Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is-devastating-to-the-sites-you-love.ars <comment><USER3> I've no real objections to advertising online, so for a long time I didn't use an ad blocker. However, in the last two or three years some adverts on sites which I visit often have been becoming increasingly offensive. Flashing animated images, pictures of the inside of people's mouths, and semi- pornographic ads are something which degrades my web viewing experience and if a technical solution to this problem exists then I have no hesitation about using it. For the foreseeable future it seems that ad blocking will remain necessary.

Perhaps the solution is some sort of code of conduct for advertisers. If ads are discreet and respectful of the viewer then I'd certainly be prepared to stop blocking them.

<comment><USER4> _If ads are discreet and respectful of the viewer then I'd certainly be prepared to stop blocking them._

I can only speak for myself but a solution does not seem that far off (at least not to get me to see your ads). While I agree that some sort of code of conduct may be a good idea, I don't really see it working out in the long run what with everyone always being willing to sacrifice good will for a quick buck.

That said, I use NoScript in Firefox and I run it for other reasons than blocking advertisements and I don't have an ad-blocker installed. If I white list a website it means I made a deliberate choice to trust whatever it is going to throw at me. The most important thing here is that I did _not_ allow any third party to serve me some random code (plain markup is fine). I have no way of telling whether the site I just white listed in fact knows what their external advertisers actually serve. And this is proven again and again by how site owners expect visitors to contact the site when they see an ad that is intrusive so that they can "nuke it". This to me makes it a no deal.

To kill two birds with one stone: Serve your advertisements from your own servers and if I want to read your content I have to make a choice whether to trust you and your webserver(s). If you violate my trust then I will go elsewhere and I am no longer a waste of your resources and you are not a waste of mine.

If I have for some reason decided to not let you run dynamic content on whatever device I am currently on you simply have to respect that or I leave. You still have the opportunity to serve me static ads, surely that's got to be worth something. You don't know my reasons for not white listing you (as this article states as well). What surprised me about this link was that I did not see a single advertisement on the page. This means they are all using JavaScript or Flash. Sorry, your loss. And eventually my loss as well since the website might not live to see another day due to lack of income.

Incidentally, easy white listing [of script execution] for sites is also the only thing stopping me from switching to Chrome today.

<comment><USER5> "Serve your advertisements from your own servers and if I want to read your content I have to make a choice whether to trust you and your webserver(s)."

Unfortunately, the advertiser then has to trust the publisher on how many users visited the site (or come up with something less intrusive that counts views).

<comment><USER4> Absolutely.

Amazingly this trust has worked well enough for television and radio (and its advertisers) for decades.

<comment><USER6> No, the advertisers in radio and tv are in the same boat as the stations themselves... no one really knows how many people really saw/heard an ad. They just both choose to trust a third party (neilson/arbitron) to give them the ratings. It just isn't possible to know for sure how many people saw an ad from a broadcast. Cable/sat and DVRs make it a bit easier, but only a bit.

On the web though, it's ridiculously easy to verify each request that there is no need for the trusted third party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Host your own ads, that way they won't be in my ad-blocker's blacklist. If your adds become annoying, then they go in the blacklist.

I'm wondering if, between ad-blocking and tivo, separate ads and commercials will be going away soon. I'm perfectly OK with the judges of American Idol with Coke glasses on their desk, or a sentence at the bottom of a blog post: "This post brought to you by FizzBuzz.com". I also don't mind the ads at the front of some podcasts, spoken by the same people that narrate the podcast itself. <http://ruby5.envylabs.com/> is a good example of advertising that I don't mind one bit. Similar to how old radio shows were "sponsored", and the sponsor got a mention a few times throughout the show.

<comment><USER8> Exactly: win win for all (except Big Brother).

How about this as an alternative:

Modify the plugin to route the GETs for the ad content through an anonymizer server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When it comes to ads online, though, isn't the right cliché "the cat's out of the bag?" For years before ad-blocking became widespread, the more tech-savvy users complained and warned that the more aggressive ads became, what with popups/unders, talking ads, etc., the more likely they would be blocked. (I seem to remember we were poo-pooed by the marketers saying that "real users don't care," though this may be a nerd-chip-on-shoulder revisionist memory.) But, here we are.

It's unfortunate that there's the collateral damage that affects non-obnoxious sites; and, while I whitelist the sites I frequent, and many here may as well, I'm sure we're the minority.

That being said, here's about as close to a real-world analogue for my thoughts as I can get: in NYC, I'm sure there are people in Times Square trying to gain signups for Greenpeace and other "ethical" purposes mixed in with the other people hustling CDs, comedy club tickets, and the like, but I just ignore everyone as I walk by, wholesale, because stopping and seeing what everyone's about will turn a brief walk into a pain in the ass.

I'm not sure what the answer is; perhaps the various adblocking technologies could make whitelisting a site even more obvious? With AdBlock Plus, you hit the drop-down and choose Disable on foobar.com, but it requires an active interaction to seek that out. GlimmerBlocker for the Mac is even more buried (as it's a proxy, it's in System Preferences.) Maybe switching to putting placeholders where the ads _would_ be with a short message and a single click to whitelist would make it a little easier for users to both see how many ads a site's pushing as well as whitelist the site with the minimum amount of effort? I donno.

<comment><USER10> A better phrase, especially in connotation, might be "the well has already been poisoned". After abusive ads have prompted you to install an ad-blocker you're not likely to look back. Nor are you likely to have sympathy for a site like Ars Technica that _admits_ they serve abusive ads (" _sometimes we have to accept those ads_ ").

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm not sure sympathy is an effective business model. If the ads are annoying enough to make lots of people block them, maybe there's something wrong with the ads, not the people.

<comment><USER12> Exactly. There is a major opportunity lurking here. Online ads suck, actually ads in general suck, but how does one fix them? Sounds like a good challenge.

<comment><USER13> Only a tiny amount of people think ads suck. It's a very small minority.

<comment><USER14> Hmm, if you mean people opposing the very concept of advertising, then I agree, most people don't. But I hear complaints about the increasingly offensive/intrusive nature of online ads in particular from pretty much everyone I know, including elderly relatives. I think a lot more people would use AdBlock if they knew it existed / knew how to install it.

<comment><USER13> I disagree. It's a small niche thing. Like people who don't own a TV.

adBlock is fundamentally bad for the web. I think a lot less people would use it if they understood that.

<comment><USER14> If you're going to make a TV comparison, I'd say it's more like people who own a TiVO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The most important thing to sustain an ad-supported business model, above and beyond anything else, is the quality of the ads. Ads that pay well but drive your userbase to block them or leave will no longer pay when the impressions drop, but ads that look nice, aren't intrusive, and are relevant to your audience will keep people coming back.

Look at sites on The Deck's network. They each have one ad, targeted to creative and tech professionals. The ads tend to look more like something the Iconfactory would put together than the average "1 rule 2 a flat belly" dreck. They give both the site _and_ the ad an ethos of premium quality.

<comment><USER16> The problem is, having an ad blocker installed means you won't see the ad in the first place to make a determination of quality.

<comment><USER17> Only if you block using a 3rd party provided list. Many people simply install ABP and block only the most annoying things.

<comment><USER18> For sufficiently small values of "many". I don't think that's a very common practice, and _those_ are the people who are treating the sites they enjoy unfairly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Well, if websites stop serving their ads via centralized servers tracking my every move across the web, I might consider not blocking them anymore (provided they're not animated and/or huge).

<comment><USER20> The point still holds.

If you don't like it, don't consume the resources of the site serving the adds. This idea that your entitled to the content, without actually 'paying' for it (you pay by giving up a bit of privacy to heighten the value of the ads) is just wrong in my world view.

It's not stealing. It's not piracy. It's just the wrong thing to do.

<comment><USER19> Pft, that gentleman's agreement was broken when they sold my privacy down the river.

<comment><USER21> They are not selling your privacy, don't be dramatic.

<comment><USER22> Given that they are in fact exchanging his privacy for money, I'm not sure your assertion holds... perhaps the poster is being over-dramatic about it, but I don't see how they're not selling privacy to some extent.

Selling people's privacy is part of an ad company's revenue stream. Ad networks pay sites to post ads. Sites make money, in part, from selling their user's privacy.

One can quibble whether or not this is a big deal, but I don't think one can say it simply doesn't happen.

<comment><USER21> It doesn't really happen though; to _sell privacy_ you have to remove a portion of it to sell.

Now we can argue the semantics of whether the act of visiting a website is considered private knowledge. I'd argue not - it's like walking into a shop, the shop has the right to say "hey you know who was here earlier?". But at the end of the day "they are selling my privacy" is over dramatizing what is happening. By visiting any website you run the risk - how do you know they are not selling the IP logs directly etc.

Visiting websites is just, within reason, public knowledge.

I also wonder how many advertisers actually use the data to target ads - <USER2> how much of it is used simply for numbers tracking (I dont know either way but it would be interested to see). I mention this because, when I run w/o ad blockers I don't really see anything actively targeted at me.

This incessant use of the word "privacy" in contexts where it doesn't really apply frustrates me: because it dumbs down situations where privacy is actually affected.

<comment><USER23> The point is not a single visit to a single site. When you have a large ad network advertising all across the web, they are serving you ads on all kinds of sites. A big enough ad provider (think doubleclick or google) gets to see every site you visit and what order you visit them in. They know what times and what days you browse. If that's not an invasion of privacy, then it's at least akin to stalking.

Regardless of what you call it I'm not comfortable with it, and I'm not going to disable my ad blocker any time soon. The only reason I even went to ars technica was to read this article; I'll be happy to not return.

<comment><USER24> In fact there is an entire sub-industry of behavioral targeting information brokers out there, reselling your history to ad networks who don't have enough data about you in their own logs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Know what's worse than online ads? Guilt trips. No Firefox plugin to filter those.

<comment><USER18> This is considered a valuable comment? A site is telling its readers that their actions are hurting its ability to produce content they enjoy. Believing that they should find a different source of income is a perfectly valid position, but if you just _don't care_ that content you enjoy might stop being produced, as your comment suggests, then you're unreasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The argument here is that even if the user never would have responded to any of the ads anyway, the website loses money when users don't view the ads. I call bullshit.

An advertiser is going to pay as much for ads as they can profit from them. At the end of the day, the advertiser wants to spend less on ads than they make in profit from running those ads - they don't care about # impressions, # clicks, or whatever. If an advertiser can make $1.01 profit for every 1,000 random ad impressions, they'll pay $1 or less for those 1,000 impressions. If I can identify half my audience that will never respond to the ad, I'm essentially making $1 for 500 impressions instead of 1,000. I'll happily pay $2 for 1,000 of those more effective impressions.

I don't care if you get paid CPM, CPC, or CPA. You aren't making money of the users who don't _respond_ to the ads.

<comment><USER27> As someone who works on a site largely funded through banner advertising, I can confirm that this is true; CPM is tied directly to CTR. A higher CTR means not only a higher CPM but also higher quality ads, so it is in everyone's best interest to not show ads to users who won't click on them.

The question then, for a for-profit site, how do you monetize the freeloaders? I thing the answer is: 1\. Try to get them to upgrade to a paid subscription. 2\. Create highly targeted ads based on the content, and integrate them with that content (ie not from ad servers). Unfortunately, this is only a cost- effective option if you get a high volume of traffic). 3\. Restrict freeloaders from using your most expensive resources. I don't imagine a site like Ars is very bandwidth intensive, but if an adblocking user is costing them a lot in bandwidth for some reason, they could provide the content without the images, for example.

Sites also should consider how important it is to monetize _every_ user directly. How much of your cost is fixed vs goes up per user? If most of your costs are fixed (paying writers for editorial content, for example) and the cost of providing content to users is low, it may be better to try to maximize readers aven if some of those are freeloaders; users talk and share information and links, so user A with adblock installed, whose visits cost you almost nothing, might result in users B, C and D who don't have adblock installed visiting your site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Until recently, I refused to use adblock on principle, because I wanted to support ad-supported websites, even if I didn't like the ads.

Then PDF and flash player exploits started showing up in ads on high-traffic websites. After a couple close calls (only averted thanks to my particular system configuration), I installed AdBlock and FlashBlock. I blacklist both ads and flash content by default.

Websites I can trust to serve me ads that aren't going to try and root my machine get whitelisted so that all their content shows up. All ads based on Project Wonderful fall into this category, since they only serve text and images. Google Ads would have also fallen into this category, but they're not safe anymore since I've seen them serving up Flash.

I'm perfectly happy with sites not liking my approach. They can show me a message asking me to turn off my ad-blocker (and I might, if I'm willing to give them a chance and I'm interested in their content), or refuse to serve me content entirely. That's fine.

If content providers are upset with the current state of things, maybe they should think about how we got here: ad networks are, in general, a wild west in which you serve up unknown advertisements to your visitors without any knowledge of its content. Content providers that care about their customers tend to block any advertisements they get complaints about - which is great - but by using ad networks that run on a 'blacklist only' system, they're knowingly putting their visitors at risk in order to generate ad revenue. By the time a flash exploit makes it onto your advertisement blacklist, your customers have already been hurt.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think we'll see more of this if adblock usage increases...

      if (user.usingAdBlock()) {
         showMessageTellingThemWhyItsBad();
         ShowDonationOptions();
         offerDegradedExperience();
      }

<comment><USER29> Absolutely. I've heard talk of some sites degrading entirely for users who are using adBlock.

I would expect that to be met with a pretty harsh backlash, though. Even though it's a small minority of people who use adBlock, they are a vocal and persuasive minority.

<comment><USER30> "I would expect that to be met with a pretty harsh backlash, though. Even though it's a small minority of people who use adBlock, they are a vocal and persuasive minority."

So this group decides to block ads and when the content producers decide to degrade their content (which is their right), they get pissed?

It sounds like a bunch of entitled kids. It reminds me of an article I read recently about the new generation of kids...

<comment><USER14> It seems perfectly fair to me on all sides. It's the user's right to modify their browser to load/display only portions of content on their computer if they want; it's website providers' right to display users different content if they do so; and it's the users' right to avoid visiting and linking to the website if they do that.

All sides come out having some reasonable points and some entitled-kids feeling IMO. In particular, the "wahh, my ads were blocked" websites sound a lot like the RIAA at times (though Ars avoids most of the more annoying rhetoric), attempting to blame someone else for the fact that their business model no longer works, instead of finding a new business model.

<comment><USER30> "All sides come out having some reasonable points and some entitled-kids feeling IMO. In particular, the "wahh, my ads were blocked" websites sound a lot like the RIAA at times"

eventually, people will be saying "wahh..why do I have to pay for my favorite site..it used to be free".

My problem isn't that ads are blocked. If you want to block a site's ads, this is fine. However, these adblockers are blocking ads on pretty much every site that uses them. Many ads are getting blocked on sites that the user has never even seen. How do you know that they are intrusive if you have never even seen the ads?

"(though Ars avoids most of the more annoying rhetoric), attempting to blame someone else for the fact that their business model no longer works, instead of finding a new business model."

If the majority if users coming to their site are using an adblocker, and they make their money on ads, it's the adblocker that is preventing them from making money, not the model. You may say that those people wouldn't have clicked on those ads, but many people I know installed an adblocker in their friends/family members computers. Those people don't even know that there are ads on many of the sites where they are blocked. If this trend continues,advertising will no longer be profitable, not because it doesn't work, but because it's being blocked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Does that mean that there are the occasional intrusive ads, expanding this way and that? Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads."

Then I'm going to run an ad blocker. I visit how many sites a day? What percent at any given time are in their "sometimes" phase?

You run annoying ads, I get annoyed, I do what I can to stop being annoyed. Don't run annoying ads, I don't get annoyed, I don't take action to avoid the thing that isn't annoying me. Done.

The fact that you picked a business model that relies on me being willing to be annoyed isn't my problem. Stop serving me content if it bothers you so much - I'll survive, I promise.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have many ad servers blocked at DNS mostly because of cross-domain tracking. Browsers (by default) allow third-party cookies, and while I don't mind if a site runs ads, I do think cross-site tracking and profiling has to be more controllable by users.

The firefox extension "requestpolicy" <http://www.requestpolicy.com/> is a fascinating view of the web. It's too strict to use every day, but is much more an "opt-in" view that everyone should try for a day.

<comment><USER33> > Browsers (by default) allow third-party cookies

Internet Explorer and Safari do not. If you have Flash installed, supercookies can still be used anyways.

<comment><USER34> Using a Flash Blocker and resetting the cookie values inside of Flash alter that behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't actively use AdBlock anymore. I keep it installed just in case I need it but it's usually disabled. Banner/text ads don't bother me. I don't even notice them. Click2Flash is my preferred weapon of choice. I have no guilt blocking Flash ads. They're annoying, invasive, and make my browser slow. Just not willing to make that sacrifice.

</comment><comment><USER36> "We made the mistake of assuming that everyone who is blocking ads at Ars is doing so with malice."

How'd they do that? Ads are annoying, and many people I know never click on internet ads. For us (perhaps a minority, I don't know) ad-blocking leads to a better internet. We're probably the ones referred to in the article who are happy to help a website out if they ask for it in another way.

On a different note: Maybe car windshields could someday block billboards...

<comment><USER37> _Ads are annoying, and many people I know never click on internet ads._

Addressed at the start of the second paragraph: "There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis."

<comment><USER38> But doesn't that reflect a broken model then? If you really and truly never click on ads, what value does the advertiser get from the view (vs a click)?

<comment><USER39> Brand recall (just like an ad on TV)

<comment><USER40> I consider attempts to subvert my unconscious mind to be the human equivalent of privilege escalation exploits - they are malicious hacks, I have no tolerance and no sympathy for them.

<comment><USER41> Then don't use that service, or pay a subscription that frees you from watching ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> What we need is some sort of voluntary rating system for ads. Tag the massively annoying (sounds, movement etc) or horribly disgusting (rotting teeth etc) ones as such and I'll happily use adblock software that only blocks those. It could kind of work, there'd need to be a way to block adnets/sites that lie about the type of ads of course and... well maybe it wouldn't work but it would be a good start.

But no, I'm not going to disable adblock while there are still so many ads that clearly cross the line of what is aceptable. Sure I feel bad about it but that's just the way it is given that the other options are a) not using the internet or b) constantly seeing pictures of other peoples yellowing teeth.

</comment><comment><USER43> Advertising is a risk, and always has been. I'm tired of advertisers (and content providers that depend on advertising) trying to shift responsibility to the consumer. If you spend money on a campaign and it delivers results beyond your initial expenditure, then the campaign was successful. There's no guarantee against failure, and it's absolutely certain that the majority of consumers simply won't care about your ads. It's part of the game. Accept it, or look for alternatives.

</comment><comment><USER44> There seem to be two schools of business; one that tries to beat customers over the head with things, and one that tries to respect the customer as much as possible.

Historically, most web ads seem to have the first view. "Why, of course! All I have to do is treat the visitor like crap: store 75 cookies, throw up new windows, flash some animations, play loud noises, and trick them into clicking on things. Then they'll surely want to shell out cash for my products!"

The problem is, after seeing a few of these, I'm not going to spend time weeding out the good from the bad: it's like junk mail, after awhile it's just thrown away, and it doesn't even matter anymore if there might be a hidden gem.

I can only assume that a scam is being pulled: that there are ad managers who create annoying systems to meet artificial quotas, and then show their employers how many "millions of clicks or page views" they received. That way, they can demand huge sums of money for all the "exposure"; in reality, I'd be surprised if the ads do much good. If a site is "dying", it's not because visitors block ads, it's because companies are falling for the scam and paying advertisers who are essentially being offensive and misleading about their numbers.

Here are examples of effective ads:

\- Hulu, because they made reasonable compromises to respect visitors. For example, they have _far fewer_ commercials than an equivalent TV show, and an ad is often displayed "up front" to minimize interruptions later.

\- Google, because they make plain text ads that stay out of the way. Not irritating? Good, now I'll actually read it.

</comment><comment><USER45> Does this mean it's immoral to use Lynx? No Google sponsored links, no images, no flash. Lynx will destroy the Internet!

<comment><USER46> Lynx and blind people depending on screen readers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> So Ars Technica has the same fundamental problem as every publisher on earth-- how do you allow your content to reach the most eyes across the most channels and platforms while still maintaing full control (only showing your content with your ads intact).

I'm not sure you can have it both ways. You either have to trade in the open/free variable or accept it and some of the loss of revenue it entails as a tradeoff to the gained visibility.

</comment><comment><USER47> Just like how Tivo has destroyed the television industry, right? I find it amazing that anyone believes they have a moral obligation to view advertisements.

</comment><comment><USER48> Relax. Soon everybody will browse from iPads, which do not have ad-block for Safari (that I am aware of).

The perfect platform for paying for stuff: music, software, books and web reading...

Not sure if I am sarcastic or realistic here, you know?!

</comment><comment><USER49> I don't like ads, and I don't like subscribing. What you need to offer is micropayments. Figure out a way I can pay one cent (maybe 5 or 10, no more) when I like an article and I'll pay you sometimes, and that will be more money than you get showing me ads.

It needs to be something I only set up once, not once per website. It should probably be integrated into my browser so I don't have to find the button on the webpage (and then type in my password or something -- it better be one click).

Of course feel free to continue with ads for the people who don't block them.

You may object that people don't care and won't pay. But the article is saying "please don't block ads as a way to voluntarily pay". If you think sympathy or voluntary payment will work, set this up as a superior option for people to pay with.

Doing sufficiently good micropayments is a lot of work, but there are a hell of a lot of other websites with the same problem Ars has, so either license it to them or get them to help create it.

<comment><USER50> Micropayments have been tried and failed several times already but I think maybe it's time for someone to take another run at the problem. Jakob Nielsen had some relevant ideas. <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980125.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I practically have to use AdBlock on my N900 just to use some sites. Some flash advertisements are so processor intensive that my phone slows to a crawl.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm willing to whitelist them on my ad blocker, I'm not willing to whitelist their ad companies on my javascript filter. I don't trust their ad companies to run arbitrary javascript on my machine.

There's got to be a better way...

</comment><comment><USER52> Alternate title: "Business Model Based on Ad Views Is Devastating to the Sites You Like."

<comment><USER53> Your insightful rejoinder is addressed in the article.

<comment><USER52> Not really. They do seem convinced that the model is workable and dismiss criticism out of hand.

Then, funnily, they offer this analogy: "Imagine running a restaurant where 40% of the people who came and ate didn't pay. In a way, that's what ad blocking is doing to us."

Imagine running a restaurant where the food is free, and your business model is getting a cut of the mariachi band's tips.

<comment><USER41> Their business isn't free to operate and that's their point ... a business is run by people that have families and need a regular income.

> _Imagine running a restaurant where the food is free, and your business > model is getting a cut of the mariachi band's tips._

I would like such a restaurant and would gladly give the mariachi a tip. What I definitely wouldn't do is go there with a smug on my face as if it's my right to eat there for free.

I don't use ad-blocking at all ... websites that get too offensive I just stop visiting. Tried an ad-blocker for a month ... but with an ad-blocker active it's harder to punish the bad guys, while rewarding the respectful businesses. And flashy advertising is also a good indicator for (the lack of) quality.

If it stops working for publishers, they'll move more and more to a subscription-based model, and we will see a bigger push for DRMed content, not to mention that the Internet will probably stop being used as a distribution channel for professional journalism.

<comment><USER52> _> Their business isn't free to operate and that's their point ... a business is run by people that have families and need a regular income._

I understand. I do not begrudge trying to make a living. I am merely disagreeing that the business model they chose for that purpose is a good one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> The notion that I should feel _obligated_ to _let someone try to persuade me of something_ is absurd.

Advertisers, the people who bought the ad, are paying for impressions in the hope of converting them into revenue. An impression spent on me has absolutely _zero_ chance of ever generating any revenue or any other kind of value. This is a safe assumption that has held true in my decade or so of browsing the web. The impressions that I block are spent on someone else, where they have at least the potential to lead to conversions. Thus, I am helping the advertiser make more money.

The ones who lose out in this situation are the middle men: the agencies, networks and content providers. Though their impressions become more valuable, they have less of them to sell and this apparently works out to a loss. However, appealing to my sympathy about this is nonsensical. _They are simply asking me to help them sell worthless impressions to some third party_. I would never feel inclined to do that, no matter how indebted I felt to the content provider.

Ad supported sites who complain about blocking fail to see the big picture. Their entitled thinking goes no further than "when you do this, I get money, so you should/must do this".

If internet advertising is not sustainable in the face of ad blocking, then it is not sustainable at all.

Incidentally, asking me to actively avoid sites who's ads I don't plan to view is also absurd. The web simply does not, never has, and never could work that way. Nobody can be expected to add that layer of deliberation to the act of clicking on a link. By publishing an unsecured website, you are implicitly authorizing anybody to link to it and to view it in any modified form.

</comment><comment><USER55> Basically, targeted listings PROVIDES value to viewers. Look at Craigs List. A site should have no problem hosting the ads on their own server and being associated with its advertisers if they respect their readers and what they see.

Content from 3rd party ad servers almost universally does not. They are designed to be as attention-grabbing as possible, stealing the resource of attention from your readers, and SHOULD be blocked.

My idea is a web app that big sites can drop on their servers where advertisers are the users. Advertisers get dynamic quotes from the system based on length coverage etc and demand by other advertisers during the same time, and can upload their ads directly to the sites server. Each site hosts the ads from THEIR web server in the same manner as they do their content images (without javascript) so they should be unblockable.

Basically, it's about giving medium size sites an easy option as possible to host ads directly from their own server. I have a few ideas for peer-to-peer ad sharing between websites as well, if anyone wants to bounce ideas or write some code, dhllndr at gmail, or aim: redfoxbeatbox

</comment><comment><USER56> I'd use a list in Adblock that whitelisted sites that only ever showed adverts that never moved, never poped up, never used flash, never showed me body parts and never tried to sell me something that was obviously a scam.

Currently that list would effectively be empty I would expect, since the only sites that qualify would have no ads currently

</comment><comment><USER57> Sounds like there's a market for modified ad blockers that download but don't display the ad---anyone game to try?

<comment><USER58> It doesn't really do much for the sites in the long term, as the advertisers won't trust the analytics if these tools are regularly used or if they suspect they might be.

I think AdBlock for Chrome does what you suggest and then blocks using CSS.

<comment><USER17> Even if they stop trusting the stats, there's nothing they can do about it really. There's no way to tell if I see something or not. I would be glad to install such plugin... hopefully it will come to FF soon.

<comment><USER58> They can pay for referrals (or purchases if they don't trust the referrals, purchases are difficult to fake). People generally don't block paid Amazon links, unless they feel they're being tricked into following them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Ghostery, NoScript, Adblock Plus, Better Privacy, CustomizeGoogle and ixquick. \+ privoxy/GlimmerBlocker & <http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm>

Those who spy do not call it spying, it is those upon whom the spies spy who rightly call it spying.

Spies call spying a slew of disarming terms: Forensics, investigation, probes, intelligence, surveillance, _research, observation, analysis, data gathering, data analysis, data mining, log filing_ , system testing, polling, questioning, interrogation, looking into, checking, double-checking, reviewing, verification, authentication, testing, evaluation, _protection of the customer_ , the citizen, the nation, and more misleading terms being invented and deployed all the time.

Apologists for spying have an ancient and wide range of justifications for the practice and never admit it is not needed or wanted by the targets of spying. Instead, spies have forever claimed their offense is on behalf of the innocents who do not understand how dangerous the world is.

Now, like any other corporation, they have a product which they sell to a market. The market is advertisers -- that is, other businesses. What keeps the media functioning is not the audience. They make money from their advertisers. And remember, we're talking about the elite media. So they're trying to sell a good product, a product which raises advertising rates. And ask your friends in the advertising industry. That means that they want to adjust their audience to the more elite and affluent audience. That raises advertising rates. So what you have is institutions, corporations, big corporations, that are selling relatively privileged audiences to other businesses.

Well, what point of view would you expect to come out of this? I mean without any further assumptions, what you'd predict is that what comes out is a picture of the world, a perception of the world, that satisfies the needs and the interests and the perceptions of the sellers, the buyers and the product.

</comment><comment><USER60> The alternative will be payola. Paid content. If advertising fails as a revenue method, why not sell mentions in the actual content? Why not write articles for pay? It'll happen. I bet it's already happening and in the best cases we can't even suspect a thing..

</comment><comment><USER61> I guess a good compromise would be to not block the ads but hide them after loading (I think thats how the AdBlock extension for chrome works)?

I agree that educating users is a good plan here. Users should have adblockers active because ads sour our online experience and a large majority of sites show ads that distract from the content (Not to mention that we have lots of sites completely dedicated to spam). On the other hand, if a site has been giving you great content for years, it makes sense to support them. But of course, lots of big tech sites have sponsorship deals so its not like they're posting great content out of their love for us...

</comment><comment><USER62> Even if the site isn't using a CPM model, getting paid by views, ad impressions still count towards getting better ad deals. For example when dealing with private ad-sales. some people also use ad impressions to count pageviews, for example with Adsense, if you have 3 ad-units on one page, they count as one pageview.

Although, having a huge technical audience who doesn't click any ads will greatly decrease the CTR which will affect the eCPM the publisher is getting paid.

</comment><comment><USER63> Because of this discussion I decided to unsubscribe (Google Chrome Adblocker [https://chrome.google.com/extensions/search?itemlang=&q=...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/search?itemlang=&q=adblock)) from both EasyList and Chrome AdBlock custom filters and just custom-block ads that are offensive.

</comment><comment><USER64> Their 'test' solution sounds like the way to go. If they figured out a decent way to simply bust the whole page for the adblockers they should just go for it.

If I went to a site and it was totally broken due to my blocking the ads I would either a) whitelist it or b) stop going there. Sounds like exactly what they're trying to get users to do.

</comment><comment><USER65> If you can detect ad blockers, why are you whining? Direct them to an alternative flow/business model that works.

</comment><comment><USER66> The music and movie industry are having a hard time, too! Soon it will be the newspapers and book publishers. People realise that they don't need publishing companies and soon people will realise that they don't need advertising. But I think that people will always need musicians, actors, and writers.

</comment><comment><USER58> Compare relevant ads which get submitted to tech news site and discussed...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1171648>

</comment><comment><USER67> AdBlock+ white-listing: fine. Flashblock white-listing: no. image.animation_mode: none.

Fixed.

(Edit: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/11073> for the cookie- haters among us.)

</comment><comment><USER68> the people who block ads are never going to click on them anyway, so it's a moot point. it isn't ad blocking that is devastating sites, it's ineffective advertising.

</comment><comment><USER69> Amen. There's no such thing as a free lunch.

<comment><USER70> Then I guess the number of ads you see on the way to have a lunch should pay for your lunch, dinner and supper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> any ad blocker for mobile safari?

</comment><comment><USER72> I block ads because I'm tethering an iPhone over my eee. My bandwidth cap is 5GB and Im not going to count my quota over ads that I will not click on.

Instead if I want to buy something, I will do a search on products that I want to buy. Then, I will take recommendations.

<comment><USER73> Do you disable adblock when you're not tethering? If AT&T had no bandwidth cap, would you disable adblock?

I don't think bandwidth limitations are your true reason for blocking ads. Ads are typically a tiny fraction of bandwidth usage. You would have to be very close to your 5GB cap each month for blocking them to make a difference.

<comment><USER14> From some spot-checking, ads are around 1/2 the bandwidth typically at major websites, not "a tiny fraction". Flash ads are the main culprit, because a single one can be pretty large, so the problem could be partly solved by just blocking Flash ads instead of all ads.

<comment><USER73> I guess I should have explained my point better. Things like streaming video consume a lot more bandwidth than loading web pages. For example, watching Hulu for an hour transfers 200MB if you're using the low-quality 480kbps stream. Google News is about 500KB, so you'd have to load it every 9 seconds for an hour to consume the same amount of bandwidth. A typical page load on Ars Technica is around 100KB, so you'd have to rack up 2000 page views to transfer 200MB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Sure, there are tons of annoying ads that get in your face and make you want to commit suicide. But there's an easy solution: FlashBlock. Regular ads come through, and ridiculous ads turn into a little box with an activate button.

</comment><comment><USER75> Personally I use ad-blockers because flash is broken and inevitably will break all modern-browsers at one point or another, especially newspaper sites that seem to think there's no such thing as too much flash.

</comment><comment><USER76> if only flash was bearable on linux or macs.

</comment><comment><USER77> It's amazing how upset people get over ads. I wonder how these same anti-ad fanatics deal with other forms of advertising in their day to day life.

If I were Ars or any other site that relied on ad revenue, I probably wouldn't remove any features, but I would put up an atrocious, gigantic, red, flashing banner on the site that was only shown to Adblock users saying, "Please don't use AdBlock! It's hurting us."

<comment><USER78> Tivo thirty-second skip.</comment></comment>


Trump Doubles Down on Potential Trade War with China - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/05/business/trump-trade-war-china.html <comment> huy-nguyen It'll be interesting to see what China will do after it runs out of US imports to tax (which it will before the US does due to the trade surplus). I hope it leaves the $1 trillion in US treasuries alone.

<comment><USER2> Tax can be additive. Metal tariffs against China did not preclude steel and aluminum from getting included again in the newer $50B list.</comment></comment>


Who's hiring dev shops? - <AUTHOR>

I've a decent ux/ui + tech team, do you know where to best look for customers? I don't want to call random numbers or send SPAM e-mails, what should I do to make it properly? <comment><USER2> Please see the FAQ regarding job posts: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html).</comment>


Ask HN: What makes a good software engineer? - <AUTHOR> In your opinion, what makes a good software engineer?<p>What qualities, what skills, etc. makes a software engineer better, and how do you recommend building those skills? <comment><USER2> 1\. Grit - being able to slog through a tough problem for weeks or months with few signs of success or progress. Sometimes you are going to need to bang your head against the desk for a long time before you get answers.

2\. Humble - as a software engineer you are going to fail at something most days. Most of the the time you will experience failure multiple times per day, perhaps even hundreds of times. A proud or arrogant engineer will waste time and calories being frustrated with failure. A humble engineer will start looking for help anywhere they can find it, and doesn't let constant failure impede their workflow.

3\. Team player - the industry loves to idolize 'rockstars'. However software engineering is rarely a one man job, everyone has off days, and a team can move only as fast as its slowest member. Helping other engineers when they get stuck, even in little ways, is essential to the progress of yourself and the team.

4\. Chops - software engineering is a multidisciplinary craft that requires knowledge, judgement, and implementation. Knowing what to implement, how to implement it, and whether or not you should / if there's a better way takes years of practice and training. Having a habit of building your skills, improving a bit every day is part of what makes a decent engineer into a great engineer.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Empathy, as April Wensel talks about a lot (e.g. [https://medium.com/compassionate-coding/confessions-of-a- rec...](https://medium.com/compassionate-coding/confessions-of-a-recovering- jerk-programmer-b9d531a05ea9)). You need this for everything from gathering requirements to debugging.

2\. Ability to gather requirements: _why_ are you building what you're building? (More here: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/02/19/ai-replace- programme...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/02/19/ai-replace- programmers/))

3\. Focus on solving problems, and when you're more advanced identifying problems. This means coding becomes a means to an end, rather than your goal. (more here: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/07/10/stop-writing- softwar...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/07/10/stop-writing-software/) and )

4\. A focus on productivity, which means a focus on doing _less_ work, and specifically unnecessary work. This goes against the grain for many programmers, who want to code. Goal is to solve problems with as little work as possible, though. (More here: [https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills- pro...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills-productive/))

</comment><comment><USER4> "It's easier to not do something stupid than it is to do something smart." A good software engineer knows most of the usual ways to write broken code, and doesn't do them.

</comment><comment><USER5> Previous discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14708350](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14708350)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2767433](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2767433)

</comment><comment><USER6> don't be an asshole that's the best skill a lot of people in engineering can be assholes.

</comment><comment><USER7> Get things done. That is all.

</comment><comment><USER6> don't be an asshole rule</comment>


How is the demand for DJango developers compare to Node and Spring? - <AUTHOR> I am junior interested in DJango but I am afraid that the job demand is low. What is your opinion? Should I go for Spring or Node?<p>My location: Boston, USA <comment><USER2> it's "Django".

Python, Java, C++. Frameworks come and go quicker than languages.</comment>


Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/dan-sanchez/miyazaki-s-beautiful-antiwar-dreams-44951be1be11 <comment><USER3> It makes me deeply happy to see this here. Miyazaki's mind is truly unique (and by extension most Ghibli films too), nothing else quite compares (and as the author points out, certainly not Disney & co. despite being Ghibli's distributors in the West). I've introduced many people to Ghibli, a lot of whom would have never even considered watching an animated film (even less so a foreign one), and most came away truly touched.

Miyazaki is anti-war, but he's also extremely pro-ecology as is obvious in most of his films (Nausicaa is an obvious one, but perhaps more obvious would be Pom Poko or Totoro). Broadly speaking, he advocates balance in all its forms. A lot of his main protagonists are strong female characters, and not the "overly girly unicorn princess with magical powers" kind. Violence, like greed, is a disease as opposed to an end (in fact those two concepts are often expressed together in his films, e.g. Spirited Away).

But maybe the best accomplishment in most, if not all, of Miyazaki's work, is his ability to capture the interest and the imagination of the viewers without resorting to cheesy gimmicks, gratuitous violence or sexual innuendos, which seem to be the go-to for a lot of cinema (animation and otherwise, Western and Eastern).

<comment><AUTHOR> In his own words, "You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two."

<comment><USER4> > You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is > evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, > but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.

As a statement, it sounds poetic at first, and the first two sentences are absolutely perfect; however, there's something very wrong about the notion of "preserving the balance", and I've seen that notion show up elsewhere as well. Evil should not persist out of any sense of balance, and nothing goes horribly wrong with the world if evil ceases altogether.

<comment><USER5> > Evil should not persist out of any sense of balance

I don't think the quote supports the idea of evil persisting out of balance, but rather that to advance the greater good one must balance the need to oppose the notionally evil things (which nonetheless contain good) with the need to oppose the evil contained in things which are notionally good.

Its the only interpretation I can see which makes sense in the context of the sentences that the one on balance follows. What is preserved is not the balance _in the state of the world_ between the sides (or between good and evil), but the balance you recognize between the good and evil in each side, a balance that is lost when you commit to one as "good" and ignore the evil it contains, and the good contained in the other.

<comment><USER4> > I don't think the quote supports the idea of evil persisting out of balance, > but rather that to advance the greater good one must balance the need to > oppose the notionally evil things (which nonetheless contain good) with the > need to oppose the evil contained in things which are notionally good.

That much is absolutely true; conflicts and war are evils in themselves, even when some would consider them "necessary".

<comment><USER6> If you have the luxury of considering war unnecessary then someone else is likely carrying your water.

<comment><USER4> I didn't say it was; sometimes it might be the lesser evil. Still evil, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Might be in the minority, but I strongly disagree with the assessment that Miyazaki-san's final film "The Wind Rises" was not amongst his greatest. I re- view it every few months for inspiration and find it holds up quite powerfully with each repetition. Japanese anime does Italian neo-realism in epic scale. The engineer as the manifestor of dreams. War as a terrible catalyst of progress. Surreally creepy voice acting by Werner Herzog as the mysterious Castorp in an homage to Thomas Mann. What's not to love?

For more on the controversy here's a link to the Chicago Reader review that sums up why some perceived it as being sympathetic to fascism:

[http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-wind-rises-hayao- mi...](http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-wind-rises-hayao-miyazaki- jiro-horikoshi/Content?oid=12535079)

<comment><USER8> Fully agree. Not to mention the fantastic artwork.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Two points:

One is that I'm tired of both the congratulatory and the flagellative uses of "Western." Feminism is no more a western tradition than it is an Arab, Chinese or Congolese one. It's a modern cultural movement. Similarly, simple good vs evil plot settings are not western. They exist everywhere. They're often from propaganda, naturally occurring hero worship, morality tales and depictions of a culture's own history. GRRM (mentioned here) is as western as Tolkien and is definitely a modern example western literature.

The complicated moral depictions in Game of Thrones are not new, but they are definitely strong in the current zetgeist. It comes and goes and has often reached the point of cliche. Hercules (and his analogues like Samson and Cuchulainn) are often depicted with character flaws, often involving women and madness in some way. We've been through a period when it was out of fashion. I think hollywood film tradition is very largely to blame, their perfect hero classics. The awesome comedic writer like Adams, Pratchet, Joseph Heller or even Franz Kafka earlier on mock this constantly. Humour is great for this kind of thing, satirising the current literary cliches.

That brings me to my second point. Today's storytelling is taking this stuff to a whole new level. The complex morality tales and decompacting of group decision making dynamics that we see in everything today is really awesome, in my opinion. I think it's great art, or at least to my taste. Playing with moral perspective and depicting the complexity of people acting in groups is an awesome thing to explore. There's a ton of depth there and a ton of artistic flair required to bite into it. In my opinion, it hits the best notes when you have been wrenched so much that your sheltered sense of morality breaks down. It still exists, but its grim rather than fiery. Evil gets demystified, banal and sad. When a bad guy gets a just end you take on the role of a reluctant but dutiful executioner rather than a hot blooded cheerleader at the gallows.

Walter White is awesome because he's complex like a real person. His angst isn't just a flat "he's angsty because X." That's very hard to do. I think the only way to get that stuff across is the moral grey areas and the "shit happens" unfolding of a person. Long format TV series give writers time to do it.

This stuff is really fantastic in modern art. TV shows, books...

</comment><comment><USER10> This article rightfully praises the Ghibli movies for their non-Manichean stories, especially when compared to Disney or Hollywood blockbusters. Yet I'm surprised it missed an important example: in the first film entirely directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Nausicäa is far from an angel. In my eyes, she is Miyazaki's most ambiguous character. _Warning, spoiler ahead_.

When her valley is invaded, the peaceful Nausicäa runs to the room of her ill and bedridden father. He's dead, surrounded by soldiers. She screams, seizes her father's sword, and enters a killing rage. Truly, even a young and sweet girl can feel hate and killing intent, and she may even act accordingly. Nobody's born an angel nor a demon, but we can all become insensitive or cruel. Just read Primo Levi or Herman Langbein to see how most people transform in a few weeks. Anyway, that sequence made me cry.

I'd also like to mention the opening of this movie, inspired from the medieval "tapisserie de Bayeux" that relates England's invasion in the XIth century. The ballet of robots along a burning city is incredibly beautiful and moving. How stunning that Miyazaki starts his first film with the artistic beauty of a war scene!

<comment><USER11> That entire movie is probably the most beautiful one I've ever seen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really an awesome article, thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER13> The post seems a little confusing, Howl's Moving Castle was in fact written by Diana Wynne Jones 18 years before the Studio Ghibli adaptation.

<comment><USER14> There are major differences between the book and the movie.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> August 6th and 9th 2015 marked the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in WWII; Thought this was an appropriate time to post this

<comment><USER15> How does portraying a criminal war aggressor as a victim support an anti-war message?

<comment><USER16> If the author had portrayed the Imperial Japanese government as an innocent victim, I would be the first to despise the article. But he didn't. He mentioned the campaign of mass murder in China, the insane stupidity of the decision to attack Pearl Harbor and then to fight the war to the bitter end. In no way does he suggest any of these things are excusable. The people he portrays as innocent victims are the civilians of every nationality who are burned to death in bombing raids or starved by blockades - 'economic sanctions' if you want to use the current euphemism.

And he's right. The economic sanctions against Iraq that condemned hundreds of thousands of children to starve to death were an atrocity just about exactly as bad as the rape of Nanking. Just about exactly as inexcusable. We need to get to the point where we stop looking for excuses for such actions.

<comment><USER15> > Nobody is more familiar with what a curse airplanes can be when deployed for > evil than the Japanese. Airplanes dropped the canisters that burned their > cities, the mines that starved their children, and the nukes that instantly > made vast irradiated graveyards out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — for the > first time in history visiting solar-temperature hell upon human > habitations, and hinting at mankind's full capacity for suicidal madness. > But their intimate familiarity with the "cursed dream" of airplanes also > stems from the Japanese state's own misuse of the great invention for its > imperial dreams.

So the bombing of Japan was "evil", Japan's own bombings were just a "misuse" in pursuit of a "dream". How very neutral.

> The economic sanctions against Iraq that condemned hundreds of thousands of > children to starve to death were an atrocity just about exactly as bad as > the rape of Nanking. Just about exactly as inexcusable. We need to get to > the point where we stop looking for excuses for such actions.

Economic sanctions are an alternative to war. Are you suggesting we should have bombed Iraq instead at the time? Or just let Saddam do what he pleased? Ironically, when the USA does nothing (Rwanda, Pol Pot, North Korea, Srebrenica) they are accused of complicity in inaction, yet when they do something, they are war criminals. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

<comment><USER16> > Economic sanctions are an alternative to war.

And frankly one of the reasons I think they should be taken off the table entirely is because they are far too easy an alternative. At least in war, some of the victims have their faces broadcast on television. The victims of economic sanctions are never heard of except as dry statistics.

> Are you suggesting we should have bombed Iraq instead at the time? Or just > let Saddam do what he pleased?

Saddam had already been stopped from doing what he pleased. He had been comprehensively kicked out of Kuwait. It should have stopped there.

> Ironically, when the USA does nothing (Rwanda, Pol Pot, North Korea, > Srebrenica) they are accused of complicity in inaction, yet when they do > something, they are war criminals. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

This is only a contradiction if the two kinds of accusations come from the same people.

<comment><USER17> I would much rather be subjected to economic sanctions than bombed, but I guess I don't speak for everyone. Maybe some people prefer to be bombed.

<comment><USER16> That's probably because you live in a relatively wealthy country that would not be harmed so much by economic sanctions. One way to look at it is that that the economic sanctions against Iraq killed two or three orders of magnitude more civilians than the bombing campaigns of 1991 and 2003 put together. Another way to look at it is that if you were starving to death because of economic sanctions, you would probably change your preference very quickly.

In any case, I wasn't proposing to spend twelve years bombing Iraq instead of the economic sanctions. I was proposing that after Saddam had been kicked out of Kuwait, that should have been the end of the matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm disappointed that what could have been a review of an excellent film contained so much anti-"US Warmongering." War is terrible. Sanctions have negative effects. How would this author propose convincing leaders who commit human rights violations to stop those violations? Asking nicely?

"Thus, the starvation of little Setsuko/Keiko was not 'collateral damage,' but a premeditated murder. [...] Of course elite war-bringers [...] do not themselves pay the 'prices' they decide are acceptable."

This author needs to remember that Japan was the war-bringer in WW2. Brought it right to Pearl Harbor.

<comment><USER19> If the label, "US Warmongering", upsets you so much, please consider joining anti-war efforts. There's a reason why we have that label. Since WW2, our military has been active throughout the world to protect our interests from Latin America to the Middle East and of course, even Europe with the Cold War. Our current president promised an end to the war in the Middle East but it has yet to materialize. The Republican Party wants to launch a full-on campaign against ISIS. That label will remain with us unless we, as citizens, get involved with our government.

With regards to your point into human rights violations, I'd strongly suggest you look deeper into the conflict itself as "human right violations" is smoke and mirrors. If "human right violations" were a reason to start a conflict, Russia and/or China should have invaded us by now for all the human rights violations our police force are committing against our citizens, for all human right violations at Guantanamo Bay, etc.

<comment><USER6> ISIS makes the Nazis seem reasonable but for some people anyone that opposes the West is good.

<comment><USER20> If you think that you haven't seen/read enough about the Nazis. Not that I would recommend doing that, just letting you know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> MAJOR SPOILERS!!! wtf! no spoiler warning at all. Grave of the fireflies was one of the few Ghibli films I hadnt got around to seeing yet. Plot is totally spoiled in the first few sentences. fuck you author!!

<comment><USER22> For what it's worth, that "spoiler" is a known fact less than 2 minutes into the film. As with all Ghibli films, the greatness is in the watching.

<comment><USER4> I agree; some stories are more damaged by spoilers than others. If the primary appeal of a story is a shocking surprise, the spoiler takes much of the fun out of it. But some stories aren't particularly hurt even if you know the details.

However, in this case, the spoiler (which I read long ago) told me that it's a film I want to skip; I don't enjoy stories with bad endings, no matter what message they're trying to convey or point they're trying to make. There's too much of that in reality already to seek it out in fiction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a terrible article.

> LeMay also oversaw and championed the enforcement of the total blockade of > Japan by filling the waters around its port cities with aerial-dropped > mines, which, for example, caused shipping through Kobe to plummet by 85%. > This campaign was dubbed, with a refreshing lack of hypocrisy, "Operation > Starvation." Thus, the starvation of little Setsuko/Keiko was not > "collateral damage," but a premeditated murder.

Newsflash: people kill other people in wars. Including civilians. Wow, I would have never imagined. And yes, you try to kill as many people as you can, because that's how wars stop, when the losses are big enough that you consider capitulation. Japan's military indoctrination gave the US not much choice anyway, since they were ready to fight till the last man.

> LeMay was instrumental in the US shift from high-altitude bombing with > general purpose explosives to the low-altitude incendiary bombing of > Japanese cities that resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths > and the famine-inducing ruination of the economy. He later became a tireless > advocate for bombing Vietnam, as he put it, "back to the Stone Age," and for > bombing the whole world back to the Ice Age by launching a nuclear first > strike against the Soviet Union.

That's a complete misunderstanding of the thinking of LeMay. There are many documentaries/books about him, and you can read "Command and Control" if you want to get a good view of LeMay and why he acted like that during that period. Whether you liked him or not, he was a rational person. His idea of nuking the Soviets first came from the fact that for some time, the US had clear superior nuclear power vs the Soviets, and that one should not wait until the Soviets develop enough bombs to be able to destroy the US if they decide to strike first. If the Soviets had decided to strike first, it would have destroyed the US chain of command and left nothing for retaliation - <USER2> is why LeMay started the SAC program to have bombers constantly in the skies with nuclear weapons, "just in case". That program lasted until after the fall of the Soviet Union. And bombing the Soviets first when the US had a clear advantage (in the early 50s basically) would not have resulted in the whole world being destroyed, most likely only the Soviet Union would have paid a hefty price while the losses in Europe/US would have been less.

Seriously, don't write about History if you know nothing about it.

<comment><USER24> > _And bombing the Soviets first when the US had a clear advantage (in the > early 50s basically) would not have resulted in the whole world being > destroyed, most likely only the Soviet Union would have paid a hefty price > while the losses in Europe /US would have been less._

And this is a better outcome than what _actually_ happened how...?

<comment><USER23> Not saying this is better or worse. Just explaining the way he was thinking - and noting that we were on the brink of nuclear war in two times in the 60s and the 80s, with actual total annihilation being very close - if it had happened you would not be there to pass that judgment in the first place, and LeMay may have been proven right.

Most observers agree that it was "mere luck" that we did not annihilate each other at those precise time points.</comment></comment></comment>


"The Home Depot Has Managed To Trick Us We Can Do It Ourselves" -- just having access to tools isn't enough - <AUTHOR> http://www.laughfactory.com/player/player.asp?siteID=603&catID=1007&listID=&vidID=425513 <comment><AUTHOR> "There's no skill aisle at the Home Depot. Have you been to the Home Depot? That's why they want you to do it yourself. They don't want to work at all. They got self-service checkout. So I'm here buying things I can't afford, to do a carpentry job I'm not qualified to do, and I got to work the register, too. They should change the name of the store. They should call it 'You're On Your Own.' "</comment>


"Our constitution has failed" - Ron Paul, upon retiring - <AUTHOR> http://news.yahoo.com/ron-paul-departs-constitution-failed-230217615--abc-news-politics.html

<comment><USER2> "The problem isn't just government's size, but its use of force, both in starting preemptive wars and as it coerces U.S. citizens with police power. To Paul, this is the fault of Americans who no longer prioritize liberty, and it will lead to the unraveling of orderly society unless people change."

1\. At the time the Constitution was ratified, the US had effective control to the Alleghanies and in a few enclaves beyond along the rivers. By 1852, California was a state. Yes, the Missouri Purchase was a purchase, but there was a lot of warfare involved in getting control of it. Yes, various other tracts were bought, but usually with the implicit threat of force, or in settlement of a war. So the founders were pacifists only to the extent that it suited them.

2\. Jefferson's administration found itself minutely regulation coastal trade to enforce the embargo. Jefferson had been in great sympathy with the Pennsylvanians during the "Whiskey Rebellion", but the embargo was his own to defend.

3\. One suffers from a kind of optical illusion if one considers the Constitution per se. It set out the rules for the federal government, not for the states, which were a much larger presence in most lives.

I am not saying that we should be happy with the state of the union, just that imagining a splendid past has its pitfalls.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> What are some ways the founding fathers could have prevented what Ron Paul sees happening to this country?

<comment><USER3> Maybe its like money: 1st gen makes it, 2nd gen keeps it, 3rd gen blows it. by this logic the founding father's are not the issue. its down to human nature, culture, and perhaps a little familiarity (entitlement) breeding contempt (for what made you successful). &tc

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, if we know how human nature acts, there should be ways to draft up a better, iron-clad constitution. But I suppose human nature has ways to go around everything.

<comment><USER3> yes, life is an exercise in discretion</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A music delivery service built around the WebAudio API - <AUTHOR> https://ampl.fi/?ref=1 <comment><AUTHOR> This was initially a project I had started to get better acquainted with the Web Audio API. I had done some preliminary work with the Media Source Extensions API and piping output via to the Web Audio API, but I wanted to see how well the scheduling capabilities were. Throughout the effort, I learned quite a bit about signal processing and FFT.

The current process is rather simple: I utilize M3U8 for storing segment information, and manually parse the file when a play request is received. I grab the first few (Opus-encoded) segments, pass them through an OfflineContext to maintain a specific sample rate, and store the resulting buffer in a wrapper object. Each object is stored in an array, and is responsible for re-creating the AudioNode when stopping or starting.

The hardest part about this (for me at least) was fetching and scheduling accurately while the player is running. I group segments requests together, and schedule after each group has finished downloading. It's not perfect, as I occasionally get pops between each segment: Chrome seems to be less noticeable than Firefox in this regard. I schedule based on the buffer duration, but there seems to be subtle differences between browsers.

In any case, I've had quite a bit of fun working on this project.

<comment><USER2> Looks great, also thanks for giving technical specifics!

Could you elaborate a bit more on what the site does, perhaps in an ELI5 way (explain it like I'm 5 years old)? It's not entirely obvious at a glance, i.e is it like SoundCloud?/How does it differ?/Can it be used to create music?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. The site is billed as a delivery service, thus you're able to upload music (that you have the rights to) and monetize it. You could, of course, opt to give away your content for free; there's no requirement to login or perform an action to download a free tack. The site does allow remixes and mixes, but they have their own rules.

In terms of interaction, it's similar to SoundCloud. I've been using SoundCloud for years - just right after they transitioned to their V2 site. I've also used Bandcamp for selling my own music, and always felt their approach was transparent and fair when it came to monetization. When I started this project, a little bit of both went into the design and structure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the look & feel and the technology seems to work just fine.

But I don't really understand what the texts want to tell me.

\- Is this for people who like to listen to music (a music player)?

\- Is it for people who like to create music where they can upload and sell it (like a store)?

Somehow I have a feeling it is both, but 'music delivery service' feels to me like an abstract term (what is the difference to 'website for sharing music'). Might be worth iterating over those parts again.

Nevertheless, cool project :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd label it as a music player and a store. You, as a listener, can browse the site and purchase music to add to your collection. Artists are listeners to, so they can do the same thing, but they also can upload their own music and monetize it. Aside from that, it has the basic functionalities you would expect from a site like this: favoriting tracks, creating sets, commenting - the typical stuff.

Honestly, I wasn't sure how to label it myself: I'm terrible with describing things. I'll be sure to give it some thought though.

<comment><USER4> So like Bandcamp, but...?

<comment><AUTHOR> The revenue model of Bandcamp, the interactivity of SoundCloud. I think that's how I would describe it.

<comment><USER5> Looks great! You've offered several simple descriptions in these comments that don't appear to be on the site. It would be good if you included some of this language on the landing page so the purpose is immediately obvious...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Whoa, an EQ in the volume knob. Nice surprise!

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://ampl.fi/track/omlet-fizz-funk-qf9mGI](https://ampl.fi/track/omlet- fizz-funk-qf9mGI)

seems to not work on safari 12 (Mojave). as in... press the play button, state changes, no audio, no other activity happens.

as with many webby things these days.... works fine on chrome, not on safari.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, Safari does not support Opus-encoded audio using the Web Audio API. I actually had to push a hotfix earlier this week since Safari uses webkitAudioContext as opposed to AudioContext (which I wasn't checking for) - the site wouldn't even load.

See this issue:

[https://github.com/goldfire/howler.js/issues/706](https://github.com/goldfire/howler.js/issues/706)

I could fallback to something like MP3, which is something I'm looking into.

I really need to add some type of alert for users using Safari, at least for the time being. Thanks for reminding me!

<comment><USER7> I've recently been doing some client-side media recording, and ... could not get chrome to record in anything _BUT_ opus for days. Didn't want Opus because... FFmpeg couldn't deal with it (nor can aws media converter, or other cloud-based converter services). opus may have some benefits, but it doesn't seem to be well supported in various tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks good!

Can you say something about the specifics? Like – can I use it like a locker service similar to Google Play Music? If so, how many tracks can I upload?

<comment><AUTHOR> You have a Collection, which is where music you've purchased resides. If an artist decides to remove their track, but you purchased it, it's "soft- deleted" \- the artist themselves cannot access the track, but you still can.

At the moment, the upload limit is 15 tracks a month. Since this is a subscription-less service, there's no way to subscribe to a plan for unlimited uploading. We can always override the limit on a per user basis, depending on your needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is cool. I like the domain name you're using too.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is pretty dope, get more tunes on it.

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice! What tech stack are you using?

<comment><AUTHOR> The backend is pure Java, and is composed of four separate microservices. The web server (we use Javalin) is nothing special; the transcoder works as follows:

* An POST request is sent to the web server. If the file is valid, it is moved via FTP to a local server. I then create a message for RabbitMQ to add to a transcode queue.

* A worker listening on the channel gets the job, and does all the needed work to make the file "streamable", e.g. segmenting and encoding file parts, creating the M3U8, generating the waveform, storing to S3, etc. Throughout the process, progress is saved in Redis, which is made available to the client for visual feedback

* Once the process is done, an identifier is generated, which the client refers to when saving any modifications to the track information. We primarily use MariaDB.

The transcode process is the most complex piece of the puzzle, of course. Everything else is pretty much CRUD operations.

<comment><USER12> > all the needed work to make the file "streamable", e.g. segmenting and > encoding file parts

Pardon the probably stupid question, but is that (splitting into several files) really necessary? Isn't supporting HTTP range requests enough?

Or is it because clients tend to download the whole file, even when the listener is still at the very beginning and might skip, meaning wasted bandwidth?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a stupid question at all! I actually looked into byte-range requests as opposed to downloading individual segments, indeed Amazon S3 does support byte-range requests. I would think it's similar to implement, and wouldn't have as many moving parts.

When I had started the project, I saw how other streaming sites fetched their audio, and I saw a pattern in individual GET requests for segments. I thought, "Hey, they're doing this for a reason, and even though I don't fully understand this reason, maybe I should do it to." At the time, I think I justified it by thinking that someone who wants to rip the stream file would have to piece the track together versus just requesting the full track.

In the end, it really doesn't matter: anyone who is willed enough can get whatever is being sent to their client. It's one of those moments where I didn't bother to really think it through and factor in the practicality aspect. I'd like to go back and re-visit byte-range requests, though, just to see how it would work differently.

<comment><USER13> MPEG-DASH and HLS both use segments. I think one reason is to allow for dynamic quality switching: if the bandwidth drops, the player can simply start pulling segments encoded at a lower bitrate. This is harder to do with byte- range, since bytes don't map to time cleanly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No RSS feeds. D:

<comment><AUTHOR> This is doable. If implemented, what would you like to see? I imagine whatever the notification system would show, e.g. uploads from other users, comments, etc.

<comment><USER14> Sure, but I expected a per-artist feed, so that I could be alerted of new tracks from by favorite artists from my RSS reader.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


5 Massive Announcements Made by Google at 2018 I/O Conference - <AUTHOR> https://www.rockonit.com/blog/5-massive-announcements-made-by-google-at-2018-io-conference <comment><USER2> That reads so much like an ad. But again it's hard to make the difference between hard fanboyism and paid content nowadays.

And i say that while i have one plus 6, and want to try out android p.</comment>