Ask HN: Do you use GnuPG? - <AUTHOR>

Do you use GPG to encrypt or sign your stuff? E-mail, documents, or your entire hard drive (with TrueCrypt)?<p>I use 1Password and an encrypted disk image now and then, but haven't yet found a need to use GPG. Security precautions for me have revolved around making sure data is safe if my laptop gets stolen; I don't sign my e-mail or anything like that yet. These days we have things like FileVault and BitLocker for encryption... have you found a need to use GPG either in addition to or as a replacement for other security programs? <comment><USER2> I use GPG to sign the hashes on tarsnap source code tarballs -- without that, tarsnap users would have to trust that my SSL server was feeding them the right bits.

I also sign security advisories and patches while wearing my FreeBSD Security Officer hat.

</comment><comment><USER3> No because I don't consider any of my data important enough. Nor any emails etc etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, when I need to use it I, I sign/encrypt my emails with GnuPG</comment>


Ask HN: What upcoming conferences are you attending? - <AUTHOR>

I just found out about the strange loop, which looks like an amazing conference, but it's sold out. There are some upcoming Ruby and Rails conferences that are possibilities, but I'm more interested in attending conferences that cover topics I don't work with on a day to day basis.<p>With that said, what upcoming conferences or training sessions are you excited about? <comment><USER2> Lone Star Ruby Conf. Hopefully PyConf 2012.

The only conference I've previously attended is No Fluff Just Stuff (Java focus) and it'll be interesting to see how these compare.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's a YC startup that does just this for you:

<http://lanyrd.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Lanyrd is good, and I use it, but it certainly doesn't beat talking with a group of like-minded people about common interests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> WordCamp SF, this weekend

</comment><comment><USER5> Going to pycon-au</comment>


Instapainting – From $4k in debt to $32k/mo in passive revenue with no employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/instapainting <comment><USER2> Congrats on the success. Thanks for sharing the business story too.

Disclaimer: this is not a paid endorsement. I don't know Chris. But I happen to be a customer - having bought a painting as a gift. It is framed on the wall at this moment.

My only feedback. Your prices felt too inexpensive. Knowing something was handmade I would have paid more than I did. I'm sure you have researched the market and margins and all that, just letting you know my experience.

Also the artist being from China aspect that other comments are mentioning, almost everything we own is made in China, and the location or nationality of an artist shouldn't be any different than other types of work. Also there are some darn good artists in China, check Youtube for examples.

Congrats again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! Thanks for the comment!

All I can say is that the reason I don't charge more is it'd just be lining my pockets since the artists set their prices at a pretty consistent rate. I don't get lower rates from the artists than my competitors, so I just undercut them in final retail price instead.

<comment><USER2> > the reason I don't charge more is it'd just be lining my pockets

What's wrong with lining your pockets? This is a business no?

<comment><USER3> That's not how business works. Unless you want transitory success.

<comment><USER2> That is how business works. It's the definition of business. He is not running a charity. It is a _for profit_ business.

Also, the intent of my question wasn't greedy-capitalism-gouge-the- customer...I meant if a business can charge more for their service and have better margins without pricing out would-be customers or losing them to lower priced competition (neither were his reasons) then why not charge more?

That extra money can be reinvested in this business or another business or used to retire early or go on vacation.

The guy runs a business, make a profit when you can. Every success is transitory here.

<comment><USER4> We're discussing how low his prices are, which is PHENOMENAL press for him. Taking a lower profit margin on a larger revenue stream is another way to get rich.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure if I'm missing something or why nobody else has asked this -- the things you've done "for SEO purposes" all seem like full time jobs on their own! Like:

\- Building a robot \- Neural algorithm AI \- Multiplayer 2048 clone

Is there any secret to all of these, like outsourcing or anything, or are you just an insane genius? (which I don't doubt actually..)

<comment><USER6> Sounds like he is a rather intelligent person.

I mean 4k in dept are hard, but all that he did (Microservices, Robotics, AI, Games) seems like way over the top of your average person.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the key is to leverage your existing skill sets. I'm primarily a coder so many of these hacks were technical, and their audience was HN.

The other thing is to start with shortcuts. The robot's hardware I used mainly from a kit, and that left only the software.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's going on with the shipping pricing?

        > Standard delivery (approx 3 weeks)
        > Guaranteed (+$15)
        > Within 25 days (+$20)
        > Within 15 days (+$20)

3 weeks is 21 days, so assuming "guaranteed" just removes the "approx", why would I ever pay more for "within 25"?

Further, why would I ever pay for "within 25" when "within 15" is the same price?

Surely this can be condensed to:

        > Standard delivery (approx 3 weeks)
        > Guaranteed within 3 weeks (+$15)
        > Guaranteed within 15 days (+$20)

without changing the effective pricing; while making the options clearer.

<comment><USER8> Here's a great bit by Dan Ariely (behavioral economics) that might answer your question:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOhb4LwAaJk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOhb4LwAaJk)

And while I'm sharing Dan Ariely links, here's another one (but I can't tell you what it's about, just watch and wait for it):

[https://vimeo.com/63062967](https://vimeo.com/63062967)

<comment><USER9> Wow the second video is really great, can't recommend it enough.

Do you know what tool did he used for the text? (I know this sounds weird, I'm trying not to spoil here ;)

<comment><USER8> No idea, sorry :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can answer any questions, whether about how to get a great Christmas present, or questions about the article!

<comment><USER10> I have a question! (Even though I could've just asked you this during the interview itself.)

You say that you've automated most of the process of running the business: "I've gradually adapted the software over time to automate every process, and generally I only have to step in in rare instances of high-level disputes."

How much time do you spend working nowadays? And on what? What's your typical day look like?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's passive income in the sense that if I just dropped everything and played video games all day, the income would sustain itself.

However that's far from what I actually do :). It simply means I can free myself up to work on new features or increase revenue. So I'm still working about on average 5-8 hours per day, 6-7 days a week.

I like to travel a bit, and work while traveling. Since I have no employees, this makes it easier to have this lifestyle. Whenever I get a chance to sit down in a coffee shop I'll usually stay a few hours and do work.

<comment><USER11> So it is not passive. That's ok, almost all "passive income" isn't, and the term has been abused into near uselessness.

Sounds like the term you are actually looking for is "lifestyle business"

Nothing wrong than that, and it's a more sensible (i.e. well defined) goal that passive income.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is passive. The revnue quoted is not sustained by the regular work. That I put into the service. As I stated, if I stopped working then that income would stay, and be considered passive.

<comment><USER11> Would it? Or would it slowly decrease? Nearly all businesses have some momentum, after all.

If you can walk away for say a year without touching it at all and the revenue remains basically steady, I'll agree it is passive.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter - it sounds like you are working at growing a business you enjoy and that's great.

<comment><USER12> There can be middle ground. I have a very similar situation to the OPs.

If I stopped working for over a year, eventually there would be complaints, competitors, etc

But within a one year timeframe, there's very little I have to do. And I could get away with working a couple months of the year only + maybe three hours a week maintenance, and the business would grow, slowly.

But, I work consistently, adding new things, because I want it to grow faster. I also know that the environment changes and eventually the current model may stop working or need adaptation.

What do you call that? It's not 100% passive. But, it's not particularly active either.

Actually, having written all this, I remembered someone did come up with a better term: residual revenue.

Meaning that I did a bunch of work in the past that continues to pay off. It will eventually decay, but not very fast. So I can devote most of my energy to new growth, or leisure, over the short to medium run anyway.

Do you think residual revenue (or income) is a better term for this case?

<comment><USER11> That might work, yes. I like the term much better than passive.

If you need to [edit regularly] respond to SEO changes, or payment provider issues, or maintain your relationships somehow it just isn't passive. It's not a lot of work, hopefully, but it is not passive. You need to stay engaged enough to know how to do it.

Reacting to the environment changes and modeling absolutely is not passive, and I wish people would stop calling it that. I also suspect people underestimate the amount of time they actually spend on this stuff.

<comment><USER13> _If you need to respond to SEO changes, or payment provider issues, or maintain your relationships somehow it just isn 't passive._

I'm not sure that's a terribly useful definition. Since any business must have some means of accepting revenues, and almost any means of accepting revenues is subject to dispute, by your argument there is probably no business in the world with a truly passive income. Likewise, in many places you are at minimum going to have to file some sort of annual statements and tax returns for any commercial business.

If a business is generating revenues that don't require anyone to do routine/regular work to keep the money coming in, it seems reasonable to call it passive, even if someone needs to step in under rare or exceptional circumstances.

<comment><USER11> Ok, I should have added "regularly" respond, that would have been clearer.

What I'm getting at is: If I adjust SEO targets, mailing lists, app or interface code say monthly to keep things moving along, it really isn't passive.

I'm not thinking about annual taxes, or one time problems (DNS issues, certs, payment provider changed) etc.

But routine, regular work _absolutely_ includes any regular updates to website code, transaction providers (add/remove vendors etc.), SEO techniques, etc. If you are tweaking the business weekly/or monthly it is just silly to call it passive.

<comment><USER12> Oh, I don't need to do any of that regularly. Doing those things fall under growth activities.

The SEO and email system more or less runs itself. But, y'know, if I completely ignore it for two years something might change.

Mind you, I have some components that have run since 2013/2014 with no change at all. Most of my system is like that actually.

There are website updates required, but a contractor does that. I just monitor reports.

So there's somewhat more work than I think you're thinking of, but not much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How enterprising. It's like the internet's very own Thomas Kinkade as a service. Clever arbitrage of artistic labor markets, that's for sure.

</comment><comment><USER15> _The hardest part was actually conveying that it wasn 't just some print or photo filter, and this is something I still have difficulty with today._

Curious about whether people care about this. As somebody who takes a lot of pictures, if somebody could produce one of my photos as a painting using Photoshop that was indistinguishable (or close to it) from a person, I really don't think I'd care. From a business perspective, this seems like it would also carry the benefits of scaling better and having better quality control. You could also give the person multiple options (watercolor, oil, impressionist, etc.).

I'm sure the OP knows the market much better than I do, I'm just curious whether going with simulated paintings was ever considered and whether customers really do care about having a person paint it?

<comment> gm-conspiracy Have you ever seen an oil painting up close?

There was an article awhile ago about using a 3d printer and scanner to make a "copy" of an oil painting.

[http://www.designboom.com/art/oce-3d-printer-creates- identic...](http://www.designboom.com/art/oce-3d-printer-creates-identical- reproductions-of-fine-art-paintings-09-30-2013/)

Until Photoshop filters output STL files and color 3d printers come down in price, humans win.

<comment><USER16> Given that he already has the robot which can paint, wouldn't it be easy (well, doable at least :) to really paint the picture instead of printing it? There is no reason why this kind of painting should be any different from the manually produced.

<comment> angus-prune There is a missing piece of automation here still.

The robot can replicate recorded movements - brush angle, pressure, timing etc.

An photoshop filter can shift pixels around to make a photo look like an oil painting.

What nobody has come up with yet (and would likely be hard to develop, or at least costly) is a way to translate a photograph, or a photoshop filter into the set of movements required to render it in physical oil paint.

<comment><USER17> For copying a painting, you could fake it with a 3-D printer that reproduces a depth+scanned painting and a topcoat of paint

<comment><USER18> Until we get 3D printers with an atom-level precision, you can't really reproduce a brush stroke with a vertical nozzle, so you'd need to somehow identify those strokes from the depth scan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > The hardest part was actually conveying that it wasn't just some print or > photo filter, and this is something I still have difficulty with today.

I thought the same thing, maybe because it's called "instapainting"

</comment><comment><USER20>
        When the 2048 game came out, I quickly hacked
        up a 2 player version and placed it under the
        Instapainting.com domain for SEO purposes.

Does this really work? Does Google think you are a better site for ordering paintings because you host a game? I tend to think Google is smarter by now. In fact, I would expect that Google almost exclusively relies on real user behaviour these days.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm fairly certain it worked. It's more like the page gets lots of link, thus lots of clout, and I link to Instapainting from that page, which means I transfer some of that clout.

And Google can't classify Instapainting.com as a "photo to painting" site. It just knows it's a site that contains some content. Since Yahoo.com would get better rankings even with disparate topics under the domain.

<comment><USER20> What makes you certain?

I am fairly certain that the world's best search engine is not falling for that. How can we decide who is right?

<comment><USER21> Uh, what experiences have you had that make you think otherwise? Google is the greatest information-finding service invented but it can still surface poor results.

But in this case, I don't think Google was necessarily "fooled". The developer happened to be multitalented enough to create a game that was popular. Assuming that the traffic it receives was legitimate (which I imagine Google can know based on Google Analytics), how is that not a signal that the domain belongs to someone of more notability than just some random domain? The problem would be if Google used that signal as the sole determiner of whether Instapainting.com was a place to find good paintings. But there's no indication that that is the case, just that clout gained from the popular game may have helped Instapainting overall be seen as a legit domain, generally.

<comment><USER17> The problem is thst people use infographics that get a lot of links, to get SEO juice for the rest of their site thst is utter garbage.

Ideally, Google wouldn't credit one part of the site that is lower quality than the other part.

<comment><USER22> >Ideally, Google wouldn't credit one part of the site that is lower quality than the other part. //

Site authority presumably wouldn't be a thing if it didn't produce good results. Sites that allow crappy content will tend to have more crappy content and so a page on such a site is less likely to be what someone is searching for; as long as that stands then site authority will still be useful and shouldn't - IMO - be discounted completely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "acquiring artists turned out to be far from the hardest part of the business."

This.

I consulted many businesses as an engineer and often times technology can get you so far. You have to "get your hands dirty" and do the work.

Tech is rarely the bottleneck, it's often sales, understanding needs, contracting work to 3rd parties etc...

Kudos to the owner, great job

<comment><USER24> ... the author was saying the opposite. "far from the hardest" = "not the hardest" and you can see it in context:

> Shortly after the launch I was contacted by many artists, mostly from China > (they already saturate other marketplaces like eBay, Alibaba, and Etsy). The > initial batch of orders were break even, but once the market-rate artists > contacted us, I knew it was going to be profitable.

Sounds like the difficulty wasn't in finding artists

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true, the difficulty wasn't finding the artists. It was finding customers, and growing the customer base, if any thing.

That being said, the OP is correct also in that the tech wasn't the hardest part either. The tech was always something I had to worry about after the fact of acquiring more customers. You can always find customers first and support them manually, and then revise the tech later to reduce costs.

<comment><USER25> Reminds me of "Do things that don't scale" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6041765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6041765)) by Paul Graham.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Love reading such stories.

Also every interview I've read on indiehackers always has this one advice as the most important one: build quickly, iterate later.

</comment><comment><USER7>
        > micro-services, which is crucial in allowing me (the
        > only developer) to migrate the site to new technologies.

I know it's 5 years old, but I still don't see why it's been so crucial to have kept migrating to "new technologies"?

<comment><AUTHOR> It lets me upgrade the application piecewise. For example I have pages that are just PHP/HTML, and some that are rendered with Node/React, and the site works seamlessly together (seamless sessions and everything).

<comment><USER27> Are there any perspectives you can share with respect to SEO and client-side React?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Nonsense. Creating a startup is the opposite of 'passive'. Also the word passive doesn't appear in the article title or text.

<comment><USER29> If you don't have to full-time manage the startup after it's created, and it still makes you money, that money IS 'passive'.

Passive income without initial effort is called a trust fund.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Usually I don't like these kinds of pieces, but this one had lots of good examples that anyone could apply. Congrats on your success!

<comment><USER31> Out of curiosity, why do you usually not like these kinds of pieces? I have enjoyed all of the IndieHackers interviews and find them pretty inspirational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I was pretty close to ordering a gift for the holidays until I saw the charge of $3.00 to NOT appear as a sample on your website. [1]

Why are you making people pay $3.00 to NOT appear in your gallery of samples?

Sorry, but that seems absolutely ridiculous and is a deal breaker for me.

[1] [http://imgur.com/a/RMcvV](http://imgur.com/a/RMcvV)

<comment><USER33> Would you have agreed if it were a discount instead of an added charge? i.e. Yes is -$3?

<comment><USER32> Are you saying I either have to pay $3 to opt out or save $3 to opt in?

Or are you saying the base price remains the same if I opt out, but I would get a $3 discount if I opt in?

I would find scenario #2 a more suitable option. Meaning I'd happily pay the standard price in exchange for opting out, but people who choose to opt in receive a small discount in exchange for their willingness to be used as marketing collateral.

Explicitly charging people to opt out just leaves a bad taste in mouth. And it just makes me thing you are going to nickel and dime me every chance you get.

To be honest, if all the standard painting prices were increased by $3 to roll in the opt out cost, I probably wouldn't care. It's the explicit charging for opting out that rubs me the wrong way and I don't think I've ever encountered it before on any other online transaction I've completed.

<comment><USER34> Q. Price $120. Can we use this as a sample? (Yes: -$3)

A. Happy to pay the full price!

\--

Q. Price $117. Can we use this as a sample? (No: +$3)

A. No fucking way I'm paying $3 NOT appear in your gallery of samples!

<comment><USER32> Q. Big Mac meal $6.99. Can we put a picture of you eating it in our next commercial? (No: +$3)

A. Keep the Big Mac. I'm going to get a Whopper from Burger King.

<comment><USER33> I get why it seems distasteful, but I personally thought it was pretty clever. This site thrives on good, real world examples in the home page, so it would make sense to incentivize people to agree to let the site use their examples. If it were a larger company I would probably not like it either, but I'm willing to give a pass to a very small business.

<comment><USER35> I'm surprised he didn't use the second, less-offensive wording though, it does feel weird as is.

<comment><USER34> Maybe there is a lot of value in having lots of samples. People are more likely to give permission to get out of the fee than to get a discount.

Personally I'd increase the discount to around 10% (raising the base price to compensate) and have "Allow us to use this as a sample" checked by default; but I wonder what % of people have a strong reaction like the OP here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I saw Instapainting when it was launched and casually wondered how well it would do. Years later, I have my answer. Congratulations man, this is awesome to read and I'm really happy for your success!

</comment><comment><USER37> What are the profit margins?

<comment><USER38> Also interested in this. Revenue is solid but I imagine a lot of that is pass- thru to the artists? Middle-man platforms can usually only do about 10% margin before opex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Congrats on your success! Would you mind outlining how you made it on techcrunch? Also, which subreddits did you find most valuable to generate feedback/promote your site?

</comment><comment><USER40> Congrats on the success. Do you have concerns that posting details publicly, including showing internal financial numbers, for a business that has virtually no barrier to entry will invite competition? From the other comments I'm seeing here it looks as though people are already making their plans and running back of the envelope calculations. I would expect at least 5 new competitors to pop up as a result of this post.

<comment><USER41> Making plans and running back of the envelope calculations is easy and fun; businesses actually require violent execution. I spent almost 10 years doing an objectively easier business. I wrote a million words about it, including substantially all of the non-obvious secret sauce about e.g. our SEO strategy. I got a variant of your comment more than monthly: the competitors are coming, the competitors are coming! And the competitors did, in fact, come... with C grade execution that had minimal impact on me.

I will note that the conversion rate between "I will totes clone your business in a weekend" and actually cloning the business was far, far below 1%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> "The hardest part was actually conveying that it wasn't just some print or photo filter, and this is something I still have difficulty with today."

I can see how you'd have that problem with the name "Instapainting". If someone didn't describe to me exactly how this works, I would think it was just another photo filter app.

</comment><comment><USER43> Risking to be downvoted, what do SF artists (if you know any) think about this?

I suspect if the founder had a background in art (as me) he would never launch something like this. I would feel ashamed by exploiting already a struggling market (art) and yet being 'painted' as an hero. Despite believing in capitalism, limits should exist.

<comment><USER44> I can't find a good argument in favor of SF artists somehow being more worthy of that income than Chinese artists. You could use the same premise to segment in any other arbitrary manner and eg claim that older struggling artists are more worthy of that income than younger newer artists, and so on. How is it anything but a strictly subjective argument that will inherently vary from person to person as to what criteria is most important?

Fortunately what he's doing isn't exploiting, he's providing a valuable service in which the artists set their pricing and choose whether to accept the work. SF artists have no _right_ to anything over an artist from an other city or country.

<comment><USER43> Try to read your comment changing the word _artist_ by _developer_. Is your opinion still so strong? And don't forget that IT is one of the most abundant markets not a perpetually struggling one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Great business, congratulations!

Could you elaborate on how your shipping pipeline works from China to US/worldwide? Also if there were any problems shipping works of art, e.g. if I upload a picture of Starry Night, an artist paints that and it is shipped to me, would that cause a problem at the border?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the early days, we used a startup called BoxC (now defunct I think) and took a more hands-on approach to shipping. They would drop off at or ship their their completed products to BoxC shipping locations which then handles fulfillment.

The site actually functions as a marketplace now, and the independent sellers handle their own shipping methods.

<comment> gm-conspiracy What is the largest size possible (that can be shipped without an ordeal)?

Lynn Boggess, paints on large canvases (some over 4 ft x 4 ft) using cement trowels:

[http://www.lynnboggess.com/](http://www.lynnboggess.com/)

Obviously, that is probably unrealistic for shipping from China.

Also, I was interested in having some abstract paintings "copied", using some of the images from:

[https://open_nsfw.gitlab.io/](https://open_nsfw.gitlab.io/)

The images are only 224pxx224px.

Would that be possible? The image resolution is not that big, but I would like something like 2 or 3 feet in length/width.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Do you have a list of the failed ideas? How many actually did you get to the stage of having a web page for?

</comment><comment><USER47> I had actually been to your site for the 2x2048 campaign, but never went to the homepage. Seeing this and having just been on vacation with the family made me decide to order a painting for my wife of our children in front of a water fountain that we took last week. Good timing.

</comment><comment><USER48> I actually met Chris a couple of years ago when I was in San Francisco for an internship. We got lunch with a mutual friend. He was excited about the success he was experiencing and inspired me with his confidence about the future.

I'm sure glad to know that he's actually made it.

</comment><comment><USER49> Ug, is it just me, or does that he took money before actually having anyone to paint the pictures seem unethical? Would people have ordered if they had of known there were no artists as yet, or for that matter the artist were going to be friends of the website owner?

<comment><USER50> TBH there's many cases where people sell things before actually having the capability to deliver them, as long as the customer gets the goods at the end of the day, I don't really see the problem.

Heck if you look at the idea of Kickstarter and Indiegogo they're a whole market predicated on the idea of buying things that don't exist yet (and in many cases those things are harder to deliver than the creators suggest in their pitches)

<comment><USER51> Yeah. Not only that, the money you give on KS has a risk of not being refunded if a clusterf*ck happens. In OPs story, he can just send a refund.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Shoes of Prey have done a similar thing here in Australia with shoes. Last year they raised a solid amount of capital to expand into the U.S as well. I wonder, what other industries would the ability to produce unique products in China at scale apply to?

</comment><comment><USER53> I find it amusing how HN readers just believe anything they read about how much people are making. For all we know this might be a guy who's making very little and wanted coverage on indiehackers.com.

<comment><USER10> Chris is a personal friend of mine I've known since 2011 when we went through Y Combinator together. I can vouch for his integrity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I think the oil and mixed media paintings are a great value from the samples.

However, I wasn't to pleased with your monochrome samples however. Some of the samples look like they were made with an EZ-Tracer.

</comment><comment><USER55> I like the way that this article itself is an example of its own main subject (using articles like this to drive SEO for instapainting).

</comment><comment><USER56> Well it worked, I just bought a painting.

</comment><comment><USER57> Thanks for sharing your story.It's inspiring!

</comment><comment><USER58> I wonder why many of the sites on indiehackers have that chat box popup.

</comment><comment><USER59> HackerNews loves stories like this :D

</comment><comment><USER60> "Majority of traffic is coming from SEO"

What are your primary keywords?

</comment><comment><USER61> Do you think people know they are paying for cheap Chinese labor when they purchase? If not, do you think they would care?

When I read something like,"100% free-hand painted onto a canvas by a master artist," my impression isn't, "we outsource the painting to cheap Chinese labor." My impression is clearly wrong. I suspect others have this impression though.

I think the concept is cool, but I'm not sure people would be so willing to pay if they knew some desperate artist in China was getting paid below minimum wage to create the artwork. I guess what I'm saying is you are selling the idea of a premium service at a great price—too good to be true—and it is, because it's not true.

Or maybe it just doesn't matter. I don't know.

Also, reading this over my tone sounds a little condescending. I don't mean to be. Generally curious what others think about this.

<comment><USER62> He's creating work for Chinese workers. Who are we to say what kind of pay the Chinese "should" be requesting? It's rather elitist of us to be telling them they are being taken advantage of. This is a job they've sought out and want to keep! It's the best option available to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> > He's creating work for Chinese workers.

Until I expand the market further, I wouldn't really even give myself that much credit. I think most of my business comes from replacing the established middle men with my software solution. Although it is my ultimate goal to give more artists (everywhere in the world) more business!

<comment><USER63> You really don't think the middlemen are the ones doing business on your platform? You've simply squeezed the margins so that the artists get even less.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Window Farming: Do it yourself veggie garden in your window - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125504307&sc=fb&cc=fp

<comment><USER2> Here's my gardening advice:

Get 2 of each starter plant you want, get used to the idea of death. I see many first time gardeners get overly emotional about a couple small plants, this amplifies the stress of failure too much.

Start with herbs. Things like oregano and basil give a huge flavor/effort payoff compared to fussy plants like tomatoes. They are very hearty and a little goes a long way.

After you get fresh herbs on hand for your kitchen, you won't ever want to go back.

</comment><comment><USER3> I picked up gardening last year and specifically tomatoes. I found it's a great stress relief - fresh air, direct Vitamin D, winding vines - and you get to eat the proceeds. We got killed by the blight last year, but if we get a dry season this year, we could be "farm stand" profitable!

<comment><USER4> I am in the process of making a couple of these to see if they produce better(and more plentiful) tomatoes than the inground variant:

<http://earthtainer.tomatofest.com/>

Time will tell if it works well.

<comment><USER3> I had seen those. They look pretty inspired. I'll be curious how they work for you. We're lucky to be on an old dairy farm so the soil is great and we get full sun. I found that cheap metal wire fencing provides just enough support for two rows of 20 plants each. Cost-wise it came out to less than $1 a plant. The plants were doing great too - about 4ft each - until the blight hit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> OK, somebody make a product for that.

<comment><USER6> A social web 2.0 webapp where you can share your farming accomplishments, plus you have a leader board to compare yourself to others. Tie-in an iPhone/iPad app to easily update the webapp, and that also doubles as an alarm & reminder to water and care for your plants! The future! Is here!

</parody> Seriously, some hardware gizmo that automates care and data-logging. I can totally see that done with those new cheap programmable MCU/SoC boards, like Arduino.

<comment><USER7> A lot of the necessary stuff already exists for aquariums. If you search for "aquarium controller", you'll find things like this:

<http://www.draquarium.com/>

Edit: Even better (phone control, twitter notification, etc):

<http://www.tankedcam.com/></comment></comment></comment>


Made in Italy, by Chinese workers - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/news/picture/made-in-italy-by-chinese-workers-idUSRTX16XEA <comment><USER2> "Many illegal immigrants arrive on three-month tourist visas but stay in Italy for a few years, until they make enough money to go back to China. "</comment>


I am sick of the media saying "Hacker" when they mean "Black Hat" - <AUTHOR> http://shiporgetoffthepot.com/yes-i-am-a-hacker-but-what-does-that-mean/ <comment><USER2> I'm sick of people having prescriptive definitions of how language ought to be used. The term 'hacker' in a media piece about someone 'remotely abusing a computer system' is entirely understandable and consequently perfectly alright to use. Language is a beautiful, dynamic, living organism that evolves depending on how it's used by _everyone_ every day. There is no 'wrong way' when it comes to language. There are ways that work and ways that don't work; which way you go for depends on how well you want to be understood.

Try to delight in the way people use language. Defining a word strictly and pedantically is showing off by demonstrating that you know more about a word's etymology and usage than someone else. Don't do that.

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty well convinced that the motivation for getting upset over the "wrong" use of this word is usually just a desire to claim special knowledge and feel superior about being part of the elite group that knows the _true_ meaning. It's disingenuous moaning about "confusion" while ignoring the fact that the rest of the world seems to get along just fine with the occasional word that has (gasp) more than one meaning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You do understand that usage has been around longer for that context than the recently popular way of describing anyone that can touch a keyboard?

<comment><USER5> Precisely. I've read the counter sentiment multiple times from black hats who are exasperated seeing "hacker" tied to any notion of someone who programs or likes to "tinker with shit". I'd much rather keep the word definition at its root. (disclosure: I'm not a hacker)

<comment><USER6> >"tinker with shit". That's gold!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When people say "cowboy," they don't mean the hundreds of thousands of working-class guys driving cattle for a living. They either mean Wild Bill or they mean some guy at a rodeo. When people say "trucker" they don't mean the hundreds of thousands of guys driving food deliveries to grocery stores; they mean Jerry Reed from Smokey and the Bandit. When people say "princess" they don't mean Lady Di, they mean any number of Disney characters.

In a similar vein, when people say "hacker" they don't particularly give a shit what side the guy's on, and "black hat" as a term is only acceptable in IT communities -- everyone else smirks at the nerd shit and continues using the terminology accepted by the vast majority of human society.

You're going to have to get used to it.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's been this way for (EDIT: at least) 30 years. And the discussion has been going on just as long. Though it used to be, especially on /. back in the day, rants about "hacker" versus "cracker". I once tried to point this out to my parents, never again. It just doesn't matter. We've elected to continue applying a label to ourselves that the media uses in a totally different way. Language changes, often in ways counter to what we want, accept this and move on.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not trying to change the world but when a potential business partner hears I am a hacker I don't want them thinking I am going to steal their credit card info.

<comment><USER9> So why don't you introduce yourself as a "programmer" or a "computer wizard" or a "tinkerer" or a "developer" or any other term and opt to use a term that's been synonymous with breaking into computing systems for 3-4 decades?

<comment><USER10> Any why would you want to introduce yourself to a business partner as a hacker anyway? If they understand what you mean, you're telling them that you're going to give them a product that works, but only because of magic and duct tape, not because it's a professional product. If they don't understand what you mean, they'll think you're a criminal.

Either way, in the business world, hacker has only negative connotations. Only within hacker circles does the term become a positive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm sick of the media saying "skinhead" when they mean "neo-nazi/white supremacist", but I don't go around whining about it. The use of words is controlled by popular opinion, not only one subclass of people that refer to themselves using the word.

Some words just need to be retired.

<comment><USER12> But you did just whine about it. And many skinheads ARE white supremacists or nativists.

<comment><USER13> Many black hats are hackers

<comment><USER14> Many hackers are black hats. All black hats are hackers, they're a subset of the larger group.

And that's what the problem is. Calling a cracker a hacker is technically correct, but lead to the assumption that all hackers are black hats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Forgive my ignorance, but wasn't the word made to describe "black hat" activities?

Everything else is a new definition (white hat etc.)

Language evolves, especially with created words.

Will your opinion win? Possibly, i dont know ( or care). I just get sick of people thinking their way of thinking is accepted fact.

<comment><USER16> The modern, non "black hat" use of the word originates with the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club ([http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/dictionary1959.html](http://www.gricer.com/tmrc/dictionary1959.html)) who define "hack" as '1) an article or project without constructive end; 2) work undertaken on bad self-advice; 3) an entropy booster; 4) to produce, or attempt to produce, a hack (3)."

Quite a few words in the "computer geek" lexicon were borrowed from the TMRC.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great answer!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As much as I agree with this we have lost this battle. For most people the definition of hacker is black hat, all the blog posts and comments in the world won't change that. People who get their news from newspapers and TV now know hackers break into things and steal stuff. They know that hackers are the bad guys.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand, but as I plan to use the word a lot and take ownership of it this post is designed to inform those whom might read my stuff that I am not intending to steal their credit cards... yet... (jk)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Language is fluid, and sadly we don't control it. Sorry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh nothing to be sorry about. Just merely making note of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> >4) a person who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system

>This is the last one because it is the least accurate and has been created only in recent times by the media.

By recent times, you mean since the mid/late 80's when hacking sort of got known in the mainstream after phreaking?

>"Anyone that takes a look at a goal and a given set of resources then figures out an unconventional way to achieve that goal"

I want to be rich! therefore I choose to rob a bank (my unconventional way of achieving that goal), does that make me a hacker too? (Like a bank hacker)

Awesome article nonetheless!

<comment><USER19> You are confused as many people grow up and enter this field. The original term for the bad guys was "crackers" and all crackers are hackers but not all hackers are crackers.

The media doesn't understand that and now all the young people growing up have the term 'hacker' all confused and messed up and ruined for the rest of us.

<comment><USER20> Pray tell, when was this mythical era when a sizable group of people actually made this distinction and used them as two separate concepts? Warning: this is a trick question, I'm almost old, so I have actual first-hand recollection of these days of yore you seem to be lamenting.

<comment><USER19> I'm probably older than you but, based on your question, far more experienced in the field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ask any random person what they think of when you say "hacker." PROTIP: it's not your typical employee of some random consumer web startup, working 12 hour days and pounding redbull. It's someone who bypasses technical security controls through mastery of the underlying technology.

<comment><USER22> Does anyone think the former should be considered a good description of a hacker? To me it is someone using their intelligence, to do something clever (or at least in a clever way) to disrupt or destroy something, make someone uncomfortable or piss someone off, or challenge something, for some result that satisfies them or someone else in some way. And the essence really lies in that first bit. A random programmer isn't a hacker unless that first bit is there, the unorthodox, challenging or subversive bit.

<comment><USER8> So in your mind this site is about news concerning disrupting, destroying and irritating things and people? "Hacker" is entirely combative and offensive in your view. That seems weird to me.

<comment><USER22> Yes, I think it should be. I think most things on the site qualify, but not all. However your second statement is a mischaracterization. It is not "entirely" combative or offensive. I just think that is the essential ingredient before the word hacker is appropriate. If you are modifying a device meant for one purpose to use it in another purpose that is hacking because you are subversively defying the intentions of the devices creators. If you are merely using an Arduino or a 3d printer to make something, that is not hacking. If you are founding a startup to disrupt an existing business model, and put a dinosaur out of business you are hacking. If you are just churning out another iPhone game, that is probably not hacking.

<comment><USER8> Using an (as an example) LCD projector to make a 3D printer is hacking. But it's not necessarily _subversive_. It's not what it was designed for, and not what it was intended for, but it's not necessarily _in opposition to_ the will of the original creators/designers. And that opposition is the key ingredient to subversiveness.

> To me it is someone using their intelligence, to do something clever (or at > least in a clever way) to disrupt or destroy something, make someone > uncomfortable or piss someone off, or challenge something, for some result > that satisfies them or someone else in some way.

All of those (destroy, disrupt, make uncomfortable, piss off, now subvert) except for "challenge" are combative things, especially if, as you keep doing, you relate it as being opposed to other people or entities. Hackers don't have to have the intention of undermining anything to be hackers. Making an HTTP server entirely in forth written entirely in assembly is a hacker thing to do, but it's not undermining anyone's authority, the closest it gets to your categorization (but not your apparent meaning) is as a challenge.

EDIT: forgot a word

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I used to think there were two separate uses of the word, and one was less correct than the other. I used to insist people distinguish between a good "hacker" and an evil "cracker". Now I understand the essence of the term, there is no distinction between the two. Its all the same. Central to the essence is this notion that good and bad are subjective, and anything characterised as hacking should probably be both good (for someone or something) and evil (for someone or something) combined. Destruction and creation are both equally implied. I think if something is purely 100% good for everyone, I don't think the word hacker applies.

</comment><comment><USER23> Language is ultimately defined by popular usage, and the majority of the usage of "hacker" means "black hat" type activities. You can argue for a different usage until you're blue in the face, but the black hat usage is pretty clearly the dominant one and has been for quite a while. Insisting on a different usage and using the word that way yourself just leads to confusion and makes you sound pedantic, no matter how correct you feel your definition is.

</comment><comment><USER24> Context is important. Most laypersons reading an article don't know the terms "Black Hat", "White Hat", and so on. A good article should differentiate the intentions of the "hacker", so that the reader can imply the morality of those intentions by the context.

</comment><comment><USER25> Dozen of years of movies and video-games have cemented fairly well the use of the word.

"Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"

</comment><comment><USER9> Well, you don't control language. Language is language as it's used.

Furthermore, the whole "hacker is the good kind, no the black hat kind" screams "no true scotchman" to me. Lots of black hat's self identify as hackers.

<comment><USER26> My understanding of the No True Scotsman fallacy involves changing a definition during an argument in order to hold on to some assertion.

This is not the same thing as a person feeling that a particular word should have a particular meaning.

<comment><USER9> The problem is the person seen as "changing a definition" could very well have had the second definition in his mind all along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> To me it's someone who creates a messy working solution quickly. This is opposite to developers, who have to care about maintainability.

</comment><comment><USER28> Whatever kind of hacker you are there's a great convention for us all this summer in NYC, Hackers On Planet Earth: hope.net

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll check it out

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Obligatory HACK THE PLANET!

<comment><AUTHOR> Love the reference!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Actually, they mean "Cracker".

<comment><USER19> You are totally correct!

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed but that could be confused with other definitions used in the derogatory.</comment></comment></comment>


Visiting Chinese Megacities - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-12/10-chinese-megacities-to-see-before-you-die <comment><USER3> I live in SE Asia (Thailand) and although I'm fascinated by China, my experience with Chinese tourists has turned me off visiting the mainland completely.

They are more often than not incredibly loud, rude and lack almost all basic human courtesy we take for granted in the west and even in asian countries like Thailand. They will push past you in queues, yell mandarin loudly in your face to others behind you, stand in the middle of the street blocking traffic, play videos on their phone speaker on full volume without using headphones - <USER2> could go on and on and on.

There's absolutely zero consideration for anyone but themselves and are, by a wide margin, the rudest tourists i've ever encountered anywhere.

I can't help but wonder if it's just the type Chinese tourists that visit Thailand and mainland China would be different, but its just not a risk i'm willing to take.

<comment><USER4> Your observation is correct. As an ethnic Chinese I'm sorry and apologize for that. Many Chinese and government know that's true. As result, all Chinese mobile phone users will receive a text message from Chinese embassies when they are landed to foreign countries even inside airplane (at least US and Canada ) reminding them(mobile phone carrier) to respect local custom and culture, especially don't speak aloud in public areas.

There are many reasons for that. A obvious one is quick economic growth makes many less educated normal people can afford previously luxury tourism. But there are more profound reasons. Unfortunately, researches and studies of personality statistics of vary large group of people(for example, behavior of an ethnic group) are very difficult and most importantly: they are politically incorrect, considered harmful and forbidden, as well as the conclusions will not be accepted by public. So most people on the earth don't know the real reasons behind that but only have fake explanations that modern human mind can accept.

BTW off the topic. with same understanding, I predicted early in 2003 that Bush's goal of Iraq war would fail FOR SURE by observation of similarity of statistical (i.e. population) mindsets between middle east people and Chinese people.

The good news is things are changing slowly towards the good direction. The habit and behavior of Chinese people, especially young generation and educated people are more and more closer to that of Japanese, Hongkonger, Taiwan people. But it will take long long time, maybe generations.

<comment><USER5> "There are many reasons for that. A obvious one is quick economic growth makes many less educated normal people can afford previously luxury tourism."

I always assumed it came down to exactly this. Give people money who have never had money before and there are going to be some social growing pains but eventually everything will normalize.

<comment><USER6> Then how does one explain the USA and Japan (just as two examples out of many) - both wealthy countries with very distinct cultures?

<comment><USER7> Japanese tourists are amazing. I once saw a 20-something couple silently watch a beautiful peacock stroll through the grounds of St. John the Divine, for an HOUR. I was walking around and enjoying the space, but those two seemed to have found some sort of peace with the place that locals will never have. The nodded to me when they left and cleaned up their picnic perfectly. You don't see many Japanese tourists anymore and (completely uniquely) that's a shame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've lived in China for 16 years and been to nearly all the cities mentioned in the article plus many more. I agree they are interesting to visit, however for different reasons. Personally I have little tolerance for the east coast cities for all but a whirlwind visit, generally being too large and natureless to justify an extended stay.

The great things you can see are random new architecture (a highly successful architect friend of mine recently described China as a "playground for architects"), old stuff (though increasingly fake / rebuilt - if you are a real history buff you need to do some research to find the less visited sites), interesting and highly regionally varied food, and almost total street-level safety.

Things that can be not so fun: transportation crushes, higher prices (it is no longer cheap to travel here), communications and cultural issues, general lack of tourism infrastructure or infrastructure limited to handful of sites with a mass tourism focus.

Personally I prefer the smaller towns, natural areas, and obscure cultural attractions like locally preserved architecture, performance traditions and wacky foods.

Overall it's a very interesting country and worth a look, though if you have a very picky diet (eg. vegan), a weak stomach or constitution, or tire easily it may not be the destination of choice.

Anyone from HN passing through Shenzhen is welcome to hit me up for a beer!

<comment><USER9> Hi Walter,

I'm a fellow founder based in SZ, it would be great to get in contact. Your Myanmar-focused financial services startup sounds interesting. I always try to meet anyone doing something I find interesting :)

Could you drop me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com? Any other HN readers based in SZ, also feel free to reach out :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For an idea of how these cities look here are some drone shots:

Shenzhen: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKLrmi5eOn8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKLrmi5eOn8)

Shanghai: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cC-j4_NtvE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cC-j4_NtvE)

Guangzhou: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNlN1_ANaJs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNlN1_ANaJs)

Chongqing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07dWi- MJReM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07dWi-MJReM)

Shenyang: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGBSpoTXZmw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGBSpoTXZmw)

Suzhou: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aXLMS- miKU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aXLMS-miKU)

Dalian: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeEJNNMcR1s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AeEJNNMcR1s)

Zhengzhou: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiOlUYfM310](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiOlUYfM310)

Chengdu: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xwVQ4Jb1zc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xwVQ4Jb1zc)

</comment><comment><USER11> After living in Hong Kong for a while, what stood out to me the most – compared to European cities – was the lack of traditional cultural elements in the form of museums, theaters, art or architecture. Guangzhou seemed the same, just must more poor. Entertainment is almost ironically fully consumerist or decadent in communist terminology.

<comment><USER10> There's a fair amount of museums, interesting areas and elaborate buildings in Shenzhen. But it's not like Europe where everything is in one place, it's a huge city. I don't think HK is very strong at public things, except national parks and to some extent transport.

</comment></comment><comment> jake-low I was pleasantly surprised by this article after being primed by the click- baity "listicle" title.

One claim that stuck out to me:

> [As several hundred million people moved from the countryside into urban > areas] ... Wages and living standards have risen to create the biggest rapid > boost in prosperity the world has seen, ever.

Can anyone comment on the accuracy of this? What other times in human history would be in the running for this "title"?

<comment><USER12> The Great Divergence (aka the Industrial Revolution's impact on GDP) is the obvious candidate: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Divergence)

But the population of Europe at the time or even America is only a fraction of China's, and the speed of China's growth has been even more spectacular. It took Britain ~50 years to double GDP between 1840 and 1890: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Biaroch_European_GDP_per_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Biaroch_European_GDP_per_capita_1830-1890.svg)

While China _tripled_ their GDP/capita (both US$ and PPP) in a bit over 10: [https://www.lowyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/interprete...](https://www.lowyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/interpreter- images/2012/1/120127-thirlwell-1.png)

<comment><USER13> Doubling GDP in 50 years is not a lot. 1.4 percent annually compounded will do that. The US postwar boom might be a better comparison.

<comment><USER14> Looking at those charts it looks like that previous doubling of UK GDP took ~350 years.

<comment><USER15> Those charts are GDP per capita; the population also increased in this time

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They also left out Xinjiang, and while it doesn't have a Tier-1/Tier-2 city in it, if you want to see the diversity of China, Gansu or Xinjiang are good. Heavy security, but radically different landscape, food, and ethnic culture, especially in the South. Oh, and less humid, blue skies, more breathable air.

I spent the July 4th holiday week there (and yes, it is relatively safe).

Nanning is also surprisingly upscale, after going to the rural areas of Guilin, I didn't expect Nanning to be so well developed.

Shanghai is always my first love. Truly "mega", good infra, good food, etc.

<comment><USER17> I've been to Urumqi in 2006 and it wasn't that bad, a very standard Chinese city with some cool nightmarkets and mosques. There are no other mega cities to speak of, I haven't been to kashgar before.

Nanning is pretty meh, but then so are most of the cities on this list :). Liuzhou is much more interesting, as it is stuck between Guilin and nanning both geographically and in feeling (big city with embedded karst mountains and not many tourists).

<comment><USER16> I went to Yangshuo before Nanning, it's a little more confining and touristy but mostly Shanghainese, not Westerners. Turpan is like a cross between Urumqi and Kashgar, in the sense that it has a high uighur population, much more uighur culture and architecture, but still identifiably a Chinese city. Also, many Uighurs in that area tend to speak surprisingly good English, which is good because their Mandarin accent can be a bit thick,

To me, when you get to Kashgar you start to feel more like you're Central Asia.

<comment><USER17> Yangshuo has more westerners than other places. If you find yourself in gunagxi again, definitely check out liuzhou, it's Guilin's grittier twin.

I'd like to visit Kashgar someday. Northern xinjiang was really nice to tour around also, except they didn't let me out of the van when we reached the khazakistan border (no foreigners allowed).

<comment><USER16> Yeah, you need a special permit now if you don't have a Chinese ID, even of you want to visit Koktokay, a recently added restriction. Our tourguide managed to hustle us in by promising he would bring us back to the gate upon leaving, proving that we had not crossed the border I guess. But he told us that was probably the last tour he ever does to Koktokay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Shenyang has Japanese modernist architecture from the 1930s, and the city's > economy is in retreat, somewhat akin to America's Rust Belt. Maybe you've > never heard of Shenyang, but the broader surrounding municipality has more > than eight million people, making it more populous than many countries.

Shenyang is great, and it is kind of criminal not to mention that Shenyang is the old capital of Qing empire. You should visit the imperial palace. It is distinctively different from Forbidden City of Beijing.

<comment> dis-sys No, it is not great. It is more like Detroit in the US - bad weather, high unemployment rate and crime rate, dead heavy industry, huge outflow of its local population.

If Shenyang is great, how come its population is dropping so fast?

<comment><USER19> _I_ like Detroit. Okay, fine, no I don't. But I live in Michigan and love the rest of it. Low cost of living, great schools, reasonable opportunity for educated workers. And I love the weather. Great for all seasons of outdoor activity.

I'm curious if Liaoning (outside Shenyang) is the same way. (I've had a long- running fascination with HeiLongJiang for reasons I don't understand myself, though I've never been there)

<comment><USER20> Being from Liaoning but never been to Michigan, I must say it's not half as good as the Michigan you described.

<comment><USER19> Well, save up some money on the coast, then move to (Western or Northern) Michigan some day and live like a king. Okay, eating out can be hit-or-miss (mostly miss), but some diamonds-in-the-rough do exist. Outdoors is great. I mean if ascending whatever-K feet is the only qualifier then outdoors sucks, but seriously everything else here, outdoors is great. Four seasons is like being able to annually travel between four completely different regions of the world without actually moving. And if you have a decent salary, get yourself some awesome snow moving equipment, just to feel cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can anyone weigh in via personal experience: how much Chinese would I need to learn to avoid getting pigeonholed to tourist areas in these cities? Is Mandarin spoken pretty uniformly?

I'd love to go, and have used google translate extensively, but am concerned about not being able to read signs. I agree that travel should be challenging, but not to the degree that it kills the experience.

<comment><USER22> "Can anyone weigh in via personal experience: how much Chinese would I need to learn to avoid getting pigeonholed to tourist areas in these cities? Is Mandarin spoken pretty uniformly?"

I think this depends more on the traveler than on the city/nation. I don't think there is anywhere that language necessarily pigeonholes you to tourist areas - it's simply how comfortable or uncomfortable it makes you.

That being said, I think you would have very good luck in Hong Kong, for obvious reasons. Beyond english accessibility, I find Hong Kong to be the most fascinating and interesting city in the world. I love to be there and miss it when I am not.

If you can find some kind of personal connection there - a meetup or hackerspace or ... anything ... it is definitely helpful and will get you off the beaten path much more quickly.

<comment><USER23> > personal connection there - a meetup or hackerspace

HKGers should check out DimSumLabs ( [https://www.meetup.com/dimsumlabs/](https://www.meetup.com/dimsumlabs/) ) as a really nice bunch (at least when I was there).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> For many of the reasons expressed here, specially the 'business culture' and 'hustling factor', China is the country that reminds me most of United States.

</comment><comment><USER25> Been to a few of these cities a couple of times. The development and culture is amazing to see. The Shanghai museum is well curated, dongzhimen st. in Beijing is great for food. Vegetarian food isn't too hard to come by if you're ok with eggs. Monks are vegetarian, and if you can find a Buddhist temple, ask them about food.

Need to make it to Shenzhen, and Chengdu sometime!

</comment><comment><USER18> > If you watch the Chinese making pilgrimages to Qufu, the burial site of > Confucius, you'll learn just how strong the long-term continuity of their > history is.

Qufu is highly recommended. It is the holy city with continuity streteching back at least a thousand years, visited by many emperors from different dynasties.

A similar site is Ise Grand Shrine in Japan.

</comment><comment><USER26> Guangzhou didn't make the cut. Perhaps too obvious a choice but it's easily one of my favorite cities.

Great weather, cosmopolitan population, good food and close to HK. Plus feels more chill than other cities.

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't like travelling. I'm normally completely uninterested in any destination but this makes me excited for some reason.

<comment><USER28> Maybe you should try traveling.

<comment><USER27> What makes you think I haven't? I've travelled a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Article claims 10, but I counted 12. My CN geography is good enough to know that Yunnan and Sichuan are provinces, but maybe some of the proper nouns were too. Anyway here are the ones I counted. Any errors?

1\. Kunming (Yunnan)

2\. Chongqing

3\. Qingdao

4\. Zhengzhou

5\. Xian

6\. Nanjing

7\. Dalian

8\. Shenyang

9\. Chengdu (Sichuan)

10\. Qufu

11\. Beijing

12\. Shanghai

London, New York and Paris (not China IIRC)

Does anyone know google maps (or whatever) well enough to make a URL with markers for all these?

<comment><USER18> I think the intent is not to include Chengdu and Qufu. Chengdu is not described as a destination (just for cuisine), and Qufu is not a megacity.

<comment><USER19> Haha, Chengdu is the only one I've been to (having been lots of other places in China). Oh, okay Beijing too...fine.

Best cuisine? Frankly I liked the old Hui stronghold of Ningxia the best. Plain old noodle soup, but to perfection every time. And very good who-knows- what-that-might-be-but-who-cares-its-delicious satay all around. Chengdu would be a close second though.

While I respect the culinary history of China, IMO SE Asia and India both blow all regions of China out of the water. (Though Taiwan, if you think of it as part of China, being my first ever overseas habitat, holds a bit of a soft spot in my cuisinitude).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Chengdu is a wonderful city, despite the pollution problems, and it's surroundings - Emei, Qingcheng, Jiuzhaigo, Huanglong - are unique, magnificent, and rather less known for westerners. Visit them while you can.

</comment><comment><USER17> Zhengzhou most definitely was never a ghost city, being one of China's 8 ancient capitals. Maybe they meant zhengdong? Ghost cities in china are almost always underpopulated districts of existing large cities.

<comment><USER30> Zhengzhou was a ghost city and hasn't been a capital for more than 2000 years. Its developing to major city in China in the modern sense only begins in 20th century, after the railway traffic prosperous here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The world will be a better place when we strap vr goggles on these chinese tourists and keep them home.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you know whether or not customers will pay for your product? - <AUTHOR>

Hello, I have some ideas for an app, but I'm not sure if people will pay for it.  How can you figure that out? <comment><USER2> Are they already paying for something which solves the same problem? If not, it probably isn't a problem.

"Something" doesn't have to be software. It could be "a manual process which consumes staff time", "a real product which could be made unnecessary by software", etc.

(Many car manufacturers solve computer problems with warehouses full of very expensive bits of steel shaped in particular ways. This is so demonstrably suboptimal that the company which licked those computer problems -- using a variety of systems which owed more to algorithms and paper cards as a transport mechanism -- basically took over the world.)

</comment><comment><USER3> A way I have used is to create a descriptive landing page with email capture, create google ads and/or post in relevant forums to direct to page and see how many signups you get. That should give you an idea of the rough conversion rate.

</comment><comment><USER4> Experience. Also, trying to sell it to them and seeing if people pay for your product.

</comment><comment><USER5> People pay for allsorts of rubbish. Why wouldn't they pay _something_ for your product?

It's what level would they pay ... start higher than you think, and offer discounts til people bite :)</comment>


Lab-grown cells develop rudimentary components of heart and nervous system - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01757-z <comment><AUTHOR> >Balls of cells mimic an unseen stage of human embryo development

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/balls-cells-mimic- un...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/balls-cells-mimic-unseen-stage- human-embryo-development)</comment>


To Save Net Neutrality, We Must Build Our Own Internet - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/7x4y8a/net-neutrality-fcc-community-networks <comment><USER3> No. To save the internet, we have to make the most gigantic stink the world has seen since the Trump election.

The solution is not "give up and let this pass, and then quietly try to work around it." It's "make the people in power pay DEARLY for their transgressions."

<comment><USER4> Let's be clear on something. "The Internet" doesn't care how Americans go about ruining their economy by prioritizing certain network traffic. As a Dutchie my Internet is largely unaffected by the FCC.

If anything the FCC rejecting net neutrality may be a boon for investment in EU startups and might actually benefit the EU tech sector. So go right ahead and take a crap on yourself America.

But let's be clear that the FCC has nothing to do with "The Internet". They're strictly an American affliction.

<comment><USER5> >As a Dutchie my Internet is largely unaffected by the FCC.

You can't be more wrong. Since Netflix, Amazon, youporn, imgur, reddit will be affected by this and they will have to pay more to keep their bandwidth on the same level as now, or slower by only 10% (hey, they could slow down their network links by 60%, but since they pay 20M per year, its slower by only 10%!) you as the end, you the end consumer will have to pay for this more. It doesn't matter where you live, as long as you use any of US internet services, you will pay for this more, sooner or later.

<comment><USER6> His Internet will still not be affected.

The Internet is not just Facebook, reddit, google, youporn and Netflix or the dozen or so popular companies.

<comment><USER7> Not to mention that most of those have servers in the EU which will not be affected by this. Sure they could raise prices there, but since this would just subsidize US costs a local competitor would have a competitive advantage.

What this non-Net Neutrality does is largely saying "if you want to build an internet-based startup the US may not be the place for you".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > A future in which ISPs are owned by local governments, small businesses, > nonprofit community groups, and the people they serve are the path forward > and the only realistic way of ending big telecom's stranglehold on America.

I'd like that. These day internet access is more like a utility. It helps people telecommute, do banking, grocery shopping even, pay bills, etc. If municipalities can handle providing water and sewage they should be lay some cable or provide a wireless solution in a more rural area.

At least there should be some provision where the big telecom companies cannot go around suing and bullying municipalities. Maybe have a Federal ban on states banning municipal ISPs.

If Verizon or Comcast want to come in and sell super-premium FIOS packages with fast transfer rates, they should be able to, but they shouldn't be able to squash or fight against the municipal internet.

The free market competition among the providers is just not happening and will probably never happen in a lot of areas. It has been enough years already, fiber technology is here, wireless as well, but hasn't helped enough. Time to stop pretending and using it as an excuse.

<comment><USER9> "The free market competition among the providers is just not happening and will probably never happen in a lot of areas."

Actually, we know exactly how to create a competitive market: line sharing rules. We used to have line sharing requirements for DSL and there were dozens of competing services in most cities. The situation we face today is the result of those rules being eliminated during the Bush administration.

<comment><USER10> Right. Line sharing works for electricity.

When I first used DSL, I could choose among many ISPs. All delivered through the same legacy copper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm in favor of network neutrality myself. My main criticism is that it doesn't go _far enough_ , in that it only requires neutrality from network providers to content providers but not vice versa or like-to-like. But I do have a serious question for other supporters.

How can so many of those who are usually anti-regulatory "free market" extremists _also_ be so strongly in favor of this regulation?

 __* This is their theory, not necessarily mine __* Internet service is a market. In theory, without network-neutrality regulation, providers _can_ charge extra for certain services but market forces will limit how bad that can get. You can't charge for something that people won't buy. Customers will go to competitors who offer what they think are more favorable terms, including competitors who claim no limits at all (even if the promises are misleading or impossible to keep). This already happens in other countries. People post the price sheets as support for network neutrality regulation, but those same price sheets are also evidence that lack of such regulation does _not_ mean the end of the internet as we know it. As long as the content differentiation is explicit and subject to consumer choice, not behind-the- scenes discrimination, there should be no problem. __* Now, back to my own thoughts __*

If somebody believes (as I do not) that markets are fully capable of regulating themselves in all necessary ways, why would they support regulation in this one case? Is it just because this particular regulation is seen as benefiting them personally? Is it because their "free market" beliefs are really pro-corporate beliefs, and network neutrality as currently defined benefits the corporations they like at the expense of the corporations they don't? Can anybody provide a convincing alternative free-market justification for network neutrality?

<comment><USER12> >How can so many of those who are usually anti-regulatory "free market" extremists also be so strongly in favor of this regulation?

Because in the US, network providers (at least the last mile providers; those charging end consumers) are local monopolies. Most people in the US have one legit high speed internet option, a few have two. There is little competition and the barriers to entry for new comers is very high (cost of obtaining easements and running cable to every house). In situations like this, monopolies are to be regulated.

<comment><USER13> Every time a monopoly arises, that is the market telling you the most efficient way to produce the good is with a single centrally planned organization, and that competition is not possible or effective.

A monopoly is the market's way of saying an industry/service should be nationalized.

<comment><USER14> > A monopoly is the market's way of saying an industry/service should be > nationalized.

The U.S. doesn't have a nationally run garbage service. Police departments aren't national. There is no national toll authority.

<comment><USER15> So yeah, publify not nationalize. But the argument is clear. Not going to resist the rationality of the market, after all.

Wonder why there's no standard term for "publify"? Let's change that!

<comment><USER14> But there still is a market. Cities compete against each other and that keeps them honest. If a city neglects it's police force, it faces demographic consequences. And if citizens are hurt by poor policing, they have other cities to choose. These properties are not true to the same degree in national issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Decentralising the Internet is the only way we are going to be able to stop corporations from lobbying (aka bribing) the government to make decisions in their favour.

Check out [https://substratum.net/](https://substratum.net/) \- they have an idea to do just that. As our computers get more and more powerful then there is no reason why we cant distribute more of what forces the internet to be centralised, if no one controls it then it can be free and open (which also raises a whole new set of problems but one step at a time!)

<comment><USER17> Unless I'm misunderstanding it, the Substratum project you've linked is attempting to implement a decentralized WEB, not a decentralized INTERNET. From what I gather, Substratum would still be running on the same internet backbone, and be subject to the same consequences if Net Neutrality is repelled.

<comment><USER18> Hypothetically a project like substratum could include internet bandwidth itself as another resource which is rewarded with substratum.

<comment><USER19> the whole reason "net neutrality" is even a thing in the United States is because how one is able to _access_ internet bandwidth. it's an duopoly _at best_ and the majority have exactly ONE option for broadband internet access.

without an access network (be that copper, fiber, or radio) internet bandwidth can't be delivered. the choke point is the modem.

access networks are a natural monopoly and infrastructure to support an access network MUST be regulated like one in order for "market solutions" to prevail.

but ATT, it's descendants, and the CableCo's have spent tens of millions on lobbying efforts to make sure that never, ever happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't quite buy this suggestion. ISPs would easily be able to identify and block VPN traffic running over their lines. The best action here is to act while there is still time to change course.

Another pressure point besides contacting your gov representatives (or visiting their offices in person!) is to contact Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and let them know that you, your friends and family will cancel contracts and boycott their services if they continue to support Pai and his dangerous agenda.

What he is proposing would be like giving your telephone company discretionary control over which calls they let in or out and relegating the rest to busy signals.

<comment><USER21> > Another pressure point besides contacting your gov representatives (or > visiting their offices in person!) is to contact Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and > let them know that you, your friends and family will cancel contracts and > boycott their services if they continue to support Pai and his dangerous > agenda.

The rep on the line might not even know what you'd be going on about and would just cancel your line without relaying the message.

<comment><USER20> Then take it as an opportunity to patiently explain the issue to them. Perhaps they do not realize they are working for the Dark Side. And perhaps your explanation will enable them to understand similar calls from other customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> the nihilism that's infected HN is so disheartening. we're so screwed if this is what the conversation looks like on a forum for technologist entrepreneurs. Everything from, "protests don't matter," to "eh, it's not my country."

This place used to be interesting. "Hacker" news, not really. "Grumpy programmers by trade" news fits better.

<comment><USER23> When is the last time a protest stopped determined politicians/policy makers? _Maybe_ the 1970s? These days, protests are a dime a dozen, and are only convincing to the protestors and no one else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> How about a decentralized internet software that works on local wifi and mesh networking and only needs to send its signals to the cloud when absolutely necessary?

Watch this video to see what I mean:

[https://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2017/08/the-future-of- decent...](https://qbix.com/blog/index.php/2017/08/the-future-of- decentralization/)

And this architecture:

[https://github.com/Qbix/architecture/wiki/Internet-2.0](https://github.com/Qbix/architecture/wiki/Internet-2.0)

<comment><USER16> [https://substratum.net/](https://substratum.net/) << these are doing exactly that

<comment><USER25> Shill much? There are tons of projects like this doing the same thing and you've already plugged this once.

<comment><USER16> I posted it here as an off the cuff remark then decided it deserved a full comment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> All revolution aside...

I wonder if this might actually be the kick out of the nest for services like Starry need.

[https://starry.com](https://starry.com)

Out helplessness on the choice side of internet service is almost entirely a function of paying to run wires under roads. Remove the wires and...

Has seemed liked a nice to have most days...but now... negates the need for physical infrastructure to develop a network. The market could actually work as intended.

</comment><comment><USER27> I would love to create my own neighborhood wired network, but up front cost would be a problem, and I don't think my neighbors care that much.

<comment><USER28> Definitely true. Supposedly Motherboard will be publishing some guides on this, so I'll have to wait and see how helpful those are.

<comment><USER27> I keep seeing stuff about using VPNs, but that be throttled easily. Wireless is just a mess and just that much more insecure/unreliable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> When I was reading this, I was reminded of a company - Blockstream.

These guys are have a satellites which broadcasts bitcoin blockchain: [https://blockstream.com/satellite/](https://blockstream.com/satellite/)

I can be wrong but I wonder - what might be the impact of a non-neutral internet on cryptocurrencies?

Obviously any impact will depend on how much of bitcoin or any cryptocurrencies volumes are from US. I tried to look it up and found this page: [https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins](https://coin.dance/volume/localbitcoins)

</comment><comment><USER30> I have a proposition: You know how Tor works? Onion routing? Send traffic encrypted multiple times through a list of nodes before exiting at an edge?

What if everyone sent their traffic back and forth to eachother. One hop, encrypted, and then forwarded. Just like Tor, but a single hop. Not anonymized, just peer-to-peer distributed.

If everyone did that (build it into browsers) the internet would function _full-mesh_. I mean, that's how IP works, right? Full mesh, peer-to-peer?

Hey ISPs! Good luck filtering on the entire internet.

<comment><USER31> I guess they would put all P2P traffic on the low priority lane. Some part of the people would try the fast lane, because the slow one is too slow and they do not care enough about NN. In the end the P2P people would lose.

<comment><USER32> And that's precisely why Europe will be affected too. I'm thinking of distributed systems, like ipfs or tor, that would be impacted as a whole by slow p2p traffic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> On Last mile in copper or fiber networks becomes easily a market failure due to large capital cost.

In many European countries (Finland for example) the last mile is divided by law into two services cable providers and internet provider. It can be the same, but other ISP's can get into business by making deal with the customer and renting the network. There are regulations for the maximum price of the rent.

<comment><USER34> Israel implemented this long ago. Check [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Israel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Israel)

> Every ADSL or cable Internet user has to pay separately to the > infrastructure provider and to the ISP, due to competition laws.

When I was there in 2007, I needed to struggle with getting PPTP and L2TP going on Linux. It was quite interesting! Now of course that's done by routers and you have wifi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> As much as I love the idea of locally building network infrastructure and making it a true commonly owned system... it doesn't work for rural areas. As soon as you hit the city limits, it's no longer the city's problem.

We gave hundreds of billions of dollars to AT&T/Verizon to build infrastructure for everyone, and they took that money and told their shareholders "look how well we scammed the US!"

What we should do is go back to those companies, tell them they've failed and owe us it back plus interest, and use that money _at a federal level_ to build an internet backbone for every single US citizen, period - like the Federal Highway Administration, but for broadband.

But, alas, the GOP will start screaming "Socialism" and that will never happen...

</comment><comment><USER36> The somewhat ironic thing is that this is literally _the_ core reason for the ideology of government being more hands off. Bad behavior enables competition. Google Fiber is an interesting case study. There are indeed major barriers to entry to competition in telecoms, both financial and regulatory, yet Google managed to overcome them in a variety of areas. However, after 6 years in business they only managed to obtain 0.07 million television subscribers and 0.45 million broadband subscribers. They've put all expansion plans on hold and have been downsizing current operations.

The reasons for their failure are complex ( _for instance they discovered that in poorer regions, families were inexplicably not even willing to sign up for the free option - they responded with grants for digital literacy_ ) but the fundamental problem is simply that they didn't get anywhere near the marketshare they expected. So thus in spite of what every inclining would lead us to believe, people didn't really feel incentivized enough to go through the hassle of moving away from Time Warner/Comcast.

The masses move like molasses. And people only really feel incentivized to change things when actions against them become particularly onerous. I think we should not really make this sort of 'onery' unlawful, but instead embrace the positive change such negative actions can foster. Make companies consider not only profit, but ethics and consequences of unethical activity. The recent events with EA are a similar example. There are no real regulations in video games and so you ended up with EA turning a major franchise title into a burdensome 'fee-to-pay' style game and it _finally_ resulted in real action from the consumers. Now people want to try to get laws stopping companies from including loot crates. In other words stopping companies from engaging in behavior that actually gets the masses to do the one thing that gets actual change from companies - speak with their wallet.

Granted, this is uncomfortable given the monopolistic nature of Comcast/Time Warner. If no competition does emerge then instead you're getting screwed by the one and only real option you have for service. But as I think this article is showing, so long as companies know they can get the marketshare - <USER2> will emerge. The one major condition on all this is that companies must also be allowed to fail, regardless of any possible consequences. 'Too big to fail' means 'too big to ever be held accountable' which, in turn, means 'too big to exist.'

</comment><comment><USER37> I've met some of these people and they were very inspiring to me. Detroit has become a leader in mesh networking they have helped setup mesh networks in the US and overseas.

If we want faster net connections that cost less they've shown us the path.

</comment><comment><USER38> You can argue all this mess is about not enforcing trust laws in the first place

</comment><comment><USER39> NN will always be under constant threat. My own country had it all enshrined in law only to be overruled by Brussels.

You're fighting against an entire industry who will stop at nothing to expand profits.

<comment><USER38> Brussel actually enforces nn.

<comment><USER40> The EU enforces a less strict interpretation of NN. The Netherlands stricter law was therefore overruled with a softer version.

This came to light when the ACM (The Dutch FCC if you will) fined T-Mobile for applying a zero rating on music streaming. T-Mobile argues in court they are allowed to do so by EU rule. The Judge agreed.

[https://www.wirelessweek.com/news/2017/04/t-mobile- netherlan...](https://www.wirelessweek.com/news/2017/04/t-mobile-netherlands- scores-zero-rating-win-court)

<comment><USER41> As far as I know country law can be more strict than EU law, is that not so? In that case, the stricter law could not have been overruled with EU laws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> My ISP is a local mom-and-pop shop that is using fixed point wireless, which seems like a great solution because it doesn't require digging up pavement, massively reducing startup costs.

</comment><comment><USER43> This isn't a solution by any stretch but I am curious, what's the stop me using a VPN provider (or an EC2 tunnel, etc) and tunneling all my traffic to prevent slowdowns?

Yes, the ISP _could_ throttle anything they don't recognize, but that seems incredibly risky, given that VPNs are used widely across enterprises in the US, and degrading people's work internet seems like a really terrible idea...

<comment><USER44> That could work on the "slow" option. The thing is that they will make money by forcing you to pay for what you want to see (not by forcing you to pay in their "everything" package).

Say you buy their "netflix" package. Then you won't even be able to turn on your VPN because you will only be allowed to watch netflix.

Now here is the deal: this kind of business model they are forcing does not work on the current switching model of the internet (but does on the phone/tv), because you can circumvent it down on the stack. Either by setting up a fake netflix server and/or forcing the routing table on your own machine, or some other kind of weird tunneling/workaround with packets to a supposed netflix server. Net neutrality is a hoax.

<comment><USER45> But doesn't the ISP know what the Netflix servers' IP addresses are? How could you fake a Netflix server?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> During dotCom era there was a Internet2 project. I remember PR statements dubbing it as the "new internet", replacing an decades old network with new infrastructure and modern protocols. It seems Internet2 project is still around, but pivoted a bit. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet2)

</comment><comment><USER47> No, we shouldn't save Net Neutrality. To save the internet, we must end it and realize it's the best way to destroy the free and open internet.

</comment><comment><USER34> Not wanting to tout my own horn but [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15760556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15760556) I posted this exact thing as an answer to the developments yesterday.

</comment><comment><USER48> You own internet will eventually be regulated if enough critical services creeps on it, the you could be back to square one

</comment><comment><USER49> If we could easily build our own internet then there would be no need to regulate the internet at all.

</comment><comment><USER50> guifi.net is already doing it in Catalonia and other parts of Europe:

[https://guifi.net/en/node/2413/view/map](https://guifi.net/en/node/2413/view/map)

</comment><comment><USER51> Isn't IPFS already there to fill that need?

[https://ipfs.io/](https://ipfs.io/)

<comment><USER52> You're getting the web confused with the net. Decentralizing the application layer is different from decentralizing the physical infrastructure, which is what is needed to maintain net neutrality.

<comment><USER32> Yep, I think that ipfs, being peer to peer, would be actually negatively affected by p2p traffic being in the slower lane. Globally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Sneakernet

</comment><comment><USER54> Rather than "build our own" we should take back what used to belongs to us in the first place.

They say there's a shortage of qualified I.T. people. If you work for telecoms who support a non-neutral internet, then quit. Go on strike. Work only for companies who support Net Neutrality.

Kill the enemy using free market capitalism.

<comment><USER18> > "take back what used to belongs to us in the first place"

Could you elaborate about how we used to be the owners of the ISPs?

Are you referring to the use of eminent domain laws to lay cable?

<comment><USER45> I think they mean the internet in general, built originally by the US government.

<comment><USER18> ARPANET infrastructure became redundant and obsolete after private entites made better and faster backbone links, and so was decommissioned in 1990.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


EU stipulates immediate Open Access in 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.scienceguide.nl/2018/09/nwo-wil-weg-van-de-impact-factor/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is fantastic news for science! Google Translate is pretty accurate [1], but a summary:

The EU, European Research Council, and funders from eleven European countries, have agreed that from 2020, European researchers can, in the general case, no longer publish their research in journals that

\- place that work behind a paywall for a certain amount of time (embargoes)

\- require a transfer of copyright to that journal

\- charge excessive publishing fees ("Article Processing Charges")

Furthermore, from 2021 (due to existing licensing agreements), European researchers are generally no longer allowed to publish in journals that are not fully open access ("hybrid journals"). That includes e.g. Science and Nature, unless they change their business models.

Some exceptions apply, e.g. when doing industry collaborations, or for monographs. Overall, though, this appears to be a great step forward.

More details in the official announcement [2].

[1] [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.scienceguide.nl%2F2018%2F09%2Fnwo- wil-weg-van-de-impact-factor%2F&edit-text=&act=url)

[2] [https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/](https://www.scienceeurope.org/coalition-s/)</comment>