Movie Business Scrambles to Adapt to Changing Consumer Demand - <AUTHOR> http://variety.com/2017/film/features/movie-business-changing-consumer-demand-studios-exhibitors-1202016699/ <comment><USER2> The proposal: "Premium video rental", at $30 - $50. Right. When VHS first came out, the movie industry thought that a video rental should cost about as much as a theater show for a family of 4, including popcorn. That didn't work, although the reason was the First Sale Doctrine, which allowed video rental without payments to studios and forced prices down. That doesn't apply online, and all the players are now huge near-monopolies. They can push prices up, but can't make people watch.

3D was supposed to save theaters. It didn't. (Incidentally, while "Ghost in the Shell" is reasonably good, don't see it in 3D. The director likes blurry backgrounds. 3D has negative value for blurry backgrounds.)

Lack of originality remains a big problem. "Four of the top 10 highest grossing films last year were based on Marvel or DC Comics characters." In theaters now, the Lego Batman movie. There are currently 69 more comic book movies in the pipeline.[1] Even the duds, such as Ant-Man, are getting sequels. Variety says consumers may be getting tired of comic book movies.

Some original ideas do make big money. Last year, "The Secret Life of Pets" — $875.4 million, "Zootopia" — $1.023 billion, "Finding Dory" — $1.027 billion, were in the top 10. They're all animated. Not one of the top 10 highest grossing movies of 2016 was a live-action non-sequel/remake. Maybe originality now requires a longer format than the one-off film. Consider Game of Thrones.

Meanwhile, I'm watching Korean drama and Japanese anime.

[1] [http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/comic-book- adaptations/32...](http://www.denofgeek.com/uk/movies/comic-book- adaptations/32829/69-upcoming-comic-book-movies-and-when-to-expect-them)

<comment><USER3> "Not one of the top 10 highest grossing movies of 2016 was a live-action non- sequel/remake."

Actually 1 was: Suicide Squad. It was indeed a live-action non-sequel/remake.

<comment><USER2> It was, though, based on a comic book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This doesn't surprise me. With all the good jobs drying up and wages decreasing, young people can't afford to go to the theater when the price of attending has been going up. On top of that, it seems like most big movies are formulaic, following the same pattern and not eliciting anything more than mild amusement. It's just not worth it anymore.

<comment><USER5> Hollywood seems content to continue milking comic books and lately anime for storylines instead of coming up with anything original and then applying the same, cliched formula.

I can't wait for the demise of this system so that we can see fresh, original approaches to film-making where the starring actor/actress is the biggest expense.

Did they learn the lesson from the music industry? Namely, not to attack the consumer as the cause of its downfall before it was eventually swallowed up by a tech company (Apple). Perhaps if they transition graciously, Amazon or other firms will offer them a better deal. Or, preferably, they take the route used by Veronica Mars by getting funding through kickstarter, indiegogo or some other fundraising platform. This way, maybe fans won't be severely disappointed and movie adaptations of popular franchises aren't dumbed down and white-washed to appeal to as broad an audience as possible.

And, yes, I'm a bit upset after seeing the treatment Ghost in the Shell, one of my favorite franchises, received. Akira and Cowboy Bebop are next, but I actually like Jordan Peele and Keanu Reeves so I'm crossing my fingers.

<comment><USER6> I think part of the problem is that the cost to produce a movie is so expensive and the risk of creating a new story/IP is large enough that few studios are willing to take that chance. Pixar is one of the few.

<comment><USER7> How can movie production be costly, at least in comparison to decades past? No film, no processing, no laborious cutting/splicing.... with CGI no model- making, much less set-building, no stop-motion, no special frame-by-frame retouching. Must be much cheaper today at least in terms of the infrasturcture required.

<comment><USER2> Watch the credits of thousands of animators and technicians at the end of any major animation project. Yes, you can now put anything on screen, but somebody has to create all that detail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I see two things they can change to improve.

\- Make going to the movies more of an event. Alamo Drafthouse understands this. Don't tolerate disturbances. Sell food and alcohol. Don't run ads for the local mattress store before the film.

\- Price B movies lower than tentpole releases. Guardians of the Galaxy I'll gladly pay $10-12 for. Some romantic comedy that will quickly be forgotten and the studio only spent $30 million on ought to be priced less.

<comment><USER9> So your plan is to price movie tickets in accordance with their production budget? That's a great way to select for lower quality.

<comment><USER8> That's only one indicator of it's potential quality. You can also judge (and price) a film by the caliber of actors in it.

But sometimes that doesn't work - Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Garner, and Christopher Walken -- should be a total winner, right? Not always...

[https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/nine_lives_2016](https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/nine_lives_2016)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just lost interest in virtually all movies in my mid twenties. They're too short, too alike, to predictable and frankly boring most of the time. There are very _very_ occasional exceptions, but for me, movies just stopped being entertaining at some point. I don't know if movies changed, or I did.

A friend of mine and I marathoned two seasons of Game of Thrones; that was _by far_ a better experience than any movie has ever provided. Movies are the abridged books of the audiovisual world, in my opinion, with some notable exceptions. Those exceptions seem (to me at least) to be getting incredibly rare compared to the deafening background noise of cynical money grabs, re- makes, sequels, and highly compressed storytelling bolstered with sfx.

What I'm saying is, if I'm not just some oddity in this (and I don't think that I am) then over time people are just going to _mostly_ outgrow movies. It's not that movies are pro tanto bad, it's just that _most_ movies don't play to the strengths of the medium; they exist as remnants of a time when the options were: Book, Broadcast TV, Movie. Frankly, the writing has been on the wall since 'The Sopranos', DVR brought closer, and Streaming means it's actually here, now.

<comment><USER11> There is definitely a place for movies, but I think a lot of people really enjoy longer spanning series. In the past TV shows were largely episodic in format and with lower production values compared to movies. But now there is less of a difference in the quality of the medium and the difference becomes long va short format. There are definitely some stories that are best told in one brief sitting, but there is a large market for longer running storylines that you can consume an hour at a time, or binge all day.

Great point about the Sopranos and how that was a forerunner to these successful shows that act as today's benchmarks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What's with the comic book movie hate? Most of the Marvel ones are pretty good.

I'd say the one exception is the soundtracks. Movies used to have memorable soundtracks. Nowadays the soundtracks are pretty boring. They use a process of filming using another movies soundtrack nowadays and then going back and recording a soundtrack afterwards. It makes movies sound the same. It's cheaper to make but it makes the movie going experience cheaper too. It reduces one of the best parts of going to the theater, the sound system.

I'm pretty sure that Marvel used the soundtrack to Mad Max for the filming Winter Soldier and then went out and recorded for the winter soldier.

<comment><USER13> Tony Zhou did a video about this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vfqkvwW2fs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vfqkvwW2fs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14>
        There is a belief, accepted as dogma in some studio
        boardrooms, that streaming services like Netflix have
        conditioned consumers to access content whenever and
        wherever they would like it.

Huh. Boardrooms doing dogma about customer preferences, in 2017, eh?

Makes me think of a very silly kids' book from a few years back. The title was The Stupids Die.

If the multiplex movie theaters can't come up with ways to measure customer preferences and insist on relying on preconceived notions, investors should simply abandon them.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think what is also broken, and surprisingly not mentioned, is the broken theatre licensing model that the large studios impose on theatres to be able to show their blockbusters. Blockbusters are sold in packages that require a certain number of screenings throughout the day as well as mandatory screening of their B grade movies also. Theatres aren't free to just show what they want, when they want, and pay per screening fees. Innovation here would help create more intimacy in local movie theatre communities and also mean crap doesn't get screen time just because it's from a big studio.

</comment><comment><USER16> I have so many entertainment choices at home. I can't imagine ever paying $30 or more! for a movie.

</comment><comment><USER17> My wife and I go frequently to our local movie theater, even though our small town multi-theater lacks some of the tech available in large cities. Sitting in a theater with a few hundred people all enjoying a movie is a positive human experience. At home we cut out cable TV and have so much good content available on Netflix, Hulu Prime, and HBO Now that we don't need anything else.

I think the interesting story is many more smaller productions done by Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, etc. It almost feels like genetic algorithm optimization - running lots of small experiments, measure viewers, and repeat...

We live in Sedona Arizona and every year we have a fairly large film festival (for a small town), and getting to meet and hear from directors and producers of lower budget productions is more than interesting.

Working on games for Nintendo and VR for Disney in the 1990s provided a view to very well funded development. I think a lot has changed, and lowering costs producing content is much more important.

</comment><comment><USER18> I personally think that there's a new way. On Kickstarter, Arrowstorm Entertainment regularly launches new campaigns for movies. One of the more succesful ones is a fantasy movie series called Mythica, already at part 5: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arrowstorm/mythica-5-th...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arrowstorm/mythica-5-the- godslayer)

One of the more recent ones is 626 Evolution, a science fiction movie: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arrowstorm/626-evolutio...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/arrowstorm/626-evolution- scifi-feature)

These are low budget movies aimed at a specific crowd. You join in for $15 or more. I love them.

<comment><USER19> The first 2 films in this series recruited about $80K. How is that enough for producing a movie ? does anybody know how their business model works?

<comment><USER9> You can make a feature very cheap but it's difficult to make a profit on it, plus there's a big trade-off between the quality of work you get if you pay or not. Film people help each other out for free frequently cause they're artists, but sadly the model for micro- and no-budget films has shrunk by about half over the last 15 years, so it's very difficult to make a living on small projects compared to even a decade ago.

<comment><USER19> The production values are quite good,at least according to promos , that's what's surprising about this.

<comment><USER9> It's absolutely doable on a small budget. The tricky part is bootstrapping that to get to a higher budget. When you produce a great product at a low budget there's some pressure to promote the cheapness/economy angle as a selling point. But as you go for a higher level of quality, whether technical or aesthetic, the costs don't scale linearly with the budget. So above a certain budget you might come under pressure to sign industry agreements on guild membership or labor contracts in order to be able to hire the people you want, so the financial calculus changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Adapt? Really? It doesn't seem so. They are in their own world, and don't care.

But no wonder when you read about the crazy head of Sony Pictures, the woman that got kicked because of the scandals that got made public (emails leaked). For example we can "thank" her for that the Steve Jobs movie lost the The Social Network director and is now such a boring piece of movie.

We don't need hundreds of super hero movies, such a mass is stupid. Where are the funny movies, the action movies, the adventure movies? We want less CGI and more real action, or CGI looking like real action.

We want movies not boring hour long series, we have no time to waste hours for a stretched story arc.

The Accountant, (second half of) Bourne 2016, Jack Reacher 2, Mission Impossible Rogue Nation ... were good movies. But it gets harder and harder to find a few movies per year that are watchable. The last two X-Men movies were so bad, so many CGI effects, so dark, so little content that made the previous X-Men movies great. Were are the Die Hard 1-2, Air Force One, first three Tom Clancy movies of this decade - right, directors and script writers forgot how to pace a movie, as constant action is just wrong, you need intense action then calm situations and then action again and a bit humour does't hurt (something almost completely forgotten). I just saw a 1968 action movie and it was so much better (Steven Spielberg mentioned it's his favourite movie he sees up to), this decades Hollywood is in a sad state.

</comment><comment><USER21> For Hollywood movies, I only do matinees. Frack paying $20+ for a single ticket. At that price point, if the movie sucks, it generates massive butthurt. These days I only go to a nighttime movie if somebody I like wants me there. Maybe 2 a year?

Art house tickets are like 5-10 bucks on smaller screens. I can buy pizza and beer at these places. There is a narrow table to hold my pizza and beer. This is my price point for a nighttime movie.

Good luck to Hollywood at those dollars.

</comment><comment><USER22> Would be interesting if theaters find a way to reduce audience interference while still capturing the audience atmosphere. The last couple of outings have had me sit next to people playing with phones or talking during the movie.</comment>


Remote Managers Are Having Trust Issues - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2020/07/remote-managers-are-having-trust-issues <comment><USER2> Re: suggestion #5

I'm a fan of results only work environment, but some managers come from cultures that place value on hours worked in addition to (or even above) getting results. If you also like ROWE, the solution is to not work for those people.</comment>


Milestonehackers Newsletter / Podcast - <AUTHOR> Hi all,
I am launching my own podcast and case study newsletter targeting SaaS entrepreneurs. The goal is to have conversations that are meaningful, helpful, and interesting so that all entrepreneurs can benefit. I want to target specific milestones that either helped or hindered success and why, so we can all take a page from someone who's already gone through it.  At some point, I will be accompanying a forum to the format for easier ways to connect and communicate. I really think this can be something beneficial for all, and its a way I can do my part to help others. If you're interested in subscribing please do so atMilestonehackers Thank you all, this means so much to me, and I hope it will to you as well. <comment><AUTHOR> Milestonehakcers email link below:

[http://tiny.cc/0f3sdz](http://tiny.cc/0f3sdz)</comment>


Where the Robots Came From - <AUTHOR> http://www.good.is/post/where-the-robots-came-from/ <comment><USER2> Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1506012></comment>


Why did Google choose Python? - <AUTHOR> http://curiousprogrammer.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/why-did-google-choose-python/

<comment><USER2> Actually, I believe JRuby is comparable to the normal Ruby, some even consider JRuby to be better than Ruby in some cases. Not disagreeing with any of your points I believe you're dead on.</comment>


Windows Drops Bing in China for Baidu - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.windows.com/bloggingwindows/2015/09/23/windows-10-in-china/ <comment><USER3> How much does state competitiveness play into China's firewall policies? If you think of China's people as a customer base, and China as a large corporation, then it wouldn't surprise me that they would take any steps within their power to prevent other "large corporations" from taking away their customers.

With that in mind, Baidu becoming the default search engine in a Microsoft product is a huge win for Baidu and China as a whole. It's also that many steps closer to being the default search engine for a Microsoft product in different countries, such as the United States.

<comment><USER4> I think this is just good for Search in general.

If for a moment one stops to think of Search and not of countries\companies, this is the way it should work.

Search needs to be much more decentralized than it currently is. People in different parts of the world think in different ways, express their information in different ways and access it in different ways.

For everyone on the planet to then have to wait for a few hundred people in some ivory tower in the West to decide how they access information is just not the most ideal way Search should run.

<comment><USER5> What? Baidu is already the dominant search engine in China. This deal makes it slightly more dominant.

I'm all for search competition, but this isn't going to make it happen.

<comment><USER4> :) Please tell me what has then in the last 10 years...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am guessing that Baidu must have the proper censorship and control mechanisms built in. I bet there is a really interesting story underneath this.

<comment><USER7> I don't doubt for a second there was a closed-door deal with the state. But we also shouldn't dismiss the fact that Baidu is still the leading search engine in mainland China so for Microsoft it makes total sense to switch the default engine to Baidu. Windows 10 is actually pretty cool (speaking as someone who have abandoned Windows for several years). If the integration experience works out I actually think the switch is going to help (I am also looking forward to seeing what the AI team at Baidu are doing). The biggest challenge today is still making use of all the data, bring them to user in the most comfortable and usable way possible. Lots of fancy words, but I guess I can summarize that down to "shadow me, guess what I want before I ask, and do the things I want as I ask."

Surely censorship, privacy are big issues but I just want to voice my opinion on both ends.

<comment><USER8> _But we also shouldn 't dismiss the fact that Baidu is still the leading search engine in mainland China so for Microsoft it makes total sense to switch the default engine to Baidu._

Well ... Google remains by far the leading search engine in the U.S.

Quite obviously they don't plan to switch the default from Bing to Google for us any time soon.

<comment><USER9> Because Google won't pay Microsoft for it, won't partner with Microsoft, etc. Baidu is not a total competitor to Microsoft the way Google is.

<comment><USER10> >Because Google won't pay Microsoft for it, won't partner with Microsoft, etc.

Where do you get that impression? They pay Mozilla, Apple, and several other companies royalties for referrals to their search engine.

<comment><USER7> Mozilla and Apple don't make Internet search engine (although some speculates Apple is making a rivalry search engine). They integrate with the Internet search engines out there.

<comment><USER11> MS didn't make search engine, either. They decided to make one anyway.

<comment><USER7> I am not following. You said they didn't make one, but they made one anyway? So they made one or not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks like Nadella is moving away from Microsoft's products that don't fit in with an "Office + Azure" future. Bing, Windows Phone and XBox don't really fit their strategy any more.

<comment><USER13> Maybe that means Azure will finally get some love. So many processes and technical decisions they made when building the platform are absolutely broken. The whole thing is half-baked in the worst of ways.

<comment><USER14> I've never used Azure, but I've been considering it -- can you give some examples/links of half-baked-broken-ness?

<comment><USER15> There are two management portals -- classic and "preview". You would think that "preview" supersedes classic, but you'd be wrong -- you actually need to be comfortable using both (and the CLI tools) to get stuff done.

There's actually a Linux/OSX version of the Azure CLI tools, but it lags behind the Windows Powershell tooling _and_ classic _and_ "preview" which is pretty frustrating.

Then, there's the ASM environment and the new-hotness ARM environment. So, the web portals support some mishmash of ARM features, but still offer classic features. The Linux/CLI tools support some of the ARM features, but not all of them either.

If you're working from OSX, it's best to just stick with the ASM environment; otherwise, you're in for pain. Either way, you'll need to keep using both management portals.

The current score:

       1. Classic Portal - deprecated, but not really; also incomplete
       2. Preview Portal - official, but still beta, but has exclusive support for some features (ARM, Redis)
       3. Linux/OSX xplat-cli - incomplete and clumsy
       4. PowerShell - Windows-only, **maybe** a superset of the other tools

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _Baidu's new Windows 10 distribution channel, Baidu "Windows 10 Express" > will make it easy for Chinese Internet users to download an official Windows > 10 experience._

What Microsoft really wants is to use Baidu's channel to distribute Windows 10. When Windows 10's market share is high, Microsoft will drop Baidu of course.

<comment><USER17> I don't think Baidu has that much advantage in its distribution channel to make MS drop Bing. If MS wants a fast way to distribute, it can use torrent like Ubuntu does. It's much faster to download a torrent with Xunlei(Thunder) than with Baidu.

<comment><USER16> It's not about the download speed. Many people in China use Baidu to find how to get and install (pirated) windows. If the official Windows 10 appears at the first one of the search results, Microsoft will be very happy.

<comment><USER17> MS can 1) push win10 though windows updates(much like iOS) or 2) buy search keyword ads on Baidu. I fail to see how dropping Bing is a better choice, unless MS is getting paid a lot or forced upon by the gov.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So did Apple to Google. Actually I was forced to use Baidu with Siri, I have complained many times, email/phone/twitter, but nothing changed yet.

</comment><comment><USER19> One concern would be if this provides a larger userbase to Baidu to be used by the Chinese government for attacks against folks like github again.

<comment><USER20> -> _One concern would be if this provides a larger userbase to Baidu to be used by the Chinese government for attacks against folks like github again._

You are talking about 3 separate issues here:

a larger userbase to Baidu - most likely

Baidu being used by the Chinese government - <USER2>

Chinese government for attacks against folks like github again - some serious assumptions here, accusations != facts

<comment><USER19> You do realize that there was a well-documented case of the Chinese government setting the Great Firewall of China to send a altered Baidu javascript to users outside of China to engage in a massive DDoS of github in an attempt to pressure github into removing two projects that the Chinese government disapproves of earlier this year, right? It took github offline entirely and they didn't even have most of the attack deflected until 3.5 days in. Google the words github baidu ddos and you'll have your pick of legitimate sources. It's well known and well documented within the tech community. The mainstream media mostly ignored it.

<comment><USER20> This comment shows ignorance at its best. Show me one source that has _proof_ that (1) _Chinese government was behind the attack_ , (2) _Baidu was behind the attack_.

<comment><USER21> Here's the paper[1] from the University of Toronto showing that the attack originated from the Great Firewall. Given the firewall is operated by the Ministry of Public Security that points the finger pretty clearly at the government. The way the attack was orchestrated implies however that Baidu was an unwitting victim.

[1][https://citizenlab.org/2015/04/chinas-great- cannon/](https://citizenlab.org/2015/04/chinas-great-cannon/)

<comment><USER20> This article seems to be a legitimate source.

It terms the system that carried out the attack as _" the Great Cannon"_ and then moves on to attribute _" the Great Cannon"_ to the Chinese government in Section 4.

As _" compelling"_ as it sounds, the "attribution" in Section 4 seems rather short and lacking technical details and proper references as compared to other sections (Also I would not consider references from GreatFire as legitimate). So I am not fully convinced about that section.

Anyway thanks for sharing this. I definitely picked up a lot from this article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> But the reason is nobody is seriously using Bing search in China. After they got the laptop, they will change it to Baidu themselves anyway.

<comment><USER23> That would make sense if Microsoft didn't own Bing. But they do, so that makes no sense at all.

<comment> guard-of-terra Why, it does. When you don't have a working product for a market, you don't pretend you do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Maybe they just looked at the stats and thought this was a non-game? Furthermore, even with 'censorship', somehow I doubt many of the regular big names in search have algorithms that do all that well targeting Chinese.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a fast move since last Chinese PM 's visit in Seattle last week

</comment><comment><USER26> MS is keeping software sales, but handing search, distribution, cloud, backup and mapping services to what is effectively a Chinese google? How exactly do they expect to make money from this?

<comment><USER27> > MS is keeping software sales, but handing search, distribution, cloud, > backup and mapping services to what is effectively a Chinese google? How > exactly do they expect to make money from this?

There's billions of people in China. It's a huge market. They'd rather play gimped rather than not play at all. Unfortunately for China, their governmental sanctioned monopolization of businesses is stifling their own innovation. It's the reason why, with so many people, practically nothing worth-while comes out of China as far as new inventions or technology goes. Whether it be software, industrial, manufacturing, health care, what have you, China is at the bottom of the pack. To acquire those things, they either have to buy, copy or steal them. And they do all three relentlessly.

Now if you're Chinese, you may think to yourself, "Good for them, then." And while it's good in the short-term, for most things, the "getting there" is potentially as valuable, or even more valuable than the end result. It allows you to improve upon things and make further innovations. It builds a foundation for further innovation. If you don't have that foundation, you're just leaving yourself further and further behind. We can see this happening right now.

I'm certainly no rabid pro-capitalist (I actually tend to lean towards socialism, specifically social democracies) but I won't deny the benefits of capitalism and its effects on a culture. It's actually why I'm pro-social democracy - I understand there are benefits to each political and economic system and think a social democracy takes the best of both worlds while minimizing (but not completely eliminating) the negative aspects.

<comment><USER28> 1.4 billion people, just have to nitpick on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Plausible deniability. "It's not us spying/blocking/hacking, it's Baidu."

</comment><comment><USER30> Bing goes the way of Ping?</comment>


Widget-Maker – A Flutter UI Builder - <AUTHOR> https://www.widgetmaker.dev/ <comment><USER2> I do a lot of flutter development and I never really have understood widget makers like this because they always end up falling flat on edge cases. Does it really speed up development time to drag/drop some boxes around? Doing this is already just a few lines of code in flutter and the hot reload is pretty amazing fast.

<comment><USER3> You are approaching this from a developer's perspective, which is fine, but you fail to consider other skillsets.

For example, if I have a team with designers, they likely know their way around Sketch and Figma and onboarding them onto something like this wouldn't be too difficult. At this point they can start contributing real, demonstrative code that compiles out of the box. Sure it lacks actual functionality and maybe it's a little rough around the edges, but that's not the point.

The point is that I, as one of the few developers on the team (or maybe even the only one) have a greatly reduced workload because now everyone can contribute to building the UI. With frontend out of the way, I can work on backend functionality exclusively and marry the two later on. From the year that I've worked with Flutter, the framework makes it easy to separate those two which further adds to the efficiency gains. Rough edges can be cleaned up relatively easily and the time sunk into cleanup probably adds up to less time than starting from scratch.

As a real world example, I have been building a mobile app for my startup since this summer. My girlfriend, who wanted to get into UI/UX design, is learning the ropes with the material widgets and making demo UIs by herself. With a few more weeks of practice, she will be equipped to start building some of the views in my app without further guidance. This takes a huge load off of my shoulders, and it's really where Flutter shines.

<comment><USER2> I am thinking from the perspective of a user of a product like this. I personally do both development and design work.

Your example does not convince me that it would save time ('probably' isn't enough) or be generally useful enough that a designer could be convinced to drop Sketch for it.

As a designer, I want to use Sketch.

As a developer, I want a Sketch design over generated code.

For sure, it is a neat experiment to create something like this, but time and time again, people always resort back to tools like Sketch. I think this developer would be better off spending their time building out a super epic component widget library than trying to build a visual designer.

<comment><USER3> >For sure, it is a neat experiment to create something like this, but time and time again, people always resort back to tools like Sketch

The difference this time around is that the visual designer language... _is the real development language._

I've also tried using these visual designers before. They all seemed half assed and had glaring limitations.

This one may end up being no exception. But I think, combined with Flutter, there may be something gold here. The key being that this visual editor is really a glorified text editor rather than a glorified art program. Sketch, for example, outputs PNGs at the end of the day. You can't throw those into your app and call it production ready. This "widget maker" outputs dart files. That's real, executable code. If the overhead visual designer is flexible enough, the only walls you may end up hitting are the ones set up by the widget implementations themselves. At that point you'd have to deal with those walls manually anyways, so you haven't lost any time really.

One of my fever dreams over the summer was to build a voice controlled Flutter widget builder, such that I could sit in front of my TV and simply transcribe a UI from my head directly into the emulator. OP's project is a good first step towards that goal. Just imagine:

"Give me a scaffold with a column layout..." "Add a raised button to this container's body" "Set its color to sky blue" "Show me this widget's properties" "Make this a stateless widget called SpecialButtonBar and have it take three arguments..."

Again, it doesn't have to do all of it. But having written code to play with is a much better starting point than having nothing. Flutter's composability means that there aren't many different approaches you or a machine can take to arrive at the same result - you will end up with very similar widget trees which means this is a task ripe for automation.

<comment><USER4> That's called "interface builder" and it falls short at edge (or just non- trivial) cases in all frameworks ever created. Qt, gtk, whatever-tk, any windows, mac, phone ui.

If it's different _this time_ , then I would like to see that authors know about the shortcomings and problems that usually arise. E.g. restructuring of a container set without losing inner constraints; injecting two subitems where one was without resizing arounds; temporary places outside of main template; viewing full hierarchy with artifical borders to select an interested level; having auto-dummies in boxes to prevent a new subitem to fill all space, making it easy to reason on half-done design. I could go on.

But all introduction videos just show us how they drop an item into an empty vbox. Thanks, but yawn.

<comment><USER5> > That's called "interface builder" and it falls short at edge (or just non- > trivial) cases in all frameworks ever created. Qt, gtk, whatever-tk, any > windows, mac, phone ui.

That's interesting, I've used those a fair amount of time generally with success for e.g. config UIs, etc.

e.g. look at the amount of Qt-based UI dialog merely on github : [https://github.com/search?q=extension%3Aui+language%3AXML+QD...](https://github.com/search?q=extension%3Aui+language%3AXML+QDialog&type=Code)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So the end goal is basically Supernova: [https://supernova.io/](https://supernova.io/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Remember me on M$ Frontpage... Had to take over a website made with that in ~ 2007.. Ended up in threwinh it away and rebuilding it myself with (relative) clean and maintainable HTML/CSS as it was quite simple, and 95% of it was static anyway.

But I understood Frontpage, my aunt used it to create and deploy a website successfully, with nothing more very than basic computer skills, so it had a valid target group.

This, on the other hand, makes one effectively enter the same information in the same way I'd do when just coding it. It fails both, the limited skill-set user class and the advanced, IMO. And, as Flutter already has really hot- reload, good previews, and allows to do such easy widgets in effectively the same way (just drag and drop replace with writing or copy/paste) or maybe even, as of good IDE integration, in a better way, it may also not be useful for "in-between" skilled user groups.

But seems to fit the "Klickibunti" (german for: UX is second class, it just needs to have fancy-looking, effect+color full graphics, for mouse-only interaction) Windows subgroup of users just fine, so maybe I'm just biased.

<comment><USER8> TIL about the word "Klickibunti"! I will now use this in my presentations about awful UI examples! Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Too bad it's Windows-only, I wanted to try it since I build a flutter app at the moment but it does not run on Wine it seems.

<comment><USER10> What technology can one even choose in the current year to be confined to Windows? UWP?!

<comment><USER11> Microsoft Visual C++ according to the pdb file in the Windows download, although the flutter_windows.dll (that likely does the rendering) file also contains some Chrome related stuff (not sure if it's just the skia graphics library or more from a cursory glance).</comment></comment></comment>


Xbox One Exploit Proof of Concept Released, Based on Chakra Exploit - <AUTHOR> http://wololo.net/2017/03/31/xbox-one-hack-xbox-one-exploit-proof-concept-released-based-chakra-exploit-unconfirmed/ <comment><USER2> I don't know much at all about the Xbox One architecture (and what I do is from public information obviously), but it seems safe to assume that this exploit would only land in the "Application" portion of the system. As I understand there are two (three?) hypervisor-level isolated portions of the system... particularly for cases like this in order to prevent a compromised application from being able to enable piracy of the "GameOS" portion.

<comment><USER3> There are actually 3 different OSes running on the Xbox One. Applications are in their own OS, so any "kernel" exploit would only grant them access to that very limited OS that can't run games. Unless, of course, they somehow manage to escape that container and force VM to run their own modified version of GameOS.

<comment><USER4> A modified version of Hyper-V called NanoVisor is used. Apps run in SystemOS, which is already accessible officially even through other ways... GameOS and HostOS use a stripped-down version of the NT kernel, compiled differently and without binary compat.

<comment><USER5> Yes, can't anyone make a Windows Store app for Xbox One?

<comment><USER4> Anyone can, that's right ;) Every Windows Store(UWP) app that isn't a game* is automatically pushed to Xbox devices also, except if the developer opts out.

* for games, it's separately handled for validation

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I do not have an xbox one and cannot verify that the exploit indeed works. With that being said, there's enough hints pointing to this being real so if you have an XBox running on the affected firmware, feel free to give it a try and comment."

I've no doubt this exploit is legit but it would be nice for reporters to actually verify these issues themselves before posting online.

The above basically reads to me I'M TOO LAZY TO CHECK MYSELF

<comment><USER7> He said he doesn't have an xbox one in TFA. What do you want him to do? Go buy one so he can make a blog post?

<comment><USER8> He could have ask a friend to apply the exploit, is a matter of responsibility because you need proofs to support your statements. What would happen if the exploit is not real and he called it out incorrectly?

<comment><USER9> The author stated that a proof of concept was released. This is a verifiably true fact. Nowhere was it claimed it worked, and in fact that's quite clear by the "unconfirmed" in the title and the "[w]e have not confirmed if this exploit works" in the first paragraph.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Backup your public GitHub repositories with GitHub-backup - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ericlathrop/github-backup

<comment> w0rd-driven Where a tool like this seems to _really_ make sense is not in the git repository. Most of us know or should know how to back this up properly.

The real power comes in dumping the issues, wiki, PRs, and any other information that is not completely contained in git. Having something that would dump the git+ so that even if a site like GitHub were to shutdown you at least had data, in hopefully human readable format like JSON, that can be parsed at a later time if you so choose.

This would also open the door for interop between things like GitLab, GitHub, and Bitbucket which all seem to have their own version of what the term "git+" should be. If this could be a pathway to lead to standardizing that API on top of git so that all these different players can talk with one another would be kinda huge as well. It's hard to see Github and Bitbucket wanting to work together for something like this when they have mouths to feed but something tells me "if _we_ build it, _they_ will come."

<comment><USER2> I wrote a tool like that for Github almost a year ago, finally got around to packaging it. It copies issues, issue events, watched/starred/private/public repos, wikis, etc. All configured via arguments. It's written in python with no external dependencies, so should work fine in most versions:

\- [https://pypi.python.org/pypi/github- backup](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/github-backup)

I built it as our company github org is getting quite big, and I wanted to backup my own repositories (at the time I had something like ~300 repos, which I've since slimmed down). Worked well enough for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks very nice. Much more comprehensive than my tool. If all my tool accomplished was to prompt you to release your better tool, then I'm a happy camper. Yay open source!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I released this as a product a few years ago and subsequently open sourced it. With a bit of work, it could be a good little web app to run on your own server to manage repo backups.

[https://github.com/antiqua-io/Antiqua](https://github.com/antiqua-io/Antiqua)

</comment><comment><USER4> Aren't your repos already backed up locally? I mean that is where I created them...

<comment><AUTHOR> Not when you use several different computers, or when you're done with an old project and delete your local copy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Plus, you can use this to backup someone else's repos in case they delete them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If I have to backup my github repositories what good is github for?! Showing my code to the world?!

<comment><USER6> Its a back up, not a replacement.

Maybe github is down or they close your account because they don't like you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can't even get it to work. Runs, but does nada. What am I missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have node.js installed and in your $PATH?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are there really people whose ONLY copy of a project is on GitHub? If so, I think they're not doing _distributed_ version control correctly.

<comment><AUTHOR> This tool helps you stay distributed by keeping a server somewhere that constantly backs up all your repos. With this you can't accidentally forget to make a copy if you make a quick repo in a coffee shop somewhere, and delete the local copy days later when you're cleaning up.

<comment><USER9> Or you could mirror to multiple repositories with one push. I write about how to use Github & Bitbucket simultaneously here: [http://deanclatworthy.com/2013/01/how-to-avoid-relying-on- gi...](http://deanclatworthy.com/2013/01/how-to-avoid-relying-on-github- mirror-your-repository/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that's a pretty neat approach! How well does that work with multiple people?

<comment><USER10> I can't imagine it would be that difficult with multiple people.

Even if they pulled from one or the other, so long as _someone_ merges the changes from the missing repo, everyone will be good to go.

This is a pretty unique approach to multiple git servers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


5 Cool Unix Hacks - <AUTHOR> http://nathanleclaire.com/blog/2013/10/27/5-cool-unix-hacks-for-fun-and-productivity#22blAbh

<comment><USER2> In regard to the first tip, I use `git add -i` even more often, because it gives you an interactive prompt that asks you which files you want to add to a commit (i.e. you don't have to type out the whole filename(s) each time).</comment>


Ask HN: Looking for startups focusing on AI/Machine Learning SAAS - <AUTHOR>

Anybody know of any? I am aware of a couple but hoping to sus-out some teams that are hungry to partner with on a startup of my own (meaning pay for your service). <comment><USER2> blue-yonder.com If you are interested you can pm me on linkedin: de.linkedin.com/pub/sebastian-neubauer/79/26a/166/

<comment><USER3> Ersatz1 Alchemy Wit.ai</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I can't code while lying down - <AUTHOR> I can do some light refactoring, or a bit of devops. But I simply cannot write any thought-provoking code while lying on my back. Thing is: I really like lying down. Should I give up lying down or give up programming? <comment><USER2> I have the same problem!

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe you just need a better chair.

</comment><comment><USER4> Practice.</comment>


Toyota joins Ford's infotainment fight against Google, Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2016/01/04/toyota-adopts-ford-smartdevicelink/ <comment><USER2> I have a toyota, and the system in it is pure junk. I only use it as much as I need to interface with my phone. It has a navigation system (a very expensive upgrade forced on me by the dealer as part of their package bundling strategy) that really sucks.

I vowed this: I will never buy another car that does not support CarPlay. If I have to, I'll go to older cars and buy used and retrofit a third party carplay system in it-- hell going to CarToys and having them do that would be a lot LOT cheaper than what I paid for the useless navigation system.

Car dealers (And everyone else hardware oriented it seems) can't make decent software... barely anyone but Apple can.. so why they think they can force proprietary systems on us an d make us think its "choice" is beyond me.

Furthermore the only reason CarPlay exists is because Apple is dong the car companies jobs for them (since they suck at software, and Apple does not.) IT's a very nice system designed to be flexible... the car makers should be ecstatic that the experience in their cars is no longer so subpar.

Remember, this is an industry that wouldn't give us audio in, let alone bluetooth for decades. (People were using walkmen and CD players in the 1980s. Audio In plugs only became common in 2010 IIRC)

Toyota can sign onto this open source choice-- that's fine, but if they don't also offer CarPlay, then they lose me as a customer.

And I've been driving toyotas for over 30 years.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm really glad someone's pushing an open source option here. I was pretty concerned it was going to be CarPlay this or Android Auto that alone. Ford also, I believe, said all of their cars in 2017 will support CarPlay and Android Auto as well, which means consumers should have options.</comment>


A "nationwide gentrification effect" is segregating us by education - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/07/11/college-graduates-are-sorting-themselves-into-cities-increasingly-out-of-reach-of-everyone-else/ <comment><USER2> Okay. I'm reading this: "Diamond also found that as cities increased their share of college graduates between 1980 and 2000, they also increased their bars, restaurants, dry cleaners, museums and art galleries per capita. And they experienced larger decreases in pollution and property crime, suggesting that cities that attract college grads benefit from both the kind of amenities that consumers pay for and those that are more intangible."

And my reaction is: yes, there is inequality, but what we're seeing here is that college graduates are improving their cities. Awesome!

And I really dislike this 30,000-foot view of humanity:

""" "When you have more college grads, all of these amenities seem to improve in your city," Diamond says. "But that may be at the expense of kicking out lower skilled workers to other cities."

It also comes at the expense of other cities that may lose their college grads. What happens to Toledo and Baton Rouge without them? """

I'm not subservient to helping cities-- I'm going to cities because of my own interests, and I absolutely reject any guilt to bringing down those cities. I dislike this attitude that sees people as pawns that we should move around for political goals rather than as people who are just living their lives.

<comment><USER3> _" I'm not subservient to helping cities-- I'm going to cities because of my own interests, and I absolutely reject any guilt to bringing down those cities."_

This dogma has penetrated very, very deep amongst techies. The invisible hand seems to be a drop-in replacement for any reflexion about morality for some.

<comment><USER4> Dogma has penetrated very deep. If you read Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations", the invisible hand is something that _intervenes_ in markets to prevent free trade among merchants from different nations.

Nowadays, 99% of the time people use his term the exact opposite way. They say it is a hand that gently guides merchants from different nations to trade with one another within a free market, and that such thing. They have twisted his term to mean the exact opposite of how Smith intended it.

<comment><USER5> No, Smith used the term "invisible hand" more generically to describe how the actions of individuals when optimizing for themselves can produce outcomes that may be optimal for greater purposes. In The Wealth of Nations, he uses it to refer to the way in which the actions of domestic businessmen support domestic industry in the best possible way (as though orchestrated by an invisible hand).[1]

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith says that the actions of the wealthy produce beneficial effects for all of society, as though guided by an invisible hand. This idea is commonly referred to as the "trickle-down effect" today.[2]

In modern economics the term is mostly used to refer to the way in which markets tend to self-regulate,[3] and it's known as THE invisible hand, which is a bit unfortunate since it's such a vague metaphor that it can easily be used to refer to almost any gestalt concept.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations#Book_IV:...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations#Book_IV:_Of_Systems_of_political_Economy) "As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it." (Book 4, Chapter 2) [2][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand#Other_uses_of_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand#Other_uses_of_the_phrase_by_Smith) "The rich … consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species." [3][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand)

<comment><USER6> Interestingly, the supporting claim about rich people consuming not much more than poor people, is massively less true now than it was centuries ago.

<comment> barry-cotter Could you expand on that? Technological progress has been less about increasing the gross amount of stuff the rich consume than the type. And for most things the poor get that stuff too, just later. iPhones, better, safer, more fuel efficient cars, flat screen TVs, , healthcare innovations etc.

Rich people do have nicer stuff but to a surprising extent they just have different stuff. An awful lot of that is zero sum social status signalling, like living in a richer area, or drinking wine, not beer, or gritting your teeth and congratulating your colleague on their kid getting into Princeton, when yours got into Duke.

I'd actually be really surprised if consumption inequality hasn't gone down since the fifties for most physical goods and services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > They're gaining access to high-cost cities like New York or San Francisco > that offer so much more than good jobs: more restaurants, better schools, > less crime, even cleaner air.

Yes, and a lot of these folks are spending the vast majority of their disposable income on housing and discretionary income on the so-called "amenities" mentioned in the article.

Don't get me wrong: it's great to be able to live in a desirable area with high employment, but at the end of the day, it's not what you make, it's what you keep. There are a lot of folks like this guy[1] who confuse cashflow from employment with financial security.

The paltry savings rates in this country aren't just a product of the less educated, lower-wage workers. If you look at national averages, it's pretty obvious that most college graduates aren't doing a great job of converting their higher wages into savings and assets.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5505622](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5505622)

<comment><USER8> i dont think that is fair. just because they are not taking advantage of their improved situation doesnt mean they dont have a situational advantage.

What im trying to say is, they do have a huge net benefit, but they may not be financially behaved to actually save it. My former roomate quite a bit of money and spent a great deal of it on alcohol. you could increase his wage, he'd just find a way to spend more. you could decrease his wage, and his spending on those non-accounted things would drop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Census data suggests that in 1980 a college graduate could expect to earn about 38 percent more than a worker with only a high-school diploma. Since then, the difference in their wages has only widened as our economy has shifted to bestow greater and greater rewards on the well-educated. By 2000, that number was about 57 percent. By 2011: 73 percent."

Regardless of how I feel about this, I wonder a bit what these numbers would look like if you took the one percent out of the equation. The distribution of wealth right now is totally nuts and concentrated at the very very top. If we were to remove them my suspicion is that it still would be trending up but maybe somewhat less severely.

<comment><USER8> This article doesnt state what census figure explicitly it was pulling from; however, its the norm to use median household income (or some other median value) as to not be skewed by outliers. In that case, removing the top 1% wouldnt make a difference.

<comment><USER10> Yes, if it was from here:

[https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/earnings/call1us...](https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/earnings/call1usboth.html)

then the median figure was used.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What degree of this is just how many college students is a city able to attract?

Georgia has worked very hard to make Georgia a good state for choosing to go to a local college, and I find it extremely unlikely that a large number of people are being pushed out of Atlanta due to cost of living, its extremely affordable to live in Atlanta, even more so if you consider the greater metro area.

<comment><USER12> This is a very good point. There are cities like Atlanta and Chicago that offer good jobs, good amenities and don't suffer in the same way - a large reason is ease of developing housing in areas there are demand. Boston, SF, NYC come with many unnecessary restrictions so supply is not able to shoot up with demand. Ed Glaser's book "Triumph of the City" discussed many of these issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This being hacker news I would ask if this is an inefficiency ready to be taken advantage of or a system ready to be disrupted?

I would argue that payment companies/services like Square are successful in part because they are doing just that. They lower the bar to someone with or without a collage degree starting a small business like a food cart or truck that can thrive in a collage grad heavy city.

Similarly sites that offer reviews make it easier for a business to prosper on merit and reduce the tendency of people to just go to a chain because they know what they will get.

I don't think this is an uphill battle. Surly a neighborhood feels more vibrant alive and inspiring when all the workers (tech and otherwise) are out on the street choosing from many unique options then when they all line up the mcdonald's drive through, starbuck's or the company cafeteria to get the same thing they got yesterday.

So what is the next great start up that helps make this happen?

<comment><USER14> Choice is good, until the food truck explodes ...

[http://articles.philly.com/2014-07-03/news/51033519_1_lunch-...](http://articles.philly.com/2014-07-03/news/51033519_1_lunch- truck-3rd-street-14-year-old-boy)

The consequence of the food truck growth is that there are now many more mobile, explosive installations of gas in existence as opposed to restaurants which have a contained, inspected, fixed installations of gas.

At what point did we have the conversation as to whether this is a good thing? We didn't.

Disruption isn't automatically a benefit.

<comment><USER13> Interesting point but I think the recent gas main explosion in new york and the fervor over our aging, difficult to inspect and dangerous gas mains (the one in question was 127 years old) needs to weighed if your going to argue safety. [1] Reputable propane fillers will only fill gas tanks that have been recently inspected and even the largest mobil tank only holds a limited amount of gas compared to what can be released when something connected to a main leaks.

However, my point more then being pro food truck or any one business model is that major socio-economic trends like groups of people needing to move away from some cities is indicative of something that might be target by a startup. Who knows, maybe the next big trend is custom manufacturing with same day delivery via 3d printers, skilled laborers and bike messengers leveraging both the concentrated capitol of the educated workers and creating jobs for people who would otherwise have to leave.

[1]: [http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/15/us/aging-gas- infrastructure/](http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/15/us/aging-gas-infrastructure/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There's another article on the front page right now, [http://www.venturedlife.com/episode- three](http://www.venturedlife.com/episode-three) that suggests Detroit could be the next Silicon Valley. I'd like to see an analysis of THAT article in the context of the findings reported on in THIS article.

<comment><USER16> Oakland and Washtenaw counties (adjacent to the county Detroit is in) have college graduates at rates far higher than the national average.

Washtenaw is about on par with San Francisco (but also only ~1/3 the population).

I think it's relevant because you don't need all those services to exist in the core of Detroit or a huge migration to get access to lots of educated people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am not sure how that could be prevented without reducing inequality. And I don't see how to raise the income of lower educated people in a world which is ever more automated.

<comment><USER18> Progressive taxation on wealth (not income). Then, mess with the curve of progressiveness.

Generating income becomes the unbridled thing. Sitting on mountains of wealth becomes futile. No dynasties. What have you done for me lately? You can live a king's life by generating obscene earned income, but your kids will only be assured easy street. Their kids only assured middle class. This gives grandpa and grandma a reason to improve the lot of the middle and lower classes.

If you let the lower groups fall too far into despondence, they will eventually come for your heads. You can build prisons to a point. You can create mental prisons to an extent. You can pacify the masses for a long while. Eventually, there's nothing left in the tank. Nothing to lose. Then, you lose stability and your choices are few.

The more your society reflects fiefdoms of the middle ages, the more you'll start seeing royalty thrown from windows and put on stakes.

We have the very wealthy (royalty). We have their military class ready to step in: Gun-coveting believers in the system that _amazingly_ keeps increasing inequality. Then we have a growing base of servants who can't own land or tools of production (education). This looks increasingly familiar.

Or maybe I just have some Dystopia Myopia.

<comment><USER19> > If you let the lower groups fall too far into despondence, they will > eventually come for your heads. You can build prisons to a point. You can > create mental prisons to an extent. You can pacify the masses for a long > while. Eventually, there's nothing left in the tank. Nothing to lose. Then, > you lose stability and your choices are few.

I don't think that's true. People will resort to violence and risk their lives when they're hungry and cold, not because the elite are driving Lamborghinis and they have to make do with Fords. As long as the lower classes have some minimum standard of living, greater and greater wealth inequality is sustainable.

<comment><USER18> I was unclear. I agree with this and was trying to say essentially this. Rich and powerful can try to contain those at the bottom through various means, but eventually those means won't be able to contain them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting to note that

(1) The cost of attending college has grown faster than inflation over the past few decades.

(2) Yet, it seems that the ROI on college is high (for those you graduate), as evidenced in this article.

(3) There's another statistic that gets bandied in education reform circles: 43% of college grads in 2013 were underemployed (working jobs that don't need a college degree).

I wonder how #3 reconciles with #1 and #2. Perhaps this is a case of averages lying, and the ROI data for top colleges might look very different from bottom colleges (to the point where there may even be no income disparity between attending a bad college vs. not attending college).

Has anyone seen a better / deeper analysis of this?

<comment><USER21> Perhaps it's not the "going to college" that puts one at an advantage, but the "being able to go to college." In other words, the people who are able to make the choice to go and afford it were already at an advantageous position.

<comment><USER22> That makes sense, but I don't think it is as big of a factor as the actual value of education. Our economy is increasingly shifting to skilled labor. If you have the right skill set, opportunities abound.

<comment><USER23> To some degree that's still begging the question of whether "education" in the traditional sense is the best way to acquire those skills. In the case of (a good school, a typical person) I think the answer is _yes_ for an important chunk of those skills (while other important chunks are not learned well in that setting). As you move further from that case, more questions are raised, and of course partisans in the pro/anti ("traditional") education camps tend to ignore one or the other of the chunks I mentioned.

<comment><USER22> I think that surrounding yourself with other smart people with a common interest in learning and where you are expected to learn is the best way to acquire those skills. I think that is harder to find outside of formal educational programs.

<comment><USER23> I mostly agree.

<comment><USER22> Yeah, I didn't mean to imply I disagreed with you. When I think about what makes traditional education so valuable I don't think its the traditional education part of it. When one thinks about what makes a college a college, you think about the quality of the professors and curriculum and while I think that's valuable, I don't that's the key part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Pittsburgh is quite an outlier on those charts. Anyone know why?

<comment><USER25> Pittsburgh is a pretty amazing place right now, because it's a recovering rust belt city that's managed to transition from manufacturing (steel) to services (health care, banking, higher education, technology firms) pretty well but because their initial crash was SO hard they still have very affordable cost- of-living comparitively. So you have all the public transit and nice museums and great libraries and all that but a bartender and a waitress can buy a house and raise kids together too. It's someplace where "hipsters" are not secretly living off their parents' money to front as making it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _" A higher share of college graduates also yielded higher wages for workers without college degrees, likely because employers have to pay them more to keep them in higher-cost cities:"_

I'm wondering if the increase in average wage of non-college degree holders outweighed the higher cost of living in the cities with high concentrations of college degree holders.

If so, not so bad, all boats lifted higher by the tide &c. I suspect that the rise does _not_ outweigh the increased cost of living, especially rents/housing costs. The result is a long commute added onto the day for the people who do not hold college degrees and who work in the chi-chi economy. That process has limits.

Perhaps it needs a generation or two to reach steady-state?

</comment><comment><USER27> "They're gaining access to high-cost cities like New York or San Francisco that offer so much more than good jobs: more restaurants, better schools, less crime, even cleaner air."

lol what? The whole article reads like someone who has a giant boner for SF. Lots of assumptions that it's an objectively better place to live and _obviously_ everyone wishes they could live there.

Tech job hubs are few and far between. There are only a handful of cities you have to choose from. Toledo and Baton Rouge aren't on the table for tech workers just like SF and NYC aren't on the table for a high school drop out.

</comment><comment><USER28> Interesting article and data, it is basically a deep and narrow dive into one of the issues tacked by the 2008 book 'The Big Sort': [http://www.thebigsort.com/](http://www.thebigsort.com/)

</comment><comment><USER29> This just in: Rich people have better lives and are happier than poor people! Film at 11.

If they want people to start taking inequality seriously, the first thing journalists might want to do is to figure out what the hell they're trying to accomplish.

<comment><USER30> What if what the journalists are trying to accomplish is to make information available to people and prompt dialogue about the issues -- whatever the outcome of that dialogue?</comment></comment>


How Many Reviewers Should Be in the Kitchen? - Yelp vs. Zagat - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/technology/07digi.html

<comment><USER2> You can add to this the fact that Google is also in the mix.

e.g. [http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=bars+in+san+francisco&fb=1&view=text&sa=X&oi=local_group&resnum=1&ct=more- results&cd=1)

Personally I like Yelp better, but I've only really been looking in SF (which is their strongest card).

<comment><USER3> Google seems to link to TripAdvisor reviews in most cases

<comment><USER2> I tend to get a whole assortment - might be very location/type dependent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a user:

I use Yelp quite a bit... but I don't really trust their rating system since I heard a while back that they pay a lot of their reviewers or "marketing associates". I've often found myself disagreeing with their ratings.

I used Zagats almost exclusively during my corporate days. Reviews seemed pretty trustworthy but the whole annual publishing thing was way too slow.

As a business:

I've heard from classmates of a Zagat family member that the company does pretty well financially. From what I remember, all my consulting/banking friends got a Zagats membership as a company perk, which helped build brand loyalty and probably generated dependable cash flow.

On the other hand, I've heard from media reports that Yelp doesn't generate a lot of cash (they've taken 4 rounds of VC financing). I guess they're waiting for the big exit for their great traffic growth.

</comment><comment><USER5> The problem with Yelp is that the reviewers are all a bunch of nouveau riche twentysomethings who only care about the ambiance, not the food. Most of the reviews are about how cool the reviewer is, and not the restaurant itself. I'll take Zagats any day.

</comment><comment><USER6> In Chicago, I've become wary of trusting much on Yelp. I've been checking out touristy stuff lately and had some really lousy experiences. Inevitably, when I check to see what the yelpers think, they rave and 5-star it.

<comment><USER7> Don't do the touristy stuff in Chicago.

As an aside, I've found that Yelp rarely helps me decide on a restaurant. Sometimes Yelp says a place is bad, and I love it. Sometimes it says it's great, and I hate it. Sometimes we agree, but basically I can't trust it. People that aren't professional reviewers don't really know how to review a place ("1 star because I don't like cheese, but ordered a cheese pizza." People on Amazon do this too -- "I didn't like jrockway's book because it didn't cover something I wanted it to." That is a wish, not a review.)

<comment><USER6> I'm checking off the things I want to make sure I do while I'm here. I agree, touristy stuff's usually lame, but you gotta go to the Sears Tower, right?

<comment><USER7> The view is nice, but I hate how touristy it is. They make you watch this dumb movie about how great Chicago is before you can take the elevator upstairs.

I like the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building ("tocho") in Tokyo (obviously). You walk into the lobby and press the "up" button on the elevator. Then you press the button for 90-whatever, wait a while, and get off at the top. Then you enjoy the view. (And it's free, of course.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My little pet theory, based on the 10/20/70 rule, is that the individual reviews themselves become less important. The 70% of yelp users will only want 2 type of information: what's the star rating of a place and how expensive/category it is.

<comment><USER9> And for the late nighters: credit card and delivery.</comment></comment>


HTTP 2.0 First Draft Published - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2012/11/http20-first-draft <comment><USER2> Personally (i.e. not speaking on behalf of my employer) I'm not terribly keen on SPDY being HTTP 2.0. It fixes HTTP/1.1 pipelining by adding a layer of binary complexity to a protocol that has succeeded by being simple and textual.

Also, it's a sort-of-layer because it really is dependent on details of HTTP (such as the existence of headers) to operate so it is not an independent layer. In networking I'm much happier when layers are independently specified.

Also, I think the implementation of header compression is poor because it uses a fixed dictionary that is based on current HTTP headers. There's no provision for negotiation of this going forward. It would be better if the compression dictionary were negotiated on session creation. Notice how the dictionary has been updated between standard drafts. Once it's in the standard updates will not be possible.

And SPDY requires TLS which means that if it were HTTP 2.0 it would require the deployment of certificates everywhere. That's an added expense for a web site operator. Unless SSL certificates are suddenly free and trivial to deploy then that would make HTTP 2.0 complex.

I would much rather see a proposal to change HTTP so that pipelining works, using textual headers and not require TLS.

<comment><USER3> _requires TLS which means that if it were HTTP 2.0 it would require the deployment of certificates everywhere. That's an added expense for a web site operator. Unless SSL certificates are suddenly free and trivial to deploy_

Get the browser vendors to stop being idiots, and treat self-signed SSL connections as identical to plaintext connections.

Or even better get them to implement a notary model [ <http://perspectives- project.org> ] (as a default rather than an extension), that doesn't allow for a single insecure CA to break the security of the entire web.

<comment><USER4> The first step towards an alternative to the multiple- single- points- of- failure CA model is already underway: it's Trevor Perrin and Moxie Marlinspike's TACK project (currently an Internet Draft). TACK allows sites to cache certificate pins, typically after first contact, so that any site on the Internet can have the same protection that Google's properties have today by virtue of the hardcoded pins in Chrome.

As Moxie Marlinspike has said, on HN even, TACK is a sensible and achievable first step towards a substrate that we can build notaries or other trust models on top of. It doesn't require years of study and consideration; it merely extends something that browser vendors already do for their preferred sites.

Meanwhile, browsers can't simply treat sites under self-signed certificates as normal plaintext HTTP sites. The user reached the site through an HTTPS URL, which promised them security. When the browser detects and warns about a self- signed certificate, it is telling the user "this site is lying about its security". The simple way to understand this: start by asking what a browser should do when the Citibank Online Banking Login presents a broken cert, and then ask how the browser should know when it's OK for a site to present as merely "not encrypted" (ie, HN login) and when it's not OK (ie, online banking). It can't. The browser has to assume that HTTPS sites with broken certificates are sensitive.

Remember also, the "broken certificate" case is exactly what happens when an attacker intercepts a TLS connection for a MITM attack.

<comment><USER3> _Meanwhile, browsers can't simply treat sites under self-signed certificates as normal plaintext HTTP sites. The user reached the site through an HTTPS URL, which promised them security._

The user reached the site by clicking on a link or bookmark, and doesn't know or care about http vs https.

 _start by asking what a browser should do when the Citibank Online Banking Login presents a broken cert_

It should not show the green "Citigroup Inc (US)" at the left of the address bar.

If I go type "citicards.com" into the address bar, I end up _redirected to_ a SSL site with an EV cert. If my DNS got hijacked, I would probably end up _not redirected_ to the SSL site, rather than redirected to a site with a broken cert. So non-SSL sites are just as dangerous ad sites with bad certs, and should be presented the same way.

 _how the browser should know when it's OK for a site to present as merely "not encrypted" (ie, HN login) and when it's not OK (ie, online banking). It can't. The browser has to assume that HTTPS sites with broken certificates are sensitive._

The browser should visually distinguish sites that are safe for sensitive info from those that are not. Plaintext and self-signed SSL are both not safe. Site with "EV" certs are supposedly safe. Site with other CA-signed certs are also supposedly safe, but slightly less so.

So, show EV sites with the green name by the address bar, like recent browsers do now. Show sites with other CA-signed certs with the little lock icon, and maybe color it light green. Show plaintext and self-signed sites with nothing at all, and maybe color the address bar slightly red. But, _do this identically_ for non-signed and self-signed sites.

<comment><USER4> Your HTTPS "session" with your bank isn't just one connection that can be checked a single time when you first connect; it's hundreds of individual HTTPS connections, each of which needs to be verified, or an attacker will just corrupt the least obvious connection and use that to break the security of the whole app.

<comment><USER3> Browsers already complain if a site mixes http and https, why can't they complain if security levels are mixed at all (plaintext, self-signed, normal- CA-signed, EV, TACK-pinned)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it will be quite tragic if HTTP 2.0 ends up being a binary protocol. The discoverability and readability of the basic text based Internet was, in my opinion, one of its most fantastic qualities. It meant that as a young hacker I could just look at things and _see_ how they work and then progress to learning and experimenting by writing very naive partial implementations of said protocols. I am not sure the bits saved justify the obfuscation of everything.

</comment><comment><USER6> My favorite part about it is that everything will be encrypted by default in the future.

<comment><USER7> And require SSL certs, which cost how much again? It's quite an expense for hobby sites, non-profits, and such.

<comment><USER8> Like most (all?) digital products, the price of SSL certificates will converge to zero with higher usage. So mass adoption might be beneficial after all.

<comment><USER9> I believe the Internet should stay free, and making your own website should certainly stay free.

Right now, you don't have to have a domain. You don't have to pay for a SSL certificate. You don't have to pay for hosting. The only thing actually need you pay for is the link to the ISP.

And it's not like there weren't better, free alternatives either. Ultimately it's not about the price tag. It's about having a third party controlling your stuff. It's more about freedom than free as in beer.

<comment><USER10> Then continue using HTTP/1.1.

SSL needs to verify the site's identity to be effective, period. For a certain level of trust (EV certs, for example) that requires humans doing work, at least for now. Humans cost money. StartSSL's free certs work perfectly well for non-EV requirements, which basically amount to a verification level of "someone who can read email on this domain has requested a cert for it" - which can be, and is, completely automated and therefore available for free.

<comment><USER9> That reply is wrong on so many levels.

First of all, everyone wants the benefits of HTTP/2.0, obviously. Else I'd be using gopher, thank you very much.

Then, startssl is a company, that happens to give free certs. For one single sub-domain. Got two subdomains? Gotta pay. They can also decide to make those non-free at any given moment, if they feel like it.

The only part I agree with, is paying for EV certificates. But you should NOT need to pay and you should NOT need a third party to be responsible for YOUR certificates if you do not want to.

And again, there's quite a few distributed trust models around that work well and do exactly that, but get great push back from vendors, since, by nature, they don't bring as much money back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone else have any experience setting up SPDY on a web server? Since SPDY is already supported by Chrome and Firefox, I'd be interested in at least experimenting with it if there is an Apache or Nginx based solution which is stable enough to work in production. Of course I would also need to serve old style HTTP for those that are using a browser which doesn't support SPDY but if there is a way to serve SPDY to those who can support it I'm all for trying it out.

<comment><USER12> There's mod_spdy for Apache 2.2 developed by Google employees:

<http://code.google.com/p/mod-spdy/>

And a spdy patch for nginx from one of the main nginx developers:

<http://nginx.org/patches/spdy/>

Wordpress and CloudFlare both use the nginx patch so it should be production ready.

I use mod_spdy and haven't had any problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> And here we go again, another design by committee to haunt us. If this piece of crap sticks we all will have to keep using HTTP 1.1 which by the way isn't that bad. First web sockets, and not this. Just great.</comment>


What if the world's borders were open - <AUTHOR> http://worldif.economist.com/article/13532/78-trillion-free-lunchv <comment><USER2> Yesterday's discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14829936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14829936)</comment>


What It's Like to Describe Porn for a Blind Audience - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/culture/2020/02/pornhub-audio-description-interview-accessibility.html <comment><USER2> On a recent flight I decided to check what movies were available, and out of curiosity I selected the "Audio Description" option for Avengers.

It basically means the movie's audio track is kept as is, while an additional voice is added. The voice explains the scene, what the characters do, and the general gist of what's happening. These guys have to be really creative and it impressed me quite a bit.

In fact, it turns out the voice actor for Avengers is Christian Simpson and he's also known for running his own YouTube show about retro computing called Perifractic's Retro Recipes. Worth checking out if you're into that kind of thing.</comment>


Why 'zero rating' is the new battleground in net neutrality debate - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/why-zero-rating-is-the-new-battleground-in-net-neutrality-debate-1.3015070?cmp=rss <comment><USER2> I've been following net neutrality issues pretty closely and this is the first I've heard the term "zero rating". I didn't have a clear understanding of the term after reading the article, since I wasn't sure if zero rating was the exemption or if ISPs were exempting services from the zero rating. The wikipedia[0] entry helped, also referring to it as "toll-free data" which cleared up the confusion for me.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero- rating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating)

</comment><comment><USER3> A few centuries ago England used number of water channels for transportation. There was a law that owner of channel could not be associated with user in any way.

<comment><USER4> Until 1990, it used to be that the mobile phone networks in the UK were not allowed to have a relationship with the retail customers on their network, instead with the billing and account management performed by a range of third parties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've lived in Canada and the US. Canada's providers made me like Comcast. The service is very bad, with caps on cable (80G when I left), high cost, collusion among the two service providers, a regulator in their pocket, and publicity campaigns to stoke nationalism to block foreign (i.e. US) providers from coming in.

Just like the US, but so much worse.

</comment><comment><USER6> Personally, I think zero rating is a good thing, especially as it operates in the Australian environment (or, at least, how it has operated previously). It has largely been consumer positive, allowing premium tier ISPs to differentiate themselves by making the effort to peer with service providers, and consumers benefit from the free quota. There are some distasteful uses though - where there are exclusive peering agreements, particularly around sporting events.

All in all, I think the CRTC has taken a pretty good approach. Perhaps the third-party only rule should be extended to refusing exclusivity arrangements, but a complete ban is over the top in my opinion - it discourages passing on savings made by peering with companies to consumers.

<comment><USER7> The article makes the correct point that even if the upside is access to more services for now, zero-rating effectively favours big companies and big services, (who have the money and time to negotiate these deals with carriers and ISPs) and removes the "level playing field" which most people believe is at the core of the Internet and fuels innovation and allows startup services to thrive and grow.

<comment><USER8> There's no level playing field in business as it is. Incumbents have the advantage of having more resources than start-ups, that's what makes disruption hard. Saying zero rating shouldn't be allowed is worse for me as a consumer, I'd definitely like it if music streaming apps I use made deals with my wireless carrier so I could stream as much as I wanted.

You (and startups) are basically asking for a subsidy that doesn't exist for anyone else. No one is giving Jolla a hand in taking on Samsung or Apple in the phone business.

<comment><USER9> You should just say that you don't buy the argument of net neutrality. The intent is that network access is non-discriminatory. ISPs will not be allowed to offer special deals that benefit one service provider over another. It's not a subsidy, it's treating bandwidth as a regulated utility.

You can choose to imagine cellphone hardware as a utility but clearly it is not.

<comment><USER10> So, an ISP that makes a deal with a content provider to host a server caching the content provider's data on their network, specifically to improve bandwidth and reduce transit costs, should not be allowed to pass on that savings to the customer, and should instead be forced to pocket it all themselves?

<comment><USER11> They shouldn't pass on the savings to just _some_ of the customers; there's no reason they can't pass on the savings to _all_ of their customers. After all, everyone benefits: those using the service with the CDN node get a faster path to that content, and everyone else gets a less congested path to the rest of the internet.

<comment><USER10> > They shouldn't pass on the savings to just some of the customers; there's no > reason they can't pass on the savings to all of their customers.

So they shouldn't be allowed to pass the savings on to the customers who actually use the service in question and thus benefit from the colocated server? And this is supposed to be more "fair"? And somehow the ISP's rate model for their customers is yours to dictate?

Consider if ISPs actually charged customers by data transfer, the way many large datacenters do. What actually costs the ISP money is data transferred _outside_ the ISP's network, going over peering connections. Many datacenters don't charge for bandwidth within their own network; for instance, bandwidth between AWS nodes in the same area is free. So why can't an ISP use the same model, and only charge for bandwidth going over their peering connections but not for bandwidth that stays inside their own network (such as to the YouTube or Wikipedia mirror they're hosting)?

For the record, I _do_ believe in network neutrality in the sense that ISPs should not be artificially limiting bandwidth to particular Internet services (though I'd prefer to see that solved more naturally through ISP competition, but there's a severe lack of local ISP competition available). I don't, however, see anything wrong with setting up additional peering/colocation/etc arrangements that are designed to be mutually beneficial to the ISP, their customers, _and_ the services whose data they're carrying.

<comment><USER12> The cost savings from CDN colocation and peering to the ISP as so miniscule that, even if they were passed on in full, would barely register on your bill. We are talking about fractions of a cent per customer.

Zero rating is not about passing on cost savings, it's about market power and discrimination.

Also, datacenters do not usually charge by data transfer. Just because Amazon does it (and overcharges by two orders of magnitude) does not mean others do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If used in the right context, I don't see a problem with 'zero rating.' T-mobile[0] has been doing this for a little bit now and, to me, it seems to be beneficial. The issues only arise when you are zero rating individual services belonging to one genre or vertical. Saying that Netflix won't count against your usage but Hulu does would be a problem.

[0] [http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/free-music- streaming.html](http://www.t-mobile.com/offer/free-music-streaming.html)

<comment><USER12> Zero rating is a pox upon the Internet and should be killed with fire, regardless of any perceived short term benefit to some end users. In the long term zero rating is always toxic.

There are over 800 telcos in the world. Even if zero rating was free to the app/service provider, just negotiating with each and every telco would be a huge burden.

Zero rating is, however, neither free nor available to all app/service providers. Thus zero rating creates both a toll booth and a gatekeeper who gets to discriminate against app/service providers and pick winners and loosers.

<comment><USER14> what if mobile carriers where not allowed to discriminate whom they could sell zero-rated services to, so each service provider/app should have the freedom to choose the business model that works best for themselves?

what if 3rd parties where allowed to buy zero-rated URLs or IPs in "bulk" from all the carriers in a geography, making it much easier to contract all mobile carriers?

preventing companies to provide zero-rated services increases the digital divide as it inhibit people who cannot afford to buy a data plan to use services. In many areas of the world, the majority of mobile consumers are on pre-paid plans and have zero credits most of the time (most countries have calling party pays, so a smartphone with zero credit is still very valuable to receive calls)

<comment><USER12> > what if mobile carriers where not allowed to discriminate whom they could > sell zero-rated services to, so each service provider/app should have the > freedom to choose the business model that works best for themselves?

While nominally better, it would just be like putting lipstick on a pig. There would also be serious real world problems with actually enforing such a regimen.

> what if 3rd parties where allowed to buy zero-rated URLs or IPs in "bulk" > from all the carriers in a geography, making it much easier to contract all > mobile carriers?

My answer is pretty much the same as above, only this one is a bit more ambitious. It's basically like suggesting world peace as a solution to global conflicts. Getting all the carriers in a geographic region on board, implementing, rolling out and enforcing such a thing would almost be an effort worth a Nobel price in itself.

> preventing companies to provide zero-rated services increases the digital > divide as it inhibit people who cannot afford to buy a data plan to use > services. In many areas of the world, the majority of mobile consumers are > on pre-paid plans and have zero credits most of the time (most countries > have calling party pays, so a smartphone with zero credit is still very > valuable to receive calls)

Offering zero rating as a solution to this problem is a false choice. Zero rating is providing a means of communication for free AND limiting what it can be used for. The correct choice is to provide the same means of communications for free and NOT limiting what it can be used for. That is how you remove the digital divide.

If need be this free mode of communication can be limited by speed or by amount, as is customary in the mobile world. What is not reasonable is to limit what can be done with it.

TL;DR zero rating is evil, give users a free tier or quota instead.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Help the Moldovan company RITLabs to survive - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/SLjDrQN1 <comment><USER3> That is sad to hear.

As a rule, when Moldova is in the news, it is rarely good news.

> We think it is a deliberate attempt to destroy our company.

That would probably be true. Knowing how things work there.

This is the country which had $1B stolen from it. Not from a company, but from the country! Sounds too crazy to be true? Nope, it is true in Moldova.

[http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/07/news/economy/moldova- stolen-...](http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/07/news/economy/moldova-stolen- billion/)

That is a whooping 12% of its GDP. Imagine someone walking away with $2T away from US.

On the other hand, if you are a corrupt criminal, Moldova is a nice place to hang out. You can make your own laws, pay your way out of anything. Corruption attracts corruption.

EDIT: This is also a country were when I lived there, someone put a bomb under the door of someone they don't like in a 5 story apartment building. I was in the evening on the phone with someone and the whole building shook, thought it was an earthquake. Nope, apartment building next door was bombed. The part of the roof and the part of the wall was missing. Could see people's furniture inside and all after the dust settled. It was miracle nobody died.

<comment><USER4> > Imagine someone walking away with $2T away from US.

Not so hard to imagine:

[https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/want-cut- govern...](https://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/want-cut-government- waste-8-5-trillion-pentagon-142321339.html)

Moldova's $1 billion probably got "lost" in a similar way - corruption that doesn't appear in the books.

<comment><USER3> At least criminality in Moldova can be agile ;-) you don't need a whole military contractor company to steal billions from taxpayers to say build "infrastructure" in Iraq or Afghanistan. Alone or with a few accomplices can efficiently take the money and cut out all the fakery in between.

<comment><USER5> So it seems Moldova offers a lesson for startups on how to disrupt corruption industry. It's time for the dinosaurs of military-industrial complex to shake in fear as the agile lean Bribe-as-a-Service companies take their marketshare. ;).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> kind of surrealism :

[https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritlabs](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritlabs)

"В 2013 году фирма удостоилась звания «Сознательный налогоплательщик»[4], учрежденного Главной Государственной Налоговой Инспекцией Республики Молдова."

translation:

"In 2013 the company was awarded the title "Conscious Taxpayer" by the Moldova State Tax Agency (ie. like IRS) "

and according to this [http://logos.press.md/node/38228](http://logos.press.md/node/38228) the company was also given "Certificate of Trust" along with the title which meant official guarantee of absence of tax audits for the 2 years following that.

Edit: After spending some time Google-ing it seems just a simple case of extortion by the team consisting of a local police inspector, prosecutor and a judge, i.e. it looks like RitLabs, despite their good taxpayer status, has still missed (and seems to be stubbornly refusing) to pay some local "tax" :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Depends.

Here's the full story:

[http://pastebin.com/gKqTcH4j](http://pastebin.com/gKqTcH4j)

<comment><USER7> Why is this all in pastebins? As opposed to company website, personal blog, Kickstarter, something even vaguely reputable...?

<comment><USER8> Looks like those messages are copied from mailing lists (TBBETA and/or TBUDL). Considering The Bat! was the most popular product[1] and its users were email addicted those mailing lists are the best way to reach their users directly.

I've seen publications in local[2] "press" about the case although it focuses only on corruption and there is no mention of internal company's politics there.

[1] at time I worked there it was the only source of revenue, not sure if any other product take off since

[2] yep, I'm in Moldova

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm originally from Moldova and it's very sad to read yet another abuse story from Moldovan authorities :( Communist roots are so deep, not even Vlad Dracula will be able to fix it.

Will help as much as I can, but a piece of advice to Ritlab team - <USER2> moving your company outside of Moldova and afterwards write a "Thank You" letter ;)

</comment><comment><USER10> oh, heck, these are guys behind TheBat email client snd FAR. Some of the most useful Win progs I ever seen before I falled to *nix.

<comment><USER11> Not FAR. It was Eugene Roshal[1]

[1]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Roshal](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Roshal)

<comment><USER10> ah, sorry, that was DOS Navigator, also very useful, it even had trash bin!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sympathetic with their plea, but I don't quite understand this: "There is no such a law in Moldova to permit for a Moldovan court to allow an ex parte suspension of a bank account. But this law was violated in case of Ritlabs, SRL." How can an inexistent law be violated?</comment>