Facebook Must Really Suck At Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> http://blog.eladgil.com/2016/11/facebook-must-really-suck-at-machine.html <comment><USER2> My suspicion is that it's not that Facebook sucks at machine learning, but that they are scared of public backlash when their algorithm accidentally takes a story from Breitbart and classifies it (arguably correctly) as fake news. At that point Facebook is derided as a tool of the liberal msm (after all it's run by liberal Silicon Valley technocrats), and from there eyeballs go elsewhere and Facebook is harmed.

Better for them to feign ignorance and lie to themselves.

<comment><USER3> Funny you mention Breitbart, it's one of the rare media that _didn 't_ predict a landslide victory for Hillary.

<comment><USER4> I don't have a dog in this show, but wouldn't that be quite reasonable/expected if they are skewed towards Republican/Trump?

<comment><USER5> i think the bigger question in wake of hillary's missing landslide, is whether facebook may actually be classifying CNN et. al. as 'fake' news.

<comment><USER6> Poor polling data doesn't mean you are publishing fake news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No. Google is fooled by fake news too.

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/googles-top-search-result-for- fi...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/googles-top-search-result-for-final- election-numbers-leads-to-fake-news-site/)

I have some problem with those claims that offer little to none details. Use the above link as an example, how do we teach machine to verify this news? First, we need to teach them to formulate a question, in this case, 'Who has a larger number of popular vote [as of now]?', then it needs to find its way to verify the number from reliable sources, possibly need to struggle between conflicted sources as well.

This is no trivial, if we solve this, we might as well solve the problem of understanding human language as a whole.

The mentioning of Princeton students' Hackthon project is really offbeat, if the author really bothers to look into what that project actually is, nothing more than an API mashup.

[https://github.com/anantdgoel/HackPrincetonF16/blob/master/b...](https://github.com/anantdgoel/HackPrincetonF16/blob/master/backend/imageverify.py)

Disclaimer: I worked for a major news app, and the effort to battle fake news or low quality non-trustworthy news is ever growing. While application of machine learning is promising, human, especially experienced human is still the real workhorse for this problem

Edit: Typo.

<comment><USER8> You're focusing on the content.

Look at the source. 70news.wordpress.com should not be at the top of anybody's list of reliable news sources.

Look at the topic (e.g. from simple keywords). Look at the references (urls) mentioned in the article. Look at the timeliness.

There is plenty of information available to machine learning algorithms, without even needing to touch the natural language aspect.

<comment><USER9> > You're focusing on the content.

That's the only thing you can focus on. Why should someone be punished and labeled as fake if they're on a wordpress.com subdomain? Domain is just out, even spammy or weird looking domains may end up being popular / culturally fit. You would be preventing good journalistic folks from having any type of reach if you want to test against domains names, something that arguable may go away as far as the user is concerned in the next decade.

I'm unconvinced there is anything but content that you can really go off of. Keywords are not even used in search results, why would they determine news legitimacy? Even references are not always useful.

<comment><USER10> > Why should someone be punished and labeled as fake if they're on a > wordpress.com subdomain

i don't know about "labeled as fake", exactly, but it's possible that quickly and easily acquired urls (such as a wordpress subdomain) may display a different amount of reliability (per whatever heuristic) in comparison with various established urls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The problem is much more difficult than creating a classifier. The purpose of filtering news is to control the impact, not to control the tactic. The last time Facebook issued a surge to control 'spam' posts for the same government concerns they seek to deal with "fake news" today, they took out pro-Sanders articles, censored sharing of the Snowden documents, prevented people from linking to Wikileaks, and shut down Facebook organizing for May Day protests.

Facebook regularly censors and directs conversation online around the world to the whims of various regimes and administrations, but it's just not easy "use machine learning".

The issue is that machine learning is inherently modeled to solve decision problems in spaces that separate high level 'features' from low level observations. The study and practice of machine learning thus far has modeled noise, uncertainty and complex state spaces.

However, machine learning classifiers do not themselves have a concept of adversarial data: this led, for example, to spammers who would "poison" machine learning classifiers by biasing them to learn the wrong things, so that they could get their spam through. Similarly, not too long ago, Microsoft put a conversation bot on the web that 'learned the wrong things' because people approached the bot in an attempt to trick it.

Facebook's requirement for battling unsanctioned opinions is that it solves this problem - it hasn't been solved yet. Facebook needs to continuously monitor the adapting activity and patterns of people who are trying to say things that governments and Facebook customers don't want people saying.

Basically: machine learning doesn't adapt but people do, and naive attempts to get machine learning to adapt make it vulnerable to being tricked, because classifier theory inherently has no concept of adversarial data.

<comment><USER12> umm no!...I don't know too much about this sub-field..but there are machine methods designed explicitly for adversarial data. it even has a wikipedia page! I don't know if facebook's methods implement any of this yet..but your statements about machine learning not modelling this just ain't so.

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

[http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/)

<comment><USER11> Great resources!

It's important to understand that these approaches are on the leading edge of research, and represent unsolved problems!

<comment><USER12> yes precisely! i'm sure Facebook's methods are very susceptible to these types of attacks. Hopefully they still are in 6 years and we can get jobs fixing this for them lol.

I also really recommend this book [https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying- Confessions-Manipulato...](https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Me-Lying-Confessions- Manipulator/dp/1591846285/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479519844&sr=8-1&keywords=trust+me+im+lying)

The type of attack is a lot more oldschool but nonetheless, pretty effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would help me if the author were to point more examples of what he means by "fake news". As it is, I can't really tell if he's really complaining about "Onion" style satire, copypasta with clickbait titles, evil government propaganda, or just political opinions that he disagrees with. Does a public training set exist that makes it clear what he's talking about? Does the division point he wants actually exist?

Snopes published an article yesterday asking that asks the question more clearly:

 _There is much bad news in the online world, but not all of it is "fake" (i.e., completely fabricated information that has little or no intersection with real-world events). There are also partisan political sites that take nuggets of real news and spin them into highly distorted, clickbait articles. There are sites that misleadingly repackage old news as if it were current information. There are sites that aggregate articles from a variety of dubious and questionable sources. There are sites (especially in the fields of health and science) that believe they're presenting pertinent information but are woefully inaccurate in their information-gathering and reporting. These forms of news are all bad in one way or another, but broadly classifying all such information as "fake news" clouds an already confusing issue._

[http://www.snopes.com/2016/11/17/we-have-a-bad-news- problem-...](http://www.snopes.com/2016/11/17/we-have-a-bad-news-problem-not- a-fake-news-problem/)

<comment><USER14> Here's an easy example:

[http://abcnews.com.co/donald-trump-protester-speaks-out-i- wa...](http://abcnews.com.co/donald-trump-protester-speaks-out-i-was-paid-to- protest/)

Google is probably just as easy to fool as Facebook. This was the first hit on a search for "protesters paid to protest", a story that is demonstrably fake: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- intersect/wp/2016/11...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- intersect/wp/2016/11/17/facebook-fake-news-writer-i-think-donald-trump-is-in- the-white-house-because-of-me/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_fake- news-845a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory)

Immediate red flags should be: This isn't ABC News's website. There are statements in the article like: "No one still has an AOL email address except people that would vote for Hillary Clinton" and from a made up Trump supporter quoted saying "I knew those weren't real protesters, they were too organized and smart..." and (awesomely) "I think I was paid more than the other protesters because I was white and had taken classes in street fighting and boxing a few years back".

I mean, this may well be parody, but it gets picked up as real news and he's making real money off it, impersonating a real news site, which is the point at which it cross the line from parody to fake, IMO.

<comment><USER13> _I mean, this may well be parody_

"May well be" is being unnecessarily conservative. Maybe you didn't make it far enough into the article to read the faked interview with the author of the the Snope's article I posted:

 _David Mikkelson, founder of Snopes.com, a website known for its biased opinions and inaccurate information they write about stories on the internet in order to generate advertising revenue, told ABC News that he approves of what a story like this is accomplishing._

 _"You have to understand that when a story like this goes viral, and we spend a minute or two debunking it, we make lots of money. Stories like this have helped put my children through college, buy a new car, a home and even get the Silverback gorilla my wife Barbara always wanted since she was a child," Mikkleson said._

Buried, but actually rather funny. In a way, this is both a fabulous and a terrible example. Read in its entirety, it's clearly satire. Yet I'm sure that many people never read it closely enough to notice.

Should Facebook be censoring this? No. Should they be labelling it? Yeah, it might be a good idea. Is this the sort of story that the author is referring to? I don't know, but it would be nice if he'd tell us explicitly.

<comment><USER15> Given who Snopes assigned political "debunking" to and the predicable results, you could also label this item as "Fake but Accurate", the "website known for its biased opinions and inaccurate information" is accurate enough for enough of their political items.

One things I don't get, though, is why so many organizations destroyed whatever credibility they had remaining in a futile attempt to win this election for their preferred candidate, I mean, this was an "it's my turn" race, a bit like Dole in 1996 and Romney in 2012. Especially prior to Trump winning the Republican nomination, was it _really_ that important?

Note that this goes all the way to the DNC for the party itself....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I challenge anyone to put together a robust definition of what "real news" is. This is a fundamentally unsolved problem at the philosophical level.

<comment><USER17> Reporting an event that actually happened.

How hard a concept is this, really?

<comment><USER18> Very. Prove I went to a restaurant yesterday. You could show a video of me at a restaurant, but is it from yesterday, or some other day. Is it really me there, or someone that looked like me.

<comment><USER17> You are describing the difficulty of proving that an event really happened.

The discussion is about the definition of "real news".

Two very different things.

<comment><USER19> Well perhaps that is the problem. "The news" _used_ to be about events that had happened, often several days in the past due to the propagation speed of information.

Nowadays "the news" also includes:

1\. What someone says might be happening right now.

2\. What someone says about something that happened, or which might be happening right now.

3\. What someone thinks might happen next.

None of which are necessarily true or grounded in fact but all of which are valued by the media in the race to be first with the headlines.

So perhaps "real news" could be defined as "events which have occurred and for which we have objective proof" and everything else is just "editorial".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If Facebook has a fake news problem it's not in small part because Facebook users will share fake news articles more than real news. Google's decision to not serve AdWords on fake sites is because those sites were taking advantage of the high traffic fake news generates to make money.

Fake news is popular. And the entire social economy is based on facilitating that which is popular. Because the more eyes you can drive to your content the more advertising you can sell.

While Google vilifies the website for making the fake news, they also profited by selling the AdWords those sites hosted. While Facebook says it's difficult to distinguish legitimate news from fake news, they make more money from the frequently shared fake news than the less popular real news.

The conflation of article content with advertising gives the advertising brokers a disincentive to prevent fake articles. Until readers stop clicking on the fake stories, but one glance at a typical supermarket checkout aisle will tell you that isn't going to happen. If Google or Facebook are serious about not encouraging fake news they will stop using the content of a webpage to drive the price of ads. But that obviously isn't going to happen as targeted advertising is their raison d'etre.

TLDR, Facebook has met the enemy, and he is Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER21> One person's fake news is another person's entertainment. The problem is not a technical issue. It is a cultural issue. ML cannot solve a cultural issue.

<comment><USER22> It'd be cool if I could adjust a parameter on how gossip-y or factual I want my news sources to be.

Google News seems to have something in place with the "Interested in? / Not interested" underneath some story abstracts.

<comment><USER23> Another knob I'd like would be terseness. Sometimes I want a nice, wandering, more literary piece. Sometimes I just want the facts.

<comment><USER22> That would be incredible.

The Information is an unpopular, I think even blacklisted, news source here due to their paywall. But they do a really great job writing a very terse and high signal two-sentence takeaway for each article. I'm not a subscriber anymore (too pricy IMO), but here are some recent examples:

 _Surge-Price Builder Leaves Uber_ By Amir Efrati · Monday Oct 17, 2016

> THE TAKEAWAY: One of Uber's secret weapons in recent years was an economics > professor, Keith Chen. He overhauled Uber's surge-price algorithm and made > other key contributions that helped riders, and Uber, save money.

 _How Dropbox Doubled Down on Business Market_ By Steve Nellis · Thursday Sep 15, 2016

> THE TAKEAWAY: Dropbox founder Drew Houston has come to terms with the fact > that his company probably isn't the next consumer tech giant like Facebook > or Google. That was reflected in a decision halfway through last year to > sharpen the company's focus on the business market, including shutting off > consumer-focused apps like Carousel.

I would love to have that for all tech news.

<comment><USER23> I've heard good things about The Information as well. One of the reasons they're able to do that, I suspect, is _because_ it's behind a paywall: they can pay their journalists for quality content.

There are ML systems out there for summarization. I wonder how long until the systems are good enough to provide this as well. The examples I've seen (e.g., Summly, which uses SRI tech, IIRC), are likely good enough if you just want the facts. I still want it to be well-written.

Ouch. I just checked out the subscription rates for The Information. AFAICT, you can't even see the rates without supplying your name and email address. :/

Edit to add: From other sources on the internet, it looks like subscription rates are $399/year.

<comment><USER22> I feel the same way. Maybe there's room for a small service ($5/month) where we can submit articles that might be interesting and the most popular ones get summarized in a well-written way.

I do remember the rates being hard to find as well: $39/month or $399/annual [1]. They do offer you half-price initially etc for a few months.

[1]: [https://www.theinformation.com/payment- policy](https://www.theinformation.com/payment-policy)

<comment><USER23> I've thought about something along the same lines, though more in terms of "news source/quality certification". I just don't see a way to prevent the summaries/ratings from being pirated/"re-used" elsewhere.

<comment><USER22> Hmm, well… I don't think a paywall is desirable. Maybe the summaries are free and users can pay for individual summaries that they like with microtransactions. A fractional penny up to a quarter perhaps.

<comment><USER23> Maybe that would work. Are you familiar with any successful use of micro transactions? I haven't gone out of my way to look. Something like Patreon also comes to mind, though I've only heard of that in the podcast sphere, where people have a more personal relationship with the content creator given the format.

<comment><USER22> I haven't seen one yet personally. I heard of a program Google did where users paid a flat rate, say $10/mo, which was divvied up at the end of the month amongst articles / authors each person chose. I saw the website once last year and have not been able to figure out the name or find it since.

I suppose what I meant is technically not microtransactions (mostly just used in the context of in-app purchases) but _micropayments_ [1]. I've added ko-fi [2] to my personal site but no one has actually done it yet.

[1]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micropayment)

[2]: [https://ko-fi.com/Home/About](https://ko-fi.com/Home/About)

<comment><USER23> Thanks for the links!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's not a talent problem. It's a culture/ management issue.

</comment><comment><USER25> Facebook's job is to show you what people in your network are sharing with you, filtered to what seems most likely to keep you engaged with the site. It's not to act as peer reviewers for the "news". All these people suddenly complaining about "fake news" are really complaining about the unwashed masses' content preferences and world views. Maybe the urge to complain is justified, but it's aimed in the wrong direction.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think there is also a incentive problem. Internally, from what I know, the performance of a team is always driven much how much metric it can drive, how much incremental revenue it can generate, how much more engagement this feature will drive, etc. The number of contents taken down doesn't seem like a sexy metric, so I assume no team wants to take this unsexy task.

</comment><comment><USER27> The fundamental problem is the mixing of opinion and facts into the same story combined with a complete lack of interest and care by writers in finding out what happened.

I want and will pay for a news service which only reports facts (no opinions) and which is concerned with accuracy. There are specialty services that provide this in certain niche areas, but no general service.

</comment><comment><USER28> My first reaction to this was to object to using machine learning to validate news stories, since it's very hard for a machine to go out into the world and verify that a story is based on reality. But the idea that fake news on Facebook is similar to the content farmed / bot generated / spammy stuff Google tries to eliminate, makes me think. The curious uptick of fake news over the last few months makes me wonder if Facebook either tried to, or was complicit in swaying public opinion before the election. I've long suspected that Google/Facebook technically have enough power to effectively decide an election by manipulating public opinion. But if they were going to do so, they'd attempt to do it in a way that doesn't make them look culpable. Someone should investigate.

</comment><comment><USER29> Surprised no one has pointed out Google's aproach to the problem: [https://blog.google/topics/journalism-news/labeling-fact- che...](https://blog.google/topics/journalism-news/labeling-fact-check- articles-google-news/)

They leave the fact-check to the publisher and ask them to use [http://pending.schema.org/ClaimReview](http://pending.schema.org/ClaimReview) schema to tag news as fact-checked.

Already in use by some publications. Announced almost a month before the election day (Oct 13).

</comment><comment><USER30> I think fake news is actually a somewhat intractable problem with the level of ML today... News is usually considered "breaking" and new... meaning there's nothing out there to cross-reference it with. Even if you were able to extract "facts" from an article - you might find it difficult to find any other source (that you trust) that would also be reporting those facts. It is a very difficult problem...

I think we will eventually get to a point where we can flag potentially fake news. But were still a few years away with our current technology.

</comment><comment><USER31> A question - does anyone utilize the fact observed in cognitive neuroscience in robotics, that the best learning happens in organically growing systems, not in universal systems where you run a huge batch on a clean, pre-configured state? So far I see everyone designing the structure of an ML system in advance and hoping for the best (e.g. define the whole structure in TensorFlow in the beginning), instead of allowing the system to self-organize as the learning happens.

<comment><USER22> Are you referring to _reinforcement learning_ [1] as opposed to "standard" supervised learning?

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> There is a large amount of (possibly dubious) research indicating it is possible to detect whether a speaker is lying by examining movements and changes in his face and/or body.

There has been a large amount of successful research using neural networks to classify human behaviors (facial expressions, lip reading, etc.)

Is it possible to create a system to act as a high quality lie detector?

Such software could be a poweful tool in studying crime, politics and business.

</comment><comment><USER33> When person A says something publicly that is fake and newspaper writes article quoting the person - is the article fake or not?

It's very blurred indeed.

What would probably help is extracting list of (main) statements/assumptions made and give them fact-probability score (ideally with references) - and show it to people.

But this is not trivial exercise, is it?

I mean, once we have technology that's good in doing it, well... it means we can probably rely on this AI to make 80% of decisions to run the country.

</comment><comment><USER34> Their news feed sucks big time, and its' not just a facebook issue, most social media outsmarted themselves with ML.

<comment><USER23> My (limited) experience with feeds online has been disappointing. Do you have examples of good feed implementations, especially at larger scales, such as what Facebook works at? What tech do they use?

<comment><USER22> Feedly's Today page kind of feels like a news feed, though of RSS feeds which I've subscribed to by hand. That said, I believe it's just selecting the most viewed stories over a very recent period from your most popular feeds (some ambiguity here).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Most of the other ML applications listed (driving, voice recognition, content recommendation) are somewhat easy tasks for humans, if not at scale... Reading, understanding and fact checking a news article is comparatively pretty difficult.

</comment><comment><USER36> Leaving aside the Fake News controversy, given the number of fake accounts polluting their social graph, I would say yes, FB does suck at ML.

</comment><comment><USER37> My respect for Elad Gil just dropped a notch.

<comment><USER38> Sorry that is your reaction. Will email you to discuss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> That's what they want you to think.

</comment><comment><USER40> Facebook let itself be bullied by the right.

</comment><comment><USER41> What a misleading title. The real title says "must suck at" (which probably is insinuating that they probably don't suck), and somehow it's been fabricated into this clickbait title.

<comment><USER42> We reverted the title from the submitted "Facebook Sucks at Machine Learning".

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> This angers the LeCun

</comment><comment><USER44> Ummm,considering that until recently, FB was second only to google in Deep learning, i would beg to differ.

</comment><comment><USER45> Facebook actually sucks at most things, but it doesn't matter as long as the stock goes up and it generates more revenues.</comment>


Why we should believe the dreamers – and not the experts - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/07/31/why-we-should-believe-the-dreamers-and-not-the-experts/ <comment><USER2> This is the usual journalist bunch of bolocks. Even the example they use is bad. Bell was an expert on what he did, Wester Union on the other hand in a company that delivers message. Even if a company can be considered an "expert", try are experts in delivering messages, not it the technology that composes a telephone.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a terrible article. It's cherry-picking some bad calls. Note that it's not giving examples like the experts who said "if we smash these atoms, there'll be a big kaboom" or similar. Experts giving correct or near-correct advice is the norm.

One clear example of where 'dreamers' fail and 'experts' succeed is ponzi schemes. They're very appealing to dreamers, but experts are aware of the fundamental problems with those kind of schemes.

</comment><comment><USER4> "History is littered with the failed predictions of experts."

Which are _vastly_ outnumbered by the failed predictions of dreamers. It's just that no-one expects the dreamers to be right, so all their failures are conveniently ignored.

</comment><comment><USER5> Who is he? An expert?

<comment><USER6> Well said - that me lolsnort.

(No, I know it will never catch on. But I like it. lolsnort.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> tl;dr -- people are generally bad at predicting the future, but some get lucky.</comment>


Netflix should buy the NFL Sunday Ticket rights, not Google - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/new-media/1e099600cb87 <comment><USER2> I think live sports is the last bit of programming that prevents a lot people from getting rid of cable completely.

On the other hand, sports, football in particular, are one of the biggest selling points of HDTV and the high resolution picture it provides.

If the future of watching football consists of the same buffering, crappy framerates and resolution, and all around frustration of using Youtube as it exists today, this experiment will end halfway through Sunday of Week 1.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious about your last paragraph. Certainly on-demand video is subject to buffering, but the rest of that doesn't seem to be my experience at all. We watch both Netflix and Youtube content at home on multiple clients (e.g. browesr, phones, the now-ancient Netflix app on the TiVo HD...) and while obviously we've seen the occasional network failure I don't think any of them seem to be service-specific.

Basically, watching "premium" 720p+ content on Youtube provides virtually indistinguishable quality and reliability. Is that really not your experience?

<comment><USER4> What ISP do you have? Degraded streaming is widespread these days: [http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/why- yo...](http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/why-youtube- buffers-the-secret-deals-that-make-and-break-online-video/)

<comment><USER3> It's just a Comcast line at home. But my point wasn't that video streaming works perfectly, just that I don't see a notable difference in reliability between Youtube and Netflix. They both work about the same, which is to say "well enough for me".

<comment><USER5> I'm in Uruguay, and the difference in quality between Youtube and Netflix is staggering.

Netflix is surprisingly smooth and fast and extremely good quality, while Youtube stutters awfully.

It is, of course, anecdote (and not relevant to the U.S.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Disclaimer: I worked at Netflix until the end of July 2013 but I have no inside knowledge relating to anything to do with NFL Sunday Ticket.

As many have said here, Netflix has absolutely no experience in live- streaming, which, despite the apparent similarity, is entirely different than streaming cached content. To my knowledge, the idea of doing anything live hasn't been on the company's radar. As recently as early February when we launched House of Cards, the company wasn't even set up to allow for a real- time, coordinated launch of a title on the service.

Unless something like this was being run as a top-secret, skunkworks-style effort (which I seriously doubt) the service architecture isn't at all prepare to handle live-content and there's little reason to believe that Netflix has any interest in dipping its toe into the live sports world.

</comment><comment><USER7> Has Netflix done live video on anything approaching this scale? I don't doubt that they have the capabilities to put a live streaming infrastructure together for something like this, but DTV's out starting next year and there's a lot of work to get done in that time. That would be a lot of risk.

<comment><USER8> At its peak, Netflix accounts for something like a full third of internet traffic in the US (almost double Youtube's haul).

<comment><USER9> None of that is live streaming. Netflix can only do that via cached videos at ISPs and other tricks.

Live steaming is a whole new ballgame and something Netflix has never tried. YouTube has live streamed many events such as Google IO and Presidential debates.

It would be interesting to see if Netflix's architecture is even capable of supporting NFL Sunday Ticket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I would certainly pay either company to get _Live_ streams of NFL games (with no blackouts, I hate those with a passion). I can't justify the cost of buying Cable/DTV + the $30-50 a month for the sports package but would happily pay that ~30/month during the season. NFL doesn't offer live streaming inside of the US for some daft reasons (OK, its because they get a ton from cable/DTV regardless of whether someone actually watched or not...)

<comment><USER11> You can do it this year for $100 for the whole season. Just buy the Madden 25th Anniversary Edition on Amazon. [1]

Before you read the fine print and conclude that it's only available to people who _can 't_ get DirecTV, please see this clarification [2] from Anthony Stevenson (Madden's director of marketing).

If the clarification turns out to be false, Amazon will be getting a return from me and a strongly worded complaint. :-)

[1] - [http://www.amazon.com/Madden-Anniversary-Edition-Sunday- Play...](http://www.amazon.com/Madden-Anniversary-Edition-Sunday- Playstation-3/dp/B00CF7KVGE)

[2] - [http://kotaku.com/madden-special-edition-includes-sunday- tic...](http://kotaku.com/madden-special-edition-includes-sunday-ticket-even- wi-508524868)

<comment><USER12> Looks like that doesn't include postseason..

<comment><USER13> Postseason typically shows all games on TV. This setup will allow us to watch any game regardless of where you live (and what your cable provider allows you to watch).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think this is a false dichotomy. Individuals pay hundreds of dollars to get the season or half-season package up-front. Given a four-month season (playoff games are broadcast over regular networks), $20/month isn't even close to what DirectTV charges. On a monthly basis, the figure would be closer to $60-$70 so I'm not sure where the author gets his proposed figures from.

If you are a cord-cutter with no cable, having Google own the rights and stream games over the internet would help you if you didn't already have cable, but those that do already get about five games a week over their local networks. So really Google would have to charge a flat fee up-front to stream all games on Sunday Ticket.

But it's important to remember that a large percentage of Sunday Ticket revenue comes from bars that purchase large packages to broadcast it to their patrons. From what I'm told this cost depends on the capacity of the location and can run into the tens of thousands of dollars for a single season. I'm not sure how this would play into Google or Netflix's strategy.

<comment><USER15> I think very few people pay full price for Sunday Ticket, either via deals like this year's Madden, getting it for free as a new customer, or calling and complaining that you don't get it for free/threatening to leave until they substantially discount it for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The math here is all wrong. It's vastly more expensive than this, if you want to provide it a la carte. All cable subscribers are currently subsidizing live sports, whether they want to or not. It's a dinosaur that should die. Sports salaries should be 1/10th of what they currently are.

<comment><USER17> > Sports salaries should be 1/10th of what they currently are.

So where should that 9/10 go?

<comment><USER16> If the major expense of your business is the salaries of your employees, and your number of employees need to remain relatively unchanged, and your revenue drops in 1/10th, then roughly you will need to higher employees who will accept 1/10th of the wages. Some of your current employees may accept, but you can expect massive turn-over. And arguably lower-quality employees.

In short, I'm being forced to pay for live sports, if I want cable, and I predict that very soon that will change.

<comment><USER18> I'll bet you any amount that you care to wager that the salaries for NBA/NFL/MLB players don't drop by anything close to 90% at any point in the next 10 years.

<comment><USER16> No try, major league sports athlete who is trying to mitigate his losses! ;-)

If taxes stopped supporting sports, and if cable / satellite customers didn't have to subsidize sports, something would have to give.

Are you just saying those things are impossible, or are you saying I'm overstating what the outcome would be?

<comment><USER18> I don't think your judgement about the degree to which cable customers subsidize sports is anywhere near correct.

<comment><USER16> > Needham & Co. estimates that ESPN rakes in $7 billion from cable customers, > even though many never even watch the channel.

[http://www.npr.org/2013/08/07/209820647/the-history-and- futu...](http://www.npr.org/2013/08/07/209820647/the-history-and-future-of- cables-bundling)

> Threatened by Internet streaming services and a fragmenting TV audience, > Comcast/NBC, ESPN, Fox Sports, Turner, and CBS have agreed over the last 20 > months to spend $72 billion for the TV rights to professional, Olympic, and > college sports well into the next decade.

[http://articles.philly.com/2012-11-19/news/35187681_1_sports...](http://articles.philly.com/2012-11-19/news/35187681_1_sports- channels-cable-tv-bill-college-sports)

> In some TV markets, Abdoulah said, sports channels account for 60 percent of > the overall programming costs in the cable-TV bill because of fees for > regional sports networks.

<comment><USER18> Yes, cable is not a la carte. That doesn't automatically mean that you're subsidizing ESPN. Maybe it's the people that sign up for cable solely to get ESPN that are subsidizing all the other channels.

<comment><USER16> You are correct that mathematically, I have not proven the direction of total subsidization.

However:

> In some TV markets, Abdoulah said, sports channels account for 60 percent of > the overall programming costs in the cable-TV bill because of fees for > regional sports networks.

I guarantee that it is not the case that greater than 60 percent of people who sign up for cable do so solely to watch sports. So, in certain markets, it is for sure people like me who subsidize sports programming, not the other way around.

<comment><USER18> Generally I start from the point of view that gross mis-pricings where there are multiple buyers and sellers involved are pretty rare. So the various TV organizations are probably paying about as much for sports broadcasting rights as their customers are willing to pay for them. Maybe it's off a bit one way or the other but certainly not by a factor of 10 (as you claimed above).

That's basically what I think unless I'm presented with very strong evidence to the contrary.

<comment><USER16> Remember, cable is merely the _carrier_. I assert that $0 of what I pay my cable company should go to pay for programming (other than Pay-Per-View), considering that programming already has advertising. If I want to pay for Premium content (like HBO, Sports), then Cable could mediate that. But that's not the relationship we have today, at all.

<comment><USER18> Cable companies are certainly not just a carrier. They pay all kinds of money in order to put together a package of programming that is popular enough for them to attract a large subscriber base. They do this because that's how they think they can best run their business.

You can assert all you want about how you think the cable company should spend it's money, but you don't get all that much of a say in the matter.

<comment><USER16> Me alone? Nope. People recognizing how awful cable is? You tell me:

Time Warner bled 191,000 subscribers in one quarter.

DirectTV lost 84,000.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/business/media/directv- and...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/business/media/directv-and-time- warner-cable-lose-subscribers-but-revenues-rise.html?_r=0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If by "should" the author is referring to what would be in the best interests of consumers, then the NFL should forget about exclusive licenses and just sign deals with everyone.

Question for the room: If the government were to mandate FRAND licensing of live sports content, would the benefits to the consumer outweigh the market burden of regulation?</comment>


Efficient embedded computing (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://cva.stanford.edu/publications/2010/jbalfour-thesis.pdf <comment><USER2> TL;DR: A distributed "nano-processor" [1] architecture with a bunch of neat tricks to allow the "nano-processors" to coordinate with the help of a master processor.

It looks like it could have potential if they come up with a sensible paradigm to progam it. Unfornately it looks like they're trying to shoehorn C into an architecture that's wildly different than C's original target. [2]

I don't really see this taking significant market share from FPGAs/ARM in its current state.

[1]: they use the term ensemble but that is unintuitive

[2]: [http://cva.stanford.edu/projects/elm/compiler.htm](http://cva.stanford.edu/projects/elm/compiler.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> I look forward to reading this. A system that can really do better than FPGAs and ASICs at compromising between speed and programmability is a multi-million dollar breakthrough.

</comment><comment><USER4> 2010 flag!</comment>


Automated Sharing of Personal Info Over Email - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=76&a=2

<comment><USER2> Cross posting from [1] now that this has a dedicated thread:

I like the proposal, but rather than using special (unfriendly) subjects, I'd use custom email headers. eg: X-Autorespond: name, age, location

Why? So that clients that do not support this protocol will display a normal email to the end-user, instead of something not-so-friendly.

This also means that the body can be free-formed text explaining to the user what this message represents, and how to support this protocol.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8282632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8282632)

</comment><comment><USER2> As for implementations, a server-side app where users grant permission for you to inspect emails/auto-reply might work. Most users grant permissions without even reading, so that won't be an issue.

If it's open-source, us geeks that don't actually click "authorize" without reading can set up our own server anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> Instead of filling out forms over and over again with my name, address, phone number, etc, I could simply generate a one-time password that I give to the other person and they put my email and one-time password on their system, it sends me an email, fetches a JSON with the information that I've authorized access to, and bingo.

Of course we could do this today with other technologies, but the point of this is to leverage something that is already ubiquitous. Because of that I think it's a powerful idea.</comment>


How you and I could become nodes in the Internet of things - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/06/03/how-you-and-i-could-become-nodes-in-the-internet-of-things/

<comment><AUTHOR> I am the author of this post. I wanted to be upfront about that. But I'm very curious about what the HN community thinks about the concept of creating this kind of distributed mobile network where every device acts as a relay node carrying the community's traffic.</comment>


Google Nexus 4 withdrawn from sale - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/devices/details/Nexus_4_16GB?id=nexus_4_16gb&hl=en <comment><USER2> The steep reduction in price of the Nexus 4 earlier this year was definitely an inventory clearance effort in preparation for the Nexus 5. My friend tried to buy one but he said that lead time estimates were huge and suspected that they were out of inventory. All makes sense now with the Nexus 5 launch.

In hindsight, I have to suspect that Google and LG's plans all along was to create a phone with high specs at a low price point but restrict the supply as they "learned" to lower costs for their subsequent models. We've suspected that the Nexus 4 was most likely a loss making model for LG, but since they were rapidly losing mindshare, a loss making low'ish volume high end phone was something they were probably willing to stomach to partner with Google to get back in consumers' minds.

Maybe they'll be making profit from day 1 on the Nexus 5 this year

<comment><USER3> > In hindsight, I have to suspect that Google and LG's plans all along was to > create a phone with high specs at a low price point but restrict the supply > as they "learned" to lower costs for their subsequent models.

Well, unfortunately the price of a nexus 5 is much higher than the price of a nexus 4. (On release - $300 for an 8GB 4, or $350 for 16GB; $350 for a 16GB 5, or $400 for 32GB. I would happily take an 8GB option; I don't make a habit of storing anything other than pictures on my phone. Or, to get really crazy, they could allow for removable media...)

<comment><USER4> > Well, unfortunately the price of a nexus 5 is much higher than the price of > a nexus 4. (On release - $300 for an 8GB 4, or $350 for 16GB; $350 for a > 16GB 5, or $400 for 32GB.

What? You're saying the 16GB Nexus 4 was $350. The 16GB Nexus 5 is $349 for a vastly improved phone. How is that a "much higher" price?

Is the issue just that they don't offer an 8GB model any more? I can understand that. But comparing phone to phone with the same memory, isn't the Nexus 5 a much better deal?

<comment><USER3> > But comparing phone to phone with the same memory, isn't the Nexus 5 a much > better deal?

This is getting repetitive, but why would you do that? There are no lifetime achievement awards for buying the most price-efficient phone, even if it costs you $750,000 ("but think of all the features you get!"). Compare the minimum price of $300 to the minimum price of $350. There's been a substantial increase.

The Nexus S was $400 (in some model, likely the cheapest). The 4 was a welcome signal of attention to price. This is going in the wrong direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought the Nexus 4 had been unavailable for a while now?

</comment><comment><USER6> honestly, if google would make a nexus 3 I might consider it. I have a samsung nexus S, and it's on the large side of what I am comfortable with.

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately the electronics manufacturers (and Google apparently) are, well, not very thoughtful when it comes to phone design. It's like they don't really know what _else_ to do, so they've settled on simple-minded memes like "bigger = better!!!"

 _Often_ this is sort of a reasonable plan in general... faster CPUs and more memory are usually helpful (if you can keep battery usage reasonable).

But when applied uncritically and universally, without much judgement or thought, in a mad rush to out-spec the other guy ("Now Double The Size of Our Competitor!!!!"), this just leads to mediocrity, where everything apparently has great specs but nobody really likes them very much...

<comment><USER8> They're making them bigger b/c that's the cultural preference in much of Asia, not b/c they have some flighty notion of _bigger=better_.

Same reason iPhone got bigger in a recent major version upgrade. This has been discussed b/f at HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Accessing this from Australia it still shows as available and you can order it. Must be geography specific (presumably, while inventory still lasts).

<comment><USER10> Yeah I have a hard time reconciling the title with the button in the middle of my screen:

        Add to cart - AU$299.00

I clicked it and now I have a Nexus 4 in my cart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is one of those rare times in which people in countries that are slow to get the Nexus 5 will most likely be able to carry on buying the Nexus 4 longer. Just a thought.

Also I do wonder how many out there waitied for the Nexus 5 and then thought Hmmm not huge jump from Nexus 4 given the nice price the N4 is at currently and now maybe regretting not getting one. Too me for the price difference the Nexus 4 does seem the more appealing, albiet a non option now, at least new.

</comment><comment><USER12> So every time they introduce a new model, they have to change the screen diagonal? This doesn't seem like a well-thought-out naming scheme.

Yeah, I know, when they run out of numbers it'll just go to "Nexus Awesome" or "Nexus Super Alpha" or something. You've got to at least give Apple credit for giving each generation of mobile hardware a clear, distinctive name. Oddly enough, their laptop/desktop hardware does the opposite--the new MacBook Pro is officially just "the new MacBook Pro," and it's left to the fans to figure out generations.</comment>


The Debate Over Startups and Tipping Could Be Just Heating Up - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-08/the-debate-over-startups-and-tipping-could-be-just-heating-up <comment><AUTHOR> DoorDash (YC s2013 [0]) says it stands behind its pay policy, which uses tips to help cover what it owes delivery drivers, similar to the policy Instacart reversed this week .

[0] [https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/)</comment>


LA sides with taxi companies, sends cease-and-desists to Lyft, Uber, and Sidecar - <AUTHOR> http://www.scpr.org/news/2013/06/24/37904/la-sides-with-taxi-companies-sends-cease-and-desis/

<comment><USER2> I feel a little sorry for Uber being bunched in with Lyft and Sidecar- the latter two use a sort of nebulous "rideshare" concept to skirt around being considered taxi cabs, but Uber uses licensed drivers, as far as I can tell.

<comment><USER3> This infuriates me beyond belief. How is Uber not in _everybody 's_ best interests? The end-user experience is clearly far superior, I can't find a soul who can argue with that (except for the understandable price differential which will diminish with scale). I haven't personally talked to a driver for either service, but the experience for them has to be better. Uber, as a private company, can optimize for extraneous costs, ultimately leaving a larger margin to be paid to the drivers. But I digress, why make bold claims as to which is better, I just wish municipalities would let the free market decide. Let the boys play, goddammit.

In a magical world where I could change all city cabs into Ubers, I can't imagine there would be too many complaints.

The situation reminds me of local food merchants in my parents' hometown in India. They fucking hate Walmart, and they've got every city official in their pockets to make sure Walmart (or any large grocery store) ever lays a brick there. They hate the fact that Walmart will have lower, standardized prices; better, consistently fresh produce; well-trained, honest workers. They hate that Walmart might kill their business. What they don't realize is if they just went and worked for Walmart, their life might be better than it is while running their own shitty little tomato stand. Where they have to work their ass off all summer so their wives can buy a winter jacket. Where one little tomato pest can kill their entire crop, and in turn, their kid's chance of going to school that year. Where another tomato farmer can undercut their prices and move their cart next door whenever they want.

It's a bummer that some people will always be resistant to change.

<comment><USER4> It's easy to show how Uber isn't in _everyone 's_ best interests: cabs are required to service well-defined metro areas at a standardized fare; in return for agreeing to operate under a set of regulations that makes them part of the transit fabric of a city, regulated cab services is granted a monopoly.

That system doesn't work if cabs are forced to compete at a disadvantage with other services that don't operate under the same constraints.

<comment><USER5> For cab service, Uber rides are serviced by already existing metro cab companies. The Uber cabs in here in Chicago were already licensed cabs, but now they can get dispatched via Uber. How is that any different from say, a cab company deciding to dispatch its drivers with their own in-house iPhone app? Do you think that would that be allowed under these regulations?

<comment><USER4> The deal Chicago has with taxi cabs is that street hails are reserved for regulated medallion taxi cabs; in exchange for that, the medallion owners are required to maintain vehicles, insurance, and coverage areas, and are required to comply with the billing procedures set up by Chicago.

Uber currently uses Chicago tax company drivers directly, but doesn't comply with the regulations the medallion owners are required to comply with --- for instance, Uber adds 20% to the fares, which is something cab companies can't do. Uber's defense for this is that using an iPhone to get a cab isn't a "street hail"; the cab companies argue that they're equivalent. We'll see who wins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, but I have a hard time feeling sympathetic for these LA cabbies when every time I try to use my credit card to pay they act like I just skipped out on the fare.

<comment><USER6> Something very similar happened to me the other day. A cab driver refused to let me pay by credit card. He said that he loses money on every ride that uses a credit card.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been told by cabbies that it takes the cab companies a week or so to process (at least in LA) and that's why the drivers hate it so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> These kind of actions on the part of existing taxi and limo services are to be expected. When a large and powerful group can't win on merit or the quality of their product, they will attempt to win through any other means, including litigation or politics. This move reeks of desperation, and if I were any of the three companies mentioned, I would see this as a glass half full scenario. Time to lawyer up.

<comment><USER8> That's one explanation of the situation (and there is certainly an element of that).

The other element of the situation is that people use litigation and politics to protect existing bargains. Cabs are regulated, for various reasons. Cities use them as an extension of their public transit infrastructure, and impose restrictions like requiring them to service the whole city, instead of just the profitable neighborhoods. In return, the cab companies are given a monopoly.

So if the cities allow Uber to skim off all the premium business, without requiring Uber to serve the sketchy/marginal neighborhoods, then that's the city going back on its side of the bargain. The cabs can't "win on merit" when they're playing with one hand tied behind their back.

The fair thing to do is either enforce the existing monopoly and keep out Uber, or alternatively to get rid of the monopoly and the regulations too.

<comment><USER9> Doesn't the fact the Uber drivers come to the passenger alleviate that fact? Also, anecdotally, from experience living in bad neighborhoods in my city taxi cabs are generally less likely to visit.

<comment><USER4> Have you looked into whether your local cab companies are required to service every area of the city? It's illegal for an NYC cab to refuse service within NYC's regulated area; it's also _illegal_ for them to, for instance, drop you off short of your destination --- my wife found this out when her cab to LGA dropped her off halfway there because he had to make an appointment, and an NYC cop immediately stopped and ticketed him.

<comment><USER10> > _an NYC cop immediately stopped and ticketed him._

Did she have to alert the cop to what happened, or is there a system in place that notifies police when this happens?

<comment><USER4> Neither. The cop just noticed her getting out and immediately trying to flag another cab.

<comment><USER11> If you have a personal story on how a law was violated and given the fact it was on books for decades, it clearly is ineffectively enforced (taxi drivers apparently prefer to violate the law regularly with a small chance of being ticketed and I can't blame them if that's more profitable for them).

If only there was a system where you could call a cab exactly to where you are, monitor its position while it arrives in real time, and one that would drop you off exactly where you wanted to go. A system where you could comment on the quality of the driver after each ride so that the bad ones are permanently kicked off.

Wait, there is. It's called Uber.

In this case self-regulation and competition work better than government regulations. Uber has self-interest in making sure they work well or else people will move to a better system.

Having government erect and then enforce the laws is a costly externality of the taxi system - police officers are paid with your money too.

<comment><USER12> The rules for NYC taxis are known to everyone that has lived in their for a non trivial amount of time. Tourists might not be familiar with them but any red blooded New Yorker would definitely remind the cabbie they have to go to the final destination.

A more commonly abused rule is that cabbies cannot refuse a destination but many will do so if it's in the outer boroughs (imagine Manhattan to Queens or Brooklyn) as they're not guaranteed a fare on the return. At night many will ask you where you're going before you get in to weed this out specifically (illegal). Again, anybody who's lived in the city long enough knows to just ignore the driver and get inside before instructing him where you're going.

I've heard stories that there are undercover folks working for the city that test out the cabbies and fine them if they refuse a legit fare.

<comment><USER13> Also, it says it in the cab. This is how I, as a New Yorker, first learned of these rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article stated that taxi activists would be protesting today. I wonder if the protesters are the people that own the medallions? I doubt the drivers making $8 an hour have time to protest. The medallion scheme needs reform or replacement.

Further reading: [http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/47636506327/the-tyranny- of...](http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/47636506327/the-tyranny-of-the-taxi- medallions)

</comment><comment><USER15> Why shouldn't the regulations that apply to one group of people who charge money to drive others around on public roads not apply to every group of people who charge to drive people around for money?

<comment><USER16> Extrapolate this, am I not allowed to accept gas money from a friend if I drive them around?

Of course I wouldn't be fined for that, but where is the line drawn? Do I have to know a person very well before I can accept their money for a ride? A friend of a friend? Will I be asked to answer a series of questions about the person if I am pulled over?

<comment><USER17> Running a business vs not is already pretty well established in tax law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those of you that care or for those of you that live in LA, there is a petition going around. Not sure how effective these are, but I signed.

Here--> [https://www.change.org/petitions/city-of-los-angeles- repeal-...](https://www.change.org/petitions/city-of-los-angeles-repeal-the- cease-and-desist-order-on-uber-lyft-and-sidecar)

</comment><comment><USER18> For many industries to be regulated is to be protected. This issue is very little different from others we have read about here, a prime example would be either AirBnB or even Tesla.

The root of all of these is government. Your going to have to push for less regulation to get into many markets. To get there means one or more strategies. Changing who is government, for that you will need to convince people there is a benefit in doing that. Second to that would be reducing the size of government, put limits on what it can do. Third, you could try and get the people making the laws on your side, but your up against numbers.

So whether its taxi rides, rooms for rent, cars to sell, hair dressers, or even where you kid can go to school, its all about regulation and protection of those regulated.

Don't get mad at those who work in regulated fields, find a way to reduce that regulation to give them choices, you choices, and customers of all a choice.</comment>


Dutch engineer builds wings, flies like a bird - <AUTHOR> http://humanbirdwings.net/

<comment><USER2> On tweakers.net ([http://tweakers.net/nieuws/80793/nederlander-gebruikt-wii- en...](http://tweakers.net/nieuws/80793/nederlander-gebruikt-wii-en- smartphone-voor-ornithopter.html)) (a very big tech-site based in the netherlands) there is a pretty large consensus that it is a hoax.

But to think that they were able to fool so many people is pretty amazing.

</comment><comment><USER3> The video of the flight just screams fake, it's like the uncanny valley feeling. You just know something is wrong with what you're watching. Almost there though, all very elaborate.

<comment><USER4> For me it's the 'inspirational' music.

If he really has the power to weight ratio of a bird, which I doubt as he doesn't have hollow bones and chest muscles that are half the volume of his torso, he wouldn't need to ridiculous music to sell his dream.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It turns out that this is a hoax. I feel like an idiot now, I wish there was a way to delete this submission.</comment>


The .ORG Sale Is a Radical Departure That Puts the Internet at Risk - <AUTHOR> http://www.circleid.com/posts/20191128_dot_org_sale_is_a_radical_departure_that_puts_internet_at_risk/ <comment><USER2> > It was given that right by the community

What community really? I have/had several org domains don't remember being asked about anything. The more important question is what did ISOC do for .org other than owning it? I personally never heard of the organization anyway. Not that i support the sale, just curious

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't miss the link at the bottom asking organizations to sign a letter objecting:

[https://savedotorg.org/](https://savedotorg.org/)</comment>


Ask HN: What is the story behind Vine - <AUTHOR>

Really curious to know, how Vine is getting so much attention, the app does look unpolished, they don't seem to have lots of active users, and event not a web site (just a few pages) or android app yet, I understand the idea is cool, but if I wanted to replicate their success I need to know their secret sause. <comment><USER2> Vine is getting attention in part because it was acquired by Twitter, and is Twitter's move in the video space.

However, Vine _got_ acquired by Twitter because it took something that was rather complicated - editing short video - and made it really easy through the use of constraints and simplification. (They were also well connected enough to get an early version in front of Jack Dorsey, and he got excited enough about it to persuade Twitter to buy them immediately.)

If you want to replicate their success, you could start by finding something that people would like to do but is currently too hard, and then by stripping enough things away from it to make it really simple and intuitive. Sounds easier than it is, though.

<comment><USER3> >They were also well connected enough to get an early version in front of Jack Dorsey

I wrote a post about this phenomenon here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5049409>. I call it the "magical introduction" in my post, I quote:

"....all the media exposure and growth opportunities that naturally follow all as a result of a magical 'introduction.'"

Sadly, "magical introductions" often get in the way of the best products rising to the top, or even having a fair shot to begin in a lot of cases. Vine is a perfect example where a product was acquired by Twitter before even launching, but as a result when Vine launches it is instantly dubbed the "Instagram of Video" in every news outlet. See the Google News search result for Instagram of Video.

[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&q=instagram+of+video&oq=instagram+of+video&gs_l=news- cc.3..43j43i400.1854.5523.0.5718.104.22.168.188.8.131.52.752.2j5.7.0...0.0...1ac.1.sBGgFOHeo8o)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Vine has exploded in my Facebook and Twitter feeds over the past 4 days. Seems everyone is "trying it". Whether or not that will translate into real traction, it's hard to say.

But I don't think "they don't seem to have lots of active users" is true.

</comment><comment><USER5> 6 second vidoes? Big meh from me but it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

<comment><USER6> 6 seconds is definitely a feature, imo.

Think of them as Harry-Potter-esque animated photos, not videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Placing porn at the very top! :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Vine was created by Twitter.

That should answer all of your questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> created or acquired ?</comment></comment>


A Surefire Way to Save RadioShack - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhacker.com/post/97313954530/a-surefire-way-to-save-radioshack

<comment><USER2> Uhh, there are two places with 3D printers locally, aside from a demo I've never seen them be used. I'm not even sure how I myself would utilise them as I'd need to know first off that something I needed was available as a 3D printer plan and then assuming that it is that it is cheaper than the mass produced alternative (hint: it almost always isn't, 3D printing is super expensive for simple plastic components).

Plus you're renting retail space and hiring staff but competing with companies like i.materialise, sculpteo, and so on, who can operate out of more inexpensive real estate and get the economies of scale, see Amazon. They also manage to bring together both the manufacturing and helping you find the things you wish to manufacture to begin with (which is a big problem with just setting up a 3D printer and hoping people will use it for "something").

It is a tiny market that is difficult to leverage. Far from a "surefire" anything, more likely to just accelerate their likely inevitable demise.

Let's not even talk about the huge limitations of 3D printing. It has come a long way, but realistically a lot of plastic items cannot be produced via a 3D printer because the resulting products are too fragile.

<comment><AUTHOR> \- "I'm not even sure how I myself would utilise them" Then you're obviously not the target demographic. \- "you're renting retail space and hiring staff" RadioShack is already doing this. \- "inevitable demise" I'm more into solutions and outside-the-box pivots, not inevitable demise kind of thinking.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, "inevitable demise" is often more economically-rational than "outside-the-box pivots," especially when talking about an organization the size of RadioShack Corp. The cost to pivot some 5,000 stores into an unproven, capital-intensive market that would require high-skill, high-cost employees would be far beyond the company's reach, especially since RS is totally beholden to its lenders for any kind of strategic change (they nixed plans to shut down some 20% of their stores, for example, since the cost to get out of those stores was higher than the lenders were willing to bear). Instead, the most likely scenario is a fast bankruptcy followed by a faster closing of stores -- or a total liquidation of assets, in the worst-case scenario.

I call this the "Blockbuster Paradox" \-- the idea that a corporation with a large investment in assets, employees and contracts is often locked into an unsustainable path by virtue of past successes. Just as Blockbuster wasn't financially capable of disrupting its own business model, so too is RS incapable of a major pivot like the one you describe. After all, the maker market is a tiny fraction of the market for cellphones and personal electronics, and the company's structure and finances are based on the higher revenue expectations. (The company needs a _minimum_ of $800m in revenue per quarter just to break even.) RadioShack, with only about $30m of cash on hand, would die of asphyxiation long before it could ever become the kind of large- scale TechShop you describe.

Having said that, I would _absolutely_ agree that RadioShack and the maker community have great mutual potential, just not on a large scale. RS could create a small number of flagship stores offering equipment, access and expertise, as a rebranding of the company back into a more technically- oriented market. (It can be argued that a central RadioShack makerspace could provide ongoing sales and marketing support for smaller, retail-oriented satellite locations.) But RS will need both a new strategy that can keep them around $4b in revenue per year, and a set of new investors that are willing to believe in them. That's a very hard row to hoe.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My last visit to RadioShack was to try and purchase an overpriced plug adaptor from a sleazy salesman. I was in a hurry and knew I was paying too much, but it was for my parents and I was just wanting to grab one to get them sorted out and move on.

He had some lengthy offer of 'free batteries' that he incorrectly assumed I was willing to listen to, then refused to complete the sale when I refused to give my telephone number. Total scumbag. This was in Florida but I had nearly the same experience 2 years earlier at one in California.

This is representative of their culture for a while now and I know I'm not the only one they have alienated. New 3D gadgets or not, I'm not likely to ever set foot in the place again. If they are 'pivoting', they need to pivot that name, too, to disassociate the new venture from the toxic sales culture that they exhibit today.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is cool, but super naive for all the problems already mentioned and then some.

Warren Buffet said that some companies are already bankrupt, they just haven't run out of money yet. Sadly, this is true of Radio Shack.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure this _would_ work, especially given the lack of funds that RS currently holds. But I think it _could_ work, or _could have worked_. Radio Shack did start a marked move towards re-embracing the DIY/Maker community a while back, but it was hardly a wholesale pivot... I think it was just a case of "too little, too late".

Still, I wish this could, and would, happen. Ordering parts online is cool and all, but having a physical retail location nearby with a great selection of parts, supplies, books, tools, etc., would definitely draw me in.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sure, and Borders should have pivoted from selling books that have already been published, to becoming an outlet for people who want to self-publish. I mean, hey, there's loads of people like that on the internet! It _must_ be a viable business model. /s</comment>


"Facebook is not worth $33,000,000,000" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/five-hundred-words/facebook-is-not-worth-33-000-000-000-35404b85eb70

<comment><USER2> > this makes no sense to me, therefore it makes no sense.

This is my main problem with the tech community, especially HN. Most of the commenters here are intelligent and knowledgable, but many of them seem to be, for lack of a better word, arrogant. I see comments all the time that point out an undressed issue in a post and then go on to assume that they are the first people to think of issue and that it's unaddressable and/or unaddressed. It's not that hard to look past that tone and assumptions to get to the meat of the comment, but it gets old after a while. I don't think this means that all of the commenters on HN are cynical assholes (hell, I do it myself sometimes), but sometimes it seems that way.

<comment><USER3> I thought the same thing about tech, until a very short while ago. I'll agree that there is a fair bit of hubris in the industry among developers ("shit code" vs "my code"), but beyond that, the arrogance that seems prevalent isn't really much more prevalent than general society.

It's just that the bar for entry into tech is, really, somewhat high in terms of social capital and intelligence, leading to a group of (generally) well spoken or well written individuals who often reality test their assumptions amongst each other. You'll see similarly well composed (not necessarily STRONG arguments, but well composed) thoughts coming out of similar fields: law, medicine, politics.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's a link to the original HN discussion from September 2010: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719975)</comment>


TheUnFunded.com - a place for VCs to rate entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.theunfunded.com/ <comment><USER2> March 31 is probably the best day for April 1 jokes. Is this one?</comment>


U2F: open standard for hardware 2FA - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_2nd_Factor <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting news piece about the recent developments: [http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/12/this-low-cost- device...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/12/this-low-cost-device-may- be-the-worlds-best-hope-against-account-takeovers/)

GitHub projects: [https://github.com/showcases/universal-2nd- factor](https://github.com/showcases/universal-2nd-factor)</comment>


How to Diversify the Anchor Text of Links to Your Site - <AUTHOR> http://www.billhartzer.com/pages/how-to-diversify-the-anchor-text-of-links-to-your-web-site/

<comment><USER2> Worst advice ever. I thought "click here" died years ago. Hostile to AT users. Please value humans over google.</comment>


Why Is the Human Brain So Efficient? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/59/connections/why-is-the-human-brain-so-efficient <comment><USER2> This is a really interesting comparison of human brain wetware versus silicon hardware.

On the one hand "The fastest synaptic transmission takes about 1 millisecond" which is far slower than the hardware limitation which is basically constrained by Speed Of Light.

On the other hand "the brain also employs massively parallel processing, taking advantage of the large number of neurons and large number of connections each neuron makes. For instance, the moving tennis ball activates many cells in the retina called photoreceptors, whose job is to convert light into electrical signals. These signals are then transmitted to many different kinds of neurons in the retina in parallel. By the time signals originating in the photoreceptor cells have passed through two to three synaptic connections in the retina, information regarding the location, direction, and speed of the ball has been extracted by parallel neuronal circuits and is transmitted in parallel to the brain."

On the third hand (to quote Niven and Pournelle) "Another salient property of the brain, which is clearly at play in the return of service example from tennis, is that the connection strengths between neurons can be modified in response to activity and experience—a process that is widely believed by neuroscientists to be the basis for learning and memory. Repetitive training enables the neuronal circuits to become better configured for the tasks being performed, resulting in greatly improved speed and precision."</comment>