If available on multiple services, you have to remember which one you were watching on so it preserves your place.

Second, you also have problems with availability: service x doesn't work on device A, but service y _only_ works on device A. This means switching inputs, or limiting what show you can watch based on what devices you currently have available. There's even more frustrating problems with this, where for example, service x will work on PC, but not with surround sound.

Third, you have to use a different user interface and navigation structure for each app. Annoyingly, these will sometimes update and change their UI in radical ways without asking, and these changes won't happen on all devices at the same time, so you have even more interfaces to remember.

This reminds me of the old "pirate vs paying customer" infographic [1] where the overall experience is markedly worse for paying customers.

I haven't had cable for over a decade, and when I did, it was all PVR'd via mythtv. My tv watching experience has been via mythtv, xbmc, Kodi and Plex. I tolerate Netflix for convenience, and YouTube as a separate app because it's unique. I've tried having other services, but found them too annoying for the reasons I started above - and it didn't help that they all had significantly _worse_ interfaces than Plex and Netflix.

[1] [https://m.imgur.com/gallery/DnQYR8S](https://m.imgur.com/gallery/DnQYR8S)

<comment><USER18> In general, the fact that UI is tied to content is stupid and probably indicates market failure. It's frustrating that I'm stuck with Spotify's one- size-fits-all UI when the large majority of the monthly payment goes to licensing the music.

<comment><USER19> Is libspotify dead now? There used to be e.g. a Clementine plugin which worked pretty well.

<comment><USER18> Looks dead.

[https://github.com/hbashton/spotify- ripper/issues/39](https://github.com/hbashton/spotify-ripper/issues/39) [https://developer.spotify.com/community/news/2016/03/22/rece...](https://developer.spotify.com/community/news/2016/03/22/recent- issues-libspotify/) [https://jonaslundqvist.net/2015/05/06/do-not-use- libspotify/](https://jonaslundqvist.net/2015/05/06/do-not-use-libspotify/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The biggest game changer for me with streaming is I watch less TV. Before streaming I either had to maintain a complex balance with my never large enough DVR or watch shows when the network decided (I'm looking at you Channel 9 in Australia putting Star Trek on at 11pm on Tuesday and Thursday nights). Before that I had VHS, so many VHS.

With streaming I watch maybe an hour or two at most, then I stop, confident I can pickup whenever (and increasingly wherever I want). I don't worry about my wife deleting my Star Trek for her Firefly.

Unlike DVDs we can catch up on an episode of a shared show while traveling.

Though I did get hooked on a Netflix show in the UK that isn't available in Australia, four weeks later I can't even remember the title.

</comment><comment><USER21> Glad I kept my torrent/VPN box ready to go. I was happy to pay a small reasonable fee but it's clear things are just turning into the overpriced nickel-and-dimming shit-show we had not even 10 years back. So yeah I'll pull what I actually watch and they get nothing again.

<comment><USER22> Yesterday I wanted to watch a movie that was in theatres in spring.

I checked Netflix, of course not there I should have known better, oh but it knew what I was looking for and showed me knockoffs "related to" what I was actually looking for. Having spent most of my life making fun of knockoffs, that was a bad move Netflix.

I checked Amazon Video, hey the movie is there, but not included in my prime subscription, and I can only stream it if I buy the movie for $20, no option to even rent the movie for 48 hours. Okay, thats a non-starter, I know Amazon Video just resyndicates from a shared catalogue of movies so that means every rent-streaming service will have it, but maybe under different pricing.

So I checked the unlikely Playstation Store. Not listed

Okay at this point I go to Google, because the "where can I stream it" sites have been replaced by a mere addition of a feature on Google where on top of the search results underneath the ratings it shows you where you can stream it. Exhibit A of features masquerading as companies getting replaced quickly by Google. Showed that everyone was charging $20 with no option to rent.

Well, I was going to rent it. Other interfaces should have an easy search that shows the availability of a title on multiple streaming services and its price. But after this bar, if you wanted me to stop worrying about who has a license for copyright distribution, thats how you get me to stop worrying about who has a license. The burden has never been on the consumer anyway, we've just been assuming Walmart properly secured the license, and that the person with DVDs on a towel outside doesn't. But we never knew and never had any liability, until we were distributing it ourselves. So fire up the dusty old torrent software and turn off the upload feature. Within 10 minutes I was watching my 4gb H264 1080P version of what I wanted to see.

<comment><USER23> > Yesterday I wanted to watch a movie that was in theatres in spring.

That's sadly most likely the issue. I bet it was a big movie? Most likely they are just keeping the good old traditional schedule. Release at the movie Theater, few months later release for sell, few months later release for rental. They added a few months later a release on streaming platform but that's it...

That's absurd that they still do that but I guess waiting a few months isn't the worse to save a few bucks.

<comment><USER22> Was not a big movie, < $100m box office, just a bad user experience :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm feeling nostalgic for the days of paying $2 an episode on iTunes. The future where there's 10 shows I want to watch and I have to pay for 10 separate $15 monthly services to watch them is almost here and it sucks. I also get to learn 10 different app UIs to watch them, and enjoy constantly logging back into them all whenever whatever box I'm using randomly logs them out.

<comment><USER11> Why feel nostalgic? You still can.

<comment><USER24> If I want to watch any of the new Star Trek series I'm going to have to bite the bullet and subscribe to CBS. For starters.

Netflix is another given. Do these content channels even release shows on Blu ray and iTunes a year later like they used to?

<comment><USER11> Why is that bad thing? Typically individual episodes are $2.99. You can sign in on the app for a month, immediately cancel so you don't get charged for an additional month and pay $6.

<comment><USER24> I don't even mind the expense so much. It's the experience. I'd happily pay more just to have TV watching be a pleasure. This whole app experience where you have to pull out your phone and log into some site over and over again when it "forgets", learn multiple UIs, have commercials that mess with you (Choose a commercial to "interact" with for 3 commercials, or choose to watch 6 commercials!)

It's just awful. It makes me miss CRTs with rabbit ears and a VHF and UHF dial.

<comment><USER11> I agree somewhat. But I have an Apple TV 4K. The CBS All Access app knows that I've already subscribed through iTunes and I subscribe to the no commercials subscription.

As far as apps that use your provider log in, with the Apple TV, you log on once with your provider and with your permission, all of the apps use your system configured login.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> A while back, I was in this exact situation. I got into The Expanse (which, if you like hard sci-fi, you definitely need to check out, it's superbly made). I have a Netflix subscription, obviously. I devoured the first two seasons on there. Then I discovered that Season 3 onwards would be an Amazon exclusive. Then I discovered that Seasons 1 & 2 had _also_ moved to Amazon. I don't have a Prime subscription any more because I can't justify it (and I don't want to be tempted to buy more useless junk than I already own). I managed to get another free trial long enough to watch Season 3, but not long enough to re- watch the previous two seasons. But when Season 4 comes out, I'm going to be in exactly the same situation as satellite TV - I don't want to watch anything else on Amazon Prime Video, I just want The Expanse. But I'll have to get a Prime subscription if I want to watch it before it comes out on Blu-Ray, and thus everything that comes with it, which to me is just junk.

Cord-cutting accomplished exactly nothing. Streaming services copied the exact model of the satellite companies (willingly or not; I'm willing to bet the distributors squeezed the streaming companies just like music publishers, since they're holding all the rights). There is no incentive whatsoever to make a single show available on multiple platforms.

This also explains perfectly why piracy will never die. Consumers want access to the content they are interested in. They do NOT want arbitrary complications thrown in their way.

</comment><comment><USER26> A return to the bad old days of cable bundles, coupled with the current average Internet speed, would just bring back the good old days of torrenting.

<comment><USER27> This is exactly what I feel I've been driven to this last year. I don't want to have all my media spread around on a tenfold different streaming providers, nor do I want to live with the random removals of offerings that seem to happening more and more where I live.

The day I have children I want to be able to share some sort of cultural archive with them, though regular tv might probably be dead by that time, who knows.

I've started hosting my own plex server, and using torrents and actual old backups to get the content. The sad part though, is that most of the major torrent sites seem really dead compared to the haydays. What are some good options these days?

<comment><USER28> I miss TvTorrents.

It had hard-to-find shows, and it kept track of who downloaded what, so if there were no active seeders, you could ping some people to seed it so they could earn credits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I want something like Bandcamp for movies and TV shows. Let me buy and download the damn things in full quality and watch them wherever/whenever/however I want them! Give me RSS/Atom feeds I can subscribe to and integrate into other tools!

I'd be more than happy to pay good money for each movie/episode, and would regularly pay more than the suggested price to creators I especially enjoy, like you can do on Bandcamp.

<comment><USER30> I believe Vimeo used to do something like this - iirc once you bought a movie you could download the original as well. Don't think it moved past a few independent films/series though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Startup idea: Make a website where I can push a single button to pay for and activate one month of a streaming service. Make the one month subscription expire at the end of the month automatically (no auto-renew).

This way I avoid paying for time during which I watch nothing, and I can easily activate a new month almost instantly.

<comment><USER32> One poblem with that idea:

Many streaming services are quite shitty, don't allow you to link directly to a show, and don't allow streaming on PC (or don't allow it any higher than standard def), and most people want to watch their TV on TVs, which means your service needs to work with the various services available on the various common streaming hardware.

I swear Google Play Movies is the most convoluted difficult to use UI to play video I've ever seen. I bought a show in it once, but I bought the entire series, which shows up in the UI separately from every other season. (So it shows as seasons "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1 through 6"). Every time I want to watch an episode, I need to open, go to my library, go to TV shows, pick the show, scroll to the "full series" season, then scroll from episode 1 to the episode I last watched to play it.

It's insane that it's that difficult! And knowing how difficult it is I absolutely will never order another show from that ecosystem again.

<comment><USER33> In all fairness, I get the feeling that a lot of Google services are there because Google has to have them. Apple have them. When people buy an Android they want somewhere they can go to get stuff. But for Google, that's it. There's very little extra effort expended to make it nice to use. They've just ticked a box. They offer films. That's it. It'll sit there and gather dust for a few years before Google sees that competitors have moved on, so they go and give their service a face lift. Then another 5 years of nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is it reasonable to expect an all-in-one streaming service? There is a lot of media, old and new, local and foreign. I don't know if a single provider can give you all the access a person wants for a price that the consumer is willing to pay.

<comment><USER35> [http://thepiratebay.org](http://thepiratebay.org) does. Like the good old days.

And the media companies did it to themselves...

<comment><USER36> I get the humor in your statement, but there's a lot of truth there. At the end of the day, when Netflix, Hulu, and Prime don't have it, tpb does. In perfect, uninterrupted HD. The only downside? Waiting 5 minutes for it to download. It's hard to justify the $15/mo I'm paying for Netflix when that is an option, and especially hard to justify paying for all 3 (which I'm doing, for some reason.)

<comment><USER37> > which I'm doing, for some reason

Convenience has value. Even if tpb is easy enough, there's still friction. So long as streaming services stay convenient and cheap enough, they will keep customers. The interesting dynamic is that the more players enter the space, the less convenience there is. Justwatch.com is already trying to add that convenience back, but the fact that we need that meta step is already frustrating.

<comment><USER38> Maybe it's just because I was doing it for 10 years until Netflix got good, but now that Netflix no longer cuts it for 90% of what I want to watch it has been _really_ easy to slip back into pirating.

> The interesting dynamic is that the more players enter the space, the less > convenience there is.

This is exactly what happened to me. When Netflix had literally everything, it was the only place I looked. Now that it doesn't have everything, I'm not going to go through the litany of Hulu, prime, etc, I just go straight to tpb. So I cancelled Hulu etc. And because tpb is second nature and it always has what I'm looking for, I just go there first... so I cancelled Netflix.

It's like watching the 2000 p2p shift all over again. The media companies don't understand how to build a business model that fits seemlessly into society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> For me, I just don't watch as much TV content anymore. It's odd too since I still watch video but not what you would call TV content. Let's Plays, restoration videos, explanation videos, and the like are most of my content these days. Even videos about philosophy and politics (/r/BreadTube is Best Tube, hehehehehehe), so it's not the usual stuff I use to watch like scifi shows or Star Trek on repeat. In a way, I think the whole streaming Balkanization just gave me an excuse to expand beyond the old formats and genres.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm fascinated by this problem: How would consumers navigate a third-party aggregation application? It seems to me there needs to be a free "Kayak"-like service for film & tv discovery. Show me only what I can watch for free (because I already subscribe to my favorite channels). Develop the application on every OS that I watch content (TV, Mobile and Web).

Would consumers like navigating a UI similar to Pinterest (boards) or Spotify (playlists) on your TV? It works well for images and music...

<comment><USER41> My Roku TV does this - you type in a title, and it will show you what apps provides the movie, the prices for each, etc.

<comment><USER40> Google does too. I'm talking about discovery - most people don't know what they want to watch when they sit down in front of the TV.

I've found myself scrolling for 20-30min sometimes just looking through Netflix, then Prime, then Hulu, then HBO... just to end up watching Friends again..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The false dictonomy of "disruption" is laid bare before us.

Disrupting an industry, is nothing more then bending the rules with technology as to avoid regulatory scrutiny. Long term, the disrupter needs to protect its userbase, and ends up becoming the monolith that it replaced.

History repeating itself is nothing new. Its a cycle every generation goes through.

</comment><comment> seph-reed If braves BAT (Basic Attention Token) thing could ever really take off, it'd make for a nice solution to all of this. Just sort of pitch a penny here or there, and after enough people pitching pennies the content has earned a worthy revenue.

</comment><comment><USER43> Don't forget about your local library. I subscribe to Netflix, but I watch more movies and shows that I get on DVD and bluray from my library than I watch stuff on Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER44> Everything is free on channel 4, 6, 10, and uhf

</comment><comment><USER45> Interesting-FF says that nytimes.com is unsafe

<comment><USER46> browser update, or you're getting MiTM?

<comment><USER45> My FF is up to date. I'm on NordVPN, maybe it is a time issue?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Relaunching a dormant startup and switching from free to paid - <AUTHOR> http://www.thirstyminds.com.au/2011/02/sprixi-is-back/ Blog post links to the startup (www.sprixi.com) which is an image search engine that focuses on helping people not just find, but also use an image. <comment><USER2> How are you planning on getting traffic in the long term? There are free alternatives like <http://search.creativecommons.org/> so I suspect most customers will be people who don't know about the alternatives.

I'd be sceptical if you could get many people to pay for it unless you found a good source of people who weren't very Internet savvy.

I think if your search engine is better at finding images compared to other sites, the best thing to do might be to let people search without logging in, but only show them a thumbnail, and to find out where the image comes from, they need to pay. However, you will still need to find a way to attribute images if the license terms require that.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be honest, I don't know how to get revenue in the long term. What I want to do is to break even so I can justify investing more effort.

I would love Sprixi to be free and then money around the edges (e.g. API). However, that will require more work. Being bootstrapped and already at it for a few years, I can't keep working for free.

Interesting idea about moving the pay wall - thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Another instance of a blog post that assumes we know what the product is.

I have no idea what Sprixi is, still don't after reading the post and clicking two links on that website

Please put a para about the product in the sidebar, or write an intro paragraph, see this sooo often on HN

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point - I've hacked up a brief description in the sidebar.

<comment><USER4> That still doesn't tell me why I would use it over google images, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Link to the startup, not the blog post: <http://www.sprixi.com>

</comment><comment><USER6> Just an idea, charge for the API. I can easily imagine this being very useful for a feed/content provider to automatically source an automatic image related to a news feed/ or product.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do like that idea. Being bootstrapped I needed to be a bit more direct with getting revenue from the majority of the traffic visiting us in the short term.

What do you think of our very lightweight freemium model? (Searching for dog or cat is free, other searches are behind the pay wall.)

<comment><USER7> That's not freemium. It's a demo. With true freemium, someone can use your service regularly while on the free plan. Very few people are going to use your service just to find dogs and cats.

Not saying you shouldn't keep it (you should. demos are a great way to get people to convert), but it's not freemium.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not limited the number of searches that someone can make, or limit the resolution of the photos they can download? That will get a lot of people in the habit of using site and then they might upgrade when they get annoyed by the free limitations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good ideas - thanks!

Re limiting the number of searches - I'm concerned that people may just register throwaway accounts to get the free searches (and thus never paying). I could use cookies or IP smarts to counteract this, but it doesn't seem a good solution. I also don't want to make the sign up process harder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not sure if this comment adds any value (I really need to go to bed) but how about requesting an action before showing people the search results for the first time? Kinda like <http://www.tweetperview.com> for searches.

Another way to monetize without a pay wall would be to use CPA ads, though some of them are scams...

Have you checked out <http://sxc.hu> yet? They have been online for a few years now and they monetize through iStockPhoto aff links.

Hope this helps :-)

Good luck!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully a little inspiration for anyone else in the same boat.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sprixi, glad to have you back, you've been gone too long!

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool. I've been waiting for this site to come back.</comment>


10 Brands That Will Disappear In 2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/brands-that-will-disappear-in-2010-2009-12#newsweek-1 <comment><USER2> Somewhat sad seeing those familiar brands go down, but seems like a lot of them are from being too complacent and refusing to put in R&D money when everything seems fine and cash is rolling in.

</comment><comment><USER3> I doubt Palm will disappear as a brand, but I'm waiting for the acquisition. It seems inevitable at this point, but I wonder if potential suitors are just waiting to see how low Palm will go.</comment>


10000+ people told us their size in their favorite brands. Here's our site. - <AUTHOR> https://www.fitbay.com/signup/refer-a-friend/GIF6R2P7WH3J1MER

<comment><USER2> I was expecting an article, not having to request an invite for a service. Maybe change the title to make it clear the result is a company, not information?

<comment><AUTHOR> I can see how you would have expected that. I have changed the title, but I think it's too late either way. I'll have to be clearer next time!

<comment><USER3> I flagged the submission before reading this response. I clicked the link from my feed reader (which is how I consume HN). I was expecting some insightful commentary on the data collected, but was instead dumped on a lead generation form. In the consumer expectation context, I was "offened".

If this is your general marketing tact, I'd consider revising it a bit. The text of a link sets an expectation for users. When they click through, the degree to which the content matches that expectation will set the tone for the rest of the interaction. The feeling of being "duped" in to clicking is amongst the worst that a user can feel.

Please understand that I'm not making an indictment of the character of your marketing. I anticipate your gut reaction will be "we didn't intend that". No one _intends_ to offend customers, but sometimes it happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've always had major difficulties with finding clothes that fit. For as long as I can remember, I have been tall & skinny with an extremely narrow waist, and so pretty much every shirt or pair of slacks that I have ever owned have fit me poorly. To make matters worse, I decided to try online shopping a few years ago, only to realize that I was spending even more time returning clothes because they were the wrong size or fit.

While growing up, my best friend and I have always shared the same exact height, weight and body type and so we've always been able to share our wardrobes and advice with each other. It then came to me last year that this act of sharing was something people all over the world could truly benefit from.

So we slowly started building our website, www.fitbay.com, with the ultimate goal of building a community that would help everyone with discovering all the brands and products in the world in the right size & fit. Basically, you plug in your height, weight and body type and we're able to instantly show you clothes that fit you based on the recommendations people with your exact measurements have made.

To get the initial recommendations we needed, I organized about 3-4 coffee meetings, inside & outside of work each and every day, asking friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances (and people on Reddit) to share with us their height, weight, and sizes they wear in their favorite brands. In doing so, we were able to, quite early, create the sensation of a "personalized store created just for you where everything fits" and a community of people who share the same fit-related issues.

In just 5 months we've now grown from just 50 to over 10,000 unique profiles on Fitbay having shared a total of 60,000+ unique product recommendations.

Help us out by visiting the site www.fitbay.com and sharing your thoughts here, and please do let us know if you have any ideas or feedback. Keep in mind that the community is still invite-only, but if you sign up using the link above I'll do my best to make sure you get access within 24 hours.

</comment><comment><USER4> Your site... in under private invite, with a CSS spam popup? TC;DR

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that Adam - it's the only way that I can track and make sure people get access if they sign up.

<comment><USER5> Maybe just put the article up on your blog? So it can be read without having to sign up?

I am still curious about the sizing data. Think about how well okcupid did by publishing blog articles analysing their dating data!

<comment><AUTHOR> You're completely right - I should have posted it on my blog. Would be happy to answer any questions you might have about the sizing data btw.</comment></comment></comment>


Artisanal Water - <AUTHOR> http://ma.tt/2015/08/water/ <comment><USER2> This is taking homøopathy to a new level. The snakeoil factor is the same, though.</comment>


How NASA teams work: Practical lessons from space missions - <AUTHOR> https://blog.nuclino.com/how-nasa-teams-work-practical-lessons-from-space-missions <comment><USER2> "Your system not breaking doesn't mean it works and is a solid design." \- an interesting read on a similar topic, currently on the front page: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19244063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19244063)</comment>


Google Walkout: Employees Stage Protest Over Handling of Sexual Harassment - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/01/technology/google-walkout-sexual-harassment.html <comment><USER2> Asking for a board seat for employees is the interesting bit.

<comment><USER3> That, and the "Chief Diversity Officer" push, after Apple rejected a similar push from some shareholders / employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ...and then they went back in, got a free massage, some lovely free gourmet food, and back to work.</comment>