ARIN down to 1.00 /8 – Akamai got 22.214.171.124/10 yesterday - <AUTHOR> https://www.arin.net/

<comment><USER3> I remember reading about full IPv4-space scans showing some fairly massive blocks that were allocated but unused. As I recall it was well over 10% of the overall space that could theoretically be reclaimed and redistributed with a hand-wave.

Anything that gets IPv6 adoption to mainstream is a Good Thing, but more likely we'll just start seeing the $1/mo/IP become $2/mo/IP, and upward... The squeeze will just continue as people make more money off of it, and we'll still need IPv4 addresses for compatibility with people running Windows XP in 2020.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, IPv4 is pretty much empty. Lots of companies own a /8 all to themselves, like Xerox (126.96.36.199/8), Apple (184.108.40.206/8), USPS (22.214.171.124/8) and Ford (184.108.40.206/8) to name a few. None of them allocate even the tiniest portion of them.

<comment><USER3> There are usage requirements for IP addresses now. I have to substantiate the allocation.

I think if ARIN wanted to, they could give everyone a year to "substantiate their allocation" and set the policy something like "companies must return for reallocation any overallocations."

The risk of not returning an overallocation, well I'm not sure. ARIN certainly has teeth, and companies should simply be expected to correct these huge overallocations.

Just like the open source community comes together to solve serious problems, if we as a community enforced an ethical standard and some key people stood up raised this as an issue, I'm willing to bet ARIN could replenish a stockpile of IPv4 space.

So the question I'm asking is, since ARIN is empty, clearly they aren't interested in keeping a stockpile of addresses. Why not? I guess the more generous alternative is simply they have failed spectacularly at their stated goal.

<comment><USER5> I admit that I am not familiar with ARIN, but if it is anything like APNIC (Asia Pacific) then those big Class A Allocations are protected as legacy allocations. As such they are not required to give the legacy allocations up and its questionable if the RIR could even revoke them.

ARIN can go over the pool of post 1997 addresses they have allocated, but I think you would find much smaller unallocated blocks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I work for Akamai and it's worth noting that we also do a ton of work around IPv6: [http://www.akamai.com/ipv6](http://www.akamai.com/ipv6)

<comment><USER7> Why did you guys need a /10?

<comment><USER8> I'd love to know the justification for this too. SSL hosts is the only thing I can think of.

<comment><USER9> Would be a shame since SNI appeared in browsers ~2007. IE 6 is hardly worth wasting the Internet's last IPv4 space on.

<comment><USER10> It's needed for Windows XP users regardless of IE version. Whether you care about Windows XP users or not is another question..

<comment><USER11> Are we terribly concerned about supporting a 13 year old OS that is EOL'd by its manufacturer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A lot of websites could use ipv6 to connect to a proxy/security provider such as cloudflare which would output the site to ipv4/ipv6 end users with all the other bells and whistles that cloudflare offers.

The end user then doesnt even know or care that the website he/she is using is ipv6

btw does cloudflare support ipv6 only domains?

<comment><USER13> There's still some issues with HTTPS which need further roll-out to completely solve this problem (i.e. not everywhere supports SNI yet), but yes, for a lot of web sites this would work perfectly fine, and indeed is how many PaaS providers work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems a little absurd that one company just got 1/4th of all remaining ARIN ipv4 adresses when there is such an insane crunch looming, no matter how big and important they are.

<comment><USER15> I can't wait till subnets are a thing of the past with ipv6.

<comment><USER16> Don't hold your breath. I think ipv4 will be around for a long time. With NAT, there's really no shortage of numbers for many sites.

<comment><USER17> Haha, I'm laughing at that statement. You do realize that NATs merely extend the address space by mapping connections to computers with non-public IPs onto a uniquely identifiable port number? So depending on the average number of concurrent connections operated per peer, NATs won't be able to extend the IP4 address space by more than, say 12 bits.

See also here: [http://serverfault.com/questions/502305/linux-networking- por...](http://serverfault.com/questions/502305/linux-networking-port- exhaustion)

<comment><USER18> Hahas are on you.

NAT does tuple mapping - src/dst addr/port and protocol. That is - two TCP mappings can use the same local external port even if they go to the same remote address, for as long as they connect to a different remote port.

<comment><USER19> This is true, but consider that while there are 16 bits of ports on both source and destination, in reality, nearly all traffic flows to a very short list of ports. Most connections, and connections are what matters here, not total traffic, are going to have a port 80 or 443 on one side of the connection or the other. So while I think 12 bits is too low, in practical use, you aren't getting the 32 bits you think you are getting. Considering source port restrictions, I think saying single-level nat extends IPv4 with another 16 bits is not too far off. Of course, that is still a lot of IPs.

Of course, nat has a bunch of other pain in the ass problems, especially in that if I want to be able to track abuse, I've got to log every new connection (flow, whatever) that you make. When I get a complaint, I've got to match that up to my logs, which can be goddamn difficult if the complainer's clock isn't just right.

With static IPs it's way easier to track abuse, and I don't have to actively log what you are doing, just who has what IP when, and because IPs stick around a lot longer than connections, I'm way less vulnerable to clock drift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Maybe they should have come up with a version of IPv6 that didn't basically require both to exist forever.

<comment><USER21> All the proposed variants required that. Some hid the requirement a little better than others.

Some proposals were superset-like, so v4 and v6 addresses could ping each other. But not all v6 addresses. As soon as the v4 space was used up, those variants had to allocate v6 addresses that could not ping v4 addresses, so you got a sneaking incompatibility. Worse: you'd never know for sure whether there were any v4-only hosts left on the network.

Clean break or sneaking, what's your preference?

<comment><USER20> Clean break with the new protocol NATing the old protocol. IPv4 addresses not behind the NAT are not accessible on the new internet. Exploit the asymmetry inherit in services vs clients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This seems to be a problem that markets will solve pretty well: as the resource gets scarcer, the price will go up, meaning people will have an incentive to use it more efficiently (selling unused address space), and/or look for alternatives (IPv6).

<comment><USER19> The major cost of IPs is routing table bloat. Every time I announce a new block, every router on the internet (that carries a full table) needs more (very expensive) memory.

The size of the routing table has been growing faster than the cost of fast router memory has been falling for some time now.

I mean, if you are only pushing a gigabit of traffic (and /maybe/ 10 gigabits, especially if the packets are large.) it's not that big of a deal; you can use dram and CPUs with large caches, and it's fast enough. But if you own a real pipe and have to push 40 gigs, or really, even 10gigs of small packets, my pair of vyatta routers on Xeons just isn't going to cut the mustard.

It's kind of a 'tragedy of the commons' because when I buy IPs, that money goes to ARIN (or to the previous owner of those IPs) - none of that money goes to all the router owners who have to pay for more fast router memory - <USER2> though I'm costing those people money.

The problem with runout intersects with this. If I need, say, 4000 IPs, I can get one /20, and occupy only one routing slot, or I can get 16 /24s and occupy 16 routing slots. From my point of view, from the point of view of the person who owns the IPs, there really isn't much difference between one /20 and 16 /24s. But the rest of the internet has to pay 16x as much if I get 16 /24s.

<comment><USER22> So with a few rules, you can design a market that works pretty well:

[http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/09-091_0077c0...](http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/09-091_0077c048-67b7-4693-84bd-8ab4165104f5.pdf)

<comment><USER19> eh, they are aware of the problem, but their solutions are still centralized ones; either preventing de-aggregation altogether, or making the end-user justify the usage, presumably to some central authority.

I mean, it might work out okay; that's pretty much what ARIN does now. I'm just saying, it's not exactly a market-based solution; that document proposes a market in IP addresses, but it largely leaves the routing table as a commons, even if it does propose to regulate that commons in ways that are similar to the way it is being regulated now.

<comment><USER22> Like I said: markets are not perfect, but what are the alternatives? I think it'll mostly work out ok: as prices go up, it'll push people to get serious about IPv6 and other alternatives.

<comment><USER19> My point is that the most important resources (routing table slots) are still allocated via informal central planning in your proposed scheme. And that isn't unreasonable; usually if you want a functional market, you need /something/ dealing with the externalities.

In the general case, sure, I like markets, too. It's just that markets deal very poorly with externalities, and I want to make the point that the way most people want to set up a market for IPs, routing table slots are externalities.

There is currently a process for selling IP addresses:

[https://www.arin.net/resources/transfers/index.html](https://www.arin.net/resources/transfers/index.html)

My understanding is that you give the previous owner enough money to make them happy, then you satisfy the requirements that you would have had to satisfy to get ARIN to give you the resources if you were requesting said resources from ARIN directly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am curious if this news affects how many HN readers which are involved into the product development are developing their products / websites with IPv6 support ?

If maybe this helps folks managing news.ycombinator.com to click the button and dualstack their site ? (Being behind CloudFlare, it is really just a click away, I am told).

<comment><USER24> We've been IPv6 entirely for about 3 years internally. Externally our peering is shit and they don't do IPv6 competently at all.

We run Windows and Linux machines.

My ISP (Andrews and Arnold) in the UK give us IPv6.

<comment><USER25> Could you expand on the peering problems?

I was thinking of switching to either A&A or fido.net this summer as they are the only ISPs in the UK that offer reasonable priced IPv6 broadband.

<comment><USER24> It's our DC not broadband connection. We have several peers in the DC but not all are IPv6 and the level of competence is "variable". We had some techs not able to understand IPv6 even from a basic level and one peer screw up our routing.

A&A rock - no complaints at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If the certificate authorities can reduce the price of a SAN cert (multi- domains on a single IP, not to be confused with SNI), I guess a vast number of IPv4 can be saved, e.g. we host quite a number of client sites and we need IPv4 for each site just for SSL.

</comment><comment><USER27> Ipv6 is still a terrible solution for so many reasons. Running out of addresses wasn't and and still actually isn't a problem, so stop pretending like it is.

IETF should have taken a pave-the-cowpaths approach and cleaned up ipv4, not created a huge incompatible ipv6 mess.

<comment><USER28> ipv6 is a terrible solution for many reasons, but running out of addresses _is_ a problem, and the best solution available right now is ipv6

<comment><USER27> sadly... you might be right. I wish there was a collaboration group to fix ipv4 incrementally

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Still no ipv6 address from my ISP at home :(

<comment><USER29> Better than the abomination called Dual Stack Lite imo (which is what I got).

<comment><USER30> Whats wrong with DS-Lite?

<comment><USER31> Carrier-grade NAT.

<comment><USER30> In case you haven't noticed, we are running out of IPv4 addresses. CGNAT for v4 is inevitable one way or another. That is why we have IPv6. At least with DS-lite there is only one layer of NAT, compared to full dual-stack which usually implies two layers of NAT (CPE and CG). But all that shouldn't matter that much when you have nice unobstructed end-to-end connectivity with IPv6.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free - <AUTHOR> https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/the-truth-is-paywalled-but-the-lies-are-free/ <comment><USER2> > it is not that the facts it reports tend to be inaccurate

yes it is.

I really lost faith in nyt when they ran article about running out of running out of charge in a Tesla. When they were caught red handed lying they still wouldn't admit to it. Their response was: "Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test"

They just don't get it. People are sick of their BS and they need to just comp to it and change. The days of BSing people are over.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on- th...](https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-the-ev- highway.html)

[https://www.tesla.com/blog/most-peculiar-test- drive](https://www.tesla.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive)

[https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems-w...](https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems- with-precision-and-judgment-but-not-integrity-in-tesla-test/)

<comment><USER3> It's a mistake to judge an organization on one, or even a handful of incidents. There should be a pattern of inaccuracy and bias before you "cancel" a news source.

This is one of the unsung problems of the modern world, the growing impossibility of keeping an accurate "reputation" in your brain. Virtually everyone and everything has been accused of being evil, in general, or specifically. It's no longer good enough to just "have good feelings" about a name, because I guarantee you've read something about every name that is negative. Mere accusation is trivial to make, and society has somehow gotten away from swift and harsh punishment against baseless accusation. Without that (very useful) habit, the heuristic of equating reputation with number of accusations is meaningless, and yet we all still do it.

<comment><USER4> The more you know about a subject, the more false reporting you will find related to that subject.

Remember that next time you read news about something you are not already well versed in.

<comment><USER5> No one can be an expert on everything. That is true for journalists too. Unless a reporter has a very narrow beat, they are going to be forced to report on topics in which they are not fully knowledgeable. This often results in misunderstandings or downright falsities, but on large they generally get it right. We should certainly hold journalistic organizations and reporters to a high standard of accuracy, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water because they make an occasional mistake.

<comment><USER6> I consider the statement of the parent to be more about not blindly believing everything the media reports, because it's most likely a simplification and the truth is more nuanced.

I personally don't consider it the journalists' fault at all, otherwise we would just end up with an academic journal. It is important, however, to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism when reading the news.

<comment><USER5> I agree, but that is not in line with the comment that kicked off this thread with this:

>They just don't get it. People are sick of their BS and they need to just comp to it and change. The days of BSing people are over.

There is a clear difference between reserved skepticism you are talking about and the "FAKE NEWS!" type rhetoric that has grown over the last half decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The linked article concludes:

"Creators must be compensated well. But at the same time we have to try to keep things that are important and profound from getting locked away where few people will see them. The truth needs to be free and universal."

Let's also consider whether lies should be made more expensive. Free costs more than it's worth.

<comment><USER8> As always, who judges whether something is true?

<comment><USER9> Another fun one I ask when someone brings up Snopes: Who snopes the snopes? In other words how do we know they are not being biased or thorough enough?

I am not saying everything there is wrong but I have ran into weird biased articles before.

<comment><USER10> They are biased, but if the facts are accurate, that's irrelevant.

A trustworthy organization doing fact checking on one side of the aisle while ignoring inaccuracies from the other side is preferable to no fact-checking at all. Question is: where is Republican Snopes? It's a free information market; why is nobody doing it?

<comment><USER11> There is no Republican Snopes because conservatives, since the Enlightenment, don't do sense making that way (i.e. via institutional consensus). At the end of the day unless you were personally there to witness something or can prove something mathematically or do the science yourself, you are ultimately dependent on some network of trust to inform you of the truth or falsity of something. And even then "true" and "false" outside of logical and mathematical domains is entirely dependent on ones values. That's not to say there's no objective universal set of values.

Most people are Liberal (in the American sense) because that's what all the organs of culture promote and reinforce. It's like the "default" position that people adopt. I grew up liberal in a liberal household where we watched Hollywood movies and mainstream news like ABC, NBC, PBS and I listened to NPR and I went to school which was run by generally liberal teachers and administrators and that's pretty much why I was liberal.

This is the Cathedral vs the Bazaar approach to sense-making.

<comment><USER12> You're in for a surprise when you discover Fox News.

<comment><USER13> I always laugh when I see someone bring up Fox News in this context. You realize your just proving his point, right? I can name dozens or hundreds of major media outlets that that lean left (MSNBC, CNN, NYT, WaPo, HuffPo, BuzzFeed, etc.), but you can only name one or two that lean right.

<comment><USER14> Most of the "left-leaning" organizations you cite above are not considered particularly left-leaning by _the left_. A better description of them would be "pro status quo", or if you're feeling punchy "relentlessly pro status quo" with a side of "pro-corporatist" thrown in for seasoning.

Now, Fox News and OAN and Sinclair are not, publically, actually the John Birch Society, so sure, you could say "right wingers don't think they lean right either".

Plot out a chart of US political opinion, and I more or less guarantee you that in most things, you'll find your list of media outlights absolutely "centrist", and the 3 I just named distinctly "to the right" of mainstream US political opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> wing-_-nuts When I first saw google books and google scholar I thought 'Oh my god, this is amazing, this will change everything!'. I imagined that a decade or two in the future, being able to read pretty much any book or paper I wanted for a reasonable monthly fee. The search functionality was an absolute godsend!

Now? Google books has been pretty much sidelined and abandoned. I feel like I've watched the second library of Alexandria burn, and I am heartbroken.

My only consolation, is sites like sci-hub and libgen have made textbooks and papers downloadable, albeit illegally. I still really wish I could search within every book.

<comment><USER15> Google Books in 2004 [1], Google Scholar in 2004 [2], and Google Patents in 2006 [3] felt like the golden age of Google's mission to "organize the world's information and and make it universally accessible and useful" [4]. If you think back to the state of the web at the time, those services were expansive in their scope and ambition when they were launched. I give Google credit for continuing to run and maintain them to this day.

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

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

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

[4]: [https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/](https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> In Germany, part of the problem is that old media lobbying has successfully prevented a reasonable (text based) internet presence of public broadcasting...

Some Google-translated coverage: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ndr.de%2Ffernsehen%2Fsendungen%2Fzapp%2Fmedienpolitik%2FDer- letzte-Text-der-ARD%2Cardvsverleger102.html)

<comment><USER17> Public broadcasting in Germany is no better than private media. In fact most topics are reported the same and even the opinion is the same. But even ignoring this, it is a big problem that publicly funded media is in direct economic competition with privately funded media. This is exacerbated by the official entertainment mission (Unterhaltungsauftrag[1]) and the usage of advertisement.

[1]: [https://www.die- medienanstalten.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Rec...](https://www.die- medienanstalten.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Rechtsgrundlagen/Gesetze_Staatsvertraege/Rundfunkstaatsvertrag_RStV.pdf) in §11

<comment><USER18> I'm German. Public broadcasting, including ARD/ZDF but also countless of local radio station is without a doubt significantly better in quality than BILD/RTL or other private tabloid media, and it's one of the reasons the country still has by and large a shared reality when it comes to political discussion.

I don't think that they also provide entertainment is in any way problematic, because entertainment is part of a cultural offering that should be accessible by everyone. I don't really see the competition issue here, just like the BBC they produce content, which is fine.

Has to be said though in quality it doesn't really measure up to the BBC, but you can try to claw _Tatort_ from my dead hands

<comment><USER19> Agree wholeheartedly. And I'd like to add that there is by no means a uniform opinion propagated. For example, the ARD (one of the major public broadcasting networks) hosts both the rather left-leaning "Monitor", and the more conservative "Report aus München". However, as you highlighted, they share a common understanding of the world, and therefore Germany doesn't suffer extreme polarisation.

(I'd argue that the fringes, as seen with the anti-lockdown demonstrations in Berlin recently, are actually sustained by newfangled social media.)

Links (German only, sorry):

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitor_(Fernsehmagazin)](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitor_\(Fernsehmagazin\))

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_München](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_München)

<comment><USER20> >I'd argue that the fringes, as seen with the anti-lockdown demonstrations in Berlin recently, are actually sustained by newfangled social media.

My impression was that they were mostly older people (50+), and from their style of clothing I could tell that they were mostly poor people, maybe people who got wrecked by Hartz4 reforms in the 90s and early 2000s, and grew a deep hate on German politics and the mainstream. Fringe social media groups and conspiracy nuts just take advantage of pre-existing hate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Please get a library card if you wish to read quality (often paywalled) news sources for free. Your tax dollars (going to your city/county) are already paying for access. Best of all, it's digital. Your library card number will grant you huge access to all of this digitally and in near real time (e.g., the databases are updated daily).

<comment><USER22> Are you referring to digital scans or what? My library card doesn't allow me to access nytimes.com.

<comment><USER21> The databases are separate web applications. Your username (and password) is your library ID card number, generally. When inside this site, you can search for publications (e.g., NY Times), and then filter by publication date (e.g., today), and view all of today's articles. It isn't access to NYTimes.com, but it's the same article contents accessed in a different way.

You may have used these databases in school to write research papers. Public libraries grant more or less the same access to similar/same databases, if you no longer are a member of an academic institution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The first link in the article is not a "lie".

"Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets" has a RT video that shows exactly that, and links to several other confirmed Twitter accounts all stating the same thing.

How is that a lie?

<comment><USER24> There's been a lot of coverage around false-flag sorts of behavior in Portland, but the fact that this thing is being pumped through the lie pipelines that originate with places like RT (Russian state-controlled media) is kinda a dead giveaway.

We can get into a nuanced discussion of "is it really lying" since there's a video, but I have not been a party to any conversations in my lifetime that start with a nuanced discussion of "is something technically a lie" that end with a good feeling in my gut. So that's kinda a clue that despite the technicalities of language something uncool is happening.

<comment><USER25> 1) There are protestors 2) They are doing things 3) "Protestors are doing things" is a lie because they might not "actually" be part of the protestors but instead be false-flag undercover agents?

That's wild. You can't have a functioning press under those assumptions, because you don't know for absolute certain that everything is the way it looks. Donald Trump might be a long-term agent of the Democratic Party aiming to damage the Republican Party. Of course, it doesn't look that way on the surface, but you never know. Saying he's a Republican is "a lie" by those standards.

<comment><USER26> There is a long, _long_ history of false-flag operations undertaken during protests. Some caution is advised when deciding whether any one action is taken by genuine protesters, especially when it's as comically "unpatriotic" as burning the bible and flag.

<comment><USER25> Obviously, just as it's important to be cautious in general when reporting on hot issues. But to claim that it's _a lie_ because _they might be false flag_ seems ridiculous. Your reporting might always turn out to not be accurate in hindsight, but I wouldn't consider it a lie unless you knew it to be inaccurate at the time of publishing.

<comment><USER26> Agreed. I don't know the article author's opinion on this, but my personal problem with the article is not its veracity, but that it is obviously engineered to cause outrage in a certain group. It is nearly impossible to put forward facts that do not tend towards a bias, but efforts can be made to present it in a less emotionally charged way. Many comments on HN that are factually true get downvoted because of accusatory phrasing, this is the same in my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Lies are not free, they are paid by ads and a complete industry is built on keeping this going. The price of the ads are built into the price of the product/service you buy, so we are basically paying for the lies too, it's just not as obvious as paying to get through the paywall.

<comment><USER28> They are free for consumers

<comment><USER29> They're free for the consumers of lies. They're paid for by the consumers of whatever product is buying the adverts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I just want Netflix for journalism. I don't want a super expensive sub to a dozen papers. I want one subscription, they all should be included (maybe offer different tiers if you are an arse) and it shouldn't be more than $20/month.

Go.

<comment><USER31> Why do you assume that $20 is enough to support multiple newspapers?

That's nearly how much the New York Times ($17/month) alone costs and they lost money every year in recent history until 2018 and are only now turning the corner as a business.

On the surface I'd assume that actual journalism -- not just clickbait opinion pieces -- is going to cost you way more than $20 a month if you want access to multiple sources.

<comment><USER32> This is the fallacy that led to the current broken model.

Suppose that instead of paying $17 a month to get the NYT, I pay $20 a month to get that and five other similarly high quality news sources. Does this make it harder to fund journalism? Not at all. The NYT now has (for argument's sake) six times as many subscribers, all paying slightly more than six times as much. So do the five other organizations. And, since the consumer has a much better proposition, people who previously weren't paying will sign up and the total pot will be even bigger. Since all the costs are fixed costs, it doesn't matter if everyone reads six times as many articles. But they won't. They will read slightly more, but benefit much more by having a bigger choice.

This is what we saw with Spotify. You pay about the price of buying one album a month. But you get to listen to much, much, more. Even if you only listen to a few songs a day, the utility of being able to choose from anything is huge. Of course, some people used to spend a lot more each month on physical music. But lots of other people used to spend nothing, since if you only had $15 a month, you could't get much for it.

One problem is that the NYT, the the FT, the New Yorker, etc, each assume that they are uniquely trusted and loved by their audience. But that's only true because of selection bias. No one who values their output to the tune of $3 a month is part of their readership.

In the music industry, the huge monopolists could force adoption of the new model. But they're also the reason musicians don't make much money, since they are now supporting two sets of middlemen - the tech companies and the 'record labels'.

<comment><USER33> > The NYT now has (for argument's sake) six times as many subscribers, all > paying slightly more than six times as much.

Not really, there must be an intersection between them and we don't know how large it is. And I don't believe there's many other magazine/news sites as successful as NYT so the revenue number is more likely 3x~4x even assuming no intersection and 100% conversion rate.

The real issue is that traditional media's competitive edge was its infrastructure for content distribution, not the content itself. Sadly, people willing to pay money for high quality journalism seems minority so its budget is. Otherwise, ads-powered yellow journalism cannot be thriving as is. In this landscape, there's simply not much incentive to pursue such aggregated subscription model for media itself. Maybe there can be suitable business models for aggregators like FB or Google, but I don't think this is what you really want.

<comment><USER34> I think the point is that a cheaper subscription model would bring in a lot of new subscribers that were previously paying _nothing_.

There's a quote that goes along the lines of "those who don't read the news are uninformed; those who read the news are misinformed".

For me, I see NYT as one of the more credible new sources, but it has a history of bias against reforms to wealth inequality, which is an important issue for me. Accordingly, I can't justify using it as my sole source of news, and I can't afford to pay more than $20/mo total for this sort of expense.

So, an option to pay $20/mo for access to 5-6 different news sources would be really appealing to me. Until then, I'll keep using my 3 free articles / month from the random news outlets that get posted to HN/reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> That's why I buy my "news" at Amazon, as e-books on the topics I'm interested, since for 99.9999999999% of the things happening in the world, nobody really cares about how many months they will have to wait for my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER36> I wonder sometimes if all of those people who sat around dreaming about what the Web would do for the world ever get together and ask what the hell happened.

What's worst is that a lot of these conversations happened when memory of Eternal September were still relatively fresh. For my own part, I was maybe 22, new to the industry, and had not yet begun to appreciate Carlin's, "Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist." Boy howdy.

The infrastructure that grants us the Enlightenment or Democracy also, when taken ad absurbum, brings us to Idiocracy.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Turns out Reason extracts the same bargain.

<comment><USER37> The fact that I can read your comment suggests that the Web has done something pretty incredible - it has made it possible for anyone with internet access to share information with billions of people.

I think that this article is written from an idealist perspective. It's asking: How can we take this accessible Web of journalistic information, and make access to it free, while still providing professional journalists with an income?

The author's answer to that question is: have the government pay journalists rather than citizens. One way to make that happen could be to centralize journalism in a non-profit, Spotify-esque app, and have donors and government sponsor the app.

Another similar, less ideal option is to create this centralized, Spotify- esque app for journalism, and then paywall the app. Since paying a monthly fee for dozens of individually paywalled newspapers/websites seems unreasonable to me, I don't pay for any of them. Yet, I do pay for Spotify. And if I could pay a monthly fee to read all journalism on the web, I probably would.

<comment><USER36> Essentially we are talking on Usenet with better responsiveness and a bit more moderation. I think it remains to be seen if responsiveness actually increases the quality of dialog (personally I suspect it's mixed; better in some ways, worse in others).

That's not a lot of real improvement for 30 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I would be willing to pay an amount for better quality news than what can be found for free, however news outlets always seem to lean one way. I want somebody to just report and not tilt it in one direction.

<comment><USER39> What is unbiased? If you were a late 18th century french reporter writing a report about the death of king Louis XVI, would you write "King Louis was murdered", "King Louis was executed", "former king Louis executed by means of guillotine for high treason", "citizen Louis Capet beheaded on the order of the National Convention" or something else? All of those descriptions can be considered true and yet none are unbiased.

<comment><USER40> What's the bias you see in the statements "King Louis was executed" or "former king Louis executed by means of guillotine for high treason"? Both the terms "execution" and "high treason" are objective descriptions takens from the proceedings.

<comment><USER41> No? Treason is in the eye of the revolutionary judge. The trial was never a fair one, the outcome was clear from the start. And from an unfair trial and an unjust judgement you can't lawfully execute someone, you can only murder him execution-style.

<comment><USER42> To me, "executed for high treason" has the meaning that the person or organisation that killed him considered him to be guilty of high treason, and that they considered themselves to have the authority to decide to execute them, not that the paper with that headline necessarily agrees with either of those things. Similarly, a modern newspaper saying that someone "was executed by a gang for theft of their drugs" doesn't necessarily mean that they actually did take the drugs, that taking the drugs did constitute theft, or that the killing wasn't murder. So I think does count as objectively true.

<comment><USER41> Depends on the newspaper. Things that the newspaper doesn't want to judge the truth of usually get put in quotes or have attributes like "alledged" or "supposed" added. Without such limiting additions, the newspaper is assumed to embrace the written statement as true and will e.g. be liable for slander. The yellow press will care more about the catchy headline than the slander charges, so they usually avoid being precise and accept the punishment as cost of running their rag...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Reminds me a lot of google's effort to create high-quality scans of every book ever written. They got pretty far before the publishers stopped them. They now sit on a sizeable percentage of all books published, locked away in their servers where nobody can access it.

<comment><USER44> Could they still use this to train an AI model, legally speaking?

<comment><USER43> I think all they are allowed to do is sit on the data. Huge waste to human knowledge. Many of the books are out of print.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is a long-ish article, as per usual for N Robinson, and I think people ITT are focusing only on the start. Yes free vs. subscription news media is an interesting and important issue, but this article goes on to make a more wide- reaching and incisive criticism of how Capitalism structures the production and distribution of information or knowledge (Current Affairs is a socialist magazine).

Information production is dominated by the super-rich and the state, and access to knowledge (not merely information) is carefully controlled for the benefit of and use by the highly educated, wealthy elite.

An aspect that I often think about is how the vast majority of truly top-tier multimedia (books, articles, movies) has been created decades ago. A person could, for example, spend multiple lifetimes reading the amazing academic and artistic literature in the public domain. But such an existence is terribly unprofitable, so it's heavily discouraged in favour of a content-diet full of pop-culture ephemera. Alan Kay said about Pop Culture, that it "is all about identity and feeling like you're participating, It has nothing to do with cooperation, the past or the future—it's living in the present." Such over- stimulating, disorienting, and fashionable multimedia, perhaps perfected by Buzzfeed, is making us energetic consumers, and idiots. Amused to death drinking from a firehose of 'free'.

<comment><USER46> No, they're focusing only on the title. People on HN are no better than the people who get their news from Facebook memes. They just _think_ they're better.

/r/LOLHackerNews

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> > Lyta and Brianna point out that in the real world, this justification [for > copyrights] is often bullshit, because copyrights last well beyond the death > of the person who actually made the thing.

I oppose long copyrights, but they do increase the value of an author's work by making it potentially pay out for longer to the buyer. At least some of that value often gets to the author in the sale price. And if they don't sell the rights there is more potential value to their heirs, which has definite value to most of us.

</comment><comment><USER48> I think a more accurate description is that the elite narrative is paywalled but the one for the proles is free - and the elite are absolutely convinced their narrative is the truth. The contents of, say, New York Times or Washington Post reporting on the state of US Covid-19 testing and contact tracing and how it compares to the rest of the world, the evidence on mask wearing, or anything to do with Trump or protests in no way resembles the truth.

Reading them leaves people absolutely convinced that - for example - the US is behind South Korea in per-capita coronavirus testing, despite this not having been true for a long time. Seriously, the number of people I've seen on here and in the Times comment section pointing to this one specific, untrue thing as clear proof Trump must've sabotaged Covid testing because there was no way that the US could have remained behind South Korea for so long otherwise was astounding - and even more astounding was the cleverness of the articles worded to trick people into believing this, or the boldness of the Times in literally printing a news headline accusing Trump of being the liar for pointing out the exact opposite was true.

<comment><USER49> I highly disagree. Rupert Murdoch is surely one of the most elite of the elites and his vast media empire has managed to brainwash certain folks into calling his vision "populism" due strictly to his outreach efforts.

It would also appear that you didn't read the article, as your point is not the topic of the article.

The article is about copyright law running counter to information accessibility, running counter to an interpretation of "freedom of speech".

The article is about economic rather than technological barriers to information sharing.

That's the problem with knee-jerk first-paragraph-read comments.

<comment><USER48> There's a reason I described the other narrative as "for the proles" and not "by the proles", you know... and the "truth" side having a business model that puts economic and convenience barriers in the way of access, so that only the people who really want to use it as their source of information and are willing to put up time and money to do so read it is a great way of turning that side into an elite thing.

Also, thinking about this some more, that particular bogus fact is probably an interesting counter-example to the rest of the article too. All the information required to debunk that claim about South Korean vs US coronavirus testing was and still is publicly available for free in English, and there were and still are really convenient sites aggregating it unobstructed by barriers like copyright. Everyone in the know believed the bogus elite- narrative claim anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> > _Now, I am sure there will be those who argue that any universal knowledge > access system of this kind will inhibit the creation of new work by reducing > the rewards people get. But let us note a few facts: first, dead people > cannot be incentivized to be creative, thus at least everything ever created > by a person who is now dead should be made freely available to all. The > gatekeepers to intellectual products made by the dead are parasites the > equivalent of a private individual who sets up a gate and a tollbooth in the > middle of a road somebody else has already built and starts charging people > if they want to pass._

This seems wrong. Longer-lasting copyright does incentivize authors more, because it can be sold for more.

<comment><USER29> But we are positively drowning in music, video and written words. We don't need more incentives for people to create copyrighted work. We need more effective markets for consumers to judge it.

<comment><USER51> We are drowning in repetitive shit and crap, I'd say. It is hard to find good new stuff although it is more abundant than ever because people who create it do not have resources to reach the audience through all the noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> There are drawbacks to such a universal search system as described. The search is often crucial to the development of ideas. Like going to a library looking for a book, and finding a bunch of books on the same shelf or two shelfs over. You lose that with a universal search. The time and energy involved in finding things is crucial to the development and ideation process.

</comment><comment><USER53> for me as a self-declared european conservative (in the history of the social(isty)-centrist-catholic parties) this page gives hope that the USA, even if currently split in between wars of oil, race and money might still have the potential to become, what it once was: a beacon of light for any honest, community-oriented and republican (in the most basic sense) democrat.

</comment><comment><USER54> Did anyone realize that this article is free?

<comment><USER55> The amount of free content that Current Affairs has published on the website is a minuscule fraction of their print (subscriber) output.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'd like more microtransactions and would gladly pay a few cents or even a dollar to read a good article.

The business model is to bundle everything together, for a long subscription - most want at least a month, perhaps a year, full subscription.

<comment><USER57> It doesn't work.

Because what if you pay 0.5$ for an article, and then you find out it's not what you expected/badly written/...

You basically are not happy and less likely to do it again. If you put payment to the end, then people are less willing to pay, because they already consumed the article. You can't take the information out of the head again if he's not willing to pay.

It's a tricky thing

<comment><USER58> A possibility would be a (global, publication independent) subscription service like this: you pay a fixed amount in each month (say, ten dollars). Then every time you read an article from a website that subscribes to the service, if you liked the article you click on a widget. At the end of the month, the ten dollars are redistributed to the publishers in proportion to your clicks. So payment is voluntary but the total amount per month is already allocated- it's not a matter of deciding whether to pay or not but just how to distribute the money.

<comment><USER57> I fully support this. But publishing houses don't. They don't see the benefit.

Also with the a volunteer voting system you could use that to signal to people without a subscription what articles were "good", "controversial", ... to increase chances of a "buy-per-page" for like 10 cents per article.

Or something, I feel like the possibilities are vast, but publishing houses need to collaborate. Which they don't like to.

<comment><USER58> Not sure what the publishing houses would think about this, but how's the collaboration needed? You can create the service and distribute the widget; and if at first it will be used only by independent bloggers I don't see the issue. More commercial players might use it too if they think it can increase their revenues- maybe test it for a subset of articles at first.

I understand that the idea has tons of limitations but it might solve the issue of micropayments with their tiny amounts and the constant need to decide whether to pay or not to pay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Lies are not just free to consume, they are also free to generate.

It is "expensive" to generate true high information content, because, from an information theoretic point of view, "high information" means "surprising" which means "improbable". The improbability of high information events/messages throttles the rate of their occurrence.

Lies on the other hand can be made to sound surprising and high information, with no natural probabilistic throttle. They can be generated at will, at arbitrary frequency.

</comment><comment><USER60> This is why I sponsor the Guardian, they stay open and give good news.

<comment><USER61> The Guardian as with other newspapers has to selectively report the news which it does using a vocabulary which implicitly or explicitly reflects their opinions about the news. Naturally the overall output confirms the prejudices of their readership. It's 'good news', they say.

<comment><USER62> Ah yes, pesky words, revealing bias and confirming prejudices. I only subscribe to newspapers that print their headlines as formal logical statements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Even access to good journalism is now related to income inequality. Very few who live paycheck-to-paycheck will pay for access to news when they can get some version of it for free.

</comment><comment><USER64> If you were to only subscribe to one online news source, what would it be? I'm willing to lay for a single source Ethan would cover most necessary news within The United Stages.

</comment><comment><USER65> Yup. This must be why all the anti-maskers and COVID skeptics get all their news from Facebook. Truth is, Facebook isn't free either, you're just sacrificing your privacy for garbage.

</comment><comment><USER66> Current Affairs should know a thing or two about lies being free...

</comment><comment><USER67> This is specifically why I choose to support sources that don't have paywalls, but are still trustworthy news sources like Vox, The Guardian, etc. In these particular cases they do have an editorial stance that I happen to agree with but others may not, but the facts are still there and they're largely trustworthy. They're also open about their editorial stance and biases, so if you don't agree you can still get the facts and be skeptical about the editorial stance. But either way, personally I like both these examples so I try to support them instead of organizations that put up a paywall. I'm sure if your worldview is different you can find organizations that are legit but also have different funding models to support, or just learn to separate facts from editorializing or op-eds.

<comment><USER68> I don't read the Guardian, but Vox has a significant bias. I wouldn't call them trustworthy.

<comment><USER67> Like I said, the facts are there. They're great journalists, and they're up front with their editorial stance. You don't have to agree with it, but you can still get the facts and good reporting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> The ironic part of this is that people tend to click on things that are sensational and fake over things that are true.

</comment><comment><USER70> I mean we do have PBS, we just underfund it relative to something like the BBC. We probably also don't have as strong of political norms around not politicizing it so it's inevitable that someone like Trump does.

</comment><comment><USER71> The best part about newspapers is that they are primary source material when it comes time to write the history books...

</comment><comment><USER72> Trim gets around many of the paywalls on popular news sites, and uses no JavaScript or cookies in the browser:

[https://beta.trimread.com/](https://beta.trimread.com/)

For example, the article in question is reduced from 895 kB down to 35 kB: [https://beta.trimread.com/articles/30765](https://beta.trimread.com/articles/30765)

</comment><comment><USER73> Are there some sort of bundle subscriptions available?

Buy all of that stuff separately won't be cheap

<comment><USER74> even if there were a bundle of that, people'll still find a way to complain about it and they'd still not want to pay for news.

<comment><USER30> People always complain. A significant amount of people happily pays for Netflix and its likes, though.

<comment><USER75> Speak for yourself, I pay for Netflix grumpily!

But jokes aside I stopped paying for my last newspaper subscriptions some time ago because I just didn't find the time to read and thought they were developing in a wrong direction.

I think Netflix TV shows have some kind of normalized content that I would fear would be mirrored if the service existed for news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Although the overall idea of this article makes sense but there are certain fallacies that stand out.

For example, the Times article on "neo-Nazis infiltrating German institutions" might not be "free" but the same article on New York Times was free. Does this imply that Times article must be closer to truth than the one in the New York Times? This assumption seems flawed.

</comment><comment><USER77> The author would've been better served by pointing out the paywalls of research done in universities, funded by people's taxes.

That'd be somewhat close to 'the truth is paywalled'.

Newspapers and truth are a contradiction - truth is boring, newspapers cannot afford to be boring because they compete on entertainment value or illusion of 'being informed', not truth value, therefore every newspaper panders and skews 'the truth' in exchange for entertainment or 'being informed' value, that's their _job_.

Paywalled or not, newspapers are drug dealers for the junkies addicted to a 'need to be informed'. Twitter is beating them to the punch. On twitter you can be infinitely 'informed' _and_ be an active participant in 'informing' others, which is why journalists and 'intellectuals' can't get enough of it.

<comment><USER78> He does, starting at the section that begins:

> Possibly even worse is the fact that so much academic writing is kept behind > vastly more costly paywalls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> And the Current Affairs site is free so...what is that telling us?

<comment><USER80> Current Affairs is primarily a print magazine (i am a delighted subscriber). They publish some (though not all) of their articles for free on the web

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> The central thesis, that the truth must be paid for is fundamentally wrong. Even if many experts may require payment it is no guarantee that what is paid for is true.

Furthermore payment isn't always needed to publish the truth. There are agendas which aren't neccessarily a bad thing or untrue. An honest victim of a crime or travesty would have an agenda!

Anyone claiming to be a victim may or may not be telling the truth but they would not need any payment to want to have their story told!

That isn't to say that unpaid could be a complete replacement but every issue cited for free could also occur in paywalled ones including nobody wanting to pay for an expert.

</comment><comment><USER82> I have no problem with a paywall in principle. I do have a problem with 20 paywalls for 20 sites, most of which I would only read an article every other month. News publishers need to get their act together.

</comment><comment><USER83> > Creators must be compensated well.

How? By who?

</comment><comment><USER84> I think this headline is backwards.

</comment><comment><USER85> So after reading some top comments (see Tesla review discussion) it looks like the bullshit is on both sides of the paywall. Upd: grammar.

</comment><comment><USER86> I think there's pretty interesting discussion about this here too that addresses some of the article's points more directly: [https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/i2z7i5/the_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/i2z7i5/the_truth_is_paywalled_but_the_lies_are_free/)

</comment><comment><USER87> Quite a few of media that are paywalled with supposed "truth" are usually ones that are first to support wars and military interventions. They also love to skew the truth in corporate direction. This is not to say they don't have talented and good writers who produce insightful journalism, they do, quite a lot.

Excuse me for not wanting to pay or support other people's misery.

</comment><comment><USER88> more like "The Left Charges for it's Fantastic Narrative"

</comment><comment><USER89> After reading this I feel like humanity might be better off if we have a full libertarian approach to information online, the Ross Ulbricht school of thought. Access everything that is digital at your desire. The internet seems to be driving humanity the wrong way in its current form, seeing what happens to democracies worldwide.

</comment><comment><USER90> The OP is a well-written, well-reasoned, thought-provoking article which I would recommend reading in full before passing judgment on it. Quoting from the first few paragraphs, which I found compelling:

> But let us also notice something: The New York Times, the New Yorker, the > Washington Post, the New Republic, New York, Harper's, the New York Review > of Books, the Financial Times, and the London Times all have paywalls. > Breitbart, Fox News, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the Washington > Examiner, InfoWars: free!

> You want "Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets," > "The Moral Case Against Mask Mandates And Other COVID Restrictions," or an > article suggesting the National Institutes of Health has admitted 5G phones > cause coronavirus—they're yours.[a] You want the detailed Times reports on > neo-Nazis infiltrating German institutions, the reasons contact tracing is > failing in U.S. states, or the Trump administration's undercutting of the > USPS's effectiveness—well, if you've clicked around the website a bit you'll > run straight into the paywall.[b]

> This doesn't mean the paywall shouldn't be there. But it does mean that it > costs time and money to access a lot of true and important information, > while a lot of bullshit is completely free.

\--

[a] Free links: [https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/01/portland- prote...](https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/01/portland-protesters- burn-bibles-american-flags-in-the-streets/) | [https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/31/the-moral-case- against-...](https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/31/the-moral-case-against-mask- mandates-and-other-covid-restrictions/) | [https://www.infowars.com/nih- admits-5g-can-actually-create-c...](https://www.infowars.com/nih- admits-5g-can-actually-create-coronavirus-within-human-cells/)

[b] Paywalled links: [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/01/world/europe/germany- nazi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/01/world/europe/germany-nazi- infiltration.html) | [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/health/covid-contact- trac...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/health/covid-contact-tracing- tests.html) | [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/us/politics/trump-usps- ma...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/us/politics/trump-usps-mail- delays.html)

</comment><comment><USER91> > _The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free_

Claims the article not behind a paywall.

</comment><comment><USER92> Of course they left the Wall Street Journal (paywalled and quite expensive) out of their list because it doesn't fit their narrative.

<comment><USER62> As in... the WSJ publishes lies but is paywalled? That's generally not my experience; WSJ is nowhere near where it used to be, but isn't among the trash tier of journalism, yet.

The "media bias" chart from Ad Fontes media puts them at a slight right slant, with reporting accuracy more-or-less on par with publications like Newsweek, The Economist, and WaPo.[0][1]

[0] Chart: [https://www.adfontesmedia.com/gallery/](https://www.adfontesmedia.com/gallery/) [1] Methodology: [https://www.adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news- sourc...](https://www.adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news-sources/)

<comment><USER92> I was implying that the WSJ is generally conservative, and the only examples they give of free sites are (uber / crazy) conservative. I've subscribed to the WSJ for 15 years and read it daily. Their iPad app is beautiful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> hah, if only it were that easy.

The paywalled stuff is bullshit too. Plus, they know they have a micro- targettable audience of _suckers who are willing to pay_.

</comment><comment><USER94> > _You want the detailed Times reports on neo-Nazis infiltrating German > institutions, the reasons contact tracing is failing in U.S. states, or the > Trump administration's undercutting of the USPS's effectiveness—well, if > you've clicked around the website a bit you'll run straight into the > paywall._

Excuse me but why would I want to pay for that ? I don't earn by reading articles online and the news websites are already littered with advertisements and autoplay videos. I get tracked around the web by these ads and I'm supposed to even fund that ?

Thank you but I will pass.

> _The New York Times is, in fact, extremely valuable, if you read it > critically and look past the headlines. Usually the truth is in there > somewhere, as there is a great deal of excellent reporting, and one could > almost construct a serious newspaper purely from material culled from the > New York Times._

... and can't you do the same with Infowars ? Critically read it and look past the headlines ? Perhaps the truth will be there somewhere too. (albeit as a total negation of the Infowars article)

<comment> blaser-waffle Don't even use Infowars and NYT in the same sentence. The NYT has some notable shortcomings, but Infowars is straight-up propaganda used by its host to shill for questionable food supplements and fake corona-virus cures.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/leahrosenbaum/2020/04/09/infowa...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/leahrosenbaum/2020/04/09/infowars- founder-alex-jones-must-stop-selling-fake-coronavirus-silver-cures-fda- says/#76a62ef3541a)

<comment><USER46> I'm pretty conservative, and I hate the antisemitism at the NY Times. Yet, I pay for a subscription because there are some basic standards to their reporting that are worth it, even though their editorial slant doesn't always match up with mine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> I love it, the first example of fake news from Breitbart is true. There's video of it happening.

</comment><comment><USER96> > Breitbart, Fox News, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the Washington > Examiner, InfoWars: free!

As is salon.com, theatlantic.com, theroot.com, vox.com, huffingtonpost.com, slate.com, and also _somehow_ missing from that list, CNN!

I appreciate the point the author is trying to make, and realize this is tangential, but I would be grateful if he didn't try to deceive me with the choice of examples.

<comment><USER53> is CNN really putting up anything except news - of which reuters/AP/UPI already give a pretty good overview for free? And while all the left/neoliberal (and clickbaity) things you noted are free, they are less concerned with news, but more opinion – to my knowledge they don't try to make the impression of a news outlet as much as the listed ones (which carry typical news-speak even in their name!)

<comment><USER96> All those sites look like news sites to me, except the Atlantic, which is indeed limited to opinion/commentary.

Salon's About page: "Salon covers breaking news, politics, entertainment, culture, and technology through investigative reporting, commentary, criticism, and provocative personal essays." A few titles from their site:

        -As pandemic spreads, feds go MIA
        -Did Steve Daines get pharma kickback?
        -The second pandemic: Pollution
        -Many Black, Latinx and poor Americans who needed relief the most never got a stimulus check: study
        -Dr. Fauci says it's not "dreaming" that a coronavirus vaccine could arrive by 2021
        -The COVID-19 downturn triggers jump in Medicaid enrollment

The Root has an explicit "News" section (theroot.com/c/news). Some titles from the site (not limited to that section):

        -Jamaica's Supreme Court Rules That School Can Ban Child With Dreadlocks (No, We're Not Kidding)
        -Protests Planned in St. Louis, Mo. After New Prosecutor Says He Won't Make Criminal Charges in Police Killing of Michael Brown
        -Brooklyn Man Sentenced to 10 Years for Hate Crime Against Black Woman
        -After a Summer of Social Media Trolling By Gen Z, Trump Says He's Going to Ban TikTok From America
        -Rumored VP Candidate Rep. Karen Bass Explains Video of Her Praising Church of Scientology, Denounces Fidel Castro
        -Michigan Appeals Court Grants Release of Black Girl Who Was Detained After Not Doing Online Homework

Vox:

        -The slow-motion 2020 election disaster states are scrambling to prevent, explained
        -The US ambassador to Brazil reportedly asked Brazilian officials to help Trump's reelection
        -Scientists have backed away from the worst-case climate scenario — and the best one too
        -"The end of arms control as we know it"
        -Polls: Biden and Trump are nearly tied in North Carolina and Georgia
        -As coronavirus cases increase worldwide, an Australian state is imposing tough new restrictions
        -Lawmakers still "not close" to a coronavirus stimulus deal, a day after $600 federal relief expired

Huffpost also has a "News" section (the most prominent of all). Some titles taken straight from their front page:

        -Coronavirus Live Updates: Read The Latest About The COVID-19 Outbreak
        -Top Health Official: Time To 'Move On' From Hydroxychloroquine Efficacy Claims
        -College Athletes Threaten To Skip Season Over COVID-19, Racial Justice Demands
        -Watchdog Calls For Probe Amid Fears Of 'Voter Suppression Tactics' Through Postal Service
        -Thousands Ordered To Evacuate As Wildfires Scorch Southern California
        -Navy SEALS Investigate Video Of Dogs Attacking Colin Kaepernick Stand-In

The very first section of Slate is titled "News & Politics". A few titles from that section:

        -The US Takes On TikTok
        -The Republican National Convention in Charlotte Will Be Closed to the Press
        -Arizona Congressman Tests Positive for COVID-19, Blasts Republicans Who Don't Wear Masks
        -Hundreds of Coronavirus Infections at Georgia Camp Raise Tough Questions About Schools Reopening
        -EU Extends Ban on Dangerous Foreign Travelers (Americans)

In sum, there's no way to claim these are not news sites.

<comment><USER53> nothing in "investigative reporting, commentary, criticism, and provocative personal essays" is, what I consider news. q.e.d.

vox.com: "Vox explains the news.". No shroud of being objective here either. q.e.d.

slate.com: "we are a general-interest publication offering analysis and commentary about politics, news, business, technology, and culture" general interest is vague, but no non-commented news here either, q.e.d.

the root has a category "news", but if you visit their main page you see, it's just a sort of "community news-ticker" (like any political page has) and I don't see them making claims to universality.

Compare that to Breitbart mingling everything there is into their political agend and explicitly stating: "truthful reporting", ... , "Breitbart News is one of America's leading news organizations."

leaves the huffpost which is laughable by design.

<comment><USER96> > nothing in "investigative reporting, [..]" is, what I consider news. q.e.d.

At this point I don't think there's anything I can say that will convince you.

But yes, if you invent some contrived definition of "news site" that disqualifies every left-wing site, only right-wing ones remain.

And I don't understand how that is even relevant to the article - as long as you can "get your news" from some source, that's enough. It doesn't have to pass some made-up purity test of what qualifies as a news site, because readers won't be applying that test. To pretend only right-wing sites share news and opinion for free is just willful blindness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> "History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books—books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon? '"

<comment><USER97> This isn't history, it's current affairs.

<comment><USER98> Parts of the article are relevant to historical research. There is a discussion about the cost of access to academic papers, which is a serious issue and one that I can relate to. I remember trying to access a paper in an academic journal about a decade ago, and was almost immediately turned by the $20 or $30 price tag. I say almost immediately because I did some additional research into what the paper was. It turns out that it was a one page editorial! So not only would costs mount for legitimate resources for a serious research project, but researchers have to put in extra effort to ensure the resources are legitimate in order to control those expenses.</comment></comment></comment>


Strategies to Take on an Established Competitor - <AUTHOR> http://thenetsetter.com/blog/strategy/6-strategies-to-take-on-an-established-competitor/

<comment><USER2> This post is giving bad advice. It sounds like good advice, but it's bad advice. Let's say I'm looking to buy an FTP client. What do I do? I'll search for FTP client on google, take a look at the first 5 clients, download and install the ones that look interesting and have about the same feature set, then buy the one that is easiest to use/and or cheaper.

New customers coming into a market do not have preconceptions about who is the biggest or the best! That's the fundamental flaw in the argument.

The correct way to take on an established product is:

1\. Offer all their features

2\. Make sure you are visible on the same locations as they are

3\. Offer more value for the money

4\. Be more convenient and or easy to use

<comment><USER3>
      1. Offer all their features

On the contrary, I think the initial approach should be simpler than that - underdo your competition - <http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Build_Less.php>

<comment><USER2> Give 5 examples where this has worked (also with less marketing).

<comment><USER3> Sure, I can give you many examples. Here are some of them:

Google Search - At a time when Web search (portals) was dominated by the likes of Altavista, Excite, Yahoo etc., Google focused only on the search side of things. A minimal homepage, no groups/usenet, no frills. Just better search.

Twitter - They focused on short messaging (status updates). Unlike Facebook (who also offer status updates), they have no photo albums, no groups, no advanced privacy controls. Just simple messaging in 140 chars.

Vimeo - They focused on online videos. YouTube already dominates this space. Vimeo on the other hand kept it simple - allowing only videos created by the users - user generated visual content. No 3rd party videos, no copyrighted content. Just original creative work.

Campaign Monitor - They are a great example of a slick yet simple service. No fancy marketing bullshit. Pure simple email newsletter delivery with only the necessary tracking tools and highly customizable newsletter designing templates. Pay as you go, no monthly fees. Send newsletters to 5, or 100,000 people.

GitHub - Source control and code repository is nothing new, but GitHub offers just what's needed. Nothing more, nothing less.

iPod Shuffle - Music on the move? Been there, done that. No radio, no fancy controls, no digital display. Under $50.

Posterous - Blogging started a new wave of online expression and information sharing. How about a dead simple place to post everything, through email. No fancy admin panel, no hassles with updates and templating.

Feedity ( _shameless plug_ ) - Create instant RSS feeds, for pretty much any public webpage. No filtering, no fancy UI (pipes!), no signup required. Today, four of our paying customers are state government offices.

All these products/startups are notable and profitable (ok, except Twitter, but they are not far from it). What do they have in common? In my opinion, they started by offering less. And, less is more.

Marketing is a different, and unrelated (to this discussion), topic altogether. My viewpoint is to keep the feature-set simple.

<comment><USER2> None of the products you mention took over the market, they just addressed a different market. Only google took over the market, but they did that by differentiation of the core product, not by stripping down anything out of search.

<comment><USER3> Starting up a business is not about taking over the market. It's about making profits to sustain and grow. You can't learn to walk, until you learn to crawl.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is really good and the advice in it is excellent - and the font size is brilliant too :-)

The only wtf is the fact that the author thinks social news is dominated by digg, when in my view it's roughly split between digg and reddit (but maybe I'm wrong). Still, if HN gets a mention, reddit should too, really.

Excellent article nevertheless.

<comment><USER5> Last graph I saw, digg was miles ahead of reddit, so I don't think it's that far off.

Also, agreed with not just the font but the whole site - one of the prettiest I've seen in a while.

<comment><USER4> Digg is partly there because it cheats on its metrics. Every upvote counts as another visit.

In terms of actual traffic, last time I was dugg and reddited digg was only slightly ahead of reddit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A related article I'd like to see is how to take the lead in a divided market. My (unlaunched, in progress) startup is in a space where there are a three or four competitors with a large customer base, and a dozen or so others with significant ones. They're almost all offering the same (aged) feature set. But it's not like the service has become commoditized the way basic web hosting has.

I feel like we're going to have strong differentiators, and a much easier time getting adoption from the slice of the market not already using one of our competitors. But what's the best way for us to get all the people who have sunk their money and time into a competitor's service (and its learning curve)?

</comment><comment><USER7> Great article. I actually asked a similar question here a while back (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=345651>).

Nice job ...

On a side note, my only complaint is your analysis of iStockPhoto's quality compared to expensive stock players. IMO, most microstock (while _good enough_ for many people's needs) isn't on par with professionally produced stock photography and many people can see a difference. Plus, if you say that in a room of professional photogs, you're likely to get a beat down :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how the strategy will change if I were to take on not just an established competitor, but a market leader, say Facebook or SAP ERP.</comment>


Becoming fully reactive: an explanation of Mobservable - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mweststrate/becoming-fully-reactive-an-in-depth-explanation-of-mobservable-55995262a254#.h1ihbtorr <comment><USER2> This looks really interesting but there are a few caveats wrt Arrays:[1]

"Due to limitations of native arrays in ES5 (array.observe is only available in ES7, and arrays cannot be extend),..."

"Bear in mind that Array.isArray(observable([])) will yield false, so whenever you need to pass an observable array to an external library, it is a good idea to create a shallow copy before passing it... "

Also, now that Object.observe has been removed from the standards track[2], does anyone know the fate of Array.observe? MDN says it's not on std track either.[3]

How are we going to write any sort of observable library that includes arrays with zero support from the language? (At least Objects have getters and setters and the ability to seal etc...)

[1] [http://mweststrate.github.io/mobservable/refguide/observable...](http://mweststrate.github.io/mobservable/refguide/observable.html) [2] [https://esdiscuss.org/topic/an-update-on-object- observe](https://esdiscuss.org/topic/an-update-on-object-observe) [3] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/observe)

<comment><AUTHOR> Object.observe was a bad idea. Even when it was available in chrome I didn't consider using it. However, the ES6 proposal for object proxies will hopefully become generally available as those can solve the same issue way more elegantly. Proxies will be able to address the current limitations of arrays in Mobservable.

I wrote a short blog post about the issue: [https://medium.com/p/object- observe-is-dead-long-live-mobser...](https://medium.com/p/object-observe-is- dead-long-live-mobservable-observe-ad96930140c5). Mobservable currently relies on property getters / setters, both for arrays and objects. Probably until proxies will be generally available.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does Building a startup feels like doing the work of 10 people? - <AUTHOR> CEO, HR, CFO, Sales, COO, Purchases, Project manager, Quality insurance, Product Development, Customer Developer, Product Owner, Customer relationship, Product Manager<p>In reality a startup company without at least 18 millions in funding for 5 years of development is just like a crippled man. <comment><USER2> Been there, done that. So yes, it does feel like that. It is hard and can grind on you. It can burn you out. There are good days and there are bad days. It doesn't always pay off. It isn't for everyone. Doing it once, whether you succeed or not might be enough for you.

So yes, it feels like doing the work of 10 people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes it does. I heard the phrase "Chief Everything Officer" and it resonated so that's what's on my resume now. It's tough that's for sure.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yes, it does feel that way. And yet I am doing it the second time. As a founder you are the janitor and the CEO and everything in between at the same time. It's fun when it works out like last time, but I will find out soon if it's fun the second time around.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes it does. The interesting thing is that you only realize it later (at least in my case) - probably 3-6-12 months down the road, as you need to do more and more and more.

But that's ok, in time you learn to cope with it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, because you have to do the work of all the positions. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER7> You don't need all those roles to have a successful startup.

</comment><comment><USER8> None of my personalities feel like that. Personality affinity.

</comment><comment><USER9> Did I miss the memo that startups were suppose to be easy and instant successes?</comment>


Update on the FBI datacenter raid - <AUTHOR> http://www.examiner.com/x-3628-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2009m4d6-More-datacenter-woes <comment><USER2> From now on, geographic replication will have a new-found importance. I think a lot of businesses think "our customers will understand if the site is down for a few days after a giant natural disaster or bombing or whatever." But, how many customers are going to be understanding of the indefinite downtime that was caused by some other completely unrelated company not paying its AT&T bill?

Imagine if this company had been hosting its service on Amazon EC2 or at Rackspace or on Google AppEngine. Would the FBI seize every one on Amazon's/Rackspace's/Google's data centers? Could you imagine all of Google's services being down for weeks or months because one of its customers is being investigated for maybe violating some contract for a few thousand dollars?

<comment><USER3> " _Imagine if this company had been hosting its service on Amazon EC2 or at Rackspace or on Google AppEngine. Would the FBI seize every one on Amazon's/Rackspace's/Google's data centers? Could you imagine all of Google's services being down for weeks or months because one of its customers is being investigated for maybe violating some contract for a few thousand dollars?_ "

Wouldn't happen. Google has the corporate muscle to make the government do what they want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _I took issue with that, as I know I can copy a 1 terabyte drive in about an hour using my aging Macintosh (not the most efficient transfer)._

Oh, really? _Really_? 1TB is 1million MB (according to HDD manufacturers, let's not get into that debate again) so even with a relatively current and snappy drive and controller you're looking at about 100MB/s net. That's about 10000 seconds or roughly 3 hours to copy. You'll get faster speeds with SAS drives, but far from all hosting sites use them, and I doubt the author's "aging" Mac does.

That's not counting the labour of documenting/tracking the origin of the drive, actually hooking it up to the target equipment, etc. The authorities could probably be handling much of this investigation a lot more delicately, but give them _some_ credit on this side of things.

</comment><comment><USER5> > took issue with that, as I know I can copy a 1 terabyte drive in about an > hour using my aging Macintosh (not the most efficient transfer).

That's 278 MB/s. I call bull. At best, they're merely confusing the prefixes.</comment>