Can Reddit Grow Up? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/28/technology/can-reddit-grow-up.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> I honestly think the problem isn't reddit. It's the advertisers' model that has the problem. I realize that this is nonsensical, reddit needs the cash, but hear me out.

I've been a redditor for nearly 5 years. I'm a moderator on many subs and over time i've even been given the privilege of becoming a moderater on a subreddit with over 100k users. I've been given random reddit gold on 3 occasions (a strange revenue system for letting users know you care by paying reddit to give them some minor perks for about $5), so i think i understand the site fairly accurately.

When you move away from the large subreddits, into the niche, you realize that much of reddit is actual adults, with brains, and who aren't too busy to see news, and also have a discussion about it. I've always seen this as a problem for advertisers.

Advertisers want it one way. They want to send a message, and they want that to be the only thing said.

Take this amazing ad from thai life insurance: [http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/22jybg/what_does_kin...](http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/22jybg/what_does_kindness_get_you_this/)

The top comment, while jokingly so, brings up the point that this is a commercial... it's not real... it's trying to make you think a certain way on purpose. It's manipulative. Reddit breaks the 4th wall. It calls bullshit, and much of the time, it's right.

Reddit's problem is that when an ad is truly impressive, a great deal, etc., the relevant firm doesn't need to pay reddit to get attention. The users will do that for them. See dollar shave club: [http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/qk7xr/dollarshaveclu...](http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/qk7xr/dollarshaveclubcom_our_blades_are_fing_great/)

I really don't think there is much of a solution for reddit, but if i were in charge, the way i would generate revenue would be to hold the successful ads hostage. Shadow ban advertisers accounts if they don't play ball. Literally remove viral commercials, but do it quietly. It's an abuse of the system and the users know that, and i think users like me would understand. Make them pay a fee to even attempt to "go viral."

That's my 2 cents.

<comment><USER3> But that leads directly to a war of countermeasures as advertisers try to not get their content classified as advertisement. It's a rather blurry line, and regular users will get caught up in a system like that.

<comment><USER2> It's a fair point, but if the prices were reasonable, i think the firms would see it as a cost of doing business.

Remember this is revenue from firms attempting to create content, not paying for ad space. You'd have a shallower river of income, but a much wider one.

I'm not saying it would definitely work, but i think it'd certainly be something worth paying for. Especially when you're watching your ad successfully drive lots of users to your product... it's working! And then suddenly reddit calls your firm up and says:

"Hey, nice successful ad you have there blowing up on our service. It'd be a shame if anything were to happen to it..."

As for the users, if you shadow ban the content, more often then not they wouldn't even know. If they find out, you could simply explain that the relevant firm is abusing the service. Most would even help... a small button (is this an ad?). I'd click it, because i would know clicking it helps reddit. Remember, redditors are adults, with brains (they watch community, not two and a half men). There may be some push back, but i know i'd certainly understand, because big firms cheating the system is bullshit, especially if price discrimination is put in place to protect small firms. Dollar Shave Club pays pennies, Gillette pays hundreds.

And, hey, i really do love the site. If Alexis or Steve are ever in need of a beer in SF, i'd be happy to buy it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not sure I'm as big of a fan of advertising firms as the author, and some quotes stood out.

 _"People on Reddit want to be anonymous, and at some point these brands want to have a real relationship with their customers "_

I find it hard to take an article seriously when it includes quotes like this in a non-critical context. Advertisement is about bullshit, not about "relationships with customers". The job of advertisers is to trick you into think you need whatever they are being paid to sell. They and the companies they work only care about their customers in regards to how much money they can wring out of them.

And the parallel is that advertisers don't give a shit about Reddit as well. They are just looking for a way to maximize their ability to wring every cent out of Reddit's userbase regardless of whether the advertising completely destroyed the community.

<comment><USER5> Not all ads are for products you don't objectively need. You do likely need life insurance.

I would want to be informed if/when somebody made a cheap razor that actually works for me. I would want to know if somebody made a better vaccum robot, or made it cheaper. I don't objectively need a new smart phone, but I would want to know about it so that I could anticipate what my users would want to get.

<comment><USER6> " You do likely need life insurance." why on earth would i need life insurance?

<comment><USER7> Because you might want to leave some money behind for your family if you happen to die too soon.

Regardless, advertisers won't "inform" you about the best life insurance for you, they'll lie to make you stop thinking and trick you into buying _their_ life insurance, which most likely will be subpar. Good products tend to advertise themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe I'm suffering from nostalgia, but the Reddit comments were once a place where some good discussions were shared. Now, they've evolved into contests of wit and cross reference to other posts. In the "frontpage" subreddits, the comments are usually void of meaningful discussion that I remember in the earlier days, although I acknowledge I may be romanticizing it a bit.

I think I lost interest in Reddit as a whole when I found HN. Curious if any others had the same experience.

<comment><USER9> _I think I lost interest in Reddit as a whole when I found HN._

Once you start exploring the smaller focused subreddits, discussion gets much better. Although even then, the poop can creep in.

Prune your subscriptions _brutally_. Once a sub goes bad, it doesn't go back. Report spam & inflammatory comments etc.. The community is only as good as its members!

<comment><USER10> _Prune your subscriptions brutally._

I recently logged into Reddit for the first time in over half a year. My personalized frontpage was filled with garbage- in the 8 or 9 months since I'd stopped using the site, a bunch of small, awesome communities had grown past critical mass into Low Effort Content Zone.

Then I remembered why I stopped using the site- this is all it is. You just watch good communities burn when they get too big, or fizzle out and die when they're too small. One must prune one's subscriptions brutally, and then search for new communities that haven't descended into the Eternal September. But the effort is Sisyphean and I despair of it.

<comment><USER11> They don't all go bad, they don't all die or fizzle out. Some prosper. Usually because of excellent and strong moderation.

<comment><USER12> See /r/askhistorians, for example. Phenomenal moderation.

<comment><USER13> Yep.

Of which I'm quite aware for having been caught in it more than once. With non-meme posts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ideas for reddit monetization:

\- Charge $10 a year to keep a subreddit name registered. 500k subreddits, say one half to two thirds pony up, thats $2.5 - 3.3 mil/year.

\- There is a "trending subreddit" section. Implement a bidding system for a daily "featured subreddit" section similar to this (implement a N day cooldown so larger subs can't buy everyday)

\- Implement a rev-share system with sub-reddit owners. Paying for a subreddit name could mean no ads, however if the owner wants, they can turn on ads and split the commission with reddit.

\- Advertise (a little heavier than now) to only non-signed in users.

Basically I'm thinking you try and get the subreddit owners to help foot the bill since they are generally the ones getting the most value from the community engine that is reddit.

<comment><USER15> This is a terrible, terrible idea. The mods of each subreddit are what keep the subreddit alive, and subreddits are the building blocks of Reddit. There are mods who put tons and tons of time maintaining the quality of their sub(s), and _they are volunteers and don 't get paid for any of their work_. Asking them to "pony up" their own money would, with no doubt in my mind, drive them away and completely destroy Reddit. You are grossly over-estimating the number of mods who would "help foot the bill," and completely forgetting about how much hatred Reddit would get form the community if this was implemented.

If Reddit considered this strategy for monetization, they'd be much better off shooting off their foot, then shooting their other foot.

<comment><USER16> > Asking them to "pony up" their own money would, with no doubt in my mind, > drive them away and completely destroy Reddit.

He wrote nowhere that mods should pay. I as a user would certainly pay $10/yr to keep subreddits I care most about going on.

<comment><USER17> User pays is equally as ridiculous as mod pays.

No way as a user i would pay $10/yr when there are multiple sites that will do the same thing as Reddit for free.

Im not interested in paying any website for the privilege of expressing my opinion and reading others.

<comment><USER18> I see two valuable things for the end user at reddiit: a. Finding good sub reddits (out of 500k am sure that is a pain) b. Getting their content some sort of traction in the community which is ofcourse mod configured & rev shared with the mod maybe.

Do you think users would pay for this? besides, do you think the 2nd point has a scope of creeping in poop?

<comment><USER17> I agree that there are users who would pay for that. Indeed, there are successful business models based on this idea already. Those models see nothing like the traffic that Reddit gets, so they are not as interesting to advertisers.

Yes, i see point b) having a scope of creeping in poop.

I'm pretty sure that point b) was a large part of the reason for the downfall of Digg.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't understand the people who don't like Reddit based on the front page. FFS, Reddit is a platform and the action is in the subreddits. There are some very high quality subreddits with good mods which work as well or better than HN.

<comment><USER20> Case in point: [http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2bs0rc/ama_fe...](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2bs0rc/ama_feudalism_didnt_exist_the_social_political/)

<comment><USER15> Holy text walls batman :-). Great read though, great writers in that thread and definitely learned a fair share about feudalism (though probably won't remember it for long...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Also, the content can range anywhere from a quaint series of animal photos > to an intense discussion about bitcoin to graphic pornography, all in a > single thread. That could spook brands that do not want their ads displayed > alongside not-safe-for-work material.

Reddit is too adult for ad networks. Can they grow up?

</comment><comment><USER22> Reddit wants to be a big company using a site where big companies are the enemy. They could do it, but they need to overhaul the ad system.

Having purchased more than a few ads, I can tell you that their platform needs serious help. They're already a step behind because users don't give location or age. To an advertiser who knows the customer, this results in blanketing people you know aren't interested.

The real problem is that targeting ads to interested audiences results in very few interactions. When you target to a sub, you have a good chance of showing up on that sub's home page - but no one really goes to a sub home. You need to get people on their front pages. The front page is hyper-competitive: you are bidding against people who are willing to serve ads to ANYONE (ahem, Hipmunk). I've still had some success, but it varies a lot depending on when people buy ads. Their planning tool cannot be relied upon.

If reddit were a grown-up advertising company, they'd run it on a cost-per- click bidding basis for link/comment/share/save interactions. Votes would be free to the advertiser, but they'd use recent upvotes and downvotes as a quality score to push ads that people hate off the site and encourage ads people don't mind by giving them a competitive edge. They'd also create more sophisticated targeting options, e.g. people who subscribe to /r/A AND /r/B. Or people who subscribe to /r/A AND either /r/C OR /r/D.

<comment><USER23> >> When you target to a sub, you have a good chance of showing up on that sub's home page - but no one really goes to a sub home. You need to get people on their front pages.

Not arguing with your larger points, but this is completely untrue for me — I _only_ use Reddit via subreddit home pages, i.e., I _never_ go to the "front page". I don't even know what a "front page" is. Is that where you just go to [http://reddit.com/](http://reddit.com/)? I must have visited that once, way back when I first started using Reddit, but since then, never.

I have a dozen or so subreddits I'm interested in and when I will occasionally get a whim to check up on one of them, I navigate directly to the subreddit (autocomplete in the browser makes this easier). I also subscribe to RSS feeds for my subreddits.

Apparently I'm using Reddit in an unusual way.

<comment><USER24> If you subscribe to the subreddits you like, and unsubscribe from the ones you don't like, then your logged-in homepage ([http://www.reddit.com](http://www.reddit.com)) will only show posts from the subreddits you like.

Basically it will be like looking at your subreddit RSS feeds, but sorted by votes in addition to recency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps a good way to monetise without alienating their core users would be to only advertise on the default subs. The vast majority of users are there, including the less technical users who might be more likely to actually consume the ads instead of ignoring or blocking them.

Another idea which I saw the Whirlpool forums do in Australia is to only advertise to those who aren't logged in.

If the sub-communities continue to thrive I can't see Reddit fade into obscurity any time soon.

<comment><USER26> I would've thought the opposite. The default subs have large numbers of subscribers (of course), but I feel like they don't have strong communities, or specific themes, that would appeal to an advertiser. Like... /r/funny? /r/creepy? /r/DIY? /r/IAmA? What would compel someone to advertise on those?

On the other hand, there are a good number of non-default subs that have strong themes that I'm certain advertisers would want to tap into. For example, city-specific subs, or /r/bodyweightfitness (105,212 subscribers), or /r/bicycling (126,713 subscribers). These communities are so specific that advertising seems like it would be more effective in those areas than any other. Of course... it needs to be done in a way that isn't intrusive or damaging, and that's probably a bigger challenge in a smaller community.

<comment><USER27> Another example: /r/MechanicalKeyboards with 38,000+ subscribers. That's a community just ripe for good advertising.

<comment><USER28> Are you sure? One would expect that most new product launches or major sales would be linked to by users for free. Additionally, all the major vendors are already linked to in the sidebar wiki posts...

<comment><USER27> Major vendors, yes. But there are a lot of small run or custom accessories that would sell quite well if they had more exposure. The wiki in the sidebar is good, but what about when a company comes out with a new set of keycaps? Getting that information out can often be iffy, but ads in a major community would make it easy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> No, it can't without everybody leaving, but they will all leave anyway. My theory is that social news is like the popular club in a major city or a fad in popular culture.

You can't predict which will be a hit or for how long. What you can predict is that eventually when enough people show up that it will lose that quality that made it so interesting to begin with, and the people that made it special will move on.

This happened with slashdot, digg, and maybe a bit to Hacker News too. I think Reddit's subreddits have made it more of a community of communities instead of one monolithic thing, with a monolithic front page. That certainly helps it have some legs.

However, I really don't see how any fad can sustain itself over the long term and anything that is built on social communities is at the whim of the movement of social opinion and interest. People change, get older, and what made something cool for one generation doesn't necessarily work for another generation.

There is no reason that Reddit should be popular as opposed to any other community site other than it's where people are congregating right now.

In 5 or 10 years, where will people congregate online?

</comment><comment><USER30> I've got my 7 year badge but I don't go back anymore. I'm aged out. The front page doesn't interest me, the memes don't resonate with me, and the reposts don't keep me.

It'll keep happening, year after year as most people age out. But year after year more people join up, I'm sure there's a net again. Enough of a momentum that it will just take decades before the decay happens. Radical changes also risk a Digg implosion.

Tough nut to crack. They've been taking every trick from the old forum (SomethingAwful, General Mayhem, OffTopic, GaiaOnline) days other than literally charging for membership. Which is always the final cashing out death knell.

Common refrain in the past when positing how the community is turning and reducing value the default rah rah answer has always been to hit the edgy subreddits rather than the mainstream ones. That changes the value of the reddit product from a community to community software.

My small business projects rely on subreddits for customer service. Give me customization tools and I'll eagerly pay. After all, it's like vBulletin but better and people out of the wazoo for that.

<comment><USER31> Charging for admission has always struck me, at least in the case of SA, as a tactic to guard the community against, essentially, trolls and children. Not as a moneymaking scheme.

<comment><USER32> SA has also charged for registration for the vast majority of its existence (it was created in 1999 and started charging in 2001), so if it was supposed to be a cash-out before the site died it was a very poorly timed one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> matt-attack It seems that all the critique in the article stem from the advertiser's perspective. "Oh no we can't make money off of the reddit users" the site must be rubbish and outdated. It needs to be more like facebook so that we companies can _connect_ with users".

<comment><USER33> Yup, it smells to much like, "oh, woe are we advertisers for not being able to exploit users for more money, Reddit needs to change, hmmpf"

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is this a submarine?

Why is a site struggling with journalism (NY Times), and a subscription model, and a paywall (that will become permanent in 3 months), and possibly an advertising problem, advocating that another site (Reddit), with more users, without a subscription model, no paywall, and possibly no advertising problem, is about to change?

<comment><USER35> What? Why is a person struggling to grasp the difference between The New York Times and The New Yorker trying to make some point about… something?

<comment><USER34> Whoops, my mistake. Sorry.

Why did I make this mistake? Did I subconsciously associate the initials NY with evil intentions? It wouldn't be surprising if The New York Times become a casualty of the The New Yorker's policy by accidental association.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Reddit seems to be doing well. I can tell, because I tried to advertise twice in the past 5 years or so and being from Europe, I had no way to pay for ads (US and UK customers only!). So they have still so much unrealized revenue potential that I wouldn't worry.

</comment><comment><USER37> Reddit has the best content for any message style forum I've ever come across. The combination of user voting plus moderation works incredibly. And it's not just a few subreddits, it's a huge swath of them. They've attracted the best community of users that I've ever seen and that positive feedback loop of easy-to-use UI plus great username creates a fantastic site.

The top comment is usually useful no matter what the topic is, and I usually never leave disappointed when I read a thread I'm curious about.

It would be a shame if they ruined the site a la digg by trying to monetize too aggressively.

</comment><comment><USER38> The article helps little in answering this question when they interview the wrong experts.

The first thing you should do when giving advice is acknowledging reality and then work with that. That is, you should accept reddit for what it is. But all those "experts" giving their opinion in the nyt article are mere bullshit- bingo players pushing reddit to become like every other company:

> "People on Reddit want to be anonymous, and at some point these brands want > to have a real relationship with their customers," ""Can Reddit deliver that > over time?"

> "Reddit is a 1998 product, trying to have a 1998 business model,"

I think reddit should come up with a monetizing strategy that capitalizes on the trust users have in it (without abusing it) They would have a massively sustainable competitive advantage. Is there any other web company of that size that you would trust more? Could any one copy this trust within a short amount of time? It's rather tragic that in our society this has so little value that you have to think really hard to come up with a monetizing strategy.

Also, I think the idea of a "just self-sustaining" reddit, as some people here have pointed out, is rather interesting. Why does it need to grow? Isn't it enough that it is usefull to their users and poses a stepping stone for entrepreneurs like Mr. Ohanian but also external guys like, for instance, those from imgur or Mr ShittyWaterColour?

</comment><comment><USER39> I'll just c/p what I wrote in the thread where the reporter asked us questions ([http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/2bjsxi/how_c...](http://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/2bjsxi/how_can_reddit_grow_up_to_become_a_real_business/))

Reddit is becoming bigger and bigger. Which is somehow bad as a quality point of view (look at HackerNews, and people there are already complaining that it got too big like reddit).

1

Reddit did a very smart thing to counter that: subreddits. So now you can still dislike reddit as a whole but find what you want in a subreddit.

Now I think that if reddit has a way to monetize its website, somewhere, it is through subreddits. You could put a free2play kind of system. Customize your subreddit but pay to unlock features. Create subreddits where you have to pay to get in (it already kind of exists with the lounge).

2

Advertisement. Reddit is really, extremely, reluctant to advertise on reddit. It's nice from a user point of view. But from an advertiser point of view, why? Reddit is the perfect place for ads. Users click and click and click and they read text before clicking. Google ads would make them profitable in a few days. It's important to think about it.

EDIT: I'll add that the subscription system makes and the subreddits make it an excellent way to know someone's tastes. It's even better than facebook imo.

<comment><USER40> They don't need explicit advertising because they already perfected the product placement.

Compared to Reddit, that Power Glove film is a masterpiec

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> As a long time reddit user my question is: is there something specific pushing for further monetization? I thought the whole purpose of spinning off from conde nast was to get away from the need to monetize.

Why not just match development/maintenance with use? Reddit is well past it's exponential growth phase and is big enough to sustain the community with basically no growth in userbase - so unless I am missing something, this seems like a pure greed play.

<comment><USER33> > is there something specific pushing for further monetization?

It's mentioned in the article and known elsewhere, Reddit is not profitable and has not been profitable to date. Not bleeding out all of your money seems like a specific push for further monetization.

<comment><USER41> Profitable is different than sustainable. So why can't it be sustained without being "profitable?"

<comment><USER33> Is Reddit sustainable while it is bleeding money? How many sites are sustainable bleeding money? I'm serious. How is losing money a sustainable business model?

<comment><USER41> From the article and from what I understand around the site, they aren't losing money, they just aren't making profit from the revenues they have. I don't know what their books look like but it appears from what I have seen that they have pretty thin delta between income and outlays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've had this idea about how ads should work in situations like this floating around in my head for a while. I know nothing about advertising or monetizing websites and likely this idea has already been presented and shot down but I'd like to see a conversation about it either way. Company X pays Reddit a fixed fee to display a mutually approved, static image, hosted by Reddit servers, linked to a mutually approved web page, on the specified page(s), for a specific amount of time. No generic ad network placeholder, no impression count, no JavaScript, no user tracking, no analytics. Reddit is simply trusted to present the image/link as agreed and Company X is trusted to keep the agreed upon web page at the URL, no switcheroos after the agreement is effective. Maybe the community would know about this arrangement and respect it by not blocking the easily identifiable (no cleaver markup disguises from Reddit) ad elements on the page. I'm thinking the link URL needs to be static, Reddit wouldn't dynamically add anything to it. If the trust is broken by any party the deal is off. Thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER43> Why do subreddits have to have only one business model, that being free? Why is the only way to get corporate revenue ugly ads that no one wants to see? Why does a company like Republic Wireless maintain their own lame forum system that boils down to a heavily brain damaged psuedo-clone of Reddit? Why, for a fee paid by RW to /r/, can't /r/republicwireless exist with all of the mods on that subreddit being RW employees, or whoever RW employees select? I'd like that for customer support and product announcements and it would let RW focus on their core competency which is being in the MVNO business not the "running an internet web forum" business.

There is a side issue, that I don't think a company that wants to be successful should take business advice from either a legacy newspaper in general, or specifically the NYT, which makes the whole thing comical. It would be like a telegram company demanding that an ISP make core business changes, because they're the experts, or at least they were back in 1890, LOL.

</comment><comment><USER44> As a long time user of Reddit, I have to say: put more ads on the right hand side margin! I don't care, make some money, and stay solid business-wise.

Please pardon an off-topic comment: I got to meet Alexis Ohanian when he spoke at Google last year and I really enjoyed his book "Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed." I am an old guy, in my 60s, and I worry a lot about the future our kids and grandkids will have, but then when I meet young people like Alexis who have such a strong attitude about helping society, I feel better :-) If you have a chance to hear him speak, don't pass up the opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER45> Why does it need to? Is it self sustaining? Maybe that's all it needs to be.

When you try hard to commercialize and squeeze profits, things change and you lose audience. This is exactly what it is limiting the lifespan of Facebook.

<comment><USER46> "This is exactly what it is limiting the lifespan of Facebook"

Facebook has over a billion users and has been around for ten years. No other social network can claim both of those things. Don't know if it qualifies as an example of a "limited lifespan"

<comment><USER47> I think he isn't saying it has had a limited life span. He is saying that it's future lifespan is being limited. Basically, he thinks it has potential to go on much longer than it will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Can reddit become monetizable? Some of the best online forums of the sort are not-for-profit. It's odd that there isn't yet a donation-supported open alternative of reddit, a-la wikipedia.

</comment><comment><USER49> Why not have advertisers partner directly with mods and allow some sort of revenue sharing?

The concern seems to be offensive/weird user created content might be displayed near an advertisement. Well, the mods have control over the content.

Mods could chose whether or not to enable advertising and could chose whether to curate content to maximize click-throughs or not.

Ads could be programmatically targeted towards subreddits and individual comment threads rather than users.

</comment><comment><USER50> I don't think reddit can be profitable. The moment it is the userbase will move on to the next thing. A new site can spring up over night. A new reddit could be coded in weeks. its all a matter of people choosing to congregate there. This is an ongoing process that is constantly happening. Message boards are popular, and they're cheap.

<comment><USER23> >> A new reddit could be coded in weeks.

Well, it wouldn't take that long, given that the entire Reddit code base is open source: [https://github.com/reddit](https://github.com/reddit)

Really, anybody can _literally_ clone Reddit anytime they want to.

But not only is it likely impossible for a competitor to attract a significant portion of the Reddit user base, what would a competitor do assuming they did manage it? All a competitor would have done is bought themselves a money- losing operation. Unless you're a charitable billionaire or a well-funded non- profit organization, why would anyone want to do that?

<comment><USER50> I don't think it's do much a company could the over reddits marketshare. Its that there's comment sections and forums every where. If/when reddit dies there will be increased traffic to other forms of blogging/commenting/posting. And eventually a new website will fizzle to the top just out of chance (in the same way reddit did).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Great, a paywall. Looks like NYTimes has grown up and us plebeians are not allowed to read it anymore.

</comment><comment><USER52> The fact you have to ask tells me no.

</comment><comment><USER53> ... said the dying old media company.

<comment><USER54> The article was written by Mike Issac, who was ATD/Recode until _very_ recently.

<comment><USER55> I'd never heard of Re/code (yes, I noticed the embarrassing spelling) until just now. reddit serves billions of pageviews a month. I'm not saying this guy's got nothing interesting to say, but it does seem a little bit condescending to say, "Can reddit grow up?" When reddit has already grown to be one of the most popular sites in the world in a quite short time.

<comment><USER56> >in a quite short time

Almost 10 years, the same as YouTube.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I've been developing a theory of Reddit in my mind for about the last year. It's mostly grown out of the ubiquity and monoculture of AdviceAnimals/memes, but I think it applies to most of the frontpage reddits.

Redditors have basically developed and distributed a set of rules for what they find funny/cool/interesting, and endlessly repeat these same jokes/memes. If you follow the frontpage for any reasonable amount of time, you see the same few ideas over and over. Just about everything is somehow referential to a previous post. It almost feels Pavlovian after a while. Someone will post a picture with an attractive female in it. Someone else will comment with a Gif of a bunch of hotdogs being thrown in her face. Someone else will point out that hidden amongst the hotdogs is a finger. Someone else will point out that every time an attractive girl is posted, all of these things occur. This happens over and over, countless times every day. To call it derivative would be generous, because it's a carbon copy.

Advice Animals (Image Macros with text) seemed to take this to its extreme. The same 10 images are posted thousands of times per day, with a sentence about how some event in the posters life relates to the meme. If you take away the meme, and simply tell the story by itself, its dull and boring. Attach it to the same picture you've been seeing for the last year and half, and it's got 1000 upvotes.

Most of the material on the frontpage of reddit is not interesting on it's own merits. It's only interesting in the context of the thoroughly homogeneous userbase that has been conditioned to respond to the same 15 memes.

It seems to me like an advertiser's dream demographic. A clearly delineated set of rules to engage millions of potential customers. Flip this switch, turn that knob, show this meme, reference The Big Lebowski, and Bob's your uncle.

<comment><USER58> > If you take away the meme, and simply tell the story by itself, its dull and > boring. Attach it to the same picture you've been seeing for the last year > and half, and it's got 1000 up votes.

IANA Literary Anthropologist, but: when you tell a story from your life by itself, you're presumably telling it about you. People don't care about you: they've never met you, and after they read your words they'll probably never hear from you again. They don't have any previous impressions of you to pattern match their expectations against, so nothing you say can make them go "oh, yeah, that's just like her" or "ha, I knew it" or "oh god, it's going to happen to him again, isn't it?"

In the context of an image macro, on the other hand, your story is paraphrased into a sort of shared mythology: there's this one platonic Awkward Penguin/Insanity Wolf/Scumbag Steve, doing _all_ of these things, and acting as a larger-than-life moral symbol of the effects of doing these things in the process. People know what to expect of the character, and so people can seek out these stories when they want something with that "feeling" to it.

Presuming you were living in Ancient Greece, you'd see these same people taking various minor heroic moments from their day-to-day lives, exaggerating a bit, and turning them into stories about Hercules.

(You can do this for a living, too, creating characters from whole cloth who are larger-than-life molds to match up to various day-to-day stories. The result is called a sitcom.)

<comment><USER59> People genuinely care about stories. A story about a wacky inventor is better than a story about their invention (see everything by Malcom Gladwell). Maybe a meme is better, since you already know the main character.

Or maybe there's a trade-off - a long story needs a new main character, but a short joke works best with a stock character. Compare War and Peace to "little Johnny" jokes.</comment></comment></comment>


Runnable is now GA: Staging environments and microservices don't mix - <AUTHOR> http://blog.runnable.com/post/150655663306/runnable-is-now-ga-staging-environments-and <comment><USER2> Founder here, happy to answer any questions</comment>


Gauss's Principle of Least Constraint (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://preetum.nakkiran.org/misc/gauss/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of the rule in particle physics: Anything not forbidden is mandatory.

i.e. There are no events (interactions) that could happen, but just don't.

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

<comment><USER3> Very cool, I wonder if this applies to interactions that "can't" happen in our current universe? I have read in the early big bang, forces "combined" together, like the electric and nuclear weak force. Could a electron interact with a neutrino for example?

<comment><USER4> > Could a electron interact with a neutrino for example

Could, and it does happen. Observed about sixteen years after the first direct observation of a neutrino interaction:

[https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S02177323930...](https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0217732393002567) (PDF directly at [https://cds.cern.ch/record/248487/files/ppe-93-065.pdf](https://cds.cern.ch/record/248487/files/ppe-93-065.pdf) )

More modernly and generally, neutrino-lepton scatterings are part of the weak interactions in the Standard Model: [https://www2.ph.ed.ac.uk/~playfer/PPlect11.pdf](https://www2.ph.ed.ac.uk/~playfer/PPlect11.pdf)

(and of course there is an even weaker gravitational interaction between leptons and neutrinos that we cannot demonstrate directly with current technology)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> By looking at the references, the author may not be aware of the use of Gauss' principle in molecular dynamics, see e.g. Ch. 3.1 in Evans, Morriss: Statistical mechanics of nonequilibrium liquids. ([http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.296...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.296.2041&rep=rep1&type=pdf))

</comment><comment><USER6> their double pendulum applet has a bug that occasionally causes it to gain energy.</comment>


Robotic bees could pollinate plants in case of insect apocalypse - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/09/robotic-bees-could-pollinate-plants-in-case-of-insect-apocalypse <comment><USER2> Hated in the Nation - Black Mirror season 3, episode 6 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hated_in_the_Nation)</comment>


Politicians Fooled the World into Believing in Nations - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/wjwegz/how-politicians-fooled-the-world-into-believing-in-nations-v26n3 <comment><USER2> There's something so enchanting about the idea of being able to travel anywhere without borders and passports. 300 years ago it was common, and it sounds so cool. The shear amount of effort it takes to go to China reminds me of papers please

<comment><AUTHOR> I know exactly what you mean. As a product of the european Union - born in France, grew up in both France and Belgium, studied in the UK, France and Belgium, but British by passport I have benefited greatly from the free movement of people across Europe. But a European citizen not more it's as if i've lost a part of who I am.

As the saying goes; you can never truly appreciate what you have until it's gone.</comment></comment>


Verizon wants $1B off Yahoo sale price - <AUTHOR> http://www.siliconbeat.com/2016/10/06/yahoo-scandals-verizon-wants-1-billion-off-sale-price-report-says/ <comment><USER2> This is great news. The only way we will have a chance to start doing things right as an industry is if there are serious consequences for doing things wrong.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I'm just being cynical, but IMO this isn't as much as about "doing the right thing and establishing consequence" as it is an opportunity to get something for cheaper.

<comment><USER4> This is how the free market punishes wrongdoings.

<comment><USER5> Yet the beneficiary is one of the worst offenders when it comes to domestic spying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It makes sense. Yahoo's last assets were its fantasy sports league, its email service, maybe Yahoo finance, its brand, and its massive user base.

Within the last couple of weeks, they've tarnished both their brand and their email service. I doubt very much that their fantasy leagues and Yahoo finance really bring as much revenue as ads from email and ads targeted to its massive user base.

What exactly is Verizon bidding on now?

<comment><USER7> Email is the crown jewel - by far their most lucrative property. Verizon may be waiting to see if there's any measurable user churn due to the recent news, although that takes some time to shake out.

<comment><USER6> I think you also missed their homepage and useraccounts, which continues to get a huge amount of traffic.

Granted, people who use Yahoo´s homepage/homepage probably aren´t the most sophisticated users, but the sheer number of eyeballs probably counts for something.

So you have the brand/homepage, which is tarnished by their leak and subsequent refusal to reset passwords (anecdotally, even my mom asked me how to reset her password) and their email is tarnished (although I don't know how much their userbase cares about privacy) by their scanning of emails for the NSA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So what are the chances that Verizon is leaking all this stuff itself to get Yahoo for cheap?

<comment><USER9> I think it's too damaging to the long-term value of the brand.

<comment><USER10> Unless Verizon is having second thoughts about the purchase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A deal team "pushing back hard" is only as good as the next best offer. (But they have to say that of course.)

</comment><comment><USER12> Instead of buying AOL and Yahoo, Verizon should have invested in network upgrades.

<comment><USER13> How's that going to boost the stock price? If you know the answer maybe you should be working for Verizon.

<comment><USER12> _> How's that going to boost the stock price?_

It would provide long term benefits, which can translate in better stock price as well. Key word - long term. Most Verizon "investors" can't operate in such terms however, they only see short term or nothing. It's a common mindset of the Wall Street today anyway. That's why Verizon let their networks rot, and doesn't replace them with fiber everywhere.

Working for Verizon? No, thanks. Until their whole upper management will be replaced, I doubt they'll improve in major ways.

<comment><USER14> > Most Verizon "investors" can't operate in such terms however, they only see > short term or nothing. It's a common mindset of the Wall Street today > anyway.

That doesn't explain many, many companies with high P/E ratios (such as AMZN).

If you know which companies have sacrificed the long term for short term gain, then you'd get rich shorting their stocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Did Verizon know about the data breach before they agreed to the deal? What were Yahoo's obligations (if any) to disclose these things to a potential buyer? A breach of this scale can't help but take a huge bite out of Yahoo's brand value and user trust.

</comment><comment><USER16> In a way, to me it seems like Verizon not buying Yahoo may be good for Yahoo's users. But if that were to happen, who would be the others to come back and attempt to buy it? From past news it seemed like others' interest fizzled out.</comment>


Lonely 'homeless' planet found for the first time - <AUTHOR> http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/science/lonely-homeless-planet-found-for-the-first-time/article4095149.ece <comment><USER2> These planetars stoke the scifi imagination. They are the perfect hideaway for a fleeing civilization... or deadly weapon. What kind of life could exist on a planet without a star?

Even when the scientific payoff is limited, the payoff to the imagination is immense.

<comment><USER3> In _Passages in the Void_ [1], these planets are the only places the machines were willing to reincarnate humanity after deciding that stars were too dangerous, having suffered the anguish of their humans being extinguished by our own Sun.

[1] A series of short stories by a Roger Williams, tagged _localroger_ on kuro5hin, wrote back in the day. I gathered the parts together into an ePub suitable for iBooks. I'm checking with the author now to see if I can make it available. You can always read it on the kuro5hin site, linked from <http://localroger.com/> (The _Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect_ is something else entirely.)

<comment><USER4> Prime Intellect was rough on my psyche, but a good experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like it was detected in the infrared. The article is a bit light on detail, but on the face of it it's an absolutely astonishing achievement to detect a planet-sized body with an earth-based optical telescope.

<comment><USER6> Apparently the atmospheric absorption of infrared is pretty decent for ground- based observation. Atmospheric seeing in the near-infrared is still a concern though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can someone explain to me how this would be termed a planet?

Doesn't the very definition of planet imply rotation around a star or other celestial object?

The BBC article is a little better: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science- environment-20309762> And it links to the actual paper: <http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.0305>

<comment><USER8> There are two "planet" definitions, depending on if the object in question is in the solar system or outside. The terminology for the later is not as well settled. You might see "free floating planet" or "rogue planet" or the more general term "planetary-mass object" (or PMO or planemo). (The actual paper uses 'free floating planet' and 'planetary-mass object'.)

In any case, if the official position is that a "dwarf planet" is not a planet then it's not hard to see that a "free floating planet" need not be a "planet."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't always read pop science, but when I do, I read thehindubusinessline.com. Also, the illustration paired with the article screams Melancholia.

<comment><USER10> Stay skeptical my friend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you read the article all the way towards the end, you will see that it's not exactly "lonely". From the article:

 _The planet is in fact called CFBDSIR2149 and appears to be part of a group of very young stars known as the AB Doradus Moving Group. "This group is unique in that it is made up of around thirty stars that all have the same age, have the same composition and that move together through space. It's the link between the planet and AB Doradus that enabled us to deduce its age and classify it as a planet," researcher Lison Malo explained._

I find it fascinating that we have identified a group of stars that are (i'm assuming) moving in synchronous towards a general direction. I can only theorize that it was caused by perhaps a giant supernova that flung all of these stars/planets outwards but it does make you wonder what caused it exactly.

</comment><comment><USER12> It says that the image is a photo. Is that really so?

It says that the planet has a temperature of approx 400 degrees Celsius. That is hot. I would have expected it to be deadly cold, esp since it never managed to initiate nuclear reactions in its center. Why is that?

<comment><USER13> There's no way that's a photo, given that this is the best we can do of Ceres, a relatively close planetoid:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Ceres_opt...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/Ceres_optimized.jpg)

UPDATE: Here's its wikipedia page. 100 light years way from earth, so there is no way it's a photo. Also, wikipedia calls it a brown dwarf, which would explain the temperature: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFBDSIR2149-0403>

<comment><USER14> The source of the image, an European Southern Observatory press release (mentioned in the HBL article, linked in the Wikipedia article) gives it a title of "Artist's impression of the free-floating planet CFBDSIR J214947.2-040308.9".

<http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1245/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Given enough time, I wonder if this planet can gather enough gas and dust to turn into a star.

<comment><USER16> If its trajectory takes it through a nebula at some point during the universe's lifespan, I would think it should be possible.

By that time, our species should either be long extinct or have evolved into vaguely godlike space-beings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Would anyone like to explain why this planet would have a temperature of 400C (I was picturing it being really cold)? Is this because of its mass/size, more related to its gaseous composition or both?

<comment><USER13> It's a brown dwarf: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFBDSIR2149-0403>

<comment><USER18> I think that the news here is that is has been determined that it is _not_ a brown dwarf. See the paper[1] for more details. Though I'm not sure why the distinction between giant planet vs cold tiny star is so important.

[1] <http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.0305></comment></comment></comment>


SPDY Review by Opera Software - <AUTHOR> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2012AprJun/0498

<comment><USER2> Another dirty little secret is that WebSocket does not (yet) work over SPDY, despite the fact both protocols essentially originated in house at the same company.

Both are effectively hacks on existing well established protocols, but both affecting different layers. With WebSocket, you cannot use your tried and tested HTTP parser. With SPDY, you cannot use your tried and tested SSL implementation. With a little bit of foresight, implementation of both might have involved use of only SSL Next Protocol Negotation (SPDY's approach) and a completely separate, orthogonal SPDY/WebSocket parser. This would also remove some of the more "innovative" features of WebSocket (Sec-WebSocket-Key and that magical fixed UUID).

This is a testament to how heavily rushed both protocols were, and the kind of thing that could be avoided with a more strongly community lead process, which was missing at least in the early stages of WebSocket. I have no idea what it was like for SPDY, but given that the "innovative" header compression feature somehow survived, I'm guessing not good.

<comment><USER3> "Rushed" is the wrong opinion to have about it.

What's impressive is that at _no other company_ you could wake up one morning and say, "HTTP is slow, so let's change that." Google, amazingly, can do stuff like that, and I'd rather them ship early than not ship at all.

(Well I guess Microsoft could have done it but they would have screwed it up like every other net technology they introduce and then we'd have two internets or something worse.)

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure it's fair to say that Microsoft has "screwed up" every technology they've had a hand in. Ajax, notably, is a Microsoft invention. What I do think is a fair statement is that Microsoft has historically been slavishly backwards-compatible _even with obvious design mistakes and implementation artifacts_ , whereas the other two 800-pound gorillas (Google and Apple) have a mantra of never keeping legacy tech around when it can safely be replaced. The latter results in cleaner technologies; the former results in longer- living technologies. As a programmer, I prefer the Google/Apple take, but it's worth noting that Microsoft's variant has a clear advantage for the user in at least the short-to-medium term.

<comment><USER5> _Ajax, notably, is a Microsoft invention._

To put that into proper context, XmlHttpRequest was a hack by a _single person_ at Microsoft -- with zero input or coordination or working groups or long term planning -- on the MSXML team to do a favour to the Outlook team. Further it could only happen because of ActiveX, and paralleled various other light request tools that existed at the time.

XmlHttpRequest is a great demonstration of a hacker getting a solution out there.

EDIT: Downvotes? I am intimately aware of how XmlHttpRequest came into existence, having been closely involved with its birth, so if someone has some correction to add, please add it. But in no universe does XmlHttpRequest vindicate Microsoft on moving web standards along. Their contribution was unintentional and largely accidental.

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't down-vote your comment.

During my interview with that team, one of the kids proudly took credit for the span tag. A weekend hack. Committed the code and shipped it. No review. SOP.

Being more standards-minded at the time, I wanted to throttle the kid.

With the benefit of hindsight, I see that all the jitter and experimentation was pretty much ideal. If a feature proves useful, other browsers may adopt it, and it may become a de facto standard.

<comment><USER7> And if it didn't, it still stayed in and caused one of a thousand incompatibilities used by masses of clueless people around the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > While the concerns is valid, flow control looks like overkill to something > where a per-channel pause control frame could do the same job with less > implementation and protocol overhead.

Coming from messaging world I can say: nope. "Pause" frames are a very, very bad idea and lead to more problems than they solve. Windowing is much better engineering choice.

> Also note that TCP provides the URG channel for exception messaging.

Which doesn't work.

> 2.6. Push ... The client has the option to read and discard this > information, but that may be a costly waste of bandwidth.

It's worth noting that caching and Push don't play together.

<comment><USER9> All your assertions are unsubstantiated. I'm not saying they're wrong, I'm just pointing out that you haven't explained any of your claims. You needn't go to any great length to cite sources, but a sentence or two of facts or explanation to match each assertion would make your post more useful to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The biggest takeaway I get form this is that Opera has done this before but never shared it with the outside world. At a minimum we know that the kind of speed up SDPY proposes is possible and apparently used in production systems.

<comment><USER11> It is well known that Opera has done a lot of work in this area: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_Mini#Functionality>

Of all the parties Google should listen to for SPDY feedback, Opera is probably the top of the list. It looks like Opera took it quite seriously and shared a lot of good work with us all, and I thank them for it. I'd say their point about the asynchronous headers is one that requires serious addressing ASAP. For one example, is it valid to push down a header redeclaring the encoding of the response at the very end? What would that even mean? It's a good point.

<comment><USER12> There's a big difference between having a closed, proprietary protocol and releasing something as open source with a public spec.

<comment><USER11> I'm having a lot of trouble with people imputing argument to me I'm not making this week. My point is that this is a known thing that they have this experience, not that Opera Mini solves anything else, and that their experience is highly relevant.

<comment><USER12> Sorry for not being clear. I completely agree that Opera's experience is relevant and useful. They have done some great work on optimizing mobile web performance and it would be fantastic to draw on that expertise to make open standards which everyone can benefit from. However, don't forget that SPDY and related technologies create a problem for Opera, which is based on a closed protocol and ecosystem. Personally, I believe in an open web based on open technologies which can be implemented by anyone. Without releasing code or a spec, it's easy to take a position that your approach is better - since nobody can scrutinize you to prove otherwise.

<comment><USER11> Where do you see them claim their approach is better? Preferably with quotes.

It seems likely but I can't prove that behind a couple of statements like "As defined the feature is not powerful enough to push non-request related content (such as new RSS items)" is the fact that their approach does do it (and possibly had to add it on later only after they discovered it was a problem), but the document is very carefully written strictly as an examination of SPDY, with no braggadocio I can see at all or any trace of marketing beyond the initial statement of "Hey, we've done some stuff and here's some observations we are in a position to make".

(Again, my compliments to the chefs.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems like a lot of the issues they bring up would be addressed by using SCTP as a transport instead of TCP. Why aren't we moving in that direction?

<comment><USER14> There are billions of dollars worth of ASICs in the wild designed to accelerate processing TCP.

<comment><USER7> There were billions of dollars worth of silicon in the wild designed to execute PDP-11 microcode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > 2.5. Asynchronous headers ... While this is already possible to do with > chunked encoding trailer, it is not a feature in popular use.

Can anyone point to a working example of this use of a chunked encoding trailer? It seems like a solution to the primary problem that came up on the discussion of HTTP Streaming: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4042247>

> And if it for instance needs to redirect the user, it can't change the > status/headers to a 302/Location if it's already ...

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I went down this road too. It looks like a good way to handle exceptions during streaming, but browser support is essentially zero.

<comment><USER17> Does it work in Opera?

<comment><USER18> Reinterpreting content? Nope. Opera (and only Opera) does anything with them — they're available through `XMLHttpRequest`.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> They sound defensive. That's probably a good thing.

Can someone explain how Microsoft's S+M proposal differs and how well it would work in the real world with proxies, firewalls, NAT etc? (I'm being lazy and haven't read the paper)

<comment><USER20> The biggest difference between SPDY and Microsoft's proposal is that Microsoft's proposal is only theory at this point. The SPDY proposal has dozens of independent implementations behind it and 3 years of operational experience.

I'm not trying to dis the proposal; just point out that it is in its infancy. To jump start it, Microsoft started with SPDY at its core, but changed the syntax.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Great read. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER22> "so lots of heuristics has to be applied"

I would think if I was going to submit something to W3C I'd consider asking someone to proofread it.

<comment><USER4> It's a 2200-word document written by someone whose native language isn't English, and there is a single verb that doesn't agree with its subject. Since that's the only actual complaint you appear to have about the document, I'll assume you agreed with the very well reasoned, well researched viewpoints therein. Overall worth reading, I'd say.

<comment><USER22> still working my way through it, but was certainly put off by a lack of respect for the language it was written in.

<comment><USER23> Opera Software is located in Norway. Let's see how much "respect" you have for the language if you have to write in Norwegian.

I bet their English is better than yours. You didn't even start the first word using a capital 'S', so you have a mistake already when writing a single sentence.

<comment><USER24> Random pedantic fact: Martin, and several of the listed contributers work in our office in Linköping, Sweden.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Shopify is next in 37signals' public customer happiness report card movement - <AUTHOR> http://www.shopify.com/blog/3314452-improving-customer-support-with-the-shopify-happiness-report

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know if/when it will be open sourced? I'd love to contribute/test it in my product

<comment><USER3> 37signals use ZenDesk for customer support, so I think this hooks into the ZenDesk API somehow.

I thought we might see this as a product in the future, but I'm not sure how it might happen right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm happy about this, and let me clarify that I love shopify and their product. However, I think they might not be aware of a disconnect in their support offering (which hopefully this would make more obvious). I've had multiple weeks go by without any response to my emails and posts on their forums. (Other times, I've gotten responses in 24 hours, so it's not consistent). I hope it's because they are so successful that their support team is being crushed under the weight of their growth.

<comment><AUTHOR> All cards on the table, we have struggled a bit under the growth. Yes, first worlds problem, I know. Shopify is a very complex product and in many cases it's our customer's first foray into the world of building a company.

We want the support and guru team to act as a kind of virtual assistant and be with our customers every step of the way. Like any company sometimes we don't get this right and have to change stuff.

\- tobi (Founder)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's the 37signals one for comparison: <http://smiley.37signals.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Direct link to Shopify's <http://smiley.shopify.com/></comment></comment>


Stross on: Some notes on the worst-case scenario - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/02/some-notes-on-the-worst-case-s.html <comment><USER2> This is a great/disturbing read. Stross can definitely connect some dots to make a compelling argument.</comment>


Companies headed by introverts performed better in a study of thousands of CEOs - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/748741/companies-headed-by-introverts-performed-better-in-a-study-of-thousands-of-ceos/ <comment><USER2> An effect size of 2% is pretty small.

Very curious as to what time period we mean here.

Some other confounding variables:

1\. introverts happen to be more common in the industries that did well during this study. (say media vs. energy)

2\. a few highly extroverted people might be throwing off the whole study

3\. the effect size is so small it could just be significant at 95%. Can we check 99% confidence?

<comment><USER3> Not only that, but even if we were sure it had a moderate effect on _all_ companies, it still may be the case that particular industries will be better suited with extroverted CEOs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> survivorship bias. introverts have to be better to become CEOs in the first place.

<comment><USER5> That's not really survivorship bias.</comment></comment>


IPv4 Flag Day on February 1, 2030: check your servers - <AUTHOR> https://ipv4flagday.net/ <comment><USER2> A private initiative. No support from vendors, ISP, etc.

<comment><USER3> It's a joke. The site was registered yesterday.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Handy .gitignore generator - ahmed-taj https://github.com/ahmed-taj/handy-gi <comment> ahmed-taj Hello,

This is my first npm package, my main purpose was to learn Node, then I thought it might be helpful to somebody.

Feedback is appreciated!</comment>


Tell HN:  Eliminating voting on submissions to Hacker News. - <AUTHOR>

Why not link to HN submissions instead (e.g., from your twitter account, home page, etc.) and rely on Google to rank HN submissions?
The HN front page could be obtained using something like this:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&esrch=FT1&tbo=1&tbs=qdr:d&q=site:news.ycombinator.com+%2Bhacker&aq=f
P.S.  It seems that PageRank is not used in Google site queries unless they also include a keyword. <comment><USER2> The PageRank method would basically mean that I don't get to vote on submissions. I detest twitter, and I don't have my own blog -- neither of which prevents me from upvoting stories based on the HN guidelines (at the moment).

I just don't see how the linking power of the submitter should have anything to do with their voting power on this site. With your algorithm, the webmaster of a popular celebrity gossip site would have vastly more voting power than I would. Is that what you want?

</comment><comment><USER3> That's a crap user interface.

You think that to vote on HN I should spam HN to my readers? Note: I have to post a link to HN, not the interesting link I want to vote up.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Note: I have to post a link to HN, not the interesting link I want to vote up._

The discussion about a link on HN is often interesting. Why not link to it?

<comment><USER3> The discussion on HN is not always interesting. I do not want to direct my readers to dull discussion.

Additionally, I often want to upvote links that don't have any discussion yet --- and perhaps won't ever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People vary in their access to external sites that can link in here. Not everyone has the same Google Page Rank on sites they control.

But I'm happy to accept your suggestion not to vote on this submission. It is an interesting idea.

P.S. You could have edited that example Google search string some more. (Maybe you will after you see this comment.)

<comment><AUTHOR> _Not everyone has the same Google Page Rank on sites they control._

People who have established a reputation online will have greater voting power. Why is that a bad thing?

Also, letting Google take care of ranking would make spamming difficult without constant human intervention.

<comment><USER5> I'm interested in collective assessment of the story quality rather than the selection bias created by a well-known poster. For example, Seth Godin is quite famous but what he does isn't my cup of tea; if he retweeted HN submissions his favorites might consistently float to the top, but I would probably not like them, and might start avoiding the highest-ranked stories out of fear that they appealed more to his taste than to mine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I much prefer the current interface.

</comment><comment><USER7> How would new people get known? HN is a great place for that.</comment>


Is This the Birth of the Copyright Troll? - <AUTHOR> http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202466627090

<comment><USER2> > "My hope," says Hinueber, "is we will raise awareness of copyright laws, > ..."

Preach it brother, I sincerely hope that the general public becomes aware of current copyright law. Because if they learn about the extremely egregious, one-sided laws that have been payed for by copyright holders they might do something about it.

<comment><USER3> This was exactly my thought. Copyright holders might not like the results if it winds up codifying the way people currently feel about copyright law.

Of course, given how apathetic people are, it probably won't happen. I'm still amazed that the RIAA was allowed to get away with nationally sanctioned extortion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How much of this would become a non-issue just by requiring the losing party to pay all costs? The way it stands now is really just blackmail. Sure you can spend $100,000 to defend against a frivolous claim or just $5,000 and everything goes away.

I have been in that exact situation. Probably the most frustrating thing I have ever been involved in.

<comment><USER5> Seems to me these people are all in the wrong. The way it's described in the article, these were people who reproduced whole articles on their website. Like it or not, this is contrary to current copyright law (and to add my opinion, as it should be). Even if they would've challenged the suit they would've lost. Standing up for your legal rights is not blackmail.

<comment><USER6> They were in the wrong, true, but a simple takedown request would have cleared that up if this was about copyright. The bone of contention is that this fellow has set up a company designed to buy up rights and pounce on violations for profit, regardless of whether the infringement was malicious and without notifying his victims that they were in the wrong. Most of the people he sued appeared simply ignorant of the law.

While he may be operating within the law, a world where relatively small mistakes result in four-figure lawsuits without any opportunity for making amends isn't one most people would enjoy.

<comment><USER7> Takedown requests are for companies like YouTube where content is illegally uploaded by a user. In this instance, the site owners clearly stole the intellectual property themselves. This is plagiarism, plain and simple, and the DMCA does not (and should not) protect it.

I may be biased because I'm a published author, but if it takes a guy like this to hammer plagiarists I'm all for it.

If you want to use someone else's writing, ask them for their permission and get it in writing. That's been the law and custom since time immemorial.

<comment><USER8> The article says many of the targets are discussion boards, probably where users posted the articles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love the quote at the end: "It's like setting a hungry wild pig loose in a china shop to find a piece of bacon," Randazza said. "It'll get the bacon, but it will destroy everything else in the process."

I wonder if the reference to cannibalism is intentional :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone with a background in law know how easy it would be to automate copyright infringement suits? It seems like the logical endpoint of professional IP exploitation companies like this is an entity that identifies violations, files lawsuits, and settles them with a minimum of human intervention. Software already exists to detect copyright infringement and file takedown notices; it seems like automatic lawyering is the next logical step.

<comment><USER10> You're doing it wrong; the purpose of mass lawsuits is to _create_ business for lawyers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> After reading more about this, it sounds like they are going after sites who have not followed requirements to get safe harbor under the DMCA... specifically registering correct contact info with the US Copyright Office and clearly posting contact info on their site.

</comment><comment><USER12> _using a proprietary technology that he won't discuss_

Er, google with quotes around key phrases?

That is the kind of guy that will end up with contempt of court jail time someday when he tries to lecture a judge.

I wonder what percentage of his lawsuits were actually fair use or could have been modified to meet the requirement.

<comment><USER13> "Many targets of the Righthaven lawsuits are political blogs and discussion boards, both liberal and conservative, which have posted content—nearly always entire articles—written by Review-Journal reporters."

I'd be curious to see the percentage as well, but those cases clearly aren't fair use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet."

\--Mark Twain

<comment><USER15> "Only one thing is impossible for God: To find forgiveness for people who think other people's hard work and effort are their's to take"

This, at least, is backed up by the 10 commandments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What are the requirements for a legally upholdable copyright? If I write a paragraph of random words and apply a Creative Commons license to it, can I require anyone who uses that sequence of random words to adhere by the CC license going forward? Is it more involved than that?

<comment><USER17> I think you have to register a copy with the Library of Congress before you can actually sue anyone, and can't collect damages for anything that happened before you registered.

<comment><USER18> In the UK at-least, there is an automatic copyright entitlement granted on anything you write / create which is deemed copyright under the limits set out in law.

"Copyright is an automatic right and arises whenever an individual or company creates a work. To qualify, a work should be regarded as original, and exhibit a degree of labour, skill or judgement.

Interpretation is related to the independent creation rather than the idea behind the creation. For example, your idea for a book would not itself be protected, but the actual content of a book you write would be. In other words, someone else is still entitled to write their own book around the same idea, provided they do not directly copy or adapt yours to do so.

Names, titles, short phrases and colours are not generally considered unique or substantial enough to be covered, but a creation, such as a logo, that combines these elements may be.

In short, work that expresses an idea may be protected, but not the idea behind it."

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works License.

Copyright © The UK Copyright Service. Source:www.copyrightservice.co.uk

<comment><USER17> Yes, everything is automatically copyrighted. But there is some sort of enforcement action that you can only take after you register, I'm not entirely certain which one (suing in general, going for statutory damages, ...).

So my understanding is that it goes like

        1. create something, get automatic copyright
        2. someone infringes, you send a nasty letter
        3. go register with the government
        4. sue the infringer to make them stop or buy a license (assuming they ignored the letter)

or

        1. create something, get automatic copyright
        2. go register with the government
        3. someone infringes, you send a nasty letter
        4. sue the infringer to make them stop (or buy a license) *and pay damages* (assuming they ignored the letter)

where without automatic copyright it would go like

        1. create something, forget to file for copyright
        2. someone uses your work, you send a nasty letter
        3. that someone tells you to STFU

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I hope someday we as a society can shift from the idea of "ownership" and "creation" to one of "contribution" and "discovery". Is anything really "invented", or rather pulled from the set of "things that can be"?

I also believe part of the original intent of original US copyright law was to promote progress by rewarding discoverers' contributions. To be in a state that we are now, where we are actually stunting discovery with ridiculous IP laws, is quite sad.

[Edit: Not sure the reason of the downvotes?]

</comment><comment><USER20> Like someone already said, his software that he's gloating about is probably pretty simple. Crawling the web somehow. Any chance that the reverse could be automated? Write the same type of crawler that can let people know this guy will be coming and exactly how to modify their stuff so that they'll be just inside the "safe harbor" laws? Whatever those are?

Maybe just a pipe dream, but sounds like a fun way to spend a weekend, and such nerd heroics are the stuff that dreams are made of.

</comment><comment><USER21> _The_ Copyright Troll? No. It's old hat to ASCAP & BMI.

</comment><comment><USER13> > Many targets of the Righthaven lawsuits are political blogs and discussion > boards, both liberal and conservative, which have posted content—nearly > always entire articles—written by Review-Journal reporters.

What's the problem there? If people are reproducing entire articles, they're clearly operating outside of fair use, and _ought_ to be paying licensing fees.

</comment><comment><USER22> Was the site just HN'd or article withdrawn? "Error getting pubarticle, Please call the system admin."

<comment><USER23> It works for me. Try again?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I, for one, welcome the copyright trolls. It can only quicken the complete reform of the copyright/patent system and the partial or complete destruction of the "intellectual property" industry.

<comment><USER25> Please clarify: are you saying you reject the concept of intellectual property, or just the industry that has grown up around enforcing intellectual property laws?

<comment><USER24> I reject the concept of "intellectual property" as unconstitutional. Read the copyright clause carefully, and read the letters of Thomas Jefferson on the issue in particular. There is no provision for treating ideas or expressions as property. _Limited monopoly_ for the _original artist or inventor_ was all that was being granted. Otherwise: Congress shall make no law -- meaning that if I tell you a joke, you should be able to repeat that joke without me coming to claim that you owe me money and potentially jail time because you "stole" something from me.

<comment><USER7> Using The Constitution as justification for an opinion is roughly on par with using the Bible, The Koran, or Beowulf. This is a document that says that slavery is ok and a black man is worth exactly 60% of a white man (but gets 0% of his votes).

My main criticism of the American educational system is that it instills the sort of hero worship that makes otherwise intelligent people use a piece of paper written by people who believed in witches and didn't even know what an atom was as the basis of an argument about intellectual property in the digital era. I expect it from Sarah Palin, not from Hacker News.

On the other hand, we wouldn't get awesome satire like this without it: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbRom1Rz8OA> . NSFW.

<comment><USER3> For those of us in the US, the Constitution is the basis for the law of the land. To ignore it would be ridiculous.

Ad hominem attacks from somebody who such a strong admitted bias towards copyright just makes you look desperate. Many published writers have shown that they can get by without copyright.

The problem is not copyright, which, in and of itself, is fine. The problem is when copyright moves from a balance between the creator and society as a whole to being only favorable for the creator.

That point (which we are at, IMO) is the point the laws need to be shucked, and that will happen as a result of people ignoring the laws until government decides to make people legal again.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't suggest ignoring it exactly. It's relevant when determining whether or not something is legal. It's just not relevant when determining whether or not something should be legal. It's a logical fallacy (called an appeal to authority).

I was not making any attack against the author personally, especially since I don't know anything about him. I also don't have a strong bias towards copyright. I believe that there has been a clear progression throughout history of protection from theft (of both the tangible and intangible) being followed by innovation and wealth creation, and therefore that the idea that copyrights as a class should be abolished is naive and shortsighted, but that's not really a bias toward copyrights as they exist currently.

I also believe that in any functioning copyright system, litigation will be the best (and for the most part, only) method of enforcement. And that the word "patent troll" is an ad hominem attack meant to discourage rather than encourage discussion about a complex topic typically used by people who don't even remotely understand it.

You never get coherent arguments like that from people who support the abolition of all IP. All you get are appeals to authority, name calling, and the occasional "Cory Doctorow makes his books free and still makes money."

<comment><USER24> _there has been a clear progression throughout history of protection from theft_

There is no provision in the constitution for the treatment of ideas as property, and the guys who wrote it explicitly disdained that idea. That isn't "appeal to authority" -- I'm merely pointing out that the document which is the foundation of our country forbids the laws we currently have. If you want intellectual property, amend the constitution.

 _the word "patent troll" is an ad hominem attack meant to discourage rather than encourage discussion_

It's a description of a person/company that uses the patent/copyright system in ways that are against the very purpose of the laws that allow it: to encourage innovation and creativity. Patent and copyright trolls discourage it, and do nothing to improve artistic and innovative environments. "Troll" does not mean "ugly guy who lives under a bridge"; it's meant to indicate someone who trolls around looking for juicy litigation opportunities so he can cash in.

 _You never get coherent arguments like that from people who support the abolition of all IP_

Never? I'd suggest you haven't read much, but how about this argument: it's illogical and unsustainable to pretend that ideas are physical objects. "Intellectual property" industries such as book publishing and music sales were actually about selling the physical media; the means to create such things were once scarce. Now that they're not, those business models must evolve or die.

<comment><USER7> You and I read the constitution very differently if you think it explicitly forbids copyrights. According to Wikipedia "the Intellectual Property Clause and the Progress Clause, empowers the United States Congress: 'To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.'" Regardless of what Jefferson may have thought, that's a pretty explicit promotion of the idea of intellectual property (with a vague notion of how long they should last for).

In fact this is exactly what I mean by no logical and coherent argument. A 12 year old could read that and tell you that the Constitution expressly promotes the idea of intellectual property, and gives Congress control over the details. He could also Google for some Supreme Court cases, such as Eldred v Ashcroft, that have upheld it's constitutionality. I'm assuming you're not unintelligent, which means the only way you could come up with "There is no provision in the constitution for the treatment of ideas as property, and the guys who wrote it explicitly disdained that idea." is if you either never actually read the very clause you cited, or if you simply saw what you wanted to see.

Also it's troll as in an internet troll. It had a negative connotation before it was applied in this context. Whatever the derivation, it's clearly derogatory and an ad hominem.

Writers don't write because they love the idea of selling paper. As one I can tell you I'm we're mostly OK with digital distribution. See the Author's Guild's controversial settlement with Google for evidence. But that doesn't mean we want other people able to sell or distribute our work without our permission or compensation. It's not about the media and it never was, media was just a necessary evil.

<comment><USER24> _You and I read the constitution very differently if you think it explicitly forbids copyrights._

I wonder how carefully you're reading. I've cited the copyright clause several times and even paraphrased it. It does not "forbid" copyright. It creates it as a limited monopoly on a creative work.

 _the Constitution expressly promotes the idea of intellectual property_

That's a big leap. It says, in short, that since they think that advancement of the sciences and arts is important, they will allow authors and inventors a limited monopoly on their work, in order to motivate them. Nothing there implies the creation of a pretend property, not does it promote such an idea. And if you read Jefferson, who wrote extensively on the subject, you'll see that he was completely _against_ the idea of "property" consisting of ideas. Paraphrasing him from one of his letters: how can a man own something in another man's mind?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What a scumbag. Screw that asshat.</comment>


Creating lasting happiness by writing - <AUTHOR> http://www.dextronet.com/blog/2011/09/creating-lasting-happiness-in-5-minutes-a-day/

<comment><USER2> "59 seconds" is a worthy read.</comment>


Ask HN: Fastest way to make $1000 a month online? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for an easy way to pay for school that I can do part-time, that aren't scammy.I'm not looking to build a monster business, I'm looking to cover my costs of going to school. Got any bright ideas? <comment><USER3> I'm on the same road as you. I'm attending my second year at my uni and I only need ~200-300 per month to manage transportation to and from each month. I'm a programmer/designer/philosopher/bioinformatics nerd. My schedule varies too much to get a regular part time job.

I started down the path of niche sites. Devoting a ridiculous amount of time into writing articles for them. A quick glance of webmaster tools has me ranked 1-4 on some 200-1.4k+ searched keywords each day. Generally, I went whitehat on the Adsense to assure my account stays alive. Generally, I receive a click every 4000-9000 views because I try not to fool/force people into clicking ads. This hope doesn't even cover the cost of my linode. I strayed away in Feb and venture back to check in on it every once in a while.

I figured I would write an ebook and sell it through ClickBank and self advertising (twitter/facebook). My ebook was too much like a real book. The information was too specific, required too much non-general knowledge, and users strayed away once they saw the preview. Looking back: the price was too low too (gasp). I wrote nearly 300 pgs and ended up with maybe enough to cover the coffees I inhaled while writing it.

So, recently, I joined the Fiverr community. I offer up a few shady SEO techniques. I've completed 3 offers and made a whopping $12. After those initial 3, all positive feedback, I've received 0 interest.

I considered offering tutoring of some type, but that's really not my field. I'm not social enough for that nonsense. My patience with what appears obvious is also described as a short fuse.

I ended up just craigslisting most of what was important for me to make it through Aug/Sep. It really hurt to sell my server, my hedgehog, and my world of warcraft account.

What I'm trying to say is this: there are many roads to achieve money. Not all paths will work out. Most will flop, or we would all be doing it. Even if you build a webapp of some type, you still need users. Even if you write a book, you need readers. Even if you build a niche site, people ignore ads for the most part (except the people who have used Adsense and realize its somewhat beneficial). Find a basic need, fill it, they will come (if they can find it); and if your product/service is worth it: you will profit. Otherwise, prepare to sell yourself to survive for now. As in Amazon turk, some kind of free lancing, craigslist, ebay, etc.

<comment><USER4> If you're good at typing then you can try transcribing. We offer freelance transcription jobs.

<https://callgraph.biz/freelance-transcription>

The best of our transcribers/reviewers make upwards of $100 per month.

<comment><USER5> Website says $10/ah. So your best transcribers/reviewers are able to work with only just 10ah/month?

<comment><USER4> Yes, thats correct. And that is by design.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You're looking for a lot of money fast for little effort and your first lesson in school is going to be that pretty much nothing in life is that simple. Try and find a flexible part time job - they do exist, especially on campus. I worked two development jobs on campus that paid pretty well (for a student, anyway) - there was never any shortage of $12-15 an hour web development gigs here, which is more than your friends will be making as janitors or bookstore cashiers. I was also allowed to work remotely, and I gained experience and made a lot of useful university contacts this way. You can try things like contracting, but be ready for it to be a lot more work than you thought - <USER2> you have to deal with people it's almost never easy money. Whatever you choose to do, you're probably going to have to earn every penny.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here is a nifty little trick to make money online with legitimate affiliate marketing. It requires almost no technical skill.

A lot of people ask for buying suggestions on twitter like "Where can I buy $productX ?" or "Which digital camera should I buy?".

You can find them using <http://search.twitter.com/search?q=where+buy+%3F>

You can try pairing this query with different keyword combinations like <http://search.twitter.com/search?q=hdtv+buy+%3F> and <http://search.twitter.com/search?q=laptop+buy+%3F>

Looking at the search results, it seems like such questions pop up every second on twitter.

You can make money by helping those people to make buying decisions. Suggest them a good product or deal, and give them your affiliate link to buy it. If they make the purchase using your link, you'll get affiliate commission for the sale.

<comment><USER8> This is a sleek idea !

<comment><USER9> actually, twitter is already cracking down on this practice. too many automated spammers trying to shill lame products.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The fastest way would be contracting. Creating a webapp to earn that much a month could take a long time. I've had my webapp for a while and I'm not earning that much a month yet. Building a webapp is the easy part, marketing and getting paying customers is where the hard work is.

<comment><USER11> I second contracting, but I was asking him to find out what we should recommend he contract at.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The good news: It sounds like you've done a lot and are relatively internet competent.

The bad news: You're not an expert yet.

I would say you could easily do online marketing, wordpress installs, SEO, etc. Basically, anything a small business would need. The key here is finding the right small business.

Here's what I look for when contacting small businesses to do contract work:

1\. They sell to larger audience than the local area. This means having a web presence actually matters, because everyone doesn't already know about them.

2\. It might be hard to tell from the outside, but look for businesses that could potentially have their crap together.

3\. Call them and tell them you were looking at their website and saw some ways you could improve it. Ask if they'd be interested in hearing about it. IF THEY ASK HOW MUCH RIGHT AWAY...RUN! RUN! RUN! You don't want these people.

I was able to bill $35/hour on my first project like this. That works out to working about 30 hours/month (billable) to get the $1000. Depending on where you live $35/hour may or may not be the right price to start at. I just did what was considered a good wage around here and took it to a multiple of 2.5. I'd start higher rather than lower on whatever number you use.

</comment><comment><USER11> What are your skills and interests ... i.e. why not get a part-time job?

</comment><comment><USER13> May I ask why you are stating "online" in the question title? I mean, wouldn't you be interesting in developing the next firmware for a tablet for example? Aren't there any computer company in your area who is looking for a student 10h/week for automating test scenarios or remodeling one of their database? That would not only make you meet professionals but also would enrich your CV probably better than a SEO gig would.

</comment><comment><USER14> This will sound silly, but it's not _that_ hard to make $1k per month playing online poker... if you're moderately mathy and have good self-control, you can make a bunch of money.

If you don't have good self-control, then yeah, pick something else.

<comment><USER15> My roommate from my freshman year tried the online poker thing. Made $100 the first day. $1k the first month. $5k the second. Then he won some $30,000 tourney. Then he dropped out.

He's been pursuing it full time for the last 4 years. He'll go into casinos and play for 50 hours straight without even realizing it. For awhile, he was dating a 35 year old women during one of his 3-month stints in Vegas. Then her husband showed up and punched him the face. He says he made around 110k last year.

The first day we met, he said he wanted to be either a zookeeper or a weatherman. Funny how quickly your life can change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Affiliate marketing/PPC arbitrage is by far the easiest way to build passive income, especially the amount you without high time commitment or too much risk.

Find some offers to promote, make some PPC ads for them, test, rinse, repeat.

</comment><comment><USER17> Learn HTML and CSS (not hard at all) ... lots of freelance gigs for frontend layout people. You'd clear $1000/mo easily with less than 20hrs of work a week.

</comment><comment><USER18> private events/parties are and still bring quite a bit of money, and it dun take much to get started. you just need to be a bit of the social animal, fairly good at writing todo list and able to use software like eventbrite.com and wepay.com i dun see why you can't make $1k per month. just get started and perfect your skills. this may take time... :-)

</comment><comment><USER19> Try to freelance at your time and schedule. Sites like: www.freelancer.com offer plenty of opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER20> do you know objective c? I have a few iphone ideas, I have been meaning to get developed and would be willing split the revenue. email me if you are interested. steve at Stevederico.tld

also if you are in dire need for cash, you could sell a website on flippa.

</comment><comment><USER21> Porn.

</comment><comment><USER22> Pretty sure craigslist closed that section.</comment>