A stream of human generated randomness - <AUTHOR> http://rnd.farm/ <comment><USER2> Hi, author here... you can find more information about the context of this project here: [https://firstname.lastname@example.com/evolutionary-failures- part-1-5452...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com/evolutionary-failures- part-1-54522c69be37)

<comment><USER3> Hi, could you please add a websocket endpoint, so other apps will be able to subscribe to the "source of randomness"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting approach. From their Github page ([https://github.com/postspectacular/rnd.farm/blob/master/READ...](https://github.com/postspectacular/rnd.farm/blob/master/README.md)):

      We'd like to do a little experiment and see if a large (or even not so large)
      group of people can collectively generate better quality random numbers than
      an algorithm. Intuitively one would think and hope so [...]

It's not clear that individuals can reliably generate true random numbers when asked to do so (see answers at [http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/3591/how-well- can-...](http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/3591/how-well-can-a-human- generated-random-number-be-predicted)), but this is asking whether a group of people can do better than that, and is capturing mouse and keyboard keyboard input. It'll be interesting to see how using a group compares to using a single individual's input.

<comment><USER5> I would guess that the group aggregate input would be very much farther from random than the individual input. Let's see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Human behaviour is hardly random. Also requires JS.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very nicely done!

This reminds me of the tiny project I built where you basically click one bit at a time to collectively generate an abstruse binary stream:

[http://www.zeroone.io](http://www.zeroone.io)

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. However, when "recording," the `00` column is always significantly larger than all the others. Doesn't look normal... (Chrome 47, Win7 x64)

<comment><USER4> They mention this on their Github page ([https://github.com/postspectacular/rnd.farm/blob/master/READ...](https://github.com/postspectacular/rnd.farm/blob/master/README.md)):

      Since this histogram is byte based and submitted values have a variable bit length, the "00" bin (grouping bytes between 0x00 - 0x0f) will likely be the most dominant

<comment><USER8> Aha, thanks - I missed that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Still down? Been getting 502 since last week. *sadface</comment>


The structures of computation and the mathematical structure of nature (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article030107.html <comment><USER2> Either the structure of the universe is computational or the structure of the instrument we use to understand the universe with is computational: our minds.

It is difficult to distinguish the two cases in practice.

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

<comment><USER3> That's not a new idea.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in- itself](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself)

I don't think it follows that either the universe or our minds are computational. For one, we don't have a satisfactory definition of "mind", so that question has to remain open until we do.

And the universe could be "computational" in a completely unfamiliar way. It might even be humanly unimaginable.

As a wild speculation, consider the extreme case: the universe actually functions as an indivisible whole.

We use math to make predictions about repeating causal patterns, and invariably they work in a time- and precision-limited way. If the universe was a true thing-in-itself on its own terms, it could be "computational", but our models would _always_ be incomplete and imperfect.

We would never be able to understand it fully, because we would never be able to build a complete and accurate representation of its computational mechanisms.

<comment><USER2> Note how you insist on a definition for "mind", but if we are going to keep raising the bar on missing definitions let's just go for the sacred cow. What is a definition anyway?

Could you give me a definition for "definition"?

At some point you have to be content that your inability to define every single term in your vocabulary doesn't hinder your ability to use that term in practice.

All we have in way of creating/communicating knowledge is symbol manipulation. Language.

Turing machines are language recognisers, and I am comfortable using them as practically sufficient (for the purposes of conversation) models of minds.

To be sure you see my point, defining "definition" is recursive and that puts you on the computer science turf.

I am a computer. Mathematics is a language; or more precisely - it is a grammar. Our Mathematical models of the universe are computational, and since Mathematics can only prove things up to isomorphism that is as far as colourless, formal, linguistic reductionism will take us.

As for Kantian transcendentalism. Look no further than Jean-Yves Girard's work on Linear Logic, Geometry of Interaction and transcendental syntax. Is all computer science intersecting with Quantum Physics.

<comment><USER4> > I am a computer.

You are a biological system. A massive, noisy and dynamical system of interactions we can never hope to model in fidelity. You exist because of unstable equilibria and tiny little proteins pushing against entropy.

> All we have in way of creating/communicating knowledge is symbol > manipulation. Language.

We can communicate with more than abstract symbol language. A dog grows and bears its teeth. A thunderstorm communicates its approach.

We're pattern recognizers, but messy, soupy ones.

<comment><USER2> >You are a biological system.

That is the language of systems theory.

You are welcome to use the Church-Turing-Deutsch principle as a semantic.

>A massive, noisy and dynamical system of interactions we can never hope to model in fidelity.

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

We are already modeling it.

The only argument here is the degree of fidelity required or possible.

> You exist because of unstable equilibria and tiny little proteins pushing > against entropy >We can communicate...

Begging the question: why do proteins exist?

Entropy, Information, Communication. Heh! That is the language of Information Theory.

>We're pattern recognisers

Yes. That is what I said - computer/language recogniser. If there's no pattern/structure you can't parse it.

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

However you define/conceptualise us, every time you use the word "I" or "we" you are exemplifying recursion.

That is the great thing about self-locating beliefs - they are unfalsifiable.

<comment><USER5> An inspiring critique of and response to confident realist materialism founded on a certain anthropocentric presumption of Cartesian dualism. It exemplified skill—its own powerful confidence—and experience, deserving great commendation. The education born from witnessing such activity has a high aesthetic value to me.

<comment><USER2> I am pleased that it pleased you, but allow me to correct the misconception arising due to the parallax between your view of me and my view of me.

Quantum Entanglement is computation, which makes me a monist and a materialist/physicalist. Computers reify our formal languages by manipulating matter.

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/landmark-computer-science- pro...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/landmark-computer-science-proof- cascades-through-physics-and-math-20200304/)

In the language of comp-sci: Code is data - data is code. Homoiconicity.

In the language that has fallen out of fashion as of late...

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. —John 1:1

<comment><USER5> I intended for my phrase "confident realist materialism founded on a certain anthropocentric presumption of Cartesian dualism," in all its entirety, to refer to the object of the critique. I apologize if my carelessness caused you to interpret the second half of the phrase (the part after the word "materialism") as a mischaracterized signifier of you, the subject or cause of the critique. Regardless, I thank you for providing an organization of your advanced philosophy and the fundamental mechanics of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wonderfully large article, I often dig in history of CS and science but there was a lot to learn about connection between different research fields.

Thanks a lot</comment>


Show HN: iBurn 2014 – Open Source Burning Man Map and Guide - <AUTHOR> http://www.iburnapp.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey all, we put a lot of work into this year's iBurn over the last couple of weeks. We rebuilt the iOS app from scratch this year and hopefully laid a solid modern foundation for future years.

Hopefully it is useful to some of you! Even if you're not going, feel free to poke around the source code on GitHub. :)

<comment><USER2> very cool, thanks for the project.</comment></comment>


"Just" (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/just/ <comment><USER2> As someone not birthed in the unix land, I find this a lot there. "vim/emacs is easy, 'just' learn forty pages of shortcuts and magical incantations and also completely rethink the metaphors you use to interact with text"

"Commandline is way better, 'just' memorize every important command needed to do basic things and all the switches you may ever want"

I think people in general just forget the learning cliff inherent in many things. It's like we don't want to remember or acknowledge that we once struggled with something.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Just", "Obviously", "Basically", "Essentially".

Just remove these words from most prose. I essentially do this to my prose and when I'm editing others'. It basically doesn't change the meaning, and obviously improves the style and tone.

If it were obvious, you wouldn't be saying it. If you can dismiss it with "just", you're probably being too defensive.

Respect your reader. Always. These words do not convey resepct. Remove them. Your readers will love you for it, and that should be your goal.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Striking a balance" and "not making too many assumptions" requires making assumptions about where is "balance" and what is "too many" — and we are back at assuming exact same things as before.

What the article amounts to is "use language I like better in your documentation". Albeit understandable, that is wierd position to me, though, perhaps there is some science on writing techniques and language use in order to make your material less discouraging and "easier emotionally" for people (similar to the famous example of positive vs. negative feedback in learning).

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess I can understand interpreting 'just' in that way... but why would a person choose that interpretation? How about "This is the only thing you need to do, there is not additional steps after these"?

</comment><comment><USER6> Just relax and don't read into things so much. :/

<comment><USER4> Author's remarks are somewhat valid in that certain language formulates certain feelings and general emotional state in people (which is a part of how and why fiction works). Having "easy" and "just" shattered when confronted with reality and not its description by the professionals "on the inside", generates strongrer negative response that it would otherwise.

However, article's argumentation and suggestions on improving the situation make me think that author does not fully realize this or fails to state the problem clearly. Issue lies with the words used and not their meaning or omitting explanations for things that are assumed to be understood by target audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Just don't worry about it. Seriously most of programming is easy once you know the correct way to do it. Learning is the hard part. Don't read into it, celebrate that there's an easy solution to your problem.</comment>


Netflix Saves Kids from Up to 400 Hours of Commercials a Year - <AUTHOR> https://localbabysitter.com/netflix-saves-our-kids-from-up-to-400-hours-of-commercials-a-year/ <comment><USER2> Worth. Every. Penny.

I went to my parents house with my son. He was 4. They turned on cartoons. Then he said, "Dad why'd you change the show? I don't want to watch this." It was a commercial. I had to explain commercials to my son. It was at that moment I realized how much of my tv watching as a kid was commercials.

<comment><USER3> After subscribing to YouTube Premium, I had a similar revelation. Now if only we could have a google ad-free subscription which would turn off all google search and display network ads, our lives would be so much better! What if we could have cities outlaw advertising on billboards and instead collect a small tax to make up for the lost revenue, how much would our quality of life increase? That makes me wonder, if we could ever get to such an utopia, what avenues would advertisers have left to sell products to us?

<comment><USER4> São Paulo is the city without outdoor advertisements.

Random link: [https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law- secret...](https://99percentinvisible.org/article/clean-city-law-secrets-sao- paulo-uncovered-outdoor-advertising-ban/)

<comment><USER5> Seems odd to also remove what appear to be signs for retail businesses on the walls of the business itself, but maybe I'm interpreting the before and after images incorrectly.

<comment><USER6> Those are allowed but have limited dimensions, doesn't matter the size of your storefront you can only have a logo of a certain size, lots of loopholes like the McDonald's M or putting huge logos inside a glass wall but in general it is followed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Good riddance. The last time I watched TV with ads was for the superbowl, and even those nicely produced ads I found absolutely grating. There's no way I can go back to ads between tense moments in TV shows. It's like seeing the internet with an adblocker for the first time.

<comment><USER8> Similar thing here - the only time I now encounter video-ads-making-noise is at the cinema before a film, and it's becoming unpleasant enough there that I've largely stopped going to the cinema.

It's not (or not just) that they're getting worse, it's that once the familiarity wears off you can't help but see how psychologically damaging and hostile they are.

<comment><USER9> > once the familiarity wears off you can't help but see how psychologically > damaging and hostile they are.

Same thing happens to me with TV news. I used to watch them, but now, everytime someone else is watching, I can't help but see how much they manipulate the content to their convenience, and how much they blatantly lie.

<comment><USER10> > Same thing happens to me with TV news. I used to watch them, but now, > everytime someone else is watching, I can't help but see how much they > manipulate the content to their convenience, and how much they blatantly > lie.

This, one billion times. I don't care which network or show you watch, or which newspaper you read, they are all lying. They are all pushing an agenda very clearly.

I mostly make do with Bloomberg, WSJ and NPR. I can't even read the NY Times these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television."

This seems nuts to me. That is 4.5 hours a day! For a 2 year old? Who are these parents...

<comment><USER12> Childcare is super expensive. I think there are a ton of people who can't afford it and use screen time to supplement. It keeps the kid safe in one spot while you can get stuff done. Keep in mind that letting a child play outside by themselves is essentially illegal.

<comment><USER13> > _child play outside by themselves is essentially illegal._

No it's not.

<comment><USER12> I encourage you to google it. People get arrested all around the country for letting their kids play in the park across the street, ride their bike around the block, sit in the car alone at the bank, etc.

<comment><USER14> The fact that "a handful of people" in "several places" over "the last 20 years" becomes "People get arrested all around the country" like it's an epidemic or something is one of many negative, and one of the worst, things about the internet.

That and the fact that "oh and then the charges were dropped and in some cases local laws changed" is inevitably (I think purposefully) left out.

Reason.com went on a year-long bender of self-promotion and half-truthing about 3 years ago when three women were arrested in three states, claiming that "jack-booted big gubmint was comin to take yer kerdz" and plastered people's pictures and stories on fundraising materials and tried to get people to buy their "free range kids" books, as though three incidents in a country of 300 million was an epidemic.

Of course, the most confusing thing about all of this is that a Venn diagram of "people who think that the government is rounding up mothers all over the country" and "people who immediately, vocally, and vociferously criticize the government for NOT protecting the welfare of children" is a perfect circle.

<comment><USER15> This seems true, and also I think there's some nuance lost in the stats as well.

My personal experience as a parent is that my kids don't get nearly the amount of independence that I did at their age. A reasonable part of this is that I am afraid that my kids will get taken away. My preference is towards the free(r)-range style of parenting, so the ex-post stats don't convey the full effect that the small sample size of reported "big gubmint takeaways" has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In a related note, I have come to realize the different levels of quality in children's television:

\- Public television shows (PBS) stuff is so lovingly created and charming. You can really tell they had experts and creatives work side by side to craft positive stories. Even if it's not particularly exciting.

\- Super-smart and creative shows (like the first couple seasons of Spongebob, or Gravity Falls). Great shows on their own merit, super funny and creative. But they are an art first and not necessarily focused on development. Good at clueing kids in on structuring jokes or references, not much else.

\- Bland and harmless. Shows that drive a story or characters, but not necessarily lovingly made or particularly funny. I have found most of the Netflix/Amazon/Hulu stuff falls in here.

\- Colorful garbage. It's a lights and noise show, with huge focus on licensing. Cartoons of my era are particularly susceptible to this (Dragonball Z, Yu Gi Oh, Transformers, etc).

<comment><USER17> Gravity Falls -- yeah! I can't stand Spongebob, but are there other shows like GF?

<comment><USER18> Haha, saying "I can't stand Spongebob" makes me think of someone trying to critically review episodes of Spongebob Squarepants for its literary merit.

<comment><USER17> heh

for me, it's like dora the explorer -- just lots of noise, triggering some visceral response in me of "turn it off now, mute it, make it go away" akin to many people's aversion to certain forms of advertising, or nails on a chalkboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What a terribly thin affiliate site? How'd this get front-paged? Why aren't we linking to the study instead of the summary of the study?

[http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/tv](http://www.med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/tv)

<comment><USER20> The article is a thin layer, I agree, but it adds the bit that people are mostly responding to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Netflix puts the ads directly inside the shows they control themselves. This way no adblock can censor them, and Netflix can prance around pretending they are saints for not showing ads.

Example "Hey let's call an uber" says character A.

"I watched X on netflix yesterday" says character B.

<comment><USER2> This is ALL over so many shows on cable TV. It hit me one day when watching bones. Two characters had a conversation about the features of their "awesome" car.

I also recently saw this on "A million little things" there was an absolutely useless shot of a main character opening the trunk of the car with a foot wave. It was so over done and out of place.

<comment><USER22> I think I know the exact scene you're talking about in Bones, it was a super obvious advertisement. Car starts making beeping noises "Why's the car beeping?", "Oh, it's the new lane assist feature in my Toyota Prius. It lets me know if I'm starting to drift across the lane because I'm distracted." Then they get to the destination and they show off the automatic parallell parking.

<comment><USER21> Everything in the new Jurassic Park movies is mercedes. Even the weird sphere- car thing is made by mercedes. There is also a prominently featured starbucks in the dinosaur park.

The movie is aware of how ridiculous is getting and a character says "Verizon Wireless presents The Indominus T-Rex!!!". I guess the writers took a jab at the producers and their deals.

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>

But the worst was in the recent Jim Jarmusch film, where Adam Driver says "You can order it and it will arrive with free 2 day shipping". In a Jim Jarmusch film, one of the most respected "underground" movie directors of our generation!!! But his movie was funded by amazon studios so.. no surprises there.

Someone should really make a "product placement in movies" hall of shame and get internet famous.

<comment><USER23> Not exactly a hall of shame, but you might have a good time looking through [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ProductPlacement/Live...](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ProductPlacement/LiveActionFilms)

<comment><USER24> Those were quite entertaining to read through!

It really made me think that not all product placement is created equal. Sometimes there are products that don't serve a purpose just sitting somewhere really conspicuously, but something like the Snack Packs in Billy Madison never once struck me as a product placement, they just seemed like a goofy thing that a kid would get really worked up over, and it ended up being one of the most quotable lines of the movie.

And that got me thinking about product placement in general, and how much stuff on that list is just products being on screen, period. I'm sure none of that ever happens on accident, but at least for me personally, it can contribute to the art to have a certain brand be present (like the Wayne's World example).

In my own life, there are brands that evoke specific feelings like road trips, or sporting events, or drunkenness, or LAN parties, or childhood in general and seeing a generic bag of burgers on screen doesn't have the same effect as seeing a bag of McDonalds... I mean, it doesn't really matter and this is all silly conjecture, but people's reactions to seeing real life brands on screen are quite interesting!

<comment><USER25> I actually find it a bit weird to watch something nominally set in the real world where everything is conspicuously covered up, and they get coffee from Generic Grey Cup, their computers from NoBrand Aluminum Cases, their fizzy sodas from Vaguely Red Can Corp., their cell phones from The Unbranded Glass Slabs Conglomerate, etc. In real life, there are some brands around. But in real life, nobody spontaneously rhapsodizes about how awesome their monitor is, or at least, not very often.

<comment><USER26> My monitor _is_ pretty awesome, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is great but if your child is watching so much Netflix that 400 hours worth of commercials are avoided, maybe your child is watching too much? Go play with Legos or do something interactive...

<comment><USER28> Well, are we assuming they're spending those 4 hours watching TV passively? Maybe they are. Or maybe they just like to have it on while they do other things.

I know my own kids tend to have Netflix on all the time, but are also playing games, making art, talking to each other, doing chores, etc.

I myself have it on for many hours a night, but I spend almost no time sitting in front of the screen. (Sundays have been an exception for GoT.) It just makes doing dishes, cleaning, and laundry so much more bearable.

That's what these studies always seem to fail to address. The assumption is if the TV is on, you must be staring at it. And that's simply not the case.

<comment><USER27> I didn't think about this, and what you stated describes me as a child-- I had some access to TV but preferred to do other things (namely Legos) while it was turned on.

But I have a very active mind. My fear is that many children will actively consume media rather than passively consume. A major part of the issue probably depends on how parents teach their children to watch TV. This issue needs more investigation because not all TV watching is the same. My fear is that not all parents are as mindful as you or mine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television.

This seems nuts to me. That is 4.5 hours a day! For a 2 year old? Who are these parents...

<comment><USER29> Average parents?

<comment><USER30> That just can't be the average. That must be the very top of the curve. For it to be the average, with the very bi-modal distribution coming from parents who have no-screens policies, the average in that other cluster would have to be like 8 hours a day. I just don't believe that's possible with any frequency.

<comment><USER29> I mean "mean" parents, not median parents. Sure, there's no-screen policy parents, but those feel (citation needed!) like a less common occurrence than "some" or "unrestricted" screen parents.

If no-screen parents only represent 10% of the total population, they're not going to do as much pulling the number down as you might think. There's no way there's an equal distribution on this stuff among between "none" and "some" so they won't weight as heavily towards lowering the curve. Also, it's a pretty wide age range. What people allow a 2 year old vs a 5 year old to do/consume is a world apart.

There's all sorts of things that go into it. I agree, without deep diving into methodology, these numbers are a whole lot of "but what does this actually MEAN"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So the average 2-5 year old spends 1600 hours a year watching tv, the WHO World health recommendation of TV for small children is one hour less TV is better.

Here is the WHO guidelines [https://www.who.int/news- room/detail/24-04-2019-to-grow-up-h...](https://www.who.int/news- room/detail/24-04-2019-to-grow-up-healthy-children-need-to-sit-less-and-play- more)

</comment><comment><USER32> For all the people living frugally here: You can also use alternative YouTube clients (e.g. NewPipe) to skip all the commercials while saving money and doing it legally.

Nice #ad for Netflix, I would never spend a cent on it knowing that they do geoblocking and limiting shows to specific countries because of agreements with other platforms, such as Sky. Instead, I would go for some third party Kodi Plugin and skipping the need of having 2-3 accounts to watch all the shows I want, freely.

<comment><USER33> I've found SkyTube and MusicPiped (a cousin of Newpipe just for music) to both excellent YouTube clients, and both are naturally available on F-Droid.

uBlock Origin with all the extra filters makes youtube.com tolerable on desktop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> 400 hrs of commercials a year? How much TV are these kids watching a day?

<comment><USER35> The article claims nearly 4.5 hours per day. I find that hard to believe... I don't know any children (in my admittedly biased sample) that watch more than an hour or two.

<comment><USER36> I know families who literally leave a tv on for the kids 24/7\. It's on during meals, it's on during the day, it's there as they are getting ready for bed. Just constantly on and droning away.

I cannot understand that behavior. Even an hour or two a day seems like a lot for a kid to me.

<comment><USER37> Sometimes having an hour of time to yourself while your kids are watching TV is a huge boon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> "The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television."

"Saves kids", yeah right. Must be just great to spend all that time in front of the tellie eaten em tater chips and drinkin that mountain dew.

Idiocracy Now!

</comment><comment><USER39> Commercials are for the mind what spam e-mail is for your inbox, you can delete them but they'll annoy the hell of you. Of course it's not a good analogy as commercials are paying for the content but the problem is the quantity and quality.

In the US I normally turn off volume when there is a commercial or avoid commercial content at all costs. However, when I visit my friends in Europe I find that their (TV) commercial a lot more enjoyable. Anybody else experienced this as well?

</comment><comment><USER40> "We're also curious, as children of the 90s ourselves, does a child who grew up without a continual bombardment of ads end up more susceptible to advertising later in life? Did those early days of being shown ad after ad for LIFE Cereal end up turning us all into advertising cynics? No data yet on this, but something we'll definitely be paying close attention to in the future."

Meanwhile, Netflix and YouTube today are 24/7 tracking and saving a record of everything a child has watched every day of every year, with no limits on how that data can be used.

Not worry. This data could never be used in a way that makes them more susceptible to advertising.

There was an image with overlaid text going around on Facebook on Mother's Day that said, "Happy Mother's Day to the iPad that is raising your child."

</comment><comment><USER41> The most jarring statement to me is that "kids 2-5 spend an average of 32 hours per week in front of a television set." That seems quite high for that age group. As a parent, I try to limit my kids to 2-3 hours of media per day on weekends and 0-1 hour on school nights--including TV and video games. Most of their screen time these days is a combination of Netflix and Xbox. I don't count Scratch programming or Khan Academy as screen time.

I try to find a balance, knowing that I grew up watching Saturday morning cartoons and playing games on Apple II, Commodore 64 and NES.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's not all downside. Commercials are a literal break during which kids might get distracted or even do a few other small tasks.

I'm not convinced that binge-watching with no breaks is ideal for anyone; let alone kids.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's true but I don't like how I can't filter content for my son. He's 4yo and is a little prone to act in real life like the characters in the cartoons do and I would like to at least temporarily filter things that have fighting in it (like power rangers) because he tends to fight his classmates (they like it, the teachers give us endless grief about it).

No way to do that and it seems like a pretty basic form of control that should be table stakes for a kids oriented service.

<comment><USER44> Yes! This all day long. I want either a whitelist or blacklist for shows on netflix children accounts. Amazon prime kidtime lets you do this for their tablets (even though the feature is very hidden), and its awesome.

<comment><USER45> Netflix permits blacklisting on kids' accounts. I've very happily used it to suppress the especially inane stuff.

(Account > Parental controls > Restrict specific titles)

<comment><USER43> That's a sad mockery of what parental controls should look like. First of all the UI is buggy - lets you select the same content twice, so if you try removing power rangers you have to remember what you picked previously. Second it doesn't allow you to set limits by profile, I don't want to remove adult stuff from my profile or my wife's, just my kid's.

Hard fail in my book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Took my 4yr old first time to Movies... he said "dont like this... can we change it?"

It was a Disney movie - but he wasnt ready to sit thro character buildup etc, and complained the cartoon was too "long". I thought he lacked patience due to watching Youtube fastcut episodes (GuavaJuice and such), then I saw him watching 45mins of a hand opening candy wrappers one by one, patiently folding it, then opening the next one. I dont know what to make of it :)

</comment><comment><USER47> Recently we stayed at a vacation home that had cable. My 5 year old asked me why Paw Patrol kept turning off and then back on. I had no idea what she was talking about until I went and watched it with her and realized that she had no idea what commercials are. Though, we don't have Netflix (or any other streaming service), she just watched DVDs from the library to get her Paw Patrol fix.

</comment><comment><USER48> Or, turning off the screens saves kids from 100% of commercials a year. Something about articles like this make me want to vomit.

<comment><USER49> You beat me to it. A lot of the comments here underscore how much better it is (which I don't doubt) without seeming to acknowledge that ads are very likely to come -- in fact, didn't they test already last year? Yeah, [https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/10/20/netflix- tests...](https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/10/20/netflix-tests-ads/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> This is a step in the right direction. Still, Netflix &c force a lot of content of their own choosing through suggestions and highlighted content, using ever invasive techniques, like auto play, to force that content on users. A service that only ever showed content that someone specifically requested would be an improvement.

<comment><USER51> To turn off auto-play, login on a computer, not Apple TV. Go to Accounts, Profile, Playback settings. For kids accounts it is different. Get into the help pages, and from there the kids profile's playback options ate available. Very confusing, only found it by chance while chatting with the support people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Just reading the comments here, people seem to be relishing the thought of having an utterly ad-free world. As some have pointed out however, advertising _can_ serve a useful purpose (see: signalling, market-for-lemons etc.).

From my perspective there are a number of issues with advertising which should be looked at - such as advertising to children, advertising of products with large negative externalities (e.g. cigarettes), and _heavily targetted advertising_ (more because of the dystopian visions it brings, and with the potential complete erosion of privacy caused by the data-collection which it necessitates). But I believe a blanket "all adverts are bad" is probably a bit much. That said, giving users an alternative to receiving adverts seems like a great alternative to the pervasive data-capturing we have going on today.

</comment><comment><USER53> The last paragraph is intriguing: "We're also curious, as children of the 90s ourselves, does a child who grew up without a continual bombardment of ads end up more susceptible to advertising later in life? Did those early days of being shown ad after ad for LIFE Cereal end up turning us all into advertising cynics? No data yet on this, but something we'll definitely be paying close attention to in the future."

I'm really good at tuning out ads online after so long seeing ads everywhere, but if I was brand new to the medium and hadn't yet learned to tune them out, would I be more likely to be influenced by them? Is that a good/bad thing? And now that I use adblock everywhere, when I do see an ad it's more annoying. It will be interesting to see the long-term effects going forward.

</comment><comment><USER54> Hold up. Are we saying the average kid is watching over an hour of commercials per day. If that stat is true (which would be around 4 hours of tv per day give or take) the solution is not Netflix but pumping the brakes on tv. That's an insane amount of tv

<comment><USER55> TV has been overconsumed since the 80s at least. When my parents grew up they only had a dozen or so stations, so if their show wasn't airing there wasn't a point to even turn on the TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> People applaud the lack of commercials because of the advertising industry's self-inflicted wound of making obnoxious ads.

Ads didn't have to try so hard to be WAY LOUDER THAN THE SHOW. They didn't have to be trying to sell obviously-terrible things ("Get StupidDrugName! <happy music> Side effects may include: death"). They didn't have to subject you to 12 identical copies of the same commercial in one broadcast. They didn't have to greedily demand an increasing share, to the point of significantly reducing the length of a show. And that's just TV...web ads have lots of avoidable crap too.

They got greedy, they made ads suck, now people have no use for them.

<comment><USER57> > They got greedy, they made ads suck, now people have no use for them.

Many figured this was the logical conclusion, absent regulation.

Of course, the industry fought the concept of regulation or even self- regulation tooth and nail.

So here we are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Year and a half ago[0] it was 230 hours. Are there more commercials in tv nowadays?

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15990559](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15990559)

<comment><USER25> My wife and I buy a couple of relatively popular TV series on Amazon to watch them without commercials. I've been watching the minute count on a "half-hour" TV series creep down over the years... 23 minutes... 22 minutes... current "best" record I've personally witnessed is 18 minutes, but stay tuned. If someone replied with a 16 or a 17 example I wouldn't be shocked. I'm wondering if the TV companies will experience some modicum of shame around the 15 minute mark.

<comment><USER58> Huh, I'm glad I don't watch tv at all. Such a waste of time and brainwash too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Shameless plug: I'm making an interactive kids' series: [https://www.featherbubble.com](https://www.featherbubble.com)

The idea is, like old-school picture books, to give space to the imagination, while introducing kids to a healthy relationship w/ technology. Hand-drawn illustrations, gentle interactivity, stories inspired by the natural world...

I'm currently beta testing the pilot episode online before distributing a fully-featured app. Feedback appreciated :)

</comment><comment><USER60> I agree that this is good, and my older child has similarly little exposure to commercials as other commenters.

I found this quote, however, a bit shocking: "The average 2-5 year old is spending over 1,600 hours a year watching television"

That is over four hours each day watching TV. And in my opinion, the quality of most of the programming on Netflix, Prime, etc. is not substantially higher than commercials. Like broadcast TV, many are just long-form commercials in and of themselves.

</comment><comment><USER61> On the other hand my experience with YouTube and my kids is without an Adblock they get all sorts of commercials. Why does my 2 year old need to be exposed to a Toyota ad?

</comment><comment><USER62> The statistics cited by Local Babysitter are ten years old, collected in 2009 by Nielsen. This doesn't reflect how media has changed in the last ten years, along with how children consume it. It would be nice to have a more updated source explaining what has changed in the last ten years, since obviously Nielsen is collecting this data.

</comment><comment><USER63> Next step- please, someone figure out how to block ads on the radio when I'm in Uber/Lyft. I find pure audio ads really obnoxious, and I really resent paying for the ride and also being subjected to some guy screaming about low low APR at his car dealership if you act now. If I'm paying for something- no ads, please

</comment><comment><USER64> Take this with a pinch of salt. Barbie™, Lego™, Paw Patrol™, Shop Kids™, and what not, have their own shows. Instead of watching a serie, with breaks of commercials, the kids watch 30 min commercials with some storie baked in it.

And then there is product placement in everything else.

Dont know if its better. It is deffinitly more "sneaky".

<comment><USER65> This has been the case for decades. These days Transformers just has more lens flare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> A hugely positive statistic. Next, calculate the savings to parents, in advertised toys that haven't been bought.

</comment><comment><USER67> It's terrifying that kids watch so much TV that they could save hundreds of hours a year by not watching commercials.

</comment><comment><USER68> Many national public broadcasting companies also do this. It's good if you can have it without the disposable income for pay tv, it's often the low incone families that would otherwise end up exposing kids to a lot of ads because of single parent situatiob, lack of hobby opportunities etc.

</comment><comment><USER69> Which then they spend watching 400 more hours entertainment with product placements. Infinite jest, this is.

</comment><comment><USER70> I haven't had cable in over 15 years. I recently tried Pluto.TV on Firestick from my usual Netflix, CBS App watching routine. I quickly realized how many darn commercials regular cable viewers have to suffer through. The repetition is insanity. _cringes in disgust_

</comment><comment><USER71> Give them time, They'll add commercials. At one time cable didn't have commercials.

</comment><comment><USER72> I think advertisements and overstimulation is going to lead to serious mental health issues.

It's already presenting with people who lose their social media accounts or followers, and that's arguably short term effects. We'll need more time to see long term effects.

</comment><comment><USER73> Even if just for my own sanity ... I like the lack of commercials and the resulting stable levels of volume.

My kids don't watch a lot of TV / screen time but when they do I want to be able to monitor it, and yet also maintain my own sanity.

<comment><USER29> Oh my god this! Why is is so hard to balance the audio between commercials and shows?

<comment><USER73> It's not hard, they don't want to do it, they want loud commercials to get your attention.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Yes, but this is offset by YouTube. My children are watching full length "unboxing" and (sponsored?) toy videos. -- Along with the worst "Disney" live action; bad music and they might be confused for NSFW.

</comment><comment><USER75> I would love to see an experiment that randomly granted people Netflix or YouTube Premium, and explore health/wealth/etc. impacts going forward.

This could also be added as feature to existing large scale longitudinal studies.

</comment><comment><USER76> I see a lot of shows have 20 mins content for 10 mins of commercials. Does this heading mean, that kids were watching 1200 hrs of TV a year? That is almost 3+ hours a day. Isn't that too high?

Note: I am not a parent.

</comment><comment><USER77> > found that kids 2-5 spend an average of 32 hours per week in front of a > television set. Children 6-11 spend 28 hours in front of a television set

What?! Is this for real? Nowhere near these numbers in my house....

</comment><comment><USER78> I don't have kids, but my sister's kids are watching Youtube, not Netflix. They're basically watching the same thing I am: product reviews, just different channels.

</comment><comment><USER79> And it also sails from one show to the next seamlessly so they have no pauses and have a hard time understanding what we mean when we say, "you can watch 1 episode."

</comment><comment><USER80> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays)

</comment><comment><USER81> Amazing for Netflix. But if we are talking about kids, lets just not forget how much garbage ideology exists in most Netflix series (or much of TV).

</comment><comment><USER82> How many hours do they spend mindlessly browsing Netflix though and not actually watching anything? And is that better?

</comment><comment><USER83> Does the article address how many hours of television do you need to watch every day to see 400 hours per year?

</comment><comment><USER84> If your kids are avoiding 400 hours of commercials a year, they are watching way too fucking much Netflix.

</comment><comment><USER85> Most of TV is one big commercial these days so I'm not sure you can really say this sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER86> it's not just TV/shows you need to save your kids from. It's books too! Almost every kids book i open up (for my 4 year old) seems to have a Pizza, Ice cream and cookies as the 3 primary food groups that the kids or animals in that book eat. It's ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER87> My kids made breakfast for Mother's Day. During breakfast, I had them explain all the steps to my wife. One of them said they opened the "Ghost man roll". Wait, what?? "You know daddy, the roll with the Ghost man on it", thinking for a moment - oh, that's the Pillsbury dough boy. A once classic American icon is now unnamed in the current generation. All thanks to NetFlix.

</comment><comment><USER88> PBS Kids is pretty good for that too.

</comment><comment><USER89> It's like being back in my childhood in the UK (commercial TV was forbidden in our house).

</comment><comment><USER90> That's over an hour of commercials per day? WTF? That's a LOT of screen time.

</comment><comment><USER91> Unfortunately it also saves thousands of hours of life outdoors

</comment><comment><USER92> Sub-headline: Kids waste those 400 hours playing Fortnite.

<comment><USER70> or Kingdom Hearts, or Mortal Combat... ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> As if their content wasn't also commercials.

</comment><comment><USER94> 400 hours of commercial-watching is not being "saved"

If Netflix and other streaming services didn't exist, kids would not be watching 1600 hours of terrestrial TV with ads

<comment><USER95> Citation needed.

There are plenty of studies showing how kids watch way too much TV or equivalents.

[https://www.livestrong.com/article/222032-how-much-tv- does-t...](https://www.livestrong.com/article/222032-how-much-tv-does-the- average-child-watch-each-day/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER96> Counter to this: Door to door salesman were the common occurrence. Now I do not know if the average person liked having people walk up there door, but how else would you sell something in competitive (arguable even un competitive) markets? Look at even ads in newspaper/magazines. One could argue ads took up wasted page space. What is the solution to advertisement alternatives in a capitalist society? (Genuine question)

I would also say this is different than restaurants who is able to sell locally or products that can be sold with media (i.e. cartoon shows that sell related toys).

</comment><comment><USER97> They'll save you from commercials but they're not afraid of producing shows that are lower quality than some of the "good" commercials.

</comment><comment><USER98> except for netflix autoplay previews screwing things up.

</comment><comment><USER99> And so do torrents.

</comment><comment><USER100> While I'm glad that kids in Netflix-only households aren't getting bombarded with advertisements targeted at children the way kids my age were in the 1980s, I can't help but suspect that these ad-free kids need to be exposed to _some_ advertising in an educational context so that they learn to recognize when somebody is trying to con them into buying shit they don't need and probably didn't want in the first place.

<comment><USER101> They learn / don't learn that skill from kidfluencers on YouTube. From what I've seen with my daughter that's a super-weaponized form of advertising compared to what I grew up in, anyone who survives Ryan and turns out halfway adjusted will have made it through a real crucible.

<comment><USER100> > They learn / don't learn that skill from kidfluencers on YouTube.

Thanks for giving me a new excuse for being a misanthrope.

<comment><USER101> LOL! It really is something to behold, this article is a pretty good rundown in what's going on (I would think I was making this up as some fringe thing, if I had not watched it first hand)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/media/social- med...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/01/business/media/social-media- influencers-kids.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER102> It's nice to see that they've discovered a profitable way to make people retarded without resorting to ads.</comment>


Navigating the WARC file format - <AUTHOR> http://commoncrawl.org/navigating-the-warc-file-format/

<comment><USER2> Wait, Common Crawl is part of Automattic? I had no idea!

<comment><USER3> It's not. The example shows them crawling a page from 102jamzorlando.cbslocal.com, which is hosted by Wordpress.com. Apparently Automattic inserts that recruitment ad into the headers of every site they host. (At least, all the ones I've checked so far.)</comment></comment>


Startup Fundraising is a Time Sink - <AUTHOR> http://paulstamatiou.com/startup-fundraising-time-sink <comment><USER2> I'm really very fond of notifo and the service that it offers is invaluable, but what I think is wrong with it is the packaging. I can understand what notifo does, but I don't think anyone else in my family would ever understand it.

If I were them, I'd pivot notifo to become a kik-like instant messenger, but with a little twist : it's the IM that webservices can send messages to. So you grow on the consumer front because people can just use it for normal IMing between friends, but then you make revenue on the back-end by selling the website to user offering (when it exceeds a certain size).

<comment><USER3> I you need to clarify your positioning, first. Then work on your GoToMarket Approach.

I think you make a more powerful Value Proposition to developers, instead of individuals. One or two home runs with wildly popular apps that choose to deliver their notification with Notifo will do a lot to drive up the number of devices with your app installed...

<comment><USER4> I think you just won startup buzzword bingo ... congrats!! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great post as usual Paul (OP).

The points raised are really good pointers for other startup companies and their approach towards fundraising, which let's not kid ourselves is one of (if not the) most important things to do.

I am sure that it is a really good product and has a lot of potential. I can easily see notifo as being one of the little tricks in a developer's bag, a framework that handles all of your notifications while you concentrate on other, more important aspects of your application.

I would agree with maxklein on the approach towards Notifo. Yes it is revolutionary and brand new technology and it did take me quite a bit to understand and comprehend what it does. The understanding was also hindered by the fact that I cannot see what it does, since I do not have an iPhone and the Android application is under development.

The only obstacle is understanding what notifo is and what notifo does. Some people will not get it but the more do, the better it will be for you :)

Keep up the good work !!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Nikos, email me - I want to follow up on something..

καλές διακοπές

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here: If you get any nginx errors on my site can you let me know here? I think I'm about to jump ship with my WP setup and move to Jekyll.

<comment><AUTHOR> what do these upvotes mean? that you approve of me moving to Jekyll or that you experienced nginx errors on my site?

<comment><USER6> I upvoted because I've been looking at jekyll myself and with your writing talents would look forward to your post covering the experience!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Paul is rapidly turning into one of my favorite bloggers. Long-form, candid, and a lot of actionable advice.

<comment><USER8> PStam has been my fav blogger since way back in his Georgia Tech days. Great insight and good journalism.

This article especially is of "PG essay" quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Posts like these make me wish a friends&family round was a viable option for me. Right now my startup is in the sort of place where most of our focus should be going to the product, it's live, but not quite launched. We have a lot of great feedback that we really want to execute on before doing a proper launch.

And on the other hand being live, but not quite launched, is giving us a lot of scaling issues. You might as well say it's becoming a bit costly to run everything ... and we can only live without money for so long. That's why we're starting to devote half of our time to freelancing, just to put food on the table. This in turn affects the execution I mentioned.

Of course instead of freelancing we could completely stop executing and go for a round of fundraising ... but surely there's a chicken&egg problem hiding in there somewhere. Thing is, we have some soft-circled angels/VC's ... but we can only handle those so fast next to executing on the vision and putting food on the table.

Ok, rant over, not really certain whether it's on topic or not.

<comment><USER10> Do you mind sharing what your product is (if not the name or URL)? Have you tried making money with your product itself, directly or indirectly? I think if you don't try to be ramen profitable, you may never be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Must be great to be in a place where getting meetings with 40 interested angels is not some kind of impossible fantasy!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your post! <http://swombat.com/2010/12/21/startup-fundraising- story>

<comment><USER11> No, thank you! If you didn't post an article worth reading and telling others about, there'd be nothing to see there! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for the detailed article, Paul. Do you have any paying customers? It's not clear from the Notifo site if you have a paid version out yet. Don't want you to spill all your beans, but it would also help to know how many total users you have (ballpark?) to give some context to your fundraising story.

</comment><comment><USER12> Paul, Always enjoy your comments and insights. Glad things are working out so well. If you are in Atlanta for the holidays i would love to grab drinks and catch up.

Steven.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the kind words Steven. Unfortunately I won't be back in Atlanta for the holidays, but there is a chance I might fly in for a few days around Startup Riot.. we'll see!

<comment><USER13> Hoping to make it to StartupRiot as well (assuming I am accepted to present). Andrew Warner and others (like me) are hoping to have an HN meetup of sorts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Pretty good summary.

</comment><comment><USER15> For what it's worth, it's only ever this bad on your first time around raising funding. Even follow up rounds for your startup are 10x easier (assuming you did what you said you'd do.)

</comment><comment><USER16> Love his app to track his mood from day-to-day. Priceless.

<comment><USER17> Hi, Jonathan,

I'm one of the developer of MercuryApp that is using Notifo for our notifications. It is the application that he uses to track his mood. We are opening up in the next few weeks, although you can request a beta invite at www.mercuryapp.com. We've got some great features coming out to make it even more useful as a tracking tool.</comment></comment>


Ind.ie Manifesto - <AUTHOR> https://ind.ie/manifesto/

<comment><AUTHOR> I've already saw people suggesting Syncthing (now Ind.ie Pulse) as an alternative to Dropbox and BitTorrent Sync. Does anybody has more experience with it? I mean how mature it is and what are the pros/cons of it?</comment>


Aaron Swartz was a key contributor to Markdown - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/#acknowledgements <comment><USER2> Going through the front page of HN today, it became clear to me how amazing Aaron Swartz was. Co-authoring RSS at age fourteen and then going on to help with the creation Markdown, even without mentioning his contributions to reddit it seems as though Aaron's influence on the web and how we use it will be profound for a long time to come.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In his own words from 2004 <http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/001189>

Something _many_ of us use every day, just like RSS

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

</comment><comment><USER3> eulogy from John Gruber : <http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/01/12/aaronsw></comment>


Greasemonkey script to show HN posts "slapped down" by moderators - <AUTHOR> http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/150452

<comment><USER2> Thanks for this, thomaspark. I had been considering writing something similar, and you've saved the effort.</comment>


Gmail users hit by software glitch - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32194202 <comment><USER2> The issue was that they let their own intermediate certificate expire, even though the leaf certificate for smtp.gmail.com was still valid: [http://www.securityweek.com/google-lets-smtp-certificate- exp...](http://www.securityweek.com/google-lets-smtp-certificate-expire)

It's good to note that many expiration checkers (e.g. for Nagios/Icinga) only check the expiration date of the leaf certificate, so you'll be in trouble if the intermediate certificate expires. However, I don't think any commercial CA will give out certificates with an expiration date longer than their own intermediate or root.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you think about it, it's not a software glitch, it's actually software working perfectly well. It'd be a glitch if the certificate ran out and the operation continued normally.

I wonder if this problem has been abused to launch MitM attacks. I bet many people just clicked away the warnings and proceeded.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't that attack be possible even without this problem?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It may not have been intentional, but I wasn't a fan of the the seeming implication in the last paragraph that this was either related to or even in the ballpark of being as egregious as CNNIC abusing their authority as a CA.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't know about anyone else, but I despise the word 'glitch'. It makes a bug sound like it only happened once.

<comment><USER7> It also makes it sounds like the defect is nobodies fault, as if it came from some external source, like sun spots or something. The description of the early healthcare.gov as "glitchy" angered me.

You glitch a radio by running a microwave oven next to it. The radio's failure to work correctly is not the radio designer's fault.

I similarly don't like the word "bug". Bug implies it wasn't always there, that it just got in somehow, snuck in through the cracks.

I try to always use the word defect.

<comment><USER8> Or that a bug literally got into the machine. It seems more analogous to edge conditions that weren't covered, which could overlap with actual defects. For example, input ranges that were "promised" to never be in a data set, but ended up happening anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here is a screenshot I took of the expired cert: [https://twitter.com/robbyt/status/584414823259181056](https://twitter.com/robbyt/status/584414823259181056)</comment>


Warn HN: The website hnofficehours now redirects to an app's landing page - <AUTHOR>

I noticed something somewhat shady today. You know a few years ago there was this website called hnofficehours where the users of HN were able to make a profile. A lot of the users currently have the link to their user page on hnofficehours in their profile.
Well the thing is that today i tried opening a specific link to a user's hnofficehours page, well i got a 404.
So what i did next was tried opening the page HNOfficehours.com and saw that it redirected to the landing page for an application.
So calling out all HNers, remove the HNOfficehours links from your profile, otherwise you are indirectly and unknowingly promoting an application which you had nothing to do with. <comment><USER2> Shady business tactics, but nonetheless the app seems kind of intriguing (not linking to avoid promoting it).</comment>


5 CEOs That Need To Get Fired - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/11/ceos-who-got-to.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Zuckerberg should be commended for his talent and vision but if you have do take out a loan to keep your company afloat because you don't have enough revenue (as was widely reported) and you are STILL not worried about having a business model something is wrong. He recites his "we are not worried about revenue for at least a few years, we just want to grow" line religiously but it seriously sounds like entrepreneurial advice crica 2006. Get with the program!

<comment><USER2> This is the modus operandi for basically every web 2.0 company. I think never before in history has there been such a large number of businesses springing up and carrying on blithely with no idea how they're going to make money.

<comment><USER3> Is there something inherently wrong with this?

<comment><USER2> I don't see anything inherently _wrong_ , really. It's just strange that, given the point of starting a business is to make money, there would be so many businesses out there running along seemingly without much concern as to revenue. If your aim is to build a large user base and flip, that's fine, but keep in mind that it's an unsustainable business model. It's basically a crapshoot.

<comment><USER3> Again, what is strange about that? There's hundreds of variations to end a chess game as there are hundreds of variations to make a business work. If you're already determined to be an entrepreneur you wouldn't be a stranger to crapshoots and experimentation.

<comment><USER2> I'm not saying that one person taking on an extreme high risk endeavor is strange. Happens all the time. What's strange is that such a huge cluster of people are doing it.

The anomaly is the multiplicity of the occurrence, not the occurrence itself.

<comment><USER3> It should be applauded. Free market. Good things bubble up and stay alive. Their personal choice in allocating their labor. Good for everyone. Blah blah. All that jazz. <3

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _investors usually move to replace founders with more experienced executives._

I don't like that at all. Captains sink with their ships, it's the most time tested adage of being a leader. The notion that investors pull out the founders and replace them with Executives I think showcases a problem with how we analyze human relations in business: people are expendable and don't matter as long as they can keep the gears turning that pad wallets.

I understand the point of business: make money. But when did it become fashionable to give up the ability to command your crew just because a petty officer comes along and says "get lost" just because he's paying the bills? Pay the bills or not, I stand by my opinion: a captain should sink with his ship.

Got a shitty founder, _teach_ him how to be a better founder and in the end you'll all benefit. Or are we all just too greedy to give a damn?

<comment><USER5> If I go the startup route, I'll do it without investors. Start small. Then earn a little, grow a little, and make smart business decisions. Repeat. I'd much rather be on a solid foundation in ten years than on top of the world in two and back on the streets in another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Right on the money, except for Dell. The company is putting money into key trend and technology. Case in point: the netbook and the 19 hour battery life laptops.

</comment><comment><USER7> I figure my thoughts are just as randomly justified/qualified as Wired's:

If Facebook replaced Zuckerberg, I bet users wouldn't be opposed to paying a monthly subscription.

I agree that the Blockbuster CEO needs out. I think he has even been quoted mocking Netflix as non threatening.

I don't know what I feel about Jerry Yang. I feel like Yahoo's situation has to be more complicated than coverage conveys.

<comment><USER8> "I bet users wouldn't be opposed to paying a monthly subscription."

If Facebook started charging a monthly fee to be a member it would die a swift death. What Facebook should do is start charging for additional services beyond a basic profile. For example: basic profile is limited to 20 photos/month, $2/month gets you unlimited.

<comment><USER9> Last time I gave some serious thought to FB's revenue problem this is what I came up with.

They'd have to find a way to sneak in a few initial tiny costs that don't abruptly cut off users who don't pay (i.e. limiting # of photos etc...). Once you get enough people with their credit card info in there, make it easy as heck (one-click) to upgrade to "Premium" or something and push the Premium site hard.

Microsoft does this with their Xbox Live service. It's so ridiculously easy to spend money on that service once they get your CC# for something tiny. All you have to do is press the X button (or something) to buy just about anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting that the article seems to be using a reddit backend. Notice the url of the vote links: <http://reddit.wired.com/ceos/..>.

It's nice to see reddit integrated into Conde Nast's other properties. I wonder what else they have in store for the technology.

</comment><comment><USER11> i have failed to understand the criteria for the list, while i can understand yangs failure, i do not think that facebook has come to an end yet as it is rather new model nobody understands.</comment>


UK 'over-reliant' on GPS signals, engineers warn - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12668230

<comment><USER2> Hear hear.

Suppose the following. Fortunately, you're in a remote bit of Australia. Unfortunately, you've broken a leg. Fortunately, you have a rescue chopper on the phone. Unfortunately, you dropped your GPS in a river. Fortunately, you know where you are, and you have a standard topographic map, so you read them a grid reference.

They won't be able to find you.

I realise that they're from the government, and they're here to help. Even so ...

<comment><USER3> I don't understand the problem. Does the map rely on a different datum than WGS 84 (which GPS uses) for latitude/longitude?

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

<comment><USER2> If the datum mattered, we'd declare victory already. Aviation GPS units use latitude and longitude, the maps use UTM, and the pilots have no way to convert. D'oh!</comment></comment></comment>


Why Microsoft Is A Dying Giant. - <AUTHOR> http://rockiger.com/en/content/why-microsoft-dying-giant

<comment><USER2> Maybe its just me, but I swear I read the exact same thing year after year. Only thing different each year is the author(s). Makes you wonder how long it takes for giants to die.

<comment><USER3> Yeah. I've always thought they'll "die" the way IBM did; still significant, still profitable, still a force to be reckoned with, just not dominating the industry anymore. Arguably, that's already come to pass, or we're very close to it. It gets easier every year to build large companies that simply ignore them. (It's always been _possible_ , but it continues to get _easier_.)

While predicting their Imminent Demise™ does get old after a while, I would point out that for years, people have been pointing out that they make all their money on Windows and Office and have failed to penetrate any other market. This has remained true. People further point out that sooner or later, those markets aren't going to be as lucrative as they once were. I think we're only now beginning to see that, but I also think it'll snowball once "I have a Linux-based system" is no more weird than "I have a Mac". (Linux and Mac both legitimize each other.) The arguments that Microsoft are going to "die" (their dominance if not the actual company) are well-founded in structural arguments about how they get to their bottom-line, not merely GPL-hippie wish- fulfillment fantasies. Without a lucrative third-front, Microsoft can not continue as the force they are today. That the argument is old doesn't mean it's not true, it simply didn't happen as quickly as some people anticipated(/wanted).

(I'd actually characterize the XBox as doing better than the article does, but it's still nowhere near profitable enough to build the company around, nor does it seem to have prospect of doing so. I can't think of anything else that could support them, either.)

<comment><USER4> Still, Microsoft office remains the supreme software suite for the office, I don't see anything on the horizon that is challenging this.

After all the hype about open office it still lacks the compatibility and efficiency of getting things done in ms office, because Windows is such a juggernaut and whether you like it or not many features are built specifically for Windows, which gives Microsoft such a gaping advantage which will not disappear until people stop using Windows, and I don't see that happening anytime soon.

<comment><USER3> "Still, Microsoft office remains the supreme software suite for the office, I don't see anything on the horizon that is challenging this."

I do. People realizing that the office suites aren't really contributing that much to their productivity and learning to use them much less, to the point where they can be replaced by commodity suites.

The real killer for getting off of Office for BigCorp is that they wrote apps in Office. This was dumb. (Excepting spreadsheets, which were actually designed for this to some extent.) These apps are moving to the web, probably with Microsoft web technologies. This is also not necessarily a brilliant move, but it's much _less_ dumb that actually trying to write a Word document that is also an app.

Secretaries passing around press releases don't need Office.

Office suite usage has been very warped by being the only game around, in much the same way the web is getting warped into an application platform, only more so. As the Office application platform is eclipsed by the web application platform, it becomes easier to get off of office.

What Office will be replaced by is simply... not Office. Not OpenOffice per se, just... not buying Office.</comment></comment></comment></comment>