Living Without a Cellphone - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390444549204578022641193306214 <comment><USER2> I got rid of my cellphone because no one calling me was anyone I wanted to talk to.

I used to be a financial/investment advisor, and those calling were mostly financial service wholesalers (insurance and annuities) and other commercial calls. Whenever I felt a vibration in my jacket's breast pocket, my stress levels would soar, and more than half the time it was imagined. Now I feel free, plus I'm probably saving $100 a month.

I'm now a programmer at a bank, and my wife can get me at my desk at work. I got a small tablet (a Nexus 7) with a data plan (attached to my wife's phone plan so it's cheap!), and I paid $20 to switch my phone number to Google Voice. Now when someone calls, they can leave voice-mail or text me, and it shows up in my gmail on my tablet. I added a Zagg hard-shell bluetooth keyboard and it's like I'm carrying around a little laptop.

I feel like it's an awesome change that has really improved my quality of life. I love to brag about making the change, in hopes that others might be inspired to follow suit, thanks for the opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER3> German resident here. I have pre-pay with a Vodafone subsidiary with a €10 data flat rate as an additional add-on.

My wife just has pre-pay and we have free calls between each other. Our total monthly bill is ~€20 per month.

The idea of paying $65 per month, per person is crazy. Is that a standard average cost?

<comment><USER4> In Canada, the cheapest iPhone plan you can find is $200 upfront + $80/month.

If you bring your own device, expect to pay $65/month for unlimited talking, unlimited messaging, and 1GB of data. Additional data usually costs around $5/250MB.

That's in 2015.

<comment><USER5> I cut costs way down by getting a "data-only" SIM for my iPhone and using a VOIP provider.

Call quality in poor signal (e.g. 2G) areas is terrible, but in urban areas with HSPA or LTE, it works great. I talk very little.

Look for the "flex-rate" plans that Rogers/Telus/etc offer. I sometimes pay as little as $5/mo if I don't use my phone, it scales with data usage.

<comment><USER4> No carrier ever accepted to sell me a data-only plan for my phone. I've been trying for a long time...

<comment><USER5> The trick is to ask for a tablet SIM or mobile internet SIM for a laptop. Don't say it's for your phone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am tracking my productivity day-by-day. It's generally sloppy, but there were a few outliers where I got done a lot. All these days had one thing in common: I forgot my smartphone at home.

<comment><USER7> That's my main reason (and battery life) for not having a smartphone. I have the attention span of a gnat and a smartphone would totally wreck my productivity. My general way of dealing with addictive substances is to ban them from my life entirely, that seems to work well so far.

<comment><USER8> except HN? ;)

<comment><USER7> I _really_ tried, I swear.

<comment><USER9> As a techie, I find it exceedingly hard to ban myself from here. Setting up a work-around for browser blocks, dns blocks, etc--takes a couple of minutes at best, not to mention there's a ton of pages where they just use the api and create their own interface.

I usually just edit my hosts file now, because it prevents the 2-second "ctrl+t, n, enter" combo and makes me think about what I'm doing.

I don't restrict myself outside of working hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> $65 a month?! shit,that's high! For 1GB od full speed internet, and after that unlimited lowspeed, with morze then enough calls, I pay $7.34 in Poland.

<comment><USER11> Don't forget that pays for coverage of a land area roughly twice as big as the entire EU[0] with no roaming charges. Also, this article is from 2012 and has outdated prices. If you go prepaid you can get 2.5 GB for $35 with unlimited voice and text[1] or 5 GB for $30 with 100 minutes voice and unlimited text[2]. Or pay-what-you-use for voice, text, and data[3] (great for people who need a phone but hardly use it or with highly-variable use). Of course you can also pay a lot more for worse plans, but savvy shoppers have decent options available to them these days.

[0] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28land+area+of+the+us+...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28land+area+of+the+us+-+land+area+of+alaska%29+%2F+land+area+of+eu) (I excluded Alaska because most of that state doesn't have cellular coverage and the parts that do make up for the parts of the mainland that don't.)

[1] [https://www.cricketwireless.com/cell-phone- plans](https://www.cricketwireless.com/cell-phone-plans)

[2] [http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans#other- month...](http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans#other-monthly- plans)

[3] [https://ting.com/rates](https://ting.com/rates)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Article is from 2.5 years ago, during more recessionary economic times, and possibly meant to influence the 2012 election by the focus on economic pain - you might recall the BS 'Obamaphone' meme from that time.

</comment><comment><USER13> I stopped using a cellphone when I moved to US --it was way more expensive than what I used to have in my home country (so I just simply said "nope."). Now when people ask my phone number, I just give my Google voice (which is free text/talk within US). If I am traveling to a conference, for the sake of emergency, I just use a potato phone with prepaid credit -- which I connect its number to Google Voice, so everyone who calls my Google voice number are automatically being redirected to my temporary phone. So I get that going for me.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is the big reason why I switched to T-Mobile. Yes, the coverage is limited outside of urban and suburban areas. I live in a major city so it works for me. My AT&T Wireless bill had crept up to about $280 and that's with one line "grandfathered" onto their smartphone data block. (AT&T started requiring that smartphones have a data package or be blocked entirely from data if the smartphone was already on the account. This one already was so the block was put in place. Six months later, AT&T declined to exempt MMS "data" from the data block, so the user's picture and group messages died. Tech support said I could put a $30 data feature on there to restore MMS.)

Now, for ~90% of the coverage I had with AT&T, I pay $179 and that's with interest-free financing of my wife's new mobile phone. Once that is paid off in a year, the bill drops to $160. That's seven SIMs, or five mobile phones and two data-capable tablets, and now the smartphone user who couldn't have MMS on AT&T has it, just like all five lines have 1GB of high speed data (going over is free, but rate-limited).

If I wanted to go cheaper, there's Cricket Wireless, MetroPCS, Red Pocket Mobile, Harbor Mobile, Page Plus, or any number of MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators) and resellers that have popped up in the past year or so. Heck, Cricket could drop my bill to $100, though I'd lose the tablet data. Family plans have never felt so inexpensive.

<comment><USER15> I'm in a very similar situation that you were in: I'm on Verizon with 3 lines, 1 of them grandfathered into unlimited data. Over several years the monthly bill has crept up to $230-$250.

Since it went up slowly I never thought much about it, until I reviewed last year's finances and realized what had happened.

T-Mobile is looking very enticing.

<comment><USER16> Do it. T-Mobile is great. And they will pay your ETFs.

Customer service is great. I recently had a billing mishap (their end, ended up $30 over) and to make it up to me, they discounted my account by $30/month for a yr. This is magical compared to the shitty customer service with Sprint and Version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It is possible to get by with a mobile device without cell service. Just need occasional email checks at open wireless spots. All the more reason to setup a router with EFF's open wireless. [https://openwireless.org/](https://openwireless.org/)

</comment><comment><USER18> The purposes of the Communications Act of 1934 were "regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States a rapid, efficient, nationwide, and worldwide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges, for the purpose of the national defense, and for the purpose of securing a more effective execution of this policy by centralizing authority theretofore granted by law to several agencies and by granting additional authority with respect to interstate and foreign commerce in wire and radio communication, there is hereby created a commission to be known as the 'Federal Communications Commission', which shall be constituted as hereinafter provided, and which shall execute and enforce the provisions of this Act."[1] In other words, it was preventing, or rather, dismantling, a telephone monopoly.

The Communications Act 1996 expanded it to support "a pro-competitive, de- regulatory national policy framework designed to accelerate rapidly private sector deployment of advanced information technologies and services to all Americans by opening all telecommunications markets to competition..."[2] In other words, it was expanding it to cover more than radio and phones.

I wonder if the cellphone lock-in policies mentioned in the article (e.g. Carlene, who can't afford the early termination fee) are considered anti- competitive, and therefore could potentially fall under the scope of the 1996 Communications Act?

\---

[1] [http://www.criminalgovernment.com/docs/61StatL101/ComAct34.h...](http://www.criminalgovernment.com/docs/61StatL101/ComAct34.html)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934#cit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Act_of_1934#cite_note-17)

</comment><comment><USER19> Can we update the article headline to include "(2012)" please?

</comment><comment><USER20> I've not had a cell phone for over 10 years, except for a period of time when my job wanted me on call, so they paid for a blackberry... even then however I very rarely used it except a way to check my email without having to get out my laptop.

In any case, I haven't found it inconvenient hardly at all, except in the occasional situation such as a car breakdown. I do find it inconvenient when traveling however, but I usually only travel once or twice a year so I usually just load some minutes onto an old tracphone for those occasions

It is not really a money issue for me because I could probably afford to stay up to date with the latest and greatest gadget if I wanted to, but it is more of a philosophical issue for me. It seems phones today are designed to command as much of your attention as possible, and it seems that most of the phone usage that I observe is not a necessity. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but I do believe it makes it more difficult to live a balanced life. It is essentially the same reason that I don't watch or pay for television and movies.

These days, I'm not even sure it is less convenient to live the way I do... with all of the security & surveillance issues that have been cropping up, I am glad that I have inadvertently sidestepped a lot of the issues that are being revealed.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's not a big deal living without a cell phone. I have been living without a cell phone and have only bought one recently because I grew tired of having to justify myself every time someone asked why I didn't have a bloody phone. For me the reason for buying a phone is 100% social pressure, it does not make my life easier or more pleasant in any way, au contraire.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm still in the dark ages when it comes to phones. I have a pay-as-you-go flip phone of approximately 2008 vintage, and I've never owned anything more powerful phone.

I pay a couple hundred a year depending on usage.

If I want to get on the Internet when I'm out and about, I just find a place that offers free wifi (such as a library or fast food restaurant). Then break out the laptop or tablet.

Judging by what others are saying about their cellphone bills in this thread and elsewhere, this simple life hack has saved me thousands of dollars over the years, and will save me thousands more.

I think most people massively overpay for their cellphone plans -- the minor increase in convenience isn't worth the four-figure price tag.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's amazing how people think the only options are unlimited or nothing. A prepaid ptel 5c/min 2c/text plan is great for essential communication. Combine with a forwarding service like Google voice where you can turn on/off text and call forwarding and the costs are extremely low. But the fear of overages and unwillingness to manage the details drive a lot of people to choose no service.

All those stories about thousand dollar bills were great marketing that drove tons of low usage customers to unlimited plans.

</comment><comment><USER24> Old article but I switched carriers recently to cut costs.

We switched from sprint to ting and went from $160 a month to like $70 for two lines. I didn't like having to watch my data usage so we switched to t-mobile and we've got unlimited everything for I think around $80-90.

We ended up buying used one generation old iPhones (5s) which were about half the cost of buying the same model in the store. With t-mobile they do wifi calling, so I don't really care if the signal is weak in my basement.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have been paying like $99 for a plan with a bunch of data and minutes I don't use. I changed the plan and its down to I think $60. I should have cancelled and found something cheaper than a regular Verizon contract. Only reason I didn't was because it would take some work to find the right alternative. I know I am still getting screwed though.

</comment><comment><USER26> A happy compromise is using a bar phone. I use a nokia; it doesn't distract me plus people can still call me in case of disaster.

</comment><comment><USER27> I recently switched to ConsumerCellular. My wife and I share 750 minutes, 1500 texts and 150 mb of data. All for $40 per month. Plus we can call each other for free. Data might seem low, but our data usage away from home is extremely low. At home we use our WiFi. And best of all, no contract required.

</comment><comment><USER28> Everyone should immediately drop cellphones and wireless equipment for health reasons. I did so more than ten years ago after developing headaches from the radiofrequency exposure from cellphones. Then I began looking into the science. Deep. Some people will develop symptoms quicker than others and the reason is yet unknown but everyone is affected. Its a matter of time and exposure before symptoms manifest. In the beginning the symptoms of exposure are predominantly neurological, like headaches, fatigue and poor sleep. Ignore that and the ultimate end-point will be cancer as your immune-system competence will be reduced to a point where cancer will be able to take hold. Yes, radiofrequency radiation, especially 3G/UMTS is an excellent cancer- promotor as has just been confirmed in a robust replication study from Germany. An overview here: [http://microwavenews.com/news-center/rf-animal- cancer-promot...](http://microwavenews.com/news-center/rf-animal-cancer- promotion)

I know many are addicted to their mobile devices and I'm not against technology (I'm an IT consultant myself) but I'm against the wireless industry basing their delivery infrastructure and end-user devices on a long-time known hazard: pulsed radiofrequency radiation. Known hazard you ask? Yes, even declassified US army reports and east-bloc scientific literature from the 60's, 70's warn of the neurological and genotoxic effects of low-level microwaves: [http://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/7915657](http://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/7915657) See, they were researching low-level microwaves as a stealth weapon against dissidents & adversaries. Now you've practically got military grade weaponry in your pocket.

Please don't be naïve. Reduce your exposure now.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not frequent user of mobile phone and paid around 10$ per month in Russia before ruble fall, now it's around 5$. It's per-minute/per-megabyte tariff.

</comment><comment><USER30> Funny, every time I asked a mobile carrier sales rep about going pre-paid, they discouraged me. "You'd hate it" they'd say. But I've saved a lot of money since doing so, and with no more mysterious charges on my cellphone bill that no one can account for.

</comment><comment><USER31> 1st world problems...

Edit: As a lower-middle-class American, my (budgetary) choice to be without a cell-phone has not impacted my quality of life in any noticeable way. The linked story says nothing more than "life without modern conveniences is relatively inconvenient." How is that illuminating, in any way?

But yeah... my original comment is kinda deserving of downvoting, if I'm honest.

<comment><USER32> Anecdotally speaking, cell phones have appeared to be pretty saturated in all the developing countries I've been in.

I bought my current phone for about $55. It's got a quadcore 1.3ghz processor, 512MB of RAM, a decent screen but a mediocre front and back camera. It might have some backdoors in it though, as it's got some software I can't uninstall without rooting.

The plans, minutes, and internet bandwidth in developing countries have been far cheaper than say Verizon's (perhaps no longer available) plan for 1GB of data for $40. The plans range from about $2 for 1GB in some countries to $16 for 1GB plus a chunk of talk and messaging time.</comment></comment>


Can a complete novice become a golf pro with 10,000 hours of practice? - <AUTHOR> http://www.tampabay.com/features/can-a-complete-novice-become-a-golf-pro-with-10000-hours-of-practice/1159357 <comment><USER2> There's a lot of armchair speculating going on about this.

What I love about this guy's mission (and why I'm rooting for him) is because he is simply and intensely applying a theory. Succeed or fail, he won't prove (or disprove) the theory, but it will be a fascinating data point for us all.

</comment><comment><USER3> To me there's a sort of a Bayesian logic working against any hypothetical "adult novice puts in 10,000 hours of work and becomes a pro" story, which is that anyone who has the willpower and passion to put in that much work probably has already. If you are so excited about a sport/instrument/game/hobby that you're willing to put 10,000 hours into it starting from scratch, why weren't you working on it before?

I recently mentioned reading an amazing music theory book and someone asked me if it had lots of prerequisites or if he could understand it. My response was "It doesn't really _require_ previous theory knowledge, but if you weren't excited enough about music theory to have acquired that other knowledge already, I doubt this book is going to be that interesting to you."

<comment><USER4> What was the name of the music theory book? Seriously interested.

<comment><USER3> "A Geometry of Music: Harmony and Counterpoint in the Extended Common Practice" by Dmitri Tymoczko.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been playing golf since I was 6 years old (I am now 25, running a YC company and whiteyboard). I've played competitively, going all over the country and even got a full scholarship to a NCAA Division 1 university for the sport.

I can honestly say that this guy does not stand a chance, and here is why.

1\. Golf, especially when it comes to playing professionally, is more of a mental sport than physical (both strength and muscle memory). Even if this guy can learn to hit the ball 300 yards, it will take him at least 10 years if not longer to get the mental comfort required to play effectively in front of thousands of people and successfully place or win an event.

2\. The 10,000 hour rule is best applied to things like coding or langauge learning, in other words, low pressure learning environments that have structured guidelines to success. Golf, beyond mental and physical, requires great feel. To be able to know that in 15 mile an hour wind, with your ball half buried by sand, and water in front of the green, how would one hit that shot? There are millions of variations of what you could end up with on the golf course, none that could be figured out in 10,000 hours. We haven't even talked about the putting green yet. Yikes

3\. I've seen this before, over a dozen times. Guy gets tired of his job, has some talent and decides to take a ton of golf lessons and practice hard to go for the tour. At least the guys Im referring to played college golf. This guy didn't so much as do that.

4\. Golf is seriously hard and the difference between the best players and the mediocre pro players most of the time is just an average difference of a few shots. To shave off those few shots is next to impossible once you've reached your peak potential.

Golf is not for everyone. This guy is wasting his time.

Update ( I forgot something):

Here is another reason why this is a pointless ambition.

5\. 10,000 hours of golf is a lot different than 10,000 of something like...learning a language (we'll use this again). To become good at golf does not mean that you can sit on the driving range and hit golf balls every day until your hands bleed. To become a great player, one must get great at playing the golf course. To play one round of golf takes between 3-5 hours (depending on where you play), and there is no guarantee that those 5 hours spent on the course are in any way productive to your progress. That is not a good use of time spent in his quest for 10,000 hours. Someone could certainly guarantee that in 5 focused hours of a spanish tutoring session that they have progresses. With golf, a bad round could send you right back to the drawing board.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure it will work. I expect golf rewards basic aptitudes like co- ordination, strength and stamina, etc., and that pros' endowments on these are four or five standard deviations from the population norm. They were likely selected for those endowments prior to most of their practice. Where is Dan on that curve? But I suppose how much these endowments matter, or whether work can enhance them, is a rough part of this experiment.

I am sure that I like his approach a damn sight better than yours. The guy is _working_. He'll have to beat all sorts of inner demons to get to 10,000 hours. He'll end up knowing a lot about learning, and himself, when he's done. That's my kind of guy.

Meanhwile, you are lobbing poorly thought-out downerisms. "get great at playing the course"? Gee, do you think maybe he'll budget some of his 10k for that? or that the ability to hit his shot straight _every_single_time_ might help? or that all those hours will do something for his mental chops? Coding "has structured guidelines for success"? None of this is intelligent, never mind constructive.

You're only 25, you were clearly a good athlete, you made YC, congratulations. No doubt worked your ass off up to this point. Well, some people have to grind it out even harder than you've had to. If you can't spare the time to think through helpful commentary, respect their dedication and keep your mouth shut.

<comment><USER7> _I'm not sure it will work. I expect golf rewards basic aptitudes like co- ordination, strength and stamina, etc., and that pros' endowments on these are four or five standard deviations from the population norm._

In golf (unlike most pro sports) it isn't immediately obvious that this is the case. Sure, most golfers are in shape, but few aerobically fitter than a recreational 10K runner, and the variation in max drive length between successful pros shows that strength is pretty variable too.

As an extreme example there are players like John Daly, who is overweight, smokes and is a double major winner.

<comment><USER6> We might, on close examination, find that pro golfers have extraordinary endowments on attributes subtler than sheer speed or strength. Stuff like depth perception, coordination of full-body motions, balance, maybe some cognitive attributes like executive control of focus, etc.

As others have noted, the effort is in part a test of people's ability to enhance these endowments. I _think_ most people putting in 10,000 hours got feedback that their basic endowments give them some advantage.

I suspect that something like that will operate here. If at some point Dan hits diminishing returns, and can't punch through by varying his approach and allowing for natural human slumps, that may be a signal that he lacks the physical tools to go all the way. Even then that isn't a waste of time, he'll have learned a lot about focus, and about detecting where his natural advantages do lie. That has to inform the search for his real calling.

One way or the other, it'll be interesting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's his blog with some updated info: <http://dannychampion.com/blog.php>

His improvement seems to be fairly rapid. I guess if this is your sole pursuit, not that surprising. But nevertheless makes I'm rooting for him. I think it would be testament to the theory.

<comment><USER9> Sports training usually shows diminishing returns. In particular, if you overtrain you plateau or get worse.

<comment><USER10> do you have a citation or any evidence for this?

<comment><USER9> Are you being funny or are you implying results can be linear?

Have you ever seen personal bests charts? Save specific cases of breaktrhoughs, it plots very logarithmic for everybody. That is diminishing returns, more or less.

<comment><USER11> Are you not citing anything?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of a blog I read a few years ago called "Scratch to Scratch". The point of the exercise was to go from being an ultrabeginner golfer to a par golfer in a year of serious practice and training.

Here's the about page from his blog: <http://breakparblueprint.com/blog/about-2/>

That is apparently, his new blog migrated from the original, found here: <http://scratchtoscratch.wordpress.com/>

The big thing was the time and effort investment: over 70,000 practice balls, and 2,000 hours in a year (that's close to a full-time job).

He actually ended up writing a book about it:

[http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Hack-Golfers-Challenge- Break/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Dream-Hack-Golfers-Challenge- Break/dp/1616080264)

<comment><USER13> You can also count on this "Dan Plan" becoming a book. Ultimately, that's the entire point of this project anyways. Not to be a golf champion, but to sell a lot of books.

<comment><USER14> I thought the entire point was to become a PGA golfer ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I would believe it were he 20. However, most golfers start fading in their thirties, having lost the extra power that their bodies could provide when younger. While I don't doubt that he will be an excellent golfer (thus "proving" that 10,000 hours of dedicated practice will indeed make you great) I certainly doubt he will be a PGA golfer.

That said, he might have a chance for a lesser tour. And that, for sure, will lead him to his true goal: motivational speaking! (Oh... come on, like it isn't obvious...)

I've certainly thought about doing similar, outrageous things. It seems to be a current pattern: do something seemingly outrageous and interesting, write about it, derive income.

<comment><USER16> I believe your comment is spot on. The debates here is basically about what "professional level" careful training and hard work can bring this guy up to. The "nay-sayers" (including myself) agree on that he might become much more proficient than amateur golf players, maybe even "have a chance for a lesser tour" (as you put it), but he won't be able to make it into the top level games such as PGA tour tournaments. This is the case for almost all competitive sports.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not fond of all these attention grabbing hotshots. Gladwell's theory is completely bogus.

A guy in UK tried to do that for Marathon and aimed to become an olympian. He did a lot of media and called his upcoming documentary "The Road to Beijing". He didn't make it, and wasn't even close (from what I remember it was 2:40 or 2:45). Then he went to Ethiopia and picked a protege. His protege was fast but didn't win a thing.

He is now a motivational speaker. I guess blatant self promotion always works. He used to be the running joke in UK runner's forums but he is the one laughing now.

<comment><USER17> The world record is 2:03. The guy you mentioned may not have been close to the world record, but a 2:40 marathon is 26 back-to-back 6 minute, 10 second miles. That's pretty damned good.

Looking at the 2010 results from the NY and Boston Marathons, that's a few minutes shy of the 100th best person. Considering that those are elite races with entrants from around the world, I think his time is pretty damned good in an absolute sense, not just a relative sense. Best in the world, no. Olympic level, no. But I'd consider him elite.

<comment><USER18> Certainly he's very good, but there's still a _huge_ gulf between him and the best marathon runners.

And that's why this ten thousand hours thing is pretty random, yet pretty unfalsifiable. In any specialised activity, the first hundred hours of dedicated practice is good enough to make you better than most people. Keep practicing and you'll be better than 80% of the world. Keep it up for a bunch more time and you'll be better than 90% of the world. By the time the irrelevant ten thousand hours milestone pops by, you'll certainly be impressive at your activity, but whether you're in the top 5% or the top 0.001% depends on which activity you've chosen (plus your natural talent in that field).

So for some definition of "expert", it's fair to say that ten thousand hours will make you an expert.

<comment><USER17> _but whether you're in the top 5% or the top 0.001% depends on which activity you've chosen (plus your natural talent in that field)._

I would be fine with that result. My objection is when people say "I'm just not good at _X_ ," when what they really mean is "I'm not as good at _X_ as I think I should be, that frustrates me, and I lack the motivation to continue trying." If we can demonstrate that with enough practice, anyone can get good at anything (with a large delta of good), then I think that's meaningful.

If that statement is self-evident to you, I've talked to people who don't consider it so. For example, I've talked to other CS majors who think that most people just don't have the right "mind" for programming, and I've taught programming to people who said similar things.

<comment><USER19> _If we can demonstrate that with enough practice, anyone can get good at anything (with a large delta of good), then I think that's meaningful._

I'd agree with that, which is a very different claim than "there's no such thing as innate talent".

 _I've talked to other CS majors who think that most people just don't have the right "mind" for programming_

I'd also agree with that, and I don't think it's contradictory. Have you really not observed that some people pick up programming far easier than others? I believe that almost anyone can get to the point where they can write basic software, but not that everyone is capable of becoming the next Dennis Ritchie.

<comment><USER17> I think that initial aptitude at a task is not a good predictor for how well you can do after doing it for a decade. It is a good predictor for likelihood at actually pursuing it for a decade, because it often determines whether or not you _like_ the activity.

Put another way, people become good at things that they like because they keep doing them. We get positive reinforcement. But I don't think there are a class of people who have the "mind" for programming.

Also note that by bring up Dennis Ritchie, you've now introduced the "what does it take to be a genius" discussion, which is different from achieving expert status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here's one of the original papers that put forth the theory of deliberate practice and the 10,000 hour rule (though in the paper it is given as a 10-year rule):

[http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...](http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf)

The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance also covers a wide range of research on performance and expertise in various areas [http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance- Handbo...](http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Expertise-Performance-Handbooks- Psychology/dp/0521600812)

</comment><comment><USER21> Six hours a day, six days a week, for six years? Golf can take it's toll on the wrists, forearms, shoulders, lower back, and knees. I predict he'll give up due to overuse injuries long before he reaches 10,000 hours.

<comment><USER22> If you read Dan's blog, you'll see that he has a physical therapist coaching him. His team of advisors have a good plan and it seems to me that avoiding injury is a big part of that plan. For example, Dan currently is not using any big clubs - the largest a chipping wedge. If his spends most of his practice time near the green how is going to injure his shoulders, lower back or knees?

In a recent blog post Dan mentions that his physical therapist will prescribe a certain weight lifting program to strengthen his muscles enough to achieve the driver head speed that his golf coach plans that he should achieve.

I suppose that today's golf pros, those actually on the tour, have each put in those thousands and thousands of hours of practice, regardless of whatever athletic gifts they received at birth. So are injuries the reason most near- pros never make the tour? That would be the case if your point is true. I think that they don't make the tour because it is simply too much effort and dedication to put in all those hours of practice.

And that's the wonderful thing about Dan's challenge. If valid, it means that any of us may achieve outstanding results if we put in the hours required to gain the expertise. Golf, in this regard, is a model for any skill we need to satisfy our aspirations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Probably want to start with a few amateur tournaments like club championships, city championships and state championships before moving onto national championships (US Public Links, US Amateur, etc.) If you can't beat the 13 year olds at these tournaments who are breaking par, you probably aren't going to do very well against the adults who use to win those tournaments as kids.

The next argument I hear from a lot of my golfing buddies is that they'll practice hard and play the Senior Tour (Champions Tour). Beating Bubba Watson, for example, in 20 years when he's eligible for the Champions tour is like beating Usain Bolt in a 100 yard dash after giving him a 3 second head start. Won't make good television.

A few books have been written on the subject where reporters try to qualify for the tour.

That being said, it's actually doable, highly unlikely, but doable. I like his chances at becoming a pro golfer (not on the PGA Tour, but maybe the Hooters or Tar Heel Tour) better than his chances of becoming a starting pitcher, running back, point guard, goalie or professional driver in other pro sports. Golf, the game is tremendously "fair".

<comment><USER24> Agreed, just think of the number of "golf pros" out there that can't even make the tour. Every course has at least one, and these days most driving ranges have them. Unless he discovers that he happens to have some hidden raw talent, his chances are slim-to-none.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There's an unstated assumption that excellence equals pro in this article.

I'd say excellence is a necessary precursor to going pro, but is itself not sufficent. That extra push is some magic combination of genetics, upbringing and opportunity (nature and nurture coming together just so) - all along with the drive and experience to become excellent.

</comment><comment><USER26> The thing about golf is that practicing six hours doesn't mean you got six hours of practice- you need to play rounds, which take several hours but are only really ~30 minutes of "golf practice" at most...golf is interesting because the athletic prerequisites are minimal compared to most other sports, but this doesn't mean that 10,000 hours is sufficient. I don't doubt that he'll be near-pro level after the 10,000 hours, but I do doubt that he will be good enough that it will be really worth the complete dedication of these six years. He'll be scratch+ for sure, but until you get close to that level, it isn't easy to predict who will have the ability to step up to the true professional level, and who will lose a ton of money traveling on minitours with little chance at ever reaching a PGA/Nationwide tour level (i.e. what most mean when they say "pro").

My perspective on this is based on my experience in playing tennis for 10,000+ hours (not apples-to-apples, obviously, but still relatively close) and becoming good enough to know that there would be absolutely no point in trying to play full-time professionally, because I was too slow to ever reach a level where I could make money while touring. There's a lot more money in golf, but it also is a lot more expensive (many golf mini-tours pay prize money out of the sizable entry fees they charge...$1k/tourney entry fee is common for small pro golf tourneys) and there's a lot more marginal pro-level players around for the golf tournaments since there aren't nearly as many physical factors in golf as there are in tennis.

<comment><USER27> The claim of the mainstream scholarly development of expertise literature

[http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.ht...](http://www.psy.fsu.edu/faculty/ericsson/ericsson.exp.perf.html)

and especially the most classic paper in the literature

[http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...](http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf)

is not that 10,000 hours is enough, but rather that deliberate practice is strictly necessary for expertise, and that 10,000 hours (in round figures) is also necessary to achieve what can properly be called expertise in any adult domain of performance. K. Anders Ericsson, the leading researcher in this field, distinguishes "playful engagement" from "deliberate practice" and distinguishes being at the journeyman level of performance from the rarer case of being at the expert level of performance.

What needs more testing is whether 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is not only necessary but also sufficient. Many critiques of Ericsson's findings evoke an ill-defined latent quality labeled "talent" to make the claim that many members of the general public would fail to achieve expertise even if they engaged in 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. But such a showing would not be a direct refutation of Ericsson's claim. Rather, it would be necessary to show that someone who is properly called an expert lacked opportunity to engage in lengthy deliberate practice. Mozart didn't write any music composition that musicologists call a "masterpiece" until he had had ten years (and at least 10,000 hours) of intensive study of music guided by his father, who was an author of innovative books on music instruction and a continual guide to young Wolfgang's musical development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Something I recently realized is that if this theory is true I have a big problem on my hands. See I love flying, and it is one of my life's goals to fly in professional competitions. However flight time in airplanes routinely cost $100 or even $300 an hour. My goal might end up costing me a few million dollars.

<comment><USER29> At the the skydiving drop zone I used to help run, almost all of our jump pilots were hired with 500-1000 hours. They were all building time to "move up" to bigger aircraft, better paying jobs, etc. Most easily were able to accumulate 500+ hours in a summer. (We flew under Part 91, which does not have a duty time limitation, so they could fly literally from sunup to sundown on a busy day.)

So really all you have to afford out of your own pocket is enough time to get your commercial certificate and be employable for flight instruction, skydiving, crop dusting, banner towing, or any of the other "entry level" pilot jobs out there.

<comment><USER28> You are absolutely correct there, once somebody has their commercial license it becomes easier and cheaper to build hours. I guess it comes down to how effective the practice is, as acrobatic maneuvers are frowned upon in most commercial settings. :P

Certainly getting your license doesn't mean you have mastered controlling the airplane, but I'd imagine that after a thousand hours of doing basic maneuvers and tightening your tolerances there's not much more you can do without buckling down and getting time in an acrobatic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I think the key here could be this:

> "He had almost no experience and _even less interest in the sport_."

How can someone truly excel in a vocation they don't love. Without that love is his practice going to be effective compared to that of someone who loves golf and wants to submerge themselves in it every waking hour?

<comment><USER17> Read his current blog. He loves it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Something missing from this story: money. How does this guy pay for six years of training (doing what he wants) with no income? I guess the lecture circuit and some Nike sponsorship, but will that be enough to pay rent, food, travel and maybe support a family?

</comment><comment><USER32> I have a different theory. When it comes to seriously major ambitions e.g. PGA tour, chess GM forget 10,000 hours because it is way simpler - if at first you don't succeed...give up. You probably don't have the freakish level of god given talent required.

</comment><comment><USER8> I never thought I'd be tempted to donate to someone so they could focus on playing golf!

</comment><comment><USER33> The first study I know of is the 1996 book "The Road to Excellence" [http://www.amazon.com/Road-Excellence-Acquisition- Performanc...](http://www.amazon.com/Road-Excellence-Acquisition-Performance- Sciences/dp/0805822321) . I got it after I read Peter Norvig's essay on "Teach Yourself Programming in 10 Years." <http://norvig.com/21-days.html> .

So here are the numbers, in short, for mastery:

It takes about 10k hours of practice.

It takes about 10 years.

That means about 3 hours of practice everyday. Everyday.

</comment><comment><USER34> It depends on the sport. For example Javier Sotomayor (high jumper) - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javier_Sotomayor> \- made it from 0 to no.5 in 4 years, and there are other examples in this particular sport where people made it in 2 years or so. That's one of the reason I don't appreciate any sport, it depends on lots of factors apart from your mental discipline (golf is more or less only mental discipline OTOH).

</comment><comment><USER35> From the article

>' _Dan spent last month in St. Petersburg because winters are winters in the Pacific Northwest. "If I could become a professional golfer," he said one afternoon, "the world is literally open to any options for anybody."_ '

// The world is 'open to any options for anybody' who can write a novel book, do a lecture and has $100,000 USD to fall back on whilst they train for their new venture ...

If he's done the experiment first, then written the book and done the lectures it would have a greater validity IMO.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's far more reasonable to change this to a challenge to become a scratch golfer or something similar. I don't think Gladwell meant that anyone could become one of the best in the world at anything with 10,000 hours of work. Such a statement is somewhat insulting to those that have devoted their life to their craft. Instead, that with 10,000 hours you could become very good at anything. Enough so that you could be considered very skilled/knowledgable in that craft/field.

<comment><USER37> The "challenge" isn't to become a PGA golfer or anything like that. There isn't any predetermined mark of how "good" he needs to become in order to succeed. It's an open-ended experiment into how far 10,000 hours can take you.

Setting one milestone as your "goal" hinders your ability to reach the thousands of other possible milestones.

<comment><USER36> But the title is can he become a golf pro. There wouldn't be over a 100 comments here if it simply said "How good of a golfer can you be with 10,000 hours of practice?"

<comment><USER38> I guess, but that title seems to be chosen by the submitter/publication. To quote directly from the article:

"Basically," he told the people at the conference, "what I'm trying to do with this project is demonstrate how far you're able to go if you're willing to put in the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is right out of the book "Talent is overrated"[0]. Given enough time and the _proper_ amount of coaching & practice, a person can become a star. The key isn't to just play golf, but rather to get proper feedback from a trained professional who knows _how to practice_.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World- Class...](http://www.amazon.com/Talent-Overrated-Separates-World-Class- Performers/dp/1591842247)

</comment><comment><USER40> It Depends....

I have a friend who can do anything with a golfball. He is literally amazing. As an amateur he was one of the very best, but he freely admits he cannot succeed as a golfer because he just does not have the right mental makeup.

He will sink 6 foot putts all day in practice but ask him to sink a six footer with a tournament at stake and he just cannot do it reliably.

Being great at something is often not just about skill or love of the activity but also you "gotta have the right stuff"

<comment><USER41> Yeah, but you're just drawing the line between "result of effort" and "inner nature" in a different place.

What if you decided to test the hypothesis that it was inner nature which allowed you to deal with tournament stakes? What if that was learnable after all? Maybe the top performers just had a different set of experiences, one that allows them to be more detached.

<comment><USER40> I have no doubt that inner nature can be learned or at the very least improved. People are complex and the stated reasons are very seldom the real reasons. My friend may just be saying what sounds logical rather than the real reason.

In any case I hope this guy makes it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is assuming the 10-year / 10000-hour rule can both a: drop that first bit and b: is not dependent on _critical periods_ of learning early in life.

</comment><comment><USER43> Cool story. My question is, if you were going to do the same thing, what skill would you try and master?

</comment><comment><USER44> I contacted Dan and suggested he try to find interested neurosci guys to scan his brain as he progresses, he's going to do so (local uni) tomorrow, very cool.

</comment><comment><USER45> I doubt that he'll be able to get to a professional level when he's not passionate about golf. At least I never excelled at things I wasn't passionate about.

</comment><comment><USER46> I just wish he'd tried this on an actual sport.

 _braces for down votes from Golf fans_

</comment><comment><USER47> Depends on the novice, right?

After all, Tiger Woods was once a novice.

<comment><USER48> Yeah, but he could barely walk at the time. That's pretty raw material right there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I don't see why not. Rory McIlroy went from pro to amateur overnight.

</comment><comment><USER50> I 'll probably be buried for this, but how is this "hacker news"? I thought HN was moderated

<comment><USER51> Not so much moderated - some links are occasionally killed, usually as spam. How is setting out on a new venture to both succeed technically and profesionally - and test a hypothesis that has been bandied about HN quite a bit - _not_ hacking related?

<comment><USER50> Just out of curiosity, would you find it equally interesting if it was about, say, soccer, or about memorizing the Bible?

<comment><USER51> Good question. The problem with soccer is that it is a team sport, so individual success is more difficult to gauge than with golf. It is also not very well-recognized in the US. Memorizing the Bible would be fascinating but it's not really in line with the whole 10K hour to become a pro at something, though I could see something like this making it to the front page of HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This is such a fluff article. Why is it interesting that someone is attempting to "try really hard at something for a lengthy period time"? Looks like he is pitching for a book deal and a spot on Oprah. When you consider how much time 10k hours is I don't think it will blow anyone away that practice of that magnitude will bring success.

<comment><USER53> If I was going to quit my job and golf for 6 years straight, I'd probably plan a secondary income source as well.</comment></comment>


Crowdfunding – Where small businesses can borrow if the banks turn them down - q-base http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21650291-where-small-businesses-can-borrow-if-banks-turn-them-down-cool-man

<comment><AUTHOR> You are aware - this article is behind a wall?</comment>


Introducing DogeAPI - A dead simple way for you to accept dogecoin - <AUTHOR> http://dogeapi.com/

<comment><USER2> Isn't the joke over?

Alternatively, if dogecoin is not a joke, what does it add to Bitcoin? Is there anything it does that Bitcoin yet doesn't do and that can't be added to Bitcoin if enough people in the Bitcoin community want it ?

<comment> Crypto-Cafe Dogecoin possesses the ability to appeal to a broader audience through its emotional appeal. It has brought a large number of individuals into the crypto-currency arena than Bitcoin or any other crypto has ever done. In only a few weeks it has gained more media attention that Bitcoin ever did in two years. It's current Reddit membership is now 20000, only exceed by Bitcoin (for cryptos). Dogecoin also provides a lower entry for the average person. It looks much nicer in your account when there are 10,000 Dogecoins as opposed to .004589 Bitcoins.

Dogecoin's success will be the success for all cryptos, so let's support it's ascension.</comment></comment>


Hard Drive Icons Through the Ages - <AUTHOR> http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2015/5/19/hard-drive-icons-through-the-ages <comment><USER2> This is all I need :/ [http://mayoyo.tokyo/jD9.png](http://mayoyo.tokyo/jD9.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> So, mostly hard drive icons on the Mac since 2000? Maybe "Through the Ages" isn't the right way to put it.

</comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr: a brief look at community created HD icons from as far back as 2002 but mostly just from the past few years.

<comment><USER5> ...for OSX only.

The topic would be fascinating I think: to look at the changes in iconography for persistent storage generally, from the 70s onwards. Someone should curate that, if they haven't already. This, sadly, is not that post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> These are all very recent (eg: ~10 years) icons, and on OS X only. Far from being "through the ages".

This had _a lot_ of potential if they had started with windows 3.11 (dunno if earlier had HDD icons, another interesting fact), Mac OS 1, and maybe gnome/kde 1.

<comment><USER7> _cough_ Xerox Star, 1977 (I don't remember if the earlier Alto had disk icons).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 'Through the ages'? More like 'through the recent past'</comment>


Ask HN: Preferred VSCode-based note taking app? - <AUTHOR> Recently, a few VSCode-based markdown note taking / knowledge base apps have been released, namely Foam[0], Dendron[1], and Memo[2]. Discussions in the below linked HN thread are useful, but I'm wondering if anyone has tried multiple of these apps and what they ended up settling with & why.<p>I'm using Foam right now and enjoy it. Not looking to really 'distro-hop' between note taking apps all the time, but curious about others' thoughts.<p>[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23666950<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23890035<p>[2] https://github.com/svsool/vscode-memo <comment><USER2> I think each solution brings something different to the table. I've tried Foam but not Memo and here are my thoughts (disclaimer: I'm the author of Dendron so have some bias here)

0\. foam pieces together a bunch of different plugins to create a markdown note taking experience. it's highly flexible and as the creator has said ([https://github.com/svsool/vscode- memo/issues/9#issuecomment-...](https://github.com/svsool/vscode- memo/issues/9#issuecomment-658381111)), is currently a testing ground for many different ideas.

1\. dendron is a highly opinonated note taking tool that focuses on "structured note taking". it supports arbitrary links between notes while also organizing notes into canonical hierarchies. these hierarchies can be enforced by schemas, an optional type system for notes, that guide what notes hierarchies accept. dendron is all about letting you work with notes at scale - I created it to handle my personal knowledge base of 20k markdown notes.

2\. memo i've never heard of until now. it seems like it provides a 'roam' like experience inside vscode. the gifs look great and will definitely play around with it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out Marquee ([https://marquee.activecove.com/](https://marquee.activecove.com/)) and let me know what you think!</comment>


Sea lion blows scientists' minds by head-bobbing to the Backstreet Boys - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/1/4172230/sea-lion-shows-rhythmic-ability-in-study <comment><USER2> Really? Blows their minds? I mean I understand the need for some hyperbole in titles to garner attention but I doubt scientists though their discovery would induce some paradigm shift in their respected fields!</comment>


A CIA officer turned police officer: thoughts on policing - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/2/21277438/police-officer-george-floyd-patrick-skinner-interview-militarization <comment><USER2> As someone from Germany it seems very strange how casually he talks about being shot at, as if this is a normal thing.</comment>


Ask HN: Can bad onboarding destroy user activation? - <AUTHOR>

So I'm bootstrapping a SaaS that lets users upload videos and do data mining on it. I had a few customers so I know that it is working and providing value.
But what's happening next is really stressful. It goes something like this in a typical week.
I see a bunch of trial sign ups. I get excited.
User uploads videos but they did not configure the settings correctly so they end up with bad data.
User tries a few more times or gives up or reaches out to me.
The majority of people are just giving up and never returning.
The ones that try it a few more times ends up requiring extra features I need to build that will take a long time and they won't pay up front for it.
The ones that reach out, I teach them how to use it properly. Only a few of these actually become customer.
My question is, is my onboarding broken and is it stopping user's from becoming activated? Is the first experience enough to destroy the product's value proposition?
What about for the people that ask for features so they can get what they want out of it but unwilling to commit up front for it and expect me to work on it for weeks and still trust them to pay for it after?
OR is this a completely different issue? am I simply getting non serious people signing up and draining my resources and causing stress?
I do have some plans to address both:
1) hold webinars or do screen share demo as a mandatory step after signing up
2) get rid of free trial
3) identify new target customers and discover market channels to reach them.
What do you think? Really could use some advice here! Thank you. <comment><USER2> Speaking from experience trying out various SaaS products - if I hit an obvious bug or get corrupted data when I try out a demo, I immediately give up on the product and try something else. Reasons:

1.) It speaks really poorly of the level of polish that I should expect in the product later. You'd think that someone would at least run through the demo to make sure it works without error.

2.) Usually if I'm evaluating a product I'm evaluating multiple products, and also have the option of building my own on the table if none of them work out. An early error is just a signal to focus my efforts on one of the other products on the marketplace.

I think you might _also_ have a problem with the product concept, if the folks who do try it without error want additional features or aren't using it even after training. But to answer your question - yes, a bad demo or onboarding experience will absolutely destroy interest.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) That's what I suspected. 2) What if I force them to hold my hand so that I can show them to how to properly use it and convince them that it works?

Since first impression is so important, and the product needs hand holding to demonstrate it's value, my free trials would essentially be hurting me.

There are some video files that give a lot of trouble so it's really to support their very custom requirements as the product for the paying users works fine. It's those people that want the custom work done for free which I don't think is a great people to target.

<comment> xkcd-sucks For users that abandon it, you could process the video that they've already uploaded and email the results to them, along with a short screencast/tutorial of how you did it? As long as there aren't legal/ethical issues with doing that.

Also, datamining is like 95% trivial and 5% picking the right parameters, so you might focus a bit more on making the automagic parameter selection a little more useful

<comment><AUTHOR> yes I have done that before, record a screencast of how I did it and even email them the successful result. most of the time I got back no reply.

It works for majority of cases but still the tail scenarios where it will choke. those edge cases consume majority of my development resources. I'm at a point where I think I will just say, 'not yet supported but will let you know' and instead focus my efforts on the cases that I can actually support.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


There's No DRM in JPEG – Let's Keep It That Way - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/theres-no-drm-jpeg-lets-keep-it-way <comment><USER2> To be fair, ask webcomics guys and photographers about piracy - they get the worst of it. Big companies that would never dream of encouraging you to pirate videos and songs functionally encourage you to swap images around constantly, stripped and re-watermarked and whatnot.

So yes, I do feel a bit bad for small independant artists who watch the standards bodies work themselves into a fury to protect video and audio content while they have to deal with Google Image Search and 9gag.

<comment><USER3> Protecting a single image is far more difficult. Video and audio are "protectable" to the extent they are because there is a really low expectation of how they have to work. Start playback, stop playback - that's about it. No one expects to pre-render, use video as a buffer for other things, etc. You can realistically render video direct to the screen via hardware, in a protected path.

Doing the same for still images adds a ton of work for little payoff. And it still doesn't prevent anything. At least in video if the system remains uncracked, it's hard to make a copy. You can't just point a video camera at a screen and get good results.

Whereas for a still image? Pretty easy to reconstruct the exact pixels, 100%.

Anyways, this is doomed entirely. They provide the case of social media sites stripping off metadata. Well guess what, if your DRM is gonna prevent them from modifying the image, it's gonna prevent them from loading the image in the first place. Even if the JPEG folks add it, it has zero chance of going anywhere. You'd need support from the hardware, OS, and on up. (Like video has.)

<comment><USER4> A video is just a succession of images. An image is a video with only one frame. You could use the exact same system that protects videos to protect an image, by making a video with one frame of very long (infinite) duration.

<comment><USER5> Which was incidentally a technique used by early blu-ray rippers. (Making a screenshot of each frame.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> DRM is protection of content from the consumer itself. The consumer is going to consume the data through an analogue channel. This channel will always be the source of extracting redistributable content. The very premise of DRM rules out any 100%-solution and sets it as obfuscation.

I feel it might be stupid idea but it is not impractical.

The effort of extracting content should be less than the maximum value that can be generated by redistribution. Thus, returns from piracy diminishes as you go from softwares to video to image to text. The effort of extracting an image is too easy via analogue hole. This is assuming an open technology ecosystem not exactly the RMS world but at least Linus or perhaps Mozilla. The enforcers of the DRM do the sensible thing of spreading their proprietary black boxes to as much people, until, they can shut down their doors to the rest of community. That is precisely when certain open source foundations too had to back down. That is how you can enjoy netflix only within your chrome browser.

What bothers me is why are they trying to make it into the standards. If it is built into the standards, it will be built into the downloaders as well. Remember what happened with HLS AES encryption, it is now built into the video downloaders itself. While I understand benefits of standardization, how it has given shape to tech, it might not be true with something so un-technical as DRM. If you do want obfuscation, at least do not make it standard procedure. You know very well that the strongest DRM can not be technically secure.

<comment><USER7> > _The very premise of DRM rules out any 100%-solution and sets it as > obfuscation._

> _I feel it might be stupid idea but it is not impractical._

They are willing to fuck everything up to extract more royalties. Don't worry that you can't have a 100%-solution DRM now. When we get to the level of advanced optical implants or even brainchips, I'm willing to bet MAFIAA will be one of the biggest investors, in order to sneak in a DRM processor directly into your head and then force you to consume content only through legal and paid-for MAFIAA-certified brain chips.

<comment><USER8> That's increadibly cynical, but if cybernetics ever become a thing, I think it's painfully obvious what will happen.

Humanity is going to learn some very hard lessons if that class of technologies ever pans out.

<comment><USER7> I wish I could attribute it to just my cynicism. I'm not saying they will succeed, but I have no doubts they'll try very hard, like they do now with every single piece of technology. There are millions of marketers and executives whose only job is trying to figure out how to squeeze money out of something, burning any value in the process if necessary. I've worked with the types, they have a particular way of thinking that makes you blind to the fact you're fucking your customers - or the society - over. A kind of reverse reality distortion bubble, in which you believe the victims of your ideas are actually happy about them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm so glad I grew up in an era where people's only concern was making things work AT ALL. Trying to make things work for licensed users only, or only for certain devices, or anything else is just bullshit.

<comment><USER10> A different way of looking at this is, we figured out how to make things work at all. Now people are trying to figure out how to get paid for the work they do on those cool new things.

Struggling to make sure you get paid is nothing new, either.

<comment><USER7> It's not struggling to make sure you get paid that's the problem - it's people fighting to get paid _more_ , and people who starts expecting to get paid for things they weren't being paid before. Both of those problems, reluctance to accept that not everything you do will bring in monetary compensation, are greed that drives invention of things like DRM.

The only worse thing is people who notice something is cool and decide to come in and monetize it.

<comment><USER11> The choice I see they have is either stop doing it anymore, or enforce payment. Continuing to do it with out pay, whether they were originally paid or not is no longer viable.

<comment><USER7> I see they have a choice to not be greedy and bitch about lost sales. This actually earns respect from the consumers. You have to accept that you're not going to capture all the value you're creating.

EDIT: also, happy 2^11-day :).

<comment><USER12> You presume this "not being greedy" won't mean their going out of business. Look at newspaper journalism for an example of free redistribution of copyrighted content literally killing an industry's worth of companies.

<comment><USER13> Yet we still have newspapers, online and in print.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, and at this point it wouldn't hurt if they all just died - they provide negative utility to society by oscillating between mostly writing lies and clickbait bullshit.

(INB4 you reflexively downvote me for saying bad things about Respectable Newspapers, take a moment to think about the last time they wrote something in your area of expertise and note how big a mix of lies, bullshit and misunderstanding the article was. There is no reason to assume that _everything else_ they cover is true.)

Journalism has a _much_ bigger problem than just their business model being ruined by digitization. They need to figure out a business model that incentivizes actual, honest reporting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If we could get rid of copyright there'd be much less resistance toward embedding information about who created the work.

I'd very much like that we could abolish fines for copying but keep fines for stripping author signature from work, or not propagating original author signature to works that are derived.

This way you could have a trail to reach actual author of the part of work that you find awesome to commission some new work from him.

This could be much more valuable for way more people than current copyright schemes that only seem to benefit fatcats.

<comment><USER15> I write books. I publish the contents for free online, too.

But I still want copyright. If there were none, someone else could take my work, attribute it, put it on some SEO'd site and outrank me.

What recourse would I have? Very few people are going to find the original source, search it, get past the SEO and find my site.

And zero readers have commissioned a work. I make money, but not that way.

Trust me, copyright isn't just for fatcats. Though I suspect it's mostly fatcats who propose unreasonable applications of copyright.

<comment><USER16> The problem is you're right, but you're not in good company.

I want copyright too, and for pretty much the same reasons as you. But right now supporting "copyright" means you're taking the same side as assholes who insists on a term of 70 years after the death of the author, or more. Some people even at HN think copyright ought to have infinite duration. It means you're on the same side as those who want to send people to prison or put them in the poorhouse for putting a video on Youtube. The same side as jerks who want to deploy bots all across the web to indiscriminately take down content whether it infringes or not, and who wheel and deal with distribution channels when the draconian laws they bribe governments to pass aren't enough. Seriously, _fuck these people_.

The political climate in much of the world eschews nuance on basically any issue you can name, and copyright is no exception. I want reasonable copyright terms of ten to twenty years from publication and to wipe my ass with the DMCA. If I can't have that, and if the choice is between copyright maximalists and those who would abolish copyright completely, I'll support shit-canning the idea altogether. It might not be the most fiscally or culturally sound solution, but it at least shows a basic understanding of how human culture even works, which I can't say for the maximalists.

<comment><USER15> You're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This comment in another part of the thread put it well. Do you have a response to the argument below?

"If that happens, the web as we know it would cease to exist. Without a legal recourse to stop plagiarism and stolen content, people who are actually creating new content stop completely and move into other areas of work. Websites that produce original and unique content close up shop. Instead you're left with a bunch of low-quality rip off sites that have nothing original of their own. Then it the entire web stagnates over the years as very few new things get added to the net as a whole. And that's just the effect on the internet, that doesn't take into account real world publishing.

I wish people would consider all of the consequences of these things before making statements like that. I haven't even begun to consider the consequences of eliminating copyright completely and just from what I can come up with off the top of my head makes it a non-starter."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10384178](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10384178)

<comment><USER7> IMO it's a very bad argument - it assumed most, or best, content is created in order to make money, whereas I believe that the best content is created by people who feel they have something to share, for the purpose of just it being out.

It's strange how as a culture we started to believe creating is just an instrument to make money. Adults are insane; they lose understanding they had as kids, that creating something and/or solving a problem can, and should be, a terminal value in itself.

<comment><USER11> It's a fantasy that there's any large amount of content that will be altruistically produced. Must content people enjoy are the popular, highly commercialised kind. You mightn't like it, but it's the reality. Taking money for content is a validation that the content is valuable.

<comment><USER14> Have you seen github?

<comment><USER17> Github (and indeed most open source) projects are not created out of a sense of altruism. How many people treat github as an online resume? These projects are meant primarily to show off people's coding capabilities in order to sell services, and are not the primary means of making money. These people get a full-time salary writing custom code for businesses.

This approach does not apply to most artists. Nobody is going to pay an author a full-time salary to write new books just for them, or a musician to make new music just for them. The better option for most artists is to invest in creating the best work they can and sell it for commodity prices to a lot of people.

<comment><USER7> > _How many people treat github as an online resume? These projects are meant > primarily to show off people 's coding capabilities in order to sell > service_

That's what it is now, and the reason it happened was because Github was full of projects created out of a sense of altruism and fun, and it got respected this way. Yes, the respect and popularity Github has stems not from code- resume-builders, but from the altruists and people doing fun shit for fun that came before.

You see, this is a pattern that repeats all over software industry, the whole Internet included. First you start with people doing something to actually do it (i.e. as a terminal goal). Then whatever useful and/or fun they made gets recognized, popularized, and some people smell a money making opportunity (i.e. doing stuff as an instrumental goal, to get money). The business comes and the whole environment turns to shit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This seems like a technical solution to what's a political problem. Those don't usually work out as one would like, or worse, get enshrined in some standard that doesn't solve anything and which makes things worse for the few people that have supporting programs.

<comment><USER19> JPEG DRM is not a political problem. It's more of a copyright problem although, more accurately, it's a digital content management problem, because content doesn't have to be copyrighted to use DRM. For something to be political it can't just be related to government (because everything is related to government in some way), or even managed by government. For that word to have any meaning at all, it needs to be a more direct reference to government and politics.

And technical solutions to actual political problems have worked great. The recent revamping of government websites has made information more accessible to the public than ever. I can't imagine Obamacare holding much value if it wasn't possible to make healthcare.gov so people could actually navigate through the complexities.

<comment><USER20> Political problems are any that involve issues of power and control. The issue of who gets to decide what you view on a computer is an eminently political one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> One of my side projects is a photo water marking SaaS. I was surprised when people actually started paying for it years ago, as I figured, "there's a ton of watermarking apps out there". But it turns out there's a lot of demand from amateur and semi-pro photographers who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they're being ripped off (and want a simple way to watermark their photos). For pros, There are other services out there that actively scan the internet looking for infringers and send DMCA takedown, or similar, notices. These services are generally two pricey for the type of customers my side-project has.

I guess my point is - there is a pretty big demand to protect images online. I suspect DRM will end up being implement in some form or another.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, some amateur photograhers are silly like that (source: I know a few), they behave like little children - shoot some photos, put a big watermark on them to both show pride and make sure nobody "rips them off", and then get mightly annoyed anyway when somebody reposts their photo on Facebook without linking back, because they thought it was cool. Only few later realize that nobody really cares who made a photo (unless they're known to make more quality photos) - a work created has social value on its own, and holding it to yourself _only_ because you're an author is actually little antisocial (also, if you don't fight, people tend to appreciate the work as a gift and will often happily attribute it to you themselves; but I digress).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Would this stop me from screenshotting the image, saving it as a .png, and distributing that?

Because I and many people would do just that. Sure, the DRM might work for my grandparents and a few other non-techies but over time I can teach my grandparents how to screenshot an image and others would catch on. People would even make chrome apps to "click a picture and resave it in a shareable format".

I'm not sure what this DRM would solve, if anything, other than pissing off users and giving photographers and other digital-sharing artists a false sense of security.

<comment><USER23> Ah, but the JPEG displayer would only run on a Trusted system, whose screenshot function honors DRM. You could try to snap a picture of your screen with your digital camera, but the camera manufacturer also embedded DRM inside the camera.

I'm not convinced he analogue hole won't ever be plugged.

<comment><USER24> > I'm not convinced he analogue hole won't ever be plugged.

The analogue holes for visual media are the two holes in your skull where your eyeballs sit. The analogue hole won't be plugged until you can implement a secure path into the human brain.

<comment><USER7> "Until" being the operative word here. Electronic implants are an active area of development, and it's only a matter of time before media companies see them as a way to further advance DRM protections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> How long until this is used to lock down the independent "publishing" of images? This seems like a great foundation upon which to build software ecosystems that discourage user-generated content w/o the imprimatur of an authorized publisher attached.

<comment><USER26> Especially when combined with new copyright/DRM laws from TPP/TTIP/TISA, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10363500](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10363500)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Couldn't we just stop using JPEG? I realize this is a can of worms, but it's an option, right?

<comment><USER28> But why? It seems to be a decent format. And what's the other option?

<comment><USER29> PNG and WebP

<comment><USER30> FLIF is very promising too: [http://flif.info/](http://flif.info/)

<comment><USER31> FLIF is not really a format so much as an experiment. There isn't a spec that I can find, nor is there any sort of formal description of the format. Right now, the only available spec is the source code and that leaves a lot of open- ended questions about what to do about inconsistencies in implementations. I hope it develops into something good, but for now it doesn't seem a viable option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wouldn't this DRM require every implementation of the JPEG standard to honor the DRM or am I missing something?

<comment> TD-Linux Yes it would - but that's how all DRM systems work, plus an attempt to make the image unreadable to "unauthorized" JPEG implementations.

<comment><USER33> How, if some Future JPEG (FJPEG) is a standard, does one make a standard FJPEG image unreadable to unauthorized FJPEG implementations? Either the standard itself has to be kept secret or the FJPEG implementation has to contain some secret, right?

If the standard is kept secret, by maybe charging a tidy sum for it, and getting all buyers to sign an NDA in blood, we'll all have fewer implementations of FJPEG viewers. There would probably be no "open source" implementations of FJPEG. We would all loose, as the market for FJPEG viewers has barriers to entry, and therefore would serve buyers poorly. That's standard, Free Market economics.

If FJPEG viewers have to contain some secret (an algorithm or a key both come to mind as things that have happened in the past) the same sorts of things happen - barriers to entry to sell in the market, higher costs, fewer options to consumers.

Of course the 3rd option is to legally mandate some kind of overall DRM at the operating system level, which would have much the same effects, except that we'd have a narrow choice of Windows or Mac OS, with maybe a larger choice of FJPEG viewers.

All of these options should be repugnant to Free Market believers such as myself. I predict the Republican Congress will laugh this out the door.

<comment><USER34> Just like they did with the DMCA, right?

<comment><USER33> I'm sorry, but could you elaborate on this? I'm not understanding the connection with DMCA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Isn't this problem better solved by watermarking anyway? People want their work distribute publicly but want attribution to attract users. Buyers need a redistributable license most probably as they are interested in the media most probably as part of some communication effort.

Drm is not going to help after buyer redistribute the purchased work in any way, especially if there is a medium conversion involved - i.e. printed issue.

<comment><USER7> Watermarking is either too easy to cut out or damages the image. I can understand the reason they want to look for other solutions, for the same reason I would pay for a tool that reliably cleared watermarks out of pictures - not because I want to steal content, but because I want to consume it in high quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> More attempted fencing off of the commons. Yay.

</comment><comment><USER37> countdown until mozilla folds like wet cardboard

<comment><USER6> like it did for Adobe Primetime CDM

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> WebP anyone?</comment>