ESPN Loses 621,000 Subscribers; Worst Month in Company History - <AUTHOR> http://www.outkickthecoverage.com/espn-loses-621-000-subscribers-worst-month-in-company-history-102916 <comment><USER2> I would pay ESPN $10 a month for an ESPN streaming app that had access to all the college football games (no blackouts), alone, as long as it didn't require a cable subscription. The current ESPN streaming app is garbage, compared to Netflix, and other on-demand interfaces. It's not available on my Smart TV. The quality of the streaming is terrible. It's slow to bring up video. The ads are repetitive and annoying, and it's a second class citizen with wait screens while local ads are up on broadcast.

Comcast recently decided to institute a 1TB/month cap in my area, with a charge of $10 per 50GB after up to $200, or $50 for unlimited (opt-in, by the sounds). There are no technical reasons why they did this, it was entirely to gain more revenue to make up for the cord cutters. Their own streaming service doesn't apply to their data cap.

The whole thing is garbage and needs to be completely changed. The moment Google Fiber or something better comes along in my area, I'm going internet only, and I'll just go without until they realize how badly they've managed to move with the trends and start fixing it.

<comment><USER3> Would you spend $25-35 per month for ESPN? Because that's what it would probably cost if it wasn't subsidized by the bundle.

Your answer to that question may in fact be yes, but the economics don't work out. Disney would make more money getting $6 from every cable subscriber than try to scratch and claw to scale up an OTT service like Netflix that would inevitably cannibalize their current business.

The only thing that will change the economics is when the market forces their hand, which is what this story is about.

<comment><USER4> ESPN does more than just broadcast live sporting events. They have to fill a whole 24 hours every day, so they also produce original programming (Sportscenter, PTI, Around the Horn, etc.). The original shows are surely cheaper for ESPN to produce than the live stuff (broadcast rights are expensive), but many viewers get almost no value out of them in the Web era. (I can get my "hot takes" from Twitter and blogs, thank you very much.)

If I could pay _only_ for ESPN's coverage of live events in $SPORTS_I_CARE_ABOUT, I would do that happily. And I do pay for similar products, with my MLB.TV and NBA Game Time subscriptions, but that's only because I'm lucky enough to live outside of my favorite teams' blackout areas. Even then, though, I miss out on national broadcasts, which are blacked out, and I have to either go to a bar or find an illegal stream on the Web to watch the game.

<comment><USER5> > my favorite teams' blackout areas.

This is why I won't get NHL Game cast or MLB at bat. They're not providing a service I want/need.

<comment><USER6> That model is fucking insane. I've gotten all of my TV over-the-air for years, which includes a surprising number of NFL games though almost no local baseball/hockey.. which is ironic, because the channels that air that stuff are _actually worth the money_ to me, if I didn't have to pay the ESPN tax.

I considered the NHL all access even though I don't watch a ton of hockey, until I realized they blackout local games. Totally untenable model.

I _do_ pay NFL.com for streaming. $100/year, I can watch any game I want at any time, and they also do those glorious condensed games that only take 45 minutes to watch, so I can sneak in a game I missed. The only drawback (and this is a biggie for some, I'm sure) is that they're not live; 10:30am PST games up for streaming by 1:30pm; 1:30pm games by 5pm, for example. That doesn't matter to me because I'm not likely to "waste" 3 hours of midday on my 2 free days of the week watching football; I'd just DVR it and watch it in the evening if it was available OTA anyway.

I'd also pay to stream F1 races, but that's not available either. I like some sports, but I just don't have any interest in the sports industrial complex.

<comment><USER7> I can't justify spending hundreds of dollars every month to pay for cable- internet/basic-cable-tv-package/wireles-phones AND super-cable-tv-package that actually includes ESPN and other sports channel. For an average family of 4-5 wirelss phones and average income, paying for cable-tv + super-cable-tv seems too much. And it is. Just to get content to show on the displays, a family has to essentially spend $ that can easily pay for a new CAR.

And because we cut cable-tv to stay sane financially, we get very little access to live sports games on over-the-air TV.

You wouldn't believe how LITTLE sports my kids watch on TV spontaneously, compared to how much I used to watch when a lot of important games were shown over-the-air TV.

What little they watch, it's from youtube. For some highlight or some incredible goals. But that's unlikely to turn them into a fan (serious or casual) of a particular sports or pro team.

The greed powered cable-tv movement has really driven a lot of fans away from pro sports teams.

This imo is a classic example of greed for short-term gain costing dearly in long-term.

Many kids in cable-tv-less households really don't interact with pro sports teams. What do you think the kids from such family will do when they grow up?

<comment><USER5> > greed for short-term gain costing dearly in long-term.

Pretty much summarizes amaerican business right there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My wife and I "cut the cord" as it were this year, now with OTA TV and a Netflix and Amazon prime account. OTA reliably gets you local and national news, Netflix and Amazon between them reliably get you movies and recent television shows. And of course with Amazon you can rent/buy stuff.

What you don't get are sports. You find that more and more those sports have become the single reason you might want to buy a cable/satellite subscription.

I welcome their final capitulation to the point where I can subscribe to just my teams and not suffer blackout rules in my home market.

<comment><USER9> My better half primarily watches E! (Keeping up with the Kardashians), HGTV, Food Network, etc. All have full episodes online, but require the cable subscription login dance. Even if I could get the live sports I wanted, I don't foresee these "middle America" networks and shows embracing cord cutting anytime soon.

<comment><USER10> The singular feature of Sports is that the content is for the most part exclusive. You can't watch your hometown team anywhere else.

The Food Network shows have stars but the content and the stars are easily replaceble. Just look at Youtube cooking and home improvement shows. They offer the same content at approaching the same quality. I can easily see those types of shows getting replaced by viewers, and I can see it happening soon.

Those specific shows may not embrace cord cutting but they _will_ and indeed are getting replaced by shows that do embrace cord cutting.

<comment><USER11> Good point. But I suppose there are a handful of other shows which have the same naturally monopolistic property as sports. For example, there is, mercifully, only one Kim Kardashian, so there's no way to directly compete with that show.

<comment><USER10> I don't know. It's true that there is only one Kim Kardashian. But Kim Kardashian archetype isn't that hard to replace. She's not famous because she's Kim Kardashian. She's famous for a bunch of other reasons that are not that difficult to replace. Even that show isn't really a monopoly that matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _It just impacts ESPN the most because ESPN costs every cable and satellite subscriber roughly $7 a month, over triple the next most expensive cable channel._

 _Yep, if you have a cable or satellite subscription, whether you watch ESPN or not, you 're paying ESPN over $80 a year._

At some point, the decline will be enough to kill these deals.

<comment><USER13> > Yep, if you have a cable or satellite subscription, whether you watch ESPN > or not, you're paying ESPN over $80 a year.

And that right there is one of the main reasons why I don't have a cable or satellite subscription anymore. Very tired of subsidizing channels I never watched. Most especially ESPN. That and the trend of, "oh you want AMC? Well you'd better buy the super premium $140 a month 200+ channel package! You can't get it with just the $80 a month 120 channel package." And, of course, the ads. My money or advertisements: pick _one_.

<comment><USER14> Bundles are often great deals for consumers. The TV bundle is the result of decades of scale, iteration, and the free market.

TV has a lot of weaknesses, but I don't think its bundle economics are one of them.

The most successful alternatives to TV are also bundles, and the bundling is a critical part of their success. Imagine instead of paying $10/month for Netflix, you had to pay for each show a la carte (like iTunes). That would be worse for consumers - and creators.

<comment><USER15> There is nothing free market about Cable TV. Free markets needs Substitute goods aka BMW vs Audi not ESPN vs Syfy or other matchups where a and b have different consumers.

Remember copyright creates monopolies and monopolies are not free markets.

<comment><USER16> Pretty much no market in existence is completely "free," but this is a pretty limited view of things.

Is there nothing free about the market for software because only Adobe can sell Photoshop? Presumably then there are also no free markets for, well, any type of cultural product. In a sense that's true and Disney is the only game in town for _Rogue One_ , but I'm not sure it's a terribly useful analytical framework.

"Monopolies are not free markets" is also an interesting claim on its own.

<comment><USER17> > Is there nothing free about the market for software because only Adobe can > sell Photoshop? Presumably then there are also no free markets for, well, > any type of cultural product. In a sense that's true and Disney is the only > game in town for Rogue One, but I'm not sure it's a terribly useful > analytical framework.

Rather than a binary it's probably best to think about the extent to which one thing is a substitute for another. Photoshop is a tool, and there's no fundamental reason a competitor couldn't make a program that does the same things; to that extent, there's a free market in image editors. To the extent that there are things that you can't substitute (e.g. plugins that use a photoshop-specific API), there isn't a free market there - it's not black and white, rather there's an extent to which the market approximates a free one. Is Star Trek a substitute for Firefly? To a certain extent yes, but probably less than the Photoshop alternatives.

> "Monopolies are not free markets" is also an interesting claim on its own.

Huh? That's completely standard, established economics. ("Free market" is an economic term of art that doesn't always mean what it sounds like).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sports is the thing that holds the cable bundle together. If that gives, the whole thing will fall apart. Right now the economics for content owners favors bundling (example: Disney forces cable companies to take a bunch of other channels with ESPN).

In this really good report [1] about Apple's TV efforts (with obvious entertainment industry sources) they had this line:

>Mr. Cue has said the TV industry overly complicated talks. "Time is on my side," he has told some media executives.

Eddy Cue is absolutely right.

[1] [http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-hard-charging-tactics- hur...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/apples-hard-charging-tactics-hurt-tv- expansion-1469721330)

</comment><comment><USER12> I figure that the NFL and NBA will eventually be the only broadcast outlet for their games. MLB has a bit of a different setup (local team contract with local provider and then national contract), but I would bet the national contract will go away. The MLB is already doing well with the national contract getting in the way of a great viewing experience[1].

Apple is probably right that the future of TV is apps. I would expect college conferences / NCAA to unite and do the the TV as some point.

I see ESPN (or their replacement) as basically Netflix for sports that cannot build an infrastructure that allows for subscriptions. Although, the MLB has done service for others and might just do it for other sports.

I would say some of the value of the commentary on ABC / ESPN is diminished by their talk of politics. It has become something of a joke about what Bob Costas will lecture us on this week. People go to sports to escape and be with friends, and not be lectured to. Looking at the feeds I follow this is a bit of the loss of people.

1) I do love them having multiple separate streams per game (Home Audio, Away Audio, Home Video, Away Video plus alternate language for some things). The bitching my parents do when the game is on ESPN or Fox is pretty heavy because of the degraded viewing experience and inconvenience of it. Plus when they aren't showing the game and my dad has to revert to internet radio generates some commentary.

<comment><USER18> Those are all traditional sports. Sports that are getting less and less participants at the youth level. ESPNs focus is dated. The fact that there are options to watch other things only compounds their rust. All in all, this isn't really a surprise.

<comment><USER19> The rise in esports and computer games doesnt necessarilly dictate the losing in popularity of conventional sports. ESPNs statistics can just as easily (with more evidence) be correllated by their focus on drama in sports. Ive seen numerous complaints about espns love of the kardashians or other non- sport related aspects.

I dont think the tech industry or a rise in videogames is necessarilly a driver in popular culture. Sports stars are viewed as heroes and often are the subject of jealousy and interest while success in videogames Is associated to a sacrifice of health and looks. There also is fun/humorous cultish mentality related to sports. Instead its viewed as depressing to the point of mental illness. In sports, celebrating your team in a big way is celebrated in a way everyone can get involved.

There is still a lot of good reasons why sports will not die and a lot of reasons why espn has activily repulsed its audience

<comment><USER20> It's definitely not just esports. I've noticed more people in their twenties are getting into football (soccer) and x-games style alternative sports. I don't see the domination of NFL, NBA, and MLB continuing for many future generations.

College sports completely baffle me.

<comment><USER21> Most cities don't have a local pro sports team, but have a local college team. Being able to go to the stadium of the club you support is a big deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I worked at ESPN from 2002-2005.

ESPN execs have been aware of the problem since at least that long ago. Subscriber fees are where ESPN makes most of its money, so the execs have been understandably loathe to cut the cord. Even back in 2004 the goal was to drive more cable subs and more revenue per cable sub because the revenue dwarfed what they could make online (IIRC ESPN.com made ~$60M top line in 2004. Not even a drop in the bucket compared to revenue from cable subscribers).

Strategically ESPN is in a difficult position. They provide distribution to content providers (the leagues) in an era when the price of distribution is approaching zero. Which is why you see MLB, NFL, etc going straight to consumer over the internet with their own offerings. The importance of TV distribution is diminishing, which leaves ESPN with no content (they've never really been a content company) and no distribution.

Interesting times, indeed.

<comment><USER23> _they 've never really been a content company_

you changed my perspective with this comment.youre so right. essentially everything espn creates to fill time between live events is garbage.

only issue for leagues distributing content themselves is local/regional tv contracts are a huge source of revenue for most teams. Tv is still the path of least resistance to consuming content. local deals might not be as lucrative if not on Tv. customers in a given region might not be 'stumbling' onto a local game to watch as often if the game isnt on a tv channel

<comment><USER24> The one time they had an interesting show (Playmakers), the NFL twisted their arm to cancel it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> My complaints about the NFL is really the ridiculous length of the games and slow pace. The games are just boring. I've turned to be more of a soccer fan.

In regards to sports revenues, I thinkit makes more sense for us as consumers to just subscribe directly to the leagues for the content. I signed up for MLS Live and can watch any game I want. Cut the cable stations out of it. Make the leagues create a product that people want to pay for.

<comment><USER26> At least as of 1-2 years ago, NFL.com rebroadcasted games with everything but the plays themselves edited out. They took around 30 min. each, and were pretty watchable.

<comment><USER27> These types of game replays exist for both hockey and soccer. You lose context sometimes but for the most part the games remain cohesive and very exciting. Showing every pass, penalty, goal, turnover, and assist only couched by a few contextual seconds on either end of the clip gives you the full impression of the game without costing you an entire night... with the only setback being that you can't participate in the next day water cooler, if that's your thing.

<comment><USER26> To be clear: The NFL broadcast I'm talking about shows every play, every moment of action. NFL games have 60 minutes of clock time; much of that time is spent between plays in huddles, etc. Thus 30 min can show you everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sports used to be the one thing people could just enjoy. There wasn't any political bullshit or social shaming. Just competition and pageantry. It was one of the very few things someone could just go all out for and not worry about it. People of different political factions, races, and what have you could all go to the same bar and just watch their team.

That is no longer the case, and so this makes following sports much less desirable. The NFL has allowed players to hijack the sport platform to make their own political points. This is like pissing in your drinking water. Since the NFL did not remove or sanction these players, they are at least tacitly agreeing with them. Note to NFL: on any given political issue, 1/3 will agree, 1/3 will be mildly uncomfortable, and 1/3 will be pissed off. Can you really afford to lose 1/3 of your followers?

It just is mind boggling that the leadership of the NFL is so inept that they didn't see this coming when they got in bed with the political folks. Yay! Another aspect of life has been politicized for no good reason.

<comment><USER29> The NFL has already been politicized. It has mostly tilted right wing. The rah rah pro military stance after 9/11 (which I overall agree with) that still continues now. The Breast cancer awareness ribbons. The debate over the Washington Redskins name. The concussion issue. The harassment and trouble gay players have. Controversy over coaching hiring.

There have been a bunch of political issues that have beset the NFL in recent years. NBA players while not kneeling during the anthem, have taken a similar stance as Kaepernick in recent years and their ratings are similar to the years before.

<comment><USER30> Other than the pro-military how is any of the rest right wing?

Do you think the NFL's refusal to allow Dallas' players to honor slain police officers is also right wing?

<comment><USER29> I was speaking in general that the NFL tends to lean more right wing, not these particular issues. I probably should have made that more clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> so ESPN:

1\. consumes monopoly priced content (ESPN pays $1.9 billion/year for "Monday Night Football") with waning appeal.

2\. produces content only to obsolete content providers (cable/satellite t.v. providers), appears contractually bound to remain this way.

3\. (imo) has a dubious content model in the 21st century. The ESPN content I've seen has been standard corporate-cable lowest common denominator garbage that builds no trust with the audience.

I'd be surprised they weren't dying more quickly, but it has taken me years at a time to get my older relatives to cancel cable subscription they never use (not just sort of never, literally never).

<comment><USER32> ESPN is unfortunately bound contractually that they have to delivery their content through cable providers. I remember reading that if they developed their own direct-to-consumer product, they could no longer be on any cable channels.

That's why they've partnered with Sling TV and Sony Vue, whose numbers are not included in the 650k loss. I'm sure those services each have a couple hundred thousand subscribers, and anecdotally, many of my cord-cutting / sports fan friends get their ESPN fix through those instead of a huge cable bundle.

<comment><USER33> I feel like they'd have enough leverage to get out of that arrangement, considering the large number of people who only subscribe to cable for the sports packages. It's not like cable providers are going to say "Oh, you put your stuff online, well, we're just going to stop offering sports then", as they'd just plain lose customers by responding like that.

At least, that's my naive impression.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> One thing about NFL rights that I haven't really seen discussed is they're so regional, and that doesn't seem to make much sense anymore, at least in big cities. Having lived in NY and SF everyone I know who's into football has a different favorite team, since they grew up in a different place.

But the broadcast networks can all only show regional games in each area. There's no way to subscribe to all games from 1 team because the networks all get exclusive rights to different games. In the US there's not even a good way to subscribe to all games on a single service other than I think direct tv which is a pain in the ass and doesn't work for apartment buildings. This doesn't solve ESPN's problem, but for the NFL offering these two services on demand at different price points seems like such an obvious way to boost viewership.

<comment><USER35> The NFL Season Ticket package has been decoupled from DirecTV for a couple of years now - you can watch your non-local games on pretty much any streaming device.

<comment><USER34> I think that's Sunday Ticket, and it's only sunday day games? So if your team is playing Monday night, you'll still need an ESPN subscription, Sunday night you need cable or an antenna that gets NBC, Thursday night you need twitter or cable or an antenna. I think even Sunday day games in your local area you might not get, so you need basic cable/antenna for that. And not sure if you can watch many of these with a delay/on-demand.

Why can't there be one service that I can just pay for and turn on at any time after it airs, like HBO Now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Cord cutting is a big part of this, but there is a cultural aspect in play as well:

ESPN has been increasingly pushing a progressive narrative on its viewers, many, perhaps most, of whom are conservatives. The NFL is seeing the same thing, with big declines in viewership since the national anthem protests began.

I see a lot of newly developed/developing antipathy towards professional sports among my right-wing acquaintances. What's funny is that the reasoning is often very similar to what my left-wing acquaintances had to say back when I was at Berkeley.

As with the libertarian -> alt-right shift of the last five years, I think it is one of the more interesting sociological developments I am aware of, and largely unremarked upon by the press.

<comment><USER37> Dropping NFL audiences have more to with the subpar product the NFL is producing these days, than it has to do with national anthem protests. The league is shooting itself in the foot via mismanagement.

<comment><USER38> If the league agrees with you on this reasoning (I've heard it pushed a lot recently so I'm sure some do) they will fail to address the real contributing factor for many abandoning the league this year which is: the national anthem protests, and to some degree the multi season string of domestic violence amongst players and the leagues handling of theses issues.

Those are the 2 reasons I and a lot of the people I talk to have stopped watching. Subpar product on field has never been discussed. The quality of play seems he same as it has any other year (from some highlights I've seen... but I haven't watched a game so I guess I wouldn't know).

<comment><USER39> The jingoism in the US is always surprising. Why is the anthem even playing in a national game? Why should the players even be forced into this display of subservience before doing their job? It's not like they're representing the national team! What a weird society.

<comment><USER36> It is weird. I think it is in part because America is the first enlightenment nation. We have no blood or deep history binding us together, so superficial and melodramatic shows of solidarity become much more important in generating a stable sense social identity. Think of it as a bunch of deracinated individuals attempting to say "see, 'we' are a 'we'!"

The puritans were virtue-signallers par excellance, so that probably also flows through to what you see today.

<comment><USER40> What do you mean by "first enlightenment nation"? I haven't heard this before. I thought the ideas of the enlightenment were first in various European countries but I don't think that's what you mean?

<comment><USER41> My parse is, the USA is founded on documents and philosophy instead of the personal power of a string of hereditary leaders and/or their overthrowers. I also feel the comment ignores the nuance of the fact that France's claim to be "An" enlightenment nation, if France wanted to make such a claim, is not so different than that of the USA just because France might be on its 5th Republic. How long has the L/E/F motto been the motto of France or French citizens anyway? The other side of that nuance being that perhaps French nationalism has a different flavor because it could be about different forms of nation at different times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is good news

Entrenched business need to suffer pain to move.

In this case, not ESPN necessarily, but NFL and other content providers

<comment><USER43> It's probably good news in the long run, but there might be some severe pain in the short- and medium-terms if you believe Ben Thompson's argument that "sports is the linchpin holding the entire post-WWII American economy together". You can read his reasoning at [https://stratechery.com/2016/the- sports-linchpin/](https://stratechery.com/2016/the-sports-linchpin/) and [https://stratechery.com/2016/tv-advertisings-surprising- stre...](https://stratechery.com/2016/tv-advertisings-surprising-strength-and- inevitable-fall/), but it basically goes like this: (statements in parentheses are the companies that are going to be hurting bad if sports takes a dive)

\- Sports are the only reason left to tune in to live TV

\- Live TV is the only reason to have cable (telcos, cable networks)

\- Live TV is the only reason to buy TV ads on broadcast networks (broadcast networks)

\- TV ads are the thing propping up a lot of "old-guard" companies (retailers, CPG companies, car companies)

Essentially the old order is a mutually self-supporting structure propping itself up (Retailers and CPG companies need TV to reach a mass audience, TV needs these companies to buy ads), and sports is the thing holding it together.

Again, if this falls apart it might be for the best in the end, but it's going to be a bumpy time if telcos, retailers, large consumer goods companies, and broadcast networks all get hammered at the same time. Collectively they account for quite a bit of employment and GDP.

<comment><USER44> I'm not sure I agree with point 4. Does the articles you link go into how that connection is made?

Why are internet (such as youtube) ads not enough?

<comment><USER43> The second link explains it pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The lack of NFL on Netflix and Amazon Prime is the only thing that makes me reconsider cable. I haven't but it hurts. Sports bars just don't cut it.

<comment><USER46> NFL gamepass does the trick most of the time. Includes RedZone as well.

Sometimes a game is blacked out which requires a VPN to see any specific game, but RedZone and NFL Live are always good, as far as I've seen.

[https://gamepass.nfl.com/nflgp/secure/schedule](https://gamepass.nfl.com/nflgp/secure/schedule)

<comment><USER47> The NFL is one organization that really needs to give up on the media blackout nonsense, and get on the streaming game. the US version of GamePass doesn't cut it. Consumers really do want live games, not restrictions saying that they can't watch anything until everything for the day has aired. They don't want wireless carrier exclusives, or expensive satellite add-ons.

The NFL needs to learn from MLB. The MBL.tv app on the Apple TV is fantastic.

<comment><USER48> >> The NFL needs to learn from MLB. The MBL.tv app on the Apple TV is fantastic.

MLB even via the web browser is fantastic. I love how it lets you pick the video feed and audio feed (including radio) to customize what you're watching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Major League Baseball's World Series is in progress. This didn't show up prominently on major news sources. It's three screens down even on the New York Daily News front page, after an article about former nightclubs of NYC. Unless you're looking for baseball news, it's invisible online.

Median age of baseball fans is 53 years and climbing. When the median age of horse racing fans passed 50 years, racetracks started closing. Baseball as a big commercial sport probably has about a decade to live.

<comment><USER50> Link to some supporting evidence?

<comment><USER51> Median viewer by age in 2014 - MLB 53 and trending older / NFL 47 and trending older / NBA 37 and remaining steady.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/06/what-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/04/06/what- the-nba-gets-that-the-other-big-sports-leagues-dont/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This isn't complicated. Just notice how all of the "neo-liberal" channels, magazines, newspapers, and other publications are getting PUMMELED.

I want to read (and hear) about SPORTS, not get bombarded with human interest pieces or have Colin Kaepernick and European soccer shoved down my throat.

And I'm clearly not alone.

<comment><USER24> I don't think that word means what you think it means

<comment><USER53> Just to second this observation, see "neoliberal" in the Wikipedia. Nevertheless, I understand the parent comment's point (just replace "neo- liberal" with "left-leaning").

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Their programming has been getting progressively more terrible over the last few years. I used to watch SportsCenter religiously, but I just can't stand the idiocy, the blatant shilling for the leagues, the political advocacy, and the puff pieces anymore. I watched it for game recaps, scores, and highlights, and just as MTV doesn't show music videos anymore, ESPN doesn't really serve that niche anymore. I'm not tuning in to watch Skip Bayless and Stephen A Smith yell incoherently at each others, or suspected-murderer-cum-saint Ray Lewis blather.

The one really great source of content they had going, Grantland, and by extension, 30 for 30, they loused up because of internal political games.

</comment><comment><USER55> Editing, bundling and distribution adds value. But only so much value. Information flows these days more freely and on-demand. Quasi synchronous distribution of news has moved to social media. Like newspapers and telco's already cable companies are struggling to demonstrate they are adding value. It did not matter so much in the past but now more importantly they are loosing the eyeballs gatekeeper (and thus pricing power) position.

Sports funding is heading towards a brick wall unless it finds other revenue streams. Which is in part possible as they have unique advertisement bearers. But as the bundling is not as big the pricing power of individual athletes and teams probably will be less as an aggregate.

</comment><comment><USER56> So does this reflect a waning interest in sports, or are these subscribers going elsewhere?

<comment><USER57> Pretty sure it's both. I think that esports are kind of displacing traditional sports for 'millennials'.

<comment><USER58> What the hell is an esport? Sport themed video games? I'm 37 and have never heard of them.

<comment><USER59> People competing in multiplayer video games. With professional commentators, multiple camera angles, replays, custom graphics, sponsors, players that earn a living playing on professional teams with coaches, and everything else you'd get on ESPN watching a football game. I don't think any sport-themed games are played professionally though.

[https://www.twitch.tv/](https://www.twitch.tv/)

At the time of my comment, Twitch is live broadcasting the Hearthstone World Championship, Duelyst Pro League, Vainglory Evil Eight, Starcraft II World Championship Series Global Finals, and SMITE Pro League.

eSports tournaments have paid out over $100 million in prizes. Some of these tournaments are being carried live on cable channels in other parts of the world where they're more popular.

<comment><USER60> > I don't think any sport-themed games are played professionally though.

FIFA is somewhat popular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> ESPN overpayed for rights fees years ago not expecting viewership to decline at all - nevermind so rapidly. I'm sure even at those high prices they make a boatload off ad revenue but clearly their poor content and lack of focus on a live internet outlet for games is killing them. Also, all their good employees left!! FoxSports has most of them..

</comment><comment><USER62> The question is whether there's anything really unusual going on here. It's quite normal for a business, especially one not owned by a family, to just keep growing and growing until it pops or levels out. The NFL as well as the Premier League are seeing a dip in interest, after a long period of expansion.

The story of sports in the last couple of decades has been for more and more money to be poured in, more and more content to be produced. Well obviously at some point there won't be anybody left to sell to. Same goes with smartphones, cars, and everything else that you can think of.

Now as for this particular market, what might have changed? Well perhaps the way we watch sports has changed a lot recently. You can basically pull live streams or highlights from any major sports event for free. With a little finesse (developer tools -> select ad elements -> delete) you don't even need to look at the pirate ads. In fact it can be easier to steal what you're after than to get it legitimately.

I doubt that people just don't want to watch sports anymore. Culturally, sports are deeply ingrained in modern culture. It's just that the necessity of paying these huge salaries means the networks are forced to try to sell you a huge production: pre-match buildups, player bios, yesteryear clips, postmortems, and so on. When you really just want to see the highlights.

As a European based NFL fan, I was quite surprised when I actually watched the super bowl in the US. It's damn near unwatchable. Constant ads. A play, another ad. I don't know if they even break a sweat, there's so many stoppages. But the highlights shows, I like those. Very high quality production, actually.

A pet peeve of mine is the analysis. If you watch enough of it over various sports, you realise the pundits do not really say anything interesting. They have their draw-on-screen replays and such, but there's no real intellectual backbone to it. And they often say things that are not substantiated by the stats. It would be good if there were clear schools of thought in sports critique.

</comment><comment><USER61> The WORST part of all of this is how Disney owns a great video streaming company who built our a killer product for the MLB, and they can't apply it to the ESPN ecosystem, whose video player is TRASH.

</comment><comment><USER63> Odd no one has mentioned this, but it seems likely that Google is going to make a play disrupting the market for live event video. On one side is an infrastructure play by expanding GCP to include many video-specific capabilities for streaming, transcoding, distribution, etc., following their acquisition of Anvato.

The other side would be helping all those producers to reach consumers (expanding the Play Store?) and possibly doing a revshare on targeted video advertising by expanding Adsense For Video or the equivalent.

The only question in my mind is whether Google intends to become the Netflix of live streaming events, or if they will be content to remain a market-maker (AdSense/AdWords has worked out rather well).

I probably have some details wrong, but clearly _something_ is going to happen in this space. Check out this job posting for example, and draw your own conclusions:

[https://www.google.com/about/careers/search#!t=jo&jid=219675...](https://www.google.com/about/careers/search#!t=jo&jid=219675001)

</comment><comment><USER64> Sorry I'm a bit cable-consumer illiterate, can someone explain is ESPN a separate premium channel these days on cable? It used to be I believe included in the offering just above "basic cable." Is this no longer the case? I am guessing you subscribe to just ESPN now? Otherwise there would be no way to get exact subscriber loss numbers correct?

<comment><USER65> It's still a packaged channel. The article links the source of the information, Nielsen's estimates the subscriber counts for a variety of channels.

<comment><USER66> I think his point is that, if it were universally part of basic cable packages (which AFAIK, it used to be), it shouldn't drop more than basic cable subscribers overall. So I suspect, though don't know, that because of its increased cost to cable operators, it may be in a higher tier package on some systems that many people are not taking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> One thing is clear to me and that is there will be many wounded companies in the battle for attention. Pro sports and the ancillary industries surrounding it are not immune. Twenty years from now I believe we will look back at this period as peak pro sports.

</comment><comment><USER68> Just as a side note, I would never, ever watch actual TV in the US if I had a choice.

The way in which you constantly get bombarded with intrusive, disruptive and annoying advertising is just ridiculous. I don't know how anyone can put up with it.

</comment><comment><USER18> That popping sound you hear is the sports bubble bursting.

That said, best I can tell, ESPN is heavily weighted with traditional sports. For example, there's very little support of soccer. In shot, ESPN is like the GOP. That is dated and failing fast.

<comment><USER69> You guys live in such a tiny bubble. Soccer is gaining popularity, yes. That's great, but the NFL brought in 11.6B last year. The MLS? 533M. Hell, _Hockey_ brought in seven times that. The NFL is the largest professional sports league on the planet.

Soccer is still very niche here and most people watching ESPN simply don't give a crap about it (myself included.)

ESPN is failing because their commentary is going downhill and they're trying to become a pop culture entertainment channel. More soccer would just hurt them.

<comment><USER70> Association football (as in football or soccer, depending on where you are), through its various leagues, has much higher combined revenues than the NFL. In fact, the European leagues alone have greater aggregate revenue than the NFL. The NFL is of course one tightly-coupled organization, so comparison might not be "fair game". And yeah the MLS is even quite small compared to several of its counterparts throughout the world. [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_le...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_professional_sports_leagues_by_revenue)

<comment><USER71> What's your point? Liga MX probably gets higher rating in the US than the European top leagues combined and it's what second tier?

No one cares about watching a bunch of foreign countries with team names that don't even make sense play games at inconvient times on a third tier cable channel that makes it impossible to watch any single team because it's just random matches on random days.

Seriously, its European sports culture doesn't fit American sports culture. The league change teams year to year. The names are incomprehensible (Juventis? "Children"? Is that what that means? Where is this team even from?) The clock is idiotic (Count down, and stop the clock when play stops. This is 19th century technology people.)

Soccer's problem in the US is that it's niche and doubles down on its nichedom (I'm looking at you Real Salt Lake and Dallas FC.) The other problem is that US isn't good enough at it, and so we don't care. (Yes, USMNT's ranking has steadily improved over the last 20 years, but it's not a powerhouse.) Conversely, the only time most Americans pay attention to soccer is when the Women's World Cup is on.

<comment><USER71> As I suspected, Liga MX is the most watched soccer league in the US.[0]

[0] [http://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/la-sp-soccer- baxter-201...](http://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/la-sp-soccer- baxter-20160501-story.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> If fewer and fewer people are watching football each year, I'm unclear what NFL's argument will be for charging more for the rights, or even the same amount.

<comment><USER73> Maybe they just want to suck ESPN dry before they bother going to the next phase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> The content on ESPN is just plain bad. I don't watch it, I don't read it. The on my thing I goto ESPN for is to see various game and match scores.

</comment><comment><USER75> what's overlooked is this is bad for consumers who are sports fans, if Fox/CBS/ESPN/NBC cut back spending for sports rights and get less games, you will be at the mercy of the sports leagues online services to watch content who will have all the pricing power and will force you into season passes, this is naive to think it will just affect ESPN and not the other networks, content will be getting significantly more expensive in the future across sports/television shows

<comment><USER76> They won't have all the pricing power because sports will be competing with each other for viewership.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Call me crazy, but I have an idea and it's been kicking around in my head for a while. But, how about a wireless broadcast system for video. I hear you laughing, but wait. Give me a second. Have large broadcast towers that broadcast out digital (ok, analog signals that are carriers for digital output) signals that can be picked up by antennas in the home.

Sounds crazy, right?

It could broadcast sports, news, entertainment, you name it. You could even finance it with product placements (strategically placed in the videos) or just short ads (I like to call them commercials, but I am not sure why).

You all are pretty smart, does this sound like it has any way at all of succeeding? Talk about cord cutting!

<comment><USER78> Sounds possible, the question is will this be like a pirate radio for video? Or are you trying to legally license content and broadcast it locally. Hopefully I'm not replying to a parody post

<comment><USER79> You are replying to a parody post. He's describing broadcast television.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> Cord-cutting?

<comment><USER81> Netflix popularized the phrase in an attempt to create a movement of people who turn of their cable tv service (cut the cord) and switch to Netflix.

<comment><USER33> That doesn't sound accurate.

<comment><USER81> It is, but they have taken steps to distance themselves from that marketing bc of their strategy for MPVD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Prediction: Disney will buy Netflix and in 2021 buy the rights to the next 10 years of the NFL for 20 Billion, and raise the price of netflix to $25/month.

</comment><comment><USER82> i blame these sports orgs, tyrants of content down to the minute details...like dang, give alittle to get a lot

</comment><comment><USER83> PlayStation vue is my new cable, month to month suckas

<comment><USER84> Lots of cable subscriptions are sans contract. PSVue could actually be considered part of the problem: they pay what is asked by these broadcasters and they toe the line with their requirements of how you can consume the content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Lightning

</comment><comment><USER85> Death</comment>


GithubFinder - The Missing Github Repository Browser - <AUTHOR> http://sr3d.github.com/GithubFinder/?utm_source=hn

<comment><AUTHOR> I was waiting to get my submission of GithubFinder to the 10KApart contest approved before posting the link here on HN, however, it seems like I'm running into some issue with the rules and I may not get the app accepted. The app is using a small proxy script to grab files from Github and even though I think the proxy script is generic enough to fit in their #3 rule, "3rd party API use", I don't want to bet on that.

So here it is, GithubFinder. I've been using it personally for the past few days and it's awesome. Browsing Github repository now is a breeze. This morning I implemented the Greasemonkey script to add a button to the Github repo page, and with this feature in place, I think the app is pretty complete. So I decided to announce it to the HN community. There are lots of Github users here so I hope it'll be a great tool to all.

For bugs and features request please go to

<http://github.com/sr3d/GithubFinder/issues>

Thanks!

PS: thanks to Github for being awesome. The API is pretty sweet!

</comment><comment><USER2> This looks cool. I'm impressed it's under 10K (I do think it's funny that the 10K contest allows the inclusion of libraries that are much bigger).

I've bookmarked it to use in the future.</comment>


Ask HN: Who plays chess? - <AUTHOR> I'm on Chess with Friends (iOS) and Chess.com. Same username as hn on both.
I'm not super good, but I've been getting better since I started playing online a month ago. I used to play a lot more when I was a kid. <comment><USER2> I used to play competitive A LOT when I was younger, my best was 3rd place for an all Ontario (Canada) competition and I won some county competitions. But it got to the point of being too time consuming and too boring, all you're doing is memorizing openings and certain strategies for middle play and end game situations rather than playing.

Having said that I really enjoy going through the old Master's games. If you're into Chess then I suggest getting 'The Most Instructive Games of Ches Ever Played' by Chernev ([http://www.amazon.com/Most-Instructive-Games-Chess- Played/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Most-Instructive-Games-Chess- Played/dp/0486273024)). He goes through each game explaining the strategy and contexts of the games and moves, really enjoyable if you're into Chess.

chessgames.com is a cool site for going through their archive of games. My favorite is 'The Game of the Century' with Fischer who was my favorite: <http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1008361>

<comment><USER3> I had a similar experience. I was a strong contender for the US West amateur championship for a few years. But once I got good enough to spend most of my thinking time on positional concerns things stopped being a game and started being a huge database to memorize. I would spend my free time analyzing my games for weaknesses in my strategy, and practiced speed problem solving using giant books of tactical problems. Everybody serious about chess hits the point of diminishing returns per unit of studying, and I believe that the "good" players are the people who can ignore the impossibility of their task and keep studying anyway. There are probably better solutions to the problem of diminishing returns than quitting cold turkey, (the solution I chose) but I'm convinced my experiences with chess have made me a much better programmer. Looking ahead at the consequences of my actions, being able to look for oddball solutions to impossible situations, never giving up, and occasionally memorizing established solutions are all things I'm appreciative to chess for teaching me.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, basically there's a point where you come to an ultimatum: "Do I want chess to be my life?" and we chose no -- simple as that. And it seems we're both happy we took that path! :)

<comment><USER3> Hmm, I was content to show agreement simply by up-voting your comment, then I realized that was an anonymous action. So publicly, +1 to your comment, you hit it right on the nail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I played chess a seriously when I was at school but my family moved to a town without a decent club in last year at school so I stopped playing.

Started again around 2.5 years ago and I'm pretty serious. Trying to do 10-20 hours per week of training, seeing a coach for 2 hours/week and entering tournaments (I'm in the middle of one this weekend).

I don't play much online, just chess puzzles, books and playing against the computer ( The hard bit with computer chess these days is _not_ "playing better than a grandmaster" but "playing like a nnnn rated human" ). At the level I'm at memorising openings isn't too big. perhaps 20 lines to a depth of a dozen moves is enough.

My rating is 1900 FIDE (although I'm probably 100 points lower in real life) which puts me in the top 100,000 players in the world or something like that. My medium term plans are to get a low level title (below grandmaster) in around 3-5 years. It's a plausible goal if I put in the hours.

</comment><comment><USER5> I used to play Chess when I was much younger and could beat pretty much everyone I knew by age 10-11. That's not saying an awful lot because I didn't know anyone particular good, and that was really the problem.

I lived in a town of about 10,000 at the time (and later in a town of 15-20,000 up until the end of high school) so didn't really have the opportunity to learn and get better. This was before the internet and playing a computer isn't quite the same thing.

It's something I'm a little disappointed about because I wish I'd had that opportunity by living somewhere bigger.

You learn from people who are better than you far more than those that are worse than you.

In university I met up with someone I'd gone to high school with (until he moved). He'd become something of a gun when it came to pool (eight ball). He used to practice 6 hours a day (I later learned) and won a junior state championship. He could beat pretty much any of us with his eyes closed. Once he beat someone when he was drunk only playing with one hand and won convincingly.

I used to play with him and actually got pretty good. By pretty good I mean I could take a game from him maybe 1 in 10-15. Against pretty much anyone else I did extremely well and even did well in the odd local comp (second place I think was my best).

That's what I mean about getting the opportunity to get better.

</comment><comment><USER6> I was never good enough to surpass the simple reactionary one-move-deep analysis of a beginner player (e.g. if I move here he'll capture my piece, or if I do this he'll have to respond like this or that), so the strategy in my games is very limited making it not-so-exciting.

</comment><comment><USER7> What I think are the three ESSENTIAL chess books are listed here: <http://j.mp/bvbRoO> ...The cheapest one is a lot of fun.

I won money in the U.S. Open and the New York Open, but that was only because I was basically improving quickly and was better than my rating. When I reached the point I could play speed chess with a clock without looking at the board (blindfold chess) I had overdone it and pretty much quit.

<comment><USER8> Reassess Your Chess is undoubtedly the best Chess book I ever read

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I play on FICS via the iChessHD app on the iPad , which has a number of annoying bugs but suffices for my needs (ie. Get a ranked online chess game for free, any time of day, with control over the time parameters). When I first got the iPad I wasted loads of time playing 15 30 games which took the best part of an hour, then I switched to 2 7 'speed' game which don't feel very rushed anymore, and only take 5 mins or so.

I'm an average player among people who play regularly, although when i was a kid I always beat my friends. I don't have the patience to learn extensive opening theory, but sometimes I like to tell myself I surprise more experienced players with my unorthodox tactics and inventive responses...

I'm interested in chess as 1. A sort of daily 'brain-training' task to sharpen up 2. Finding ways and strategies for beating people who are much more skilled 3. Highlighting blind spots and flaws in my thinking (and others') 4. Improving visualisation/memory (for instance nowadays I find it easier and easier to remember entire boards/positions and analyse them in my head.

As you might have guessed, I condsider these skills to be transferrable to programming.

</comment><comment><USER10> I used to use the chess.com facebook app a lot to play. But at some point I stopped. I forget when or why. I think I got fed up with the app engine and just turned it off for a while. I've since turned it back on, and might start playing again. I've played since I was a kid and always enjoyed it, but haven't had a whole lot of time recently.

<comment><AUTHOR> The great thing about these formats is that the time commitment is minimal, though chess.com does ask you to supply a 2-3 day time limit between moves.

This also explains the great success of _Words with Friends._ I had been playing that game consistently since I was introduced to it back in March when I discovered chess. I never played scrabble before, I guess that phase is over now. I like chess much better!

Hit me up if you can!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been really playing alot for past 2 months.

First studying alot, basic openings, midgames, endgames, simple tactics. But what got me really hooked was Stockfish (on iOS and Android), <http://www.stockfishchess.com> ... it is a pretty amazing open source chess engine. By far the best learning has been through <http://www.jrobichess.com>. His video analysis is great. In general I still lose alot more than I win but the studies are great and there is alot to learn.

Also great documentaries to watch ...

Game Over : Kasparov and the Machine : <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLhqmqwy2gw>

Susan Polgar : Brilliant Brain <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WREgHsTr5yE>

Also watching the current games of Magnus Carlsen, Judit Polgar, and Alexandra Kosteniuk are great.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've played tournament chess on and off since the mid-70's and as was pointed out elsewhere, to get good you need to devote a substantial amount of time to the game. Not that this is a bad thing, but you do have to ask yourself just how much time you have to devote to just how many things? I've managed to make a decent living from time to time as a chess programmer--- don't do the engines, but did do the interfaces. Starting with John Stanback and Hal Bogner working on Zarkov, and then later working with Electronic Arts for real money! I always got a kick out of the fact that I was the lowest rated player in the project including the manager! The last interface I worked on was for ICC another interesting project...

<comment><USER13> Sounds nice to work with chess as a programmer.

I remember about 10 years ago when I was too young to pay for an ICC subscription, I would continually use a two-week trial by changing the volume ID on my hard drive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd never been very good at it. I could play, but would almost always lose to anyone that had spent any real time studying chess. Then a couple years ago I got into it and spent maybe 100 hours on it. Now I know I can demolish anyone that doesn't really play, but I'm probably at the bottom of any club or group of serious players.

One innovative tool that helped a lot is <http://chesstempo.com>. It presents puzzles, but each puzzle has a dynamic rank, so the site is always adjusting what it gives you to your current skill level.

</comment><comment><USER15> I played chess a lot in my teenage years and I was very good. Italian Champion under 12, under 18 and under 20, fide master with 2 international master norms.

Then I decided to quit. It was incredibly fun, but also a lot of work which is not going to pay off unless you become a very strong grandmaster. I'm still thinking what a loss it was not to spend that "teenage energy" into doing something more profitable.

But it was so fun that I'm thinking about a comeback :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I play on Yahoo Games. Not any good at it though, despite having read a basic chess book and gone through the surprisingly thorough Yahoo Chess Strategy Guide [http://games.yahoo.com/help/strategy/ch&ss=1](http://games.yahoo.com/help/strategy/ch&ss=1). It's a fun game if you're more of a spatial thinker (hello designers) or get bored by more quantitative games like poker.

</comment><comment><USER17> I play casually and wrote a simple HTML jquery chess board: <http://joelparkerhenderson.com/chess/>

The board is just pieces you can drag and drop anywhere. For me, this is more flexible than Chess.com, Yahoo Games, and other sites with sign in, membership, Java, Flash, and the like. Feel free to use it. Feedback appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER18> I used to play second board in interschool competition. We were a small school, but had a really good team (number one board ended up state champion.) Took a couple of years but we ended up winning the whole thing.

Interestingly, Terrance Tao's brother (Trevor) used to play in the same competition sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER19> I keep Shredder on the iPhone and usually play with that. I go through phases of playing it whenever I have a couple minutes free. I like it because you can keep a game around for a while, only needing to play when you're in the mood.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're really interested in getting into chess, check out ICC and FICS.

</comment><comment><USER20> I play regularly on <http://www.freechess.org/>

</comment><comment><USER21> Black coffee w/ as little sugar as I can tolerate in the particular moment of the day.

</comment><comment><USER22> i used to play all the time. now i only play maybe one or two games a year. never been much good at it though :(

</comment><comment><USER23> Chess is a candy for your brain :)

</comment><comment><USER24> I use to play once or twice a week several years ago. I need to get back to doing that and get rated.

That Bobby Fisher chess open, middle, and end game puzzle book is a great way to step back into the game despite the major personal flaws that BF had.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup - free organic traffic for mvps, betas and startups. - <AUTHOR>

The Beta Network is a free cross promotion network whose aim is to provide a way to organically increase your traffic and (validated) learning, by means of automatically interlinking your beta landing page or Minimum Viable Product website to others in the same ecosystem of yours.
It works like this:
1)You create your ad ( or partnership, as i prefer ) through our very simple form and you submit it.

2)Embed the js code in your webpage and choose where you want the ad to appear.

3)In 24 hours your ad will be approved ( the network is non exclusive, and unless your content is really crappy or obscene your ad won' t be rejected ).

4)Every time a visitor clicks on the link inside an ad displayed on your website you earn a credit from the website the link was pointing to ( it owes you a click ).

5)Since you are the creditor and the other website is the debtor, the network promotes your ad until you get a click back.
The idea is fairly simple and i was inspired by the awesome work made by the guys at Applifier, a cross promotion network for mobile and social games. What we want to build is a way for people (especially developers and wannabe entrepreneurs) to immediately take advantage of the ecosystem in which they are operating even if they are located in a place where the startup community is not present in the territory, getting initial exposure for their early stage products so that they can get validated learning and customer insight. I like to think of it as a way of "automating partnerships", partnership meaning that i promote you since i know you' ll promote me and we will both benefit from this.
It's especially geared towards mvps and beta pages, since it' s not always easy for them to reach decent ( or even minimum ) traffic and this leads to a lack of information, which is the worst thing that could happen to a freshly started company. Our mantra is "alone we fall, united we stand".
Following the Lean Startup methodology ( awesome book, by the way ) I decided to release a MVP early, without it being perfect or anything near perfection.
What is important for us at this stage of development is learning and getting constructive feedback. You can find the network at http://betainsight.com
Thanks a lot for the attention and the aforementioned feedback. <comment><USER2> I think it is a great idea. Your homepage looks a bit bland, but your description of the content in the above post is quite good.

Not sure how you will monetize and I would encourage you to NOT monetize (for a while). Instead, perhaps you can create a tool that will just be really useful. It seems useful enough anyway

</comment><comment><USER3> How is this different than <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkExchange>?

<comment><AUTHOR> Even if the idea of link exchange is not new at all as you are pointing out, betainsight is different for several reasons: it' s fast, no crappy or spammy websites, geared exclusively towards the startup community and aims to really promote parterships. As i wrote in the description the itself network is still in its mvp stage, but I' m planning to add social features to make cooperation easier between the subscribers and collect feedback from visitors. As it is now it could be a nice feature for all of those startups posted on websites such as betalist to boost their traffic by means of interlinking to each other.</comment></comment>


The Birth of Wheelchair Basketball - <AUTHOR> https://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2020/09/02/wheelchair-basketball-history-veterans-disability-rights/ideas/essay/ <comment><USER2> I hadn't realized just how differently people with even the most visually noticeable disabilities were treated in the first half of the 20th century.

Much more recent times have seen some pretty cool content related to wheelchair sports: I remember the documentary Murderball[0] following a team of rugbymen and the manga Real[1] about basketball (by Takehiko Inoue of Slam Dunk fame - also about basketball) for example.

[0] [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436613/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0436613/)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_(manga)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_\(manga\))

<comment><USER3> Fans of knife fights in phone booths might enjoy wheelchair fencing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBLpJujGSYE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBLpJujGSYE)</comment></comment>


Three Reminders of the Human Condition Today - <AUTHOR> https://benwajdi.postach.io/post/three-reminders-of-the-human-condition-today <comment><USER2> Today? By definition the Human Condition is eternal and doesn't change over time, here are my timeless definitions that are true across all the ages and all the cultures of man;

1)You are mortal and will die and you know it. Most religions are attempts to deny this fact. From the East, you don't _really_ die you get reincarnated and come back as a beetle or some other creature in an endless cycle of life. From the West, you don't _really_ die you go to Heaven where your life continues despite your new home transcending space and time of this world. This is called rationalization to avoid facing this fact.

2) You are an epistemological island and the only consciousness you will ever experience is your own. Nobody can think for you and your life depends on what you think. There are no Son's of God nor UFO aliens coming to save you. There are no Saviors, it is all on you.

3) You are born unto an era that you did not choose and culturally will not change much in your lifetime. The best you can do is make the future better but you won't be around to enjoy it and the culture you enjoy today was made by others who worked for a better future in their time. Pay it forward.</comment>


The problem with startups is that they can't solve the big problems. - <AUTHOR> http://remarkedly.com/2012/01/27/the-problem-with-startups-is-that-they-cant-solve-the-big-problems/ <comment><USER3> Just because you don't see startups tackling these things doesn't mean it's not happening. Maybe you just need to look harder...

For your point #1, it's called a PHR (personal health record) and it's been done by many players including many startups, plus Google (who gave up because no one used it) and Microsoft (which still has one).

The problem is NOT the government. (In fact, find podcasts or video of the CTO of HHS Todd Park or the CTO of the USA Aneesh Chopra, and then tell me that it's the government that's holding back health entrepreneurs. Seriously, go google these guys.) The problem in healthcare is the lack of engagement from many consumer/patients plus a private industry reluctant to standardize. The Feds are trying to lead the way. If you're a vet, you can get access your medical records from the VA via their Blue Button initiative, and the government is encouraging other systems to follow (and some have).

Yesterday 1200 people attended a free Health Care Innovation Summit in DC with the heads of HHS and CMS (including Todd and Aneesh) on stage actively supporting healthcare innovation and entrepreneurship. I know because I was there as the CEO of a small health IT company that's solving some of those "big problems." Check out hcidc.org in the coming days for a video archive of the event.

New companies ARE changing healthcare. (That's actually the point of Obamacare!) Check out the many health startups from Blueprint Health, RockHealth, and HealthBox.

In other words go look before you assume that none of us are solving big problems. Not all of us make gamified, location-based, social networking buzzword bingo solutions for mobile.

Edit: fixed Aneesha's title

<comment><USER4> > The problem in healthcare is the lack of engagement from many > consumer/patients plus a private industry reluctant to standardize.

I don't think patient engagement is an issue -- there are gazillion health related niche disease communities/blogs on the Internet. The challenge for consumer oriented startups is to scale beyond their specific niche to become successful in terms of revenue or as a widely used App/Service.

For all health IT startups targeting to the enterprise -- Good Luck with the PBU (Payer, Buyer, User) problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not every startup is a couple of guys working on an iPhone app. Startups have definitely solved big problems. For example:

\- Amazon.com, when it was a startup, figured out how to allow you to buy just about any book in print and have it delivered to your home. They had to build or lease warehouses, contract with delivery companies, and do all sorts of things that were not just hacking or technology.

\- Apple, when it was a startup (two guys working in a garage) figured out how to design an easy to use personal computer and get it manufactured at an affordable price.

Actually, I'm uncertain about whether I really want the problem of centralized healthcare records to be solved. If it is, it means that my healthcare records could easily fall into the wrong hands (look at how many data breaches there have been at banks, for example).

<comment><USER6> _Actually, I'm uncertain about whether I really want the problem of centralized healthcare records to be solved. If it is, it means that my healthcare records could easily fall into the wrong hands_

Making sure this doesn't happen is part of the problem definition. I'd expect something like client-side encryption to be an essential piece of the puzzle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The examples he gives are not truly big problems; they're medium-sized ones made artificially hard by regulations.

Dropbox is probably solving a bigger problem technically than any of the examples he gives.

<comment><USER8> You're mistaking _big_ with _technologically complex_. The author of the article clearly states that there is no complex technology involved in solving these problems. Yet, they are big. They're big because solving these problems would make our everyday lives significantly easier (much more so than a photo- sharing app, for example). But unfortunately, as you correctly point out, regulations prevent people who would be willing to provide a solution from doing so.

<comment><USER7> I'm not confusing the two; he's misusing the phrase "big problems." In ordinary usage, when people talk about solving big problems, they mean hard problems. If you said "back in the 1960s NASA was willing to take on big problems like landing a man on the moon," no one would argue that what you were saying was false on the grounds that it didn't make our everyday lives significantly easier. Someone might claim (probably accurately) that there were more important problems the government should have focused on instead, but no one could honestly claim you were misusing the phrase "big problems."

<comment><USER9> Ok you're right, but why argue the semantics in this case?

The author's point is that too many start-ups are creating fun apps that give little moments of joy rather than ones that noticeably and significantly make life easier or better for people. You can criticize the author for trying to be controversial and write something he knows has a good chance of making the front page of HN; as we've all probably noticed posts with this general sentiment are definitely in vogue right now on HN, but I think it's worth moving on from that and noting what he defines as big problems.

I think all the problems he lists we can agree are 'big' in the sense that they create a lot of confusion and inefficiency in society. In the case of medical records, 'solving' that problem could literally save countless lives.

On a related note, I disagree with the author there are big problems in society that start-ups can't solve. I think there are plenty. For many I'm guessing the idea behind 'Kill Hollywood' springs to mind. For me, it's the ubiquity of advertising in society. Personally, I'd love to see Facebook, Google, and co trying to change the world to reduce the concentration of it in our lives, unfortunately it looks like they're more interested in the opposite.

<comment><USER10> "Ok you're right, but why argue the semantics in this case?"

The logic of the article is that great minds are working on small problems in irrelevant startups. However, these great minds are great at certain fields, like technology. They are not particularly great at politics, for example, which is necessary for many of the problems listed in the article.

Put another way, if I want to make the most good in the world, and I'm a great programmer, what should I do, build the next Dropbox (something I'm capable of), or try and fix government regulations which cause inefficiencies in parking bills? Never mind what helps the world the most, take into account my chance of succeeding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> oddly, I would hardly classify the administrivia you listed as "big problems"... Those are first world middle class problems.

Why the downvotes?

TRULY Big problems:

Every year 15 million children die of hunger. ... 1 in 5 children in Africa die of malaria ... 1 million people die of malaria

I would hardly classify "having to fill out the same form every time I go to the Doctor's office" as a "BIG" problem.

<comment><USER12> To be fair, medical errors are a "TRULY" big problem, and I'm sure that poor/inaccurate/incomplete record-keeping isn't helping things.

<comment><USER13> If doctors had access to perfect data on their patients medical history would they actually use it?

<comment><USER14> No. My doctors regularly don't read the forms I fill out before the visit. (I know this because they ask the same questions that were on the forms and act surprised at the answers.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the point is interesting, and I definitely question the social value of the social-media startup, and I hate to be the guy in the room arguing for what amounts to a modern-day aristocracy, BUT...

In a sort of roundabout delayed fashion, startups ARE leading to tackling big problems.

<http://spacex.com>

<http://teslamotors.com>

<http://gatesfoundation.org>

<http://startupeducation.org>

<http://ubuntu.com> (maybe stretching it a bit)

<http://omidyar.com>

<comment><USER16> This list is really a non-sequitur.

First, I honestly can't count Ubuntu.

So besides that: Gates Foundation, Startup Education, and Omidyar are essentially charity. Yeah, they are technically start ups, but...

The other two's problem domains are really exceptions in the realm of "big problems": we've been doing space travel, we've been doing electric cars—these startups just do it better, but they aren't solving any new big problems. (They are solving many interesting technical problems along the way, of course.)

It's also interesting that every one on that list (still discounting Ubuntu) was started with a pile of money by a previously successful entrepreneur. (And SpaceX and Tesla by the same entrepreneur, by the way.)

<comment><USER15> Whoa, whoa. Those aren't startups. Those are organisations tackling big problems that are all funded by the wealth generated by startups.

Did you ignore the words "aristocracy", "delayed", and "roundabout" in my comment?

<comment><USER16> Aha, that went over my head. Apologies! In that case: excellent point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> ADP (www.adp.com) is a company which provides pretty much all of the mentioned services. My employer uses them as the corporate portal for W2s, vacation/sick time and etc. The user experience is terrible and the site won't render right in anything but IE. But these guys thrive because there is no competition. This is obviously not your typical trendy and entertaining niche to be in. It doesn't appeal to most people, like a picture of video sharing service. It's hard to break into the market. Most startups these days are after quick money. They'll roll out, get a decent user-base and sell out the moment they can. Creating a startup in this niche would require a lot ass-busting work and PR to get paying clients.

<comment><USER18> If you poke at their JavaScript, you'll notice that they intercept every keypress and handle it explicitly (i.e. having a list of alphanumerics that are 'ok' to pass through on text boxes) rather than letting the browser handle the keys that don't need to be special cased. It really seems like someone decided to convert some 'green screen' apps to the web (or else someone with only 'green screen' experience decided to do web programming).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> We could look at the OP's point and take it a bit further to ask, What are the biggest problems humanity faces today and how can software contribute and co- operate with other disciplines to tackle these problems? Most of the problems, that humanity today faces are in some way or other linked to Geo-Politics, unequal distribution of resources/wealth/well-being among the world population, non-optimized consumption of natural resources and we are running out of them and so on and so forth. So can software or software startups think about finding the problems they are trying to solve by taking into mind the global perspective? Or are they even willing to? I am not a startup guy and I don't even have many friends in the community, so I am not in a position to answer this question, but I am sure others here can.

But problems alone can't take up whole of the domain of human interest. So, the second part of the question, would be, what are the most interesting problems/technologies software could solve teaming up with other disciplines? I guess, many people are already working on such things, but the tech is still not mature enough or marketable enough, to be presented to the world, e.g. Google Xlab.

</comment><comment><USER20> I for one am quite happy that my health, working history and government database profiles are not (yet) interlinked. Sure, it would make things a lot easier... BUT

<comment><USER21> BUT what?

<comment><USER22> You want the government snooping around in your medical history?

<comment><USER23> Do governments with socialized healthcare not have access to their citizenry's medical histories? I wouldn't have a problem with it.

<comment><USER24> Only people with a need it get access, eg doctors

It's not a huge deal over here but imagine trying to run for office with an abortion from your 20's in your medical history if the opposition knew about it

Or politicians 'requesting' donations from directors of big companies or else their socially embarrassing medical issues like HIV (one in 20 people in the USA!) or plastic surgery history get's 'anonymously leaked'

Medical records can actually be a pretty huge source of power and that's certainly one thing the government should have as little as absolutely required of. All I have is a couple of broken bones in mine but I'm sure there are good people who could be swayed by bad people with the wrong information in the wrong hands

<comment><USER25> Hm. CDC says the number is 1 in 300:

<http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/resources/factsheets/us.htm>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's actually a fairly decent chance that you do have a secure way to access your medical records online. About 38% of patients in the US have a record in an Epic (disclaimer: my employer) EMR system. If you're part of that population, chances are good that you have access to Epic's MyChart web portal [1]. Each organization brands this portal as their own so I recommend asking your doctor's front desk staff about it.

And more directly to the OP's point, Epic certainly was once a startup (3 employees 30 years ago, 5000 today) that has tackled some very big problems.

I don't refute that there are many more startups working on products that won't quite save the world, but is that such a bad thing? P.T Barnum was organizing circus acts while his contemporaries Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Morgan were shifting the very foundation of our society (literally and figuratively). Doesn't mean Barnum doesn't have a legacy of his own though.

[1] - Here's an example: <https://mychart.clevelandclinic.org/>

<comment><USER27> The industry is much different today than it was when Epic was small. Even established companies now struggle to keep their clients from migrating to Epic. Epic's ability to connect different hospitals and physician practices trumps most other functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> My only question is which of the three problems is actual a technical problem? All three seem to be if anything political problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> that's the point... we are very efficient at getting restaurant reservations or booking flights or doing video chats with random people around the globe, but we can't apply technology to the most basic, fundamental problems that we are actually facing

<comment><USER28> You are right. My argument would be that the fundamental problems may not be solvable. Though I think in smaller countries the problems can be mitigated effectively. Example I believe in Singapore you can pay your taxes online.

<comment><USER23> Probably 95% of individual returns in the US can be handled by one of the high-end copies of TurboTax from your local office supply store. If Intuit can build it, so could the IRS and offer it as a web app. They could also put the data from W2s, 1099s, etc they receive online for you to view and automatically fill out most of your return with it.

It's a technology issue, just one the IRS has to tackle, not a startup.

<comment><USER28> It is still a political problem as the IRS has not already done it even though the tech is available. But you are right it is not something a startup can do. Though a startup could develop web apps for states. God help them if they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Sure they can. You just have to devote a lot of effort to do the additional analysis necessary. Most entrepreneurs simply aren't willing.

There are such things as intractable problems, but payments, health care recordkeeping and government are not among them.

I do like the fundamental point of the post, though. There should be more attention paid by startups to serious problems.

<comment><USER30> I agree with you that they can, but I think the point of this essay is that startups can't solve these problems on their own, using only technology and chutzpah. In order to solve "health care recordkeeping" you have to get governments and large companies on board with the process. You can lead a horse to water, and all that. There are going to need to be a lot of people at the table, and for the most part a startup isn't going to have the political juice to make it happen.

<comment><USER22> You will never succeed if your plan is to get government "on board" with the process. What needs to happen is to get government OUT of the process.

<comment><USER24> Government may be incompetent, inefficient and slow, but at least they won't cut corners on security. For sharing tweets or something a startup can get the infrastructure done pretty quick, for something more serious (eg tax info) you really want a proper security team and proper insurance and legal advice.

VC's and advisors need to provide a platform to give startups those tools. For security using Google AppEngine or the Amazon cloud, combined with automated penetration testing tools, combined with some kind of cheap application security testing (does it exist yet?) might get enough of the way there, but would you really trust something so flimsy, run by two kids out of college who are working it out as they go, with your serious data?

<comment><USER22> You don't appear to know how security really operates in federal government software. They hire Booz-Allen-Hamilton for millions of dollars to come in with 200 consultants and produce a massive report declaring their software meets all "certification and accreditation" requirements. This document then goes on a shelf somewhere and government workers continue to email all kinds of PI data around in Word and Excel attachments because the software is so obtuse it's the only way they can actually get anything done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Please excuse me when I point out that the mentioned big problems are big first world problems. The true big problems are how we as humanity cope with growing world population in the face of dwindling ressources. Desertification and water scarcity, climate change. Having shelter and food, water. Reducing the toxification and killing of mother earth. Global justice. Our standard of living feeds off of the uncounted lives of other humans (and animals). Simple examples: the poor people mining Coltrane for our newest gadgets under inhumane conditions and the children in Ghana burning our electronic waste in the open, inhaling the toxic fumes, to get a little metal to pay for food. These are challenges on massive scale.

So. A place to store my birth certificate? Srsly? Not really a problem.

</comment><comment><USER32> These issues are structural.

Its as if our institutions are just now upgrading to Dungeons and & Dragons Pathfinder edition while leading-edge companies are running the Skyrim engine.

We need common semantic data formats and automated systems based on them for processing data and enforcing regulations where necessary.

We also need these data formats and systems to be designed to ensure a certain level of distribution and guard against over-centralization, both on a corporate (antitrust) and personal (income inequality) level. Another key requirement is for the data formats and systems development to be continuous and agile.

Part of the problem is the belief in, and acceptance of, not only deadly force but a monopoly on force, in the form of centralized government. Common data formats are a critical missing component which should be agreed upon, but governments currently bear too much resemblance to large criminal organizations to expect them to really facilitate innovation.

I believe we need to iterate on the core of our social institutions, starting by reexamining basic premises. For example, if nearly every group is simply competing against all of the other groups for profit, how can an individual group come to the conclusion that completely revising their data systems to handle a new common format is a priority?

I'm not saying that we can't have competition, but I am saying that we need to look very closely at the fundamentals of the way the system works and try out some different frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER33> Every company that has ever tackled a big problem was once a startup. Startups can't solve big problems _right away_ , but some (mine included) intend to get there some day.

Right now, my company is a tiny star in the oligopolistic slow-moving galaxy of the US healthcare system. We grew 10x in 2008-2009, and grew 10x again in 2010-2011. We're still gathering steam, but we (and healthcare companies like us) are crafting the building blocks that will one day grow into the solution to this big hairy problem.

</comment><comment><USER34> Interestingly enough, i was thinking along the very same lines just yesterday, and most of this week. I have spent the last week going back and forth to the bank to open up a new bank account and failed multiple times. Simply because they dont accept certain types of proof of address, nor printed copies. Unfortunately i moved into the house with my then fiance so all bills are in her name except the ISP bill but it is emailed to me electronically. I had no choice but to print out, but the bank did not accept it citing "its a copy".

These kind of problems in 2012 should be easy to solve, and yet here we are. Why is there not a decent banking service out there that is well aligned with how we do business in 2012? Why im a stuck with the big powerhouse that are like big ships when it comes to steering direction. i.e pathetically slow.

I also thought similar things with Car Repair and servicing. I think that market is utterly ripe for disruption and hasnt had any real innovation (from an organisational point of view), in a seriously long time.

These are just two problems that come to mind since they're very fresh on my mind recently, but im sure there are many others just like they were pointed out in the blog post.

</comment><comment><USER35> So in short: Start-ups are dynamic while big companies are powerful. Red tape problems need both.

I tend to agree though: The minor inconveniences listed by the author aren't "big problems". We've got an endless list of _proper_ big problem. AIDS, global warming etc. You don't fight those problems with the same tools as one would for red tape - you need actual innovation...which I gather start-ups occasionally achieve.

</comment><comment><USER36> How about solving small, but important problems? There are countless examples of people using tech to improve people's lives in a way that matters.

Just look at the winners of this year's Microsoft Imagine Cup: [http://www.imaginecup.com/blogs/imagine_cup_finals/default.a...](http://www.imaginecup.com/blogs/imagine_cup_finals/default.aspx) \- Apptenders, team from Croatia, built a physical therapy app for Kinect that helps children with cerebral palsy, quote: "KiDnect is a Kinect-based solution for on-premise and remote physical therapy for children, especially those born with Cerebral Palsy. This software has the ability to monitor a child's exercises to ensure they are being completed correctly, and then provides statistical analysis to the therapist."

I would argue that the problems of the world are solved by solving small important problems, one at a time. And there's a world of opportunity for every startup to do just that!

</comment><comment><USER37> Some other big problems:

        Prisons
        Retirement for not-so-rich people
        High schools
        Government procurement
        Shipping (in developing countries)
        Customs (in developing countries)
        Utilities prices in Northern countries
        Digital democracy (removing corporate influence on elections)

<comment><USER38> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems>

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Is it possible that we see these as big problems partially _because_ they can't be solved by startups? If these could be solved by startups then they would no longer be big problems and some other problems would pop up which couldn't be solved by startups and would be referred to as the "big problems."

<comment><AUTHOR> i definitely think it's possible.... but i still think it's a pretty big problem when basic medical information is harder to access than last week's restaurant reservation

<comment><USER39> I definitely think that's true, but I think that your own construction of the problem supports my point. Last week's restaurant reservation is easy to access because it's a problem that can be addressed by startups. In other words, the reason why medical information is a "big problem" is that it hasn't been vulnerable to the same advancement that we perceive in other industries, mostly due to its barriers to entry. Without those barriers to entry it wouldn't be a "big problem," it would just be another thing that gets better with advancing technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> At the civic level, check out some of the projects that the Code for America folks are up to: <http://codeforamerica.org/projects/>

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't think it's true. With 5 programmers we were able to accomplish what 50 did at method integration. We created a better interfaced, more thought out integration. We just soft launched and here is a link to our YC post <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3521108>. Most startups don't have e know how but we are all pretty seasoned in creating businesses. I wouldn't really call it a startup but in a literal sense of course it is.

</comment><comment><USER42> I agree with the sentiment that too many startups are working to solve problems that don't really exist, but what irks me even more is that so many of today's startups are working not to make the world a better place, but to find better ways to serve advertising.

It's quite depressing to see so much energy wasted on this problem, which isn't a problem for consumers, but for advertisers. I'm sorry, but finding a better ways to use mobile photo social geo to target people for ads is not changing the world.

<comment><USER43> Yeah, but those startup people could be working in Big Finance or whatever. Having them working on useless social apps is harm reduction :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> You don't think Apple and Google are solving big problems? They were startups too, once. I think the flaw in your logic is that once a startup _successfully_ solves a big problem, they quickly stop being a startup, and become a big company. It's a mistake to conclude "startups can't solve big problems".

</comment><comment><USER45> "Dr Socman has tagged you with measles vaccination. Please confirm." - <USER2> solved?

</comment><comment><USER46> A non-profit for the good of the people company (like Salvation Army, etc.) could tackle these problems.

For instance for the government taxes one; a group could build a website that handled it and offer it for free to the government.

</comment><comment><USER47> The problem with these problems are that they aren't scalable. The problems you listed are quite US centric, but startups aren't happy unless the market is international.

</comment><comment><USER48> This may not be relevant, but what irks me in 2012 is how pathetic we are at transportation. You know, moving humans around. We fail it.

If you want to go from New York to Los Angeles, you have a sub-5% chance of paying a fair price. Most often, you'll find yourself paying a ridiculously high price because you booked your ticket to close to the date, too far away from it, on the wrong day of the week, or in the wrong season. Then you get shitty service the whole way, including 40-minute security lines and $25 baggage-check fees. If you spring for business class (domestic first) you get service that was almost as good as what coach offered 30 years ago, when flying wasn't horrible.

Trains aren't even an option for mid-distance travel, due to the infrequent schedules, equally absurd fares, and slow speeds (comparable to cars, except on Acela, a "high speed" service that goes 120 mph).

We have good highways in the U.S., and people drive a lot in this country because it's the only mode of transportation that actually works (for a family of four, it's cheaper than air and rail, which is just fucking absurd) but it's just not safe to drive them faster than 80-90 mph average speed, and legally you can't even go that fast.

New York is the only city with "decent" (by American standards) public transit, and that's still not enough to slash housing prices to where they'd be with an extensive transit network. (Note to all: if you pay urban rents, you'd benefit from a better public transit system even if you never used it, because it would de-crowd the city.)

We're amazingly good at shipping electrons, but we've given up entirely on moving humans.

<comment><USER49> In 1970, the price to fly coach from LA->NY was about $555 in 2010 inflation adjusted dollars. Comparing service then to now is silly. If you pay $555 now, you'll get decent service.

Furthermore, I think you might have a skewed sense of what a fair price is to fly 2,500 miles. A flight from Lisbon to Moscow (about the same distance) is more expensive than a flight from LA to NYC. It is a long way and expensive to operate planes. Last minute tickets and upper class tickets subsidize "cheap" fares. If you want to convert an airline over to fixed price tickets, the ticket price would likely be considerably higher than what you deem "fair."

Finally, the way cities are built in the US does not lend themselves to public transit. NYC has decent transit because the population density is so high as to make it the only viable option. There are no other cities in the US like that with the exception of maybe San Francisco which has a significantly smaller population. In Europe, many cities are high density and have good mass transit. Unless we encourage density, we're unlikely to see good urban mass transit since most people would rather drive all things being equal.

<comment><USER50> > NYC has decent transit because the population density is so high as to make > it the only viable option.

It's a little known fact that much of the Queens subway lines were built when the area was still mostly farmland. Check this article out: [http://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2010/06/the- futureny...](http://www.vanshnookenraggen.com/_index/2010/06/the- futurenycsubway-queens-flushing-trunk-line/)

We Americans are fond of saying that we can't have muni rail because our cities aren't dense enough. Well, reliable rail is the only thing that allows for greater density. In some cases city planners are starting to realize this and work with developers to add density and transit simultaneously. But it takes real leadership (or cojones, depending on your view) to build municipal rail that won't reach its potential for ten or twenty years -- but that's exactly what happened in New York and it has seemed to pay of very well.

<comment><USER51> Same thing with London, the tube was built out to "Metroland" which all grew into London. The system was also immensly profitable back in the 1930s...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley's Call to Secede Shows How Out of Touch It Is - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602835/silicon-valleys-call-to-secede-shows-how-out-of-touch-it-is/ <comment><USER2> Is there a serious piece somewhere discussing this option? I don't support it, but I would be curious to know if it would be technically possible. Can SV feed itself? Can it produce enough electricity? Basically, could it really function as an independent state?</comment>