How Much Money Are Facebook Apps Making? Not Much Apparently - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2008/01/28/facebook-applications-revenue/ I am baffled by the hype surrounding Facebook applications.  I wonder where the payoff is for the companies that develop these applications.  The users are reluctant to pay for them.  Advertising is clearly less than optimal at this point.  Where exactly is the money coming from, or is it that money has yet to be made by anyone yet. <comment><AUTHOR> I am baffled by the hype surrounding Facebook applications. I wonder where the payoff is for the companies that develop these applications. The users are reluctant to pay for them. Advertising is clearly less than optimal at this point. Where exactly is the money coming from, or is it that money has yet to be made by anyone yet.

</comment><comment><USER2> Why in the world is anyone surprised? Do you people honestly believe facebook is worth the billions they claim?</comment>


Facebook Home ads show Facebook at its worst - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/265cc8a17432 <comment><USER2> So there is an interesting "issue" with Facebook which is that Facebook has so many users that when even a very small fraction of them thinks Facebook should be something that Facebook isn't trying to be, its a lot of people disconnected from the "vision".

The issue is in quotes because for some this is a non-problem, these people don't get it and they will eventually move on. For others it is a huge problem because they see a potential product that they would like, and Facebook has some or most of the pieces, but it never completes the picture.

One has to assume that because a television spot requires review and approval and then insertion approval that it represents closely what the folks managing the vision of what Facebook home should be. And from these commercials they are selling a way to "hang out" with the people you really care about when you are hanging out with people you are near and perhaps care less about.

As with real relationships you bring your complexes to them, not the other way around.

<comment><USER3> That "issue" is something I've been trying to put into words for a while now and you did it very very well. I think that absolutely describes the dynamics between Facebook and the reaction of subsets of users every time the company releases a new product.

<comment><USER4> I think people don't always realize the scale of Facebook's user base. With one billion people if 99% approve of a change you've still upset 10 million people - 90% 100 million.

And the approval rating is probably much lower than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My first reaction on seeing the goat ad was negative. Why they chose to advertise this as an antisocial product which helps you disengage from ACTUAL social activity escaped me.

I once wrote a blog boat decrying the attitude of many of my European friends and family (who I see and keep up with on Facebook of course) for their attitude summed up on the phrase "I don't live to work, I work to live" ...while this sounds superficially appealing most folks saying it use it as a justification for letting life pass them by, taking Jo responsibility for themselves, making no effort in their job and then blowing their paycheck on booze at the weekend.

Facebook Home as portrayed in these ads appears to be for the folks zombieing their way through life in this way. The artifice if social networking replacing the actual social. It saddens me. Sharing "experiences" is nowhere near as good as actually having experiences, being present fully in the moment, in the company of others similarly engaged.

<comment><USER6> > My first reaction on seeing the goat ad was negative. Why they chose to > advertise this as an antisocial product which helps you disengage from > ACTUAL social activity escaped me.

Because they want to promote disengaging from actual social activities and browsing facebook instead.

> Sharing "experiences" is nowhere near as good as actually having > experiences, being present fully in the moment, in the company of others > similarly engaged.

Yes, but "actually having experiences" doesn't give you a chance to watch facebook ads, while "sharing experiences" does.

It's _your_ business to know what's better for you and their business to know what's better for _them_. Facebook isn't a charity.

<comment><USER7> > _Because they want to promote disengaging from actual social activities and > browsing facebook instead._

Exactly. This is as honest marketing as it gets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The behaviour of the people in the ad is exactly the type of behaviour that facebook can thrive off. Glance around in public occasionally and note that half the people looking at their phones are looking at facebook. I think this is the first time that facebook has so blatantly approved of that behaviour, though.

Side-note: Was the adversary in the recent Doctor Who episode (Bells of Saint John) a metaphor for this type of facebook behaviour?

</comment><comment><USER9> Advertising Facebook as the perfect tool for the completely unconscious is a most unfortunate choice.

I have only seen the airplane ad and while I was watching it I was wondering if they are being ironic. The hero of the ad so to speak is this guy who thinks everything around him is oh so boring so he escapes to the colorful fantasy world provided by his facebook phone.

I was waiting for the punch line only it never arrived.

<comment><USER10> Have you ever boarded an airplane before? For me it's about two minutes of waiting behind people putting up bags, 30 seconds of stowing bags and sitting down, and then fifteen minutes of going through all my chats and social sites hoping somebody has said something interesting since they called my boarding group.

<comment><USER11> I have never been on a plane. I'd be nervous and excited, and would take in as much as I can see. I'd look at my stupid phone for exactly zero seconds.

<comment><USER12> Takeoff, landing, and the flight in between is awesome. I've not flown enough for that to get old. However, the time spend waiting to get ON the plane, or waiting for it to start taxiing, is _amazingly_ boring. Imagine waiting in line to get in an elevator, and then once you're inside, you have to wait ... and wait ... and then the elevator attendants give the mandatory safety spiel that you can't see well, and then finally it starts to move after ten minutes.

That's roughly what the pre-launch portion of an airplane trip is like, and I wholeheartedly empathize with someone traveling alone wanting to mentally escape it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I understand the author's issues with the spots -- and agree with them -- but he seems to demonstrate a poor understanding of what the goal of an advertisement for a free Android overlay targeted mainly towards 18-35 yr olds should be.

The goals of such an advertisement are to be loud and to promote immediate curiosity, in my opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> The author, Josh Elman, has worked at Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and is now a principal at Greylock Partners with an investment focus on advertising and social (among other things). I'd say he definitely understands the advertising goals of a social media company.

<comment><USER13> I'm not trying to be glib, but he really doesn't demonstrate it in the article. His thesis is:

 _Facebook is celebrating all the wrong things. It advocates tuning out the people around you to see what else is happening that must be more interesting elsewhere. It foments FOMO._

Which sounds incredibly effective with the aforementioned target audience.

You could make the argument that he's talking less about the ads being ineffective and talking more about the ads being deplorable, which is fair -- but why does that matter? I can't remember Apple deployed a marketing strategy without the world 'magic', but I still think they're a great company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> These ads are a little strange, but perhaps Facebook is targeting the younger demographic with short attention spans? Perhaps in light of the recent market reports that suggest teenagers are losing interest in Facebook?

Assuming this might be the case, think back when you were a teenager.

Family meals were really monotonous when all you could think about is running back upstairs and resuming your IM sessions with your friends.

Boarding planes (not flying in them mind you) is hella boring and if you look around today, almost everybody who has taken his/her seat is glued to their phones to ease the banality of the entire process.

And the droning out of the CEO? Well, maybe that was Facebook's feeble, yet well-intentioned attempt to poke fun at themselves. Who can't appreciate a little self-deprecating humor?

Finally, I could be completely wrong and Facebook needs to hire a new agency to handle their media image.

</comment><comment><USER15> they're almost the exact opposite of the ad I would want to see: for example, the family is having dinner, everybody is together and talking to each other, and at the end is the reveal that the oldest kid is actually alone in his dorm room, but he feels close to home because, well, facebook home.

on the other hand, i guess most people do in fact view their boss as a boring blowhard so it's more attractive to advertise that your phone can help you ignore him than it is to advertise that it can help you listen. but aren't ads supposed to be aspirational?

</comment><comment><USER16> I hate to do this.. but..

" The Morlocks could have descended from today's social network or hedge fund owners, while the ancestors of the Eloi undoubtedly felt lucky initially, as free tools helped them crash on each other's couches more efficiently. What is intriguing about Wells's vision is that members of both species become undignified, lesser creatures. (Morlocks eat Eloi, which is about as far as one can go in rejecting empathy and dignity.)

source : Lanier, Jaron (2013-03-07). Who Owns The Future? . Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's a truly horrible ad. So un-Facebook, so unlike their landing page. Or maybe it's the Facebook I didn't notice but is normal for everyone else?

How is this ad persuasive or even feel-good?

</comment><comment><USER18> When Facebook tries to drive engagement to their site, is there "meaningful content" qualifier that management uses? Because as far as I can tell, things like "frictionless sharing," "sponsored stories," reposting old likes and even harvesting them from user messages & mere brand mentions in updates have absolutely ZERO to do "meaningful content."

As far as I can tell, Facebook wants users on their site constantly: clicking, and interacting with it in just about any capacity, even an automated one.

Perhaps, mission statement-speak aside, these ads show facebook at its most honest, if even in an idealized way.

</comment><comment><USER19> I still don't know why I click medium.com links here, the site does not work on android thanks to shit CSS

<comment><USER20> We'll look into that. Thanks.

<comment><USER21> Basic Opera Mini support would be nice too.

<https://twitter.com/sausaw/status/320064095321722880>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It looks to me as if Facebook is attempting to represent a product that immerses the user into any experience that they desire, regardless if it's "social" or not. It's obvious that by presenting the viewer with fast-paced, exciting content ready at the flick of a finger, it in turn captures the viewers attention enough to evoke curiosity of the product's possibilities.

If Facebook were to take an intimate social approach with the ad campaign, it could lead to negative results as well. Although I don't have conclusive evidence, I believe a large portion of Facebook's user base uses the platform to feel closer with people and organizations that they don't have immediate relations with - or an actual follower base that will appreciate what they post.

From my point of view, Facebook is more of a content consumption platform than a broadcasting platform -- that's kind of a weird statement, but I'm just partial to believing that most people use it to consume than to produce, hence presenting all of these immersive experiences that users can escape to.

I should add that I agree that this may be harmful for Facebook's long term image, but if the campaign's goal is to get this app into users hands and trap them into the operating system, it seems like a good approach.

</comment><comment><USER23> If these ads intended audience were grown-up, corporate they could have featured business trip and family time, but these ads targets a different demographics altogether.

These ads depicts turning boring into fun, features interruptions every few seconds, showing people unhappy with life looking for a way to escape it and wanting to be entertained. In the center is the phone.

Now what demographics has a short attention span, a low tolerance for boring, is unhappy with life because it sucks and constantly want to stimulated ?

So facebook is targeting teenagers as loosely the 10-25, to the surprise of OP who's an investor, it actually makes a lot of sense.

Teenagers are going mobile, sometimes mobile only at an unmatched rate and they are the major driving force of any so called "social networking website", as demonstrated with pretty much every of those websites in history. I believe it is a known fact that facebook was losing users from this vital demographics and mostly due to a shift of usage towards mobile.

The unexpected part in these ads is that they seem to be truthfully honest, to me the ads shows facebook home as disruptive, obnoxious and unwelcomed constant feed void of interesting content pushing people towards not living in the moment which pretty much sums up facebook IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER24> The next installment of the Facebook Home commercial...

A guy at a party staring at his phone watching a guy at a party staring at his phone watching a guy at a party staring at his phone watching a guy at a party staring at his phone watching a screaming goat.

All through the magic Facebook Home :)

According to this article, the commercials pushes an anti-social agenda. I agree for the most part. The commercial is a lot closer to reality than you think. We are so connected to our phones that we forgot how live without it.

Social networks could be a great thing. But, it should also be use as an amplifier of reality. I could go on an on about this topic, but I give up. People have their obsessions. Whether it is fast foods, TV, internet, sex, Honey Boo Boo Child, too much of anything is never a good thing.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't know. Beach pictures, drag queens (Shangela jumps out of a box!), cute kids, kitty cats, and club photos basically describes what I see the service as being used for by my chums. Not a bad diversion for keeping up with far- flung friends, in my honest opinion.

</comment><comment><USER26> If these ads don't speak to you, you're probably not their profitable market.

</comment><comment><USER27> It is interesting that one cannot see how many people liked or disliked the videos on YouTube, and comments are disabled. They clearly are not that confident about their campaign.

</comment><comment><USER28> Indeed. Is using Facebook on a smart phone to slyly tune out people around you, coworkers, and family really advancing the mission of "making the world more open and connected"?

</comment><comment><USER29> > [...]friends around the world who can celebrate with them immediately from > their phones.

I get the part of the videos, but is this guy delusional? We don't live in an advert, so we don't send out PR quality photo's, or celebrate a friends something by 'like'ing a photo. You do that by calling your friend and congratulate. Social networks is marketing itself as a replacement for actual networks, which is catastrophic.

</comment><comment><USER30> Was literally about to write the same thing. The ads focus on Facebookcas a cigarette break, not on the positive side of things.

</comment><comment><USER31> Facebook is a hyper-successful product that, among some people, has a bad image for various reasons: uncool, invasive, socially destructive etc.

The goat ad is self-aware and funny. It is the opposite of faceless, bland, tech-centric, and obvious. It also deflects expectations that Facebook Home will be perfect straight out of the chute.

Seems to me it's just right.

</comment><comment><USER32> The past decade has wrought a massive shift in the communication paradigm of humans. The context map of communication has completely changed. Over the next decade, we will begin to see the both the positive and negative effects of our collective shift in social perspective.

</comment><comment><USER33> Its all about perception. I like Facebook Home ads. Its creative way of communicating the idea about app instead of just listing out all the services. I am not saying Chrome ad is bad, I lik them both, but Facebook ads got creative edge.

</comment><comment><USER34> Those ads don't appeal to me either. But if they are aiming at a teen to mid- twenties demographic, which I'd imagine they are, it seems fairly spot-on.

</comment><comment><USER27> "When you get messages, you don't have to go into a siloed app to talk to friends, messaging is pervasive"

Facebook Home is the very definition of a siloed app.

</comment><comment><USER35> I agree

</comment><comment><USER35> agree

</comment><comment><USER36> Fuck Facebook and fuck smartphones, too.</comment>


EU copyright reforms draw fire from scientists - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-03837-7 <comment><USER2> > Concerns focus on a provision that would let publishers claim royalties for > the use of snippets of information, such as tables or headlines. This was > included with the aim of enabling news publishers to secure revenue from > social-media platforms such as Facebook and Google. But a proposal added by > a European Parliament committee would mean that the provision also applies > to academic publications.

In other words, this proposed rule is to address the made-up problem that publishers aren't content that third-party news aggregators are doing them a favor by sending them readers; they want to milk them for additional revenue.

The EU parliament committee seems to be acting consistent with the belief that fixing this perceived unfairness is more important than considering the unintentional negative side-effects.

<comment><USER3> The questions asked by the parlement (and the US senate) to Mark Zuckerberg show very clearly how minimal knowledge politicians have of the reality as percieved by 'the rest of us'.

<comment><USER4> did you actually read or watch the whole testimony (of either testimony) or you basing this on ~5 minutes of youtube click bait footage of older senators being confused...

I watched the entire zuckerberg united states senate testimony and I found much of the questioning incisive and valuable

<comment><USER3> I admit I only read some articles on both encounters (in reputable newspapers). However, those are very much in line with my personal experiences from the years that was running a media company. Politicians are focussed on getting in office and staying there. Being friends with (listing to) the big guys (big names, important companies) is cool and good for status. Mingling with the little guys is only neccessary every so many years (because, what do they know anyway ?). Yes, it made me a little frustrated ;-)

<comment><USER5> I watched a couple of hours of it myself and saw moments like the "senator, we run ads" moment happen. A lot of the things the media was running off about was taken well out of context. That moment, for example, was not nearly as "oh my god look at this old fart" as Twitter made it. They had already established the fact that FB makes money off ads and the senator was basically poking to see if there was any thought towards another way to make money.

Honestly a fair number of quality questions were asked and deflected by Zuck, and he knew how to play some moments to make the senators look stupid for those social media soundbites. But to be fair, an alarming number of questions were also either very poorly formed (intention was there, a millennial proofread would have helped though) or were thinly veiled self indulgent political maneuvers. Zuck actually did a good job defending net neutrality at one point where the line of questioning was obviously a nod to the ISP cabal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Intellectual-property experts agree that existing EU copyright rules need an > overhaul for the digital age

Variations of this idea are the root of all the bullshit that has began with the DMCA and keeps on with periodical attempts to expand it with SOPA/PIPA/ACTA etc.

<comment><USER7> And the sad fact is that they are right, it does need an overhaul, just pretty much in the opposite direction. With the need for traditional publishers and distributors a thing of the past we should be looking into other ways to monetize the arts to support the artists rather than doubling down on scarcity.

<comment><USER8> Experts cost money. One side can pay for experts, the other can't. In this case it's the newspapers and publishers. Other times it will be the copyright lobby.

It's reminds me of well-funded think-tanks providing experts with academic credentials very articulately arguing that supply-side effects are a great reason to cut taxes for the super-rich and decrease or privatize those costly public services.

How many think-tanks advocating increasing taxes for the rich to pay for public services for all get a steady income stream?

It's like a biased random walk. Sometimes things go backwards a bit, but the direction's set by underlying bias of the system.

<comment><USER9> The other side can pay for 10000x more experts. Google is on the other side and the EU has been intentionally ignoring what they've said on the subject for years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're am EU citizen, you can call an MEP, either with Mozilla's simple but basic tool[0] or by looking at the list of swing MEPs[1] and using EDRi'S talking points[2].

[0] [https://changecopyright.org](https://changecopyright.org)

[1] [https://edri.org/files/Copyright_JURI_MEPs_undecided.pdf](https://edri.org/files/Copyright_JURI_MEPs_undecided.pdf).

[2] [https://edri.org/stop-the-censorshipmachine-suggested- talkin...](https://edri.org/stop-the-censorshipmachine-suggested-talking- points/)

<comment><USER11> I also want to mention [https://saveyourinternet.eu/](https://saveyourinternet.eu/), a joint campaign from some 20 organizations (including Creative Commons and Wikimedia).

The FSFE and EFF are running their own campaigns as well:

[https://savecodeshare.eu/](https://savecodeshare.eu/)

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/internet-luminaries- ri...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/internet-luminaries-ring-alarm- eu-copyright-filtering-proposal)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Please help out to make sure this directive proposal is voted against next week by the majority of the JURI committee. List of handles of reportedly yet undecided MEPs:

@Emil_Radev @1PavelSvoboda @KaufmannSylvia @enricogasbarra @mady_delvaux @FrancisZD @TadeuszZwiefka @marinhoepinto

(source: [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfrJ6kpWAAEifEL.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DfrJ6kpWAAEifEL.jpg))

Full list of Legal Affairs (JURI) committee members that will cast a vote:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8q1mfc/on_the_eu_co...](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8q1mfc/on_the_eu_copyright_reform/e0lavem/)

MEP @Senficon is leading the charge against this on Twitter with some sensible alternatives proposed.

A good takedown of this proposal that gets into details:

[https://www.communia-association.org/2018/05/22/council- parl...](https://www.communia-association.org/2018/05/22/council-parliament- edge-towards-finalizing-positions-article-13-remains-mess/)

This reddit thread is also a great resource:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8q1mfc/on_the_eu_co...](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/8q1mfc/on_the_eu_copyright_reform/?st=jig36rhl&sh=1d6eb9ca)

</comment><comment><USER13> Just the mere fact that the EU government can be so technically inept as to draft and circulate such a legislation makes me totally distrust its intentions.

<comment><USER14> I don't think it's bad intentions, just very very poor intuition about how computers and software works. They take it as a given that software-based content filters can and do work reasonably well and that the exceptions are exceedingly rare. Just like the press and government and most Hacker News patrons think that self-driving cars are imminent and real AI is just around the corner, and electronic voting is a good idea; and how the press believe that there's probably a backdoor solution for encryption that is still totally safe.

<comment><USER13> I think their calculation is far more rational: "There are no large internet companies in Europe (due to their own anti-startup regulation and taxation regime btw), but there are large copyright owners. So let's at least maximize the the value to the EU copyright lobby without any regard for the EU internet lobby (since we have none)".

<comment><USER15> >due to their own anti-startup regulation and taxation regime

Mention one such law.

<comment><USER16> _Mention one such law._

EU law that creates a barrier for startups? Here are just a few examples that are likely to be relevant to a typical startup we might have been discussing on HN, in addition to the various attempted IP changes mentioned elsewhere in today's discussion:

* Article 82(c) (the foundation of the anti-price-discrimination regime)

* Consumer Rights Directive

* ePrivacy Directive

* VAT regulations (particularly the 2015 changes affecting digital services)

* GDPR

All of these could credibly have been introduced with good intentions. Many of us would probably support reasonable consumer rights protections or privacy provisions, for example.

However, all of them have been criticised for their practical implementation and their adverse (and possibly unintended) effects on smaller businesses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > _Concerns focus on a provision that would let publishers claim royalties for > the use of snippets of information, such as tables or headlines. This was > included with the aim of enabling news publishers to secure revenue from > social-media platforms such as Facebook and Google. But a proposal added by > a European Parliament committee would mean that the provision also applies > to academic publications._

The EU repeatedly shoots itself in the foot with badly-written laws—aimed at Facebook and Google—landing on itself. Revenue thresholds, for GDPR or this, only above which these requirements activate, are a simple fix. No idea why the European bureaucracy repeatedly opposes such thresholds.

<comment><USER18> How GDPR is always listed as bad is beyond me. Do you actually know what it does or are you just repeating what the sellers of your data are moaning about right now?

Privacy is broken, GDPR with informed consent requirements for nonessential data uses, is a first step in the right direction. All the bitching right now is from companies that made money off of selling you out.

<comment><USER19> And from consumers who want those services to exist at the prices they are currently offered at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I worry that the days of openness - of FOSS and SV startups, as leading examples - might be looked back on as a halcyon nirvana, a wild and free era, remembered by the few who understand what openness means and what its implications were, and who still remember as new generations grow up accustomed to something else. In the case of something so fundamentally technical, most of the public doesn't understand it; they would not understand the significance and what it has begotten. How many noticed what happened to the streetcars? How many Americans notice their horrible healthcare system, despite overwhelming evidence of far better alternatives?

Look at the CPTPP[0], net neutrality, and this proposed law. Look at the brazen abuse of power by big business in Washington (and in American state capitals and in Seattle and in campaign finance). If you think horrible laws won't happen, won't become fate; if you think it will work out in the end, you haven't read history. There not only have been horrible things like segregation and mass incarceration, which (have) lasted generations, or war upon war, but again and again industry has seized power and cemented their position, and soon it becomes a norm that nobody notices, with vested interests that won't want to change. Look at the current patent system, as a modern, IT-implicated example. Or a better example: Most people blindly accept region restrictions, for example on films, as a norm - maybe something they try to workaround, but an inevitable situation; it's not.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17313484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17313484)

EDIT: Added region restrictions example

<comment><USER21> Why is it hard to do sane policy?

Because if you listen to the key powers, those key powers act not in the interest of the public but in their own instead. The problem isn't going to get better, as history already shows.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs)

I wonder how it would even theoretically be possible to balance such gravely contrasting needs/wants by whatever definition of representation without ending up at Douglas Adams' quote about summarizing this problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> _> The European Parliament legal committee's vote on the law, scheduled for 23–24 April_

The vote will be on June 20, 2018.

See [https://juliareda.eu/eu-copyright-reform/](https://juliareda.eu/eu- copyright-reform/)

Hopefully enough people will protest, like happened with ACTA.

</comment><comment><USER23> This should be eye-opening to a number of Europeans here on HN who, in the GDPR debate, basically dismissed any possible negative implications of the law by trusting their politicians and basically saying "we don't have to worry because this is not the United States".

<comment><USER24> The problems with EU's incredibly overzealous copyright laws have been known and talked about for decades (in Germany if you take a photograph of the building _the architect_ has some copyrights to that photo). It is a significant issue, and one that is probably perpetuated by the large EU publishing houses like Springer Verlag and so on.

But I think that arguing that because of this issue, other unrelated legislation like GDPR is now somehow "tainted" is being a bit melodramatic. It's not. Privacy laws have been incredibly important in Europe's history and have also been a theme over many decades as well. Not to mention that GDPR was effectively an extension of previous privacy general directives passed in 1995 and earlier. Many non-EU countries also have EU-style privacy laws (like Switzerland).

<comment><USER25> > _in Germany if you take a photograph of the building the architect has some > copyrights to that photo_

FWIW that is the case i'm almost every country (by the Berne Convention) and some are even more restrictive. See e.g. [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panora...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Freedom_of_panorama) for an overview of the international situation (but please don't depend on that for subtleties).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am not an EU lawyer, but in north america this sort of academic use would not be a copyright violation.

(1) You cannot copyright facts. A study saying that there are "100 hamsters per square kilometer" does not control that fact. Anyone else can also say that there are "100 hamsters per square kilometer". They don't even meed to cite the original study (plagiarism is different than copyright). This is well-understood doctrine, especially for people who make things like maps. A chart or a table is just a representation of facts. Copyright would only be an issue for something like a diagram or photograph, something with some creative input. And even then ... see (2).

(2) Academic citation is covered by 'fair use'. One academic paper incorporating a bit from another does so to either rely upon it for some grander theory (comment) or to say that it is wrong about something (criticism). Google and similar entities covered by this law add nothing and so are not covered by fair use.

</comment><comment><USER27> How is it even difficult to reform copyright? You focus on the term, and set a timeline for it to ramp down. Say 5 years per year.

<comment><USER28> Their definition of "reform" is different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This proposal shows how a body that has a power of creating regulation can get corrupted and there is nobody dare to investigate. I won't mention how much tax payer money could have been already wasted on this. People should be in jail over this.

</comment><comment><USER30> At this stage it's clearly an open war between German publishers and media industry with Google and Facebook. The EU citizens will receive the beatings, particular how western world was patronizingly teasing the Great Firewall of China only 5-10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER31> The vote mentioned in the article was almost 2 months ago.

<comment><USER32> The vote by the European Parliament, which is what matters, is next week on June 20.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Worse than net neutrality

<comment><USER34> Are you saying net neutrality is a bad thing? Why so?

<comment><USER33> I mean the net neutrality ban. I should probably have been clear about that.</comment></comment></comment>


First American Mission To Sample An Asteroid Gets Green Light - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-05/asteroid-sampling-mission-gets-critical-go-ahead <comment><USER2> First American mission to return to Earth with a sample from an asteroid, but 13 years after the Japanese did it.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayabusa></comment>


Bing Off to a Good Start: Takes #2 Spot Ahead of Yahoo - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/bing_off_to_a_good_start_takes_2_spot_ahead_of_yahoo.php <comment><USER2> Way too early to call, but recognizing that bloggers need hype.

This datapoint is derived from a couple of weeks of information collected from a company that has no way to verify actual numbers, only predict/interpret much like a Nielsen rating.

Not to mention, position #2 is a long way from position #1 in this game. Add on top of that the fact that Microsoft has historically been very good at making a splash, minorly disrupting the marketplace, and then fading off.

This will be a more interesting conversation 12 months from now.

<comment><USER3> StatCounter does get its data from sites that use their analytics package, so this is more than just a Nielsen-style prediction. I'll admit that those numbers could be skewed due to the type of sites that use StatCounter, though.

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure Google, Bing and Yahoo are not giving them any direct data, so it's mostly coming from speculation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how much of the current success is people trying it out, as opposed to people actually using it for their every-day searches.</comment>


Ask HN: I want to make a boring process fun. Fast-loading HTML5/JS/CSS3 games? - <AUTHOR>

This may already exist, so I figured HN would be the best place to ask.
I am working on a large inventory system and throughout there are a few number crunching functions that take time to execute. I would like to add a small "please wait" game that will take the edge off of an incredibly tedious and painstaking task.
Users are very happy with the system on the whole, but I feel like I can make the annoying bits something to look forward to. I like the thought of them saying "yes, this sucks, but at least there is something to look forward to".
I have no interest in game development, but I also don't want the bloat of a committed game engine, etc.
Any ideas? :D
EDIT/HN devs: When I first added this post, it included <p> tags instead of CR. After editing and removing, it appears it doesn't happen again.
EDIT 2: I would pay for a service that provided interstitial games. <comment><USER2> I don't remember where I saw this, but some companies replaced the "loading.. please wait" with funny stuffs such as "Loading Chuck Norris... (10%)", "Loading the internet (20%)", "Loading MSDos... (30%)", ... It's simple to implement but I found it smart and entertaining !

</comment><comment><USER3> my idea would be to show jumbled words that they can guess while waiting... simple and yet will get them engaged and thinking.. and before they know it, the app is loaded!</comment>


Ask HN: What Websites Are Good for Purchasing Ethereum? - <AUTHOR> Hello Hacker News,
I'm interested in purchasing Ethereum. The issue I keep running into is the purchase limits that each site puts when you initially sign up.
So I have a few questions:
1) Is there a site where I can buy large volume of Ethereum imediately?
2) What are a few good sites where I can buy Ethereum?
Thanks for your help! <comment><USER2> You can buy and sell high volume from GDAX. heres the website: [https://www.gdax.com/trade/ETH-USD](https://www.gdax.com/trade/ETH-USD). You need to make an account with them and provide your information as the money gets transfered to and from your personal bank account.</comment>


"The markets have spoken, and they've chosen wind." - <AUTHOR> https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23082018/wind-energy-prices-market-growth-offshore-tax-credits-turbines-technology <comment><USER2> The thing with the moving parts is doing better? Really?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "The short story is wind is doing well in the markets, has been doing well, and looks like it will continue to do well," said Michael Webber, deputy director of the energy institute at the University of Texas at Austin, who was not involved with the reports.

"It's despite a lot of these policy shifts that have happened under the Trump administration," he said, referring to proposed rules aimed at boosting fossil fuels. "It's as if the markets have spoken, and they've chosen wind."</comment>


RIM implodes: announces layoffs, 500,000 PlayBooks shipped - <AUTHOR> http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/06/16/rim-implodes-announces-layoffs-500000-playbooks-shipped/ <comment><USER2> Whenever I hear about MSFT, Nokia, or RIM struggling to catch up to the incredible lead that Apple has, I remember back in 2007 when Steve Jobs said basically "the iPhone is at least 3 years ahead of everything else in the market."

It took about 3 years for most of the competition to catch up to what the iPhone launched as. Microsoft kept trying to ride the WP 6 train hoping the iPhone was going to flop and not become the next iPod. Eventually they had to do a major rewrite which put them a few years behind of iPhone. Oops. Blackberry Storm and Torch are both still below par and not even competitive against Android devices, let alone iPhone. Nokia never caught up at all with the iPhone.

Similar story is playing out with the iPad. Android is catching up on hardware, but not software ecosystem. Maybe that will be different in a year, but the market could certainly shape up to be more like the iPod dominance of music players than the iPhone/Android dominance of phones. Windows 8 will launch when? 2 or 3 years after the iPad. Sound familiar? Blackberry Playbook is out, but that's such a mess it's not worth discussing.

Steve Jobs was right back in 2007 and most of the market is still 2-3 years behind where Apple is.

<comment><USER3> Lately I feel Apple is behind Google's Android.

There are many decisions Jobs and company have made that for me has made Android look more attractive. I currently own an iPhone and have so for over a year now, but there are things I want it to do that it can not while Android can. When my contract is up Im getting a Nexus or EVO.

I want to enjoy flash, i want to truly run apps in the background, i want the ability to have voice search on home screen via click of a button, i dont want to have to go through sync process when i connect iPhone ( i dont want to find out how to stop sync), I want Google's awesome built in GPS and I want the ability for more customization.

Ive enjoyed my iPhone but playing with girlfriend's Droid X2 and her prior Droid Incredible just showed me Im on the wrong platform. Though Apple's customer service is almost unmatched - will miss that.

They have hordes of cash now but to me with what I mentioned above maybe Apple is truly headed down and destined to repeat it's own history?

<comment><USER4> To each his own. I enjoy simplicity on my phone, excellent battery life, and the odd game, as such, I use an iPhone. It doesn't mean that either way is right, but it also doesn't mean that Apple is destined to repeat their failures.

Bare in mind that although Android outsells iPhone's, Apple still has 40% of the profit of the entire smartphone industry.

<comment><USER5> Ppl always repeat the profit of Apple, but why? What exactly is that relevant to, unless you're a shareholder or Apple employee? Is it just a comment to indicate that Apple isn't about to go out of business?

 _To each his own._

This is really the important statement. Phones are in a state now that I think we can actually have 3 viable OSes in the market. I know families where the dad has a BB, the mom an iPhone, and a child an Android (or Sidekick back in the day), and no one cares. It's not like PCs.

When I go and look at a WebOS device or WP7 I'm not worried about the fact that they have small market share. For the most part it doesn't matter that much to me as a consumer. Sure WP7 only has 20,000 apps. But unless you're Robert Scoble, you'll be more than happy (and if you're Robert Scoble, apps don't even count until you hit 500k).

It's a very different world, and I think we'll see things evolve quite differently.

<comment><USER6> _"Is it just a comment to indicate that Apple isn't about to go out of business?"_

Partially, and partially to indicate that the way Apple is doing things must be at least somewhat right and sustainable.

Why is it so hard for Android manufacturers to release updates for their phones? Because they don't make enough on them to continue supporting them. They make money on new devices sales, so they keep churning out more new handsets.

<comment><USER5> _partially to indicate that the way Apple is doing things must be at least somewhat right and sustainable._

Just an odd concern for an end user, IMO. When I go to buy a car I don't look at the profits of Honda vs Ford. Sure you may not want a company that will go bankrupt, but even if they did the impact really isn't all that huge.

 _Why is it so hard for Android manufacturers to release updates for their phones?_

Because they make deeply integrated skins. They have to reintegrate the skin with a new drop from Google -- not on their schedule, but on Google's (that's when customers start screaming for the update).

 _Because they don't make enough on them to continue supporting them. They make money on new devices sales, so they keep churning out more new handsets._

Everyone makes money on new device sales. The difference is if you get an iOS device -- Apple gets the profit. HTC/Samsung/Moto/LG/etc have to compete for the next sale, even if you've already decided it will be Android.

<comment><USER4> Of course you don't think about Apple's share of profit when you're buying the iPhone, but when you're discussing the iPhone's long term future, the fact it makes an immense amount of profit is very much relevant.

<comment><USER7> To me, when discussing the long term future of an OS, a very valuable metric is how many companies are using it to build their hardware.

Apple is ridding the wave, releasing kick-ass products one after another; but you never know how tomorrow will look like for Apple. On the other hand, if Samsung stops making Android devices or goes out of business, there are others to fill in.

So it's not really so cut and dry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1\. RIM needs to to stop trying to be Apple. I'm not saying ditch the touch screen completely, but they need to stop following so closely in Apple's product development footsteps.

2\. RIM needs to stop being shy about where they manufacture their products. They need to bring manufacturing completely (as in 100%) in to North America and advertise the heck out of that. Apple relies on inexpensive, cheap labor - hit them in the marketing cahones.

3\. RIM needs to build a profitable developer marketplace. The only reason anyone cares about iOS Apps is because there is a chance small developers can make a lot of money developing. RIM needs to create a system where developers can easily earn money. From in-app purchases, to a robust in-app ad serving platform to flexible purchasing options, RIM needs to take a giant step back and let a developer develop any app they want and charge any way they want.

4\. RIM needs to remember that it is first and foremost, a hardware company. They've _never_ been good at making pretty software that works well. Palm, Handspring, HP, Microsoft, and Apple have all at one time or another beat RIM time and again with software - but rarely hardware. Mobile Internet Devices don't need to be complicated or even revolutionary - they just need to be sturdy, refined and fashionable. Forget about saving money on Curve keyboards, forget about trying to breakthrough some crappy "clicking screen", build really great hardware, even if that hardware doesn't conform to the latest trends.

5\. Last, RIM needs to kick cellular providers in the butt. They need to step up where Apple hasn't and make their consumer level data plans inexpensive, open and user friendly.

<comment><USER9> Do people actually care about where the product is manufactured? I don't, as long as they're not using slave labor etc; I actually think outsourcing improves the standard of living around the world and provides me a better product at a lower price.

<comment><USER10> Of course. For many people "buy American" is a mantra. People from car makers to American Apparel try to tap into this sentiment. (obviously the degree to which something was actually "made in the USA" is not always clear)

<comment><USER11> You do know RIM is headquartered in Canada, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Blackberry became the big name in smartphones by making emailing dead simple. In the middle part of last decade, that's what mattered. People were mostly used to mobile phones for making calls, the occasional text message, and maybe a stupid game or two.

When RIM made emailing from the road a very simple process, and created an enterprise-class system for businesses, their brand hit its peak. When they tried to leverage themselves into the consumer market, they did have some initial success. But when they were starting to actually jump into the pond-- after dipping their toes in--Apple came in and sucker punched the entire market in January 2007.

All of a sudden, big players like RIM were behind the curve, figuratively and, for RIM, literally.

They essentially had a 6-month period to get phones that could compete with Apple and nobody really did a good job. The first iPhone was very vulnerable-- no native apps, EDGE, and big price tag--but by the time anyone could offer an iPhone-like experience, Apple had the 3G, native apps, and a lower price tag.

RIM seemed to simply take too long to close their gaps. Their first touchscreen had a hugely misplaced marketing campaign. When RIM released the Storm, they made their SureTouch (or whatever it's called) screen a huge focus. Differentiation is certainly a product strategy, but it seemed like a fairly ridiculous thing to try to base your marketing around. At the time, a lot of people were weary of touchscreens vs. physical keyboards, but the added "value" of the SureTouch didn't come close to a physical keyboard and hindered the use of the touchscreen.

It seems like RIM's major problems were with product design / development, coupled with bad marketing. They controlled the business market, which helped drive the consumer market, and then lost control of it.

<comment><USER13> I think you hit the nail on the head with email. So much is about perception and not technology. When people think about Blackberry they think about email and business. That's it. They don't imagine awesome fun games or music players or videos or cameras even though the blackberry (in theory) has all those.

Nokia has a similar problem, I think. When people imagine Nokia they imagine a 1990s era dumb phone, or at best a crippled feature phone. It doesn't matter what else Nokia does, they are defined that way in the consumer mind.

When people think of Android they think of Google, super smart things like mapping, searching, voice recognition, translation, calendaring, etc. They feel like they are on the edge, living in the future.

And when they think of the iPhone they think of the slick, super smooth experience, the games and multimedia features, apps.

It doesn't really matter what any of these companies do, they'll continue to be defined this way and only Android & iPhone have a truly positive image in this new world. WP7 is hard to define and I'm divided on whether Nokia is good or bad because when Nokia becomes an influence on the brand it may well act like a boat anchor rather than the winch MS obviously wants it to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> RIMM is one of the few companies that can actual compete based on it's hardware specs, as opposed to it's software. People who use blackberry's love their keyboards. They also love their email functionality. They should have switched over to Android based devices running on their hardware with their email client, with BBM thrown in. It could have been a killer device with a ton of apps available from the get go.

This really could have, and should have, been done a while ago, but it's seems like Mike Lazardis is on some kind of a ego trip.

<comment><USER15> Could you elaborate on this some more, particularly the email client?

I had a Blackberry 8830 a few years ago and, even at that time, I thought it was a barebones POS. The email client was pretty unremarkable, as I recall.

<comment><USER14> It's unremarkable to me as well, but people who I know who have switched over from a Blackberry to a iPhone are typically happy with their decision, but the only thing they claim the Blackberry was better with is email. Maybe this is primarily for corporate environments, where they use the enterprise server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm not really a fan of RIM, but the Playbook gave me a very good impression when I first played with it at Best Buy. It isn't an iPad, but it was far more pleasant to use than any of the Android tablets currently on the market.

The decision to ship it without email or calendaring, though... I don't know what they were thinking.

</comment><comment><USER17> Phrases like this make me feel a little bit queasy:

Cost Optimization Program: The company also announced that it will begin a program to streamline operations across the organization, which will include a headcount reduction. This realignment will be focused on taking out redundancies and a reallocation of resources to allow us to focus on the areas that offer the highest growth opportunities and align with RIM strategic objectives, such as accelerating new product introductions.

(Source - Research in Motion's first quarter results for fiscal 2012 - page 2 - retrieved from <http://press.rim.com/financial/release.jsp?id=5051>)

I wish that companies would ditch the PR speech when they announce layoffs.

<comment><USER18> Sometimes PR speech is directly symptomatic of executives' thinking. They talk like this because they think like this - i.e. vague, non-committal, detached abstract concepts that sound professional but are ultimately flat, uninspired and purely reactionary.

I'm only saying this because I'm still bitter from my last employment where this kind of business talk was routinely used to fill the void where management's vision was supposed to be. It really begins to grate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article predicted this a while back: [http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2010/10/whats- really-w...](http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com/2010/10/whats-really-wrong- with-blackberry-and.html)

"RIM's real problems center around two big issues: its market is saturating, and it seems to have lost the ability to create great products. This is a classic problem that eventually faces most successful computer platforms. The danger is not that RIM is about to collapse, but that it'll drift into in a situation where it can't afford the investments needed to succeed in the future. It's very easy for a company to accidentally cross that line, and very hard to get back across it."

<comment><USER20> > _"and it seems to have lost the ability to create great products"_

I disagree with this part. RIM's products are just as good/bad as they've always been - the problem is that Apple came in and raised the bar across the board, and Google came in and did it some more.

RIM is creating early-2000s product in a landscape that has been completely reshaped by iOS and Android.

<comment><USER21> This has been true, but recently RIM has moved towards a system more similar to iOS and Android than their previous products. The Playbook is the first product in this new technology stack.

I imagine that they are basing their future growth around other products based on this new stack. They are behind, but they may still catch up enough to do well. After all, if Apple has proven anything it's that execution matters a whole lot. More so even than features.

Android is a good competitor to iOS only because they have both the features and execution down well enough. Apple may still have an edge in polish, but it's diminishing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This article from Gruber in 2008 seems eerily prescient now. <http://daringfireball.net/2008/05/blackberry_vs_iphone>

</comment><comment><USER23> The next time something like the iPhone launch happens, I'm going to listen to the voice in the back of my head telling me to short the competition over the next three years...

<comment><USER24> Good luck spotting the next iPhone. It wasn't exactly a given that the iPhone was going to be a success. And if you remove the recession, MSFT hasn't really moved it's just stagnent. Same for RIM from what I can see EDIT: I was wrong on rim they went to 100 bucks in 2008 but quickly dropped back to 40-50 range where they are now. I was looking at 2007 where they were in the same range.

<comment><USER25> I think it was pretty obvious that the iPhone was going to be a huge success. It's one reason why Microsoft's board is negligent in keeping Ballmer as CEO. If it was obvious to me that the entire cell phone industry (or at least the only profitable part of it) was being turned on its head, it should've been even more obvious to Ballmer, Lazaridis, and other key industry executives.

The iPad, though, was a different story. I knew I wanted a giant iPod Touch as soon as the iPhone came out, but when the iPad was finally announced I wasn't sure if they were going to sell 2,000 of them or 20,000,000. To this day I think my uncertainty was defensible, because unlike phones there was no existing mass market.

<comment><USER26>
      I think it was pretty obvious that the iPhone was going to
      be a huge success.

There's more 20/20 hindsight in this thread than a rear-view mirror convention. Could you please furnish the public statement you made four years ago where you asserted the doom of all the market leaders, or failing that, brokerage documents showing your massive investment in Apple Inc in 2007?

<comment><USER25> I didn't assert anyone's doom. At the time I assumed that everybody interested in the smartphone business, not just Apple, was heading in the same obvious direction.

Jobs' boast about being three years ahead of everyone else sounded like empty hype, and Ballmer's public assertion that the iPhone would never gain significant market share sounded like strategic misdirection.

I'm not going to post any trade confirmations, but I did buy some AAPL in response to the iPhone announcement, thinking it was a good way for the company to leverage its existing strengths in UX design. Should've bought more, but hey, it was AAPL, and the conventional wisdom at the time went something like, "What kind of moron would put a lot of money into AAPL?"

I don't lay claim to any magical insight, and that's the whole point of my post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I realize it's probably early, but can anyone find any layoff numbers? (even vague numbers, on a scale between "a few" and "a boatload" will be accepted)

<comment><USER28> I'd expect that the layoffs would be centered around the old OS. Anyone involved in the new OS is likely to be safe. Or at least that sounds like a logical approach.

I'd expect the layoffs to be around 5% maybe at most 10%, but really things can still turn around for RIM if they can get their new OS out in mass, so I think we are still not quite in a complete panic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Blackberry had the smartphone lead in the UK for 2010 [1], and is still growing. [2]

Blackberry has a 42% share of the smartphone market in Canada. [3] They also dominate other markets like Argentina. [4]

I wouldn't count them out just yet. I don't see the Playbook getting much of a response from users who don't already use BBs, but their handsets will have a long life. They will have to move fast to keep up with Android, but I think this announcement is a good example that they are aware.

[1] [http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201105/6765/BlackBe...](http://www.thetechherald.com/article.php/201105/6765/BlackBerry- claims-lead-in-UK-smartphone-market)

[2] [http://m.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/mobilemarketing/i/artic...](http://m.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/mobilemarketing/i/article/android- doubles-uk-market-share)

[3] [http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/6/c...](http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2011/6/comScore_Launches_Mobile_Measurement_in_Canada)

[4] [http://www.nextwirelesslatam.com/index.php/1-3g/symbian- and-...](http://www.nextwirelesslatam.com/index.php/1-3g/symbian-and- blackberry-lead-the-smartphones-market-in-argentina/)

<comment><USER30> Not to mention their growth in India. Where 50 million subscribers get added every month. BB is growing very fast here and iPhone is not affordable to most of the indians.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The sad fact is that RIM just can't seem to decide where it's going as a company. They have an entire host of phones that are totally obsolete[1], their tablet doesn't run an operating system that was built in house[2] and for some reason they decided to force people to have a blackberry phone to get the very features most people would use the tablet for.[3] So if I'm in the market for a phone, why on earth would I go with a blackberry?(And no, BBM is not enough)

[1][http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/02/rim-announces- blackberry-...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/02/rim-announces-blackberry- os-7/)

[2][http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/27/rim-introduces- playbook-t...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/27/rim-introduces-playbook-the- blackberry-tablet/)

[3][http://www.intomobile.com/2011/01/10/blackberry-playbook- tab...](http://www.intomobile.com/2011/01/10/blackberry-playbook-tablet- bridge/)

<comment><USER32> I'm with you most of the way, but in what manner is QNX a liability?

<comment><USER31> Rather than build the OS themselves, they decided to acquire it. That tells me that RIM is suffering from a lack of creativity and while you can buy your way to innovation(Microsoft has been doing it for more than 20 years) it's always better to develop new technology in house. The fact that RIM didn't for a flagship product is a huge red flag.

<comment><USER33> When it became clear to Apple that they would need a new OS, they bought NeXT in 1996, and the OS they got that way seems to have worked well for them -- on computers and on phones. Also, Google got its mobile OS by buying Android, Inc, in 2005.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The potential deathblow for a lot of these struggling platforms is that Apple is coasting on a longer (15 month?) product cycle this year. RIM, Nokia (and Windows Phone generally)and HP's webOS platform are counting on big fall launches, but a big simultaneous iPhone launch might relegate the rest to noise. If the rumored new Nexus phone launches around the same time, it's not hard to imagine a 2 way platform race.

</comment><comment><USER34> Ahh I knew I never replied to those linkedin hr emails for a reason.

</comment><comment><USER35> +1 for Schumpeterian destruction!</comment>


Ask HN: Review my investment website startup, StockYoyo.com - <AUTHOR>

We just started StockYoyo (http://www.stockyoyo.com)3 months ago and feel like we're about ready to do a bit of marketing.  Before we spent our hard earned cash we wanted to see what things we should be focusing on and the best feedback we've gotten so far is from members of a hacker news meetup I've been going to.
StockYoyo is an investment website based on game mechanics and social networking principles to help people learn about investing.
We would love general feedback on the site, and we are particularly looking for feedback on the following things:
1) UI.  We've recently made some changes and we'd like to know how the experience is. 2) The game mechanics/feedback loop.  We're trying to make it stickier. 3) The rating system.  Is it understandable/useful.
Of course those are just the things we know we need to know about. I'm sure we're missing stuff we should be thinking about so any other ideas would be great. <comment><USER2> Hey guys, I was there for the demo yesterday. I wanted to talk to you but I had to leave early due to a prior commitment. I hope you'll take the comments below as constructive criticism.

To better prepare for my comments, let me start with a few facts most investors don't know. (For the impatient, there's a TL;DR at the end).

1) The stock market is not infinitely resilient; the price of a security _does_ respond to investors' actions, as per supply-demand.

2) The price of a stock is not a random, meaningless number that keeps going up and down in funny ways; it actually measures the market price of the company (aka 'market cap', which is roughly equal to the number of shares times the share price).

3) The market price of a company is a very, very important barometer for both the company and the overall economy; to name a few, decisions for M&A (mergers and acquisitions) by other companies are based on such numbers, as are lending and investment decisions by banks.

4) For a lot of companies, the vast majority of their shares are traded/held by individual investors like you and me (as opposed to institutional investors, like pension funds, college endowments, mutual funds, etc); for the curious, you can check out the quantity 'institutional ownership' percentage of a company using your favorite stock quote tool (e.g. Google Finance).

An important corollary of the above facts is that, _collectively_ , individual investors like you and me have an enormous power in driving up and down the market prices of public companies. Consequently, if most investors base their buy/sell decisions on criteria other than company valuation, it is likely that their actions will be doing a serious disservice to the market as whole: market prices of companies will no longer reflect the company's value (see below), and will instead reflect whatever is it that investors based their decisions on (such as the phases of the moon, whether the company is being hyped up in the media, amazing little charts that try to predict what the market will do next, etc).

Somehow we've got to an unfortunate place where many companies and publications incentivize investors to think in terms of "what will the market do", "let's ride this climbing wave", "don't be the last sucker to leave this stock", etc, instead of asking the simple question "is this company over- or under-priced?". This is bad for the market, bad for the economy, and consequently bad for investors.

I hope these words will help you reconsider the direction you're heading with StockYoyo. We need tools that empower investors to make more educated decisions, and not more "go-with-the-flow" services.

Check out Trefis.com for a step in the right direction. (DISCLAIMER: I am not by any means affiliated with them).

May I recommend the following literature:

\- Irrational Exuberance, by Robert Shiller (For a gentle introduction on how collective misguided investment can lead to bad things)

\- Value Investing, by Bruce Greenwald et al (For a gentle introduction to value investing)

\- Security Analysis, by Graham and Dodd (To learn from the masters, using good old English from the 30s)

 _TL;DR:_ Services that treat the stock market as a gambling machine ("will it go up??") are doing harm to the market and the economy. Stock prices have a purpose and a meaning, and the market is suffering from the ill-advised actions of investors, who are victims of services that incentivize trades based on things other than company valuation, such as silly technical indicators, or popular consensus on whether a stock is going up or down.

<comment><AUTHOR> I totally agree with you about the problem with "go-with-the-flow" rating systems. You should not simply be able to perform well by picking highly rated stocks. This is one of the problems we're trying to solve.

Our rating system actually has an internal pricing mechanism which is designed to drive the ratings toward zero and prevent piling on behavior. If you just follow the crowd you won't do well as a real investor and you won't score well on our site.

Judging by the feedback we've been getting that's not nearly as obvious as it needs to be and we're trying to figure out how to best show that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I also saw your demo at the HNDC meetup last night - nice job, and kudos for being brave enough to get up in front of a room full of critics.

Some feedback:

\- Without seeing the demo, I'm not sure I would easily get what the site is about from a quick glance at the home page. You have some nice wording -- "A free and enjoyable way to learn about investing" -- but it's part of a scrolling animation and doesn't jump out at you. I also don't see the word "game" anywhere on the front page. It seems like your two key themes are "fun" and "learning" and those don't quite stand out enough.

\- The actual game mechanics are a little confusing - why would users actually care about being the "executive" of a company? As an investor, I might care about learning more, or being exposed to good advice, but to assume that people will be motivated to win a game just because you created it seems like an overreach.

\- Why would StockYoyo picks be better than one of the million other investing sites out there? For that reason, why would it be better than the ultimate "wisdom of crowds" valuation -- the market itself?

I could imagine that one of the numerous self-managed investment sites out there would benefit from having a compelling, easy to use game where aspiring investors could learn but then also easily transfer their picks into real money when they are ready. I'm thinking of the online poker model -- a .net site to learn with play money, a .com to use the real stuff. There might be some significant regulatory hoops to jump through to get this working but I can see real potential there.

<comment><USER4> I made the comment at HNDC last night that "Are crowds wise? That's arguable. But it definitely moves in herds."

The value of a well executed stock "betting" game is that, since what is being wagered is of little or no value compared to an actual market position, the herd may reveal it's intentions in the game before a similar movement is noticeable in the actual market.

For this to to be true, though, two necessary, but by no means sufficient, pre-conditions need to be satisfied: a sufficiently large and well-informed herd; playing a game that maintains the proper balance of care-free (not too much at risk) -vs- care-full (enough is at risk) gameplay.

<comment><USER5> Why would the crowd reveal its intentions earlier in a game than in the actual market? It seems historically, the herd does the opposite. The game is an "easier" market than the real market; much like how play money poker is far easier than real money poker games.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll offer feedback on the ratings system. My one gripe with your site is that the "buy" or "sell" justifications provided by your users seem weak. For example:

        Electric cars are pretty modern now and Tesla is one of  the few companies, that really can offer some excitement to them

\- User Vlado

If you'd really like these guys to learn about investing, you should think about putting prompts in to get them considering the various factors that might lead to this being a successful investment:

* What's this company's valuation? * How does it compare in the competitive landscape? * How well-capitalized is it? * Etc, etc.

It seems like these are "bus station judgments" in large part, where people go "i like this company, it will do well." Build in prompts for deeper consideration if you really want to teach people something and generate useful data.

<comment><USER7> This is a good idea. It would be interesting to see people answering questions such as: At what valuation would you _sell_ this stock? What do you think is a reasonable P/E for this company, and why? If the company isn't cash flow positive, in what timeframe do you expect it to turn the corner?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a concept I like it, and I think your implementation looks good. However the level of commentary in the Cooperative insight is really weak, bordering on completely useless. I'm not sure how to solve that, but to me that is something that instantly jumps out and greatly lowers my impression of the whole site. I realize that it is early days and you don't have many comments to chose from, but perhaps some tough curating of the comments you display is still in order.

</comment><comment><USER9> Saw the showcase at HNDC as well, interesting idea for sure.

Click: <http://www.stockyoyo.com>

</comment><comment><USER10> Just saw this startup at the Hacker News DC meetup last night ... very cool concept!

</comment><comment><USER11> I like the concept. It's light and fun and I could see how it would become addicting especially given your game mechanics setup. Are you using a third- party platform to run that?

From a marketing perspective, this might be something to pitch to high schools with finance classes. It's a bit lighter than some of the more technical stock simulations but I could see teachers using this as an intro to investing and a way to engage students. I think understanding how you're positioned relative to the heavier simulators like VSE would be valuable.

My one request would be for a demo or screenshot or something on the front end before I register. I like to see what I'm getting into before I give you my email address and create a username.

Stickiness does seem to be a challenge. I love the idea of becoming "employees" of a company based on how you predict their stock. But beyond that, I'm not sure what else there is to do. I make a pick and wait to see what happens. What do I do in the meantime?

</comment><comment><USER12> I saw the demo last night, too. Sure there is a need for this, personally I have tried to do something like that using Google Finance and see how I perform over time, without actually buying anything. I should say I didn't understand were the credibility of the site comes from. I mean why should a user trust the scores? or maybe I missed something there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. This is one of the main things we're trying to get right.

To answer your question about the scores, we are using collective intelligence to generate the stock ratings. Ideally the scores will be a kind of average opinion of everyone on the site.

One thing that makes StockYoyo different than other collective intelligence rating sites is that our ratings actually affect how you score when you pick the stock. We reward contrarian opinion and try to drive the ratings to zero. With enough users that means any non-zero rating should hopefully be a meaningful indicator of sentiment.

Unfortunately, we're not sure any of this is very clear and we're not entirely sure how to make it clear without users having to read our scoring FAQ. Better UI? Tool tips? walkthrough?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You aren't giving me enough information. When I view a company the only data that I get are the current price(how current?), and the value based on user votes.

The game mechanics are a good start, but you need to find the sweet spot between where you are and sites like updown.com.

I agree with an earlier commenter that putting things in terms of beating the S&P 500 is a good reference. Your current focus on up/down this week is a little short sited for most investors. I know you need to recurring traffic, but I think you may have abstracted too much from how investing decision are actually made.

If you had tokens that could be placed on stocks and won by beating the S&P; a weekly leader board of who made the most tokens, and positions in the company where awarded to who made the most/least tokens from that company.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Motley Fool has a similar system called CAPS, except that their system is structured around outperforming the S&P 500 index. I like their approach a lot, because it reinforces the oft-forgotten idea that if you're losing to the S&P 500, then a passive investment strategy would have suited you better.

<comment><USER7> And, really, since your competition is The Motley Fool CAPS system, and you are several years behind them, you would be wise to take a look at how they've implemented their system to be conducive to learning about investing to help yourself differentiate. Off the bat, I can name several things:

\- their "outperform"/"underperform" ratings are not absolute, but relative to S&P 500

\- they provide easy access to SEC filings (quarterly and annual financial reports, etc), along with statistics (this is important if your goal is to encourage anything resembling security analysis)

\- they have a wiki dedicated to translating financial jargon

\- they periodically write articles introducing beginners to differing financial topics, such as fixed income investment, investing for retirement, investment philosophy, etc (i'll purposefully avoid commenting on the quality of any of their articles)

\- they have a comprehensive stock screener (with a bug or two, in my experience, but still fairly worthwhile)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is the type of site that looks interesting to me, but not enough that I would register without a better understanding of how it works/what are the benefits. I think you need one of those quick video demonstrations, on the front page to better describe it and walk a new person through how it works.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very interesting idea! Looks like you have a small graphical error right here: <http://i.imgur.com/cfICi.png>, too little spacing between "dots" and the text when there is a big headline. (I am using Chrome 11.0.672.2 dev on OSX)

<comment><USER16> Along the lines of display errors, you have a problem with your slides when a user has JavaScript disabled: <http://i.imgur.com/lThGo.jpg>. I think you could set slide.p2, slide.p3, and slide.p4 with display:none; initially in your css, as opposed to doing it via JavaScript as the page loads, to account for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Great idea - trying to get my feet wet with stocks again (Played with them briefly, with minor profits during school) and this seems like a fun way to give it a go.

Curious: what do you use for email notifications for signups and other transactions done on the site?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now we're not doing anything special. We just send the emails from the server as we need to. A lot of the emails are set up as nightly jobs which we queue up in a DB before we send.

<comment><USER17> Ah, thanks for the heads up.

I asked because I'm the Product Manager of PostageApp, and we specialize on those sorts of emails. Let me know if you'd be interested in giving our app a whirl, it takes the headaches of deliverability out of your hair. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Saw the demo as well last night. Interesting concept and if it actually did hit the masses, I personally think it would have a sway on how you invest into the market. Great concept though!

</comment><comment><USER19> Caught the presentation at HNDC last night; very good UI/UX and a decent idea to boot</comment>


Mastering the CSS rem unit: All units are made equal, sort of. - <AUTHOR> http://writing.ludwignz.com/post/all-units-are-made-equal-sort-of

<comment><USER2> A possible counterpoint: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11799236/should- i-use-px-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11799236/should-i-use-px-or- rem-in-my-css)

<comment><AUTHOR> Alluded to in the article is why 'px for everything', is not better than 'rems'.

Sure, browsers now scale _everything_ up when users zoom, but that doesn't give me, the author, control. I don't have the ability to bump up/down all the text on the page by the same ratio at certain viewport sizes. If I wanted to do this, I'd have to rewrite every 'px' value.

The main point in that counterpoint is that 'px' give greater clarity when authoring CSS, which isn't truly. 'rems' also allow you to use one unit for everything. A 'rem' is a 'rem' is whatever I make a 'rem' in my html{}.

A 'px' is a 'px' is whatever a 'px' is at 96dpi. No matter what I do.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't Google come up with Project Planning service? - <AUTHOR>

Since we're using more and more web-based office tools like Google Docs/Spreadsheet/Powerpoint, it is still cumbersome to use other Project Planning services like Basecamp, etc and link Google Docs links there.
For Project planning, Spreadsheets and PowerPoint are still useful tools.
Why doesn't Google provide a complete suite for Project Planning which can have Docs/Spreadsheet/PowerPoint integrated in it?
Why there is no - Basecamp + Google Docs/Spreadsheet/Powerpoint integrated solution yet? May be Zoho is one... <comment><USER2> My guess would be that Google is still smarting from this:

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/huddlechat_campfire_rip...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/huddlechat_campfire_rip.php)</comment>


JZoopraxiscope: jQuery plugin for making animations from static sequences. - <AUTHOR> http://cobalys.github.com/JZoopraxiscope/

<comment><USER2> that is... just so coool!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


New Experiment Torpedoes Lightweight Dark Matter Particles - <AUTHOR> http://news.sciencemag.org/physics/2013/10/new-experiment-torpedoes-lightweight-dark-matter-particles

<comment><AUTHOR> The paper from LUX is here:

[http://luxdarkmatter.org/papers/LUX_First_Results_2013.pdf](http://luxdarkmatter.org/papers/LUX_First_Results_2013.pdf)

Talk is here:

[http://luxdarkmatter.org/talks/20131030_LUX_First_Results.pd...](http://luxdarkmatter.org/talks/20131030_LUX_First_Results.pdf)

<comment><USER2> The important slide of the talk is 65. It shows the exclusion zone of LUX and some competing experiments in the parameterspace of dark matter particles. The parameters are the cross-section ( how likely a DM particle will react), and the mass of the particles. The funny thing is, that several experiments detected a signal, but they do not agree with each other, and the signals are in the exclusion zone of other experiments.</comment></comment>


Regarding Reuters's report that Apple dropped plan for encrypting iCloud backups - <AUTHOR> https://daringfireball.net/2020/01/reuters_report_on_apple_dropping_plan_for_encrypted_icloud_backups <comment><USER2> For the non-US folks like me, iCloud was a non-option from the start due to data sovereignty. I am already skating on thin ice by sharing calendars between devices using iCloud.

The way Apple can best address the privacy issue while still providing easy backups is to build the iCloud backup functionality into macOS or Apple TV, with facilities to provide rsync-style backups of encrypted volumes to generic online storage services, of which Apple can be one provider.

I want something like Western Digital's "My Cloud" devices, but supporting Time Machine as first class citizen (eg using rsync) not via mounting a disk image.

<comment><USER3> In general, I think Apple's former ideology was "the computer was the hub" back when the iPod was popular. At least 10-15 years ago that's transitioned towards "the cloud is the hub" (I can imagine a bunch of reasons). The old behavior has stuck around, but not really added to and I wouldn't be surprised if it was soon dropped. I think the discontinuation of "Time Capsule" is an example of this.

As another example, you can do backups via iTunes. Generally this was done when you plugged in your device. They did add syncing over wifi, but it's never been very rock solid and afaik you can't automate it since your never plugging in your device. Every time local backups get brought up people say, "but not everyone has a computer" which reenforces the focus on cloud backups.

<comment><USER2> > Every time local backups get brought up people say, "but not everyone has a > computer" which reenforces the focus on cloud backups.

Which is why I would like to see the focus on migrating this functionality to their non-"computer" devices. Or add a separate device specifically to add this feature.

Also the iTunes/Finder backup only works locally, can't be used when I buy a new device to configure it while in the shop.

<comment><USER3> > Which is why I would like to see the focus on migrating this functionality > to their non-"computer" devices. Or add a separate device specifically to > add this feature.

I think that attempt was the AirPort Time Capsule (2008-2018). I'm sure it would have added standalone iPhone backup and other functionality if there was a strong audience.

> Also the iTunes/Finder backup only works locally, can't be used when I buy a > new device to configure it while in the shop.

Apple has had various "p2p" solutions. For awhile it was a physical device that would effectively do a backup & restore to a new device. More recently there's a wireless way to transition your phone that you can do yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >Surely there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of people every day who need to access their iCloud backups who do not remember their password. The fact that Apple can help them is a benefit to those users.

Wait, so how does this work right now? "Hey I promise I'm so-and-so, here's a totally-not-doctored scan of my passport, can you go ahead and send me _literally every conversation, photo, calendar event, note and file I 've downloaded_ since I've been in the Apple ecosystem? Thanks"

That's terrifying.

</comment><comment><USER5> If this bad publicity doesn't get Apple to offer encryption for iCloud backups, I don't know what will.

<comment><USER6> They used to offer it, but found that more people were hurt by loss of passwords (i.e. fail-secure backups) than were hurt by hacking. People who lose all their family photos because they forgot their password get very angry and sad, and it happens more often than you might think. I believe they switched back in 2015 or so.

<comment><USER7> I don't buy that defense. They could set it up to function exactly like local encryption on your Mac.

When encrypting the drive it has you set your passcode. Then it tells you in plain English that you can let them store a decryption key for you in case you forget the passcode or you can store the decryption key yourself and risk losing access to your files if you lose it.

It's simple, easy to understand, and allows the user to decide what sort of security they are comfortable with.

<comment><USER8> When I first enabled iTunes cloud backups years ago, it did exactly that — gave me the choice of letting them securely store a copy of my cloud encryption key, just in case.

I didn't take that option, but the option was there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > For at least the last decade, Apple has offered truly secure encrypted local > backups of iOS devices, using iTunes on a Mac or PC.

I don't see a citation for this claim. How do we know if this is correct? Trust but verify.

> ... for most iPhone and iPad users it's irrelevant, because they never > connect their devices to a Mac or PC, and the overwhelming majority of them > surely have no idea that the feature even exists.

That's precisely why Reuters didn't mention iCloud in its headline. For almost all iOS device owners, backup means iCloud backup.

<comment><USER10> iTunes/local backup works over WiFi without connecting the iOS device via usb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author's hypothesis of how the FBI discussion happened is naive, seeming almost like a straw man. Here's what happened — Apple and FBI have been locked in combat for years over this issue. Surely they've been served with National Security letters, and had the full weight of the government pressing on them.

Apple was forced to compromise, and iCloud is pretty much everything.

<comment><USER12> I think you mistook his point. He's not arguing that Apple didn't acquiesce to the FBI, he's just pointing out how ridiculous the idea is that Apple reached out to the FBI to discuss future product plans (which is what Reuters says happened).</comment></comment>


A bipartisan group in Congress wants to make it harder for you to do taxes - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2019/4/9/18301943/last-minute-tax-preparation-h-r-block-turbotax <comment><USER2> The article has almost nothing to do with the text of the bill. It looks like the author read a sensational blog post and sensationalized it further.

A subsection of the bill just says that the IRS Free File Program will continue. This doesn't make it harder to do your taxes, nor does it make return free filing illegal (the most sensational of the author's feverish claims, which he goes on about at length). This keeps the status quo.</comment>


American Schools Are Teaching Our Kids How to Code All Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/691614/american-schools-are-teaching-our-kids-how-to-code-all-wrong/ <comment><USER2> First phrase of the article: "The US Department of Labor projects that one million jobs in computing will go unfilled by 2020"

This is just false. Similar lies are spoken in Europe. It is just a scam of the "industry" to get more cheap labour.

</comment><comment><USER3> The author complains that kids are learning coding tutorials - like angry birds ones on code.org. Having attended my (then 5yo) doing some of these I think the level is about right. Just like we don't force kids to read chapter books without illustrations at that age, 'horses for courses' as they say.

The angry birds type tutorials are a bit too closely lead buy they cover basic variable use and loops and such. They also show the JavaScript produced by the blockly frontend.

The objections seem a bit harsh given the target age ranges - if they're still using only blockly at 15yo then you would be right to worry IMO.</comment>


Ask HN: You $10,000 to Invest into 1 CryptoCurrency, What would it be? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> hmm none! The Cryptocurrency market is very unstable right now. This is different from usual stock market instability. When stock indices fall, given enough time they will bounce back. However, Crypto's very viability is in question so it is a very risky gamble.

That said, it all depends on your investment profile. Are you a big risk big reward person? Even if that is the case crypto's don't really offer high rewards for the high risk at this point in history

</comment><comment><USER3> XRP

</comment><comment><USER4> Grin

</comment><comment><USER5> keepItInMyOwnPocketCoin

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point, but that being said, wouldn't it be based on what Protocol you felt the most strongly about?</comment>