402: Payment Required - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@humphd/402-payment-required-95bc72f06fcd <comment><USER2> This is fine as far as it goes, but RPM on a blog post is what $1.50? $3.00? So to replace your ad revenue you need to charge 1/3 of cent, not the "15 cents" that was shown in the mock. That would be $150 RPMs which would make Google blush.

There is a fundamental disconnect in how writers value their writing, and how readers value their writing. Trying to understand the economic forces that drive information value will really help writers understand what is, and isn't, valuable prose to readers.

Too many people are stuck in the mindset of "buy a book/article" etc, but the web is 99.99% one and done. So nobody wants to pay 15 cents for something they will never read again, and may not even like the first time. But have them pay a third of a cent? Sure, if they go back an re-read it 100 time's they will have paid you 30 cents for it. The value would be emergent rather than demanded.

Until journalists can internalize that, this conversation will remain unresolved.

<comment><USER3> This comment is wrong on many levels.

1\. The RPM you posted is significantly off – at least according to the websites I operate.

2\. The web is not "one and done." Successful websites exist because they have loyal readership that keeps coming back.

3\. Say a writer spends 4 hours creating an article, and they're paid $100 for that article. (A pretty abysmal amount.) They would need 30k readers to pay 1/3 of a cent in order to break even just on the cost of the article. That is absolutely insane and impossible for most articles. Heck, even if the article cost just $5, they'd need 1,500 pageviews. This is outside of the realm of reality, and simply impossible for the vast majority of websites. If your numbers were the general rules, we'd be mostly reading $1 articles written in 3rd world countries, were people can live on $5 a day.

<comment><USER4> 30k readers is quite low for an article of any decent quality site though. There are a billion+ people on the internet. For articles getting 30k or less reada probably shouldn't be montizig or won't be getting much. Unless you want the cost of the articld to be paid back in 24 hours. Which is kinda anti web isnt it? I can see it becoming very quickly where someone can paraphrase or mirror the content somewhere else for cheap.

I see any per article pay model as likely flawed anyways. Netflix and many others do well because flat rate. I'd hate if nytimes charged me per article. I'd likely go somewhere else

<comment><USER5> But not, if you write in a language that is not English but a native language to the country you are living in, like German, French, Spanish, Portugeese, Italy, Polish, …

Maybe with the exception of Spanish (Middle and South America) and French (Africa) you have a rather small audiance but still the same living costs like in the US.

If you audience is not the general public but a specialied audience like Technology, like Astrophysics, like historic cars, then you don't have the audience like an article about Lady Gaga or some general politics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Apple's new content filtering and São Paulo's Clean City Law both use code — > one via the law, the other through software APIs — to enable the creation of > ad-free public spaces.

Except that content filtering isn't about the creation of ad-free _public_ spaces, but rather ad-free _private_ spaces. There are (or should be) only two parties to a web request: the client and the server. Neither Apple, nor the State, nor Google, nor anyone else, is legitimately a party to my session.

The reason that I'm free to use an ad blocker is that it's my browser, and I am free to configure it however I want; the server, of course, is free to try to determine whether I'm actually viewing its ads or not, and may refuse to serve my requests if it chooses.

As for micropayments, I love the idea but people in general seem to be extremely resistant to them. For one thing, they definitely don't want unbounded monthly charges. That could be solved by having a set amount of money, divided up by the sites one visits—but the service that does that would be a privacy nightmare.

<comment><USER7> "There are (or should be) only two parties to a web request: the client and the server. Neither Apple, nor the State, nor Google, nor anyone else, is legitimately a party to my session"

The ad is arguably part of the content, as it's what's paying for you to see it in the first place.

"The reason that I'm free to use an ad blocker is that it's my browser, and I am free to configure it however I want"

That is a very selfish view, one which ignores everyone else except yourself. What if your company decided that you're not worth paying, but still wanted your work?

<comment><USER8> Let's say I'm offering you food. If someone else paid me to feed you horse manure, would you have an obligation to eat it? No, because it's not food. It doesn't become food just because some _other_ party is paying me to feed it to you. You certainly aren't coming to me because you wanted horse manure. You don't have a deal with me regarding horse manure. _I_ have a deal with the third party, and that has nothing to do with you.

<comment><USER7> This is completely ignoring the fact that ads are how the content you enjoy gets paid for, and part of the social contract is that, since people won't pay, that the content will be paid for by ad views.

<comment><USER9> This discussion never ends in changed minds. Best to abort it before you waste too much time.

Remember that there is a camp who thinks that _they_ can do what they wish with the data sent to _their_ computer -including refusing to process said data-, and there is a camp who feels that one has a _moral_ imperative to process _all_ data sent by a website to one's computer.

These camps rarely see eye-to-eye.

<comment><USER7> It's not a moral imperative to process all data, it's a moral imperative to pay others for the product of their labor that you're benefiting from.

<comment><USER9> > It's not a moral imperative to process all data, it's a moral imperative to > pay others for the product of their labor that you're benefiting from.

There's a _very_ reliable method of ensuring that one who labors and posts to The Internet gets paid: refuse to deliver the fruits of the labor to others prior to payment.

If camp #2 _actually_ thought as you claim they do, they would advise all Internet-publishing laborers to eliminate the ad-blocking worry -and keep the dishonest among us honest- by putting their creations behind a paywall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No "micropayment" system has ever succeeded, and no such system will succeed in the future. This is not a technology problem. It's a matter of human psychology.

Every single example provided by the author takes one of two formats. Either you pay a monthly bill for "all you can eat," or you make discrete payments of $1-$2-$10. These are the models that work.

It's not that your article isn't worth a nickel, it's that _it 's not worth my mental energy to debate whether to spend a nickel._

It is not a question of whether it is built into your phone, your browser, or any other platform. It's what's built into your _brain_. "Pay as you go" is incompatible with the observed preferences of consumers.

I'm sure that most sites that rely on advertising would have rather been paid directly by consumers, such that they would not have to rely on ad networks or other third parties. But consumers don't want to spend a penny or a nickel at a time. It's not worth the mental transaction costs. Ad views were the only realistic way to squeeze a penny out of a page view.

<comment><USER11> That's flatly untrue. I've got a good example: SMS

When texting started it was almost universally $.25 or $.10 or so per text. One would definitely be aware of that fact when communicating with friends but you get over it because it's useful.

Wait I have another example, $0.99 songs via iTunes. That was the model that created the largest music retailer in the world from whole cloth.

It's not that complicated, all it would take is for someone (gee I wonder who) to standardize the price (or price tiers) and have a quick modal OK to continue on to the article for one credit, or equivalent.

<comment><USER12> You're describing things that were inconvenient and made convenient with a nominal transaction cost.

You couldn't just buy one track before. Now you can for $.99. You couldn't send a text message at all before.

Try $.10 per email and see what traction that gets.

<comment><USER11> Sure and I used to watch SNL for free over the air, now I pay $8 a month for Hulu. Things change.

The market, like all markets, is defined by people's willingness to pay and their next best alternative. Make the transaction cheap and nearly frictionless and it might be the choice with the highest utility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is the "independent web" in all of these articles exclusively referring to people trying to make money with ads? I make software and put it on the web for free. There are millions of Github repositories like this, are they not the "independent web"? I post pictures on various sites, under CC0. In high school, I made games and put them on the web, always for free.

It's disappointing to see the web portrayed as so profit-minded :(

<comment><USER7> People like to eat food and pay rent. Not everyone can afford to give away their hard work for free.

<comment><USER14> What if their hard work is determined by the marketplace to have no value?

<comment><USER7> Then people won't use it.

But knowing the internet, people will claim up and down that it doesn't have any value, _while still using it._ And then call the person greedy for wanting to feed their family.

<comment><USER14> Something can have a value to me at free, and if the price were to rise at all, I would shift my consumption elsewhere.

Like Taylor Swift on Spotify.

<comment><USER7> You're paying for Spotify with ads.

<comment><USER14> Just barely. I hit mute when they come on. I'd rather miss the next song than listen to an ad.

<comment><USER7> Then pay for Spotify.

<comment><USER14> Like I said above:

> Something can have a value to me at free, and if the price were to rise at > all, I would shift my consumption elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "I would argue that your browser should be helping you safely, securely, and easily make purchases of content and services across the web."

It's tragic that the author's highest desire for what was envisioned as a global hyperlinked information system is to make it into a more efficient virtual-reality strip mall.

We already pay for every byte of data that moves across the wire. Infrastructure and upkeep costs are why ISPs are actual businesses. The right answer to the current problem of asymmetry in communication pairings is peer- to-peer content distribution, which spreads costs much more evenly _while_ decreasing latency by bringing data closer to edges of the network. You support Wikipedia-over-IPFS by flipping a switch in your settings to help host it, rather than doling out a handful of USD to the incessant baleful banners of Jimmy Wales' face.

Meanwhile, the right answers to the costs of content creation are universal income and voluntary sponsorship, not DRM, paywalls, and moneyware.

<comment><USER16> It's tragic that the author's highest desire [is to be able to pay for content].

We already pay for [network connectivity].

Meanwhile, the right answers to the cost of content creation are [a form of social welfare].

<comment> vezzy-fnord _Meanwhile, the right answers to the cost of content creation are [a form of communism]._

Indeed, those dirty reds and their communist system of... voluntary patronage.

But, then again, maybe you're right on UBI. It has been espoused by known communists like Thomas Paine, Milton Friedman and F.A. von Hayek.

<comment><USER16> You are correct. I've corrected it to socialism. Its a forced redistribution of wealth. My point is the gaping logical flaw in the original post. How is this the top comment?

<comment><USER15> What precisely is the logical flaw? My line of thought was that it's productive to delineate the costs borne by those who wish to create and share digital objects into two categories: costs of designing/making the thing and costs for producing copies.

The latter can easily be defrayed with appropriate network technologies, which is along the lines of the original intent of the Web as a platform for sharing information; the former requires some change in how we fund creative work.

I think it's productive to address them separately, as their relative scales are vastly different for digital objects compared to physical ones. Since the incremental costs of producing additional copies of physical objects are so high, it's easy to absorb design costs into the price paid for each copy, but for digital objects this makes much less sense.

I am advocating a humanitarian system of patronage of the arts, yes. I think it's worthwhile to have faith in the ability of people to self-actualize when their basic needs are met, and I'm hoping we can thereby support creative endeavors of modest scale, like writing articles for the Web. A coercive system like communism has been shown to not work for various reasons, but socialist basic income on top of a relatively free market seems viable.

<comment><USER16> You are creating a delineation to in order to obfuscate that you want to deprive content creators the _option_ of charging you directly for their work. The unit costs of digital copies are irrelevant when the alternative, patronage, doesn't covering the fixed costs of designing/making. Instead, you want society to bear that cost because ... anything on the internet should be free.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Working within the existing HTTP spec is an idea worth pursuing. Of course I'm biased because my startup is in the process of doing just this by implementing a 402 server. [http://www.fairtread.com/](http://www.fairtread.com/)

While the status code is a good place to start, you really need Accept- Monetization and the corresponding Content-Monetization headers to fill out the picture. We propose these to work the same way that Accept-Language and Content-Language headers work. Essentially the user passes along the monetization methods they allow, and when there's a mismatch on the server, a 402 error occurs...along with instructions on how to fix that.

The ideal system would allow multiple ways to pay for content, and would include advertising as a "free" option.

<comment><USER18> Building on HTTP 402 looks like a good path forward, but some tough love: the name fairtread.com looks like "fart read" or "fair read". The 't' gets lost in the middle because "read" makes more sense than "tread" in the context of paying to read web content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> We need to also then figure out how to handle a situation where a purchaser is unsatisfied in some way with the paid-for content. How do you refund their money (regardless of the amount)?

It's all well and good to tell someone that their idea sucks in the comments, but they still have your money.

<comment><USER20> Do you ask for a refund when you bought a newspaper and, after reading it, you don't like what you read? Do you ask for a refund when you bought an app on the app store and you stop using it after 1 hour because it doesn't fit your need? I think it probably depends on the amount you paid, though...

<comment><USER21> >Do you ask for a refund when you bought a newspaper and, after reading it, you don't like what you read?

No, because i know what to expect from different newspapers and in the very very rare cases where i buy them, i do that only after skimming the front and relevant pages.

>Do you ask for a refund when you bought an app on the app store and you stop using it after 1 hour because it doesn't fit your need?

Yes, all the time.

What's your point?

<comment><USER20> Asking because it seems unusual to me, and I think those situations are really similar to what GP was referring to: "I paid to see what you had to say, but I don't like it so I'd like my money back". I can think of a lot of similar situations (movies, digital music, books, ...) where I wouldn't consider asking for a refund _after_ I have consumed the content, whether I liked it or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Arguing that micropayments are the fix is analogous to using the live tiles ux on the desktop or the querty keyboard on a cell phone. Migrating a solution to a new form factor because it has been succesful in the past or because there is a sulerficial similarity rarely ends up being a good design decision. Often when it works it is not at all for the reasons one initially presumed.

UX is all about matching intuitive user behavior with a solutions feature set as naturally as possible. The free vs fee problem is more similiar to this that on initial inspection. How does the user behave when coming across a web site which, as a part of its feature set, requires a transaction prior to proceeding with the use case?

To say that micropayments categorically won't work is to equate the Internet with a homogeneous payment network. Sure, it's been huge for commerce, but that isn't what the internet is, at all. The analogy doesn't carry. Micropayments are already working in some cases. This is exactly what Spotify is. User pays Spotify. User listens to tons of random songs. User pays Spotify. Spotify pays artists/corps pro rata. Sometimes a penny here, a nickel there. Kinda like, micropayments. Spotify seems to be doing ok. The artists, that's another story.

The Internet is not one thing. The Internet it more than the sum of its physically parts. It will have many solutions.

I wish one-size-fits-all solutions would stop being put proposed. It's exactly what the Internet isn't. In fact, the centralization of advert brokers and personal information brokers is exactly what I don't like about the Internet at the moment.

</comment><comment><USER23> This seems like great advocacy for [http://www.w3.org/Payments/IG/Roadmap/](http://www.w3.org/Payments/IG/Roadmap/)

My first concern is the lack of (popular) payment providers that enable microtransactions. If you want to pay $0.15 for a web page, and there's a flat 30 cent + 2.9% processing fee on every transaction, the model doesn't work.

Second concern is using primarily commercial payment providers nothing to break the oligopolies created by payment gateways, which is what makes these transaction fees so high in the first place. I would love to see cryptocurrency support baked into any implementation of browser payments, as microtransactions and user freedom are both well supported.

<comment><USER24> Why are there transaction fees when seemingly all you're doing is updating a value on a ledger? Fraud. Investigating transactions involves humans, which gets expensive.

Global-shared-ledger cryptocurrencies aren't suitable for this case: a global record of every web page the world views is far too huge a quantity of data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We don't want ads and we don't want to pay for anything. Unfortunately, I don't think we've worked out the economics for that model.

<comment><USER26> Who says we don't want to pay? Some of the most profitable newspapers are completely paywalled and have been for years. Someone wants to pay. I will gladly pay myself.

But I will only pay for ad-free content.

Remember how cable TV used to have that promise? You pay for your TV and you don't have ads. I remember that back in the day my cable provider would broadcast listings of today's programming schedule to cover up ads in the source transmission. Now you pay and you watch ads. If we do pay for websites, I hope we pay for no ads.

<comment><USER27> I got cable in 1980 (HBO and all), but I remember ads being shown when I watched cable (except HBO) at that time. Was the ad-free cable before 1980?

<comment><USER26> If you are talking about the US, I am not. Cable in Mexico would hide ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> All the web has to do is figure out why people will spend $1 at a vending machine for tiny terrible snack that is completely unsatisfying but won't spend $1 on a mobile app that they would use every day.

<comment><USER29> There are several highly relevant and clearly apparent reasons:

1\. Snack food is _very_ highly consistent. As with other mass-market goods, it's entirely homogeneous. You know precisely what you're getting. Information goods are virtually by definition _not_ homogeneous. Virtually all successful sales models for information goods are based on some level of subscription or branding (frequently by author, venue, or publisher/publication, particularly periodicals).

2\. The typical vending-maching payment mechanism has no extended-tail risk. Deposit a few coins or bills, receive your product (yes, I suppose there are debit/credit based vending systems). _Every time I make a debit or credit card payment, particularly online, I 'm creating a risk of future account fraud._ That's something I weigh heavily, _have experienced in the past_ , and quite simply do not consider worth any putative convenience benefit. Paying cash is a very reliable stop-loss risk mitigation strategy.

3\. Privacy. Particularly for information goods, leaving a perpetual trail that _I specifically_ paid for _specific items of content_ is ... highly unappealing. I don't pay for my _physical_ books with credit (or use "loyalty", a/k/a Snoop Card programs). It's why I don't and won't use Kindle or similar apps (I _do_ read eBooks, but open, untracked formats, on other devices).

Oh, and I really don't buy much from vending machines. Prefer fresh foods or a good street vendor if I can find one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I don't see this flying because putting this info into my web browser means that lending someone my smartphone or tablet empowers them to _spend my money_ , practically without thinking about it. Yeah, no. I think things like Patreon and tip jars just make more sense.

<comment><USER31> It's worse than that: considering that browsers are never completely secure, especially against user stupidity, it means it empowers random websites to spend my money.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's an old hacker news discussion about the 402 code's slot in the spec which is fairly interesting: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7857236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7857236)

</comment><comment><USER32> > Of course not everything on the web needs to cost something, and I'm not > arguing that every site charge for its content, and go behind paywalls.

I can't help but think that if the implementation becomes easier then more sites will start to demand small sums for their content. I'm curious about how these charges might work with the existing distribution platforms. Would a user who reads a 402 article through Facebook's Instant Articles or Apple News still have to pay? Apple News at least was offering pubs 100% of the ad revenue they generated off the ads they list themselves, would they give 100% of the 402 payment?

</comment><comment><USER33> "At the point where you want to read one, you are presented with a Buy now with 1-click button. Clicking it does just what it says, and suddenly, instead of being denied access to that book's content, you can read it."

What a recipe for disaster. Anyone who has ever downloaded something knows how confusing and difficult it is to press the right button (instead of some ad or virus or whatever). The idea that one single click could reveal my identity to the site owner AND wire my money to them is truly frightening.

<comment><USER34> In the articles' vision of utopia, people pay for downloading things, so putting misleading ads not only becomes unnecessary, but actually harmful for the content provider's bottom line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> There is no way people are going to pay for individual articles, what might work though is letting people customize what kind of ads they see.

For example I want to see car ads, movie trailers, new gadgets and I want to see what's on sale at grocery and hardware stores with 10 miles of the zip code I give it. No video, no animation, no tracking, no targeting, no fucking Taboola. And if an ad pisses me off I want a "never show me ads from this company again" button.

</comment><comment><USER36> There are not many sites I would pay for that are purely content. I think HN is one of the few that could get away with charging $5/month and not lose me as a reader. The biggest problem is that most sites can't transition from free to subscription without losing most of their customers. Even a site that proves to be extremely useful could not do that without a competitor popping up that'll offer the same service for free.

</comment><comment><USER37> There is also the situation of security to consider. Although browsers have made great strides in improving security, if we start including our payment information directly in the browser it could lead to potentially interesting situations. If a malicious entity escapes the sandbox or some memory reading vulnerability, they could figure out the payment information. Of course there's also XSS and CSRF which could potentially allow a malicious entity to silently authorize payment by the user for their own website, all of which would have to be considered not only by the websites implementing the 402 API but also the browser. Sure we're already working to fix these problems for all other data and account purposes, but if history is any indicator then I don't think we're ready just yet.

</comment><comment><USER38> I've been thinking about this kind of thing for a number of years (even coded a micropayment solution which was terrible). But this article reminded me of that and just gave me a thought:

      What if you flipped the burden to online commerce providers?

For example, stripe provides a small toggle so that your integration can add an extra 0.1% to all transactions (so your $49 SaaS offering pays an extra $0.049). In exchange you get a small JS code to embed on your marketing blog.

I'm not crazy about the bitcoin bandwagon, but this seems like a good entry point for distribution. Multiple providers other than stripe can deposit to the same bitcoin address stored in your browser, and then that bitcoin address is paid out according to the sites you visited that had "opted in" to the revenue sharing.

</comment><comment><USER39> That is all well and good if you can use Paypal (As per screenshot in article)

Some of us can not use Paypal (and are not being told by paypal as to why after being banned) so have to use bitcoin, bank transfers, prepaid cards and cash for day to day transactions.

<comment><USER40> Why are you considering rough conceptual mockups to be a finalized list of payment processors? Hell, as-is it already shows non-PayPal options.

<comment><USER39> I see Stripe, Paypal, Visa/Mastercard

all centralized companies that do restrict access to their systems for all sorts of reasons (often not shared with the person being blocked)

all are "pull" methods where your account can be charged in an unauthorized manner

bitcoin, prepaid cards (such as paysafecard), cash and bank transfers are "push" methods giving the owner more control and cheaper fees for that manner

Not sure how practical paypal would be if you only want to spend a few cents (or more interestingly fractions of a cent!)

<comment><USER40> Again, it's clearly a mockup. Complaining about the processors shown is like complaining Mozilla's going to adopt a light-grey-on-dark-grey color scheme because they show that too.

You can also get prepaid Visa/MasterCards, incidentally. No trackable information required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I like it, and I would like to be the first meta comment about the topic. Please reference my proposition from 10 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=10274226](https://news.ycombinator.com/reply?id=10274226)

I actually have been thinking about this for some time and while there are many things to consider, this is a problem Mozilla could get behind. My assumption about them is still unsubstantiated, but given enough research, it is a solution that is in serious need.

I might do a write up on my detailed thoughts on the subject.

</comment><comment><USER42> Good luck with that.

When web advertisements finally die off, I imagine subscribing to one or two news websites, maybe the NY Times and a local site. Other than that, I'm not interested in paying for web content.

The funny thing is, the sites I'd be most likely to pay for don't have ads in the first place.

I really miss the days when people made websites and posted things on the web because they enjoyed it and were trying to be helpful, and not because they were out to make a buck on ad clicks. Quality has plummeted so far it's not even funny.

</comment><comment><USER43> we really don't need an HTTP status code level paywall anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER44> In reality I don't think ads are a problem, as long as they aren't annoying, are hosted by the webpage I am on, have zero trackers and are related to the content on the page.

Though the best system will always be free primary content with paid "premium" content. That way if you enjoy the content of the webpage you can support them, but you aren't required to pay to figure out if you do enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER45> Maybe internet providers should pay fee to the website owners. Same as cable tv providers pays HBO or other channels. We could log the time each user spent on website and then similar to spotify pay proportionally to the website owners. For each internet connection we could pay e.g. $10 that goes to content creators.

Ofcourse Facebook and Google would earn most of this money.

</comment><comment><USER46> Sorry, I have to say it. If someone isn't willing to pay money for your content or service then you probably aren't offering anything of value. Instead you're surviving off of ad based revenue that you're generating while people are figuring out you are offering nothing of value.

</comment><comment><USER47> The real story should be: why don't consumers have full root access on their mobile computers so they can do whatever they want? It shouldn't be controversial for Apple to let consumers have a little more access, it should be controversial that no major mobile OS allows full access.

</comment><comment><USER48> Any way the solution to this problem will be the same as streaming movies and music. There will be an aggregator or curator you pay money to for access, and they will pay pennies to the content creators per view.

</comment><comment><USER49> I submit that subscriptions at the level of micro payments work..at least on mobile devices..$36 Billion in 2016.

Do it the same way first month is the free trial..want to keep reading each month than pay the month subscription

</comment><comment><USER50> I don't think a law proscribing billboards is particularly analogous to a content-blocking API.

</comment><comment><USER51> Another solution would be Google Contributor.

Why is this not accessible outside of America yet? >_>

<comment><USER52> > Hey, we took this perfectly fine content and made it worse by plastering it > with annoying banners and spyware. If you give me $5.99 a month I'll make it > not shitty again.

This is not a business model I want to support. I'm happy to pay for good content, but if the supposed "value" I would get from giving you money is not being annoyed and tracked then you'll never see a penny from me.

There are a few unicorns who have figured out how to have good free content, have no ads, and make money, like the Thrilling Adventure Hour, and Welcome to Nightvale podcasts. They get my money because their model is actually adding value with swag and live shows rather than making their content worse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Couldn't ad networks move from javascript to server-side?

</comment><comment><USER54> i don't hate this.</comment>


Tell HN: HN Meetup in Pune Tomorrow - <AUTHOR>

The Pune HN Meetup is on. It's on Sunday, 12 June at the "Infinitely Beta" office at 6 PM.
Address is on http://infinitelybeta.com
If coming, please send an email to b.ghose at infinitelybeta dot com.
See you there! <comment><USER2> Is this a regular meetup? I'll be in Pune in December and would love to come along to one of these meetups.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there one going to be in Chennai / Bangalore ?</comment>


Thin vs. Unicorn - <AUTHOR> http://cmelbye.github.com/2009/10/04/thin-vs-unicorn.html

<comment><USER2> "You should not allow Unicorn to serve clients outside of your local network."

-Quoted from the Unicorn philosophy page at <http://unicorn.bogomips.org/PHILOSOPHY.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I will just throw it behind nginx in production.</comment></comment>


The Next Wave of Web Education Startups - <AUTHOR> http://namesake.com/conversation/81ca3b0c-4423-11e0-96d1-12313f014066

<comment><USER2> This is a really good conversation with smart people weighing in on the issue from multiple POVs. Hopefully more people will jump in and add their perspective!

</comment><comment><USER3> This sector is ripe for innovation.</comment>


The Post Office Is Deactivating Mail Sorting Machines Ahead of the Election - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7wk9z/the-post-office-is-deactivating-mail-sorting-machines-ahead-of-the-election <comment><USER2> Posted this article separately but it was flagged. The quiet part has been said out loud by the president. The motivations have been made clear here and the speculation about why this is happening ends there IMO:

> "They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take > all of these millions and millions of ballots," Trump said in an interview > with Fox Business's Maria Bartiromo. "If they don't get those two items, > that means you can't have universal mail-in voting because they're not > equipped to have it."

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/13/donald- trump...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/13/donald-trump-usps- post-office-election-funding)

</comment><comment><USER3> My father in law works for the USPS and mentioned the elimination of these machines as well as elimination of overtime about a month ago.

It's being described as a result of a massive decrease in flat mail. From the local union newsletter:

 _" On 5-15-2020 USPS announced a National Equipment Reduction Plan to remove and scrap 671 pieces of equipment nationwide. ... USPS is scrapping and not relocating these machines because they don't see the mail coming back."_

The 5/15 date is interesting because it's about a week after the new Postmaster/CEO was appointed. [0]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy#U.S._Postmaster_Ge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_DeJoy#U.S._Postmaster_General_and_CEO)

</comment><comment><USER4> We do just in time shipping on top of the post office, so have visibility here. We're definitely seeing mail being delivered more slowly, with more delays. At the same time, it's a question of degree, not a major dismantling of the post office. I'd guess 90% of our packages are still arriving within a day of when they were supposed to.

For context, I run bottomless.com, YCW19. We're shipping hundreds of packages from dozens of locations around the US every day.

<comment> huy-nguyen You can do a great public service by publishing a metric of postal mail delivery timeliness from across the country.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. We are thinking about it. I really don't want us to get involved in a partisan debate, but presenting the facts might inform the discussion overall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My understanding is that in most areas without existing voter suppression efforts anything postmarked by election day should be counted. This will probably delay the announcement of the winner unless it is a landslide, which is not really that big of a deal unless you are a cable new channel that feels it is necessary to have 24/7 coverage of the election until the winner is announced.

<comment><USER6> This is untrue - different states have different standards by which mail in ballots will be counted. A postmark on or before Election Day is no guarantee your vote will be tallied, depending on where you live.

<comment><USER7> And in places like California which take a long time to count ballots they usually announce results and the election is effectvely over before everything is counted.

<comment><USER5> Most places will make the announcement once the outstanding ballots are extremely unlikely to change the result of the election.

So if Candidate A is winning 500,000 to 400,000 but 150,000 ballots are still outstanding then they'll make the call for Candidate A because there is no reason to think that the outstanding ballots will be that much different in distribution than the already counted ballots. This can be adjusted based on historical precedent as well, if you know that late counting precincts tend to vote in a certain way then you can make educated guesses as to when the results of that precinct will no longer make a difference. Even after adding in some extra margin for safety you can call the race.

The tricky part is when a race is really close and you have to count every ballot. This is when waiting 3-5 days for the mail to finish trickling in is going to cause cable news anchors to lose sleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I know this is an annoying thing to say, but:

This is an argument for not having mail delivery being controlled by elected politicians.

<comment><USER9> > _This is an argument for not having mail delivery being controlled by > elected politicians._

Which is not the same thing as having mail delivery being controlled by private companies, who are even less answerable to the public than elected politicians.

<comment><USER8> Then who is left? Churches? Foreign governments?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Mail in voting is going to make the hanging chads in Florida in 2000 seem like a nice memory.

In the best of times, the postal service was striving to deliver 96% of the ballots. Why would we sign up for automatic 4% disenfranchisement?

It is common for 20% or more of mailed in ballots to be invalidated for one reason or another. And that's just when its a normal year with absentee ballots as the ones in the mail.

Changing the election system during a pandemic with only months prior to the election is just asking for it. This sort of thing takes years to plan in the best of times.

</comment><comment><USER11> How about we don't have a mail in vote and just make the day a holiday.

<comment><USER12> We've actively lobbied for that for years--Republicans have refused, because they know that the people working low-income jobs whose managers will not let them off to go vote tend to lean Democratic.

There are some states where the best we've managed is being allowed to take "unpaid" time off to go vote, with the caveat that your employer cannot fire you for doing so. Some states don't even have _that_ much. Guess which way those states tend to vote.

<comment><USER13> If you've actively lobbied for that for years, in multiple states and those darn Republicans refused it... Then those years would include times when there was a Democrat president and congress, and governors.

So maybe blaming the other side is just politically convenient?

<comment><USER14> Florida's state govt has been in complete control of Republicans (all houses + gov) for over 30 years, despite Republican voter registrations being in the minority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why is this flagged? A working postal system is a required element of many YC companies.

</comment><comment><USER6> Direct election interference. Please call your elected representatives and demand action. There is no safe alternative to voting by mail in the middle of a pandemic that the Trump administration has completely bungled a response to.

We are watching the creation of a banana republic in realtime.

</comment><comment><USER16> After reading the article it seems like it won't effect the election results - other then maybe making them take slightly longer? But even that seems unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER17> If only there was a communication medium which travelled at the speed of light and 100 years of research in information theory and cryptography which would allow secure auditable verifiable elections from the comfort of home. Nah lets use pre-telegraph technology.

<comment><USER18> Do not ever allow an election for who gets to control the nukes be decided by an e-vote. I don't want Boaty McBoatface to be the president.

<comment><USER17> That's exactly my point. This article is critiquing ancient technology which can be tampered with by the ruling government that limits democratic involvement without proposing obvious remedies involving superior technology. The hidden subtext here through the intellectual dishonesty of its exclusion is that this technology would allow a little bit TOO much involvement from the electorate which is contrary to the entire design of American representative democracy which is purpose built to prop up candidates captured by big money corporate donors and PACs.

<comment><USER19> This isn't a technical problem that can be solved by technical solutions, and even technical solutions can be tampered with.

Everyone understands paper ballot technology. Very, very few people are going to understand a technically "superior" e-voting system that has all the right characteristics. I'd rather have the system that can be accurately understood verified by the public than one where the public has to completely trust a few dozen experts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If we can't trust the government, then we need to rely on our community.

Sounds like we need communities to band together and have a group collect & deliver mail-in ballots and make sure that people in charge of counting the ballots are onboard to ensure end-to-end compliance.

I will be standing in line this year. Covid be damned. Though, my next fear is that there will be a shortage of ballots in left-leaning areas.

<comment><USER21> Please don't incite criminal behavior. Under law, only certain people are authorized to deliver mail-in ballots -- typically family, elections staff, and postal workers.

Ballots have chain of custody issues, and it would be terribly easy for one party to organize a collection drive, look at the sender, and decide to save or recycle based on party affiliation of the voter. The thing that changed this year is the openly partisan affiliation of the United States Post Office, so the laws haven't been updated to remove them as from the chain of custody.

EDIT: I guess the law changed in California[1] to allow other people to carry ballots, so long as the voter signs for it. But other states don't have that freedom.

[1]: [https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/voter-info/vote-by- mail.htm](https://voterguide.sos.ca.gov/voter-info/vote-by-mail.htm)

<comment><USER22> >Please don't incite criminal behavior

This is a gross oversimplification of morality. Regardless, I agree what the parent is proposing wouldn't work well.

<comment><USER21> I don't see a moral claim being made at all in my post. Morals are a completely different dimension than government law. I think you're conflating the two.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Peter Jackson's 48fps Presentation Of 'The Hobbit' Gets A Mixed Response - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/peter-jacksons-48fps-presentation-of-the-hobbit-at-cinemacon-gets-a-mixed-response-20120424

<comment><USER4> _"It doesn't look 'cinematic', lacking that filtered or gauzy look we're all accustomed to"_

 _"Not all will like the change. 48 fps has an immediacy that is almost jarring."_

 _"...he elaborated his thoughts, and essentially, the crisper looking image had the odd effect of making everything seem almost too realistic"._

Lighting and set-design issues aside (sets shouldn't feel artificial), these comments seem ridiculous to me. It would be like a Triumph TR3 or Sunbeam Tiger owner lamenting over the Mazda MX-5 (Miata), saying that it's not an authentic British-style roadster unless it regularly hemorrhages its fluids when stationary in your driveway, occasionally fails to maintain an idle, or if an artifact of one the builders can't be found hidden in the trunk. Oh, wait -- people _actually_ made those sorts of complaints.

People dislike change, even when it ultimately is for the better. I'm sure there were plenty of complaints when the industry moved away from nitrate film as well. Heck, since this film is digital I'm going to go find the "Death of the Projectionist" article I'm sure exists.

<comment><USER5> Film is an artistic medium. Many many many choices are made in the making of most films that intentionally deviate from reality.

It's completely reasonable to believe that 48fps will not be the right creative choice for all films.

<comment><USER4> I agree. Black and white, sepia-tone, deliberate flicker and visual noise (including cigarette burns) will all have their place when used appropriately and to further push well-thought stylistic choices that are brilliantly executed.

However, those films will certainly be in the minority. To dismiss higher frame rates on the whole seems goofy.

Additionally, googling "death of the projectionist" yields more articles than I'd care to mention, including some that honestly lament that nitrate film is no longer used.

<comment> excuse-me Higher frame rate doesn't automatically translate as "better"

Our eyes (actually brain) have a natural fusion frequency, images shot with a relatively long exposure at 24fps - with corresponding motion blur - <USER2> different from shorter exposures at 48fps.

Remember Ray Harryhausen's stop motion monsters? Those are much 'sharper' than actors, but not necessarily more realistic ( except in the case of Keanu Reeves)

<comment><USER6> The exposure length could be the same. 360 degrees of shutter at 48fps is the same exposure as the cinematic standard of 180degrees/24fps.

<comment> excuse-me IIRC the Red camera has a rolling shutter so is equivalent to a fixed 360deg shutter

(if I understand cinema shutter terminology correctly ?)

<comment><USER7> The two things you posted are completely un-related.

Film cameras generally have a 180 degree shutter, which means that the film is exposed for half the time each frame is in the gate - which means at 24 frames per second, the exposure time is 1/48th of a second. A 360 degree shutter would theoretically therefore be 1/24th of a second at 24 frames per second, or 1/48th of a second at 48fps (so should exhibit similar motion blur to 24fps at 180 degree shutter).

The EPIC is perfectly capable of taking any of these exposure times (up to 360 degrees - I'm not sure what the limit is exactly at the low end - <USER3> something like 1/10000th of a second).

Now, 'rolling shutter' is just the fact that each column of pixels along the sensor are read sequentially, so there is a slight difference in time from the first column to the last one being read (called the read-reset time). This can be really bad on cheap cameras with slow read-reset times, where it can cause vertical things like light-posts to look skewed when you pan across them quickly, but the EPIC's read-reset time is fast enough that it's not a problem (it is similar to the time it takes a film's mechanical shutter to blank).

<comment> excuse-me You still have an adjustable exposure time between the pixel reset and read, which you can make pretty small (<1ms)

But the real problem comes from the time taken to read an entire frame. On a cheap camera this is about the frame time because the electronics is slow, but on a high end camera it is still often close to the frame time because you have a lot of pixels and there is a limit to how fast you can read while still having low noise. Some scientific CMOS cameras get round this by having massively parallel outputs.

The problem gets worse at 48fps - if it takes close to 1/48s to read the chip then a moving object will have stretched across the entire frame from top to bottom. In the worst case a vertical post in a fast pan will be at 45deg. A 24fps camera run at the same pixel clock only has half the effect.

The cameras do have software to try and correct this - basically they look for vertical edges and de-skew them, but this puts in artifacts that you don't want in a Hollywood movie. The other secret is to not fast pan at 48fps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it all breaks down into three categories:

        * People who like it
        * People truly not liking it because they're not used to
          it, but someday they'll look back and think 24fps looks awful
        * People trying to send hipster social signals by being more
          cinema snob than thou

Not sure what the exact breakdown is, but I wouldn't underestimate that third category.

If it seems like I've not left space for people genuinely and indefinitely not liking it... no, I haven't. It's a proper superset of capabilities. If for some bizarre reason 24 fps is truly called for, it can be used. I expect that to happen about as often as we bizarrely have a sudden need for 12fps footage in the movies of today, which is to say, never. (No, I don't mean slow-mo, I mean a sudden frame rate drop for its own sake.)

<comment><USER9> How about the breakdown of people who like it?

      * People who think it actually looks good
      * People trying to be so hipster they look down on hipsters who wax nostalgic about 24fps

Seriously, I have noticed the "too real to be cinematic" phenomenon since Blu- Ray and Spider-Man 3 came out. It looked like I was watching the people 3 feet away from me, and I don't feel like I'm watching a movie, I'm watching a Spanish soap opera.

I like 24 fps for the same reason I like deadtree books: the experience.

<comment><USER8> Sorry, I'm _totally_ more metacontrarian than thou. Don't even try.

Let me reiterate the most important point I had, which is that if 24 fps is so wonderful, directors will choose to use it (after the initial rush has worn off). Nothing stops them.

But they won't, because if 48fps has any fundamental problems, it's that it's still _too slow_.

I'm sure you can Kickstarter up some shutter glasses to blink at 24fps if you get that desperate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _Terms like "artificating" and "juttering" are terms still best known among > hardcore tech heads, not moviegoers, and frankly, that's because when most > people watch movies, they aren't seeing those "problems."_

I suppose they just have to ask my mother "Hey, what did you think of the first minutes of Quantum of Solace?"

The argument for 48fps is a simple one to make: With faster cuts and pans, photographing a scene 24 times a second only gets you so far.

24p was mostly an economical decision - made decades ago. Unlike, for example, digital audio, which is modeled after the maximum detail that the human ear can perceive, 24 fps was simply set at that limit because that's when people stopped noticing the flicker - in movies at that time.

I would say that any change as big as this will take a while for directors to get used to. I don't think it will get quite as ugly as 3D, though, and I'm not sure why people are trying to make this connection. A lot of digital content is already in in frame rates far beyond 24 fps, so we're getting more and more used to this every day. Finally, this new technology is just another tool - now it's up to the directors to use it in a way that entertains audiences.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have one of those TVs that does a good job at extrapolating frames (Samsung 7000 led) and when you turn that functionality on, it does make everything look more 'fake'.

It makes movies feel more like theater than cinema. When I first got the TV, I really noticed the makeup and excessive hairspray on men a lot. Also, the props in sci-fi movies looked like they were foam or plastic (since that is what they actually are). Iron Man's costume, for example, looked very plasticy. I don't know why that is. Our brain must be filling up the missing frames of 24fps such that everything looks more real.

It only took a week or two to get used to it and now I mostly don't notice it anymore and actually prefer the crisper looking images. It's especially great for documentaries such as Planet Earth where everything is more life like.

I know some people have difficulty getting used to it because the guy who sold me the TV told me he was getting some returns with complains of things looking fake on the TV.

</comment><comment><USER12> To everyone raising their noses at these cinema hipsters who doubt the attraction of 48fps: take care. Human perception is a fickle thing and does not always follow the logical path one might expect.

Consider the uncanny valley, where adding fidelity to an image actually reduces the perceived pleasure rather than increasing it.

In my experience, even the jump from 24fps to 30fps is enough to lose the feeling of 'magic' that people are used to in the movies. There's a reason that most non-reality, non-sitcom TV shows are filmed in 24fps rather than 30fps (the native framerate of television).

It may be that the movie industry will find a way to make movies that take advantage of the characteristics of 48fps, but it's not going to be like sticking a new video card into your rig and receiving an instant experience improvement. The fundamental way that movies present themselves (photography, scene design, set design, storytelling) will have to change.

</comment><comment><USER13> As excited I am for The Hobbit, I'm also leery of the 48fps. If you've ever noticed the difference between watching movies on a 120Hz/240Hz, it's definitely extremely noticeable and distracting. It makes movies look like reality TV.

Why this is, I don't fully know. The fact that this is _filmed_ at 48 fps (rather than simple interpolating the extra frames) might make it better, but I'll just have to see for myself.

What I do know, is that if watching a film at 48 fps is like watching a typical bluray at 120Hz, I'm going to find it distracting. It really does mess with the "feel" of the movie. Whether it's simply cognitive dissonance or not will take time to determine.

Here's a relevant article from last year that really hits home for me: [http://prolost.com/blog/2011/3/28/your-new-tv-ruins- movies.h...](http://prolost.com/blog/2011/3/28/your-new-tv-ruins-movies.html)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for that read. It's splendidly written and really hits home - and is the last straw to convince me to get a plasma instead of an LED for my new apartment :)

<comment><USER15> you can disable those extra features on every tv set i've tried, so it really shouldn't be the deciding factor.

<comment><USER14> Actually, I'm talking about the true black.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Reminds me of people who said CDs would be a flop because they reproduced sound too faithfully, and consumers would be uncomfortable listening to music that didn't have the distortions and white noise record players produced.

In other words... BS.

<comment><USER5> Did people say that? I just remember the other side of it, people saying that CDs were lower fidelity than good vinyl recordings.

Of course, now we listen to MP3s.

<comment><USER17> People still say that, and there is a tremendous market for things like tube amps based on the idea that the lower-fidelity stuff 'sounds warmer'. And it does, because you're passing your signal through a filter than adds a small amount of mostly low-frequency distortion which some folks have grown accustomed to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps the negative reactions are simply because most people aren't accustomed to seeing insanely high resolutions and frame rates in the cinema.

When I first got a high-definition plasma TV (which replaced my 20+ year old CRT), I felt the exact same way: as if all my movies were ruined, because they looked like documentaries. Now it feels like a degraded experience to watch poorer quality films. Perhaps the audiences of 2032 will feel the same about 48 fps/5k resolution.

<comment><USER19> I think this isn't a resolution issue at all. The issue largely has to do with motion blur. Here's how I understand it (and poorly):

When capturing video at X FPS you thus must hold open the shutter of the camera for some fraction of the time each frame in order to capture the scene. You can hold it open anywhere from 0 to 1/X seconds. If you hold the shutter open too long as a fraction of the frame time, you get too much motion blur and moving objects look blurry. If you open it for too short of a time, you have the opposite effect: things look jumpy. Your objective is to find just enough motion blur to trick the eye into seeing things as smoothly moving from frame to frame. As a rule of thumb, IIRC that amount is usually half the frame time, that is, 1/2X seconds.

If you are shooting at, say, 48fps rather than 24fps, and you're using 1/2X shutter speed to get the right motion blur, the total amount of time your shutter is staying open (during a length of film) is exactly the same, but for each frame you're staying open only half as long. Thus each frame is only getting half as much motion blur in 48fps as in 24fps, and this has an effect on the psychological "look" of the medium. The "feel" of film is largely due to its low frame rate, resulting in shutter speeds of 1/48 seconds and corresponding large motion blurs in each frame. Video has a shutter speed of 1/60 and thus smaller motion blurs in each frame, making it feel more "live" or "realistic". Move to 1/48 FPS or 1/60 FPS and you're talking very small motion blurs per frame (shutter speeds of 1/96 or 1/120), resulting in an exaggerated "live" look. It doesn't feel archival any more, it feels like you're watching through a window at something going on _now_. And this can really break the fourth wall.

BTW, the faster shutter speeds have another effect: they make it much harder to shoot dark scenes. You don't have many good options: your aperture is already dictated by the look you want to achieve, and all you have left is upping your ISO, and no one wants a grainy video. Given all the other problems that the RED cameras have given Jackson's team, forcing them to exaggerate set colors and makeup etc., I'm surprised they'd add this problem to the pot.

<comment><USER7> "Given all the other problems that the RED cameras have given Jackson's team, forcing them to exaggerate set colors and makeup etc."

This was actually a really strange thing - it comes from a comment in one of the making of clips but (as a RED owner) it really doesn't make any sense to me...

The uncorrected preview output from a RED cameras can look quite dull on a monitor, but after grading the RAW footage we've only found it to have better latitude and colour rendition than most other cameras. I don't know if it's a problem with their post workflow or what, but it doesn't sit right...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The argument for 24 frames per second is that:

a) adequate sound sync is maintained when projecting film

b) reducing the frame rate to the _minimum_ humans need to perceive something as continuous motion leaves the maximum amount of detail "missing". This in turn produces a dream-like quality, and frees up the mind to spend brain cycles on non-visual things, like the story, acting, etc.

(a) is now outdated: we can get rock-solid sound playback at any frame rate today, thanks to digital projection. Personally, I find playback of 24fps material on a 60fps LCD monitor to be annoying – there's always that judder.

This makes me wonder if we shouldn't drop the frame rate further, to 20 fps. This would have a nice even multiple for our 60 fps LCD screens, and also maximize the dream-like quality we associate with films, but with zero judder.

Anyway, food for thought. :)

<comment> excuse-me Alternatively you could run your TV at 50h so you can simply convert 24/48 fps film while saving yourself 4% of the time to make a nice cup of tea

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I googled native 48fps footage and found a couple of tests uploaded to viemo from the Scarlet-X, and didn't notice much, however, I'm wondering if any experts on HN could weigh in on whether flash video does any frame dropping or other degradation that would make such examples different than the actual experience. Are there any examples of sites that have native 48fps footage at a high resolution?

Like many other commenters here, I was wary of the use of a higher framerate based on my experience with 240hz TV's, which look so distractingly hyper-real I can't watch them for any sustained length of time, but I'm not sure of how much that has to do with frame-doubling or other "tricks" that might be applied.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's an established perception issue. Not only people expect blur from the movies, but they also associate the _lack_ of blur with lower quality production.

To explain - the same problem exists with never LCD TVs. Many of them has a logic for resampling 24fps source and interpolating it into higher frame rates. In theory, this is supposed to remove the blur and make dynamic pictures more detailed. In practice, it actually does that, but it also makes movies look like soap operas. A quick google search brings up ton of complaints of this nature, and the root of the problem is that soap operas are shot for TV broadcasting and _at higher frame rates_. Hence, the visual aesthetics one typically associates with them. In other words, you bump up FPS, you get the soap opera impression... which hardly the vibe Hobbit should have :)

</comment><comment><USER23> I for one am looking forward to 48 fps. I have too often that I am watching a movie and I can see "juttering" as the camera pans across a scene. I find it extremely annoying. I have also noticed that it is in various other aspects of life as well.

There is a traffic light near me that has three lights on it, and there is a noticeable difference between when the first light goes from green to orange to red and when the second goes through the same progression. My friends thought I was insane until I took high speed photography of the same traffic lights and proved them that it was off by the tiniest amount (don't remember exact figures). The same thing can be said for PWM'ed LED's, such as the ones in certain cars...

<comment><USER24> Here's another example you might spot if you're a commuter: Some weird timing in the brake lights of some Ford Fusion models. (c. 2010 I'm guessing? The one's with the cheesy shallow-stamped trunk/license plate area.)

The three areas of brake lights come on at different times, creating a subtle horizontal flow.

I assume it's due to poor wiring harness design, but IANAEE.

<comment> X-Istence I am not sure what car you are talking about, but if it has three physical different lights it may be because of differences in the relays that turn them on and off that cause slight timing differences, unless it is on every Ford Fusion...

I too have the same issue that I am able to see slight difference in timing for certain lights. I've learned to ignore it rather than let it get to me, but I've got a friend who is extremely sensitive to them and has a hard time behind the wheel of a car because the timing on LED brake lights in some model cars causes her physical pain and that causes her to lose her concentration on the road. Her husband drives her most of the time due to this issue.

<comment><USER24> Wow, that's a truly unfortunate problem your friend is faced with, especially since we're likely still in the dawn of the general proliferation of LEDs.

I too notice the odd strobing effect of LEDs when they're in motion or I am: Christmas tree lights, Macbook Pro sleep indicator, some brake and headlights. I imagine having that be a cause of pain must be fairly similar to hyper- sensitivity to scented products/VOCs; one has to go out of of one's way to avoid commonly occuring things in the typical environment.

I've noticed the "Ford Fusion effect" whenever I've looked for it.[1] Got to do something to pass time in traffic!

[1] This link is for the sport version, but it has the same (hideous) sheetmetal as the base model. [http://i.autoblog.com/2009/02/16/in-the- autoblog-garage-2010...](http://i.autoblog.com/2009/02/16/in-the-autoblog- garage-2010-ford-fusion-sport/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am cautiously optimistic that this will NOT be as jarring as the "soap opera effect" on modern (120/240Hz) TVs -- which for the most part is caused by hilariously crap interpolation and sharpening filters that TV manufacturers seem to love these days.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've wondered about variable framerates. Higher framerates are very nice when panning, or during fast motion, but as viewers have noticed, are less "dream- like" during periods of slow motion.

With the technology that we have, it'd be possible to have 24 fps (or even lower) during the "slow" scenes, with instant speed up when desired. This would add one more aspect of the filmmaking experience for filmmakers to exploit.

</comment><comment><USER26> No home video formats support 48fps, though TVs do.

"Both blu-ray and ATSC do not support 48 fps at any resolution. Both do, however, support 60 fps at 720p."

[http://sayspy.blogspot.com/2011/04/framerates-for-movies- and...](http://sayspy.blogspot.com/2011/04/framerates-for-movies-and-debacle- that.html)

Does anyone know if there is newer information or standards planned?

<comment><USER27> The folks over in Europe watch their 720p at 50fps, which is awfully close, but would still require pull-down for material shot at 48fps.

I wouldn't expect any new home video standard formats any time soon. I think for viewers to see The Hobbit in their home theaters at 48fps, it would require them releasing the movie as a digital file (still a long way off) and for there to be both a file wrapper and playback software capable of handling new frame rates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > theaters will need to upgrade the software on their 3D projectors to handle > 48fps, about $10,000

For a planned software upgrade? Is this some kind of obscene vendor lock-in?

Is that figure per projector or per theater?

<comment><USER29> As a general rule, if a product in anyway is meant to be used by Hollywood or any kind of video production, it's super expensive. Just go browse around B&H Photo's site for a bit to see what I mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Oh no. Not a fan of 48fps. Oh no no no"

Don't know the man, but I'm pretty sure I don't really care for his opinion now.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if 3D-48fps is a different experience than 2D-48fps? Perhaps the effects of 3D and 48fps don't work well together?

<comment><USER32> Less flicker and should also be brighter. The one aspect of the Hobbit I look forward to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Reminds me of this. <http://xkcd.com/732/> (Hover over the picture.).</comment>


First rule of ant traffic: no overtaking - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23176/ <comment><USER2> While it is interesting that there is "no overtaking" in the ant world, I don't think this really has any real bearing on humans and driving congestion (as suggested by the articles subheading). Having sat in long, single lane stop and go traffic I can anecdotally suggest it's irrelevant.

More importantly, there is a big difference between personal locomotion and commanding a vehicle. For example, the difference between my walking pace and that of an Olympic champion sprinter is not THAT great. However, the difference between my freeway merge speed and that of my mom is an order of magnitude. Add in fixed and inflexible travel lanes, the ability to speed up and slow down consciously and unconsciously, traveling at speeds that will knowingly cause death in the event of a problem, etc. and you have a lot more variance with higher stakes to the participants.

I'm not saying it isn't a fascinating bit of trivia, but I think Tom Vanderbilt's book "Traffic" is apt to lead to more insight than this particular nugget of knowledge.

<comment><USER3> The real difference is that stopping distance for an ant is a fraction of an ant length, but for a car it's several car lengths. So for cars, most of the space is following distance For ants, most of the space is ants. Car density decreases as the square of speed, while ant density is constant. That's not because they have better algorithms but because they're in a different realm of physics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> (Warning: improvised English, this has been very hard for me, sorry)

There is a annoying effect that I can see in my city in most of the jams that I suffer. It's about the highway exits. The circular highway is usually three lanes wide. It has exits, many of which are slow (entries to the city). The exits take the form of an additional lane to the right. When the "contact zone" of the rightmost lane with the additional lane is long and the traffic is middle or heavy, the jam is a sure thing.

Why? Even if the exit has a reasonable speed, there are drivers that wait until the last moment to take the additional lane. There are so many that most of the vehicles that reach the exit are of this kind. If you are kind enough to take the additional lane as soon as it is possible, you get caught in a trap for ten to twenty minutes.

It's a moral dilemma. Either I am a good citizen and agree to be victimized for a quarter of an hour daily or I do the same to others. Please, don't ask me what I do.

It also creates a jam for the cars that aren't taking the exit, because the late changes of lane affect them. Not only the right lane, but also the middle one are filled with "late-exit-takers". And the slow cars have to change lanes to avoid the stopped cars waiting to exit.

I've observed that there is a disposition of lanes that prevents the problem: separating two lanes to exit and two lanes to follow on the highway, making the exit lanes long enough (to have a "buffer" for the slowness of the exit) and the fork instant, not a long "contact zone". But this disposition is seldon used and I haven't really made the experiment to be sure :-)

About the article: I don't think the ants are similar to cars at all. Drivers have freedom to behave differently, some are in a real hurry and we have different speed of reaction (to use the holes in the exit to wait to the last moment).

<comment><USER5> Where do you live?

<comment><USER4> Madrid, Spain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ants are not trying to text their friends, watch their GPS, and change the radio station while they are in formation.

</comment><comment><USER7> This article does make a good point. It has been my experience that highway traffic can move more quickly when people do not change lanes. I have seen this happen a couple times in very snowy conditions; the traffic density was such that it should have been stop & go traffic; however, due to the large amount of snow between each lane, everyone pretty much stayed in their lane. This made traffic go at a steady 20-25 mph. (Note that the set of circumstances in which snow can cause traffic to _speed up_ is very rare).

The main problem that this article does not address is bottlenecks. Even with a perfect system, it is impossible to keep a constant speed if there is a large influx of traffic at a certain point or the road narrows to fewer lanes.

</comment><comment><USER8> The article makes several good points but I'd have to disagree with the no overtaking rule. Taking the human out of the equation, vis a vis 'IRobot' style, where road travel is managed by computer seems like a more viable option in the long term. There have been several advances in this technology, from MIT especially (Google 'Self driving car', do you really expect me to divert from this tab for you?)

I work in Highway Engineering and Management, the company i work for manages quite a few of the UK's motorways. I wonder if I could wing this point into a meeting. Another Gem HN, thanks.

</comment><comment><USER6> The more I think about this the more I think the comparison is not relevant. Ants are all going from point A (the colony) to point B (the food). Additional ants are not joining the line midway, nor are any splitting off to some other destination, nor do different streams of ants cross one another's paths.

If you had a one-way one-lane road with no cross streets, merges, or exits, MAYBE the situation would be comparable; in the real world, I don't see a whole lot of relevance.

</comment><comment><USER9> In "Critical Mass" by Philip Ball chapter 7 covers "The inexorable dynamics of traffic" which is highly worth a read if this subject matter interests you. There's also some very interesting sections on crowd dynamics and route finding.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ants can form platoons (groups moving at constant speed) because they have the same destination.

<comment><USER11> We have buses, which do help a good deal.</comment></comment>


VC Super Angels: Filling a Funding Gap or Killing The Next Google? - <AUTHOR> http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm;jsessionid=a830b5f3b997b21c4d19775624453e5ff675?articleid=2580 <comment><USER2> There may be some truth to the "preventing the next google argument," but I have two opinions:

1) From an entrepreneurship standpoint, who cares. $50 million is a lot of cash. When Mint was sold, the VC's were critical about selling too quickly, but that $170 MM was a lot of money. Also, some of these successful small sells will definitely lead to more super angel activity, which is alright by me.

2) The next Google will appear. To assume that powerful, rapidly growing companies will be less likely to emerge is silly. Ego, or boldness, or vision, or some other human emotion will continue to instill a drive and eagerness within founders to grow and expand. They may have 2-3 or more small company sales before they do it, but that intrinsic drive to build will still remain. If anything, the 2-3 or more small sales may result in the "new google" being built better than a first time startup, as the first small companies were where the painful learning occurred.</comment>


Bing Engages Open Maps Community - <AUTHOR> http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2010/11/23/bing-engages-open-maps-community.aspx

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a rather badly written press release, this tweet from OpenStreetMap founder Steve Coast is the much more straightforward short version: "I'm working at Microsoft and we're donating imagery to OpenStreetMap!" – <http://twitter.com/SteveC/status/7116536766533633></comment>