High Frequency Trading Is A Scam - <AUTHOR> http://market-ticker.denninger.net/archives/1259-High-Frequency-Trading-Is-A-Scam.html <comment><USER2> Just so you guys know, there's actually nothing economically inefficient with what these high frequency algorithmic traders are doing.

With the example they gave, the buyer was WILLING to pay up to 26.40. This means, in the buyer's opinion, the stock is worth $26.40 per share. The sellers were willing to sell for anything above 26.10, which was the ask price. As basic economics teaches us, them trading for ANY amount between these two prices is 100% efficient. And, in this case, it doesn't matter who gets the extra money, whether that be the seller, the buyer, or the high frequency trader.

The trader is doing nothing to hurt the liquidity of the market - they are not 'gaming' the system in any way, nothing and nobody is being 'manipulated'. The seller sold for a price that they thought was a fair value, and the buyer bought for a price that they thought was a fair value. The traders are simply looking to make that 30 cent difference. Although it seems like they are contributing nothing, it is still economically efficient.

<comment><USER3> Except that they're paying money (both to the exchange, for privileged access to the low-latency data, and to their own employees/vendors for their software and hardware) to be the ones who pocket that $0.30/share surplus. That's rent- seeking, and from the point of view of the economy as a whole it is a deadweight loss. The resources used on HFT could have gone toward creating wealth, rather than generating a zero-sum transfer from one market participant to another.

<comment><USER4> Aren't the HF traders exposing themselves to price risk, creating more opportunities for sellers to sell and buyers to buy, and narrowing the bid-ask spread?

<comment><USER3> Yes, that's a good point - and both my criticism and your rebuttal could be applied to any number of professional traders, not just HFT systems.

I was mainly focused on this claim from the New York Times article: _"A loophole in regulations allows marketplaces like Nasdaq to show traders some orders ahead of everyone else in exchange for a fee."_

If true, this means that the HFT operators are not necessarily taking on the normal level of price risk, and their incentives aren't necessarily aligned with efficiency as they would be in a neutral market.

And the point I _should_ have made is that most of our market regulations are not about efficiency, but about more specific ideas of fairness or transparency. For example, insider trading does not introduce inefficiency into a market, but it's regulated nevertheless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you plop a big limit buy order at $26.40 and the market's at $26.20, you will wind up paying close to $26.40 because you'll eat through all the sell offers and transact inefficiently. It's called slippage.

However, what's preventing you from getting f __*ed is that this is a market, so basically you have 10+ HF shops fighting who can be on the other side of that slippage. The fact that it's a competitive market ensures you don't get raped like the guy claims.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can I just point out --- knowing full well that this is not a meaningful or valid argument or constructive comment on the article --- that Karl Denninger is a huge, notorious Internet crank? He's burned a whole through operating system teams, ISP markets, the security community, at least two major world religions, the SCUBA industry, and now this. He has a bias here, and it's towards controversy he can be self-righteous about.

He may actually be right about this --- he is occasionally right --- but man I wish there was a credible source that backed him up.

<comment><USER6> I do too. I almost feel bad saying I agree with the Yamhead, but the more I read about HST and the wave of financial types claiming this is all perfectly legal just makes me angrier and angrier.

Without donning the tinfoil hat for too long, you gotta wonder if that source code Aleynikov tried to take away from Goldman was a smoking gun. I've never seen the FBI move so fast. When the hat comes off it's probably just one mechanic trying to take the toolbox to another garage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this characterization of HFT is a bit overblown. The activity he's calling unethical--offering a security at price, getting hit at that price and continuing to raise your price until you stop getting hit--is exactly what market makers have always done. This is basic free market dynamics. You offer at $100, you get hit, you raise your price a little bit, say $100.05, and see if you get hit again. Don't get hit? Ok, drop your price back down a little. The same thing happens in open pit trading, it's just a lot slower.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here's a good thread over at New Mogul on the subject. This type of trading is not illegal, and it's actually commonplace among the big players on Wall Street.

<http://newmogul.com/item?id=14134>

<comment><USER9> Call me jaded, but 'commonplace' and 'not _technically_ illegal' don't strike me as a very compelling defense.

<comment><USER8> Please don't try to interpret what I meant. What I wrote is exactly what I meant to write. This trading is not illegal. This trading is perfectly acceptable. The only people who seem to have a problem with this are a subset of the people who don't have the resources to do it. Frankly, the arguments I have read against it are mostly penned by ignorant folks who simply come across as jealous.

<comment><USER10> > The only people who seem to have a problem with this are a subset of the > people who don't have the resources to do it.

That's likely true, since only a couple of firms can do it, and there are millions of people's interest in the markets. The NYTimes article this article pulls from specifically points out that these few firms are taking money out of the pockets of "slower" firms, like hedge funds. Given that a large number of people in the country have their retirement funds tied up in hedge funds, until someone shows otherwise, this is clearly the rich stealing from the poor.

I understand that those in the industry have a different worldview, but try to see the bigger picture. The only difference between grossly immoral and illegal is a few years and a new law. If this isn't illegal, its because the population hasn't been sufficiently outraged. Yet.

<comment><USER8> I do see the bigger picture. I've worked in the industry, but I've moved myself outside the industry to go back to school. I do not feel in any manner that I am being stolen from. When I enter a trade as a retail investor, I accept that I don't have nearly as much information about my trade as I would like to have. I wouldn't walk onto an NFL field expecting them to change their ways simply because I can't bench 400 pounds.

<comment><USER10> With due respect, this isn't about you, or me. It isn't your money (or mine, as I don't invest in the market) at stake here. Yes, financials are a competitive place to be, and you may have a great deal of humility as well as respect for those in the market. Like it or not, there will be a day of reckoning, when the average person will realize they are being had and take their money (aka "the leverage" that makes those commissions larger). That day will be much farther off if average people feel that they are being taken for less of a ride.

<comment><USER8> What I'm about to say is not pleasant. It comes from working in several different parts of the industry.

The greatest thing Wall Street sells is dreams. This will never go away. Every buy carries with it the thought that this one will go higher. Otherwise people wouldn't buy. As long as Wall Street continues to allow retail investors to play in the markets, there will be people who will come along for the ride.

EDIT: Don't get mad at me for saying it. I think I'm doing people a favor by pointing this out. You won't hear this from many other people.

<comment><USER10> Certainly not mad at your for saying that... I personally have this opinion of the markets, and thats why I don't "invest". When I go to Vegas, I have a great time, and treat money on the table as an entertainment expense. That said, society has convinced the average person that their retirement money needs to be in the market (via 401k's). As long as it is the case that uninformed people are coerced into trusting the market, I will be vocally angry when they are cheated out of their money.

<comment><USER6> I personally have no problem with people investing their retirement in the market...if the market was directly tied to the economy and the growth of companies.

But I don't see that market as being ABOUT that anymore. It's become a world of side bets and arbitrage plays. When an outsider analyst has more influence over the price of a stock than the company itself, then the market is a game, not an investment.

For example: a company can show growth, real POSITIVE growth...but ohmygodholyjebus if it's not EXACTLY what the analysts predicted then the stock is toast for the quarter. What the hell is that all about? Why do we play quarter to quarter instead of decade to decade? Because Wall Street is now about churn. And churn makes commissions.

<comment><USER8> What you are talking about is market efficiency at work. You can't accept some things about the market and not accept others. The market can be viewed as a machine that takes information and turns it into a stock price. Previous information, such as an analyst's predictions, do influence the price of a stock. If the company releases their earnings, a new piece of information, it is only natural that the price would adjust to reflect that. What many people fail to understand, is that an earnings announcement carries with it much more information than just how the recent quarter was.

Now, with that said, I will say that I don't believe the markets are 100% efficient. No matter how many papers Sharpe, Fama, French, and others publish, I will never change my mind. Globally, the markets are extremely efficient, but there are local inefficiencies. Identifying and exploiting the local inefficiencies are what makes one really good at making money off of the markets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The 'price limit' phrase reminded me of the traditional fish selling method called 'lota' in my corner of Europe.

It goes like this: the fishing boats come in, crates of fresh fish are brought to a market area where buyers await. For each crate, the announcer starts with a high price (say 100) and counts rapidly down ("99, 98, 97 ...") until one of the buyers shouts out "Soo" to buy the crate at that price.

Not as amusing as bidding up an auction, but this seems a time-efficient method for finding the buyer's price limit - after all, the fish is not getting any fresher sitting there ...

</comment><comment><USER4> From the article:

 _"If you're wondering how Goldman Sachs and other "big banks and hedge funds" made all their money this last quarter, now you know."_

But from this article at Bronte Capital (via New Mogul):

 _"Anyway if 10 percent of global stock volume provides 220 million dollars revenue per quarter then there is no way that a substantial proportion of Goldman's trading profit can come from high frequency trading. The numbers do not work."_

([http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/07/high-frequency- tra...](http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/07/high-frequency-traders- phoney.html))

</comment><comment><USER12> John Hempton thinks it's impossible for this to amount to $22billion/yr - [http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/07/high-frequency- tra...](http://brontecapital.blogspot.com/2009/07/high-frequency-traders- phoney.html)

He's not a crank.

</comment><comment><USER13> This sounds like the kind of story Technologists love.

Machines at better are stock market trading, so the humans are being replaced in this industry.

</comment><comment><USER14> When the average investors leave the market because of this, front running (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running>), , and the fact that small number of firms (~400) is involved in 70% of the US trading volume ([http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a5f03366-6d69-11de-8b19-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a5f03366-6d69-11de-8b19-00144feabdc0.html)), will they ever come back?

<comment><USER8> The average investor is not going to leave the market. I spent time as a retail broker, and the truth is most have no idea what they were doing to begin with. I don't think this is going to persuade them to stop.

<comment><USER14> Those investors (no idea what they were doing to begin with) already got spooked by the 60% drop and pulled out of 401k/into bonds. I mean the average investors who have some knowledge of the market, and have decent capital (20k-200k) but is just trading normally using online trading services.

<comment><USER8> Trust me, they don't leave. There's something about the markets that make people think that they can compete against a firm with a multi-billion dollar IT department, a slew of economists, and direct access to the exchanges. I'm not denying that the game is in favor of Wall Street firms. I'm simply saying that this will not cause retail investors to exit the market.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Step-by-step guide to bootstrap a React Native app from scratch - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/atolye15/crna-recipe <comment><USER2> slikdtj</comment>


A geographic model of why Europe tended to fragmentation, and China to unity - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbGOXnElJeU&feature=youtu.be&t=507 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm a huge fan of using simulations to ground qualitative arguments. While the sims usually need to be fine-tuned so extensively as to leave them open to claims of 'overfitting', the benefit is that it nails the assumptions in your argument to the church door.

Abstract:

 _Patterns of political unification and fragmentation have crucial implications for comparative economic development. Diamond (1997) famously argued that "fractured land" was responsible for China 's tendency toward political unification and Europe's protracted political fragmentation. We build a dynamic model with granular geographical information in terms of topographical features and the location of productive agricultural land to quantitatively gauge the effects of "fractured land" on state formation in Eurasia. We find that either topography or productive land alone is sufficient to account for China's recurring political unification and Europe's persistent political fragmentation. The existence of a core region of high land productivity in Northern China plays a central role in our simulations. We discuss how our results map into observed historical outcomes and assess how robust our findings are._

[https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.nber.org/papers/w27774](https://sci- hub.tw/https://www.nber.org/papers/w27774)</comment>


Photography Is "Copying;" More Fallout from Maisel vs. Baio - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110625/01030814852/if-jay-maisels-photograph-is-original-artwork-then-so-is-pixelated-cover-kind-bloop.shtml <comment><USER2> The issues here can be argued endlessly without resolution because the only definitive way to resolve a fair-use dispute where the issues are close is to take it to trial in a federal court.

17 U.S.C. sec. 107 provides that, "in determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include [four factors]" (which factors are the "purpose and character of the work" (including whether it is commercial or non-profit), the "nature of the copyrighted work," "the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole," and the "effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work." These factors represent the so-called 4-part test used by courts to determine whether an allegedly infringing use is "fair use" or not.

These factors constituting the broad legal test for fair use are very general and can apply in a thousand different ways and combinations to different facts. What is worse, the four statutory factors, though first _codified_ by Congress in the 1976 Copyright Act, had first been developed by courts long before that and were never the exclusive factors to be used in making a fair- use determination. Thus, when Congress codified them, it specifically provided that the fair-use determination was to "include" those factors but was not to be limited to them. Thus, the legal test was deliberately kept vague and was all along intended to be left for final determination, case-by-case, in the courts.

Given this legal landscape, anyone who wants to take a copyrighted work and transform it to a new use even while copying it in whole or in part risks an infringement suit and, the closer to the legal line the copying gets, the greater risk that a lawsuit will be filed and will need to be defended all the way to trial (with a substantial 6-figure price tag being inevitable in such a case - see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2688599>). This is because fair use is not a bar to a lawsuit; it is merely an affirmative defense that one can try to stand upon in defending against an infringement action. In defending, though, you also run the risk of losing on the merits and so you run the risk not only of having to incur hundreds of thousands in legal fees but also that of having to pay huge statutory damages should you lose the case.

That is the dilemma in which Mr. Baio found himself. He believed himself right. But he had no way to test it short of incurring large lawyer costs and liability risks. Nor can he ever win the "case" definitively in a court of public opinion because it is too close. He _does_ have a compelling argument (his work can readily be argued to have independent artistic value and to be transformative and not in any way supplanting any market opportunity available to Mr. Maisel). But there is no way to definitively refute the equally compelling argument that Mr. Maisel can make (a substantial part of his work was used, or at least the "heart" of it and the aesthetic additions do not - he would argue - truly transform a work that remains primarily imitative in quality). Yes, good lawyers can sharpen and refine these arguments to the nth degree and that is where the 6-figure price tags come in. Of course, the only way to test who is right is through a trial. And, there being no practical way to get to a trial, the issue will remain unresolvable.

Note that a legislative solution to this type of issue is possible. Just as the fair-use statute explicitly says that one form of fair use is for "criticism," it might also say that it is a fair use to take a photograph and to do a pixelated rendering of it that adds artistic elements. Law can always be defined this way if desired. But, just as one does not code well by addressing only a specific case where a broader algorithmic solution is possible, one also does not normally pass laws to deal with isolated, individual cases where broad principles can govern a broad swath of cases. Copyright applies to countless situations and the fair use rules are broad and general. Given this, a dispute such as this will always prove frustrating to litigants and those with deep pockets will inevitably have the advantage.

<comment><USER3> You're pretty much spot on. After taking several copyright courses in law school, I can definitively say that the whole area of law is a clusterfuck. Even the seminal cases aren't consistent, let alone those on the periphery. Sadly, most of the closer cases seem to come down the a single judge's gut feeling. If either side has deep enough pockets, they can force the case to come down to a panel of judges' gut feelings, but even the Circuit courts hold wildly inconsistent rulings. I'm not bashing judges here: the law here isn't so much a guideline as it is guide posts. It's not surprising that there's not much consistency.

It's really frustrating for anybody trying to create. It can even be frustrating for the lawyers trying to practice in the field. I ran across this insightful, if slightly biased, post by William Patry, a fairly famous copyright lawyer, explaining his decision to shut down his personal copyright- based blog. He explains the decision as being partly motivated by the landscape of copyright law: <http://williampatry.blogspot.com/2008/08/end-of- blog.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would love to hear an opinion on photographing "The Bean" from a photographer that's defending Maisel.

("The Bean" is a sculpture in a public park which is protected by copyright and, therefore, illegal to take a photograph of. This seems absurd to most people, including photographers. More: [http://newurbanist.blogspot.com/2005/01/copyrighting-of- publ...](http://newurbanist.blogspot.com/2005/01/copyrighting-of-public- space.html))

I wonder if there are photographers that would argue that it should be OK to photograph a copyrighted sculpture _and_ that it should not be OK for another artist to create a derivative work from a photograph ... that would be an interesting argument to hear.

<comment><USER5> Photographers will argue that 90% of a photograph is composition, not the subject.

Even though a pixelated adaptation of a photo is different, it's got the same composition. For example, that Miles Davis photo perfectly lines up his head and hands to fill the square CD cover. It also uses light and shade to make the subject's features really stand out. So through a the lens a photographer sees through (horrible pun), it's very derivative.

A pixel artist will disagree, of course. They will say that composition isn't as important as getting the pixels just right.

(Actually, bean is interesting because it actually changes the composition).

<comment><USER6> I think the pixel version of this artwork is much more derivative than an 8-bit cover version of the music, yet they sort permission from Mile Davis's estate to use his music. Then they settled out of court. I have no idea why this is the internet's latest crusade.

If they'd have given 1000 artists (including photographers) the brief of an album cover of Kind of Blue, I doubt any would have been so similar to Maisel's. Give 1000 pixel artists Kind of Blue and ask then to do a straight pixel version and they'd all be indistinguishable. And despite the supposed outrage for the rights and artistic merit of pixel art, I haven't seen any pixel artists stand up for this straight copy of a photograph. I don't think any of them would consider it a particularly enlightening representation of their art form.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An interesting viewpoint, but I think the differentiation here lies in the degree of "artistic" creation. Put 10 photographers in a room with Miles Davis and you'll get 10 pretty distinct photographs of the man. Have 10 people create a pixelated version of a photograph, and you'll have 10 pretty similar results.

Creating a pixelated version of this photograph is more akin to taking a photograph of the Mona Lisa - sure you can get a cool angle or do it with infrared film to get a different color palate, but it's still a picture of someone else's original work. You wouldn't say that the Miles Davis cover photo is "based on a Miles Davis concert", but rather it was created _at_ a Miles Davis concert.

Similarly, in music, remixing a song can be a very creative process - but it is still a derivative work in that it wouldn't exist without the original which was created "from scratch".

(Disclosure: I am/was a photographer who used to earn a living solely from licensing my photos for editorial purposes)

Edit: I'm not attempting to discuss copyright laws (which are pretty clear), but rather the philosophy and justification behind the creation and copying of artistic works.

<comment><USER8> > Put 10 photographers in a room with Miles Davis and you'll get 10 pretty > distinct photographs of the man. Have 10 people create a pixelated version > of a photograph, and you'll have 10 pretty similar results.

Interesting because I would have said _exactly_ the opposite. 10 photographers (all using the same pose from the same location of course) would make nearly identical photos. But the pixel artists would have been totally different.

Take a look at how the cuff or the diamonds on the tie were drawn - you really think everyone would have done it exactly the same?

<comment><USER9> There are many pictures of Miles Davis but all are different to the one on the kind of blue album. That was the point of the OP.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are people that look like Miles Davis in that picture. If I take a picture of one of them, in the same looking clothes (although certainly not exactly the same) holding a similar trumpet, with similar lighting, would that violate copyright? At a quick glance maybe indistinguishable. At closer side by side inspection, any amateur investigator could spot the differences.

<comment><USER11> I'm not really convinced that would be sufficient; if you paint a duplication of an existing painting you are really stealing the likeness and profiting solely by distributing someone else's creative work. I think if someone did your example, if they could prove that your intent was simply to reproduce your creative work you would still be infringing even if you don't simply copy paste it.

If you paraphrased Harry Potter and published it, it would probably still be copyright infringement even if no single sentence in the novel remains unchanged.

It seems to me that it comes down to whether the work you made is a derivative work of someone else, particularly if you are directly taking their creative vision and adding nothing. Reproducing something in another medium easily could be the same thing as photocopying a book or selling prints of someone else's painting.

<comment><USER10> I suspect you are probably right. What this leads me to believe more and more is that there is no natural right to art. I'm really feeling more like copyright needs to just go.

<comment><USER12> It has nothing todo with what is 'natural'. There is no natural right to land ownership - it's just the system we choose democratically because we believe that the advantages it brings outweigh the certain misery it causes the impoverished. Few of us believe that abolishing the right to Private Property would, on the whole, bring about a net gain for the majority. Personally, i don't believe that the Maisel case has much to say about abolishing Copyright. That doesn't mean i'm not in favour of doing so, but Maisel is an edge case.

<comment><USER10> Actually, the most prominent scholars in this field often do include land ownership as a natural right. John Locke, the modern father of natural law, described natural rights as, "life, liberty, and estate". I think its largely settled philosophy now.

Copyrights are still much more debatable. The main defense for pro-copyright activists are that they're necessary for the economy. I tend more and more to the belief that the economy will change as a result -- a freer economy, but a different one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am really disappointed in the reaction of Maisel, and other photographers who're supporting the result of the lawsuit. _Even if_ Baio copied the image pixel-by-pixel, what harm was done? Did anybody buy the Bloop because of the album artwork? Or because of the music? Come on, people! Show some common sense! A fine of a few 100 dollars would have been enough.

On a tangential note: this is well worth a watch: <http://www.everythingisaremix.info/watch-the-series/> No wonder pop music today is so crappy.

<comment><USER14> I, for one, was glad to see an Internet celebrity whacked by an individual artist. As somebody else pointed out, the $32.5k he got probably went straight to the artist's lawyers. It was pretty telling that Baio licensed the music but not the cover art. The blog article never explains why his chiptune versions of the _music_ don't count as fair use. And he admits he didn't accept the copyright infringement claim immediately but stalled for _seven months_.

I am almost certain a different, happier arrangement could have been worked out if he'd agreed to license the artwork right at the beginning.

<comment><USER10> _I am almost certain a different, happier arrangement could have been worked out if he'd agreed to license the artwork right at the beginning._

Maisel has said that he would never license this artwork for that purpose. So there would have been no licensing deal.

"And it's worth noting that trying to license the image would have been moot. When asked how much he would've charged for a license, Maisel told his lawyer that he would never have granted a license for the pixel art. "He is a purist when it comes to his photography," his lawyer wrote." [1]

1\. <http://waxy.org/2011/06/kind_of_screwed/>

<comment><USER15> Of course he's going to say there's no price he'd have licensed the image at - he was trying to get damages out of Baio, so why put a limit on how much his damages were?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I publish software as software developer, publish music as a musician, and 'copy' as photographer... publishing rights are on the top of my mind every time something of mine goes live.

The writer tries to make a valid comparison between taking a picture, and taking an already created already popular picture and modifying it. There are a lot of variables involved process of taking a previously published picture and copying it, the writer want us to believe, the variables make it original. If the two art forms were comparable you could take that famous, extraordinary picture of Miles again, just like I could recreate that pixelated pic of the picture of Miles again. There are many problems with this: one, Miles is dead, two, the best photographer could not catch that moment at that time because one thing about photography is every shot is one in a billion trillion, no two shots are the same. Other problems with this comparison go on and on.

If you wanted to extend that metaphor to music, 'there are only 88 keys on piano. Every song written is copying some sampling of those 88 keys. No need for music composition copyright anymore.' Obviously, this is not the case. Yet, sampling a segment from a song to use in your song is usually obvious to the listener and is commonly and 'easily' fought in court. photography is not copying and if you think it is, I will hand you my camera, and ask you to take that picture again.

<comment><USER17> Say what you will about the art institute, but they disagree. "You may not reproduce the Art Institute of Chicago's logo or building image, which are also trademarks, without an express license from the Art Institute of Chicago."

Why would people ever need such a thing as a [http://www.google.com/search?&q=photography+release+form](http://www.google.com/search?&q=photography+release+form) if it's not copying someone's likeness?

The "moment in time" argument is clearly weak when you compare it to copying from your neighbor's physics final. "No one could copy Feynman's sophomore year final exam! He's dead. It was a performance such as the world will never see again."

I agree with you, photography is art. There is a huge amount of talent luck and preparation required to get that shot. I'm just saying your defense of photography seems weak. It's pretty trivial to create derivative work with photography (hence the releases and licenses).

The reason we're never "forced" to agree, in a math problem sense, is the line between original and derivative is so subjective. A photo of a person is derivative. A photo of a crowd is unique. A photo of this building is a trademark violation, no matter how artfully done. The most pedestrian photo of the building across the street is fine.

Fuzzy, ambiguous rules kinda piss me off.

<comment><USER16> "A photo of a person is derivative. A photo of a crowd is unique. A photo of this building is a trademark violation, no matter how artfully done."

Solid point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Do the people arguing that Baio stole the image also argue that photographers who take photos of building are stealing the architects designs?

Isn't it the same thing?

<comment><USER19> Building owners can require a property release in order for their structure to appear in a published work.

<comment><USER20> As I understand it (IANAL), this is a somewhat controversial point of IP law. However, in the interests of playing it safe, a lot of stock photo agencies do require property releases for certain iconic structures such as the Sydney Opera House. This is in the same vein as model releases however. it's not copyright but the use of a likeness for commercial purposes.

I can take a picture of you on the street and use it for any editorial purpose. (Subject to not defaming you in some way.) But if I want to use that picture in an ad, I'd better have a model release.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Photographs are protected not because of the artistic choices per-se (since there are artistic choices e.g. of a model posing as well) but because it is in a fixed form.

A live performance is not copyrightable, but a video recording of a live performance is. Even if there was no significant artistic choice in the setup: for example, if you setup a camera on a tripod so that the entire stage is in view and record it, you've got something copyrightable.

<comment><USER22> It should be noted that a performance can infringe on copyrights though. If you cover a song, even in a much different way at _any_ venue that charges a cover, that venue or the artist is obligated to pay royalties. Not unsurprisingly, many low-budget all-ages venues have been hit hard by lawyers from ASCAP for amounts that would put them out of business. I know a few venues I went to as a teenager had a very, very strict "no covers" policy, as ASCAP went so far as to hire people to visit the 100 person venue and listen for cover songs, and then send a bill for the annual license to the venue if they heard them. I think the annual license was somewhere on the order of 5-6k or for a venue of that size.

<comment><USER23> "Charging a cover" is not relevant to determining whether the performance is a "public performance" for copyright purposes.

<comment><USER22> No, but the amount of royalties you pay is somewhat dependent on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wish that there was a place where, as an experiment, intellectual property was entirely disallowed. No trademarks, no patents, no copyrights, no trade secrets, nothin'. Just to see what happened.

<comment><USER25> That is easy just look at China. Little original content worth anything and a huge black market, though I guess in this case it would be a regular market. Everything would be driven to the cost of reproduction pretty quickly.

<comment><USER26> This isn't a fair comparison. The cultures of the United States and the PRC are quite different on many levels. Copyright law is one of many variables. Furthermore, there actually are some good mainland musical acts. I'd like a more detailed analysis of the volume of original content before I passed it off as worthless.

<comment><USER25> PRC invented the free to play video game model because they learned early how worthless it was to actually ask their fellow citizens to pay for content. _good mainland musical acts_ Good or not they aren't making money in a way that scales.

edit: Worth in terms of getting paid not artistic worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> From a photography point of view I can see both sides of the argument, even though the article says it's not just a pixelation filter to me it's not modified enough to see any artistic effort. On the other hand, I don't really see the damage done to the photographer so many years after taking the picture.

However, my first thought was "that's the Kind of Blue cover" not "that's the famous photo of Miles Davis". Kind of Blue is one of the greatest records of all times so if anyone should get compensated it's Columbia or Miles' estate. I just checked my vinyl version of the record and the photographer isn't even mentioned.

No doubt it's a great photo but without Miles it would be just a photo of a guy with a trumpet and none of this would have happened.

</comment><comment><USER28> I wonder what Andy Warhol would say about this situation, half his stuff was "theft".

<comment><USER29> That was my thought too. Especially to the "it's theft if you can recognize the original" argument. Did Andy 'steal' the Campbell's soup can? You can obviously recognize it in his art, right? Someone should sue his estate!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a good post that is maybe significant morally but probably irrelevant within the law.

</comment><comment><USER31> I hope everyone on all sides can recognise how absurd the "it's theft if you can recognise the original" argument is. For starters, photographers have a long tradition of claiming copyright in reference photos of fine art, where the whole point is to create an image which is as alike the original as possible.

<comment><USER31> Just replying to myself to clarify, here: the situation seems to be different in the US and in the UK. In the US, there is explicitly _no_ copyright in a mechanical reproduction of an original artwork. It would appear that there is in the UK.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Some alternative album covers that are hopefully a show of support for Baio. Copyrights: kind of screwed. [http://aptsurdist.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/a-story-by- waxy-o...](http://aptsurdist.wordpress.com/2011/06/23/a-story-by-waxy-org- kind-of-screwed/)

</comment><comment><USER33> I wrote a similar essay a while back: [http://www.virtualritz.com/archive/on- plagiarism-creativity-...](http://www.virtualritz.com/archive/on-plagiarism- creativity-in-the-digital-age/)

</comment><comment><USER34> If you ask me, this is a pretty open & shut case: he copied the photograph exactly, as much as exactitude was allowed for the medium. Baio brought barely anything new to the table at all. A tie pattern? That doesn't seem like enough to me to make it a true derivative work, and moreover, it was for a commercial purpose.

It is telling that Baio got permission for the music but not for the album cover.

</comment><comment><USER35> Meh. IMO the 'pixelated' 'art' isn't nearly pixelated enough, and not unique enough to qualify as art. Arguments based upon particularly bad selections of photoshop filters are not sufficient. The photo in question was beautifully captured, and the flippant way it's being treated is rather sad.

<comment><USER36> "Uniqueness" isn't a qualification for determining whether something is "art". Most art is not unique, and certainly not most photographs.

Calling the pixelated version a "flippant" capturing is disingenuous, as it seems to be a reflection of your (apparent) dislike of pixel art rather than the artist's intentions.

<comment><USER35> Uniqueness is a qualification of artiness as far as I'm concerned. Merely reproducing something is not art, it's direct reproduction. Introducing unique style would be art. This slight pixelation is insufficient to qualify as such.

I never called the pixelated version flippant. Rather, I called the treatment of the _original_ flippant. Also, don't project a dislike of pixel art onto me.

<comment><USER36> > Merely reproducing something is not art, it's direct reproduction. > Introducing unique style would be art.

One could then argue that photographs are merely reproduction of reality, and therefore not art. I fail to see why you think photographs introduce unique style but pixel art does not.

> The photo in question was beautifully captured, and the flippant way it's > being treated is rather sad.

I apologize for suggesting that you dislike pixel art, but that's how I this sentence reads to me.

<comment><USER35> _One could then argue that photographs are merely reproduction of reality, and therefore not art. I fail to see why you think photographs introduce unique style but pixel art does not._

Because that photography does not merely reproduce reality. The camera, lens, film type, lighting, everything produced an entirely unique image[1]. Furthermore, if you were sitting there, observing his playing, you would _not_ have seen what came out in that photograph. That's what makes photography something other than mere reproduction. That's where the art comes from.

Regarding pixel art, I don't really consider this piece to even _be_ pixel art. It's just a somewhat blocky rendition of a photograph. Great pixel art is more akin to Picasso's deconstruction of a bull:

[http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/animals_in_art/p...](http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/animals_in_art/pablo_picasso/pablo_picasso.htm)

Great pixel art deconstructs an image into the minimal set of elements necessary to convey the original idea. The 'pixel art' in question really does just looks like a few photoshop filters applied to a very well-known photograph. Or a bad resizing of a thumbnail.

[1] I get the impression that the "photography is reproduction" crowd don't understand technical aspects of photography, like lens selection, aperture, dynamic range, the effect that film selection makes, etc. Yes, a midday, f/16 snapshot of "The Bean" may not entail meaningful artistic qualities, but that sort of distinction tends to be along the fuzzy line we draw between 'snapshots' and 'photography'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The absurdity of so called "intellectual property" becomes ever more patent.

</comment><comment><USER38> Except Miles Davis allowed himself to be photographed (or "copied"), he even paid the photographer to use the photo on the cover.

Nobody allowed Baio to "copy" that photo.

I'm pretty sure Baio will lose, deservingly so.

</comment><comment><USER39> Hypothetical: Baio downloads the latest Linux kernel. He changes all variable and function names to words of his choosing. Baio now says that he has the right to distribute BaioNix code free from GPL copyright restrictions and does so. The Free Software Foundation sues Baio alleging copyright infringement.

Who wins and why? How is this different from or the same as Maisel v. Baio?

<comment><USER13> The problem with hypotheticals is that there's no end to them. For every hypothetical you can come up with to show your point, I can come up with another to show mine.

Please, just use some common sense: BAIO WAS NOT PUBLISHING THE PHOTOGRAPH! He was publishing the _MUSIC_ ; the photograph was just incidental, to show (at a glance) the relationship between the original music and the remixed Bloop music. Do you __REALLY __think that people bought the album because of the pixellated artwork? It had absolutely _NO_ impact on the sales. I've bought many a record (and CD) in my lifetime, and I don't recall ever buying a single one because of the cover.

I am a hardcore supporter of the rights of the individual artists and musicians, and even I think Maisel was dead wrong.

<comment><USER40> Insulting everyone by implying they haven't used common sense simply because they don't agree with you is incredibly fatuous. Chill with the righteous HEY YOU GUYS IF YOU JUST SAW IT MY WAY caps and italics; most of us aren't particularly dumb here.

The pixel art was definitely published by any useful meaning of the word publish, 200 copies of the liner version. Also, it was the background of the site, clearly used as promotion.

Let's say everyone accepts your argument that you can only violate artist rights if you gain a profit directly driven by the unauthorized use. It'd be perfectly fine to use a struggling unsigned band's best song to sell Volkswagens, since no one would buy a car because of music in an ad.

Of course, the unsigned band was just about to license their song to sell cat food and pay the rent, but now the cat food manufacturer doesn't want the same song that's in that damn Volkswagen commercial. Oops! Shoulda moved faster, indie band!

If you think that an artist or a musician should have no control over where their work is reproduced or published as long as it can be argued that it wasn't the main draw of any profit, you're not a hardcore supporter of the rights of individual artists and musicians.

I wasn't around for any negotiations Maisel's or his attorney had with Baio, but it does see like Maisel was a bit of a jerk about this. A jerk solidly in his rights, however.</comment></comment></comment>


Meteor meets NoGPL - <AUTHOR> http://blog.lassus.se/2012/04/meteor-meets-nogpl.html <comment><USER2> [I'm one of the Meteor authors.]

We released under the GPL Tuesday because our single goal was to share our work and direction of thinking with everyone. We hoped to spur a discussion about new ways to build apps that dramatically changes the skill sets required and the time it takes. We look at Meteor as part of an exciting transition from LAMP to a new architecture of rich client applications (see also <http://www.firebase.com/> that launched yesterday!).

That's still the main focus for now. Hundreds of developers have deployed apps to meteor.com. We've got pull requests for new features to sort out, and many technical questions to answer. There's a whole buffer of screencast ideas we want to do.

The four of us are a company. We intend to make money while committing ourselves to an open-source strategy. We want to see great software -- not just ours -- be something developers can sell. So while we'll give away much of what we build, we'll also look for places where developers who gain benefit from Meteor can give something back.

We did not expect such strong interest in writing closed source commercial apps this quickly on the platform. It's clearly something we have to sort out faster than we thought, and we will. For now our offer stands: please just write us if you need a commercial license for a closed source project and we will find a way to accommodate your needs. I'd imagine over the next couple weeks we'll have more concrete things to say.

<comment><USER3> I think you're turning this too corporate too soon.

At this stage your most powerful evangelists will be hobbyists and spare- timers. When I write code, I _like_ to write it open-source. Setting the obviously negative connotation aside, it is objectively true that the GPL code, compiled or no, is a license virus that spreads so fundamentally that linking with non-GPL-compatible code violates the terms. Because the distinction between client and server code is blurred, this makes the territory murky and introduces overhead into the developer's mind as to whether what is being written can ever be open-sourced or not.

\---

Besides dampening enthusiasm for using Meteor, this can also reduce the quality and usefulness of modules being released. This sounds counter- intuitive, but consider the following hypotheticals:

Company A develops and maintains a production-ready module that is especially useful for anyone using Meteor. However, the legal department says that the company cannot release software under GPLv3 (this _is_ common). Company B and Person Z want to use it, the former with a commercial license, the latter with a open-source license.

Because Company A cannot release the module under a permissive license, they can 1) Release it permissively but in a GPL-incompatible license, thus banning all Person Z's from developing open-source software with it legally, 2) Opt not to release it at all to Person Z, and just license it to Company B. 3) Abandon Meteor for something they can both release openly (to give back and get more eyes and hands) and develop in-house.

Company C uses a closed-source library, because they're required to use it because it's the only one out there, and they're contractually obligated because that's the business they're in. They use Meteor to get the project off the ground and they never move off, because it's what they know and are good at. Company C can _never_ write, for example, a white-label platform to distribute to Company X and Company Y, because at best they could only distribute the platform sans non-GPL parts. And while the licensing is viral, the understanding of it will not be. So it may lead to GPL violations down the road because Company X didn't understand, and Company C may be holding the bag. Legal doesn't want the company to take the risk and assume liability, so it says "no" and kills the project's use of Meteor.

Company D thinks about the hypothetical case of Company C, only it was just founded and is looking at Meteor. Maybe it was founded by Person Z. Because of the hypothetical of Company C, and because Company D doesn't know what their business is yet, they decide to avoid a potential future nightmare and write their own framework. Maybe they open-source it, because it's compelling and useful, and they want to get as many eyeballs and hands on it as they can, improving it.

\---

tl;dr I was super-excited about Meteor, but now that it's GPL I will not be touching it with a ten foot pole. I am _really_ sad about this.

Because I value developer freedom, I do not use GPL'd code in my projects, even if it is objectively good. Because I support open-source, and want to give back when I can I do not want use Meteor with a commercial license. So because of your choice of license - and for no other reason - I can not and will not use Meteor.

<comment><USER4> It's so hypocritical tho.

Obviously you want to release only code that will help you code less in the future (ie: let others maintain feature X for FREE for us; but don't give them what MATTERS)

And that's the main concern with all the anti-GPL folks - that's also the very reason why the GPL exists.

<comment><USER3> Having developed and released something under the GPL a long time ago, I am not anti-GPL, but that doesn't mean I'm not wary of it.

> Obviously you want to release only code that will help you code less in the > future

No, I want to release code other people might find useful.

> ie: let others maintain feature X for FREE for us

This sounds naive. Virtually nobody writes a library then abandons it when other people start helping out.

> don't give them what MATTERS

"What matters" is highly subjective and different to different people. What matters to Twitter is the userbase and user experience. So they open-source their database stuff, Bootstrap, and a plethora of other things. And why not?

It's not hypocritical. The GPL was critical to the fight against closed OSes and the closed tools that made writing software essentially limited and pay- to-program.

My view of open-source and programming in general is that there are many things that programming can help you do. More often than not, these are the same things. The more programmers can help each other to spend more time writing things that are great, the better off we all are.

The GPL fights proprietary software, but for things that are not products on their own, but are designed to be a component of or integrated into other products, it can also fight other programmers as well. I use GPL software, but I don't use GPL libraries or frameworks. (The LGPL is less selfish - the whole software ecosystem doesn't need to open for it to play its part, but the library damn well stay open.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As exciting as Meteor is (VERY!), their approach to licensing kills it for me. The products I am working on cannot be licensed under GPL for a large number of reasons, and their "talk to us and we'll see what we can do" policy puts too much risk into my business plan. At the early stage of product development, I don't necessarily know the finer points of how my revenue model will work. If there's a fixed fee for a commercial Meteor license, then I can put that into my business plan, see what kind of impact it has under different scenarios, and make a judgement call. But a "let's discuss your revenue model and see what makes sense" approach simply _can't_ happen during the earliest stages of product development. Which means that basing my product around Meteor would introduce a potentially catastrophic risk into my business, should their licensing terms turn out to be too onerous, once that conversation can finally be had.

So, with considerable regret -- because it looks awesome -- Meteor is unusable to me. I'm certain that many other people are in the same boat.

Its developers say that they've chosen this license because they want maximum contributions from the community. By seriously limiting the size of the community that can use Meteor, they've chosen the wrong way to do it. I would strongly urge them to reconsider their choice of licenses. The MPL[1] would probably be the most compatible with their aims, since it requires any modifications to the core Meteor components to remain open source, while allowing the inclusion of closed-source components without violating an aggressive copyleft. This is a constraint that I would be very happy to live with. Choosing between an agressive copyleft or whatever is behind the mystery curtain labeled "commercial license" is not.

If the Meteor team wants to fix this, they can either:

1\. Clearly state that they require a commercial license for commercial use, and state the price and terms of that license upfront (the Sencha approach). Or, better yet:

2\. Switch to a license such as MPL, BSD, or MIT.

The former will allow commercial developers like myself to begin adopting Meteor; the latter is guaranteed to produce a much more robust open-source community around it. If Meteor is to become the next Rails, then that's what it needs to do.

Barring this, I'll just wait for other enterprising developers to take the Meteor concept and re-implement it with a more permissive licensing scheme. If Meteor is as good as it looks, then this should happen relatively quickly.

[1] <http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/1.1/>

<comment><USER6> Um... how is "talk to us and we'll see what we can do" a problem? Isn't that exactly how proprietary licensing works for non-shrink-wrap developer tools like this. You'll get the same response if you want to buy ClearCase or a CAD tool, etc...

It's a commercial product that also happens to be available under a free license you can't use. How does the second part impact the first?

Edit: it seems the implicit context in your post is that you would use this if it were free under a permissive license, but not if it costs money or is GPL. That's not an uncommon position, but it's not something that rises to a multi- paragraph complaint on HN. You're complaining about the "GPL" instead of complaining that "the authors want to charge money", and that seems inequitable and unfair. If they were just another tool vendor, you wouldn't have posted: basically you're _punishing_ them for releasing free software.

<comment><USER7> One of the main points is that Meteor supposedly seeks to build a community around their project, and that the GPL is a hindrance to this goal. Without a strong community, a tool such as this might not have much relevance in the future, relative to others which _have_ successfully built a rich ecosystem around themselves.

<comment><USER6> There are plenty of GPL projects with robust communities though. (Albeit not in the web development space). The same kind of thing was argued c. 1998 when the "Open Source" branding movement started and all the cool projects went with permissive licenses. And it really wasn't correct. GPL projects continue to be very successful a decade and a half later. The apocalypse never came.

So I guess I'm saying that I understand that argument, but I don't buy it. Which side of the argument you land on tends to be colored mostly by your emotional feelings about the GPL (I find as I age that I'm becoming more and more a pinko commie copyleft fanboi, for example), and not really well grounded in practice.

<comment><USER7> I typically land on the side of pragmatism over idealism, and as a lifelong observer of human behavior and psychology, I would say the argument carries some weight. A project I can start using without even thinking of licensing issues, and grow to become dependent on, is one I'm much more likely to contribute towards, simply out of selfish necessity and convenience.

<comment><USER6> Sure. But that's only pragmatism in the sense of "I want what's best for me and my project". It's the kind of "pragmatism" that led Andy Rubin to demand rewriting the GPL userspace with a clearly inferior one for Android, for example.

After enough years and enough projects, I find my perspective is broader. The GPL helps more than it hurts. Efforts to _explicitly avoid_ the GPL (not just to use permissive licenses for free software projects -- that's clearly a good thing) tend to hurt more than they help.

<comment><USER7> How does saying "If you use my code, you have to give me your code" make me want to use it, let alone join your "community"? It seems toxic and coercive to me. It's suggesting that my code is of much lower value than your code, so don't worry about it. This might be correct most of the time, but when it's not, it's a problem.

Good communities are founded on mutual respect and voluntary engagement.

<comment><USER8> >"If you use my code, you have to give me your code"

No, the GPL says "If you use my code, you have to let people use yours too"

<comment><USER7> An important point, it's true, but you've gone too far in the other direction. It's more like:

" _If you use my code, you have to share yours under the terms I determine._ "

It muddies my main point about the relative value of the code in question, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> GPL doesn't require you to distribute your server-side code if you are hosting it on your own servers (AGPL does). The client side code does have to be open sourced since _it is_ distributed but Javascript code is pretty worthless without the server-side API, HTML and CSS that goes with it.

In other words, all the commercial license does from a business point of view is allow you to sue people who copy your client side code. That's a pretty poor incentive since most businesses don't even care about people stealing their Javascript.

In addition, as mentioned in the article, the GPL license makes people feel like they are contributing because they legally have to rather than because they want to give back to the community, which is not a good thing from a psychological point of view[0].

FWIW, I would advise the Meteor team to pick a more permissive license and reconsider their business model. Perhaps they can provide consulting, hosting, job board, certification, etc.?

[0] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oV0cbCFGAtU>

<comment><USER10> > GPL doesn't require you to distribute your server-side code if you are > hosting it on your own servers

This is very clearly true, yet I know of several GPL libraries whose maintainers believe the opposite. It is very strange.

<comment><USER11> Are they GPL, or AGPL? The AGPL removes the so-called "network service loophole". Unsurprisingly, few projects use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> First of all, it's of course the Meteor team's prerogative to chose whatever license they want, and wanting attribution and pull requests is in no way an unworthy cause.

That said, GPL made me look twice. Mainly because client and server are so intertwined, that I assume the entire app would need to be GPL'd to use Meteor without getting a commercial license. Now I've nothing against the dual licens, and paying for a framework that makes us money , but before shopping Meteor around the company it'd be good to have some specifics on what they're thinking in terms of a commercial license model. I hope that's on their priority list. It's hard to motivate investing in something that may later turn out to be prohibitively expensive.

</comment><comment><USER13> LGPL with a linking exception for platforms that require solid binaries (like iOS, some embedded systems) covers the vast majority of use cases that the "anything but GPL" crowd cares about.

In Meteor's case, as it's middleware, the LGPL would be the more appropriate license anyway.

I get the feeling that they're searching for business models with Meteor. The most obvious one would be optimized paid hosting ala Heroku...

</comment><comment><USER14> They're making an amazing framework - something a lot of us have been waiting for. They spent time & energy on it, and yet make it freely available. The only thing they ask in exchange is to share what you do with it under the same terms, or pay for their work if you really want/need to be proprietary.

I'm always amazed by this reaction - ie being ok to use the generosity of others, but refusing to reciprocate.

</comment><comment><USER15> Personally, I'd prefer they just kept it closed source and charged money for it rather than making it "open source, but not really since you can't use it to build anything unless you give out all your code or can lawyer your way past this obnoxious, ambiguously worded license".

I don't care about being able to look at somebody else's source code. I just want something that I can use. Meteor looked really cool until I realized they had those two points exactly backwards.

<comment><USER16> It took years to convince the wider commercial technical community to so much as expose portions of their source code, regardless of license. It's invaluable for bug identification, security auditing, and general programmer education. I'm glad they're sharing it under any license, and I hope your attitude does not become more widespread.

<comment><USER17> Actually, what needs to die is the idea that anyone can own an idea (or pattern of words/code).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I met these guys last night, and I'd really recommend you write them before you let the GPL stop you from developing software using Meteor. It sounds like they'd be happy to license it otherwise to anyone that wants to use it now, but they don't want to neuter their monetization for all the people that sign up later. (If I were them, I'd formalize that fact and dual-license for early adopters to bootstrap their community.)

</comment><comment><USER19> We started digging into Meteor this week (we are using Node.js with express/LazyBoy etc... now) and were really excited about it.

But now, this has created FUD for us.

It's all so complex and confusing at a time when we really just want to be writing code. Our startup is not far enough along to know for certain what licensing terms make sense.

I can't believe we will be alone in having this reaction. Which is a shame because Meteor had such a chance of being a real big thing.

</comment><comment><USER20> I think I prefer the paid-support model a-la RedHat. I think the OP makes a good point of this licensing possibly hindering uptake/contributions to the Meteor project. Just by virtue of Meteor choosing this licensing model, I've lost some of my excitement to try it out. I would most certainly use it for something commercial and because it looks so sweet I would be willing to shell out some $ for, say, some email support or maybe for some bleeding-edge features.

Having to worry about not being able to use Meteor in a commercial capacity without knowing the price-point breaks the deal off the bat. I'm a one man team and don't have the time nor resources to swim through legalities and pricing--I need to be writing code.

This isn't to say, though, that if I wanted to do something outside of the scope of a commercial app I wouldn't try Meteor--but who knows when/if that will happen.

<comment><USER21> That's kind of a silly view. You would rather spend 6 months "writing code" than spend 1 day negotiating a contract that would save you 6 months of effort?

What if sending them an email that took as long to write as this HN post would get you a quote?

Psychology of product purchasers is fascinating.

<comment><USER20> How about if my budget for negotiating contracts is $0?

If I don't have a baseline price and I am worried about licensing, I'm not going to spend time trying to fight for a budget to then spend time trying to negotiate a contract--I don't have time.

If I could dev without licensing worries, _then_ I _would_ fight for a budget for things like support and add-ons.

Also, may I ask why you put "writing code" in quotations?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's quite entertaining to see "Proprietary Software 2.0" developers complaining about _finally_ being affected by a requirement of Free Software.

</comment><comment><USER23> Sencha took a similar approach with ExtJS and it pains me to watch it falling into obscurity. The framework itself is elegant and well thought-out; it seems that everything Backbone and its various offshoots give us now was already available there years ago.

<comment><USER24> I don't think they are falling into obscurity -- last I talked with people there, Sensha is quite profitable and growing rapidly.

<comment><USER23> Sencha Touch is growing because they stopped dual-licensing it. Going on my own personal experience, ExtJS doesn't have much mindshare in the circles I care about i.e. valley-style startups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is by no means a clear cut situation. The question of whether a piece of code which uses this library is a "derivative work" is not an easy one to answer, and the GPL only applies in situations where one is distributing said work.

Imagine if the client side libraries for Meteor end up in the Google CDN. Then you're only distributing your own code and linking against a separately distributed GPL library. Beyond that, you don't even care if the library is actually Meteor, you just care that it has the API that you use, meaning it can't really be suggested that you know you're linking against GPL code.

What about the server/client split? Could you make an argument that they're implementation agnostic to one-another? So why would you need to distribute your server side code just because you distribute your client code? Simple answer is that you don't under the GPL.

<comment><USER26> > linking against a separately distributed GPL library.

Unless you are changing your underlying JavaScript implementation, I don't think you are really linking your code to anything in this case. It could be that your JavaScript runtime got linked to the library, but the runtime/interpreter being GPL doesn't require your programs to be GPL too.

<comment><USER25> I meant linking in the web sense - literally pointing at some offsite bit of code that you do not distribute and adding its APIs to the context you're currently running in.

<comment><USER26> Technically, you are instructing your runtime to load and execute source code hosted elsewhere. I don't think this is the kind of linking GPL refers to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Nokia faced a similar problem after they bought Trolltech (creator of Qt). How to increase adoption and encourage community contributions. They opted for LGPL which, as mentioned elsewhere in the comments, allows proprietary software to _link_ to the Qt source.

</comment><comment><USER28> It's a question of whether a program using Meteor is to be considered a "derived work".

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Link...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Linking_and_derived_works)

<comment><USER29> That's one thing that has been bugging me since the first time I've heard of GPL. If I use a library or framework that's licensed under GPL, without modifying said library/framework in any way, do I still have to (as TFA puts it) "extend the copyleft nature" of GPL to my code? It would be great if someone could finally lay this question to rest.

<comment><USER30> Yes generally you do. But you are only obligated to make source available to parties to whom you distribute the binaries you've built.

Typically a web app that generates and serves html, would not be 'distributing' the derivative work, so there would be no source obligation (GPLv2; AGPL etc changes this).

If its a web app that includes client-side js that in turn relies on a particular server-side API, things are perhaps less clear-cut.

<comment><USER31> _(GPLv2; AGPL etc changes this)_

Could you clarify? GPLv2 doesn't require source in this case and AGPL does? Or both GPLv2 and AGPL (along with versions) do?

<comment><USER32> If your application lives on your own server, and only static HTML/CSS is served to clients, then under the letter of the GPL no "distribution" has taken place, and you do not need to make your source code publicly available[1]. This is known as the "ASP loophole".

The AGPL was specifically developed to close this ASP loophole, and a app on your own server, again only serving static HTML/CSS to clients, _would_ require you to make the source code available under the AGPL.

Now, the big question is, what about apps that serve up JS to clients? Again, the spirit of the GPL is clear here: You are distributing GPL code to clients, and must make the source code for everything (client, server, build scripts, unit tests, media assets, _everything_ ) available. But unlike in the static example, the letter of the GPL is very unclear.

Many people - including Sencha, who have built an entire business around this interpretation - believe that webapps with significant client-side components are "distributed" under the terms of the GPL, and thus the ASP loophole does not exist for JS-heavy GPL-licensed webapps; the source code must be made available, and that this requirement extends to both the client and server- side codebases.

Other people have argued that - contra Sencha - the GPL only applies to the client code of webapps. Still others have argued that the ASP loophole _does_ still exist for GPL-licensed JS applications. Other people argue that the somewhat archaic terms used in the GPL don't even apply to modern interpreted languages. It's even been suggested that you can't even legally visit a website using GPL JS on a non-free webbrowser like IE, nor use Google Analytics on any GPLed website. The whole thing is, frankly, a royal mess.

Anyhow, coming back to Meteor: Ultimately a court's interpretation will be binding, but no court has ruled on this issue. Until then, you're probably safest following the wishes of the author. If - as with Sencha - the author says that there is no ASP loophole it's safest (not to mention morally correct) to follow their wishes. In this case, the Meteor dev's appear to be following an interpretation very close to Sencha's. So the safe/moral answer is - at least until there's more clarification - assume that for any Meteor app that the GPL and AGPL are effectively the same. :)

[1]: You would be, of course, thumbing your nose at the spirit of the GPL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Other folks have already pointed out that _using_ a library does not constitute a derivative work, so the author's point is irrelevant anyway.

There are times when BSD license and equivalent are sensible choices. Berkeley was releasing a reference set of source code. Their whole point was to have a common platform that everyone was building off of. Similarly, a BSD licensed reference implementation of TCP/IP back in the day meant that everyone could get the protocol up and running much faster with far fewer inconsistencies. BSD licensing is useful for social engineering.

But for most cases this isn't so. Why would anyone who wrote a JavaScript library and gave it away want to make it easy for someone else to build a company around taking their work, extending it a little, selling it, and giving nothing back other than enough tidbits to keep the community (if any) from getting up in arms? This is what happened to the Lisp machines, and it's exactly why the GPL is the way it is. Businesses have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder profits. If you're selling software, that means minimizing costs and maximizing income. It is the legal obligation of a company to take any permissively licensed code it can get its hands on and thinks will speed things up, extend it a little, and sell it. My response: if I'm not trying to engineer your behavior, stop leaching off the community and buy your underlying components.

The GPL exists for a reason. Every so often, some cheap bastard complains about it because he can't make a quick buck by ripping someone else off. Tough. That's why it's there. You want to use my work on this? Give me yours in exchange.

<comment><USER34> > Businesses have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize shareholder profits. > If you're selling software, that means minimizing costs and maximizing > income. It is the legal obligation of a company to take any permissively > licensed code it can get its hands on and thinks will speed things up, > extend it a little, and sell it.

This is not true.

First, not every business is a corporation or has shareholders.

Second, fiduciary responsibility does not require maximizing shareholder value (or profits). This has been explained several times here on HN and elsewhere by people who know much more about it than me. Here's one good explanation and discussion:

[http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/corporate- law/corp...](http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/corporate- law/corporate-law/LAW_COR_CRL/834796-1078684)

Excerpt: "...there is no law stating that the purpose of a corporation must be to maximize shareholder return. The corporation's purpose may be any legal purpose, chosen by the creator and/or the shareholders. There is no requirement of law that profit or the maximization of value or return must be paramount or even on the list of objectives. The overwhelming majority of U.S. corporations have in their articles of incorporation an article stating that the corporation shall have the right to engage in any legal activity."

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I dislike GPL because it makes business decisions (licensing concerns) get in the way of any and all programming.

Sometimes I make a lib that I want to use for myself, proprietary but not profit making. Sometimes I later want to use that library in a consulting project (now it's profit making). In general, I don't know whether all the desired end uses of my code will be commercial, open source, or just simply code I use personally but don't want to release.

(I believe the GPL triggers upon release/distribution of software, right? If I keep my modified version on my local system and don't sell it or ship it then there's no conflict. However, using it on my personal machine to serve up a publicly accessible website, I believe, also triggers it. Since lots of my "personal" code gets used on my personal, non-commercial, web site, I stay away from GPL even when I think I'm never shipping a piece of code.)

</comment><comment><USER36> Am I missing something here? My understanding is that when you use GPL software in your product, you are not required to GPL your own code unless your code and the GPL code are compiled into the same executable that is distributed to the user. Looking at the Meteor website's front page, I don't see anything that suggests it compiles your code and its own coffee into a single executable, so I don't think that using it would require you to GPL anything except possibly any customizations that you make to Meteor itself.

Obviously this is not legal advice, and may in fact be the delusional ramblings of someone who has no understanding of the GPL. But please enlighten me if I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER37> Original authors have the right to license their code whatever way they please. This kind of article is disgusting.

If it were a proprietary license nobody would raise a finger. HN is a very hypocritical community.

</comment><comment><USER38> Sencha has used GPL/Commercial License business model successfully.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is likely irrelevant for the server-side bit, and it remains to be determined if it is for the client-side.

It will hinder contributions if they require attribution, however.

<comment><USER33> Absolutely. The license difference is why FreeBSD is so much more widespread than Linux. </sarcasm>

<comment><USER40> The license difference is why you're aware of so many places that Linux is used. It's hard to miss a blob of text as big as the GPL.

There are a lot of boxes running FreeBSD internally which you never hear about. We try to convince vendors that it's ok to talk publicly about using FreeBSD, but an awful lot of them consider it to be "secret sauce" which they don't want their competitors to hear about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> "The basic idea is that the source code is publicly available for people to look at and modify and that it costs nothing to use as long as you're building a GPL application with it and give out your source code too"

Can anyone confirm whether this is actually accurate? I'm not sure it is...

<comment><USER31> I've been reading up on GPL because I know little about the nuances, but I think you only need to GPL and provide the source code if you distribute it to others. Web seems tricky for GPL, but I thought that was the purpose of AGPL. Please correct me it I am wrong.

<comment><USER42> AGPL closes the "loophole" for server-side code.

Meteor pushes a lot of code to the client. This most probably constitutes distribution.

See Sencha's take on this: <http://www.sencha.com/legal/open-source-faq/>

They make money by dual-licensing JS code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This has all the makings of a 'KDE vs Gnome'-like battle. For those not around at the time, a quick refresher: KDE was launched to applause and was based on a (then) restrictive Troll Tech license (for its QT library). This restrictive license lead directly to the creation of the Gnome project and so we saw a very promising desktop environment lose momentum and support as community resources were diverted to reinventing the wheel with Gnome (IMHO).

Yes, we have more choice now in the world of Linux desktops, but I still believe hundreds of man years were wasted and the Linux desktop effort set back years, due to Troll Tech's choice of license. Of course, Troll Tech finally realized the error of their ways, but as history clearly shows us, it was too late.

So, does Meteor want to risk being a KDE (or even Svbtle) and have the community praise it for their ideas and invest huge amounts of time reinventing the wheel, or do they want to harness the unstoppable momentum of the developer community?

</comment><comment><USER44> The real reason permissive licences are preferred is developers are greedy. I know, I'm a developer and I'm greedy. I don't want to admit I'm using other people's code to do my work. I want to silently include that code and pretend that I did all of it myself and impress people with my amazing programming skills. If I have to buy a license I have fess up, and admit to myself I need their code, whereas if I can just use it freely there isn't that moral barrier to cross.

<comment><USER45> It's not greed, it's friction. Developers don't like friction in development and worrying about licensing is a type of friction that requires real money. I want to help them (I contribute $ to a few projects), but I need to know my stuff will work with there's before I go paying. There are few things worse than paying for software, deploying, and finding out you need to switch to something else.

I am fine with attributing others. I have actually done it after paying even when paying removes the need (e.g. glyphicons pro).

<comment><USER4> attributing != sharing back

it's greed, ego, etc.

<comment><USER45> I'll share back too if it I have some improvement (I am going to test in on my own site first).

Greed is actually a very poor reason for not sharing back. It actually costs more money to maintain a forked code base than contributing the change back and getting it maintained by everyone. It is also fairly stupid to hide what software you are using from a recruitment point of view.

I prefer the BSD / MIT licenses because the sharing occurs on my schedule, less stress, and less friction. I like doing things because it is right and not because I have a lawyer at my door.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can behavioral science help in Flint? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/23/can-behavioral-science-help-in-flint <comment><USER2> Maybe they can redirect all this wonderful behavioral science to train the politicians to actually care about ordinary lower-income citizens so they can fix the fucking pipes instead of placing the responsibility on tax-payers by teaching them songs and dances about when to change their filters or devising clever tricks on how their can regain their "trust".

<comment><USER3> Spending money collected from people with a higher income/net worth sensibly on people disadvantaged by a system that disadvantaged the lower income/net worth people by its very existence....that sounds a lot like _Socialism_.

Also yes I agree, safe potable water in the worlds richest country should not be an issue in 2017.

I also think that natural monopolies should be heavily state governed if not state owned.

<comment><USER4> The water supply was state-governed. The Flint City Council voted to approve switching water sources. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#Switching_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis#Switching_to_a_new_water_source)

<comment><USER3> Yep and that's a problem, I think the solution there is harsher penalties actually enforced, if you need to increase the salary to make people take that job then so be it.

Other countries do infrastructure better and have water that is demonstrably better than in a lot of places in the US.

<comment><USER5> Please keep in mind that the US water supply naturally has higher concentrations of pollutants than many other countries. We also have a higher population drinking straight from the water table pump.

It makes it hard to do a direct comparison since other countries don't have to do as much.

[https://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/trace/pubs/gw_v38n4/](https://water.usgs.gov/nawqa/trace/pubs/gw_v38n4/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think new water pipes would help in Flint.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is one of the worst "articles" I have experienced reading since joining Hacker News.

 _TL;DR This is all personal opinion: My main issue is with the journalism here. To me this article was disrespectful to readers, scientists and the people of Flint. Without making any accusations, I would be curious to know how this article was researched and in what capacity the journalist and the scientist this article is about knew each other before the article was written? Were they friends or classmates? (I don 't have a problem if a journalist wants to write about one of their friends per se, especially if that person is part of an interesting story worth telling, but from an ethics and respect for readers standpoint I think that should be disclosed)._

I like The New Yorker and read it regularly but after reading this long, long piece something felt very off. There was a noticeable lack of substance and accuracy, along with flowery misleading writing when it came to the science/behavioral science stuff suggesting the article was under-researched. But then the tenor of the writing about the scientist was a completely incongruity to the rest of the article (the language often felt like a letter of recommendation to a grad school on behalf of a friend).

Honestly, I have no idea if there was conflict of interest and I don't really care. The writing just made it feel like something fishy is going on. I think most importantly, behavioral science is interesting and has potential to do good work in many areas and all. But the people of Flint have fucking lead in their water...So a fluff piece connecting behavioral science to the Flint water issue is misleading at best and potentially harmful. It's misleading about what behavioral science can and can't accomplish; Flint was a government fuck-up in a place with serious systemic issues that need to be addressed. Plus 99% of what the article connects to behavioral science is really just people paying attention and helping other people in person. No behavioral science magic involved. Also the fucking "write a song" part of the article was a joke, that's an idea any Joanne Shmoe can come up with, that part of the story was not real behavioral science and pretty disrespectful to everyone.

Also New Yorker: I get your readers might not be interested in detailed science articles and they might prefer people stories. But I am very confident they want accurate stories whatever the topic. If you waste their time overly long articles of bullshit you will lose more readers. Come on.</comment>


Letter to My Fellow Software Engineers - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/mseshachalam/23e0f1976dfcda3d7188c921b92fc0ed <comment><USER2> I upvoted this, not because it's good content (it's not), but because you're clearly in need of community support.

Here's my advice to you: stop caring about politics and get a remote job.

Forget all the social justice stuff and poor government regulations. It sucks, but you can't do anything about it unless you have a lot of money, which you don't.

You have good experience and your written english is fine. Be flexible with your working hours. You're about 12 hours offset from the Bay Area, so you might end up working the night shift. If you have an accent that would make it hard for Americans to work with you, that's probably the highest value thing you can improve. Indian accents are notoriously difficult and one of the reasons people in the US don't like Indian outsourcing (even if they won't admit it).

Use the HN job listings, angel, remotejobs, etc. Find yourself good paying work. Understand the situation and figure out how to exploit it. Maybe you can live comfortably on 50k/yr in India? Hiring you in the bay area would be $100k/yr minimum for someone with 7 years of experience of full-stack dev. Exploit the difference. Let companies know that you're willing to travel, that you're steeped in SV culture from the internet, that you're a hard worker, that you have lots of experience, that you're willing to work for half the price of US counterparts, and that you're willing to work on any timezone.

Save your money, invest, continually try to increase your salary. Once you have good cashflow, you might want to stay in India due to the cost of living, but you'll also have the means to relocate globally.

Just to be crystal clear: You're not failing at code or interviews, you're failing at selling yourself, and you're distracted by political issues. This is a skill you can learn and a problem you can fix.

<comment><USER3> Great advice! I just want to bold that "Save your money, invest, continually try to increase your salary" part.

Almost every country on Earth is good to wealthy people, so find your way to make money and learn to invest it right. Use the system on your own favor and stop trying to fight against it (because you won't win).

Usually, development countries (I live in Brazil, that's more or less like India) have great opportunities (growth rate) but you need to open yourself to them. More important than have skills is how to make them useful.

Best regards!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The raw version has word-wrap: [https://gist.githubusercontent.com/mseshachalam/23e0f1976dfc...](https://gist.githubusercontent.com/mseshachalam/23e0f1976dfcda3d7188c921b92fc0ed/raw/c207281eda3e5868ae8aa9ecdab24dc3bdb76970/gistfile1.txt)

</comment><comment><USER5> That's an interesting read. I wish the author good luck and a happy future.

FWIW, I'm from the USA and have lived and worked in several states. I've known many people from India, some well, all have had success in the workplace. I've never noticed any kind of bias against these people (several were higher up the workplace ladder than I was, I believe they earned it.)

Author, if you see this-- please make a good plan and move forward. Let HN know how things go.

</comment><comment><USER6> What you need is a healthy dose of self-determinism. Learn to control your self (not "control yourself" but control your "self" or your own being) and learn to control your own life.</comment>


Ask HN: Where do you find this mysterious product "niche"? - <AUTHOR> Since my last side-project failed I was looking where to apply my technical skills: maybe to create some business, to have fun implementing something useful, to have purposeful side project. Everywhere you look for "ideas" you'd find a common thread of advice: find a B2B niche with some unresolved (or poorely solved) problems aimed at medium/small business, where customers would want to pay for that problem solution, and try to offer something there (cheaper/better). Do an MVP, iterate on an early feedback, pivot if needed, GOTO 10.
The problem #1 is: where the heck do you find these niches? Let's assume you're a highly skilled and motivated engineer working a typical job in a big corporation. You have absolutely no contact with thousands of small businesses with all their problems: you have no idea what kinds of inefficiencies small legal firms have (that have optimization potential), you have no idea what professional landlords expect from their CRMs, you have no idea what small scale-metalworking shops have for problems.
What are possible solutions to this? Networking events (hard in COVID times), endless HN browsing, endless scrolling through openstartup or indiehackers?
The problem #2 is: even if you'd find some interesting and seemingly successful niche product, you go to the landing page and are welcomed with some abstact marketing bullshit bingo about "enchancing productivity", "no coding required", "track your goals", "manage contacts" and you're like: "wtf, people are willing to pay for this?" You think: "all of this can be solved with a bunch of properly designed excelsheets and some python glue, why is there a fancy webapp for that?"
How you get rid of this mindset and adopt a more business-oriented thinking?
I would be very grateful for any sorts of insights: interesting idea sites to browse, good books to read, etc. <comment><USER2> I think you are approaching the "niche" part a bit wrong. You should create a business in a niche you are very familiar with, not to try randomly finding a niche. It's very hard to help a niche you don't understand. Just look at the things you do in your life (work, hobbies, health, education, sport, etc) and see what needs improvement.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is the point of problem #1: if you are an average joe, not tightly connected to certain areas, where money is usually found, then this severely limits your potential scope.

<comment><USER2> I don't really get the point. Money is found everywhere, people are always willing to pay money to improve their life. Also, does it matter if it's B2B or B2C if it can be successful and earn you a living with the same amount of effort?

<comment><AUTHOR> At this level it doesnt matter. It is perceived harder to enter b2c, since a lot more external parameters are involved. The advice for b2b usully stems from certain predictability</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Newegg hidden data - <AUTHOR>

I bought a aSUS mEMO PAD from Newegg. I am returnng it via RMA. I was boxing it todAY AND WENT TO THE EGG to copy the RMA number to print a second copy for inclusion in the boxing. I copied the RMA number and pastedit into a previously opened notebook page. (OI just took one from my desktop Highlighted the info there then pasted over top of it to print then close and not save restoring the original data on it. LO and behold the paste operation also shows the tablets MAC address info. This was not visible when I copied the RMA number. Pasting the clipboard info to anything else also does not expose the hidden background data. (I'll paste the clipboard date here now) ATTN: RMA 25071434
And just a number but this is what the little bug I exposed by accident shows.
ATTN: RMA 25071434 5cff3579f77f
I assume this was to prevent switching of the original item however, hidden is hidden. What else are they collecting but hiding? <comment><USER2> wow very interesting. to answer your question I would say at the very least model, serial, etc numbers.</comment>


Ask HN: Any experience with domain name registrar API's? - <AUTHOR> I have to develop a Register Domain functionality in our project.
I'm looking for an API service that does the domain registration.
It seems that Godaddy's prices (on their API Reseller program) are far better than others.
I started using their service and I'm still in development phase. But their API, documentation and toolset seem unmaintained.
Does anyone have experience with them? Are they reliable? Are there better choices out there? <comment><USER2> Did you try AWS Route53? They offer a full API for registering domains: [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/APIReference/API_d...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/Route53/latest/APIReference/API_domains_RegisterDomain.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I did not know that and now I feel like an idiot :)</comment></comment>


Julian Assange AMA on Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/28js8v/i_am_julian_assange_publisher_of_wikileaks_ask_me/ <comment><USER2> Many Redditors seem to lack patience. Calling it the worst AMA because there are not many answers after 20 minutes is really impolite.

Sometimes I need more time just to write a two sentence email reply. Give Julian the time he needs.

<comment><USER3> I usually wait for the interesting AMAs to show up on /r/tabled before I even bother looking at them. Much cleaner way to go through them and avoid the clutter.

<comment><USER4> See also [http://www.topiama.com/](http://www.topiama.com/) which I think was done by a HN member here.

<comment><USER5> Aah, presented in a nice Q+A format and everything. Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sincere question: Why do HN people flag this off the frontpage, because of reddit or because of Assage?

</comment><comment><USER7> I can't find a single question about the rape accusations. Am I blind, are moderators removing them or are people simply not interested?

<comment><USER8> You're wrong [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/28js8v/i_am_julian_ass...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/28js8v/i_am_julian_assange_publisher_of_wikileaks_ask_me/cibkmwt)

<comment><USER9> They are few and far between, but this is a gem: [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/28js8v/i_am_julian_ass...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/28js8v/i_am_julian_assange_publisher_of_wikileaks_ask_me/cibld0z)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Am I the only one that finds Assange to be just an absolute self-centered ass? He's trying to turn himself into a cult leader, and runs his own "justice" site[0].

He's manipulative and just leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

[0] - [http://freeassangenow.org/](http://freeassangenow.org/)

<comment><USER11> Can you substantiate any of that with evidence?

<comment><USER10> Substantiate what? My personal feelings? I don't think that one can provide evidence for one's "feel" of a person.

<comment><USER11> The specific charges. If you don't like him you should have just said that. Do you call everyone you don't like a "self-centered cult-leader"?

<comment><USER10> I said he's attempting to be one. My rationale for that is his statements that make him seem to be basking in martyrdom. See my comments above in reply to another comment.

I call people I feel to be self-centered self-centered. I call people who try to convince other people that they're an innocent messenger for truth while demonizing anyone who says anything bad about them a wannabe cult leader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I want to ask him if he is bitter at all that Edward Snowden is more popular now and he is yesterday's news. But I won't...

<comment><USER8> He replied a related question [1] and seems to be quite supportive of Ed Snowden.

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/28js8v/i_am_julian_ass...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/28js8v/i_am_julian_assange_publisher_of_wikileaks_ask_me/cibko0g)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reddit is an awful place full of awful rules and awful people and plenty of censorship and manipulation of topics and comments , manipulated by real people and also bots they have created to monitor conversations.

They shadow ban topics and comments to create an illusion of fair conversation.

They have the collective ego of being relevant but are nowhere near the level of facebook or twitter or instagram. Or even Yahoo news.

They are just an annoying little site that keeps popping up like that poop that just won't flush , that's reddit , the shit that won't flush , reddit is about as relevant as myspace.

AMA seems to be the last grasp that reddit has , and why do you need reddit for that ?

<comment><USER14> You do know Hacker News shadow bans users, has a list of certain domains that are outright banned, and has a moderation team that occasionally kills stories, right?

<comment><USER15> Is the list of banned domains public? I'd love to know what is ban-worthy on HN.

<comment><USER14> This is as close as we've got: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=499044)

As pg says at the beginning of the comment, if you want to know if a particular domain is banned, just submit something and see if it's dead immediately.

FWIW, this comment and my previous one aren't a complaint: I think that most of this is a good thing. I _do_ think the mods kill some important stories, and I think the flamewar filter is terrible, but I'm glad for a lot of it, and wish there was more.

<comment><USER15> Thank you. After all this time I'm still amazed. There's always a kind HN reader around with specific knowledge. :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>