Ask HN: Are there any software jobs in nature/animal conservation? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN. Lately I have been thinking about what I really want to do in life; what really brings meaning and joy to my life. I am currently finishing up my solo "start-up" project, and we will see where it goes, but in the mean time I have been doing some introspection and thinking about the future.
I am a software developer (mostly backend, some frontend and some data analytics). I personally don't really have any desire to work at FAANG. I also don't really have any desire to write CRUD for some generic company that pays well either.
I want to explore more meaningful avenues of work. Preserving nature, animals and their habitats, is one cause I have been thinking about. I know that most projects are very hands-on, requiring mostly hard labour or specialised research efforts. However, I've been wondering if there is a demand for software in these projects? Particularly in terms of specialised tooling and/or data analytics?
I suspect that most research projects don't have the funding to afford anything beyond the bare requirements. The same probably goes for government sponsored programmes; again, this is all speculation.
Does anyone have experience as a software dev in these fields? Where might one start looking ?
--
Because I am sure some people will mention it, yes, volunteering is an option. But money is an unfortunate living requirement in today's society (unless you plan on going off-grid entirely). <comment><USER2> It's most certainly better for your soul, but get ready to take a pay cut. After a short career in game development and a much longer career in museum/library/archives, my take is that our societies values are out of whack: the more your job benefits your community and the planet the less you will get paid, and vice versa. It's even worse for social services.

You'll also take a hit in your reputation among other developers, most of whom seem to have gone into it for money and don't seem to care whether or not their labor is doing anything to benefit society.

Good work is still worth doing of course. You just have to count the work itself as one of the benefits.

"Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation."

<comment><USER3> > the more your job benefits your community and the planet the less you will > get paid, and vice versa. It's even worse for social services.

In a free market economy, this is an entirely false statement. People pay for the things they value. They more they value it, the more they pay.

Compare the amount of hours spent playing video games to the amount of hours spent touring museums. It's not close. People value video games much more greatly than museums.

Just because _you_ value certain things more than others doesn't give them any intrinsic value.

<comment><USER4> well, if museums would drive the same marketing campaigns (read propaganda or simply media based manipulation), this might easily change... Also generally the amount of time you can spend in museums is somehow limited, as most don't allow you to be active (like videogames do in a sort of lobotomied way).

As for your example: if you compare the amount of time people play in bands/sing in choirs (often without any direct money involved, e.g. around church or school) you've got an obvious example that people don't naturally "pay more for the things they value" (or see the need to pay or get payed at all). I value this very much and if someone was coming up and saying: pay up, I'd say - come on guys, let's do this on our own.

<comment><USER3> > this might easily change

This is a perfectly testable hypothesis in the free market. You can start a museum and market it, and see if you generate a profit. If you don't, then you have to fund it yourself (pay) or hope a handful of others value it and pay.

> often without any direct money involved, e.g. around church or school

There's much money involved in organizing people and having venues for whatever it is they do inside those venues. In these cases, the people paying for these organized singing events are what you would consider a patron. Churches and schools aren't free.

Modern instruments cost a lot of money, lots of labor to produce.

As far as just some friends getting together and signing because they enjoy it, that's obviously free. But it's not a service that someone else is providing to you, that's just something you're doing because _you_ feel is has value. What would be more analogous would be having a civic center where people perform and.... people pay money to enter the venue and be entertained.

Some people greatly value libraries and museums. I don't. Those people should pay for them. If from time to time, I might want to use their services, I would gladly pay. If there was a membership required, perhaps I would enroll if I felt the cost was worth the benefit. This happens every day for many other industries.

Anyway, the root of the point was that people don't value librarians so they don't get paid as well as programmers. This is true. If it wasn't true, they would be paid more. I know this really hurts the socialist sensibilities of people on this site, but it's the cold hard truth.

<comment><USER4> > Modern instruments cost a lot of money, lots of labor to produce.

well, I'm not sure, how the trumpet from 1970 differs from a modern instrument (and yeah, people are still using these, where I play), but yeah, "lot of money, lots of labor" ><((((*>

And btw., one of the bands I'm in plays sometimes for money, but incurs no cost for membership or anything. It's just there.

<comment><USER3> > well, I'm not sure, how the trumpet from 1970 differs from a modern > instrument

I consider a trumpet a modern instrument. How did you procure said trumpet? Did you pick it from the wild trumpet tree? No, of course not.

Someone mined the copper and zinc, refined them, someone combined them into the alloy brass, someone formed that brass into a trumpet. Of course, the trumpet wasn't conceived magically, it was something that went through countless iterations and revisions as instrument building matured. Then someone had to sell the trumpet to you. Unless you were at the factor-direct trumpet store, it was shipped to a retail location or warehouse where you then purchased it. Money and labor was invested just so you can obtain the trumpet.

How much labor goes into making a trumpet? Lots. Someone realized there was a market for trumpets and invested a good bit of capital to produce them. Improvements in manufacturing (aka, market efficiency) has resulted in high quality trumpets being produced cheaply, same as anything else. I'd say, the entire price structure of the trumpet (or much of anything, really) is entirely labor based. The metals exist in the ground. Digging them up is free (purchasing mineral rights notwithstanding) in terms of needed to pay the earth for them.

Much like libraries, there are places you can rent musical instruments like trumpets. These are often 'required' for education purposes, so why doesn't the government just have a trumpet library same as the book library? Don't you enjoy music? Why don't you demand taxes pay for instruments for the homeless that can't afford their own instruments? They're so enriching and such.

All those things exist because people voted with their money to make sure they exist. It's not because some greater good commanded their existence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yes there are jobs and yes the non-profit industry needs your talents. Software jobs in the industry fall into one of 4 buckets in my experience. Don't expect much career growth or pay. Most of the work is in support of fundraising. Be willing to work at a vendor that serves the non-profit industry.

\- Web development. Nonprofits need websites. Sometimes they may have a dev on staff, usually they at least have a digital director that can work with devs at web dev vendors. These vendors are usually solely focused on the non-profit market.

\- CRM. Non-profits fundraise and they need people to manage the donor database. Usually this is bought from a vendor that specializes in non-profit CRM and those vendors also have devs/DBAs.

\- IT. Non-profits need IT to manage networks, phones and equipment. Often they work with IT vendors.

\- Devs for conservation work. This is more rare. Still, some non-profits have staff scientists, GIS people, and devs to build out conservation tools, such as data collecting apps, data visualizations or other things. This is rare because most non-profits are trying to convince the government to do the science because the government has much more money and power to recruit. It's rare and maybe a bit of a vanity project to do any science out of the non- profit, though there are a couple of groups that do that.

<comment><USER2> In my personal experience working in nonprofits there is a tendency for organizations to have the actual technical work done by vendors rather than staff unless the work is central to the mission of the organization. There's a feeling that this is cheaper than trying to hire and maintain staff with those skills.

<comment><USER6> It may be less about it being cheaper, and more that you know what your budget is for a given year but perhaps not what it is three years from now. You can spend this year's budget with confidence and not worry about having to lay off your dev staff next year when donations dry up. It also requires management expertise to manage a software building team - not something a lot of non- profits have.

<comment><USER7> I learned from your perspective here. Thank you for sharing your experience.

Interesting, because this trade study could be conducted by an engineer and a manager in a small company and still have starkly different results in the weighing of concerns.

Most of my early career was solo. I recognize the importance of a good team, but as a business you (even non profits and myself solo) have to understand the bottom line for all stakeholders.

If anyone else could expand on this person's ideas, please do!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Check out [https://enviro.work](https://enviro.work)! I'm the founder and created the site because I felt similarly to you. Aligning personal values and your career is a great feeling

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! From a cursory look I can't see anything that immediately applies to me but it's a good resource to find companies. Will take a deeper look later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Check out Tech Jobs for Good: [https://techjobsforgood.com/?q=&impact_areas=Environment&imp...](https://techjobsforgood.com/?q=&impact_areas=Environment&impact_areas=Food+%26+Agriculture)

Big NGOs also need technical people, too. Check out the Humane Society, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Compassion in World Farming, etc. They aren't going to be the highest paying jobs and there are all sorts of downsides but it's a way to use your skills to make a difference in the world.

<comment><USER10> Many would just need, at least me, a decent salary for sustaining comfortably (in my case that would be fine in just 50% of my CTC or even less) but a stellar medical insurance (yeah, I want that covered!) and work-life balance which also includes being treated and respected as a human being.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not exactly conservation, but there's plenty of computational work (and funding!) in plant biology.

I do web development and data engineering for plant phenomics automation in a plant bio lab. Crop optimization (e.g., for abiotic stress resistance, reduced fertilizer requirements, atmospheric carbon sequestration, yield) basically requires digital surveillance infrastructure on the same scale we've (regrettably) developed for humans, except for plants. Nobody really understands how phenotypes develop as a function of genetic, physiological, and environmental factors; but we need to if we want to maintain the viability of agriculture in the face of climate change etc.

You won't get paid like you would in a more traditional software development position, but it's enough to live on. Let me know if you'd like more information.

<comment><USER12> I am interested to know details but I am in Pakistan. I work (Ed) on multiple technologies but mostly python these days for ETL and automation. Learning Go too. Check out [http://adnansiddiqi.me](http://adnansiddiqi.me)

<comment><USER11> Hi Adnan. Unfortunately I'm only familiar with the situation in the U.S. Pakistan may have different agricultural practices and a different funding landscape. Here are a few links about the motivation and current state of the art if you want to read more.

[0]: [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/327/5967/818](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/327/5967/818)

[1]: [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pce.12107](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/pce.12107)

[2]: [https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/66/18/5429/482901](https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/66/18/5429/482901)

[3]: [https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S13601385110020...](https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1360138511002093)

[4]: [http://www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.114.243519](http://www.plantphysiol.org/cgi/doi/10.1104/pp.114.243519)

There is a ton of software-oriented work involved, from robotics and embedded devices in the field, to data engineering (containerizing and automating pipelines in grid, cloud, and HPC environments), to web development (creating research portals), to simulation of growth processes and modeling yield as a function of genetic/physiological/environmental factors, etc. Python is very widely used for all of the above. Go not as much, but Singularity (Docker for HPC, basically) is written in Go iirc.

If you want to discuss more let me know and I'll contact you directly.

<comment><USER12> Sorry for the late response. What I meant that I wanted to know about remote working possibilities. If you could guide or help then let me know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Your website says you studied science and have built software for spreadsheets and for 3D printing.

I work with oceanographers. There are many who get by with rudimentary programming skills but love the help of developers who can help them build tools to analyze and disseminate their data. They love spreadsheets because they don't know how to make databases.

Having mechanical or electrical engineering or CAD skills helps them design enclosures for instruments, having software skills helps them add autonomy.

However it is not a field where, at least as I've seen, engineers have free rein to improve processes simply for the sake of improving them.

You are right that research funding is tight and in most of the world it is getting tighter. Right now many projects are burning through funds while scientists babysit their kids; the research vessels are only now trying to resume operation.

</comment><comment><USER14> A few years ago Bret Victor wrote a long and wonderful essay lamenting the lack of attention to climate change in the tech industry. No specific job opportunities, but it's a wonderful read about how technologists can contribute to solutions.

[http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/](http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/)

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't know of any opportunities, but if anyone's taking ideas for products in this domain then I would like an app or website that links volunteers with animal shelters, farmstays and other places that could use a few extra hands.

It could be like a combination of Airbnb and Couchsurfing etc. that serves a specific niche.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.workaway.info](https://www.workaway.info) is what you're looking for

<comment><USER15> Thanks. From a quick scan of the site and their safety information page, it seems they do not handle payments between users like Airbnb does, or do they?

And since they require an upfront membership fee, has anyone here used Workaway? How was your experience?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the membership fee is a bit annoying but I paid because my girlfriend and I were planning on volunteering abroad - then the pandemic hit.

So I haven't actually done one of these workaways.

> it seems they do not handle payments between users

Most of the offerings you will find on there will only provide you with housing, maybe food, in exchange for labour. Some do pay, but I strongly suspect that it is in cash.

<comment><USER15> > _Most of the offerings you will find on there will only provide you with > housing, maybe food, in exchange for labour. Some do pay, but I strongly > suspect that it is in cash._

Ah I do not require payment for myself, I just thought some hosts may request payment for accommodation or the initial moving-in costs (paperwork etc.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is this development company that's doing good work (the "improve people's live in developing country kind of development"):

[https://catalpa.io/work-with-us/](https://catalpa.io/work-with-us/)

They are based in East Timor and were founded by an Aussie and an American (U.S.) and they allow remote work.

<comment><AUTHOR> That looks very interesting, thank you. And they need a backend dev!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Start investigating biodiversity informatics. There are a lot of different aspects in this space: genomics, georeferencing, image processing for feature extraction, etc, as well as typical distributed systems infrastructure.

<comment><USER12> As a Python developer I once used BioPython for rNA/DNA related data exploration and liked it. Could not figure out how I could explore this niche further due to lack of domain knowledge and a clear path.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Some tangentially relevant observations based on volunteering at a raptor conservation trust in the UK.

The trust maintains a visitor park that provides bird displays and experience days for the general public. The gate takings and donations fund conservation activities in the UK (raptor nest boxes, bird hospital, bird surveys) and overseas activities (e.g. reducing poisoning of wild birds by game poachers). The Trust itself is very much an outdoor organisation, with key staff supporting bird care and site infrastructure. There is a small back office that supports ops, marketing and merchandising, using COTS software. Academic research is conducted but in conjunction with local universities, which is where data crunching, etc, happens. There are a small number of on-site student placements, primarily for those in biology / zoology courses, and the placement activities seem fairly practical in nature. I suspect that most similar organisations follow a similar pattern, with a relatively small COTS software footprint and a focus on practical tasks rather than software development / data analysis.

That said, I started volunteering to support an office-based marketing function: management of a massive photo library and video editing to support marketing and outreach functions. After six months of doing this, COVID-19 happened and most office staff started WFH, with office-based volunteering suspended because it involves hot-desking. When the park started to reopen, I switched to COVID-related activities such as queue management ('space marshal') and cleaning. Although some tasks are menial, I've learned much more about how the trust works on a daily basis and I've got to know the key bird staff much better.

One of my key insights, as an ex-software professional, is how much I didn't know about how conservation actually works, and how specific conservation organisations actually operate. But getting hands-on with some of the less glamorous tasks is a good apprenticeship and a way of building trust in the industry, if you have a long-term interest in directly supporting conservation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that was insightful and encouraging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Bay Area listing service, world scope?

[http://www.greenjobs.net/](http://www.greenjobs.net/)

ps- contact them and help with the cert!

</comment><comment><USER20> Find a grad student working on research projects in the field. Every area of focus will have different requirements but almost all wildlife related field work involves some form of data entry that involves transfer from data in a notebook to excel or some CAD program. Challenges include no access to cell data, wet environments, battery management, etc. That being said, if it cuts down on tedium, most researchers will find a way to pay for it.

I've seen a plant identification app disrupt the process of species identification with field guides. I suspect that there are a lot of tedious classification projects that professors assign to undergrad researchers (find photos with wildlife) that can be entirely automated.

</comment><comment><USER21> There are several startups working on conservation/anti-poaching initiatives using image recognition and/or drones.

[https://airshepherd.org/](https://airshepherd.org/)

[https://wildlifeprotectionsolutions.org/](https://wildlifeprotectionsolutions.org/)

[https://observer.com/2017/05/artificial-intelligence-can- sto...](https://observer.com/2017/05/artificial-intelligence-can-stop- elephant-rhino-poaching-in-africa/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I applied to and was interviewed for a non-profit in the area that serves to connect volunteers with non-profits that need their help. Maybe they just really didn't like me in the interview (I didn't get that impression at all) but even offering my senior software developer skills _for free_ to _any_ non- profit, I have not heard back with anyone wanting my help and it's been months.

</comment><comment><USER22> [https://oceanmind.global/careers/](https://oceanmind.global/careers/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm about to start at Optimal (in London). It's not exactly conservation, but I like to think it's not far from it. Some details on the Who's Hiring post [1]. Best of luck otherwise.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23702401](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23702401)

</comment><comment><USER24> I wouldn't say I "write software" but I have a computing job in the field of animal/landscape ecology research with a pure CS background. I guess I'd say it's part scripting ETL type jobs, some parallel processing stuff, and ... I guess I'll call it DevOps to keep it short.

Make friends with people in national-level government organizations (whatever would be most like USGS wherever you live) or university "geomatics" type people. A good start would be those involved with remote sensing (satellite [radar or optical]/drone/other sensors). These are the people that know of or are sitting in these types of jobs.

If you want a web dev type job find a way to get experience with scripting for ArcGIS Portal.

</comment><comment><USER25> It depends on the country, probably.

I would suggest you to assure first a well paid job and use your free time for volunteer activities. Nobody should be doing science before 50 Yo. Not at this moment when postdocs are being paid 300 euro/month. Is committing economical suicide and starting a family first and having kids should be your priority.

About oceanography. If you can read spanish (if not, you can always google- translate it) you may find interesting this recent piece of news.

[https://elpais.com/ciencia/2020-06-30/dimite-la-cupula- del-m...](https://elpais.com/ciencia/2020-06-30/dimite-la-cupula-del-mayor- organismo-oceanografico-de-espana.html?rel=lom)

Your mileage may vary

<comment><USER4> you missed two 0s for our postdocs annual net salary. But hey, generalization is so great.

And while I understand that in most parts of the world, it's paid a lot worse and you might have problems making ends met, I don't really get, how you want to solve these problems (interlinked with nowadays capitalism) by getting more kids (wow, just 30t of CO2/year more "output") and helping the 1% redistribute an even larger fraction of the wealth to themselves (which are imho the only really "richly"-paying jobs.)

<comment><USER25> Some people want to have kids

<comment><USER4> yes? if you want to have kids by 30, a PhD probably isn't right for you. A career in science might as well probably not work out. So what, not everyone needs to procreate?!

<comment><USER25> Do I need to sacrifice my children to have the privilege to be allowed to solve _your_ problems?

Okay. Good bye, science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Not sure about preserving nature and animals directly, but there are lots of software jobs in clean energy (I'm hiring SWEs for Kevala right now). These could indirectly have a big impact on preserving nature via slowing climate change.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you're in the UK look at SMRU. [http://www.smru.st- andrews.ac.uk/](http://www.smru.st-andrews.ac.uk/)

active group, good work, and they're a semi-commercial autonomous wing of st. andrews.

</comment><comment><USER28> Remote sensing is being used as a tool to help fight deforestation by a few startups and tech companies. There aren't many jobs yet as I think it is still mostly an academic area but it's something to look into.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is not directly answering your query but you might sometimes be surprised at the positions available at major companies that work towards your goal of nature conservation. For example, I had a stint at Siemens working on an project that managed customer site environments. This meant doing things to help them conserve energy and helping them save money by reducing power waste. I am guessing Siemens doesn't come to mind as an environmental pioneer in spite of their work on wind power, etc. but there you are: it was functionally one of the more gratifying jobs I had.

</comment><comment><USER3> > However, I've been wondering if there is a demand for software in these > projects?

No, there's not a demand for software in this arena. All this stuff is dominated by grants and politically charged funds.

</comment><comment><USER30> When I was working in that field any 'software development' I did was alongside everything else I did. Most of that was online database and website work and some scripts to make analyzing data easier. I still spent far more time doing field work, writing reports and hustling for grant money though.

<comment><AUTHOR> May I ask where that was? That sounds like a good deal to me, to be honest with you - I don't mind getting my hands dirty - it breaks up the monotony of development sometimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Nature and animal conservation is a political issue. The best use of your skills would be to aid in the lobbying efforts for tighter regulations and more money for developing countries.

You might save a tiger, but in the year it took you to save him, Brazil cut down 8 million hectares of the rain forest for palm oil.

<comment><USER32> Lobbyists require data. Existing wildlife laws require enforcement. Political support requires mobilization. All of the above can be helped by smart, enthusiastic developers. If more people help out, we can save the tiger and the forest.

<comment><USER31> All of this requires political support. You can't collect the data if you are not allowed to or if your results are silenced. Enforcement requires political will, otherwise the criminals never get prosecuted or flee to their home countries.

Until we get "the establishment" to care about this, doing any work in this field is simply for vanity or to make you feel good.

<comment><USER32> > doing any work in this field is simply for vanity or to make you feel good

Making blanketing, dismissive claims about everyone who works in a specific field is a great way to end the conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I worked on a forestry grant platform for a while. It was interesting, but at the end of the day it was the same software problems I solve everywhere else

</comment><comment><USER34> Hey, we are working on this www.bexbox.cc

Drop me an email at email@example.com. We don't have a framework for hiring at the moment but might do very soon.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've sent you an email :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I would have to imagine a large amount of work in the animal conservation space would be in the hardware market.

</comment><comment><USER36> What country is this?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am in the UK but I am willing to relocate.

<comment><USER5> I would not bother with the US if you would need work visa sponsorship. No non-profit I've ever worked with ever had the resources to do that. You might have better luck with consulting where they don't need to relocate or sponsor you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> droneseed

inaturalist

Cornell ornithology lab

eesa

Caltech JPL

USFWS

MBARI

blue point conservation science

NOAA

Sitka technology group

conservation x labs

sail drone

uw escience institute

greenridge sciences

Oregon carbon

m science (marine research)

Tortuga agtech

conservation metrics

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for listing these. It's a great starting point.

<comment><USER37> I always find it easier to find companies once I have a list to work from, even if they're not in the geographic area that I'm looking for

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> A few thoughts:

\- [https://4returns.earth/network/job- listings/](https://4returns.earth/network/job-listings/) is in the regenerative ag space - lists some tech jobs if you search for them. (e.g. try [https://4returns.earth/network/job- listings/?searchval=devel...](https://4returns.earth/network/job- listings/?searchval=developer) )

\- Conservation is only one area, and the term 'conservation' itself is a frame I've been more critical of after reading papers like [https://www.uv.es/jgpausas/papers/Pausas- Millan-2019_BioScie...](https://www.uv.es/jgpausas/papers/Pausas- Millan-2019_BioScience_Mediterranean-Basin-changes.pdf) which have been making me think some of the problems we have might be more with abandoning land for the city. Another frame of thinking about about is how/where you want to live and go from there - I'm really questioning whether one should live in "today's society" \- that doesn't mean going off-grid entirely but living in a way that's local/bioregional oriented..

\- I'm skeptical of the tech-focused effort on only looking at co2 because it doesn't account for the other problem areas (google "planetary boundaries framework" to learn about biodiversity collapse/nutrient flows and how those are much bigger problems), but there's the airminers folks: [http://www.airminers.org](http://www.airminers.org) . Again, while this falls more in the tech frame I'm not sure I'd spend time on it.

\- While I disagree with some of the recommendations around 'effective altruism', it's another path worth considering if your survival requires making money at the moment. You could say, work at a mapping or weather- related company spend then leverage the experience later on for more direct action. At the moment I haven't quit my dayjob yet but am taking an "Ecosystem Restoration Design" course ([https://www.gaiaeducation.org](https://www.gaiaeducation.org)), donated to various things, and participate in a study group around these topics ([https://earth-regenerators.mn.co](https://earth-regenerators.mn.co)) and feel like that so far has helped in developing a perspective before jumping into anything.

\- almost forgot, Patagonia's Action Works seems to have a really good platform for finding tech volunteering on environmental projects: [https://www.patagonia.com/actionworks/](https://www.patagonia.com/actionworks/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, that's very useful! Will read through those links.

> developing a perspective before jumping into anything

Probably the biggest takeaway here, for me. Each domain is more complex than it appears on the surface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> You mean making conserves?</comment>


Reclaim and reuse your Facebook data - <AUTHOR> http://givememydata.com/

<comment><USER2> Facebook allows you to do this. There is no need to give a third party application access all of your information.

Click "Account Settings", and then "Download Your Information". Voila. You'll get an email within a few minutes.

<https://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=download>

To be fair, it appears that this project predates Facebook's launch of the download feature by a few months.

I work for FB, but not on this feature.

<comment><USER3> When you download your information with the FB feature you only get your wall posts and other basic info.

I guess that with this app you can download your group's wall, something I have always desired since the creation of the new groups.

EDIT: I tried to download my group's wall with this app and it's not working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This app has been online since late 2009. It offers formats that the FB download did/does not (dot file, XML, CSV). It received a lot of attention last year (2010) [http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/facebook- app-...](http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/01/facebook-app-brings- back-data/) possibly influencing FB to add the download service. Not sure if they would admit it, but its very possible the idea seeped-in somehow.

I am the developer.

<comment><USER5> PHP runs out of memory when I try to export all of my mutual friends to dot or nodebox formats

<comment><USER4> How many friends?

<comment><USER5> ~1500

<comment><USER4> I've been able to test only with mine of course, which is 589. I'm guessing its because of your number. There's a post on Stack Overflow about the troubles I had with that function, looks like I'm not done. Would you be willing to post in the discussions on the app page? [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4281210/facebook- mutual-f...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4281210/facebook-mutual- friends-and-fql-4999-5000-record-limit)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious what the point of using this app is after Facebook introduced a feature allowing you to download your entire profile a few months ago. It comes down as a zip file containing a nice, offline-browsable HTML minisite with your wall, pictures, videos, etc.

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/06/facebook-now-allows-you- to-...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/06/facebook-now-allows-you-to-download- your-information/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Can't we get all of the data through open graph API anyways? <http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/>

<comment><USER8> Sadly, no, you can't. Facebook seems to offload older data to systems that are inaccessible to third-parties using the graph API. Their "Download Your Data" feature has access to this tier via async methods.

Reference: [http://bugs.developers.facebook.net/show_bug.cgi?id=10576#c7...](http://bugs.developers.facebook.net/show_bug.cgi?id=10576#c78)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Ok FB. You can keep the data. Give me FB options instead. Thanks.

<comment><USER10> This is a third-party application that allows you to export your data. It was not created by Facebook.</comment></comment>


Show HN: DeepWater – A ConvNet which identifies water in satellite images - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/treigerm/DeepWater <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author of the project here. This is not meant to be seen as a state of the art system but more like a very basic example of a machine learning technique applied to geospatial data which might help other people to get started in this field. I am both new to machine learning and geospatial data, so feedback of any kind is more than welcome!</comment>


Digital Olympics: Week 1 in numbers - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2012/08/olympic_statistics_traffic_week.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Mobile is approaching half of all views of the Olympics online.</comment>


Announcing Tokio 0.1 - <AUTHOR> https://tokio.rs/blog/tokio-0-1/ <comment><USER2> As someone who hasn't actually used Rust for anything yet, the example on the root of the site is surprising legible: [https://tokio.rs/](https://tokio.rs/)

Question for the more knowledgeable Rust folks: Does this code (the echo server example) not handle the situation where the port is already in use? What's the return type of the socket bind in that situation?

EDIT: Wow six responses in as many minutes. I think I've created a new objective measure of how popular a programming language will be!

<comment><USER3> This is actually something about the code samples in Rust docs that irks me a bit.

My view is that sample code such as this should be as idiomatic as possible and that means providing a sample demonstrating a _typical real use case_. So seeing "unwrap" in this context doesn't sit well with me.

In fairness, this isn't specific to Rust. I find sample code like this in many projects regardless of language. However Rust is billing itself as a safe systems programming alternative to C and C++. It would help its marketing efforts, in my opinion, by having more robust samples than the competition. And let's be honest: given the competition is C and C++, that's a low, low bar --and this comes from a guy who's about as big a fanboy of those two languages as possible.

Edit for more disclaimer: documenting Rust code is a real pleasure. The team has done a stellar job at making documentation an easy thing to do while writing the code. It's already better in most cases than many other projects I can think of.

<comment><AUTHOR> So, to be clear, unwrap is safe. It is never going to cause the sorts of memory issues that an uncontrolled crash is.

That is, in terms of safety, this is the same thing as explicitly handling the error and then terminating the process. Which is the only real way you're going to handle this error anyway, unless you wanted some sort of retry logic. Which you might!

<comment><USER3> I agree that in terms of safety it's equivalent. However in terms of how an actual program would be written it's...Less than optimal. I almost never simply allow a panic-like termination in a program like this, if it can be trapped, without doing _something_ else, even if it's just to spit out a log/stdout message with a descriptive reason. Then again the plural of anecdote isn't data, and maybe I'm the oddball here.

<comment><AUTHOR> > even if it's just to spit out a log/stdout message.

This will print an error out already.

      $ ./target/debug/tokiotest
      thread 'main' panicked at 'called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err` value: Error { repr: Os { code: 98, message: "Address already in use" } }', ../src/libcore/result.rs:837

Printing out a _better_ error might be helpful, though, I'll agree :) You could use expect for that, which lets you change the message in the ''s easily.

This really shows a fundamental tension though, in documentation. Is this example supposed to be demonstrating error handling? Or just get you going? Does adding more complex error handling distract from the point it's trying to teach? These are sort of open-ended questions.

<comment><USER4> Wasn't there an attempt to get a variation of main that returned result at one point(that would presumably print error and set exit code one error)? Back before "?"

If rust had that examples would be even shorter using ? Instead of try! or unwrap

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, and that discussion is still ongoing. The devil, as always, is in the details.

<comment><USER5> `-> impl Trait` seems useful in that context, so that main could have a variety of appropriate return value types: `()`, `i32` (for an exit code), or `Result<T, E>` where T implements ReturnValue and E implements Error.

`quick_error` uses a trait like that to determine the exit code of `main()`, allowing it to return either () or i32.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is all very impressive, especially since AFAICT Tokio is only about 5 months old and consists of tens of thousands of lines of code spread across a half dozen different repositories. I'm anxious for the day when I can use Rust at work. All I'm really missing to justify using it is a bit more mature ecosystem. Especially a full featured, stable AWS SDK.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you tried [https://crates.io/crates/rusoto](https://crates.io/crates/rusoto) ? I haven't, interested to hear what people say.

It was announced roughly in August, so yeah, five months. Though some work had to happen for that initial release, of course. There was a joke though, about this rapid development. Someone said something like "That they keep re-writing tokio is really annoying as a user, but I guess if Rust is so productive that you can throw out huge chunks and re-build it that quickly, well, that says good things about the language." Of course, as the post says, things will be more stable now.

<comment><USER7> Rusoto seemed like a good effort last time I looked, it didn't have very full coverage of the AWS API. Amazon just has so many APIs that it's a huge dev effort to implement it all and keep up with changes. This is a problem in other languages where Amazon doesn't contribute to keeping the client up-to- date. I'm hopeful that with macros 1.1, the situation will improve since it will enable compile-time code generation based on the official json files in botocore. Just add that repo as a git submodule and then:

      #[derive(Aws!("s3/2006-03-01/service-2.json"))]
      struct S3;

Becomes up-to-date with the latest changes from Amazon the moment they're released (recompile required).

Procedural macros are really exciting with regard to writing/consuming APIs as they enable both the client and the server interface to be implemented in an API specification language (Amazon uses custom JSON, but Swagger/RAML could work too) instead of Rust with zero performance penalty (gotta love those zero-cost abstractions :-)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the feedback.

We're tracking the missing services: [https://github.com/rusoto/rusoto/issues/436](https://github.com/rusoto/rusoto/issues/436) . There's plenty of work to do and we're concentrating on getting them implemented. Sometimes progress is slow since it's a side project, but it's still moving forward.

If we can make the derive statements work as your code snippet shows, I'd be really happy. We'll take a look at how we can improve codegen when new features are available. Some of our codegen is dated, using what was available when it was written.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I really want to know if the eventually arising full-blown web framework in rust still can claim "zero cost abstractions", and if this would translate into basically "the most performant/efficient way to write a web-app".

<comment><AUTHOR> So, when what was to become tokio was first announced, we did a check to see how it compared to writing mio by hand. The two were within 0.3% (not a typo, one third of a percent) of each other. That was before any optimization work was done.

One of the core premises of tokio is that this compiles down to the state machine you'd have to write by hand if you wanted to do asynchronous stuff. So yes, this is very much intended as a zero-cost abstraction.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I got that. So to build a "small" web framework like express.js, one could build a routing layer based on macros (like Phoenix/Elixir or rocket.rs do), plus JSON-serialization (Serde might do it) and a compile-time HTML- templating-engine, all of those leveraging zero-cost abstractions once Macros 1.1 land in stable, right?

Then stuff like spinning up 1 OS-thread for every CPU core and scheduling requests in round-robin (?) style, and then wrap it all up into a developer- ergonomic thing.

Since you probably have a way better insight into rust-dev and the ecosystem, can we stay tuned that this eventually will happen or are there still showstoppers somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup! So for the next step up, see this example of using hyper with tokio: [https://github.com/hyperium/hyper/blob/tokio/examples/server...](https://github.com/hyperium/hyper/blob/tokio/examples/server.rs)

You could see how that match block functions as a router...

I was literally playing around with this last night. There's a lot of experimentation going on in the server-side Rust web framework space right now, and I expect it to heat up even more now that tokio has had a release.

> once Macros 1.1 land in stable, right?

So to be clear, macros 1.1 gets you custom Derive, which is Serde/Diesel. It'll be stable in the next release in ~3 weeks. It won't get you the full ability to use any custom attribute, like [https://rocket.rs/](https://rocket.rs/) uses.

> Then stuff like spinning up 1 OS-thread for every CPU core

This is not implemented in tokio yet, but in my understanding, it's coming.

<comment><USER9> > a lot of experimentation going on in the server-side Rust web framework > space

This alone are awesome news! Having worked with literally dozens of web frameworks, I have a sincere interest to see what emerges from the rust space. I can't pinpoint or prove it, but many developers seem to care about doing stuff "the right way" instead of getting something out the door that works maybe Ok. I really wait for the "this is it"/"we couldn't possibly solve this better" moments that might arise from such experimentations.

> macros 1.1 gets you custom Derive, which is Serde/Diesel

... basic building blocks for all things web I'd say. Looks like the next stable release will arrive just-in-time for things to emerge.

And then there might be the next wave of rust-users/developers that want to built upon such rock-solid foundations, like me. Really, I'm excited like I haven't been in many years!

<comment><USER10> Really minor thing, but I for instance like how in Hyper.rs types are used to enforce (at compile time) that one does not try to write headers after having started or sent the body of a response. [http://hyper.rs/hyper/v0.10.0/hyper/server/index.html#an- asi...](http://hyper.rs/hyper/v0.10.0/hyper/server/index.html#an-aside-write- status) Good sign that we are starting to leverage the compiler to verify such invariants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That is a serious amount of documentation for a 0.1 release.

<comment><USER11> The rust community suffers here from humility and a modest default (`cargo new` puts you at 0.1.0 by default).

<comment><USER5> The Rust community also takes semver quite seriously. 0.1.0 can break API compatibility when it moves to 0.2.0, so prototypes that want to iterate on API stay pre-1.0 until they feel confident in their API. The Cargo ecosystem has shockingly few 2.x or 3.x versions.

<comment><USER12> When you say this, what experience are you comparing to? Any particular package ecosystems, or a general rule? Thanks

<comment><USER5> By comparison to the long tail of the C library ecosystem (SONAME handling), and the package ecosystems of many other languages, most of which do not use sufficiently well-defined versioning schemes to allow expressing dependencies like "1.4 or any compatible version". In other languages, I've done the equivalent of "cargo update && cargo build" and encountered build errors due to API changes. In Cargo, I've found that exceptionally rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I really look forward to the first production web framework based on futures.

<comment><USER13> Scala's play framework is pretty good if you can live on the JVM. I've been pretty happy with it.

<comment><USER5> To clarify, I was specifically looking forward to the first production _Rust_ web framework based on futures. I'd like to write web applications in Rust, to integrate with many other libraries and parts of the ecosystem, and I look forward to doing so via a futures-based framework that integrates well with other futures-based Rust code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazing work from the contributors, kudos!

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm getting an SSL / certificate error...anyone else?

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone on Reddit is having the same issue. DNS was changed 12 hours ago, but possibly has not propagated to you yet? Sorry about that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Would be interesting to read story about naming :)

<comment><AUTHOR> "Tokio" is one way to romanize 東京, the capital of Japan. [1] "Tokyo" is more accurate in a sense, and so is more popular today, but doesn't contain the I/O pun. The logo also references its metropolitan crest. [2].

1: [http://english.stackexchange.com/a/207016](http://english.stackexchange.com/a/207016)

2: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_of_Tokyo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbols_of_Tokyo)

<comment><USER17> It's a really odd way, though, since "kyo" is a single syllable in Japanese and not pronounced "kee oh" like most English speakers do.

<comment><AUTHOR> I edited my post with a link to some history, you might want to check it out. As someone with very limited 日本語 skills, I find this stuff very fascinating. (And yes, un-learning kyo vs kee-ooh was tough...)

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I think I still say it wrong sometimes. To me, it's a word I learned in English, and so I think of it the English way. In that way, loan-words are troublesome in both English and Japanese for words from both languages.

Don't even get me started about learning French words in either of them and then learning their pronunciation in the other, and then the actual French. As an example, the Atelier game series.

<comment><USER18> I don't know if it's entirely correct to call it wrong. The nearer a word comes to its equivalent in its source language, the higher the expectation that it's pronounced the same as the source language. This expectation is arguably correct when the word is not commonly used in the host language. Some words are very different. Germany/Deutschland. Florence/Firenze. Some are closer, even having the same spelling: Mexico/Mexico. I don't think it's not wrong per se to pronounce it the way its typically pronounced in the language you're speaking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting usage of Serbian domain (.rs).

<comment><AUTHOR> They're pretty common in Rust, since that's the filename extension.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Instead of adding concurrency to rust adding javascript-like hell to it. Brilliant.

<comment><USER21> They don't want to add abstractions to the language (e.g. Green threads). So, they are doomed to add abstractions to the libs instead, and one way to do cheap concurrency without the help of the language is to use async I/O.

And by cheap I mean cheaper than OS threads. The reactor pattern still adds a lot of CPU overhead to each I/O operation.

What's interesting is that Rust had green threads at one point. They implemented that by making std::io async-capable under the hood. But they didn't like it: too much abstraction cost, and it was preventing to add more native i/o features easily.

So they ditched it and now they are doing exactly the same thing to I/O, just in user space, and without green threads.

<comment><USER22> > And by cheap I mean cheaper than OS threads. The reactor pattern still adds > a lot of CPU overhead to each I/O operation.

You need to pay for concurrency one way or another, there is always going to be some bookkeeping overhead. Whether you pay the price in your language's runtime (like Go) or in a library doesn't mean you're getting for free. However, it looks like the design of Rust's futures will let it reach very throughput.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The term "zero-cost abstraction" is a bit annoying. By definition an abstraction has an obfuscation and compilation cost even if it doesn't add to the runtime cost. Too much of these and the program is not understandable anymore and takes hours to compile.

<comment><USER24> I wish the term wouldn't exist.

I've measured "zero-cost abstraction" that weren't quite so when profiled.

What it really means is "if the inlining goes like the programmer expects, then it should have no cost". The term expresses hope.

But inlining is best left to the compiler, and hope is of little value until measurement is done with a profiler.

<comment><USER25> Inrust you can tell the compiler to always inline a given function.[1]

But you don't necessarily want to do that since you may not make the most efficient use of the CPU cache.

[1] [https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference.html#inline- attributes](https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference.html#inline-attributes)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Asynchronous programming is hard, even when hidden behind abstractions like futures or promises.

It was cool and trendy when libevent and Nodejs came out, but now we should all have the experience and knowledge that tell us to stop doing asynchronous I/O.

Go, Hakell, or Erlang do a great job at concurrency, without the async i/o craziness.

<comment><USER26> No, this is not true and you got couple of things wrong. Erlang's model is more like an asynchronous event driven programming on steroids, while idiomatic Go is synchronous and is merely a traditional multithreading, which is known to be unusable for non-trivial concurrent problems. Here's the thing though, people don't really understand these things, they always want something easy that solves a simple problem they have in mind and always fail to grasp how much flexibility they sacrifice and how much harder or even impossible it will get for more complex problems. And believe me, if you get into concurrency you're gonna have a lot of problems that are very hard or even impossible to solve synchronously. The world is an asynchronous place.

<comment><USER27> Go certainly does not do traditional threading. It has Go routines, which is are lightweight "threads" which gets multiplexed on top of real OS threads. It's basically implementing async IO at the runtime level.

<comment><USER25> In term of programming interface, you deal with them as if it was a traditional thread. (with its pro and cons: pro: all your code is sequential, it's intuitive to understand what the programmer wanted to do in a specific scenario. cons: data-races are hiding in every corners :/)

Being a green thread with a growing stack is an implementation detail for the developer writing Go code.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ranking TV Shows That Got Canceled - <AUTHOR> https://priceonomics.com/ranking-the-most-beloved-tv-shows-that-got/ <comment><USER4> You can't use future events (# ratings on IMDb _10 years later_ ) to determine what someone "should" have done.

IMDb ratings in general follow a four point scale ([http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourPointScale](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FourPointScale)) and are also skewed toward the internet-savvy demographic. It's a good example of a homogeneous population and the problems that can cause for data analysis.

<comment><USER5> Not to mention that Firefly's cancellation has posthumously added to its notoriety. Nearly every Firefly mention is in relation to its cancellation. Would it be as popular if it hadn't been cancelled?

I really like Firefly, but the cancellation meant they didn't have the opportunity to fuck it up. Every other Whedon series has had poor seasons.

<comment><USER6> Actually, I think this is consistent. 13-26 or so episodes is a pretty good length. Beyond that, ideas get stale, characters get repetitive, plots get either formulaic, or too convoluted to ever resolve, and a show generally starts to tilt downward.

I wish there were more shows that just were OK with planning an ending. I like stories with endings. Just know your limits, don't try to make a show that can go on for a million seasons, end it when its still good, and then use the goodwill garnered from making a masterpiece to build the next creative thing.

I'm not sure why this model seems to be more successful in, say, Anime as opposed to western TV. Budget, maybe?

<comment><USER7> I think they're starting to get it. Breaking Bad fully executed its ending. Game of Thrones announced their end years in advance. TV producers are finally starting to come on board with the idea of stopping a show even though it's popular.

<comment><USER8> The alternative is to mint an evergreen series like Law & Order. Someone finds a dead body in NYC; investigation, trial, and silly social commentary ensue. Then vary the parameters a bit and you get SVU, Criminal Intent, et al. Characters are interchangeable, guest spots abound, social commentary changes with the politics of the day.

Walking Dead -- eh, it's getting a little old. I thought they were going to explore some primitive economics, and maybe they will, but the cliffhanger gag last season reminded me too much of "Who Shot JR?" Not sure I care. And the spinoff went too heavy on the social commentary, couldn't even finish Season Two.

Mr. Robot is more promising, but I haven't seen one yet that comes close to the satisfaction I got from the clear arc of the story in Breaking Bad. Sons of Anarchy tried, but fell short somehow.

<comment><USER9> Walking Dead, I just wish they could find another model for a season.

"Oh, we're walking or driving through the woods" "Cool, we found a place that looks cool and has cool people" "Oh, the cool people were actually horrible for some reason" "Time to blow it up I guess."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Internet ranking for cult shows/movies is problematic, these shows have an extremely loyal fan base which ties the origins of the word fan to it's root fanatic quite often.

While these are great shows, the ranking don't necessarily mean much, it just means that there were more fans willing to give the show a good rating, and more likely than not on probably more than a few accounts.

It's hard to compare IMDB ratings properly when shows like America's Got Talent or the Voice only have 5000-7000 votes with a pretty shitty score while clearly being considerably more popular with the mass audience. Shows like GoT are an outlier with over 1M votes cast, while even highly acclaimed TV sci fi shows like Star Trek TNG have only about 60K votes.

Firefly is the "best tv show that got canceled ever" just like Kim Jong Un is Time's internet person of the year, mostly anonymous internet voting and highly loyal and fanatic fan base can easily skew statistics.

I love Firefly I would loved to have seen it live to be 5-6 seasons old, but every time I see people talk about it like it was the "greatest mistake" in modern television programming I can't really take them seriously.

<comment><USER11> It might not have been the greatest mistake in modern television programming, but the size and enthusiasm of the fan base at least says something about how profitable it might be (or not) if it returned on, say, Netflix.

Potential producers might also want to consider factors such as the average age and income of a Firefly fan (since it was aired 13 years ago and remain popular among Silicon Valley geeks) and whether it would be feasible to bring some of the original cast back together and still have an interesting story (Star Wars VII did).

<comment><USER12> " it might be if it returned on, say, Netflix."

My Netflix has Firefly. In Finland. Our selection in Netflix in generally very limited, though. Or do you mean Netflix would make new seasons?

<comment><USER11> New seasons. Which might or might not be a good idea, depending on some of the factors I mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a little surprised _Dollhouse_ didn't rank higher. It's really a wonderful, extended meditation on the nature of identity, wrapped up in a sci- fi, transhumanist, pre-apocalyptic shell, with a liberal dash of feminism. Fran Kranz, Olivia Williams, and (last, but not least) Enver Gjokaj are standouts among the excellent cast.

I do, however, recommend watching the first pilot from the DVD set rather than the actual pilot episode that aired. It takes a couple episodes to get going, but once it does, it's truly amazing.

<comment><USER14> Dollhouse was premised on the idea that Eliza Dushku could convincingly play a different character every week. I do not think it worked very well.

<comment><USER15> I can imagine if they rebooted the show, Tatiana Maslany could pull it off without a hitch. It's basically what she's doing in Orphan Black, but she's playing those multiple characters two or three at a time in one episode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fox tried so many crazy things. Brisco County Jr., Dark Angel, Alien Nation. They'd stand by shows that did ok, like x files or fringe, and constantly try random new stuff.

Yeah, i'm bummed with the rest of the internet that Firefly got canceled. Some browncoats still have some hate for Fox. But really without fox churning through random ideas, it never would have been made.

<comment><USER17> The browncoat hate for Fox isn't just that the show was cancelled but that it was aired somewhat out of order in inconsistent timeslots and then cancelled it.

Fox has set up numerous shows for failure, including Arrested Development, which was aired against Monday Night Football and wasn't aired during sweeps week. How does a show succeed, no matter how good, when it's never given a chance to develop an audience?

You're being overly generous to Fox. It's not enough to "try" crazy shows. They're dead in the water if they're set up for failure this way by extremely short term thinking.

<comment><USER18> > Fox has set up numerous shows for failure

Seems like a dubious claim to me, since it's not in their interest. My guess is that since the most coveted timeslots are a finite resource, they need to make hard calls about placing stable earners in them vs. new shows, for example, or bank on audiences finding those new shows anyway, via directed marketing effots. "Giving a show a chance to develop an audience" is technically achieved by airing it at all, and it's not the only thing they need to get done in a day.

You can criticize individual decisions they make, but only if you take that full picture of everything they need to accomodate into account. There can be good reasons why a network doesn't place your favorite show in your preferred timeslot.

<comment><USER19> Without commenting on Firefly specifically, one hears a lot of comments in the vein of: "They needed to just give this show another season so that it could find its voice/find an audience/develop its storyline/etc." Personally as a viewer, especially these days, you have very little time to grab me given how many options there are--and how relatively little time I spend watching TV. I'm not going to give your show 3 seasons, even if the network is willing, to hope it turns into something interesting.

<comment><USER20> Consumer's life is fast and boring, so he cannot wait to entertain himself. I think it is called positive feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think a similar situation happened with 'Chuck'. The last couple seasons of it were produced in such a way that the finales could have worked as series finales since they were never sure it would be extended further.

As a result, it had weird sponsorships like from Subway, which meant scenes of the show were pretty much Subway ads.

But anyway, my point is that nowadays on Netflix and IMDB the show has lots of ratings and they're generally positive.

IMDB has Chuck as 8.2/10 based on 109,543 ratings, which I would think is decent. I think the last time I noticed it, Netflix had it at 4.5 or so out of 5 stars (not sure on overall numbers, however).

That show had a great blend of a bunch of genres: cheesy/action/suspense/romance/sci-fi to name just a few.

But I think in general this kind of situation is mostly a result of our times. 5+ years ago shows were just really beginning to be widely available (at least to people who didn't torrent online and things like that). Back then you really had to intentionally be around when something aired on TV or you needed to care enough to set it to record to DVR (or heck, even VHS further back).

Nowadays it's easy enough to just open up Netflix and continue watching a show sequentially on demand.

<comment><USER22> We've rewatched Chuck a couple times, but always end on the episode where Ellie has her baby and Chuck proposes to Sarah. After that, it's just too much of a roller coaster (for all the reasons you mentioned).

<comment><USER21> The last couple seasons are still decent, but because of the on again, off again nature of the series that rollercoaster is quite uncomfortable to ride.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The logic behind the rise of niche programs is simple : they didn't fit the advertising based model , which seeks mass appeal, but they are the thing that makes a loyal fan stay subscribed to netflix(or Amazon) even if the rest of netflix isn't great for him - but still nice to watch.

As for the economics - let's say each niche grabs 5% of viewers - you need just 20 shows, which is reasonable.

<comment><USER24> This is related to an opportunity cost problem that Netflix doesn't have (so much).

The networks have a limited set of time slots so if one show is deemed relatively better than another for a particular slot then it makes sense to consider a swap.

Netflix only really needs the show to make money to keep it going. If a competing show makes more money then that's great. Show both.

<comment><USER10> Netflix to some extent actually prefers "niche programming". Their mass appeal library and show would sell subscriptions but they'll peak rather quickly as a replacement for cable. Their niche programming is very good at attracting new customers since these customers tend to be more hardcore and they don't have (m)any alternatives.

How much of this will remain as Netflix moves towards original programming I don't know, I think that they are likely to move most of their mass appeal programming to originals and just pick up the odd cult classics/fanclub shows and movies and maybe revive a franchise once in awhile.

<comment><USER25> I've been pretty disappointed with Netflix offerings lately. I've been finding that Amazon Prime Video has a better selection of shows and movies.

Although I'm still waiting for something that just streams everything in TCM's or the Criterion Collection's back catalog. A lot of old movies, even very notable ones, are hard to find anywhere, legally or otherwise.

<comment><USER26> FilmStruck (TCM + Criterion) is scheduled for Dec 2016 launch, [https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4032-introducing- fil...](https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/4032-introducing-filmstruck)

Netflix has a few Criterion films, [http://streamingcriterions.com/](http://streamingcriterions.com/)

<comment><USER27> Hulu has (had? Don't remember) a ton of CC films such that a film's Hulu availability is featured in the actual CC website.

<comment><USER26> From the link above, CC@Hulu is ending in Nov to make way for the new service.

<comment><USER27> Thanks. I'd prefer that actually!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> One season was enough. I don't know about the rest of you, but I quite like small one-off or short-lived TV runs because they often set out to tell a story and once their story is told, that is it. No tacked on extra seasons.

<comment><USER29> Agreed. Just tell a good story, take the time it needs, and be done. In my opinion, long-lived series tend to become repetitive and formulaic, escalate beyond measure because somehow there always has to be a new bigger bad (I am looking at you Stargate SG1) or more trumped up storyline. I understand the appeal to keep on going as long as it makes (a lot of) money. But as an appreciator of a good story I just move on to a fresh idea.

<comment><USER30> I disagree with you on SG-1, though I'd like to bring up Supernatural 'spoiler mentioned as a perfect example of what you're talking about.

SG-1, compared to many other overdone shows, had one redeeming quality - <USER2> protagonists (in this case, all humans) actually _progressed_ through the course of the show. In SG-1 humans went from 1980s level of technology in Season 1 to spaceships, teleporters and off-world colonies in Season 10. So new 'bigger bad' always made some kind of sense, and I feel there was a space for a few seasons worth of additional interesting ideas.

That, or they could have simply continued Stargate: Universe.

There is one series I'm really up in arms about it being recently cancelled - Person of Interest. That one was nowhere close to repetitive, it had tons and tons of space for good, intelligent story developments, and it got cancelled behind the crew's back anyway, because whatever. Fuck you, CBS, for cutting out what was probably the only thing in history of television that approached the topic of AI in a smart, realistic way (and also basically broke Snowden's revelations a year before Snowden).

<comment><USER29> I do not disagree with you on humanities' progression in SG1, but I'd think that all these mayor shifts in technological advancement would have been better explored in separate series rather than in one big swooping race to the max.

For example how Star Trek explored early space exploration in Enterprise (sans time traveling shenanigans), another era in the original series, and another one in The new generation and DS9 and Voyager.

I do like the stargate universe, the Atlantis spin-off in particular, and I would like to see more of it. Maybe they can set a new series in, say, 100 years from the ending of SG1. Or maybe it is time to move on to fresh ideas. I liked the universe of The Expanse, for example, and am looking forward how they can move it forward.

(I was less happy about the Dark Matter universe, or rather the story told in it, for example: one small ship with a small crew holding the balance and future of the entire (known) universe in their hands is a bit too much for me.)

<comment><USER30> Yeah, I agree. Splitting SG-1 off would work for me too. I just grow very fond of the universe (and the style, tbh. SG-1 was actually one of the things that held me together during my biggest periods of depression - I loved the sarcastic style of O'Neill).

I like The Expanse too, I'm waiting for the second season, and seriously considering picking up the books it's based on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The list all of the high points for me: Veronica Mars, Jericho and Freaks and Geeks.

I also appreciate the presence of Stargate: Universe on the list. Everyone hated it, but I really, really, really enjoyed the different take on the Stargate, er, universe.

<comment><USER30> I liked it too. It was a very _different_ Stargate. More dark, more psychological. Some camera takes stolen from BattleStar: Galactica. But it was interesting, and it get much more interesting (the whole cosmic microwave background thing) just before they cut it down :/.

<comment><USER32> I loved it too.

And it was just hilarious how much it looked like the "younger, edgier" version from SG1 "200".

One of the best parts of the entire Stargate franchise is the amount of self- referential and self-deprecating humour in it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Who knows? Maybe if Firefly hadn't been cancelled, its audience might have evaporated, or Joss Whedon might have run out of ideas for new episodes (as unlikely as that sounds). We just can't know.

I think Firefly was absolutely terrific and the people at Fox were perfect morons not to see what they were destroying, but none of this is science and we can't possibly know what might have happened in an alternate future. For contrast, there's the "Matrix" sequels to show what can happen when projects aren't terminated when their sell-by date arrives.

<comment><USER34> > Joss Whedon might have run out of ideas for new episodes

Joss Whedon had planned 7 seasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Oh wow, I can't believe that Rome is #2! That's one of my all-time favorite shows and I've only ever known 1 other person who has even heard of it. I really do recommend it to anyone who likes historical drama with spare-no- expense sets, costumes and visual effects.

</comment><comment><USER36> The closest successor to Firefly, Dark Matter (minus the cowboy thing) only just made it to season 2 but is now renewed for season 3 by reducing production costs and selling older seasons to Netflix.

The new way people are watching TV is on-demand rather than on-air which is dramatically cutting ad-based income for traditional networks. If networks can partner or sell to streaming companies like Netflix it might help long tail shows like Firefly to survive in the future. Another great Syfy show, The Expanse, will hopefully survive that way whereas back in 2003 it would have been axed by now.

</comment><comment><USER37> Looking over this list (at least for the ones I'm familiar with), most of these shows really require that you see the premier episode (or first several episodes) in order to "get into" it. It is hard for viewers that come in the middle of the season, or the following season.

So unless it was really popular from the beginning, they stand a good chance of not picking up ratings later on. Which also explains why they do so good in streaming format -- you can binge watch them from the very beginning.

<comment><USER27> Arrested Development especially rewarded loyal, in-order viewing and hurt "random" (seeing any episode out of order while switching channels) because the show focused a lot on jokes or plot devices made episodes before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The Buffy vs. Angel vs. Firefly discussion is a good one. Babylon 5, Veronica Mars, and the recent Battlestar Galactica also fit in. Ditto Dollhouse, Heroes, Alias and Lost.

I'd say:

\-- It's just a detail, but recall that the first season of Buffy was actually just a half-season in length.

\-- The first three seasons of Buffy had a very clear meta-metaphor. :) It posited monsters as being a good representation for what happens in actual high school life.

\-- That aspect of the show hit its stride in the Buffy/Angel romance: Girl sleeps with guy and he turns into a monster.

\-- Firefly was good, but nothing in it was as brilliant as, say, the best of Buffy.

\-- A lot of shows started with a lot of monster-of-the-week/crisis-of-the- week and emphasized the ongoing story more later into the run. But most of the shows cited did at least some standalone stories all the way to the end. (Babylon 5 is one exception).

\-- Firefly never got past that part of the show's evolution. This may be one reason it never matched Buffy's brilliance.

\-- Not knowing whether or not a show will be renewed is a huge problem. If you're a fan of Buffy or Angel or Babylon 5, you're familiar with the consequences.

\-- The writers' strike messed up multiple shows, or at least their audiences. I never went back to watching Battlestar Galactica post-strike.

\-- Joss Whedon tried to oversee three shows at once. That didn't go well. Each of Buffy, Angel and Firefly deserved more of his attention.

\-- Dollhouse didn't have real characters, the people running the place excepted. It was never going to work.

\-- Some shows have a brilliant idea for an overarching story, in which the big story and the individual characters' experiences and arcs mesh beautifully. Then that story comes to a natural end, and the show is never quite as good again. Veronica Mars Season 1 is a great example. Ditto the first 1 1/2 or 2 seasons of Alias. Ditto Babylon 5 after things were wrapped up in Season 4.

\-- I'd put Battlestar Galactica into the same group. The best part was the first season, as everybody builds a society on the fly )as it were) that can survive against terrible odds. The plots with the election and the defeat and the aftermath weren't as good. And the pseudo-mystical stuff toward the end was just weird.

<comment><USER19> I agree with a lot of what you wrote.

Babylon 5 was a pretty unfortunate case. There was a lot to love about it but also so much that you have to overlook that it's really hard to recommend, especially a couple decades later (ack! seriously).

The effects were pretty low budget at the time--even if somewhat revolutionary for low budget graphics (Amiga).

The acting was _very_ uneven.

And, generally, as you suggest the uncertainties around renewals through the series run drove too many decisions with respect to the story arc and made the whole ending arc somewhat anticlimactic. I'm also not sure that shows driven so heavily by central mysteries--as B5 was--work very well outside of their original context. (And perhaps in today's on-demand viewing environment more broadly.)

I think I liked Battlestar Galactica more than you did overall but agree that the final somewhat mystical arc wasn't a strong finish. Lost didn't close well either after a strong start.

<comment><USER38> I actually think Babylon 5, Seasons 2-4, was outstanding. I'm not sure of what you mean by being very negative about some of the acting -- I see the range as being from competent to brilliant, with almost nothing that was outright bad, a few specific lines perhaps excepted.

There was quite a bit of good stuff in the fifth season as well, actually, mainly the Centauri and telepath arcs.

I also can't think of any effects that are distracting on a rewatch.

I stopped watching Lost early on, perhaps in Season 2. I stopped watching Heroes a few episodes into Season 2; when Kristen Bell of all people seemed to be giving a bad performance, I concluded that the show was probably doomed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> They used total ratings as a proxy for fan popularity.

I sorted by average rating count per day to give a different outlook, as some shows have been available to rate for longer.

Firefly (37 ratings a day) is still up there in second place below Terra Nova (38 a day): [http://d.pr/i/1119j](http://d.pr/i/1119j)

That doesn't take into consideration the rating values, though; just their quantity. It would be interesting to see ratings per day weighted by user rating, but I couldn't find a way to retrieve that raw data.

</comment><comment><USER40> I am reminded of an interview with Joe Satriani. The interviewer asked if he was worried about recording contracts given that he is not hugely popular. His answer was something along the lines of: I may not be as popular as some, but studios also do not have to spend buckets of money on advertising and marketing when I release an album. My smallish fanbase will buy my albums when they come out regardless.

I suspect Netflix is in a better position (now) to cater to those type of fans than Fox was then.

Too late for firefly, unfortunately.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think it will be very interesting how the major broadcasters/content producers do with Nielsen Total Audience Measurement going live. Remember all these media execs make the live or die calls off those media ratings and ad sales. For over a decade Nielsen has been discounting online viewership. Yes they were covering DVR, but it felt half assed. A lot of people blamed Jericho getting cut because they questioned nielsens numbers.

</comment><comment><USER42> Luck is another HBO show that started to show great promise but was cancelled due to the death of some horses, at least according to the show's producers. [1]

How to make it in America too was bright but was cancelled due to more conventional reasons. [2]

[1] HBO Luck

[http://www.hbo.com/luck](http://www.hbo.com/luck)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luck_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luck_\(TV_series\))

[2] HBO How to Make It in America

[http://www.hbo.com/how-to-make-it-in-america](http://www.hbo.com/how-to-make- it-in-america)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Make_It_in_America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Make_It_in_America)

</comment><comment><USER43> It surprises me that there are no mentions to Carnivàle...

<comment><USER44> Totally agree, it was a great show. You can really see in the second season how the they dithered over killing it.

I believe it was originally set to be only 2 seasons, which is fine.

Then they decided to extended it, so they added the Sophie plot.

Then the execs changed their minds and cancelled it anyway without wrapping up the new plot. Doh!

Whilst I was sad Rome only had 2 seasons at least it's fairly self contained and ends well.

Deadwood though has to be my top pick for a bad incomplete ending.

<comment><USER45> The first two seasons of Deadwood were exceptional with Ian McShane being the primary reason. Season 3 started to lose something by dwelling too long on the evil George Hearst character. I'm not sure the show could have stood up a compelling complete fourth season but I really would have liked some closure instead of yanking the cord like HBO did.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Trivia: Bryan Fuller made the list 3 times with Pushing Daisies, Wonderfalls, and Dead Like Me.

<comment><USER47> Dead Like Me was a great show, which was really getting into its stride (plot- wise) when it was cancelled.

Thus far I've resisted the temptation to view the movie they made - <USER3> due to Mandy Patinkin's absence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I thought Firefly was incredibly average. If I were to list the best SciFi shows of all time I don't think it would even occur to me to put it on the list. I honestly can't even think of the plots of any of the episodes. There was one with a guy in a spacesuit, I think it was red? and there was one with cattle or sheep?

I don't have anything against it. I just don't really find it remarkable at all.

Fans of Firefly, on the other hand, are the absolute worst. I used to have a game and see how many days I could go without reading someone online randomly bringing up how terrible it was that Firefly was cancelled. I rarely made it past Tuesdays.

</comment><comment><USER49> Amazing how popular this "Western meets Zombies in Space" trope still is.

<comment><USER50> Zombies?

<comment><USER51> Reavers, I think he means.

[I'm tired of the trope. Probably my least favorite thing about Firefly]

<comment><USER52> Oh, Reavers... the best (only?) way to enjoy Firefly is to pretend that this part of the universe simply does not exist. I guess every show has its low points.

The main quality of Firefly was just plain old, maybe somewhat simplistic, character likability. Just like in SG-1.

In my case, as I only discovered much later, that was also assisted by the heavy Traveller influence in Firefly. Never played it much, but Traveller (in some of it's incarnations) had always been my personal favorite amongst pen&paper RPGs.

<comment><USER19> >The main quality of Firefly was just plain old, maybe somewhat simplistic, character likability.

Agreed. In fact, I'd argue that if you take away the appealing and interesting cast and characters from Firefly, you're not left with an awful lot. Of course, characters form the backbone of a lot of shows but science fiction can also be driven by plot, the setting, ideas, etc. in a way that can make the characters less central. But in Firefly if you take away the characters you're mostly stuck with an overdone Western in space motif and generally unmemorable plots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Surely you would have to compare these with shows that were not cancelled? Firefly received a lot, but was it enough/more than others? Presumably something else should have been cancelled in its place?

</comment><comment><USER54> There is a lot value and money to be made in the long tail. Simply taking a black box approach and measuring what is easy to measure in the short run is not really useful to predict how many people and how deeply people will engage.

Distribution channels for narrow audiences (amazon for books/dvds, netflix/torrents for video) combined with social network dynamics have changed the game. Of course there is also the case that a world event changes the game. One of the most famous failed shows - not in the list - is Startrek. Moonlanding ignited that boom.

</comment><comment><USER55> Wow. "Pushing daisies" is listed too:) Really fun WTF show.

</comment><comment><USER56> Any list that doesn't include Airwolf, tragically cancelled after 3 seasons (the 4th with a totally different cast doesn't count), is missing the mark.

<comment><USER57> The list doesn't include The Adventures of Brisco County Jr either, which is far more of a true cult series than most of what is listed there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I wonder how much Firefly has benefited from being cancelled so early. I imagine if Heroes got cancelled after about 10-13 episodes, it'd be very well perceived right now. The subsequent writers' strike mess and not being able to handle an evolving story messed that show up quite a bit. So many shows, even really well done ones, taper off at a point due to various production issues (Babylon 5 comes to mind).

</comment><comment><USER59> The worst cancellation I have ever seen was of Caprica. The last show aired made a veiled criticism of Israel policies toward Palestine. It was pulled the next day! The rest of the season be damned. They stuck reruns of ST:NG into the slot. A year later they allowed the final few episodes to be shown and that was the end of that. Since then I am reluctant to watch anything on SyFy.

</comment><comment><USER25> One of my favorite bits on Family Guy

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oMTmtN7lHI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oMTmtN7lHI)

edit TLDW: Rapid-fire listing of 29 shows started and cancelled by Fox in the two years between Family Guy's initial cancellation and revival.

</comment><comment><USER60> I just want this page to have a mention of _The Pirates of Dark Water_ on it somewhere, so here it is.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirates_of_Dark_Water](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pirates_of_Dark_Water)

<comment><USER46> You reminded me of _Gargoyles_ which is worth mentioning. Creator Greg Weisman quit over Disney planning to ruin it in Season 3. It was probably a good call because they did ruin Season 3.

Weisman had created a detailed story arc that had a couple more centuries to go. He has continued to answer never ending fan questions and reveal details of the story arc for the following 20 years at "Ask Greg" at Station 8 Gargoyles

[http://www.s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/](http://www.s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Wasn't the reason that Rome was canceled after two seasons the fact that their entire wood-built set burnt down?

How many more are on this list where it is not differentiated between canceled for ratings vs canceled due to an external event?

<comment><USER12> I don't know what _actually_ happened but the public reason stated in the wikipedia page cites budget and the termination of the collaboration contract with BBC as the main reasons. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_(TV_series)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome_\(TV_series\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> If you don't mind getting attached to a brilliant story and characters for a single season, I can't recommend Battleground from Hulu enough. Do yourself a favor and watch it.

</comment><comment><USER63> Well, Lie to Me had unfortunately been deteriorating so unless they would've employed new writers it isn't that bad it got cancelled. Now we hold only good memories of it.

<comment><USER64> I agree. I was glad Lie to Me got cancelled.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The performance of christina hendricks in Firefly is jaw-dropping !!!

</comment><comment><USER65> I really wish they'd finished V and Flashforward too. Both could have been signed off in a few episodes and would of added tons of value to the franchises.

</comment><comment><USER66> I loved Firely, but the analysis is flawed because it didn't account for the older shows having more time to accumulate more ratings.

<comment><USER39> I thought the same at first, but it's still in second place if you account for that: [http://d.pr/i/1119j](http://d.pr/i/1119j)

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Anybody remember what happened to Lone Star? 3 episodes, not 3 seasons, for a critical and cult favorite.

</comment><comment><USER68> Don't care what the stats say, Brickleberry should be first on that ranking.

</comment><comment><USER69> How does the number of ratings on IMDB relate to profitability exactly?

</comment><comment><USER70> Should I watch the pilot or not before watching the official episodes?

<comment><USER71> Watch the series in the order it's presented in the DVD set. The episodes were aired out of order in a way that makes the plot arcs incomprehensible; the DVD set has them in the intended order.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Can I vote just cancel Fox keep cancel tv shows?

</comment><comment><USER73> John Doe :(

</comment><comment><USER74> I was sad Firefly was cancelled back in the day. Now though? I'd rather Adam Baldwin not receive any support.

<comment><USER12> If you censor your entertainment based on the perceived morals of the performers you are going to miss on lots of good stuff. For instance I have no problem enjoying the performance Tom Cruise in Mission Impossibles despite his bat-shit crazy position on Scientology. Roman Polanski is a convicted child rapist and that does not stop me from enjoying his films. Etc etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Here's an unpopular opinion. Firefly was a terrible show and was rightfully cancelled. Not sure why it is so revered amongst neckbeards. It's a poor rip off of Cowboy Bebop.

<comment><USER76> Popular or unpopular, you know why you've taken a hit? Because you offer no rationale whatsoever for your opinion.

<comment><USER75> Bad acting Over used tropes Unimaginative plots

The entire show was a poorly executed "train job".</comment></comment></comment>


Viacom buys the free video streaming service Pluto.tv for $340M - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/22/viacom-buys-the-free-video-streaming-service-pluto-tv-for-340-million/ <comment><USER2> Nextflix needs to watch their a$$!

I just read Disney lost over $1 billion on their streaming services(Hulu + Vice) haha</comment>


Protesters in Chile using Lasers en masse to disorient, neutralize Riot Police - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/mooncult/status/1195418253859811329 <comment><USER2> Amazing how after getting continually gassed by riot police, protesters have begun escalating to other tactics also banned by the by international agreement. It's almost like just because the thing was worded to only cover military engagements between countries, it actually makes sense to extend to authorities v. their populations before things get out of hand.

But nah. Legalism is the better part of valor in today's environment.</comment>


UK Movie Pirates Facing Shocking Prison Sentences - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/movie-pirates-facing-shocking-prison-sentences-151213/ <comment><USER2> Do the crime, do the time.

<comment><USER3> Mandatory sentencing bought and paid for by Hollywood. Let's reserve long sentences for crimes which truly harm individuals, not corporate bottom lines.</comment></comment>


Best choice for web bill pay? - <AUTHOR> Since Vanguard is discontinuing their web bill pay this month, I'm forced to look elsewhere.<p>What would you choose as the best web bill pay service? <comment><USER2> Nearly any credit union offers bill pay for free. BECU (if your in the Seattle area) has a nice mobile app and website that are at feature parity, with a great Zelle integration. Otherwise, First Tech FCU is the largest US Credit Union, and tends to be a fairly decent credit union.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, thanks.

I was looking at First Tech FCU as it is nearby (in Silicon Valley).

<comment><USER2> First Tech is fine, they have branches all up and down the west coast, and offer free access to the Coop ATM Network (every 7-Eleven ATM, any other Credit Union ATM), ATM fee reimbursement, Online Bill Pay, a working Zelle integration (which doesn't support recurring payments yet unlike BECU :c) and other fringe features.

They're working on a new mobile app, but they really need to add Zelle support on their website IMO. Bill Pay and transaction history are available via the website.</comment></comment></comment>


Liquid breathing - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of The Matrix [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IojqOMWTgv8&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IojqOMWTgv8&feature=player_embedded)

<comment><USER3> That's a tube with air so the human can breathe _even though_ it's submerged in liquid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This reminded me of the Lost Symbol book (which is also mentioned in the article. For reference, it's from the same author of The Da Vinci Code).

I recall reading this in the book and regarding it as junk science, but it really exists after all. The other "science" mentioned in the book though...

I never imagined my "bogus science" detector to fail me in this unexpected way. I guess I have to check not only for "bogus" science, but also for fantastic yet _real_ science!

</comment><comment><USER5> reminds me of the film Abyss

</comment><comment><USER6> Neat, thanks. I just learned the word "aliquot" from that article.</comment>


Ask HN: How much better are FAANG Developers/Engineers? - <AUTHOR> You always see new stuff coming from these tech companies or silicon valley with the "woows" or "what geniuses". But I have started working with ACTUAL Senior Developers who are 30-40 years in their technical career. When working at FANNG companies before, people were smart but not <i>that</i> smart/skilled compared to the teams I am working with now. Wondering other people's thoughts <comment><USER2> Being selected for being able to regurgitate a catalog of algorithms onto a whiteboard on demand is hardly the same as "smart/skilled".

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd say that those companies are interested in innovations, so they invest more money on that than an ordinary company.</comment>


YouTube Regrets Reporter browser extension - <AUTHOR> https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/regrets-reporter/ <comment><USER2> I do think that some human intervention needs to be put in these algorithmic recommendations. Too often we think it's some "group" suggesting videos when in reality I tend to believe it's simply an odd-case in the programming that's causing us to see videos on YT.

To the point of anti-LGBTQ videos being reported. I know people who identify as this group, and I don't think they are any less than anyone else. I do think it's fair to hold the opposite position, namely that we are born straight, and accept discussion between the viewpoints and not only consider anti-LGBTQ viewpoints as wrong. In either case any hateful videos shouldn't be uploaded, but consider free discussion between both sides is still appropriate.</comment>


new.ycombinator RSS feed - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> Does anyone else wish new.ycobminator came with an rss feed?

<comment><USER2> Isn't it at the bottom of the page? RSS | Bookmarklet | Feature Requests | Y Combinator | Apply | Library

<http://news.ycombinator.com/rss>

<comment><USER3> Huh, so it is, but why no auto discovery? Paulgraham.com is also oddly lacking in the RSS department.</comment></comment></comment>