IBM Design - <AUTHOR> https://www.ibm.com/design/ <comment><USER2> Even though IBM doesn't seems very sexy startup. But they survived 100+ years and trying to find way to stay in business.

They learn and adapt. They contribute significantly to Open Source. Now they are understanding importance of UI/UX design and trying to invest heavily on it.

Lot of big name startup even though succeed for short or medium term but struggling a lot in long run. I really enjoy reading the below book about IBM

Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? by Louis V., Jr. Gerstner (Outsider came to IBM as CEO) IBM is nearly in verge of collapse during early 90s. And he pulled it off.

[http://www.amazon.com/Who-Says-Elephants-Cant- Dance/dp/00605...](http://www.amazon.com/Who-Says-Elephants-Cant- Dance/dp/0060523808)

<comment><USER3> I would like to see IBM release something similar to Material Design / Bootstrap - that is home grown from their own design experts.

<comment><USER4> Material and Bootstrap are very different, so I'm not sure exactly what you're looking for, but FWIW, IBM does have some resources available, including what appears to be working code in the "animation library" [https://www.ibm.com/design/language/resources](https://www.ibm.com/design/language/resources)

<comment><USER5> Yup, the IBM Design Language is a growing library/guidelines for all new IBM Designed products. Still a work in progress, but there is finally a unified look/feel/function for future apps/sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was hired as one of the product designers in the winter class of 2015 and love my job. It's not smooth sailing but it is also my first job out of college and it is incredibly rewarding to see the kind of impact you can have on shipped products and also really inspiring to see a 100 year old company trying to change from the inside out. We have an amazing culture in the design studio and I couldn't imagine working anywhere else right now.

</comment><comment><USER7> 96 HTTP requests, totaling 5406.72 KB, in 12.87 seconds. Maybe good design for print, but certainly not for web.

<comment><USER8> I was going to say it works like a charm with javascript disabled, but it's just broken fast!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there anything new here? This site was all over the tech news last year when it was released, but I can't tell what, if anything, has changed now.

<comment><USER9> They recently updated their design thinking process. Pretty much the same thing, but more focused on iterative approaches?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> IBM is truly owe of the most loathsome tech companies in our industry. They have a long record of treating their employees horribly. Many people I know have been laid off at IBM and made to train their (foreign) replacements. One person I know has worked for IBM 3 times (twice through acquisitions) and was laid off all 3 times! Please keep this stuff in mind as a contrast to their flashy new marketing.

<comment><USER11> They have to. It is part of the strategy and how it can manage to stay alfoat. At some point software consulting business was big so they had consultants for big projects. Then I don't know cloud got bit, so now what should they do, keep hoards of consults on payroll as a jobs program like TSA? Maybe retrain them? The fastest and easiest way it so lay them off.

At some point I've heard they sold cheese slicers. They probaby had experts in that. What should they do when the market situation changes? Keep selling and hiring more people in that area or lay them off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> IBM is largely a relic from a bygone era. You know, the era where people of color didn't exist and women were largely relegated to secretarial roles.

I have it on good authority that you need to pay for snacks at IBM. When an executive was asked why this was so, they replied that: "the coffee is free, because it will make our engineers more productive."

IBM, not even once.

<comment><USER13> > I have it on good authority that you need to pay for snacks at IBM.

I work for the State of Oregon. It's pretty much illegal to give employees free food without a business justification. Buying my own snacks and coffee is the default, and not a huge deal; I'd rather have money to spend as I deem fit than more calories. Complaining about not having a mini fridge full of Red Bull and a cabinet stocked with Doritos is a great way to make yourself look tone deaf and selfish when the vast, vast majority of American society doesn't have these fringe benefits.

Far, far worse is the series of things IBM's been doing to benefits. They've shifted the 401k match to the end of the year, so you have to survive any layoffs and stack ranking system to earn your contribution. Early retirement has been slashed from 6 months pay to 1 month.

<comment><USER14> IBM 401k did move matching to the end of the year. I was annoyed about that too until I realized that Google employees only get 50% matching on their contributions, capped at $8250. Meanwhile, IBM contributes 1% automatically and matches 100% of your contributions up to 5% of pay.

IBM's 401k benefit is easily verifiable: [http://www-01.ibm.com/services/socomm/shared/pdf/IBM401PlusP...](http://www-01.ibm.com/services/socomm/shared/pdf/IBM401PlusPlanBrochure.pdf)

Google no longer lists their 401k benefit publicly, but there is this: [https://www.quora.com/What-exactly-is-Googles- employee-401k-...](https://www.quora.com/What-exactly-is-Googles- employee-401k-matching)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I note Apple products featured quite prominently.

<comment><USER4> Possibly related to this: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/15/apple-teams-up- with-ibm-for...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/07/15/apple-teams-up-with-ibm-for- huge-expansive-enterprise-push/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hey IBM, instead of just telling us you care, how about _actually_ creating a delightful experience for ClearCase, ClearQuest or DOORS.

I guess it's easier to simply say "Design" 37 times on a static site, maybe add some bright colors, people of 'diverse' background and a hoodie for effect. Nailed it!

<comment><USER9> IBM has hundreds, if not thousands, of products that they own and maintain. Understand that the research for a design, designing it, and then developing it takes months to years to accomplish. IBM won't be able to update all of their products, but they will work on the ones that they can and then carry design consideration to all new products. Thats all a company can do. Same goes for Microsoft, Google, etc. IBM is a bit late to the game is their only issue.

Also consider, how are they going to get designers/people who care about design if they don't advertise it first. Yes there are products that need work, but to fix that issue they need to say Design 37 and more times just to get the attention of the right people. I am sure in your line of work as well, things don't just happen immediately because you want it to and sometimes to solve one problem you need to solve two or three others first.

<comment><USER16> ok agreed. hope it works!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They just released a new Design Thinking framework, it's pretty interesting and worth a look. [https://www.ibm.com/design/thinking/](https://www.ibm.com/design/thinking/)

</comment><comment><USER18> Please be cautious when considering working for or with IBM. IBM's poor treatment of employees and customers is widely reported. Do your own research.

For example, Cringely has a book outlining IBM's problems: [http://www.cringely.com/2014/06/04/decline-fall- ibm/](http://www.cringely.com/2014/06/04/decline-fall-ibm/)

He has many posts in the same vein (note dates in the URLs):

* [http://www.cringely.com/2016/01/11/wheres-the-beef-ibm/](http://www.cringely.com/2016/01/11/wheres-the-beef-ibm/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2015/07/21/ibm-is-so-screwed/](http://www.cringely.com/2015/07/21/ibm-is-so-screwed/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2015/01/26/ibm-right-gadfly/](http://www.cringely.com/2015/01/26/ibm-right-gadfly/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2015/01/22/ibms-reorg-hell-launches-...](http://www.cringely.com/2015/01/22/ibms-reorg-hell-launches-next-week/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2014/10/27/fix-ibm/](http://www.cringely.com/2014/10/27/fix-ibm/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2014/10/21/ginni-comes-senses-late-i...](http://www.cringely.com/2014/10/21/ginni-comes-senses-late-ibm/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2014/10/12/ibms-power8-servers-less-...](http://www.cringely.com/2014/10/12/ibms-power8-servers-less-meets-eye/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2014/07/25/fed-suckered-ibm-failing-...](http://www.cringely.com/2014/07/25/fed-suckered-ibm-failing-cloud-strategy/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2014/07/16/ibm-apple-just-big-deal/](http://www.cringely.com/2014/07/16/ibm-apple-just-big-deal/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2014/06/15/ibm-back-ussr/](http://www.cringely.com/2014/06/15/ibm-back-ussr/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2014/01/23/ibm-sells-intel-server-bu...](http://www.cringely.com/2014/01/23/ibm-sells-intel-server-business-company-doomed/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2013/08/07/fulfilling-customer-requi...](http://www.cringely.com/2013/08/07/fulfilling-customer-requirements-is-a-weapon-at-ibm/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2013/07/25/the-new-ibm-vampires-in-o...](http://www.cringely.com/2013/07/25/the-new-ibm-vampires-in-our-midst/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2013/06/20/ibm-to-customers-your-han...](http://www.cringely.com/2013/06/20/ibm-to-customers-your-hand-is-staining-my-window/)

* [http://www.cringely.com/2013/04/22/the-decline-fall-of-ibm/](http://www.cringely.com/2013/04/22/the-decline-fall-of-ibm/)

...and many older columns.

See the comment by _slantedview_ in these comments for another example.

Cringely isn't the only one offering serious criticisms of IBM: [https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=pro...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=problems+at+ibm&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

<comment><USER11> Regardless of what happens with IBM, this sounds like someone with a chip on his shoulder. He wrote a book about how bad it is, then blogs about it.

It is like someone who got out of a relationship (didn't he work there?), but then keeps obsessing and talking to everyone else about it for 10 years after.

<comment><USER18> Many blog entries preceded the book, some by years - look at the URL dates.

Cringely was not employed by IBM according to: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_X._Cringely)

Cringely was an early employee of Apple and has worked for PBS (another TLA), as a journalist.

My point here is to urge people to be cautious when including IBM in their career plans. If you can get past Cringely's flamboyant writing style you will see that _on the topic of IBM Cringely is informed and has been accurate for years._

Please do your own research into IBM's treatment of employees and customers before hooking your cart to IBM's horse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> this is nice</comment>


Show HN: Asteroid Squad yet another Asteroids on Steroids Game - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.UEAgames.AsteroidSquad

<comment><USER2> Are there any power-ups? Does it get much more difficult? The demo video didn't seem to show all that much in the way of gameplay, and the description is rather spartan as well...

Basically, why should I try this and not one of the myriad other Asteroids clones?</comment>


Wall Street Journal Pulls Content Out of Google's "First Click Free" Program - angry-hacker http://searchengineland.com/wsj-first-click-free-269545 <comment><AUTHOR> HN should ban WSJ submissions in the wake of this as the "web" link is longer a workaround.

</comment><comment> angry-hacker > Those finding Wall Street Journal content are now getting a "Subscription" > label appearing next to its links in Google News...

That is a nice gift for them by Google. Normally, with a thin content like only a title it's impossible to rank. Especially for hot topics.</comment>


Australia sues Google over alleged misuse of location data - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/29/tech/google-location-data-australia-scli-intl/index.html <comment><USER2> These are shady UX practices, those settings are all over the Android device and one thing doesn't actually mean what it says, you have to turn them off in multiple places. Not to mention the fake warning and default "On" state for the same. About time Google needs to pay for this design choice.</comment>


Whoa, this is heavy: brain equates weight with importance - <AUTHOR> http://trueslant.com/ryansager/2009/08/27/whoa-this-is-heavy/

<comment><USER2> The paper is available here [pdf]:

[http://www.igroup.org/schubert/papers/jostmann_lakens_schube...](http://www.igroup.org/schubert/papers/jostmann_lakens_schubert_ps_2009.pdf)

The experiment design has an interesting flaw: the values that the users assigned to the questions were indicated by marking a position on a line, not by writing out a number.

In other words, they might have simply measured where people who don't give a shit about answering questions in a stupid survey make arbitrary line markings on a sheet of paper when having to struggle a bit to hold up a heavy clipboard, versus when easily holding a light one.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've noticed this with chess pieces. Play on a cheap unweighted plastic set, it feels a lot different than playing on a heavily weighted one.

<comment><USER4> Poker chips as well...

<comment><USER5> Agreed, you can easily notice the difference in how someone plays when you're using lightweight plastic chips and properly weighted ceramic chips. It affects how someone plays more than money (usually putting $5 on a game will be enough to get people to play serious, but the proper chips and cards will make people play like it's a $50 game).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So we think heavy things are important, and we use the word heavy (or, more formally, weighty) to mean important. In fact, gravitas means something like importance as well. I wonder which direction the causality flows. The article speculates that it might flow from experience (as an infant) to language...which would suggest that languages other than English should have similar metaphors. Anyone know of any?

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been getting artwork together for new business cards, and found a company to print them. They sent me some samples of available paper types, and my first thought was that the card stock felt flimsy. And flimsy cards send the wrong message.

I've had really solid biz cards before (you could loid a office lock with them), and they suck because you can only get three of them in your wallet. But although a card is really just an information storage and transfer device, and paper stock really shouldn't matter, I can't bring myself to get wobbly cards. Like or not, how it feels also imparts information.

<comment><USER8> If you go too overboard on this track, you turn into this guy:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YBxeDN4tbk>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps this explains the American Express Centurion Card (aka "Black Card") which is made from anodized titanium--its weight is immediately noticeable.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centurion_Card>

<comment><USER10> It would have been even cooler to have made it out of tungsten.

Specific gravity for titanium: 4.506. For tungsten, 19.3.

<comment><USER11> Or gold which is even heavier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In cognitive linguistics this is called conceptual metaphor. If you're interested in it, read "Metaphors We Live By" by Lakoff and Johnson. My favorite conceptual metaphor experiment (I think by Lera Boroditsky) was based on a question like:

 _The meeting was scheduled for Wednesday but was moved forward 2 days. What day is it on now?_

Because this uses the common "time is motion" conceptual metaphor, if you ask it to people on a moving bus, they are more likely to say "Friday" than are people sitting at a bus stop.

The people who are in motion are more likely to conceptualize themselves moving through time and "moving the meeting forward" means forward in their direction of motion. The people who are not in motion conceptualize time as moving past them, and "moving the meeting forward" means forward towards them, making them more likely to say "Monday".

<comment><USER13> I wonder what would happen if they asked people who were facing backwards on the bus?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think they're exactly right on the developmental basis of these effects. Our thoughts are embodied because that's how we develop. Just because we learn new stuff doesn't mean it's not rooted in the old.

That's at least one clear place where the brain-as-computer metaphor breaks down. I have yet to see evidence of a neural "delete" function. The question is how robust the overwrite functions are. And so far the evidence suggests the formation of new "files" rather than tampering with, or overwriting, old ones. Based on the neuroanatomy, these basal responses are likely to arise from posterior and subcortical structures. The frontal cortex is then used to abstract away and resolve conflicts.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is always a factor in people's comparison of iphone vs. palm pre.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is a good case for the embodied mind.

 _[Those] who study the embodied mind believe that the nature of the human mind is largely determined by the form of the human body. They argue that all aspects of cognition, such as ideas, thoughts, concepts and categories are shaped by aspects of the body. These aspects include the perceptual system, the intuitions that underlie the ability to move, activities and interactions with our environment and the naive understanding of the world that is built into the body and the brain._ (from: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition>)

</comment><comment><USER17> <http://senseis.xmp.net/?Heavy>

The meaning isn't exactly "important", more like "unwieldy". (Although I can't see how unimportant stones could ever be labeled heavy.)

</comment><comment><USER18> I've noticed that doors on expensive cars are much heavier and "solid" feeling than lower-end models.

Maybe the manufacturers picked up on this.

<comment><USER19> A lot of extra thought that goes into high-end cars. I remember reading an article about how the _sound_ of the door shutting is carefully tweaked to make it feel substantial and expensive.

Edit: Found this: [http://soundinthemachine.org/2009/01/21/the-swaying-car- door...](http://soundinthemachine.org/2009/01/21/the-swaying-car-door.aspx)

 _Few things sound like they actually do. The sounds made by technology are more a story about what it should sound like than what it actually does._

 _Because drivers don't get the sensation of a "real" car in a hybrid electric car, speakers are now being placed in the cab to play synthetic engine noise for the driver. And, because it's synthetic, the noise piped into a Prius can be made to sound like a Lamborghini._

<comment><USER20> Yesterday's BMW article had in interesting section on how they made a special dual mass flywheel to dampen vibration at lower RPMs so the sound would be more agreeable and people would not downshift as early.

A lot of effort and expense to work around a misprogrammed driver.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've wondered about why we think dense objects are valuable and whether this is a large contributor to gold's historical use as money.

<comment><USER22> Heavy things cost more to ship, therefore as the relative weight of any given piece of equipment goes up, so does the price. And we all know that pricier things are better, right?

Unless you are talking about equipment for activities that actively value lightness (camping, rock climbing, hang-gliding).

<comment><USER23> laptoping

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> there's that word again, "heavy". why are things so heavy in the future? is there a problem with the earths gravitational pull?

</comment><comment><USER25> Cool, now how do I make a heavy website?

<comment><USER26> CSS image resizing.

<comment><USER7> Or Flash.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The nuances of our collective psyches never cease to amaze me. Now to off to do some "heavy" thinking.

</comment><comment><USER28> That was a heavy article.

</comment><comment><USER29> But it's not true for all of us...

For someone, it could perfectly be the other way round:

"Hey, it's perfect, and it's light too! Wow! Now go to h*ll all of you too earth-bound children, while we will continue to fly high in the sky...".

;)</comment>


OpenSourceFood.com acquired - <AUTHOR>

From an email I got:
Dear Open Source Foodie,
Jon here. I'm the creator of Open Source Food and today I have an exciting announcement to make.
Open Source Food was launched as a personal project in March 2007 and has grown from a little recipe site inhabited by me and my friends, to a popular social network for foodies where thousands of people browse a beautifully-photographed collection of thousands of recipes every day.
I started Open Source Food at the same time as I started experimenting with cooking and I can honestly say that without a doubt, my cooking skills have improved by being constantly inspired by the OSF community and my friends on there. It has been a most wonderful and delicious journey :)
My intention with managing OSF was always to grow it into something big, bright and beautiful. Even if that meant I could no longer handle everything by myself. I have huge aspirations for the OSF community and I think that the time has come where you all deserve more attention and more resources than I can offer alone!
That is why I am pleased to announce that from today, OSF will be owned and operated by Tsavo Media who will be integrating it into the Daymix network (www.daymix.com). Don't worry, they aren't some big, grey corporation - they are a group of highly talented people, and I have friends there. OSF is in good hands.
I'm not going anywhere though. Remember - I still like cooking and eating :) I'm still going to be on the site, posting my recipes and writing comments as usual. I'm also going to be staying around to help take OSF to the next level, and with that will come some changes to the site, which I'll tell you about now.
Tsavo are smart folks and they see the huge potential in the site but we both agree that the name might be holding us back a bit. Open Source Food... It's a little too "techy" - even a little bit cold, when you consider how bright and beautiful the community is. For that reason we will be changing the name. Same great site, same great community - but new name and brand new horizons.
The new name will be... www.nibbledish.com!
I think it's cute. I like it.
The name change will not affect service. The transition will happen in the background and one day when you visit the site you will simply be forwarded to the new name automatically - we anticipate this will happen within the next few days. This means it is business as usual, so don't stop posting recipes!
Thank you to all of you for coming together and creating this community. I thank you for your continuing support of me, the Tsavo team and the rest of the Daymix network as we launch nibbledish and take it to new heights!
Happy Eating, Jon Yongfook Cockle <comment><USER2> Thanks for the pointer to the site. My wife (a CIA-trained chef) would definitely tell me the old name was 'geeky', but probably love the recipes based on my quick look through the site. Very nice design, and fabulous pictures. Who doesn't like looking at pictures of tasty food? Now I'm getting hungry again... :-)</comment>


Learning the codes  - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestar.com.my/Lifestyle/Features/2013/07/05/Learning-the-codes.aspx

<comment><USER2> Would've been nice to have seen this 2 days ago.</comment>


I'm making local website to deal with murder,How would I conceal my ID? - <AUTHOR> Put simply, I'm making a website to empower my local community to share information about murders in our neighborhood. However, because of the real and sensitive information that will be shared, how would I conceal my identity so that if you're a criminal (gang member, murderer) you could never find out who I am, or the members of the community. How would I conceal any identifiers (my credit card info I use to purchase the domain, my ip etc). I'm not worried about a low level finding me, but if you were a well connected criminal who could hire a private investigator, I want to make sure I can't be found. I will become a clear target. The website will make a lot of very dangerous people angry. Thanks in advance. - Benni Frank.<p>Is this even possible? <comment><USER2> Never talk about it offline or on any other website (especially from any account associated with any name/username you've used for any other purpose).

Be aware that you can fingerprint people based on word usage and sentence structure patterns.

</comment><comment><USER3> Posting here with your name, Benni Frank (if it's even close to your real name) probably permanently kills your privacy. You can't delete HN posts.

Your best bet would be to post on a public message board like reddit with a throwaway email address using a VPN through another country with a Tor browser from a public library.

But, again, if your name is anything close to Benni Frank, you're already identifiable.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not even close. I love Benjamin Franklin though. :) When you say a public library, are you referring to when launching the site?

<comment><USER3> I don't think you should launch a site at all. You should use someone else's infrastructure, ideally on the dark web.

And if you want to stay anonymous, never use your own computer or phone or internet when connecting to the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If someone really wanted to find out who was behind it, they could eventually do it depending on their motivation. Not to mention when registering the domain, you _should_ enter contact information. If you are genuinely concerned about your safety and wellbeing, I do not think a website would be the way to go.</comment>


From HTTP to HTTPS with free certificates - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ruilopes.com/post/3678866680/from-http-to-https-with-free-certificates

<comment><AUTHOR> I recently set up HTTPS on my personal blog, and this article saved me a lot of time doing so. The free StartCom certs really work. In the end it doesn't matter so much because I switched to Jekyll, but if your blog has an admin interface where you send the password over HTTP, there's no sense not securing it.</comment>


Addressing Arguments Against Unit Testing - <AUTHOR> https://blog.taylorbuiltsolutions.com/addressing-arguments-against-unit-testing/ <comment><USER2> At one shop where I worked we used the phrases "A good integration test is worth a thousand unit tests" and "Unit test that which cannot be easily tested with an integration test." I guess they had issues with people writing unit tests that were effectively testing getters and setters so they were trying to swing the pendulum hard the other way... but it also somewhat makes sense: invest your test writing where you get the biggest bang for the buck time- wise.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like those quotes! I may borrow those if you're ok with it.

And I agree with trying to find the best bang for the bucks. Especially if your project existed without tests at any point. You've got to pick and choose wisely.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome to borrow the quotes!</comment></comment></comment>


Help me HN: My startup after 10 days - Independent Music TV from Latin America  - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN,
So, I've been trying to find a right idea for a while now, and I think this one is getting traction. I've gotten about 70+ followers on twitter just today, and tons of bands sending me music videos.  You think ya'll could take some time to give me some feedback and advise me on what I should do next?
clickable link: http://lindavista.tv
Previous Show HN: MPV - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6154628
#UPDATE - It's now at 128+ followers from yesterday. <comment><USER2> Get some branding up there and social links. I can't see the name of your product (i'm just assuming its Lindavista?) on the site or anyway to interact with your brand. A Twitter 'Follow' button and a button to tweet about the currently playing video would be neat.

Also maybe some sort of header, it's a bit cramped up the top of the page (incorporate this with your logo or just your product name in text perhaps).

Good luck with your project!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the critique! I'm currently putting up a new media player that will allow me to do that. I'll add the header/navbar and do ab testing on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The site could definitely use a better design. I've wireframed something basic that I think is better. I see you've got some improvements on the way and maybe use it to help, although I'm not sure how much leeway Shortform gives you to move stuff around.

Move the leaderboard section down a bit

Put your corpo name in the top left(maybe include a link to your Twitter as well)

Enlarge the song/artist names, social links are good there (although you might get a larger response if you separate Facebook and Twitter and put them right out there)

Make the preview screens larger and underneath the main video with a title/artist visible without mousing over(similar to Vimeo's layout)

The massive slogan and "Learn More" button are really just wasted space, make them smaller to leave more room for the videos

Here's the wireframe link [https://wireframe.cc/F5T58B](https://wireframe.cc/F5T58B)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the critique. Shortform doesn't give me anything to work with really, so I'm cutting it out completely and using something else. I saved your diagram, and I m moving around a lot of stuff right now thanks for your time :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would you be interested in the domain: independentlabel.org? It's about to expire, I have no use for it, and I'd rather it go to a good home, but only if you'd put it to good use right away. Let me know by replying here.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's hard to browse the content. I didn't understand the categories. Nonetheless it's a cool idea, check out this site dedicated to Colombian bands: [http://www.radiolem.com/](http://www.radiolem.com/)

Update: I visited at ones with my monitor on portrait mode, I didn't see the thumbnails on the side. Now navigation makes more sense.</comment>


Mac OS is better and Mac users are better people - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/mac-os-is-better-and-mac-users-are-better-people-7000008870/

<comment><USER2> Research finds that people who can afford to buy macs have more money.

Next up, people who breath tend to live longer.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Better people" equates to "gives more money to charity".

Not a statement I'd make, personally.

(Personally, I'm a Mac user, stingy with money, prefer to work off my white middle class liberal guilt over attempting to assuage it by throwing a little spare cash in its general direction).

</comment><comment><USER4> Weird, People with Linux give more money to games, programs, ...

So they are better then Mac users? :)

</comment><comment><USER5> what a nonsense article...What about comparing the percentage of donation of every dollar spent on the computer. That might change things.

</comment><comment><USER6> Bill and Melinda Gates foundation.

</comment><comment><USER7> Obviously troll article is so obviously troll, I'm not even sure if it is a troll article.</comment>


Spam call filter app. Possibe? - <AUTHOR> In response to this news about AT&T blocking robo calls. https://www.techspot.com/news/80874-att-begin-call-authentication-screen-out-fraudulent-callers.html
We don't really have a problem here in Australia, I get just a few a year, but I understand its a much bigger problem in the US.
Is it possible to make an Android and iOS app that will answer an incoming call and play a recoded message to the caller asking some questions, then listen for answers, then if the answers are correct, ring the phone and connect you to the caller? <comment><USER2> Have you had a chance to look at truecaller? It crowdsources data on who is spamming, advertising and marketing. In India where you get sales pitches even from a personal number, truecaller is a savior. Instead of having to answer questions, crowdsourcing would be a viable one</comment>


A Differential Approach to Undefined Behavior Detection - <AUTHOR> http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/3/198849-a-differential-approach-to-undefined-behavior-detection/fulltext <comment><AUTHOR> I'm currently dealing with an older C++ code base that relies on a lot of classic undefined behavior[1]. Stuff like this:

      // check for wraparound
      const char *maxPtr = ptr + minSize;
      if (maxPtr < ptr) maxPtr = ...

      // force crash by dereferencing NULL
      if (thing_that_should_not_happen) {
        char *xx=NULL; *xx=0;
      }

Some of these are obvious patterns that I can search for and replace, but I'm sure there are lots of cases that are more subtle. What are the current best tools (preferably for Linux) that detect places in the code that are suspect, so that they can be reviewed manually?

[1] At least, I think this is undefined behavior in C++. I'm much more familiar with C, and am extrapolating. Are there big differences in undefined behavior between the two that I should be aware of?</comment>


Ask HN: How can I protect my personal info for TLDs that don't offer whoisguard? - <AUTHOR>

There are certain TLD (like .fr and related) that have restrictions and don't offer whois guard. What is my best bet in protecting my information if I were to register one of these domains? Is providing false or inaccurate information an option? <comment><USER2> Have any other intermediary do it for yourself.

That can be an attorney, a notary, a corporation (but it may be costly to start up your limited liability corporation just to hide your name from whois), your grandmother.</comment>


Large Investment in OpenStreetMap from Knight Foundation - <AUTHOR> http://mapbox.com/blog/knight-invests-openstreetmap/

<comment><USER2> It's great that Development Seed is getting the funding. They are amazingly innovative developers, the creators of TileMill and MapBox. They'll do great work improving the OSM toolset.

TileMill is a marvel; if you ever wanted to try your hand at making map tiles give it a shot. You can have a basic custom map up and going in 20 minutes. It's particularly cool how they are delivering a Mac and Windows app based on Node.js, of all things. It's terrific.

<comment><USER3> Before they rocked the OSM world, they rocked the Drupal world :)

It is great to see they continue to innovate at a _very_ high pace! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How long, one wonders, until Open Street Map becomes the ubiquitous standard? Could Google switch to using it, and feed into it themselves to improve its results further?

<comment><USER5> It seems a bit hypocritical for Google to have and open source OS that gathers mapping data from a proprietary source.

Down the road, I don't want Google to be the only one with enough mapping knowledge to have self-driving car tech. That doesn't seem like data that should be owned by a corporation.

<comment><USER6> I don's see how it could be hypocritical, but anyway.. 1)Google Maps is not part of the OS, but is a proprietary closed source application. 2)Nobody is stopping you from building a better system, or improving OpenStreetMap 3)Cartographers obviously have ownership of the maps they build, more so, they introduce errors to recognize unauthorized copies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The more we hate the Apple's map, the more we need to worry if our life is depending too much on a particular company like Google or Facebook.

It is just the beginning, kudos to OSM, I really hope OSM can be as successful as Wikipedia in the future.

<comment><USER8> Apple wrote a software application which uses Openstreetmap and Tomtom. They don't have an actual map data set like Google does.

<comment><USER9> Users use apps, not map data. Apple's Map app is the gateway to mobile maps for _many_ people. When Apple switches their backend data, their users don't have much alternative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While Open Street Maps is an incredible and worthwhile project. The release of iOS 6 this week has demonstrated just how hard it is to get maps right.

<comment><USER11> Kind of like building a world class encyclopedia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ever since the development of the Knight Rider in the 80's the Knight Foundation has always been a leader in technology. Thanks Michael Knight and Kit for your continued support of new technologies!

</comment><comment><USER13> OpenStreetMap is invaluable for me, a college student in a third world country:

Google Maps: <http://i.imgur.com/Sqtot.png>

Open Street Maps: <http://i.imgur.com/gZWGL.png>

<comment><USER14> Brazil is a third world country?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Credit to Mapquest for opening their data to all and giving OSM a big push forward.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Google Maps started with public data. Data you tradtionally could find in public and university libraries and from government sources, even before the web existed. And then what they found crawling the web. They saw the potential value and have just added to and improved it a great deal.

But they did not start from zero. Nor has Apple.

Do not underestmate the "free" contributions to this type of data. It is not insignificant. It really should be open. In my opinion.

<comment><USER16> Are you sure about that? Outside the USA (which has a nice "lots of government work is public domain" rule, which lots of countries lack), there is very little 'freely available' map data from countries. One of the first non-USA countries on Google Maps, the UK, even now does not have freely available map data from the government (this is partially why it was people in the UK who set up OSM)

<comment><USER15> I am sure about what I said in my comment, not what you've said in yours. I said they started with free data. And indeed they started with data on the US, not the UK. Everyting begins at home. My point is Maps did not start from zero. Public data got the ball rolling.

I cannot say for sure but I would guess it is also what spurred the ideas to bring in a guy they knew who was doing related work at Stanford and also to acquire what became Google Earth. I believe it all began working with public data. They have obviously added lots of proprietary data since that time. They have a massive amount of cash to spend. Far more than the libraries and government agencies in the US who have the public data.

<comment><USER16> Yes they started in USA, but when UK was announced it wasn't a blank map (like OSM was when it started). The UK maps started with purchased, non-free data. So in a way, you need to bootstrap it somehow.

<comment><USER15> What was the date they started in the UK? How much cash on hand did they have at that point? A billion or so in the bank maybe?

It all started with public data. Google was born out of a project at Stanford centered around the idea of "online libraries". They had lots of practice using public datasets. The crawlable web is itself a public dataset.

Your point about OSM is the reason I mentioned the generosity of MapQuest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Could anyone explain what the benefit might be to investing in an open source service like OpenStreetMap? This is a sincere question.

[edit] I know that the concept is brilliant, it's a great service, and has great potential. Will investors potentially build chargeable products that use it? Why not just invest more into their product to enhance it?

<comment><USER18> Companies like MapBox, Stamen, MapQuest, and Bing, who have OSM layers, have an incentive to improve OSM data because it makes them competitive with Google; it eliminates the massive fixed/sunk cost of creating proprietary data and redirects the game into how you can use/distribute/mainstream that data. The business models for that are fairly clear; charging for services based on the data.

<comment><USER17> Makes sense! I didn't realize those companies use OSM. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They probably saw the 'amazing ios6 maps' blog and were like 'damn, time to put some money in'

<comment><USER9> If the Knight Foundation made this grant last month, they would not get nearly as much press. Apple's Map mishap is a great PR opportunity to point out our dependence on walled gardens and promote alternatives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> $575k is not a large investment. It's basically angel money.

</comment><comment><USER21> Good timing and looking forward to seeing more developers use OSM

</comment><comment><USER22> beautifully crafted website.

<comment><USER23> Except that his backgound image shows no name for the largest city on the map (Berlin) ;-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Michael? Is that you?

</comment><comment><USER25> It's all part of a master plan to build K.I.T.T.

</comment><comment><USER26> The singularity, it comes.</comment>


Ask HN: Any Fellow Numismatists on HN? - <AUTHOR> Enthusiastic numismatist here. I've noticed during my time in the hobby, many fellow enthusiasts are (often older) ex-software engineers. I have wondered why that is. My best guess would be that the "science" of grading is relatively complex and fascinating.<p>What are your thoughts on the current state of the hobby? How do you think we can appeal to younger folks to get in to coin collecting, despite the further digitalization of spending money? <comment><USER2> I'm not sure all collectors are interested in grading.

I have a fair collection. Most of them are worth exactly face value. I collected them because they are unique in some way. For example, the Canadian $1 coin that set of an FBI investigation because a border guard thought it was a listening device. I have another coin that I have kept because it is the same denomination and year as what Brian May from Queen uses as a guitar pick.

I have some "ancient" coins from a few places around the world as well. I have no idea if they are worth anything. They're just cool to have. And I have some that are genuinely valuable. But I don't even collect those because of value. For example, I like to collect gold and silver coins with holograms on them -- because I like holograms.

I also have a few different Bitcoin "medallion" coins like you used to see in every rap video. Again - something nice to look at, and there's an interesting story attached.

Maybe that's what you hope to culture in younger people. There's an aesthetic value to the coins that one can appreciate and relate to other areas of their life.

</comment><comment><USER3> I became more interested in coins and monetary systems after reading "A history of money" by Glyn Davies et. al. ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45426.A_History_of_Money](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45426.A_History_of_Money)). It's quite long but it goes into great detail about monetary systems and coinage throughout history. The discussion of how the Romans, Greeks and British used coinage to fund their wars and political endeavours, how they diluted the gold or silver content their different coins over time and how that led to unwanted side effects is quite fascinating, at least to me.

Most coins themselves are not very interesting from an artisanal point of view I find, it's more the story behind them that's often really fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER4> > How do you think we can appeal to younger folks to get in to coin > collecting, despite the further digitalization of spending money?

By teaching them about the history of money and currency.

I had a short lived interest in collecting old stamps and coins after watching pawn stars on history TV. Although I was more motivated by how much they paid for old stuff rather than the old stuff itself at first.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you brought that up. There was a minor renaissance we saw on cable tv with shows like Pawn Stars, American Pickers, Storage Wars, etc., that brought up collecting old americana and the like to a younger generation. I think though it's as you said, the dollar amounts were at the forefront of what was shown off more so than than the items itself.

I make good faith attempts to pass things like Franklin and Kennedy half dollars to younger folks in my life, while explaining some of the facts around them, hoping it plants a seed, much like when I was young.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note that "science" in quotations is in regard to the inherent subjectivity of coin grading, but is in no way dismissive of the nuances and strive for consistency

</comment><comment><USER5> For those who don't know what numismatist means: A numismatist is a specialist in numismatics

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah, I tried to make that clear by including "coin collecting" in the post. Hard to get that from dissecting the word though :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I collect but it is more for 'unique' as opposed to value. By unique I mean unique to me. I never grade anything beyond the level of 'oh that looks nice'.

I have many US coins of various flavors but am getting bored with the US quarters and British 50P. Both appear to be just trying to ruin coins like stamps became ruined.

My favorite was when a friend obtained for me a set of communist Russian coins from the 70 and 80s. I love going to flea markets and odd second hand shops to search for interesting looking coins.</comment>


DANE – RFC 6698 alternative to CA - <AUTHOR> http://wiki.halon.se/DANE <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10753342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10753342)

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, let's not trust Verisign to operate CA, but let's trust Verisign to operate a replacement for CA.

How is it supposed to distribute trust better?

</comment><comment><USER4> combinate use with CA may be feasible</comment>


Show HN: Free open-source IPTV cloud service - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fastogt/iptv Opensource IPTV service based on gstreamer can relay/encode/shift streams and many many other features. <comment><USER2> I would love to see some screenshots of the UI? Or am I misunderstanding the product? Is this like an open source Apple TV competitor?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, now we have only cli. This product used for streming service encode/transcode/timeshift etc... live streams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty awesome. I just set it up for my own IPTV to stream my own servers. Really simple.

Create an M3U of all your servers, i.e. PC1, PC2, PC3 and so on.

Upload the M3U and generate an installer.

Give it out to everyone you need.

Now they can stream your local library. Need to remove a channel? Just remove it from the profile.

Family videos? 1 binary. Educational videos? Another binary.

This is awesome and would be a great STB Alternative for Windows.

I'd presume it would work for M3u Streams as well for IPTV services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for feedback

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey, your website seems to be down and there isn't really any documentation on your project - what sort of codecs, packaging and delivery formats will you be supporting?

Thanks!

<comment><USER5> I thought it was down at first too, but that seems to be a link to the org's site, the site for the project appears to be up: [https://fastotv.com](https://fastotv.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it is, iptv it is our backend service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I guess this could be useful for small ISPs in the US who don't want to pay for an iptv platform or is this more for people with security camera networks?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it is good idea, i don't think about security cams.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Features:

        Encode/Transcode
        Relay
        Timeshift
        Catchups
        Playlist
        Stream Post Processing
        Mozaic
        Many Outputs
        Physical Inputs
        Streaming Protocols
        File Formats

</comment><comment><USER7> I am really curious, why isn't there any popular FOSS P2P for live streaming? It's very easy to get any show, movie, game via torrents but you can't just do the same for a live football match, is there a technical obstacle for this?

<comment><USER8> They exist, particularly as Kodi plugins.

<comment><USER7> free? like what?

<comment><USER9> It's like a bizarre network of bad pirate streams, when one goes down someone starts another. Kodi plugins in this context generally just refer to pirate streams.

Torrents: downloading is a lot easier than simultaneous live streaming to many people; this is why many streaming sites moved from something like RTMP to HLS/DASH/etc - instead of a persistent connected stream, they just upload small video files

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/fastogt/iptv](https://github.com/fastogt/iptv)</comment>


Show HN: Sell tickets to your events or services for Bitcoins - <AUTHOR> http://cointicket.com

<comment><USER2> It's interesting to see bitcoins going mainstream. I wonder if it'll take off, or if regulations will scare the layman away. It's a cool concept, either way.

<comment><USER3> It really isn't going "mainstream" any time in the foreseeable future. More often than not companies announcing that they accept Bitcoin only get one or two token purchases through it, so other than the free advertising, there's not much in it for them to start using the unwieldy beast.

It's unfortunate that their community is based around squabbling on bitcointalk.org rather than creating truly great, usable software and services.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're wrong. A lot of very smart people in the Bitcoin community are working on some really clever ideas. Zerocoin, colored coins implementations, stock exchanges, distribution of shares to name a few. A friend of mine, for example, is working on a wallet that would allow people to create contracts without trust or a third party: [http://blog.oleganza.com/post/58240549599/contracts- without-...](http://blog.oleganza.com/post/58240549599/contracts-without- trust-or-third-parties)

<comment><USER4> Much agreement on smart people doing clever things.

In 5-10 years, Bitcoin (or similar systems) will end up being adopted by enough individuals and businesses that critical mass of usage will be achieved and digital currencies will no longer seem novel or strange. We saw the same dynamic at play with the internet itself not that long ago and here we are already seriously considering the effects of the first viable digital currency.

Sidenote: A gentle reminder to folks to back up the efforts of indie Bitcoin developers with whatever can be spared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great idea. Nice and simple execution: great work. I might have an upcoming event I can try this out on too.

</comment><comment><USER6> Usecase 2 could be better, but cool product over all.

</comment><comment><USER7> minor sp:

You'd like to organize a conference for professional cheescake eaters

cheescake -> cheesecake

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed. Thank you.</comment></comment>


Using a Raspberry Pi and LED to send morse code to a smartphone - <AUTHOR> https://dmtechtalk.wordpress.com/2019/10/18/doing-what-you-love-doing/ <comment><USER2> As an aside from the OP, and because I think it would be of interest to the developers here on HN: I had to learn Morse code decades ago when I was in flying school. I did it the old, rote method, which sort of worked.

I knew that the series of dots and dashes were based on the frequency of the letters (shorter codes for more frequently used letters etc.)

It is only recently that I discovered that the Morse code can be expressed in terms of a Binary Tree, based on that same frequency of letters [0], with dots to the left and dashes to the right.

This 'new' way of thinking about the code would make a far easier task of trying to remember the codes, I believe, as the tree is really only 4 levels deep (if you ignore numbers on the 5th level, which have their own consecutive pattern anyway).

[0] - [https://www.mathworks.com/content/dam/mathworks/mathworks- do...](https://www.mathworks.com/content/dam/mathworks/mathworks-dot- com/moler/exm/chapters/morse.pdf)

<comment><USER3> The difficult part isn't knowing which symbol is which. The problem with learning the tree, or rote memorization, is that you'll learn it as a translation table. This will slow you down to well below conversational speed. You'll "know" morse, but in practice you won't be able to use it. I think that's what you were implying with "sort of worked"?

(To be clear, I'm not saying that you can't learn morse code at all that way, and definitely not suggesting that you are or aren't fluent in it.)

For a really great modern approach, see [https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/morse](https://experiments.withgoogle.com/collection/morse) (no hardware needed, just a smartphone).

In general the recommendation is not to learn that dit, dah, dah, dit means letter "P" (and you already know what sound P has), but directly learn that the sound "ditdahdahdit" corresponds to the sound of "P". And thus cut out the middle step.

There are a few more things to actually using morse:

* Clean timing

* Keying (straight keys aren't used anymore. sideswipes / dual lever are somewhat intuitive. iambic keying is not, but it's so much less exhausting.)

* Head copy (the challenge is understanding entire words/phrases, without paper, and/or buffering it in your head because writing down char by char is too slow)

* Dealing with noise (incl other morse conversations)

(This is coming from a ham radio perspective, so maybe a bit different than flying school. I'm really curious now - did you actually expect to use it back then, or was this a case of mostly learning for the test? If yes, in what situation and how? ie, would you actually use a morse key? In the airplane? Or was it more about something like recorded emergency messages or similar?)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for your input. To answer your questions at the end - Yes, we learned it primarily for the test, but also this was more than 20 years ago, and back then, the ATIS (Terminal Information System) broadcast that gave you your weather and QNH etc. would prefix every repeated recorded broadcast with the 4 letter ICAO airport code.

My local airport here is YPDN (Darwin, Australia), but in larger cities with several airports, we had to verify via morse to the instructor during a flight test that we had dialled in the correct ATIS frequency by cross checking the morse ICAO code.

Also, we had to do the same verification when dialling in to an NDB (Non Directional Beacon) which is about the most basic navaid available on a plane. Because the ADF (Automatic Direction Finder) on board used to dial into an NDB was in the HF radio band and thus subject to reflections off the troposphere inadvertently picking up another NDB over the horizon, we also had to listen to the repeated morse identifier of that beacon to ensure we had dialled in and were tracking the correct one.

As said, only on flight tests mainly. We soon got used to the patterns of the beacons and transmissions that we used regularly and would just listen for the pattern rather than try and decipher each letter/number.

EDIT: Here is a video I found recently which talks about using the binary tree method of memorising morse code, as well as another method - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8tPkb98Fkk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8tPkb98Fkk)

<comment><USER3> Thank you, that was very interesting!

In particular how reflections caused you trouble, whereas in the ham world (also mostly HF) the same are desirable because anything that increases range is generally seen as good (we do use directional antennas to narrow it down). Different world.

And so in the end, you did learn to recognize entire words (callsigns) at once :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice. Reminds me of a "Using a Raspberry Pi to send and receive Morse Code with a laser" post from a while ago [1].

[1] [https://partofthething.com/thoughts/sending-and-receiving- mo...](https://partofthething.com/thoughts/sending-and-receiving-morse-code- with-a-laser-and-a-raspberry-pi/)

Knowing a little Morse code, the scene in Stranger Things where they set up a whole wall of letters was mildly infuriating. I guess if no parties knew the code that's what you'd have to do. But what a great reason to learn!

Ham radio operators still use it (they call it CW for continuous wave) mostly because it is really easy to hear over super long distances (inter- continental) with small radio equipment (often just a few Watts) through all the noise.

</comment><comment><USER5> FWIW, here is a CW beacon I built using RF circuitry and an AT Mega 388:

[https://youtu.be/YaaSstm3qP4](https://youtu.be/YaaSstm3qP4)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I focused on the morse part in the title of this submission, but just for a lack of a good way to include the rest. The technical details and the use case are interesting, but I really liked the framing of it as well. Doing what you love doing and actually being able to earn money that way.

</comment><comment><USER6> Christmas 2013 I received both a raspberry kit and a toy Star Trek phaser, so I managed to make a Morse Code transcribing toy phaser. Can't seem to find the video but it was a fun way to spend a lazy holiday afternoon.

</comment><comment><USER7> I came across a similar concept earlier this week [https://youtu.be/sdgnX49ZXig](https://youtu.be/sdgnX49ZXig)

</comment><comment><USER8> Was he signalling Batman, or what?

<comment><USER9> > It's used on a really large field where they fly drones and don't allow any > radio communications except the drone controllers. Turns out there are apps > that will read Morse code signals sent on light by cell phones!

<comment><USER8> I gave it two solid skims and missed that both times, thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


GOP lawmakers shamed on billboards for trying to repeal net neutrality rules - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/08/pro-net-neutrality-billboards-shame-lawmakers-who-want-to-repeal-rules <comment><USER2> I'm not bothered by this at all Marsha blackburn's district is a gerrymandered mess. She supports some of the worst policies consistently. Repealing net neutrality will just allow ISP's to double dip when charging. First they charge you their customer, for the pipe, then they will charge someone like netflix for faster data, forcing netflix to pass those charges on to you. The ability of an ISP to downgrade services they don't like or that competes with them is too much. There is no discussion to have.

I feel like net neutrality should be fought for at almost all cost. Marsha Blackburn doesn't care what her constituents believe...she got payed and her district is mostly safe.

</comment><comment><USER3> These sort of things always bother me when I am on the other side. They are just for galvanizing those who already agree. This is the biggest problem in our political discourse, no one ever attempt to have a discussion that changes minds.

In this case I am opposed to net neutrality and things like this, the fcc bot comments, and a "study" showing 75% of the electorate "doesn't understand" do nothing but make me want to entrench my beliefs further.

<comment><USER4> How are you opposed to net neutrality? All it does is aim to keep anyone from controlling the pipes that connect the internet. My favorite way of thinking about NN is to compare it to toll roads. Without NN, you could end up with a situation where Honda buys a toll road and then charges more for people to drive Toyotas on their road. Or they could reserve the left hand "passing" lane for only people in Hondas. In the same way, Comcast could slow down your connection speeds when you try to connect to Netflix or charge you additionally to connect to Netflix's domain.

<comment><USER3> Good analogy; I think I can work within it.

It is entirely appropriate to limit the speed and size of large trucks (high bandwidth users) on roadways or charge them more. The ISPs need to be able to do this sort of economizing to help maintain everybody's min service guarantees and to a apply market force to the bloating of popular websites.

With regard to the censorship argument (only allowing Honda cars), I agree that a democratic government entity needs to have power here as roadways and the fiber under them are natural monopolies (why dig up a street twice?). But it seems fairly clear that the appropriate regulating body is at the size of the city which administers the land on which the distribution network is built --NOT the Feds. No city would allow something like that (only X brand cars allowed) to stand, the FCC is overkill.

I think there is a real economic and business case for ISPs discriminating based on bandwidth requirements. You have to throttle streaming and prioritize phone packets because they need stronger latency guarantees. Basically its a market, which suggest the ISPs are going to be doing this, whether its against the rules or not. If you make something so logical against the rules, it basically becomes another "look the other way" law; providing the federal government with a legal club with which to beat companies it is not pleased with, perhaps when an ISP refuses to comply with an inappropriate information request.

I am concerned about censorship mostly by the Feds, less so by private utilities, and less still by city halls.

<comment><USER5> _It is entirely appropriate to limit the speed and size of large trucks (high bandwidth users) on roadways or charge them more._

This has nothing to do with net neutrality. ISPs already get to sell their users as much or as little bandwidth as they choose to. If the ISP's users are sending a lot of traffic to one web site, that's only possible _because the ISP 's users are sending a lot of traffic_. They can't stream movies unless they're already paying for a connection fast enough to stream movies. Which web site streams those movies doesn't matter.

<comment><USER3> By high bandwidth users I am referring more to companies like Netflix or a bloated news site than to end users. It would be easier for everyone if ISP and Netflix negotiated ``oversize'' rates than having individual consumer throttling. It doesn't have to be discriminatory, oversize rates could be triggered when traffic from a corporate entity exceeded some threshold rate.

<comment><USER6> Eh.

As an ISP you can't give your customers (the very vast majority, I realize that a small minority have symmetric connections) vastly asymmetric pipes (usually in the order of 10:1, if not 20:1), and then "complain" about how your inbound upstream traffic is asymmetric and thus "unfair" to the peering arrangements.

It is as it was designed.

Give users symmetric pipes and they'll use them differently. Far more uptake of offsite backup, other services from users with a lot of outbound bandwidth.

Will ISPs scream about how unfair it is if Dropbox, Crashplan, BackBlaze, Carbonite and the like start charging THEM more because "oh gosh, look, your users are sending far more data to us than we are to them, so you're abusing our peering relationship"?

It's a bunch of willfully ignorant BS. Design a traffic model and then complain that the usage pattern dictated by the traffic model is unfair to you, and therefore you need to double dip your billing.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, let the ISPs design their traffic and billing model. The market has effects.

Now, you probably want the ISPs to be operated or regulated by your local government so that the marketplace they encourage is favorable to the citizens. But please no more federal regulations on the pipes of communication between citizens.

<comment><USER7> But Netflix _already_ pays for their bandwidth! Everybody _already_ has incentives to minimize it!

<comment><USER3> I love Netflix. Back when they paid for their bandwidth via the postal service, they paid for distribution and I paid them correspondingly. Then they switched to streaming and it was good for all, despite the immediate purchaser of distribution changing.

My point is that the cost of distribution is going to be paid one way or the other. I don't see why we should make federal rules about it. You really want a society where the national government is not in charge of communications.

<comment><USER7> The government is not in charge of communications anyway. It's just saying "treat everyone equally" and leaves it at that.

Net neutrality (or the lack thereof) isn't about paying for what you use (your argument about trucks is incorrect because of this). It's about paying based on who you are, so your ISP can discriminate based on who the data is coming from.

The original analogy was correct, it's about toll roads where cars of the same size and build pay different prices depending on their brand. "You have a BMW, so you must have more money, so pay more, even though you use the same as a Toyota."

<comment><USER3> With the truck argument I was just flushing out the analogy, which is a good one. Then, addressing the net neutrality part of the analogy and stating why I opposed the FCC's net neutrality rules: I disagree that it should be regulated at the federal level. It does not take a genius mayor or governor to say that a toll road should not be restricted to one brand of car.

<comment><USER8> >It does not take a genius mayor or governor to say that a toll road should not be restricted to one brand of car.

But it does take a genius mayor to also be fully aware of the more technical arguments thrown around by ISPs to fight regulation such as NN. We are not discussing roads. As much as the analogy helps, someone might not be there (who isn't working for ISPs) to tell the mayor or governor about it. A small town mayor might not have any idea what impacts a decision like that could have on the local area, and if they make the wrong choice, an entire town is basically held back from an open internet, and therefore communication, point of view.

As an aside, "flushing out the analogy" in this case would mean you were holding the trucks as high-bandwith users, like you've stated previously. I'm not sure if you were admitting a mistake with your comment or not, but I'd like to support the other comments arguments against this.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't have federal ISP regulations, nor would we tolerate large scale ISP monopolies like Comcast. The Mayor is not getting hoodwinked by some out of state conglomerate, the largest ISPs around would be the size of the city or a regional body.

I also am not sure I understand the point of nitpicking the analogy. A roadway is like a cable. Sort of. A truck would be like a superposition of a large content provider, the upstream ISPs, and all the customers requesting data from that domain. The point I am trying to make is that when you try to charge this ``truck'' for its use of the cable, well its like taxing economic activity between all these entities and we should be careful when making rules about this: we may lock ourselves into the current model of ISPs without realizing it.

This does pertain to Net Neutrality because how else is NN assessed than by getting into these details?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One advantage of repealing all net neutrality and letting Comcast milk the Netflixes of the world is that it'll encourage big population centers like San Francisco or New York to seize the fiber with eminent domain and give it to e.g. the local electric company to run. Or at least apply their own local net neutrality standards to the regional Comcast branch.

I've always thought that was a better solution than involving the feds anyways. Why do people from California need to beg senators from Alabama to stop Comcast from screwing with their local fiber?

The last mile connection seems to be the only important one anyways: It would be feasible for someone like Netflix to hook together all the big cities themselves, but they can't dig up all the streets to lay their own fiber.

<comment><USER10> What makes you think California would do better on its own? California is an infrastructure backwater, due to anti-development policies. If you live in the shadow of Comcast Center in Philly, you've probably got two fiber providers to chose from. If you live in San Francisco you probably don't have fiber at all. (Philadelphians also have pretty decent public transit, while San Franciscans have ... BART. I posit that those things are not unrelated.)

<comment><USER9> I don't think California specifically would be better off, for the reasons you describe. It was mostly intended to raise the question: "If nobody around the companies and people advocating for Net Neutrality actually wants it, why should a higher power intervene on their behalf?" The headline seems to give the impression that it's only federal Republicans blocking them, which if true would make you think they would prefer to have more local control.

I haven't heard any net neutrality advocates give a good argument for that yet. I could imagine "It's easier to have one standard than 50, for each state", but we don't seem to currently have too many disparate Net Neutrality laws that need to be unified. Or "Even unenlightened rural areas deserve open internet" \- but that's not convincing if the big tech cities don't even have it yet.

I suppose there's, "It's easier to organize a nationwide campaign than to organize hundreds of local ones", but that makes it a matter of logistics not principle. Is that all there is to it?

Are they currently forbidden by e.g. the FCC from passing local net neutrality laws?

<comment><USER10> > Are they currently forbidden by e.g. the FCC from passing local net > neutrality laws?

Not directly, but it would be problematic. The "channels" of interstate commerce are an area in which the Federal government has primacy. States can regulate them to some degree ( _e.g._ prescribing speed limits on the portions of interstate highways passing through their jurisdiction). But they can't regulate them in a way that conflicts with how the federal government regulates them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If we have learned literally nothing else over the past 20 years it is that incoming shame bounces off like 99.95% of these people

<comment><USER12> You may have been misled by the title. This is effective marketing to us, the constituents, not the lawmaker.

There was a big thread yesterday based on a survey that most people don't even know what net-neutrality is. This is a net neutrality billboard that anyone can understand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If net neutrality goes away, the burden of prosecuting anti-competitive behavior lies with the FTC.

God help us.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting that NN opponents seem to have more long-lasting motivation than NN advocates, judging from top level comments here vs. a year or two ago.

<comment><USER15> That comes back to money. Billion dollar companies have people on salary pushing opposition directly, astroturfing editorials and think-tank pieces, etc. and one of the big things they've been pushing are alternate definitions of what network neutrality means.

A key part of this is the GOP's big shift towards ideological purity tests over the last 20 years. Party line messaging obedience is expected to a much higher degree now and since network neutrality was successfully politicized many people go along with the statements even though it's bad for them personally and violates the principles they believe in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> While I agree that these people are idiots (especially Paul Ryan) I am starting to get a bad feeling about public shaming. It seems a very non- constructive way of political discourse.

<comment><USER17> Paul Ryan is an idiot, but so is every other member of Congress, on both sides of the fence.

<comment><USER16> Sorry, he is in the 1% of idiots. Even in Congress.

<comment><USER17> I don't recall stacking them up by percentage, ranking them from dumb to dumbest, or inferring any such ranking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> omg, that disclosure. I felt like I'm in high school math class again. :)

</comment><comment><USER19> how is not having net neutrality different from google and co censoring the internet on whim.

Seems like the same set of people cheering google for censorship are afraid of censorship form ISPs.

<comment><USER20> If your message doesn't show up on one webpage, you can always publish it on another, or on a webpage of your own. If your ISP decides what webpages you are allowed to visit, that's basically it. If they don't want to let you contact any competing domain registrars, you won't be able to.

I suppose technically that'll never happen; you could fall back to a dial-up ISP. After all, the phone company is not allowed to decide that you can't call their competitors. One tiny part of the Title 2 regulations that cover telecommunications forces them to allow all telephone subscribers to call all other telephone subscribers. It's telephone neutrality. Look up the whole MCI thing from a few decades ago.

<comment><USER19> > If your message doesn't show up on one webpage, you can always publish it on > another, or on a webpage of your own.

Can I just say this then,

If you can't access your website on ISP choose another ISP.

Whats different about this argument? Also, thank you for answering instead of downvoting.

<comment><USER21> ISPs are natural monopolies [1]. In the US we're seeing increasing market share concentration by some pretty big juggernauts in the space (Comcast, Verizon). So what you're seeing is a lack of ISP choices for consumers and in many instances only 1 choice and that in my opinion is far more problematic than what Google and FB are doing. I'm not defending censorship by any party here really, but I definitely think censorship at the ISP level is a much bigger problem.

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

<comment><USER19> I read that wikipedia page. I'd say I have more choice with ISPs than with search engines. Won't you say 'natural monopoly' applies to google too at this point?

<comment><USER22> It takes me all of 10 seconds to type duckduckgo.com, and maybe 30 to switch default search engines for the browser.

I don't think I could switch an ISP in 10 days, let alone seconds.

<comment><USER23> I can get 50-100++Mbps from Comcast, or 1Mbps (maybe) from CenturyLink, and then... no actually that's it. And 1Mbps would not let me do a lot of stuff online anymore.

So effectively I have no choice, unless I want to stop all video watching, downloading games regularly (not gonna soak 18 hours of 100% of my bandwidth to download a new title), etc.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


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