Reddit to Give 10% of Its 2014 Ad Revenue to Non-Profits Picked by Its Users - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/28/reddit-to-give-10-of-its-2014-ad-revenue-to-non-profits-picked-by-its-users/ <comment><USER2> So a not yet profitable site is going to start giving away revenue. Very happy I'm not an investor in that company.

<comment><USER3> Let me rephrase that "So a not yet profitable site is going to spend 10% of a new form of marketing. Very not happy I'm not an investor in that company" :)

<comment><USER4> _> "... spend 10% of a new form of marketing..."_

Exactly.

Seems a big part of the Reddit appeal is the love for feeling a part of the collective.

All at once this reinforces that sense, lends a suggestion of passive nobility to using the site and pre-emptively defends an increase in advertising.

I expect they'll also see some jump in guilt tripping by the community around adblocking as well.

<comment><USER5> There are already ads on reddit that say "Thanks for not using adblock." Though they may get more blatant as time passes.

<comment><USER4> I'm thinking more among the community than from Reddit directly. You already see a fair bit of that kind of peer pressure in some circles [0][1].

0: [http://www.reddit.com/r/CoDCompetitive/comments/1ssvjm/if_yo...](http://www.reddit.com/r/CoDCompetitive/comments/1ssvjm/if_you_really_support_esports_subscribe_or_dont/)

1: [http://www.reddit.com/r/nerdcubed/comments/1w2h95/adblock_di...](http://www.reddit.com/r/nerdcubed/comments/1w2h95/adblock_discussion/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm always suspicious of people proudly announcing that they're giving something to charity. We already have a system in place for every organisation to give part of their money for the public good: taxes. As a democratic society, supposedly we already have mechanisms in place to decide how to spend this money for the public good.

Why, then, is it laudable if an org decides to give to charity instead of paying taxes? This takes the decision of how to spend for the public good away from the public and instead the company decides. Is it because in practice we distrust the government and our decision-making procedures too much and we trust private companies more?

<comment><USER7> > We already have a system in place for every organisation to give part of > their money for the public good: taxes.

Yes, but without any personal discretion or choice. For example, I personally think a woman's access to birth control and abortion is an essential right, but because this is by no means a popular viewpoint, I donate directly to charities that support my views.

Taxes aren't a way to support specific, desirable public goals, they only maintain the status quo. If your view had merit, Bill Gates would try to pay taxes to encourage redesign of condoms to improve Third World family planning outcomes (one of Gates' current projects). But Gates knows this won't work -- as far as a vocal minority of American are concerned, family planning is the work of the devil.

> As a democratic society, supposedly we already have mechanisms in place to > decide how to spend this money for the public good.

You have a distorted idea of democracy. Democracy is not a centralized decision-making process in which various views are amalgamated into a single choice of action for all. Not to oversimplify, but democracy respects the rights of individuals and diverse groups to act in a way that doesn't interfere with any other group's similar rights. On this basis, private charity accurately represents democracy much better than centralized taxation does.

<comment><USER8> Ironically, it would have been more on the nose for you to briefly empathize with a different position on birth control for the sake of this argument.

There is a very small minority (even among Catholics) that believe that birth control is immoral, let alone that government should impose that moral view. Nowhere in the near future will there be popular support, even within select states or counties, for banning birth control.

So what's the issue? One of them is that there are cases before the Supreme Court, including one involving Hobby Lobby, regarding whether private businesses should be forced to pay for birth control (by means of tax penalties) over moral objections. The "vocal minority" in question is struggling to maintain their freedom of personal discretion in this respect.

In arguing that people should have personal choice, you are indirectly agreeing with the very same minority you caricature.

<comment><USER7> > Nowhere in the near future will there be popular support, even within select > states or counties, for banning birth control.

If you live in the U.S., you're out of touch with popular opinion. The majority are in favor of birth control, but there is certainly popular opposition to birth control.

[http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012...](http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/03/religious- rallies-across-usa-protest-birth-control-mandate/1#.UxGVWTmx27s)

> In arguing that people should have personal choice, you are indirectly > agreeing with the very same minority you caricature.

That's absurd and a troll. Obviously anyone who speaks in favor of free speech would have to receive the same reply from you, on the ground that free speech is by definition a tolerance for unpopular views.

<comment><USER8> To be clear, according to Gallup [1], over 85% of American Catholics have no issue with birth control. Not that this is solely a Catholic thing, but it's an illustrative example.

Even in the link you provided, there is nobody protesting legal birth control. They are protesting being forced to pay for other peoples' birth control. If birth control was an out-of-pocket expense, there would be no issue here.

I was simply trying to point out that the government is willing to put people out of business and litigate them all the way to the Supreme Court to mandate free birth control.

You seem concerned that the government could trample over your conscience as well, and we should all be concerned about that, but it's ironic that you chose this particular issue as an example, considering current events.

[1] [http://www.gallup.com/poll/154799/americans-including- cathol...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/154799/americans-including-catholics- say-birth-control-morally.aspx)

<comment><USER7> > Even in the link you provided, there is nobody protesting legal birth > control.

Transparently false -- the people in the story are protesting legal birth control.

> They are protesting being forced to pay for other peoples' birth control.

That's this week's explanation. These people are against birth control, and they con't care what form it takes.

> I was simply trying to point out that the government is willing to put > people out of business and litigate them all the way to the Supreme Court to > mandate free birth control.

Yes, just the same way the government put people out of business and litigated all the way to the Supreme Court to mandate an end to slavery. You very clearly have no idea what you sound like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Right... that's not going to trick us into advertising on Reddit again, which is one of the biggest wastes of ad dollars out there. You couldn't sell Makeup to the /r/makeup forum. They just don't click on ads, let alone buy anything. We joked about how you're probably better off advertising on a gay porn blog. I actually tried it. And I got more sales than on Reddit. I've tried 3 separate times and all three were wastes, I've read articles about others trying and they found it to be a waste as well.

They're doing this to try to get their (often stereotyped as snarky and condescending) users to click on ads for the "good of the world". It won't matter because their audience's clicks don't convert into sales.

<comment><USER10> I sometimes browse the frontpage of reddit and I feel like the best way to advertise there is by making "real" submissions.

I've seen quite a lot of highly upvoted submissions like "look what my girlfriend got me!" linking to a picture of some "geeky" product. Maybe I'm a bit cynical but I can't help thinking 80% of them are just marketing in disguise.

Also, you don't even have to pay to submit those stories. I'm not sure how reddit could solve this problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ad revenue needs to die as a business model for websites. I will continue to block all ads on all websites because I can and they are ugly.

<comment><USER12> Ok, education time.

You may not like ads but they heavily subsidize great content. In fact, the price of a New York Times subscription would be close to $1,500 per year if it weren't for advertisers keeping it closer to $300 (and that's if all their existing subscribers could even afford it).

Alexander Hamilton (newspaper owner, secretary of the treasury, founder of the Bank of New York) said:

"It is the advertiser who provides the paper for the subscriber. It is not to be disputed, that the publisher of a newspaper in this country, without a very exhaustive advertising support, would receive less reward for his labor than the humblest mechanic."

The fact is people dramatically underestimate what it costs to produce high quality content and that as a rule you'd need to spend much more than you'd expect to have access to it.

Advertising has essentially made information free or cheap for the user for a long time. Just because you think ads are ugly and annoying doesn't change this fundamental reality.

<comment><USER13> This fact is why newspapers are dead, and online content continues to blossom. In the information age, there's absolutely no excuse for the content they produce to cost $1500/year per subscription.

In fact, that's where we hit the real problem: the kind of content that is covered with advertisements is usually _not very good content_ to begin with.

This is especially true of content aggregators and meta sites such as Reddit and to some extent, this website. The content isn't even theirs: they are simply hosting a discussion forum about the content. A new-agey one instead of the old BB sites, but it's nonetheless exactly the same.

What content providers should be learning is that _people are willing to pay for good content._ Quality absolutely matters. The 90s and 00s were all about quantity, but now we're up to the rafters with disposable content. Look at the shows with the best ratings today: Game of Thrones, Mad Men, Breaking Bad. Exceptional content quality, heavily pirated because the content creators have failed to adapt to new media distribution. The fact that I can torrent GoT more easily than I can view it from HBO is tragic.

So there's your dose of education for the day.

<comment><USER14> I'm trying to learn more about this issue. Could you elaborate on the evidence for people willing to pay for good content? I know almost no one who pays for TV a la carte through iTunes or Amazon.

I also don't understand why Game of Thrones supports your argument. Of course the shows that are pirated the most will be the ones that are (1) popular and (2) expensive or hard to access. And of course if those shows were cheaper they'd be pirated less. But I don't see how that relates to the idea that people are willing to pay for good content. My roommates pirate GoT, but I am skeptical they'd pay even if it was available for $4.99 an episode.

<comment><USER13> > Could you elaborate on the evidence for people willing to pay for good > content? I also don't understand why Game of Thrones supports your argument.

[http://bit.ly/1mLgOc3](http://bit.ly/1mLgOc3)

> I know almost no one who pays for TV a la carte through iTunes or Amazon.

You now know of me. I spend around $50/month downloading content from Amazon, be it music or tv. I would buy Game of Thrones as it came out if I could, but I can't.

Absence of evidence isn't the evidence of absence. Especially if you've done no investigation.

>I am skeptical they'd pay even if it was available for $4.99 an episode.

$5 might be a bit steep for some, $2-3 is just about perfect. But honestly I'd _still_ pay $5 for content created at this level, if not just to encourage the people creating this quality of content to keep doing it.

Your skepticism is powered by your lack of knowledge and research. Do the work, then come back and comment.

<comment><USER14> Actually, this is an issue I'm trying to research and understand better which is why I asked you my questions. Sorry if I offended you.

One thing I did try to find before asking you was data on the size of the a la carte TV/movie market. Anecdotally I know no one who buys TV shows (probably because I'm poor and tech savvy), but I thought I might be able to find comprehensive data to change my beliefs. Unfortunately my Google Fu was not good enough to find anything. I thought you might have a source you could share with me.

(To be honest, I think your response was rude and I feel a little hurt. But it's ok.)

Edit: In hindsight, some of the fault was mine. Of course there are people willing to pay at every price (that is the idea behind a demand curve). I guess what I'm really getting at is what are the best estimates of the shape of the demand curve. Would HBO make more money if they made GoT more accessible/cheaper? Is there evidence that a $2-$3 price point would be better than $5 price point? What are the price elasticities of demand? I guess I kind of wrapped up those more subtle questions into the question of people being willing to pay for content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> That's very cool. Allowing the users to have meaningful input will really set them apart. I don't do reddit much, but this is very noble and generous of them!

<comment><USER16> Yeah, unless the users choose charities that alienate other users. Is your pageview going the planned parenthood or the NRA? Berkshire Hathaway discontinued their shareholder directed charity because some (vocal) people disapproved of the choices: [http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/news/jul0303.pdf](http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/news/jul0303.pdf)

Anyway I wish them the best but I hope they know what they're getting into.

<comment><USER17> They do seem to be thinking about exactly the sorts of problems you are talking about. Not quite clear in the techcrunch blurb, but more explicitly stated in the actual reddit blog post:

[http://www.redditblog.com/2014/02/decimating-our-ads- revenue...](http://www.redditblog.com/2014/02/decimating-our-ads-revenue.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is cool, I wonder why they are using part of the ad rev though. Advertisers want to advertise no matter what, like it's _basically_ just a formula for $ <-> traffic. But I'll bet users would be more pumped to buy each other reddit gold if part of that purchase went to charity.

<comment><USER8> It sounds like it's to provide an incentive to stop blocking reddit ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone else feel like this is extremely suspicious (classic misdirection) given the negativity surrounding the moderation of Snowden's latest leak?

<comment><USER20> Are you serious? Of course it isn't. Not everything is a conspiracy theory, you know. That was to to do with the moderators of /r/news and nothing to do with Reddit itself.

<comment><USER21> A company is trying to get some good press after a lot of bad press. Must be some kind of conspiracy theory, right?

<comment><USER22> If I haven't already read about it in the newspaper, then it must be a loony conspiracy theory. /s

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> josh-wrale I wonder if it will be the EFF... ;-)

[http://www.salon.com/2014/02/28/why_reddit_moderators_are_ce...](http://www.salon.com/2014/02/28/why_reddit_moderators_are_censoring_glenn_greenwalds_latest_bombshell_partner/)

<comment><USER23> Is the NRA a non-profit? That's the sort of place I see redditors shooting for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a double-edged move. I will boycott Reddit if it donates to non- profits I do not wish to support.

</comment><comment><USER25> Link: company x gives to charity, 5 hours ago.

4 comments responding directly to the link, 3/4 negative.

117 comments responding to randomAnonymousUser[1-4].

(Internet (Hacker News)) culture at its finest.

</comment><comment><USER26> And down goes the click-through validity rate.

</comment><comment><USER27> Non-profit == noble cause?

<comment><USER24> Not at all. Further, Reddit forms hiveminds with strongly idiosyncratic opinions that squeeze out other valid views, and it's likely one of these which is going to determine the direction of donations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> isn't reddit a non-profit?

</comment><comment><USER29> Reddit has ads?

<comment><USER30> Yes, if you remove AdBlock (or similar) you'll see them.

Also it has plenty of hidden adds crafted as submissions.

<comment><USER31> They aren't hidden, the posts that are ads are clearly marked as such

<comment><USER30> I mean advertisement made by people disguised as some kind of post.

It's a risky business though because if they get caught they get masses of anti-advertisement. Though one would say that best advertisement _is_ anti- advertisement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This move is so people on Reddit stop using ad blockers, which is clearly effecting their bottom line.

I don't think it will work, since Reddit already uses non-intrusive ads and the majority of people block ads on principal alone.

Users don't want ads (because it's somehow intruding on your space), nobody would be willing to pay for the site, and Reddit gold was seen as class warfare (haves and have nots).

Anything that even seems like Reddit wants to bring in money is shunned immediately by the user base.

Like most anti-capitalist Utopian groups, it's doomed.

<comment><USER33> Can we infer from this that using ad-block is a form of low intensity class war? I (as an ad-block user) like this idea.

I think that its perhaps a bit of a stretch to call reddit an 'anti- capitalist' group, but for sure the capitalists are failing to find a way to extract profit from it, and this itself really interesting

Like other 'social media' (in the broad sense) enterprises reddit uses the products of users unpaid labour to reach an audience, and it attempts to make a profit from selling this audience to advertisers. Unfortunately for those wanting to profit from reddit, its strong community is resistant to being exploited in this manner. Im not claiming here that all or even most reddit users are 'anti-capitalists', or directly opposed to the profit making of reddit, but simply that there is not (or has not yet ben discovered) a means of adequately monetising its community which doesn't give the effect of taking control from said community, and things like the revolt against reddit gold and the use of ad-block are movements in this struggle over ownership.

I dont, personally, see any resolution to this impasse which maintains both a profit for reddit and the autonomy and control desired by the reddit community, and in this we are in some sort of agreement. The two are irreconcilable. I would choose to back the other horse though.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Corsair Game – Minecraft Meets the Martian in Space - <AUTHOR> https://corsair-game.net <comment><USER2> I'm another guy working on the game.

Whoa, thanks for the attention! Left the computer here and came back after an hour to see quite a few new email signups... Didn't really know what to expect, but this was a positive surprise!

Anyway, regarding the similarities with Space Engineers, it is understandable, as both are kind of first person space games. To be honest, it has been a while since I looked at their game, but I believe our vision is different. We have more of a back story, more gameplay (not just a sandbox), living ecosystems, NPCs, missions, etc. Ship building is a core part, where you build and improve your ship and crew to be able to travel further and explore more.

The demo we have on our site is a bit dated concept version we built with WebGL (Three.js and Cannon.js). We have recently moved to Unity and are working on an intro/tutorial that will be our new downloadable demo. ETA of that is few weeks from now at least.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a great concept. It looks good, but the controls are a bit funky and not intuitive, compared to for example Minecraft where you "got it" right away. You should make the demo into a tutorial, so when ppl make the decision to buy or not, they already know how to play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks similar to Space Engineers: [http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/](http://www.spaceengineersgame.com/)

<comment><USER5> Has that become any better? last time I played with it about the only mechanic that worked was slamming ships into rocks and watching them crumple

<comment><USER6> Planets, programmable systems, automation, the game is basically constantly under development

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After watching the video I didn't understand the game at all. Maybe add some text "Explore the open world" or something.

</comment><comment><USER8> Regarding your demo: When Firefox is an unsupported browser, and it isn't the year 2000 anymore, I stop using your website.

Looked like a fun game, but unless it has a (not half-assed) SteamOS port, you probably won't get my money.

<comment><USER9> I don't understand the downvote, if the demo doesn't work on half the browsers[0] in the world at the moment then it's not great is it? More so when most of them can actually have decent WebGL performance.

[0]: [http://gs.statcounter.com/](http://gs.statcounter.com/)

<comment><USER10> Better support for the demo would be good, sure. But "I stop using your website" because one feature of it is browser-specific is rather extreme. And the snipe about SteamOS support, when as far as I can see there's no mention of target platforms at all, just comes off as rude.

<comment><USER8> There was a lot of density in my comment. I'll unravel.

The point is I'm a linux-only gamer using firefox. I am clearly not their target market. I felt it appropriate to explain that I was not about to download chrome(ium) on my device in order to view their game. Browser monocultures are a dangerous meme I do not wish to support.

If there was a chance it would be ported to SteamOS, I would buy it in a heartbeat, even if I didn't get to play the demo (the Youtube video was nice). It's safe to guess (I'd love to be wrong) that, if they're focusing on only one browser, they're likely going to focus on only one platform. If I'm wrong, and this ends up being released via emscripten/asm.js, (or, even better, a _native SteamOS port_ ) I'll happily eat my words.

SteamOS has some _lousy_ linux ports so far, unless you get Ryan Gordon to port it, or use Unity/Unreal. My "Half-assed" parenthetical was in reference to this. There's a real Blue Ocean opportunity here for good coders fluent in DirectX and OpenGL/SDL to make decent careers off porting to SteamOS right now.

<comment><USER2> I work on the game. Really happy to hear you like what we have done, and sorry to disappoint. We have moved from WebGL to Unity and are currently porting our demo.

Send us an email at firstname.lastname@example.com if you want to help test our Linux releases!

<comment><USER8> (lengthy) email sent. The fact that you ported from WebGL to Unity proves that I was largely barking up the wrong tree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This looks pretty cool, our minecraft addicted kids are going to love it.

I'm curious, do you plan to charge for this game? And if so, I wonder how that might work when it's a browser-based game. Ads? Subscription? Something else?

<comment><USER2> We will charge for the game, yes. We are building the game with the Unity Engine, and that allows us to release on practically any platform we want. Currently we are aiming for a standalone PC/Mac/Linux release, but mobile is of course also interesting. First things first, though.

We are considering selling the game on Steam, but have not decided yet.

<comment><USER12> While steam is a good platform to sell on, I think a lot of people here will agree that selling a DRM free version on sites like GOG.com would be awesome especially if you can support Linux.

<comment><USER13> What about GOG is better than steam? I'm pretty sure you can sell your game DRM free on steam too. Valve is also pushing pretty hard for Linux gaming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> oh my god. I'm five minutes guiding the mini man to the other asteroids. I could only make eletronic parts with the two asteroids close.

<comment><USER14> Did anyone manage to create anything other than eletronic parts?

<comment><USER15>
        - 2x polymer = empty hull
        - hull + electronics = boardable ship (unpowered)

Then I got back to work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> creepers...in space?</comment>


Yahoo Engineers Talk Of Outsourcing To Bangalore; Yahoo PR Disagrees - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/07/yahoo-engineers-talk-of-outsourcing-to-bangalore-yahoo-pr-disagrees/

<comment><USER2> India, where technology companies go to die.

<comment><USER3> Very possibly; one thing we do know is that culturally Yahoo simply doesn't care about the quality of its engineers or particularly respects them. As noted by PG, Yahoo has traditionally been a "media company" in which its engineers exist to implement the visions of others. Based on development, it would not appear that their new from Autocad CEO is fighting that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hey HN, I need your advice – 26 y/o visiting the US - <AUTHOR> Hello HN, I am Michael, 26 y/o from Greece - a Marketing graduate from the Athens University of Economics and Business. I've been following HN for quite some time and I figured it would be a great place to seek advice for my current situation.
Right after graduating I had to leave Athens, where the most jobs are, and move back home (Chios, one of Aegean islands) because of family reasons. As a result, I wasn't able to turn my degree into a fulltime job. I did, however, get some relevant experience.
My first job was a content editor and social media manager for a greek poker news website for about a year. My next venture was managing a fitness equipment e-shop for about 2 years. It was a great experience for me, dabbling around in the real economy and trying to provide real value to customers and suppliers. Our cooperation went into a hiatus at the time I had to serve the greek army. After finishing my service I took up the post of a very successful Airbnb host for the summer. I was responsible for the daily management of 3 listings (check-ins, check-outs, cleaning schedule) as well as the pricing the days that were not yet booked.
I know this sounds like a boring cover letter, so I'll cut it short and explain where I stand now: I am currently a visitor in the US, living in Upstate NY. Is it viable for me to apply for a job under the H1B visa? What steps should I take? Where should I look at?
I'm a fluent English speaker and my skills include SPSS and SQL proficiency. Moreover, I am looking to learn Python and R in order to strengthen my data analytics skillset. I am mostly interested in digital marketing but I am willing to work in business analytics as well. I am also a sports fan and have a keen interest in the business side of sports, so utilising my skills (and obtaining new) in the sports industry would be great too.
I would truly appreciate your thoughts, either here or with an email at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER3> Unfortunately it's not viable. The H1B Visa program is extremely broken. Visas are capped yearly and run out in a few days. This happens around April.

There are a bunch of other reasons, like a preference for STEM graduates, abuse of the Visa program by big companies and more. They are all equally depressing to iterate through.

The easiest path to immigrate to the US legally is to find a good job in your home country in a company that has offices in the US, work there for at least a year and ask to relocate under the L1A/B Visa.

I went through several different Visas so feel free to ask me questions.

<comment><USER4> Hey, I'm wondering if you get a L1 type Visa and then while in US you get another offer from another US company, what happens?

<comment><USER3> The L-1B Visa does not allow you to transfer to another company like a H-1B Visa, so the Visa process is the same as any other H-1B.

The L-1A Visa has a clear path for residency as a Multinational manager or executive (EB-1) while the L-1B does not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > What steps should I take? Where should I look at?

The US system is mindlessly, hopelessly complicated.

Here's a potential solution-- apply for permanent residency status (Green Card), then apply for a work permit (EAD) while your application is be processed > [https://www.us-immigration.com/blog/applying-for-a-work- perm...](https://www.us-immigration.com/blog/applying-for-a-work-permit-while- green-card-application-is-pending)

If you need a sponsor, go to the local Greek Orthodox Church-- ask who they might know that works in software. You will be amazed how well connected the Greek-American network is.

<comment><USER3> This is a little misleading, you cannot apply for residency unless you're married to a USC, or an individual of extraordinary ability.

A job can apply for residency for you, but there are a specific set of requirements.

There's a lot of mis-information regarding immigration, and your best source is [http://uscis.gov](http://uscis.gov)

[http://visajourney.com](http://visajourney.com) is also a pretty good community.

<comment><USER5> Eligibility: Job or Employment Based - Third Preference: Skilled Workers, professionals and other qualified workers > [http://www.uscis.gov/green- card/green-card-processes-and-pro...](http://www.uscis.gov/green-card/green- card-processes-and-procedures/green-card-eligibility)

<comment><USER3> Which requires a job offer and the employer to petition for you. The requirements are pretty steep for third preference applications too.

Even through marriage/family, the US Citizen petitions for the immigrant relative.

<comment><USER5> Finding a Sponsor: Use -- and Expand -- Your Network >[http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/tips- find...](http://www.alllaw.com/articles/nolo/us-immigration/tips-finding- sponsor-employer-work-visa.html)

* απευθυνθείτε στον τοπικό Ελληνική Ορθόδοξη Εκκλησία

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you came to the US with the intention to find a job (even a H1B job!) you are currently breaking the law. I would strongly advise not to apply to any companies during your US visit.

That being said: do a lot of googling on H1B and read this thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5150810](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5150810)

</comment><comment><USER7> I am an EU citizen, so I don't know much about your chances of getting an US visa, although from what I heard and from what the other commenters say, I think they are slim. However, can you try to get a job in UK? Since you are Greek, you can go there without visa and don't require any work permit - <USER2> can try other European countries as well (here in Barcelona there are jobs that don't require to speak Spanish, I suspect there are similar jobs as well in Netherlands, and maybe Germany or Belgium.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you guys, I really appreciate your input.

I didn't intend for this to be a visa discussion, I am more focused on what I should look for in my career from now on. Could you give me some pointers given the facts I stated above? Thanks again everyone!</comment>


Eulogies - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=341

<comment><USER2> <http://www.thenation.com/doc/19450818/wells>

Actually, I think writers in general just like to pretend that writers are more powerful than they are. Even _The Making of the Atomic Bomb_ played up the weapon's literary precedent.

</comment><comment><USER3> Clarke was widely known as the guy who popularized the idea of artificial satellites for communication _long_ before he died, pretty much in the same way that pg is known for having popularized Bayesian spam filters (among other things of course).

</comment><comment><USER4> matt, try laying off that caffeine.

</comment><comment><USER5> Obituaries are to journalism as HTML is to hacking. Aspiring writers have to start somewhere.

Let's just not confuse the lack of journalistic professionalism (is that an oxymoron?) with the man's accomplishments.

</comment><comment><USER6> Want a sure way to be featured on HN or reddit? Stir up controversy by bagging on geek culture.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you prevent users from certain countries from using your web app? - <AUTHOR> I am trying to open a US company from India using Stripe Atlas. They keep stonewalling me with this question ...
How will you screen for and prevent people in comprehensively sanctioned jurisdictions, namely Cuba, North Korea, Syria, the Crimea region of Ukraine, or Iran from using your app?
My typical answer is ...
Our app is only available to people who have a Gmail or Facebook or Github or Twitter account. We believe Gmail/Facebook/Github/Twitter accounts are not available in the above countries. So we cannot have customers from these countries.
Their reply goes ...
Thank you. We will update you in a few business days, or possibly up to a week due to a surge in interest.
And then it's back to the same question ... how will you prevent people from certain countries from using your app? This has been going on for two months now.
How do you prevent users from certain countries from using your web app? <comment><USER2> Most Linux distributions have a "GeoIP" package you can leverage. Another option is to pull down the country data from firehol's ip-sets [1] and use that in your application. I would suggest asking the people if either of those options is appropriate and get that in writing.

[1] - [https://github.com/firehol/blocklist- ipsets](https://github.com/firehol/blocklist-ipsets)

</comment><comment><USER3> Blocking Tor and IP ranges might be sufficient. CloudFlare might offer this as a service, but I'm not sure. I'd imagine using a third party would legally put you in the clear, but again IANAL

<comment><USER4> I can vouch for Cloudflare blocking Tor.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Ask HN: Should I learn Julia? (good investment now?) - <AUTHOR>

I have some additional limited free time, would it be a good idea to invest in learning Julia (bullish on the future of the language), or not?
Julia has ~everything that made Python popular for general programming and data science, plus much more, without the flaws.
Some of these benefits  include super low cost abstraction, beautiful syntax, multiple dispatch, coroutines, hygienic macros, almost c like speeds, dynamic type inference, high productivity  etc
Coming in the next release is multithreading, package precompilation, Interactive C++ FFI, array and matrix views, Generational GC and more. After that there are plans for standalone binary/shared library creation and handling of distributed, streaming, and out of core data sets.
Facilities to call Python and R alleviate the package scarcity to an extent.  There are the bugs though, but they should be ironed out.
Why wouldn't Julia  become wildly popular with all this stuff , and thus would it be a good idea to get ahead of the curve?  Or, is path dependence on go, python, r, node too strong? <comment><USER2> If you have a specific project in mind and think Julia would be a good fit, go for it. That said I think it would be more valuable to you to build up a reputation as someone who can analyze data in any language, than to brand yourself as a Julia hand specifically. Sure 80% of the world might be converted to Julia someday but it will mean nothing if your current project involves translating a code base in Stata or SAS, or working with a bunch of web devs who want to use Python for everything, or collaborating with a research professor who just has to have his Matlab since that's what he used for his thesis... Invest in becoming a data whisperer first and in becoming a coder of specific languages second. Happy stats-ing!

</comment><comment><USER3> It's never a bad idea to learn a new language, but from experience I will say that the quality of the language rarely has anything to do with how popular it is.</comment>


Salary Negotiations Study: Data from Tech Employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.comparably.com/blog/whos-negotiating-their-salary-in-tech/?utm=feed <comment><USER2> Its too bad young people don't negotiate more. When your next salary is anchored so heavily on your current salary, a little negotiation early can have such an impact on lifetime earnings.

<comment><USER3> I don't know where you live, but had my salaries have always been a 'take it or leave it' deal. The only way to get a bigger pay check here in Belgium is by getting a new job.

<comment><USER2> I'm in the US. I'm not talking about negotiating raises at the same company. The key is when you go looking for that new job, negotiate with the new company. After finding another offer I've had my current company offer $15k extra to keep me and when I didn't want to stay with one company, I've negotiated two new offers to get an extra $10k over my top pick's "absolute max for the position." Negotiating happens when you start a new job and fresh out of college is the perfect time to do it because it's often much easier to get multiple offers at the exact same time and play them off each other.

<comment><USER4> That's great for you, but for the "young people" coming out of school it's just not the reality. I left school (highest honors, 4 semesters of work experience, stem degree)with 2 offers, both 100% static.

Perhaps people with computer science degrees from the best of the best schools have that luxury, but for the rest of us even an interview in this market is often times asking for too much (and continues to be even over a year out).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I change jobs every 2-3 years. Mostly because asking for a raise or a promotion is usually met with an eyeroll. Or a laugh. Or some lame attempt at blame-shifting to "corporate."

<comment><USER6> Yeah, watch out there, though. After a certain number of job changes, "too many job changes" becomes a red flag to future potential employers.

<comment><USER7> Months is a problem. Two or three year stints with obvious level progression is great.

// Hiring :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would have been really useful if we could see the last visualization (male/female comparison by dept) include department AND experience.

As hotly debated as that topic can be, (and no coincidence that it was presented last in order) it seems responsible to align all available variables as closely as possible.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's always easy to try to make assumptions based on data, but it's just as easy to take away the wrong idea. Do prospective executives negotiate because they're used to negotiation, or because companies are prepared to negotiate salaries for those roles?

<comment><USER10> You don't get to that role without negotiating and if you notice the higher up you get, the more likely you are to negotiate.

<comment><USER9> I think it at least partially correlates with knowing what the new role is worth, financially, to you and to the employer. Nobody's going to disclose what the current executive in that role makes but once you get to that level you're prepared to ballpark it. And prepared to know what it would take for you to accept it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Actual intelligence comes from all aspects, not just stuff that is written on a 2-dimesional plane. Being good at that stuff -- in reality -- equates to being good at academic stuff -- which is not actually connected to intellect, in a way that non-academic things are not. Likewise; being good at academic stuff is not an indicator of a lack of intellect either.

Math in particular is only a supplement to intellect, as it is only one of an infinite ways of _describing_ what is first understood through intellect.

Often, organisms who are capable of reproducing mathematical stuff, are void of an understanding of what it is that the math is describing.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd worry if someone in sales, BD, or supply chain didn't negotiate. Part of their job is negotiating, and their employment is a business deal the company is making with that individual. So I was very surprised to see that the negotiation rate for VP of Sales was not near 100%!

</comment><comment><USER13> Nothing unexpected, but interesting to see the comparison to other jobs</comment>


Google Grants MapReduce License to Apache/Hadoop - <AUTHOR> http://firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER2> _That_ is "don't be evil" demonstrated. Google could have kept GFS and MapReduce strictly confidential (no paper published, merely a patent) and sue those who implemented anything similar.

Microsoft had at one point used Hadoop and HBase (via the Powerset acquisition), they've also made their own MapReduce (Dryad) and Sawzall (DryadLinq) equivalents. It's admirable that Google resisted the temptation to patent-troll them (not that patent trolling has any actual benefit, it just sounds like a typical "evil big corporation" thing to do).

<comment><USER3> Dryad is not MapReduce. M/R is just a very simple case of what Dryad can do. But Dryad is not available for serious use outside Microsoft. Also Google only got implementation patent, it's only applicable to Hadoop, which is a Java- based clean room implementation of Google's M/R.

Zvi

<comment><USER4> > _Dryad is not MapReduce. M/R is just a very simple case of what Dryad can > do._

That's irrelevant ... if it touches on the claims of the Map-Reduce patent, then it infringes.

Being a company that releases stuff in the open sure is a disadvantage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I expected them to do this - good for them. As much as I tend to distrust large corporations, Google has some coolness, and I can't think of another large corporation that I distrust less than Google.

<comment><USER6> The only one that's up there for me is Mozilla. The implementation of the Weave platform so far puts user privacy way above Mozilla's business interests. The dedication to open development and management is higher than Google's.

<comment><USER7> Mozilla is not a corporation, it's a non-profit foundation: <http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/>

<comment><USER6> The Foundation owns the Corporation. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation> Still, I see what you mean - Mozilla doesn't generally act as a business would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if this means anyone can use MapReduce (even outside of Apache code). ON the other hand I see no mention of 'derivative works' in this section of the license.

So, yeah, I'm curious if this patent license is transitive such that people creating new works based on the Apache code can always use the patent license.

Apache Software License 2.0

<http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.html>

3\. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non- exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.

</comment><comment><USER9> The message seems to have disappeared. Here's the next message in the thread: [http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/hadoop-general/2010...](http://mail- archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/hadoop-general/201004.mbox/browser).

</comment><comment><USER10> What happens if I take the hadoop code and modify it? What about a very substantial modification?

<comment><USER11> licenses are granted to legal entities, not some code?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The submission seems to have dropped the last > of the URL, causing a 404.

Here it is as a tinyUrl:

<http://tinyurl.com/36jzc7v>

<comment><USER13> And lengthened:

[http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/hadoop-general/2010...](http://mail- archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/hadoop- email@example.com%3E)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1287969>

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, thanks. Can anyone point me to a reference on entering special characters in HN URLs and comments? If I had entered the URL properly, this would have been presented to me before I posted the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The link is a 404 for me. Is there a mirror or another link?</comment>


Chew on This: Reduced Mastication Impairs Memory and Learning Function - <AUTHOR> http://neurosciencenews.com/mastication-memory-learning-7052/ <comment><AUTHOR> As a warning to all the Soylent consumers</comment>


Jony Ive's "Boring" Christmas Tree - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/21/technology/jony-ive-christmas-tree-design/index.html <comment><USER2> Actually doesn't look bad at all, I like it. At the very least he left the branches on.</comment>


Always remember the about page - <AUTHOR> http://labs.teppefall.com/2010/04/always_remember_the_about_page.html

<comment><USER3> And don't forget a contact Email if you want press. Phone numbers are great too (perhaps consider one of those Google Voice widgets if you are hesitant to put your number on the web). Oh, and if you don't want your logo butchered it's always good to have a ri-res version available somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER4> The irony is that I wasn't able to find your about me page...

<comment><USER5> It's hidden pretty well (not on the blog, have to click to their homepage first).

<http://app.teppefall.com/about/teppefall>

(And it doesn't have much info either (when did the company start, etc))

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yay, for once I idly click on some obscure thing and it turns out to be an above-average post! That doesn't happen nearly often enough. Anyway, this one makes at least two distinct and interesting points:

1\. Users click on a site's "About" link way more than you'd expect. (That certainly matches what I do as a user; it's the first thing I look for if I'm at all interested in a company or a blog.)

2\. What Facebook and Twitter really are are "human spam filters for near real-time information". (This is a more controversial point, but an insightful one.)

Edit: you should fix the typo ("though nobody") and perhaps also come up with a better title so people other than a few straggling procrastinators take notice.

</comment><comment><USER7> When I show up on a landing page, and there's no info about what the website/company actually (sin number one), I immediately look for an about page, and if I can't find one, I'm gone.

</comment><comment><USER8> Made me check the logs for the site I administer (www.shirlaws.com.au) - <USER2> About Page is #14 of 118.

This is higher than I would have expected - other content (business articles etc) is being populated over time, so the site is almost entirely About Us and what we do at this stage. And people still click that button to find out more.

</comment><comment><USER9> This rings very true with me as a user. I know I've spent minutes hunting through a particular website's navigation system looking for the non-existent about page before abandoning the website entirely.

</comment><comment><USER10> Here are traffic stats from my blog: <http://i.imgur.com/IVr7e.png>

As you can see, my about page got a fair amount of traffic.

</comment><comment><USER11> Don't forget to make text lines not stretch to fill the window. People with bigger screens will be presented with hard-to-read text.

<comment><USER12> Don't forget to do exactly the opposite of this.

If you don't want the text to fill the window, reduce the width of your browser.

<comment><USER11> What? Long lines are hard to read. That is a fact. If you want some life examples just go to a random news site.

My browser is fullscreen as almost all my applications are if I use them. It would be silly to small-window it just to make a website more readable.</comment></comment></comment>


This Is What a Zero-Star Car Safety Rating Looks Like [In a 40mph Collision] - <AUTHOR> http://jalopnik.com/this-is-what-a-zero-star-safety-rating-looks-like-on-fo-1777974705 <comment><USER2> This is what happens when you don't have a NHTSA or equivalent.</comment>


'iTunes university' better than the real thing  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16624-itunes-university-better-than-the-real-thing.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news <comment><USER2> No, it's not better than the real thing. You need to have iTunes installed. With OpenCourseWare and various websites of professors I just need a web browser.</comment>


What's Lost as Handwriting Fades - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/science/whats-lost-as-handwriting-fades.html

<comment><USER2> Looks like this is a day late, but just wanted to add that I did some research in med school on learning methods and one of the strongest correlations was that hand-writing notes was an excellent learning method while typing notes was horrible.</comment>


New toy for Kagglers - Your team's own Splunk server - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kaggle.com/2012/06/20/gigaom-and-wordpress-and-splunk-oh-my/

<comment><USER2> If anybody is interested talking about Splunk, APIs, or need any help on the Splunk side, please feel free to get in touch - I'd love to help :)

Disclaimer: I work for Splunk, on the Dev Platform team - we're trying to make it easier for developers to use Splunk.

</comment><comment><USER3> What the hell is a Kaggler? It might be worth a moment to explain that somewhere on the linked page.

<comment><USER4> It would appear to be a customer of kaggle.com. For what it's worth, the Splunk server also appears only to be used and available for the duration of the contest itself.</comment></comment>


Skybox Imaging + Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.skyboximaging.com/blog/skybox-imaging-google

<comment><USER2> SkyBox was going to bring democracy to the monopolistic wholesale satellite imagery market. SkyBox was disruptive, attacking issues of cost and recency with a novel, inexpensive satellite constellation. The only other real provider is DigitalGlobe.

With Google buying SkyBox, it's going to be one huge, closed monster vs. another, both of which are hostile to free maps.

SkyBox was meaningful to the OpenStreetMap movement, in being a source for recent, traceable imagery. Their existence alone put pressure on DigitalGlobe continue to evolve and innovate. The capital markets see it as Google eating up some of DG's market, but it has bigger consequences to the free maps I care about: [http://seekingalpha.com/news/1665313-digitalglobe-sells- off-...](http://seekingalpha.com/news/1665313-digitalglobe-sells-off- following-google-skybox-report)

I know it's cliched on HN to boo acquisitions, but BOOOOOOO.

<comment><USER3> > SkyBox was meaningful to the OpenStreetMap movement, in being a source for > recent, traceable imagery.

I really don't feel like it is that important. Right now OpenStreetMap is still lacking active contributors more than anything.

In the long run OSM will offer better data under a less restrictive license which google simply does not offer. That alone will create demand for satellite imagery by mapping providers like MapBox as their customers want that.

<comment><USER4> How many contributors does OpenStreetMap need?

From what I've been able to discern, OSM's road data is reasonably complete. Place data perhaps not as much. Is that the gap that you foresee additional contributors filling?

<comment><USER5> Road data is largely complete in Western Europe and getting there in Eastern Europe. In much of the US, it's still raw USGS TIGER data, which is very low quality and needs fixing. Asia, South America etc. are much patchier.

Address coverage is almost universally poor.

POI coverage is patchy: landmarks are often well surveyed, businesses less so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder what the implications are for OpenStreetMap. Skybox was playing nice with OSM and Mapbox -- [https://www.mapbox.com/blog/skybox-mapbox- integration/](https://www.mapbox.com/blog/skybox-mapbox-integration/)

<comment><USER5> The MapBox Satellite layer available for tracing into OSM is sourced from DigitalGlobe[1], not Skybox, so it shouldn't affect OSM.

[1] [https://www.mapbox.com/help/mapbox-satellite- sources/](https://www.mapbox.com/help/mapbox-satellite-sources/)

<comment><USER7> I think he's talking about mapbox's custom tasking that's still kinda being worked on. You'll be able to request fresh imagery through mapbox, that will be tasked to skybox (among others) through their apis.

[1] [https://www.mapbox.com/blog/interfaces-for-visualizing- rapid...](https://www.mapbox.com/blog/interfaces-for-visualizing-rapid- satellite-imagery-collection/)

[2] [https://www.mapbox.com/blog/mapbox-satellite-live- firstlook/](https://www.mapbox.com/blog/mapbox-satellite-live-firstlook/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was always one of those "not if, but when" acquisitions in my opinion. Seems like a perfect fit for the trajectory Google's been headed, and the company was already based out of Mountain View.

</comment><comment><USER8> A great acquisition of a group of really smart people doing interesting work. This is the kind of company Apple should have been looking at acquiring if it wants to ever truly compete with Google in mapping and online services in general.

</comment><comment><USER9> Does anyone know why you have to purchase a 2.4m dish antenna and two FULL RACKS of equipment to schedule image acquisitions and download images? Why does each customer need to be able to communicate with the satellites directly instead of via a web interface?

<comment><USER10> Maybe they're distributed ground stations and all clients are contributing to the network of receivers?

<comment><USER11> Yes, low orbit satellites need lots of ground stations, lots of storage, or lots of bandwidth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If Apple cares about maps maybe it should acquire Planet Labs ([http://www.planet.com/](http://www.planet.com/)) to compete with Google?

<comment><USER7> Close, but Planet says their Dove sats are limited to 3-5 meters, whereas Skybox's sats are submeter resolution. Planet seems to have more of a change detection mission over a quality mission. Skybox also does video, which I'm not sure about with Planet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Every other great startup that's building something cool, something innovative is being acquired by Google, Facebook, Amazon and so on. Aren't we going to see the next Google or Facebook, because they are all being acquired by, well, Google or Facebook :|

</comment><comment><USER14> Congratulations! The cofounders were invited to a Stanford Ecorner lecture a year ago, worth to check: [http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3053](http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=3053)

<comment><USER6> Any idea or links on what the background of the founders is? How do you get trained in the kind of technology that a startup of this kind needs?

<comment><USER15> Their company page has bios of a bunch of the key people:

[http://www.skyboximaging.com/company](http://www.skyboximaging.com/company)

Lots of engineering degrees and experience at aerospace companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why do they capture the horizontal scrolling so that they can vertically scroll?

<comment><USER17> Because they are more concerned with satellites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I assume they could use these to help self-driving cars, too? Could spot obstacles or accidents that are about to happen way before they happen.</comment>


DOWN WITH RENT - <AUTHOR> https://www.libertarianism.org/media/liberty-chronicles/down-rent <comment><USER2> What's with the all caps headline?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm so confused my these new political identities and partnerships.

"Libertarian Socialist"

"Anarcho Communists"

None of this makes sense and I can't help feel like someone just made this up because it sounded good when they where high.</comment>


Show HN: WoofJS, a programming language I built for my students based on Scratch - <AUTHOR> http://woofjs.com? <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, developer of Woof here! I've been working on this for the last few months and really eager for feedback. If any of you have students or children who use scratch, I'd love to hear if you get a chance to try it out with them.</comment>


Ask HN: ETL solutions for developers? - <AUTHOR>

Which tools gave you a pleasant experience, while doing ETL tasks? <comment><USER2> Ha! There are no general purpose tools--lots are a) overkill or b) not robust enough given your task but two general ones that have served me well (and of course lot of Python scripting for my domain-specific issues):

Refine (formally from ITA/Google, now open source) IBM Watson Analytics - Don't knock it until you try it. Forget the 'analytics' bit but the ETL bit is pretty decent for getting through the basics

</comment><comment><USER3> Data Brewery has a nice ETL library called Bubbles for Python [1]

Kiba [2] is a really nice library for ETL in Ruby

Hope this helps!

[1] [http://bubbles.databrewery.org/](http://bubbles.databrewery.org/)

[2] [http://www.kiba-etl.org/](http://www.kiba-etl.org/)

</comment><comment><USER4> If you are looking for commercial solution then try Informatica, otherwise the opensource soln are Pentaho Kettle and Python based [http://bubbles.databrewery.org/](http://bubbles.databrewery.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Currently working with Talend, it's pretty good and saved me a lot of time.

</comment><comment><USER6> If I was going to start a new ETL project right now I'd pick Luigi.

</comment><comment><USER7> Python, and its various libraries including Pandas, and odo.

</comment><comment><USER8> try pentaho, it's easy and clean, no installation required.

</comment><comment><USER9> Try Talend</comment>


Big banks help payday lenders offer quick cash at steep prices - <AUTHOR> http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2011-12/big-banks-help-payday-lenders-offer-quick-cash-at-steep-prices

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a pretty interesting business model on the part of the banks. Banks have realized that poor people don't have enough money for their deposits to cover the risk of overdraft or customer service. Their solution to this is to list poor people with a credit reporting agency for checking accounts named Chexsystems. Once you're listed in chexsystems a bank can close out your account, and you are effectively blacklisted from the banking system in the united states. You can still cash checks under a certain amount at the issuing bank, but they put up a ton of roadblocks to make it difficult, adding so much friction that people end up going to these check cashing establishments where the banks get to keep 3-5% of their income. The best part of this is that the poor have no recourse because they're poor. It's a brilliant, if unethical, business model.</comment>


Self-Repairing Teeth Could Become the Norm in the Future - <AUTHOR> https://interestingengineering.com/new-study-shows-self-repairing-teeth-could-become-the-norm-in-the-future <comment><USER2> I feel this is like the cold fusion of dentistry. I've been reading optomistic "10 years" papers about it for 25 years, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some people have a natural ability to repair teeth - I'm one of them. I've never had a dentist find a cavity in my mouth, though I've had perhaps a half- dozen cavities over the years. (I'm in my 50s.) When that happens, I just get double up on brushing (I usually just do two quick brushings a day), and the cavities heal over within a week or so.

I realize I'm fortunate, but my teeth do heal cavities on the rare occasions I get them. I haven't been to a dentist in over 35 years (my Mom paid for the last visit!), and with the exception of the inside of my bottom front teeth (where a small amount plaque flakes off every couple of months), I have no significant plaque buildup or discoloration. So, long story short, this is definitely possible, and should be inducible in others once we understand the mechanism.

<comment><USER4> What's your diet like?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This site could be a case study in everything wrong with modern web publishing.</comment>


Stack Exchange is not interested in cooperating with the community, is it? - <AUTHOR> https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/342039/firing-community-managers-stack-exchange-is-not-interested-in-cooperating-with/342045#342045 <comment><USER2> Stack Exchange is interested only in making big money since they know they missed out for a very long time and they think they deserve to be a billion+ dollar company just like many of the top 100 websites, if the community is interested in making money for Stack Exchange so that's fine otherwise SE is okay with becoming Quora for developers thanks to their influence in search engines and making money by brute force.

</comment><comment><USER3> Once, enough people have left and SE has become a hollow shell of its former self, it will become a textbook case of how to run a good and valuable company into the ground. I would guess if SE had not responded at all rather than make the series of statements they did, they would have done better in the community eye.

<comment><USER4> It's like image hosting sites, right? Eventually they all turn into ExpertsExchange and another site springs up that promises to do it all different. StackExchange held out longer than I would have expected.

<comment><USER5> It's what motivated me to join SuperUser back when it was new almost 10 years - pure hatred for expertsexchange.com results always coming up in Google results.

All good things come to an end. :(

I believe theoretically someone could fork the entire site, but I haven't studied the recent license changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there a good replacement to SE yet? I also don't really support SE's changes, but it doesn't sound like there's a viable competitor to switch to.

</comment><comment><USER7> IMHO, the biggest problem SE has had this entire time and continues to have throughout all of these various issues (abrupt relicensing, community moderator firing, etc) is that there is _constant zero transparency_. Even the times they do respond and even seem genuine, it shortly becomes clear that they were not

SE's willful lack of responsibility and lack of transparency make them an actively hostile entity towards all users, including members of communities they wanted to be more inclusive towards (good supposed intent, incredibly poor/disastrous execution). This is clear from a number of responses from people in the LGBTQ+ community that disagreed with how things have been handled by SE

I know there are good communities on SE that want to somehow try to save it, to fix this, but the only way that happens would be a complete reorganization/removal at the highest levels. It is likely best that SE have a mass exodus and become a ghost town and its members move elsewhere and try again, hopefully to build something better. Of course, any new alternative to SE runs the risk of becoming another SE.

I really hate to see it, because I've learned a lot just from lurking and reading questions and answers... there's so much wasted potential

( _edited for accuracy_ )

</comment><comment> tom-thistime Where does 'community' fit into the business picture? There is a corporate owner, and (eventually) there are some kind of advertisers or other customers.

The volunteers who provide the content are not part of the business picture. Possibly if they organized they might be, but currently they're like chickens on a farm.

At one time all that was the obvious inevitable endgame of "walled gardens / web 2.0" That was why these sites were funded by investors.

Did this stop being obvious at some point since AOL and Yahoo went out of fashion? I'm sorry if I sound bleak, but this kind of horrorshow is a known problem.

</comment><comment><USER8> The TLDR is that they implemented a policy requiring the use of made-up pronouns for imaginary sexes. One person was fired, seemingly for being woke but not woke enough. Many others quit.

<comment><USER9> [https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-...](https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack- overflow-inc-sinat-chinam-and-the-goat-for-azazel/5197#5197)

this explains it better. They never said anything about 'made up pronouns'. Rather that as a writer they are meant to write from a neutral perspective regardless of gender. SO said it was against a policy and has failed to provide such policy. It's clear to me this is a result of either grossly incompetent SO mods or a targeted attack.

<comment><USER8> [https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334399/summing- up-t...](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334399/summing-up-the-main- issues-the-story-so-far/334417#334417)

See #2: "An SE employee announced an updated clarification to the Code of Conduct (CoC) in the TL requiring the use of preferred pronouns if known; announcing that the change is in effect for moderator communications (among moderators or from moderators to a user)."

So, like I said, she was woke (used they to avoid "misgendering"), but not woke enough (didn't want to use "Xer" or "FlimFlam" or whatever).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Judging just by the editorializing title, this isn't anything I want to get involved in.

It seems to be en Vogue to hate the SO team. But having tried to understand some of the recent hubbubs, I never saw anything that can't be attributed to fast growth, and excused with a basic assumption of good faith.

<comment><USER9> [https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack-...](https://judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5193/stack- overflow-inc-sinat-chinam-and-the-goat-for-azazel/5197#5197)

I fail to see how this is excuses under those circumstances. Basic assumption of good faith goes both ways, and fast growth does not mean throwing your very important users to the curb without good reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have never seen so much petty pointless drama about a bunch of people being told "don't be jerks" and then responding like children who have had their toys (diamonds) taken away when they acted like jerks in my entire life.

Ten trillion years of unending stellar-scale nuclear fusion could pass and less energy would have been released into the entire Universe than has been expended in one femtosecond as impotent rage by Stack Exchange contributors being "fired" and then complaining about it.

If Hacker News implemented a policy wherein I had to refer to everyone as "cutie pie" and I questioned it and then they nuked my account-- so what?

<comment><USER12> You sound angry, wanna talk?

Looks like you haven't really understood what the issue is but I can't be arsed to care enough and explain.</comment></comment>


What do you think about learning a new language by implementing a board game? - <AUTHOR> Do you find the concept of learning a new programming language by implementing a board game appealing?
Assuming sufficient familiarity with the board game, understanding the domain becomes less of a barrier and at the same time, a board game implementation can be sufficiently complex to provide an in depth learning experience.
It also seems fun. What do you think? Have you done something like this before? <comment><USER2> In over 50 years of programming I have always read a new language manual in close association with designing then writing a program.</comment>


Ask HN: Advice – Career Move Out of Wall Street into the Entrepreneurial World? - <AUTHOR> I've been within the financial industry for now 20 years dealing with trading technology and operations, 18 years with the same Wall Street firm.
The culture has changed over time and not for the good. We are now more concerned process and governance and not delivery. It used to be a culture of high performing team. Now it's all about having a meeting to meet and ensure that feelings don't get hurt.
All this has led me to reconsider what's important in life, family yes! And maybe start something of mine.
What advice would you give as I take the plunge into the entrepreneurial world.
thanks <comment><USER2> Since it's your first time as an entrepreneur I'd suggest you select your easiest idea to execute that you think someone would pay you for.

I'd also ignore most entrepreneurial advice out there. Half of it is wrong and the other half is self serving for the author. Your time will be better spent hustling your product and learning from your mistakes in real time. Experience is invaluable but the people qualified to give insight are usually too busy with their other stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - working thru setting all the pieces in play before leaving and not chasing the VC money.</comment></comment>


U.S. fails to win early limit on Net controls at global gathering - <AUTHOR> http://reuters.com/article/2012/12/04/us-un-internet-treaty-idUSBRE8B316I20121204

<comment><USER2> So the coalition that's trying to get this put in place is comprised of authoritarian regimes like Russia, China, and Iran, and developing countries that have seen their long distance fees decline. Why not drive a wedge between those two groups? Surely there must be a way to address the concerns of developing countries without also capitulating to the anti-freedom crowd. Less palatably, but perhaps more likely, the authoritarian bloc could probably get what it wants without jeopardizing the competitiveness of US firms.

<comment><USER3> Please note that this "anti-freedom crowd" is also heavily supported by the major telecom corporations from the US and Europe, and the predominantly American copyright lobby also likes to join in the fun.

Yes, Western corporations are siding with repressive regimes against their own people and government. I can't think of a better argument to eradicate corporatism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What might the ramifications of a US/Canadian/Eurozone withdrawal from the ITU treaty be?

<comment><USER5> I could see that being deleterious to our access to markets in Africa long term. If the Chinese are perfectly willing to just "throw money at the problem", and we take the position of "standing on principle", well it isn't hard to see who the Africans will be doing most of their business with(1). Africa will be very important in the future as a market. If I'm a US policymaker, and PARTICULARLY if I'm a FRENCH policymaker, I have to think that I wouldn't cede access to that territory so casually. Especially not over something as trivial as them wanting Google to pay routing fees. That sounds, to me, like something that can be worked out. The complication, of course, are Chinese telecoms that are there, money in hand, perfectly contented to pay those fees.

Anyway... that's just one drawback I can think up off the top of my head. Arguably, the most important one long term. But there are others. Some probably far more important in the short to medium term.

(1 - I realize that the Africans MAY ALREADY be doing most of their business with China. I only used future tense because I don't KNOW that they already do most of their business with China.)

<comment><USER4> What about for the ITU? Surely without the support of the Western world it would lose much of its punch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Freedom isn't popular, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER7> Strange thing when you talk about russia and other potentially censoring regimes you'll also need to talk about SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and what ever else the western governments try to pull off..

It's not like "we" are exactly a role model, either..

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting, since it was a regional vote, that means Australia and ROK, two of our allies on ITU, were outvoted within their regions. Wonder what region Australia is classified as?

Implies that South America (somewhat expected) and Africa (expected) voted to support the ITU against the US.</comment>


Freedom is something to use or lose - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/20/freedom-use-lose-antisocial-behaviour-bill

<comment><USER2> An interesting line from the article:

 _Does extreme comfort deaden the will to be free_

And so, with progress on things like VR and social networks and data mining, what can we do as developers to help encourage the will to be free--knowing that the box is already opened?</comment>


PGPfone (1995) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGPfone <comment><USER2> I've recently given a try to Jitsi [1] and seriously it works _great_. It really is a Skype drop-in replacement, and is fully open source. Without any need for configuration, I could discuss by text, audio, and video (and also do screen-sharing) all encrypted between my Debian laptop and a Windows PC, using existing XMPP (Jabber) account.

Really I've never seen any other free software do as good as Jitsi in the VoIP field. I've always tried SIP client and it was never perfect. Jitsi can do SIP to, but does wonder over XMPP so I didn't even try SIP.

[1] [http://jitsi.org/](http://jitsi.org/)

<comment><USER3> Does it encrypt PGP-style?

<comment><USER4> More like ZRTP style, also not sure exactly what you mean by PGP-style

<comment><USER5> PGP gathers entropy for keys using user interactions with the computer (mouse movements, keyboard input, normal usage) as well as disk and memory activity, making for more true random number generation than the PRNG that uses the pool in many modern processors, which could be 'fixed' by the NSA following recent revelations.

<comment><USER2> That's not specific to PGP at all.

<comment><USER5> No, but it's known for being commonly used in PGP. I could be wrong, but that's what I understand when someone says, "PGP-style encryption."

<comment><USER6> "PGP-style encryption" probably implies public-key cryptography.

Like the other poster said, using various computer inputs to feed the entropy source during key generation is not specific to PGP or public-key cryptography at all.

<comment><USER5> That seems like a misleadingly-broad term, but sure. IMO, public-key cryptography (or just asymmetric crypto) is already an improvement over "the Diffie-Hellman key exchange," which is what's generally implied when talking about public-key crypto.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you're looking for encrypted and decentralized VoIP, [http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/](http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/) is one handy solution (and a lot more).

<comment><USER7> Jitsi also uses ZRTP for audio and video on the desktop, and there's RedPhone on Android and Silent Eyes (Silent Circle) for both Android and iOS. There are probably a few others, too.

I'm not sure if it can be used with WebRTC clients, or if it's even needed there.

<comment><USER3> Personally, I'd stay away from anything that is closed-source (as we don't know what's happening inside) and/or centralized (because it's just one more attack vector and totally unnecessary for VoIP).

<comment><USER8> Which of the above don't involve a central server? A server is absolutely necessary for VoIP, if only to set up calls (its also the only way to deal with some NATs).

<comment><USER3> RetroShare is completely decentralized/p2p/OTR.

EDIT: @JshWright - Not sure I understand your question, but RS _does_ "real- time voice communication" (besides the other things like chat, messaging, file sharing, forums, channels...)

<comment><USER8> Isn't the article about a real-time voice communication?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Normal people just really don't care about security. It's super sad.

</comment><comment><USER10> I guess the 2013 edition is silent circle...

<comment><USER11> IIRC, Silent Circle ran into a lot of issues because their product was not open source.</comment></comment>


What Would a WeChat Replacement Need? - <AUTHOR> https://vac.dev/wechat-replacement-need <comment><USER2> I think people that feel WeChat is simply a social network don't understand WeChat. Though the article doesn't say this, the comments here and popular opinion generally think that.

From my time visiting China I'm not sure it's possible to live, in the urban areas, without WeChat. Payments are basically all through WeChat; I found places that didn't take Visa/Mastercard (or even know what those were, although that may have just been my pronunciation).

So the answer to this article is simple:

\- For China: CCP approval

\- For America/Europe: WeChat would never happen, unless there was severe monopolisation that allowed a company to roll something like WeChat out successfully, or the federal government / national governments mandated it

The article discusses how a WeChat replacement may be done using blockchain, not what a WeChat replacement needs to be successful (as the title would imply), or what may be the most technically viable way of doing it.

<comment><USER3> Nowadays, it's literally impossible to live in China without either WeChat or Alipay as health codes are integrated into the apps and it can be impossible to move outside without displaying your health code. Travelling on trains, planes and long haul busses now require you to have the app.

I don't think enough has been made about how extraordinary it is that a sovereign government has let such a core governmental function simply be handed over to for-profit businesses. It would be like, in the US, registering for your drivers license by Signing in with Google and being bound by the Google TOS. Commit an offense that causes Google to delete your account and now you can't legally drive anymore.

<comment><USER4> I recall, this actually happened a few months ago, but with Uber.

What happened, was Uber started dropping customers that had a poor rating. Maybe they didn't give a $5 tip, so the driver gave them a poor rating. Who knows why.

But the result is that the public, the customer in question, can no longer use Uber's services.

This is terrifying, in that Uber wanted to eliminate public taxi services, and privatize it on their proprietary platform.

If you think this through, then what could be the potential long term effect of this?

Possibly that we as consumers, are now beholden to some random rating system, by some private company, that has the final authority to withhold essential public services from us.

And from what we have seen, these private businesses have an effective lobbying system, that can get lawmakers to draft laws in their favor.

<comment><USER5> A few points. Uber drivers cannot see if individual riders have tipped them. They also cannot see your individual rating of them, nor you of theirs.

Policing their own platform works both ways. When I order an uber I expect a certain quality of service. ie a safe, comfortable ride. Likewise, when I drive for uber I expect people to respect my property (my car). I expect uber to fulfill both of these things so that it is a usable platform.

Beyond that, if you get removed from using uber can't you use lyft, didi, a taxi, or public transit?

I would hope that the long term effect of this is that people behave in ubers. I personally have had friends throw up in them or drunkenly harass female drivers.

<comment><USER6> > Uber drivers cannot see if individual riders have tipped them.

This is not true, I can see exactly which rides included a tip. However, I can't see this before I rate the rider so I can't penalize a rider for not tipping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> People seem to have the idea that WeChat is some sort of amazing application -- it's not. In fact the only reason why it has the market share it does in China is simply because all competitors are blocked.

Some of WeChat's real pain points are: \- No backing up your messages to the cloud like WhatsApp or having them loaded from the server like Facebook Messenger. Moving all your messages from one phone to another is quite the ordeal .

\- Complete disregard for platform standards. Specifically notifications on Android and Windows 10 are atrocious. Both WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have notifications that are well integrated with the especially the Android notification system, WeChat notifications however are not.

-A lot of nice to have chat features are either non existent or have just recently been introduced. For example a poor implementation of quoting a previous message was just introduced like a month ago, and there are no reactions for specific messages -- and no timeline for implementing them either.

WeChat does have quite a bit of different "apps" built into it, but not really more convenient to use than the separate apps are. It's mainly just a casualty of China's lack of anti monopoly legislation.On my phone I have Alipay (the other half of china's online payment duopoly) installed together with WeChat, and almost always use it for payment (It's pretty much accepted everywhere WeChat is)

<comment><USER8> > simply because all competitors are blocked.

International competitors may be. Till this day, I didn't see something come close to what WeChat is offering in China.

WeChat is like Chrome, it is so big and ubiquitous in China, it can dictate standard.

The online backup of messages itself is a pain point I agree, but local transfer is possible, though a bit cumbersome.

<comment><USER9> I think the international opinion is that there is no WeChat competitor in China because people are afraid to step on the toes of those in power. Chrome is enormous and ubiquitous because maintaining a modern browser is orders of magnitude more difficult than maintaining a chat application.

Why do you think there a many competitors outside China but none in?

<comment><USER8> > I think the international opinion is that there is no WeChat competitor in > China because people are afraid to step on the toes of those in power

But how can there isn't a WeChat competitor, that actually does all the things WeChat is capable of in US/EU?

Regarding WeChat as if it is another chat application only means you have never been a regular user of it, which is probably true to most HN folks.

WeChat actually has its own embedded WebView within it and JS execution engine also. It also has the whole Paypal counterpart ships with it. The whole WeChat ecosystem is probably on par with the whole Facebook, probably more complex than Chrome I would say.

<comment><USER10> > But how can there isn't a WeChat competitor, that actually does all the > things WeChat is capable of in US/EU?

For many reasons, but I think a major one is because neither EU nor US (both people and governments) would be cool with all aspects of one's life being functional ONLY by using this one app. Imagine if a WeChat competitor came out in EU/US, and now you cannot use transit without this app at all, or buy things, or get a taxi, etc.

This is extremely anti-competitive and goes even beyond the usual monopoly definition. Major politicians these days run for president on the promise to break down Amazon, Google, etc. And neither of those come even close to the monopolistic reach on the scale that WeChat operates on.

<comment><USER8> What you are saying is to provide an explanation why WeChat-like apps didn't and probably are not going to happen outside of China, but it still means there is NO WeChat alternatives outside China.

The reason is not that important however.

The Chinese market is unique, Western economy can't create something like WeChat doesn't mean that its existence is something abnormal.

Chinese companies create something more to the liking of Chinese consumers should get anyone surprised. When it comes to internet, and no one is enjoying natural advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It would need to be introduced in a single large city in 2011 and spread from there with the implicit backing of the federal government.

It would not need a blockchain. There is no reason whatsoever for basing this on a blockchain.

<comment><USER12> But then we have to trust our government...

and governments vary in their trustworthiness

<comment><USER13> It does not matter whether you trust the government or not. The only thing that matters is whether you can resist the government or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> He missed a point (and probably an important one for wechat's home market): CCP approval.

/snark

<comment><USER15> Definitely. Literally half of the features in the "What do we want?" section would get his replacement _banned_ in the PRC, which is one of the few markets where WeChat is popular enough to even be something to replace.

<comment><USER16> _And much more. Not going to through it all in detail, and there are probably many things I don't know about WeChat since I'm not a heavy user living in mainland China._

The team definitely needs to get the experience of being behind the great firewall. Try using a VPN there to watch YouTube, try using a locally purchased cell phone without access to Google Play or the Apple app store. Try bashing PRC government policies in WeChat.

Only then will they see how tightly things are locked down. It's not like they're the only ones to have this idea, so why doesn't it exist? Oh, because it's really difficult and even dangerous with the current police state that controls the communications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I would be interested in a we hat replacement, but as soon as I read ethereum I thought: nah. Cryptocurrencies are just not compatible with mainstream consumption. Why? Because I get paid in euros. And you might get paid in dollars. And a wechat user gets paid in Yuan. But nobody gets paid in ethereum.

<comment><USER18> That's not true anymore. I've been paided and knows others who continue to be paid in bitcoin.

<comment><USER15> >> But nobody gets paid in ethereum.

> That's not true anymore. I've been paided and knows others who continue to > be paid in bitcoin.

The statement is true, if properly understood. Colloquially, "nobody gets paid in [cryptocurrency]" means that it's so unusual to get paid in it that it's reasonable to assume no one does. That's not a statement that can be shown to be false with a few counterexamples.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Seems like a silly article. Even if they had feature parity today, very few people would use the replacement because their friends aren't using it, their family aren't using it, the shops they want to buy from aren't using it, the people they meet aren't using it...

<comment><USER20> Exactly. Setting aside the issues of whether Google would be preferable to Facebook as a central "portal" like this, they ran into the exact same issue when they launched G+.

At the time it had feature parity (and in many cases, superiority) with Facebook, but even though loads of people already had Google accounts for Gmail or Docs, etc. they didn't want to post to both Facebook and G+.

Since everyone was on Facebook and less than everyone was on G+, it didn't matter that you could silo your contacts more easily, integrate voice/video chat, make online/in person payments, or maintain some semblance of a personal "page" in addition to just looking at an activity stream.

And as we've seen over and over, once something is seen as an "also-ran" or less popular option, it largely becomes a joke among the potential userbase and definitely not a success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> WeChat is many things all in a single app:

      - A payments platform called WeChat Pay (think PayPal, Venmo, Apply Pay, Android Pay all combined)

      - A consumer messenger platform with voice and video chat (think Facebook Messenger + WhatsApp)

      - A friends newsfeed called Moments with audio and video support, external links but visibility of
     content is timeboxed in days, weeks or months (think Facebook News Feed with a touch of Instagram Stories)

      - An e-commerce store platform called WeChat Store (think Shopify)

      - A business platform called "Official Accounts" with many features:

        * A business / bot messaging platform (think Facebook Messenger for Business)

        * An advertising platform

        * A content distribution platform, primarily through Official Account Subscription Accounts (like blogs, news, think Medium). WeChat offers this through "Channels", "Top Stories", "Official Accounts" and "Mini Programs".

        * WeChat Official Accounts Service Accounts can create "Mini Programs" which are rich integrations and tightly integrate with your linked WeChat Payments account, for example:

          1. Didi Chuxing for Ridesharing (Uber)

          2. Mobike for Bike Rental (Lime Bike etc)

          3. Meituan Dianping for e-commerce and food delivery

          4. Douban, Yishenghuo, Yoopay etc for Event / Concert Tickets (think Eventbrite, Ticketmaster)

Most noteworthy is that WeChat Mini Programs are standalone and don't deeplink to other apps. No aspect of WeChat does Deeplinking to any other app. You always stay in WeChat.

</comment><comment><USER8> Surprised to see no Payments mentioned at all, which makes the post makes very little sense.

WeChat is also, and by large, a financial service. Payment and transfer is happening all the time on this platform, and to replace that is a magnitude difficult than just replace the chat.

</comment><comment><USER22> You will probably never come up with the right answer for this question because the question itself is wrong. You never build a "WeChat replacement" by building a WeChat replacement. You just end up with a knockoff if you start from this question.

</comment><comment><USER23> Spoiler alert: the answer is Blockchain according to the post.

Site is running slow, here's an archive: [https://archive.is/w1HMt](https://archive.is/w1HMt)

</comment><comment><USER24> This might be onpopular, but I don't think you should aim for "no censorship" and "no way for authority to police people". As we're seeing in today's social media, unfettered communication is not something you might want. Think of all the misinformation, trolling and conspiracy theories going on in our western social media _despite_ very heavy efforts to contain them by Facebook, Google and Twitter. This is biting us hard in our current crisis, where people are going as far as burning down 5G masts, thinking they are heros fighting against the government-ordered spread of Covid-19 [0]. The older I get, the more I start to think that the police fulfills a very fundamental function in our society, no matter how free that society thinks it is. And we likely do want some policing in our virtual worlds as well. Whatever the next social media is going to be (it seems to me that this is what you're trying to plan out here), it should include some sort of moderation option of some case.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/technology/coronavirus-5g...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/technology/coronavirus-5g-uk.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> You don't just build a product like WeChat or Facebook. You grow your product to that level.

What WeChat/Facebook are today is highly path-dependent hence you don't get to replicate that, and your intelligence and ambition probably won't let you either.

Stop try to replace them, build sth different and help people in a new and better way. With that, you might be able to transcend them.

</comment><comment><USER26> Telegram was on a good path to become WeChat replacement, with its Telegram Open Network blockchain an Gram cryptocurrency coming and plans to add wide range of services including decentralized storage, web pages and payment channels. But now it looks that part has been killed by SEC, so the niche is still unoccupied.

<comment><USER27> Do you have more info about being killed by the SEC? I'm curious about this because I was looking forward to a Western Competitor to WeChat.

<comment><USER26> Sure:

* TON blog: [https://ton-telegram.net/news/telegram-and-sec-asked-to-spee...](https://ton-telegram.net/news/telegram-and-sec-asked-to-speed-up-suitlaw/)

* nice summary of how US securities law affected TON (from October 2019): [https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/10/13/sec-blocks-t...](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/10/13/sec-blocks-the-telegram-ico-what-this-means-and-what-happens-now/)

* verdict in the case: [https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-telegram/sec-wi...](https://www.reuters.com/article/legal-us-otc-telegram/sec-wins-injunction-against-telegram-blockchain-launch-in-key-ico-case-idUSKBN21C3N0)

Some investors are considering launching independent blockchain based on open- sourced TON technology. But even if they do, it's not clear when is Telegram going to integrate wallet with their app, if ever.

<comment><USER28> Great summary.

I'm very biased (active developer in Telegram ecosystem), but I'm having a hard time imagining Durov letting this SEC case stop him.

Even if he has to return _all_ the funds, I'm confident he will still push forward and bring TON and Grams into production.

It's less of a straight path, but Durov's smart and stubborn - two valuable traits in this circumstace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> WeChat's dominance in Chinese social media is mainly due to its close relationship with CCP. It would be a different story if the market was open to west tech companies. Talking about a censorship resistant social media in China is completely a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER30> This technology has a lot of potential. I have played around with Status for a while and it has a real potential to surpass the safety functionalities of Telegram and Signal.

</comment><comment><USER31> LINE, whatsapp etc are catching up wechat.

Instead of cloning wechat, an alternative would be developing a proxy between IM apps, i.e. all wechat messages can be forwarded to whatsapp so it become part of whatsapp, well, kind of, it's painful to use whatsapp, LINE, telegram, wechat at the same time, need something to "unite" them so we can go to one place and do it all.

<comment><USER32> Wasn't XMPP supposed to do something like that?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Connecting_to_other_proto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMPP#Connecting_to_other_protocols)

<comment><USER33> XMPP does it, Matrix does it: [https://matrix.org/bridges/](https://matrix.org/bridges/)

...honestly most of the open chat protocols end up with bridges since it's easier to do there than with the proprietary ones. WhatsApp for example will ban you if they see you trying to connect with a third-party client; using the Matrix bridge actually involves running Android with the official client in a VM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> 1\. Government approval (the ability to record and snoop on all conversations) 2\. Wechat would have to lose government approval.

</comment><comment><USER35> WeChat is a not a chat app. It's a micro universe. Imagine WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, Paypal, Uber, etc. and an entire app platform all integrated into a single app. That's WeChat.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is what facebook wanted to do when they launched their APIa long time ago, never came to pass. WeChat did it. Its a whole operating system in itself.

</comment><comment><USER37> I only skim read this, but it feels like you could swap "WeChat" for any messaging system or social networking site

<comment><USER38> That's definitely not true. WeChat has a bunch of ecommerce stuff built in among other features. You can pay for stuff on WeChat and there are stores. It even has translation built in to facilitate buying and selling between people from different countries.

I think there are also apps and other stuff there too. It's more like a chat app that became an ecommerce and mini-app platform.

<comment><USER39> It's similar with KakaoTalk in Korea, which now also has a payment system in addition to acting as a regular bank, and allows you to buy various things including, say, hairdresser appointments. 93% smartphone market share.

<comment><USER21> Kakao has a separate app for everything. Quite different from WeChat. KakaoTalk, KakaoTaxi, KakaoPay etc etc

I wouldn't say that those are all extremely well integrated with each other.

<comment><USER39> Sorta both - the hairdresser booking and other commerce is in the main messenger app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Chinese govt (firewall) and people of China

</comment><comment><USER41> Feature #1: Censorship circumvention.</comment>


Ask HN: Am I missing out by not being in a larger city? - <AUTHOR>

I am often faced with this question of whether I should be in a larger, 'more innovative' city.  Maybe not the typical SF or NYC, but even Austin or Boulder.  I'm in a moderate sized town but it's nothing great (yet?).  There have been no large successes here outside of enterprise companies and there isn't a ton of innovative thinking done by the people here.<p>I feel kind of left out and maybe like I should be in a larger city, but where?  That's the question.  I am young and pretty flexible.  Not married, no kids, and I do most of my consulting remotely and I often am building an idea for a startup or helping others. <comment><USER2> I've been feeling the same way lately

In western NY looking to move south - Atlanta maybe.</comment>