A new approach to minimum viable product - <AUTHOR> http://www.humbledmba.com/a-new-approach-to-minimum-viable-product <comment><USER3> MVP is one of the many words which has undergone corruption and softened in meaning through people's personal interpretations (Pivot, Startup...other increasingly vague terms).

The approach put forward here is not exactly new - if you read Ash Maurya's Running Lean (<http://www.runningleanhq.com>) he talks extensively on using a rich landing page (rather than a 'viral' launchrock-style page) to accelerate validated learning. The classic DropBox video example is another piece of classic Lean case material. What these both somewhat lack is the 'P' of MVP. Product.

I'd suggest this is 'practical application of Lean Startup principles' rather than MVP - people tend to talk about 'building their MVP' and that process hasn't begun in this case. Validated learning is critical, and getting a headstart on it in this way is a useful technique, but blurring the distinction of early-stage customer development and the actual MVP doesn't help the discussion. It makes the conversation around desirable qualities of a public MVP somewhat harder.

</comment><comment><USER4> A minimum viable product is something that customers can actually _use_. Something that you can sell, that people are willing to pay money for.

This?

> We did everything possible to not show that we hadn't even started the back- > end yet.

Is testing marketing and UI design. Which is great. But it's not an MVP.

<comment><USER5> I think this can still be considered an intermediate MVP that can be tested. The goal of lean is to eliminate waste, so there is a risk that an MVP with working code has no demand whatsoever.

One drawback to this approach is that it may give you false negatives. What if you landing page copy doesn't work or your AdWords copy is wrong? As with all lean/custdev hacks ymmv. Bottom line is you need to find customers to talk to, otherwise everything is an assumption.

Some other articles that touch on this approach:

[http://startupbound.com/how-i-quickly-test-and-validate- star...](http://startupbound.com/how-i-quickly-test-and-validate-startup- ideas/)

[http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/using- adwords-t...](http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2008/11/using-adwords-to- assess-demand-for-your.html)

[http://www.cindyalvarez.com/best-practices/customer- developm...](http://www.cindyalvarez.com/best-practices/customer-development- interviews-how-to-finding-people)

<comment><USER6> i don't disagree that there's value in using this stuff. a lot of value. but doing only this is not an MVP. "P" = product, something you're selling, something people are using.

there should be another name for this. MVI maybe? minimum viable idea?

<comment><USER7> Wikipedia's article on mvp (I know, I know), includes this:

>The canonical MVP strategy for a web application is to create a mock website for the product and purchase online advertising to direct traffic to the site. The mock website may consist of a marketing landing page with a link for more information or purchase. The link is not connected to a purchasing system, instead clicks are recorded and measure customer interest.

from: [wikipedia]([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product#Techniqu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_viable_product#Techniques))

That seems to directly contradict the implication of 'mvp' that you're using, which is that it MUST be a viable product that customers can _use_.

EDIT: The best part of markdown is when it isn't supported, the code is very readable. I say leave it!

<comment><USER6> the wikipedia article seems to me to be referring to an MVP more as a process, and the smoke testing by creating mock websites as one part of that process.

i can agree with that, on some level, but i still feel that to have a complete MVP (process), you necessarily have to have a P at the end of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This isn't MVP (there's no product!), just the beginnings of customer development, no?

</comment><comment><USER9> The cicles do not make sense to me. Minumum viable means the result of the lowest effort/functionality that leads to a viable product. Using overlapping circles just does not work at all, I'd say

Using minimal without viable is somewhat strange. If you look at a program: What is minimal? Hello World? No, I can still do "int main(){ }"! But wait, this still does a context switch... IMO it just does not make sense to say something is "minimal" (but not viable). it's better to say there is viable and not viable and within viable thing, you can head for minimal, too.

<comment><USER10> There is a minimum circle and a viable circle so it would follow that they must both contain products.

So the circle on the left contains minimum (crappy as they indicate) products and the circle on the right contains products that are all viable - <USER2> overdone perhaps.

I'm not sure why it wouldn't make sense that something is minimal but not viable. Any product that can't sell because it is too minimal would fit there.

And the intersection that they are showing is in fact what you are describing: viable and within viable, also minimal. In other words, the most minimal of the viable.

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-warner-x If you feel a swelling sense of pride every time you publish a mockup or do an a/b test you might be missing the point of MVP -- solving a problem without getting caught up in process.

</comment><comment><USER11> I got a new term for this. A fake MVP. Think it's a cool concept, as long as you only fool a couple people (around 10 ~ 50 and not thousands) with it to get some feedback.

</comment><comment><USER12> I am missing the new approach. Maybe this is an explanation of how you applied lean and MVP principles?

</comment><comment><USER13> _Good customer development is filming the trailer and then deciding whether to make the movie._

FWIW: Tarantino & Rodriguez's movie _Grindhouse_ included several fake movie trailers. They were so popular that _Machete_ and _Hobo_With_A_Shotgun_ were turned into real movies with good boxoffice returns; more such projects are underway.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is not a new approach. Vaporware and other deceptive practices have been plaguing our industry for decades.</comment>


The .blog Bait and Switch - <AUTHOR> http://chrisschidle.com/the-dot-blog-bait-and-switch/ <comment><USER2> This seems to have become the de facto pattern with the new gTLD system. A company swoops in and buys a namespace for $200k (or more if there is a competitive bid), and they effectively turn into the cartel equivalent of the domain squatter.

You can register your new gTLD for anywhere between $1 and $100, depending on what I suppose they expect their target demographic to be willing to pay. Dot horse is more expensive than dot webcam, for instance, and I imagine dot lawyer is more expensive than dot lol.

However, if your domain name uses a word or phrase that happens to be in their "premium domain" dictionary, then they'll charge an elevated price based on heuristics similar to what yesteryear's domain squatters used. Some simple and concise domains can run hundreds of thousands of dollars.

      cheap.horse is $25/yr
      tiny.horse is $100/yr
      internet.horse is $1000/yr
      free.horse is "ask us"

Controlling the TLD is the ultimate form of domain squatting.

I wonder what will happen when some of these companies go under because they can no longer afford to pay off their debts? Will those that registered domain names lose them outright? Can someone else buy the gTLD and take them all over?

<comment><USER3> I wonder how much to buy "my.horse".

Then I can setup a sole mailbox "look", and have it auto respond to any messages with "my horse is amazing".

I wonder how may will get the joke.

<comment><USER4> I have a .horse domain - I tried every permutation horse puns and in-jokes (my.lovely.horse, etc) but they were all taken by squatters or reserved for stupid prices.

Eventually I settled for sheep.horse, which is easy to remember but not much else.

<comment><USER5> I'm glad that someone snagged hoarse.horse and is doing more with it than I would have.

not.horse is available, too, if someone wants to tell that joke via a TLD.

And of course, bad.horse is exactly what you expect it to be.

<comment><USER6> Don't forget to traceroute bad.horse.

<comment><USER7> 17 bad.horse (220.127.116.11) 274.138 ms 272.734 ms 271.442 ms

18 bad.horse (184.108.40.206) 281.595 ms 346.926 ms 277.790 ms

19 bad.horse (184.108.40.206) 321.686 ms 486.714 ms 288.551 ms

20 bad.horse (188.8.131.52) 280.425 ms 281.488 ms 314.627 ms

21 he.rides.across.the.nation (188.8.131.52) 296.891 ms 297.092 ms 297.880 ms

22 the.thoroughbred.of.sin (18.104.22.168) 380.358 ms 305.077 ms 312.953 ms

23 he.got.the.application (22.214.171.124) 308.228 ms 373.024 ms 334.579 ms

24 that.you.just.sent.in (18.104.22.168) 305.447 ms 452.741 ms 306.166 ms

25 it.needs.evaluation (18.104.22.168) 342.778 ms 317.674 ms 313.240 ms

26 so.let.the.games.begin (184.108.40.206) 387.610 ms 310.964 ms 482.971 ms

27 a.heinous.crime (126.96.36.199) 320.908 ms 455.232 ms 351.113 ms

28 a.show.of.force (18.104.22.168) 327.957 ms 328.891 ms 494.652 ms

29 a.murder.would.be.nice.of.course (184.108.40.206) 406.810 ms 379.742 ms 406.548 ms

30 bad.horse (188.8.131.52) 341.390 ms 341.207 ms 531.487 ms

31 bad.horse (188.8.131.52) 415.444 ms 412.884 ms 345.962 ms

32 bad.horse (18.104.22.168) 344.182 ms 345.273 ms 343.255 ms

33 he-s.bad (188.8.131.52) 539.652 ms 352.428 ms 354.169 ms

34 the.evil.league.of.evil (184.108.40.206) 354.151 ms 368.464 ms 409.535 ms

35 is.watching.so.beware (22.214.171.124) 412.046 ms 397.060 ms 377.321 ms

36 the.grade.that.you.receive (126.96.36.199) 369.120 ms 472.142 ms 369.329 ms

37 will.be.your.last.we.swear (18.104.22.168) 450.581 ms 584.539 ms 369.829 ms

38 so.make.the.bad.horse.gleeful (18.104.22.168) 443.618 ms 380.086 ms 430.089 ms

39 or.he-ll.make.you.his.mare (18.104.22.168) 409.878 ms 409.638 ms 376.659 ms

40 o_o (188.8.131.52) 394.767 ms 392.315 ms 394.865 ms

41 you-re.saddled.up (126.96.36.199) 470.925 ms 574.203 ms 390.227 ms

42 there-s.no.recourse (184.108.40.206) 399.117 ms 398.627 ms 418.105 ms

43 it-s.hi-ho.silver (18.104.22.168) 614.293 ms 407.711 ms 410.689 ms

44 signed.bad.horse (126.96.36.199) 419.605 ms 410.318 ms 538.911 ms

<comment><USER8> What a waste of precious ipv4 addresses! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've never understood why some random company is allowed to arbitrate the domain registration and make $$$ out of it. Feels like it's kinda not in the spirit of the internet.

<comment><USER10> It is a complete state-sponsored racket. There's no way around it.

You pay an upfront fee to ICANN and probably some kind of recurring tax and you get to create a TLD. You then sell this TLD for higher prices than ICANN and run a very simple service that processes the transactions.

You then take anything lower than a 5 or 6 letter domain that is a word in the english language and define it as a "premium" domain and charge obscene prices for those domains. The fee you charge for the domain based on this system is recurring. So instead of buying milk.com for $10k and selling it for $12k you already own milk.blog by default and if someone wants to register it you charge $500 a year.

NOT TO MENTION this whole system is like a slap in the face to a certain kind of "domainers." People who buy domains based on their perceived value, park them, and then try and resell them for more money. There are many millions of dollars wrapped up in this other, also stupid racket. These companies got so bold as to get their domains "valued" and then bet on the value of their company based on their holdings like some type of stock filled with mortgages. This new system is like cutting directly into that strategy but I guess ICANN gets some of the money this way.

<comment> nommm-nommm I have a last name that's extremely uncommon. MyLastName.com was available for many, many years. I thought about buying it a few times in the last 20 or so years but I don't have any use for it so I didn't. Two years ago it was bought by a domain squatter who was probably iterating through the white pages. Now that I can't have it I want it (I guess human nature) but they are asking like $2k for it. It seems somehow "unfair" that "my" last name is being "held hostage" by some faceless company that's just trying to make a quick buck.

<comment><USER11> Start a business with your name, trademark it in a certain domain, file a claim with ICANN. Long process, but might be cheaper. :)

<comment><USER12> Almost as expensive (UDRP claims start around $1500), and more importantly, it'll fail. WIPO isn't that dumb -- they can look up the registration date of your trademark, check WHOIS, and determine that the domain was registered before your trademark existed.

<comment><USER13> > and determine that the domain was registered before your trademark existed

It's a shame they don't determine that the domain was _squatted_ before your trademark existed. But it seems in their interest to give the benefit of the doubt to the one buying many, many domains yearly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here is a message I received from Gandi.net regarding the .blog domain:

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

Hello,

You are getting this email because you have performed a pre-order with your handle {redacted} for the domain name {redacted}.

Unfortunately, this order is currently in error, because the domain name in question has been defined as Premium by the registry. This decision is of course beyond our control and frequently corresponds to a list of common and/or connotative words that allow registered to apply special rates to them.

This means that in your case, we have placed the order in error, because the price that you initially paid is no longer the price that the registry is charging for it.

If you would like to know the price, in order to eventually purchase it, then reply to this email, so that our support team can obtain that for you from the registry.

As long as you are considering this, do not cancel your order, since this will cause you to lose your place in the waiting list.

If, however, you no longer wish to register the domain, you can cancel it from the link provided below, and your prepaid account will be refunded for the order:

<comment><USER15> Good on Gandi for providing a straightforward response. Living up to their motto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is very common with these new TLD's. At least they didn't give it to you for a year then jack up the price. I had jacki.party as a fun domain for my wife that she didn't end up using, but after a year the price went from like $29/yr to $2,495/yr. because they decided it was "premium." There was nothing my registrar could do because it was the domain registry who decided that, so I just let it lapse.

Why is a very specific spelling (note the lack of "e") of a not terribly common name so expensive? No clue, but I'm guessing the same forces are at work (i.e., $$$).

<comment><USER12> What registry was this? That's not supposed to be possible -- registries are only supposed to be able to designate domains as "premium" if they aren't registered yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> They are doing this a lot with more and more of the new TLDs. Defeats the purpose of even bothering with them. Create more, to open up the domain space, make it cost prohibitive, so we're back to where we started.

<comment><USER17> > Create more, to open up the domain space...

Adding TLDs doesn't open up the domain space; it closes it. The domain name system was designed to expand downwards, by adding more hierarchies. Downwards is where the space is. Expanding upwards is limited.

The racket ran out of space selling keywords inside .com, where this was originally meant to be confined. Once they finish selling keywords at the root, that'll be it.

<comment><USER18> I don't know. I don't think nested hierarchies is a thing. I mean, I guess you have the "Go Network" go.com example (disney.go.com). But I think the ship has sailed for deeper hierarchies. I really don't want an email address that is: firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER17> I didn't make any judgement on whether it is a good or bad thing. The fact remains: don't delude yourself into thinking that adding a TLD free-for-all opens up the space. It doesn't. It closes it.

The current "problem" stems from the fact that .coms are full. Once the TLD space is full, the same problem will remain. Everyone who wants one cannot have a memorable name in a flat namespace. There are too many people and there is too little room.

<comment><USER19> When that happens, I fully expect that as the value of available domain names go up, people will invest in expensive domains (blah.com) in order to treat them as "2LD"s and sell its 3LDs (xyz.blah.com). But it won't happen while there are 2LDs available for the exact reasons stated above (nobody wants a subdomain when they can have an actual domain).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've also got stood up with fashion.blog. Full refund and no invitation to auction. I haven't even bothered to ask for details, because that was their way of assessing and freezing the domain names that people would be interested in buying.

<comment><USER21> > because that was their way of assessing and freezing the domain names that > people would be interested in buying.

Indeed. Seems like it would be easy for them to use the auction to automatically see "300 people tried to claim this domain, it must be a good one, let's make it premium."

They wouldn't need to spend a penny doing market research to select the premium names themselves.

<comment><USER22> That's the feeling I got as well. The answers were really dodgy too. But such an ethically challenged practice would reflect poorly on the WordPress brand and you wouldn't want your low level employees to know about it since they could easily leak it. So maybe the CS reps weren't dodgy so much as trying to keep customers happy with very little information available to them.

Maybe one way you could do it is create a tiny subsidiary to manage the reservations/registration. The subsidiary can be created under the pretenses of shielding the parent company from legal liability so you can both limit the team size, the scope of their purpose and isolate them from the parent company.

Build the backend to provide information on reservations but accessible only to subsidiary financial management/officers and parent company employees whose wealth is tied to the success of shares in the company. Officially only share the total number of reservations and financials with the parent company via something documented like email. Then the backend reporting is decoupled from the reservations that come in for early access. If you setup a distinct founder program and establish enough time between the reservation announcement and when you give normal employees early access you don't even have to worry about your employees snatching up the most profitable ones.

The first the CS reps hear about it is when a reply/complaint comes in from one of the cancellations. When asked their supervisor only knows that the name came over as one of the early access reservations from the parent company. The CS reps don't have enough information to draw conclusions because they don't get access to numbers and an early access employee program provides plausible deniability if the reps start asking questions.

That was kind of a fun mental exercise. I've seen some real cloak and dagger stuff from people but those were always at small companies. I have no idea how plausible any of that would be, especially in companies this big. But it would be interesting to see what would happen if we had a fairly unique but uninteresting domain that wasn't obviously gibberish and a a lot of us put in a reservation for it at random intervals to create a perception of interest and popularity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a fellow very-common-name sufferer, I long ago gave up any hope of getting a vanity domain name (how I wish I had paid the $25 back in 1996). Most of the new TLD seem pretty scammy to me, the costs in obtaining and running most obscure TLDs far outweigh what could be got by paying customers actually waiting to run sites off them.

I suspect that a lot of them are just hoping that enough large companies buy up kfc.blog, walmart.porn, etc to make a return on investment. Fleecing people who actually want the domains is just icing on the cake.

I am somewhat of a hypocrite, I run my blog off [https://sheep.horse/](https://sheep.horse/), but only because I thought that the .horse TLD was silly enough to be worth supporting.

<comment><USER23> That's exactly it. Brand protection companies like MarkMonitor will buy these up as a matter of course to protect their clients, and they'll do so at the inflated Early Access rates to boot. By the time the domains are released to the public, these companies have already made their profit.

<comment><USER24> At one point even their clients will realize that the value of owning {name}.{everything} is more finite than the number of possible values for {everything}. When this happens, TLD racketeers will be sitting on a well oiled money burning machine, because only few of those who are attracted by that kind of business are good at keeping expenses low in times of plenty. The end game for many squatting-TLDs will be an existential pricing standoff between the dying registrar and the very low number of users that were foolish enough to build a long term identity in one of its namespaces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This seems like it has gotten out of control - it is a basic key/value lookup, and we've created a rent-seeking, global series of registries to further suck good money from people.

I worked briefly at a registry - it is money for jam.

I don't know if the DNS protocol and all the related ones are fundamentally broken or need fixing, but it seems to me the problem is ICANN and the web that spreads out from under it.

Why can't we just create an alternate ... distributed naming system, except without the rent-seeking/government ownership attached? I mean, this focus on how important the last bit is is ridiculous, the namespace doesn't have to be artificially restricted, beyond what the protocol might require.

I guess I have a simplistic view and probably lack a bit of history, and there must be something preventing it. Do the top-level servers collude, and help to create something like ICANN, or was it taken out of people's hands etc?

<comment><USER26> _> except without the rent-seeking/government ownership attached?_

Because people like money. This TLD business literally _invented a new economic activity_ , and one with great margins. It doesn't really hurt anyone, has little to no cost, and makes a pretty penny. People With Money _love_ stuff like this; if tomorrow they could invent a marketable TLD system for physical addresses, phone numbers or _anything_ else, they'd jump at the chance.

This is just how the capitalist world works: stuff exists to make money, everything else is a bonus.

<comment><USER25> Agreed, I guess the way that works in general is just disappointing in that it doesn't produce anything meaningful or advance anything (to my mind). It's spinning wheels and burning energy for no appreciable reason, to make some people rich.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I was keeping a close eye on .family for quite a while - I'm getting married next year, so mysurname.family would have been a good domain to have both for wedding planning and personal email accounts.

When it finally came out, I eagerly went to my favourite registrar to try and buy it, and found that it's listed at over £1000. It's not a particularly common name either. Out of interest, I tried a few other surnames off the top of my head, and it seems that pretty much any domain that could be somebody's surname has been bumped up massively.

Of course, they have every right to do that, but the people buying these domains are individuals - very few of these domains are ever going to have a business use. To me, it looks like they've done nothing more than price themselves out of the whole point of their TLD.

Instead, I'm going to wait out the expiry of the .com, which isn't being squatted as such, but it is owned by a company for a single software product of theirs which looks like it was written in the 90s and requires you to send a cheque if you want to buy it. The last update was helpfully reminding visitors that the app wouldn't be compatible with the upcoming OS X Lion. One day, they'll stop renewing that domain...my time will come.

<comment><USER27> My family name is $20/year!! Now I need to decide if it's worth supporting this cartel...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I believe this new gTLD registries will manage it to finally sink their own boat. They are behaving so greedy that this new gTLD will never become popular. But then it wont take long until the first registries will close shop and this will be the end of this whole ngTLD scam. Because nobody will invest money to market a domain which might not exist anymore in a few years.

There are some proposed safeguards built into the rules to prevent this meltdown caused by failing registries. But looking at how the industry currently behaves I don't think the will to stand to the rules and grab as much money as they can and leave the sinking ship asap.

</comment><comment><USER29> When the .beer tld came out I tried to buy "california.beer" as soon as domains were available to the public. The site wouldn't let me buy even though it was listed as available. It was finally registered by a squatter months later. I wouldn't be surprised if the good names were kept in reserve and sold through special channels.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'll tell my TLD story. I was following .family for a long time, since my current "primary domain" is horrible and hard to say. <family name>.family sounded pretty awesome.

There was that whole pre-registration BS but it is so convoluted and expensive I just waited till it went live. It did, and when I checked on my last name, it was set at $1200/year for a normally $30/year domain. This was when I was introduced to the idea of reserved domains in this new TLD system.

So I emailed them and put forth my argument, that this TLD in particular is a bit unfair, considering I don't control what name I'm born with. I didn't think it would have any impact, because $$$.

One day I got an email and they offered me to buy it for a one-time price of $1200 and then the renewal would be set at $30. I said no. There are so many TLDs now that it's easy to get a common-word, easy-to-say one.

<comment><USER31> > that this TLD in particular is a bit unfair, considering I don't control > what name I'm born with

To be fair, it would also have been a bit unfair to the next guy with your last name if you had taken it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I signed up too and then saw the ridiculous prices and policies. Happy to stick with .com for 10 bucks.

<comment><USER33> Like the author I would also have no problem in paying a few of several hundred dollars as an initial registration one time fee, for a domain like chris.blog.

I would really prefer using chris.blog instead of buying a .com domain like this-is-chriss-development-blog.com, just because any shorter .com domain is already taken.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right on. While I said "I appreciate a good name", I'm truly a sucker for a good name. Branding is huge, even when it's a personal brand.

So yes, a one-time fee of $250-$1,000 feels ok to me, especially considering what Automattic paid for the TLD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> What is the long-term security/availability of those new tlds?

If I register a .de domain today I am pretty sure that it will last a long time. But some of the new ones have a pretty sketchy vibe to it and I am not sure if I'd trust them enough to build a business on top of a .fancy domain

</comment><comment><USER35> The Registrar's policy language makes so many exceptions for themselves that you'd have better odds playing roulette:

[https://knockknockwhoisthere.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/dot...](https://knockknockwhoisthere.files.wordpress.com/2016/08/dotblog- launch-and-registration-policy-2-0.pdf)

"We are not bound to select a winner among RFP respondents and may hold the Domain Name for future allocation."

"We may activate and allocate to ourselves or third parties certain Domain Names (plus their IDN variants, where applicable) deemed necessary for the operation or the promotion of TLD."

"the Registry makes no guarantees or warranties as to whether any applicant will be successful in registering any Registry Domain Name."

</comment><comment><USER36> In 2011 I paid for and registered o1.io (I really wanted 01.io, but back then it was not available to register domains containing only numbers on .io).

The .io NIC web interface is really horrible and I ended up in an inconsistent state after making the "horrible" mistake of clicking the back button. Even though my Paypal account got charged, I received an email confirming I was the owner of the domain, and so on, I couldn't access my account.

Next step I took was contacting them. I got ignored and after 7 days later they made a transaction reversal on Paypal and I never heard a word back from them, even though I have tried to contact.

Some time later they made the o1.io domain a reserved one and so if I wanted it now I would have to pay thousands. What a shame.

</comment><comment><USER37> At this point, this looks ever more akin to charging people to have their phone numbers listed in a phone book. If you don't know what a phone book is, it was the DNS-equivalent of the 1960s. You know those plastic-wrapped bricks of yellow paper that sometimes appear on your doorstep, that you just drop right into the recycling bin? Those things are actually phone books.

The phone book is rather simple. Your individual given name or your business dba name is the dictionary key, and the phone number is the dictionary value. Your dictionary entry is automatically included, unless you paid to be "unlisted". That would keep your phone service provider from printing your name-number pair in _their_ phone books.

This approach is still viable. Every state has a database of corporate names and dba registrations. The secretary of state for Illinois, as an example, could make aaa-plumbing.corp.il.us resolve to the server address for "AAA Plumbing, Inc.", if that business chose to disclose it, or to a landing page otherwise. Likewise, zzz-towing.llc.il.us could resolve to the address for "ZZZ Towing, LLC".

The US Patent and Trademark Office could do the same. Let lego.028.tm.us (and lego.009.tm.us, lego.041.tm.us, etc.) resolve to LEGO Juris A/S Corp's servers, so you can see a site about plastic building blocks, and let lego.005.tm.us resolve to American Lego Group Inc's server, so you can see a site about soy protein supplements.

If you are Foobar LLC, you really shouldn't have to register "foobar.com" and "foobar.net" and "foobar.cc" and "foobar.co.uk" and "foobar.biz" and "foobar.info" and "foobar.sucks" and "foobar.pooky" and "foobar.booger". It isn't really elucidative, and does not help discoverability to have so many TLDs. The problem is that all the simple names have been mined out of the original TLDs, and there is no mechanism to resolve name collisions between Foobar LLC out of the US and Foobar GmbH in Germany. Whoever grabs "foobar.com" first gets to keep it, and the other is stuck trying to make some DNS entry that somehow relates to the company name.

Adding a bunch of niche TLDs helps a bit, but not if the registrar can charge $1k/year for names. That's just ridiculous. You're not going to end up with all the Johns on the Internet getting their own john.something domain name that way. You just let the richest John on the Internet to have _all_ the john.anything domain names.

<comment><USER38> " _If you don 't know what a phone book is, it was the DNS-equivalent of the 1960s. You know those plastic-wrapped bricks of yellow paper that sometimes appear on your doorstep, that you just drop right into the recycling bin?_"

You mean monitor stands?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The ICANN whois also does not give any information, there is just a copyright message from Nominet UK

[https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=chris.blog](https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=chris.blog)

Maybe the domain got bought during the sunrise period by a copyright holder!?

[https://my.blog/launch-plan/](https://my.blog/launch-plan/)

<comment><AUTHOR> The reply I received from get.blog support (last image in the post) stated that "chris.blog ended up being part of the list of reserved domains that are not available for registration". So I imagine they'll either keep it internal or sell it as a premium domain.

<comment><USER39> Yeah right, you had mentioned in your P.S. two other names dave and matt, I did a whois for those two and got some information:

[https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=matt.blog](https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=matt.blog) [https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=dave.blog](https://whois.icann.org/en/lookup?name=dave.blog)

So yes it seems it got reserved. I wonder why too.

P.S. I'm a chris too ;) that's why im so interested in this, I own chris.lu but as it is a country tld this is not so good from a SEO point of view. I want to change if I find a better one, but haven't found one yet. Have fun with your new chris.lol :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wanted a domain for a tax industry blog. I really wanted digital.tax, but it was held back as premium. Then, one day I was browsing 123reg and noticed it was available. I quickly looked at other registrars and it was still labeled as either taken or reserved. I placed my order and got the domain! I'm not sure how common these discrepancies are but I guess they do occur, so perhaps all hope is not lost.

</comment><comment><USER41> Fwiw I snagged lech.blog at list price (so $30 + 220), I wouldn't pay a cent more, but my main problem is that I still have no access to the domain and, unless I am provoven (or refunded) otherwise, my domain registartion runs from 28th of October. Some email were sent from an unverified, unencrypted, unrelated domain - I nearly sent them to spam. They really need to sort out their internal processes.

</comment><comment><USER42> Same happened to me. They should expect a class action lawsuit as even though the list was not finalized, they should have said something.

I had something like this happened before with WordPress.com - I have nikolay.wordpress.com, and then an employee took it way from me. After making a long discussion on TechChrunch about it, the employee decided to give it back to me.

So, my point is, there's nothing new under the sun here - obviously Matt is the old Matt having double standards, and not knowing what's acceptable and what is not in the digital world.

Also, he's going against his investor's interested, because some of these domains could've brought in millions of dollars, but he wants to do his buddies favors, and not honor what was promised.

Edit: Maybe if there are several of us, we should try to see if we can have a class action lawsuit. Our hundreds of dollars were used by the Automattic for 3 months, that's a lot of money collectively, and they should not get away - there was no mentioning of any Founders when they took our money!

</comment><comment><USER43> > Perhaps it's not fair to call this bait & switch. Really it was bait & > refund

The title of this article was a bait & switch.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was being generous when I wrote that line. But I maintain that clearly stating it will go to auction then pulling the auction is a "switch".

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> In my case, my surname TLD exists like XXX.{surname}. So I bought it w/ my first name ==> firstname.surname . It's cool and I will keep it as long as I can.

I agree with the OP. They seems to gather the popularity info by accepting pre-register requests.

Is there any policy to ban this behavior? Shouldn't the TLD be publicly opened?

<comment><USER45> technically its their property and theirs to do with as they please. though i disagree with the behavior.

nothing is stopping you from reselling *.whatever.com and so forth.

i wish i had my whole name as a domain, thats pretty awesome for you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> "Perhaps it's not fair to call this bait & switch. Really it was bait & refund"

<comment><USER47> The article title was a bait and switch! Honestly, I don't know much about the domain registration business but I had always imagined it worked even suckier than the way he describes it working in this case.

<comment><AUTHOR> When you hand over $250 and they hold it for 3 months with the promise of giving you a shot at an auction, then they cancel the auction... I still call that a "switch".

Still haven't received the refund, by the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I had this happen to me as well. I registered a domain directly with get.blog on the day that they first started accepting pre-registrations. I got an email a couple of days ago saying that I would be getting my money back, nothing about an auction. I asked for details because I too was expecting an auction. My response also came from the same guy ("Ran") who said that it wasn't available when my "application" was processed.

The twist in this case? The domain I applied for is now pointing directly towards WordPress.com. So get.blog, owned by parent company Automattic, took the domain which had been made available for the public, and gave it to WordPress.com. I wonder what ICANN will have to say?

SHADY AF.

</comment><comment><USER49> Who wants to help me create an .arse TLD? Who's with me!

</comment><comment><USER50> I've long felt the only sane approach is to define country-level TLDs (via the UN or something) transition everything under them, and then let each legal jurisdiction handle (or mishandle) their own shit.

While it's far less-convenient for global companies and "ignoring borders", it decentralizes the system. Compartmentalizing failure and allowing some kinds of competition.

<comment><USER51> That would be lovely, but I don't see any way of such change actually happening. The current hierarchy is extremely entrenched and heavily supported by the most powerful entities on the net.

<comment><USER25> I wonder if using the validation of the DNS record and all the surrounding nonsense is really a useful function though.

I mean, if we created a new distributed system, and grandfathered the old one, how can the current incumbents stop it? The control over a name pointing to an address could be done with a blockchain, I'm hearing.

So we move to a new naming convention. An arbitrary prefix on the end of a name shouldn't mean $$$$.

I'm saying we (techies anyway, not money-grubbing VC's), can make the decision for them, en masse. When they say "But, we need to make money from this!", we reply, "No, we need a naming service for these internet addresses. Go get stuffed _. "

_ The finer details of how it all works can be left till later.

<comment><USER51> > I mean, if we created a new distributed system, and grandfathered the old > one, how can the current incumbents stop it?

That's a weird way of putting it. Anyone can create DNS roots based on any hierarchy they want, no-one will stop you from doing that. The meaningful question is how do you get anyone to use your fancy new roots?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I fail to understand the purpose of these non-standard TLDs. Nobody is going to remember or type in such a domain, so you stuff is only going to be found by a web search - where a standard domain would be better. So why not just register a .com - which are also cheaper?

<comment><USER53> Have you ever tried to buy a .com domain dude? There's hardly any useful names left.

<comment><USER54> All 60+ domains I own are .com although I have a .net and a .org for a couple of words. I only paid premium price of $2000 on one of them. My company name is Sendlinks and getting Sendlinks.com kind of makes sense. ;)

In particular, I have a 5-character easy to spell meaningless name that I am reserving for some large scale service I will build in the future.

Getting an unregistered .com is tough, but many are available at a reasonable price on secondary market. I define reasonable price as under $1000. When I decided on the Sendlinks name, the seller originally wanted $5000. I made the decision to buy it at that price once I was ready to re-brand.

Since no one else would likely buy the name, I wasn't too concerned about someone taking it. Fast forward a few months later, I was at the point where I had money and so I decided to just buy it then and cross that item from my launch checklist. Luckily for me, the price dropped to $2000.

I own the .com domains of my Internet nickname and my last name among other properties.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Can someone think of a better way to do DNS? I remember when the internet was just a hosts file you had a copy of on your computer, so it is not outside the realm of possibilities to come up with something different. Something better.

</comment><comment><USER56> Are gTLDs like this even worth it as a primary domain? In my limited experience, these kinds of domains tend to confuse people who are not technically oriented.

<comment><USER57> For people who aren't technically oriented, anything that isn't .com/.net/.org (and regional variants like .com.au) are confusing, but there's no good domain names left there. If you're starting a website you're stuck with the choice of a terrible .com domain with _shudder_ hyphens or something, or you can get something like yourbusiness.shopping or yourhandle.blog.

It's gonna be a case-by-case thing whether one option is better than the other, but them's the breaks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I thought about buying coffee.blog but the fee was 100k per year! Insane!

</comment><comment><USER59> What are the rules around changing annual registration fees for gTLDs?

<comment><USER60> The new domain companies can raise them whenever they want and however much they want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Don't give these scum your money, moral of the story is.

</comment><comment><USER62> I exclaimed 'wow 30 bucks?' when I saw 30. But then was shocked at 250. Fainted at the auction.

</comment><comment><USER63> No one cares.</comment>


Dark Social: We Have the Whole History of the Web Wrong  - <AUTHOR> http://m.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/10/dark-social-we-have-the-whole-history-of-the-web-wrong/263523/ <comment><USER2> Previously discussed at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4644820>

<comment><AUTHOR> Darn. Hey ho.</comment></comment>


Berkeley Weeded Out Job Applicants Who Didn't Propose Plans to Advance Diversity - <AUTHOR> https://reason.com/2020/02/03/university-of-california-diversity-initiative-berkeley/ <comment><USER2> Now read [http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html).

Requiring commitment to a particular political position is the best way to undermine the principles of free inquiry that our university system is based on. When thoughts become unthinkable, what happens if the unthinkable thoughts turn out to be true?

I don't care whether the opinions being shut down are ones that I agree or disagree with. They should not be examined honestly, not shut down. As the quote often misattributed to Voltaire says, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." (Actual author Evelyn Beatrice Hall. Voltaire says the quote in a book of hers.)

<comment><USER3> >I don't care whether the opinions being shut down are ones that I agree or disagree with. They should _not_ be examined honestly, not shut down.

That is either one very unfortunate typo, or the mother of all Freudian slips.

I'm pretty sure I know which one. I hate it when my thought/finger synchronization is off.

<comment><USER2> I rephrased and left a negative where I didn't mean to. Big oops.

Hopefully my intent is clear from the rest of the content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Reason: "Free Minds and Free Markets"

Berkeley: "Ok, we've freed our minds and want to focus on diversity. No Gods or Kings, Only Man amirite?"

Reason: "No, not like that."

</comment><comment><USER5> Discrimination at its finest.

No doubt by a minority agenda to advance said minority agenda.

</comment><comment><USER6> That in of itself is discrimination, isn't it?

<comment><USER7> Maximum exterior diversity, maximum ideological alignment. Diversity of opinions not welcome.

<comment><USER8> That seems to be the trend. 'If you're not a facist, you're a nazi' looks to be the hip discourse lately. I have never been more happy, or genuinely nervous to be unaffiliated with any political movement burdened by other members.

Still though, remember the left, the right, the facists, the nazis, the whigs, and even stalin all think they were doing the right thing, and saving humanity by making hard choices at the expense of others. Power, no matter how it is held, can and will bulldoze the powerless, no matter who they are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What exactly is the argument? Berkeley attracts people from all over the world, and they also aim to educate students from non-traditional backgrounds. _Of course_ you need minimal cultural competency just to do your job, and it's little surprise that the institution would like to see tangible proof.

<comment><USER10> Reading the article instead of just the title may prove enlightening:

"Berkeley rejected 76 percent of qualified applicants without even considering their teaching skills, their publication history, their potential for academic excellence or their ability to contribute to their field. As far as the university knew, these applicants could well have been the next Albert Einstein or Jonas Salk, or they might have been outstanding and innovative educators who would make a significant difference in students' lives."

<comment><USER11> Only so many (very few relatively speaking) people can go to a given elite school. If it _really_ matters who gets in, everyone is doomed. If it doesn't matter, then they can use any criteria they please.

I happened to be looking at capsule bios of Kodak's C-level execs - I'm not sure how this compares to before their 2013 bankruptcy, but many of them seemed to have illustrious careers, and more than one went to SUNY Geneseo. Who knows, maybe one of them was motivated by being rejected by Harvard or something.</comment></comment></comment>


How a I had to go through hell just to change his Apple Developer account name - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/bambuu/a-story-of-apples-excruciating-outdated-legal-practices-e5c144f0aeeb <comment><USER2> I don't hope their buffet is just as cumbersome...</comment>


Truffle's (blockchain tooling) TruffleCon 2019 tickets discounted to $99 - <AUTHOR> https://www.trufflesuite.com/trufflecon2019 <comment><USER2> We're excited to see you all there. The space has been amazing this year, despite what you might see in the market, and our sponsors have covered a significant cost of the conference. Because of our amazing sponsors (Microsoft, Quorum, etc.) we've been able to reduce ticket prices. We'd love to see you all there.

If you don't know about truffle, you can find more info here: [https://www.trufflesuite.com/](https://www.trufflesuite.com/)

We're trying to make blockchain development an enjoyable experience (like eating a chocolate truffle). Would love your thoughts.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Disclaimer: I work at Truffle.</comment>


Apache Mesos is not as reliable a we used to think - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@paulcolomiets/evaluating-mesos-4a08f85473fb

<comment><USER2> Pretends to be a common standard for different solutions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah.. yeah, my English is not very good.

I mean Mesos tries to be platform to build on top. Some common denominator for other solutions.</comment></comment>


Does Anybody Use New Programming Language Features? - <AUTHOR> http://web.ncsu.edu/abstract/technology/wms-feature-hunt/ <comment><USER2> _Here's some background, in case you're not a software whiz. Software languages have specific features, or commands, that are typed in as shorthand for programmers._

Here's some advice, since you're not a software developer. Stop calling them "commands".

</comment><comment> alan-crowe One subtle point that I explain in <http://www.cawtech.demon.co.uk/lisp/ghost- benefits.html> is that programmers who write big programs that need serious planning can benefit from the presence of programming language features that they do not use. Grepping the source files to count the number of times that advanced features get used is only part of the picture.</comment>


Let it BDD: a song about testing - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvJi1E730HA

<comment><USER2> "This video is no longer available." That didn't take long.</comment>


Square Debuts its Latest Hardware, a $299 Card Swiper for iPad Registers - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/14/square-debuts-its-latest-hardware-stand-a-299-card-swiper-for-ipad-registers/

<comment><USER2> So what happens with signatures? I recently visited a cafe where they were using an iPad as a checkout, and the cashier had to constantly swivel the thing around to let customers sign for their purchase.

I know it's not that big an inconvenience, but it just seemed like an awkward conclusion to a transaction that's supposed to be simplified by these devices.

<comment><USER3> In Canada, virtually all credit card transactions now take place via chip insertion, not swiping, and chip transactions require PIN entry, not signing. Unless they get an external numpad to handle such things, this is going to be a security nightmare.

<comment><USER4> In Canada, most in store transaction are using Interac and not credit cards. I wonder when Square will accept both. I guess europeen countries have something similar to Interac as well (french's blue card?).

<comment><USER5> I'm not really sure what Interac is, but a large number of European credit cards aren't credit cards, they are debit cards, issued by your bank. The cards are co-branded VISA or MasterCard. Some countries have they own national cards, Denmark has Dankort, the Netherlands have they own, Finland is dropping theirs I think, and I'm sure there's more.

The point is that the European rules for credit cards is EVERY different from the US. Signatures are no longer valid, you need the PIN and a lot of ATM and terminals will only read the chip. New terminals without chip read won't get approved.

Launching a swipe terminal is catering to a dying marked.

<comment><USER3> Interac is actually the name of a payment services company (they license and operate point-of-sale plastic-handling machines), but the name is most commonly associated with the Canadian variety of debit cards. As in Europe, the cards are issued by the bank, but they're not generally cobranded with any credit card company and payments made with them draw funding directly from your chequing account.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here in Barcelona we're using wireless for paying. Each card has a chip you just get your card close to the read and bam, you payed the bill. It's nice and confortable.

<comment><USER7> That sounds sketchy as hell.

<comment><USER8> Why? If you had those cards, or a smartphone with NFC and Google Wallet installed, you could do the same thing in the US. Just look for the MasterCard PayPass logo on the top of the terminal you are swiping your card in today.

I've seen it at CVS, RiteAid, McDonalds, Wawa, ShopRite, Home Depot...

<comment><USER9> We have vending machines with these at my university. I often start swiping my card only to realize I've accidentally "tapped to pay" (according to the reader).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there any chance that Square (or any of its competitors) will open up their service to custom app developers?

I want to build a custom application that uses their hardware and payment processing back end. But I can't.

<comment><USER11> I see no evidence that Square would make one although they could. Until they achieve a huge market percentage they are still in growth mode. That requires brand trust first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are there any wires needed to hook into receipt printers, cash boxes, etc?

<comment><USER8> The receipt printer is a network printer; it needs an ethernet cable. The iPad connects to the printer over wifi. The receipt printer is connected to the cash drawer by, essentially, a telephone cable. The printer tells the drawer to open through that line; the iPad does not directly communicate with the cash drawer.

Unfortunately I paid $499 for this stuff from Square just last month, and I'm not going to spend $299 more to upgrade to a fancier stand.

<comment><USER13> The Square Stand actually includes a USB hub to plug the printer, cash drawer, and barcode scanner in via USB. It's much simpler than setting up everything to talk on the network.

<comment><USER14> Do printers/drawers/scanners come with an USB interface?

<comment><USER15> Absolutely, Here is a list of USB hardware compatible with the Square Stand.

[https://squareup.com/help/en-us/article/5125-square-stand- su...](https://squareup.com/help/en-us/article/5125-square-stand-supported- hardware)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is great. Their hardware has always been one of the weak points in the experience - people hate swiping on the wobbly headphone-jack doohickeys. Having something much more solid would help.

</comment><comment><USER17> Honestly I'm a little surprised it took this long. Seems like a no-brainer for the company.

</comment><comment><USER18> But does it accept Bitcoin?

<comment><USER19> > Accepted payment methods: Bitcoin, pogs, that Billy Ripken baseball card > with an expletive on the bat, good intentions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> And firearms/firearm accessories stores around the world shrugged.</comment>


Flights to Rome - <AUTHOR> https://flightstorome.moovellab.com/ <comment><USER3> I've been collecting GPS tracks of all the commercial flights I've been on for the past several years, using a little pocket receiver.

It's been pretty interesting data, from seeing how ATC works differently from country to country (China is _nuts_ \- a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong will have hundreds of course changes to minimise overflight of populated areas), to how airports stack traffic, to where GPS jammers are being operated - <USER2> large airports seem to have a curtain of interference, presumably to stop drone intrusions. It's also interesting seeing things like routes dog-legging around Ukraine, or ascending to a very high level to overfly Afghanistan - apparently pot-shots by armed groups are of not insignificant concern.

So far it's only a few hundred flights, but it's still pretty neat.

<comment><USER4> Which device did you use? I always thought consumer devices were supposed to disable themselves above certain altitudes and/or speeds to prevent them being used in cruise missiles ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_Committee_for_Mul...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_Committee_for_Multilateral_Export_Controls))

<comment><USER5> Airplanes broadcast their location using ADS-B. Using an SDR hooked up to a raspberry pi, you can get in on the action.

www.flightradar24.com

<comment><USER6> I would recommend something like adsbexchange instead, which ignores any filtering lists.... Information wants to be free?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From the same makers the Roads to Rome is also interesting: [http://roadstorome.moovellab.com/countries](http://roadstorome.moovellab.com/countries)

Try step 3. Explore. Search for your city with the magnifying glass, and see where you can walk, bike or drive in 15 to 30 minutes from your house or office.

<comment><USER8> Wow, it's taking very long to compute (server side I imagine), easy on it future clickers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is utterly beautiful - thank you. I made a very primitive interactive (WebGL) version a couple of years ago (not going to link here - always feels rude to drop links in someone else's post) but this takes it to a whole new level and then some.

I love all the analysis too as well as the gorgeous visuals. I'd definitely purchase a print for my office wall if you ever decide to offer that.

</comment><comment><USER10> I didn't see any link to anything of the sort, but I'd love to have a large print of one of these maps.

<comment><USER11> The link to the 3D visualization is quite obvious.

<comment><USER10> Yah, but I don't really want to steal their work without their permission...

<comment><AUTHOR> It is not forbidden nor "stealing" to print out for personal use.

<comment><USER10> * I want it for our office.

* Generally speaking, putting something onto the internet doesn't entitle you to make reproductions/copies/prints for your personal use, at least in US law and I believe in most European jurisdictions. You can usually see this with photographers who may sell you the rights to your photos in addition to/alongside any physical or digital prints they sell you.

IANAL, but hot damn is this community aggressive to people suggesting they would pay for things.

<comment><USER12> I don't think anyone here is being aggressive, generally people on HN are positive towards paying for things. The argument here isn't "pay for it or don't pay for it", it's "do you actually need to pay for it before printing it for your own consumption".

Until you mentioned it was for your office, the answer was no [1]. You printing something linked online would not violate the four factors determining Fair Use (at least in US law).

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

Displaying it publicly in a place of business may run afoul of fair use though.

<comment><USER10> That case references reproductions of thumbnail images for search engines and lays out the criteria under which a fair use is judged, and people who are casually reading your comment shouldn't take it as a definitive judgement about legality.

For some extended commentary on what fair use is, [https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is- fair-...](https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/) is pretty good.

While you're unlikely to be sued for printing off something you don't have the right to make a copy of, you definitely don't have the right to make prints of whatever you find on the internet.

<comment><USER12> >you definitely don't have the right to make prints of whatever you find on the internet

If you have any references that say that, I'd love to see them. Specifically, I'd like to see anything that says that printing a contents of a publicly accessible website for personal use and not to distribute or sell is a violation of copyright. I'm not a lawyer, but everything I read in the Wikipedia article I linked to says otherwise.

The printed version would be transformative, the image is from a published work, and printing it does not harm the market value of the image. That's why I linked it, because it's substantially the same argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> there are a few UI issues with the website itself, but these maps are quite beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER14> Oh man, those tilt-shift 3d visualisations...drool

</comment><comment><USER15> In the first image why are all the flights from Madagascar stopping at an intermediate island between it and mainland Africa?

<comment><USER16> Because the algorithm seems to be wrong. It prefers to make several small "hops" over long direct flights. For example Phoenix - Albuquerque - Denver - Winnipeg(?) - Iqualuit - somewhere in Greenland - Reykjavik - Glasgow seems like a very popular route and the whole West US is using it to reach Rome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A bit off topic but why did you have to fill my browser history while I scroll through a page?

I don't know if this is happening only to my browser (Firefox nightly on Android) but it's very annoying.

<comment><USER18> Just a note to Chrome users, when you click and hold on the back button, you can see a history - just click the site you want to get back to.

<comment><USER19> Unless you play with a page long enough that it becomes your entire visible backward history, requiring multiple hold-and-click rounds to get the hell away from a single page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My Android back button and this page did not get along.

<comment><USER21> Came to this thread just to make sure complaints about navigation were the top comments.

This is how I know I've found my people.

<comment><USER22> #embraceYourBubble ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This webpage breaks the back button on Android Chrome. Couldn't come back to HN

<comment><USER24> So many of the top comments on HN posts are complaints about website functionality rather than the content of the site. I'm all for not breaking standards but sometimes it gets old when the top content is a negative content about the use of javascript or ux. __Bracing for downvotes __

<comment><USER25> You're right, and it's a long running problem. See what dang says here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739)

> A reader emailed to complain about how this and other HN discussions often > become derailed by off-topic carping about blog design. I agree completely. > Could there be a more classic form of bikeshedding? It would seem parodic if > it weren't sadly real. This has become more of a thing on HN lately. It > needs to become less of a thing.

> I don't mean to pick on you personally, or just on this one comment. (Your > second sentence alone, by the way, would have been a helpful contribution.) > The problem is the tedious stampedes such comments spawn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nice images. But the author has no idea what he is trying to say.

</comment><comment><USER16> Somehow I doubt anyone is flying to Rome via Iceland. Even if there's no direct flight, people would go through London, Paris, Madrid or another big hub.

<comment><USER27> With the great circle route it's not that far out of the way (especially from the west coast of the US) and Iceland Air has some great deals. If you spend a night in Iceland, you can get some crazy cheap flights.

<comment><USER16> Ok, but did you make a stop at Baffin Island like the map suggests? Also one airline couldn't possibly carry all traffic from the Western US to Europe. And Keflavik International Airport doesn't look like it can carry all this traffic either.</comment></comment></comment>


Vibrate on Silent is not silent at all - <AUTHOR> http://ralfrottmann.net/vibrate-on-silent-is-not-silent-at-all

<comment><USER2> The iPhone volume interface has seriously confused me. There's volume, then there's alert sounds. The buttons only control one at a time but that depends on the last context you were in..

</comment><comment><USER3> YES!</comment>


Amazon is building a social graph under the radar - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenetworkthinkers.com/2012/04/next-big-thing.html <comment><USER2> A couple commenters point out that this isn't really a social graph, which is totally fair objection to the way the author is talking about this stuff. But my main concern is that this doesn't present any evidence that Amazon _is_ doing this (and I'm not saying they aren't), but just suggests why it might be in Amazon's best interest to do so. They put together a couple graphs, one of which appears to be based on publicly visible "customers who bought X bought Y" data, but that data has been around and visible, and scrape-able for _years_ , and they don't present any reasons for believing that this data is being used by Amazon in a different way now than it was 5 years ago. So, in other words, reckless speculation.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems quite a stretch to call a database of movie and product ratings a "social graph." Amazon _is_ building something extremely valuable; they are doing it above the radar, not under it; and it doesn't strike me as a social graph.

</comment><comment><USER4> I never care about other readers' notes. In fact i find it annoying that you can't turn them off on the kindle. I don't care what other readers wanted to take note of, maybe because people read a book for different reasons and keep notes for different reasons (one may be doing research on a subject, another may just be collecting jokes). If that was a general case, Library books would be sought after for their side notes. There's little information there. OTOH the "people who bought this also bought" is sometimes useful, sometimes a recipe for very average reading.

To be fair the "friend network" recommendation are not much better either, but the trust factor involved makes us perceive them as more important.

<comment><USER5> Are you sure you can't turn them off? I thought with my Kindle 2nd Gen I was able to- I recently replaced it with the most recent Kindle Keyboard and unfortunately do to an accident it is out of commission right now so I can't check, but I was fairly certain with the 2nd Gen (note I probably hadn't updated the firmware in a long time) I could turn off other people's notes and highlights.

<comment><USER6> I can (and do) turn it off on my 3rd gen keyboard kindle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So it's last.fm for books? How it that a social graph? I don't mean to discount this data entirely, but what some reads (or what music someone listens too) is not anywhere a comprehensive picture of a user; for this reason, niche "social" services like these hypotheticals won't be able to compete with a monster like Facebook. If the service could be a Facebook app, why will users choose this new standalone network over their existing network that already has all of their friends?

</comment><comment><USER8> At ROFLCon a couple years back, the Three Wolf Moon meme was described as being started by a guy looking for law books on Amazon, and it said "people who bought xxxx (law books) also bought.... the three wolf moon shirt" ... so he had to buy it. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Wolf_Moon>

</comment><comment><USER9> I think the point being missed here is that although knowing what people might like is indeed a marketers dream, most computer-generated recommendations systems don't do a very good job at it.

Perhaps some people use recommendations like those at Amazon, but I think generally most people avoid them because (at least at present) the signal to noise ratio is ridiculously bad.

<comment><USER10> Pandora works great for me. I rarely listen to my own library any more.

<comment><USER11> Pandora's recommendation system is not based on a social graph, nor is it particularly "computer generated" compared to most other automated recommendation systems.

It's based on the Music Genome Project. For over 8 years, they've been having highly trained musicologists listen to each song individually, then manually categorize them on ~400 attributes (e.g. is it syncopated? major or minor key? does it have vocal harmonies? etc). Pandora uses this data to find similar songs to the ones you like.

You'd think it wouldn't scale but Pandora seems to be doing it.

"The Music Genome Project's database is built using a methodology that includes the use of precisely defined terminology, a consistent frame of reference, redundant analysis, and ongoing quality control to ensure that data integrity remains reliably high. Pandora does not use machine-listening or other forms of automated data extraction." <http://www.pandora.com/about/mgp>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As it hasn't been said yet - I really hope that Amazon does not do this. We trust Amazon to deliver products, not strangers. Apple's Ping failed for good reason.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder why Netflix doesn't match users with similar movie preferences. Perhaps is a legal restriction.

<comment><USER14> I thought it was closely related to staying within the boundaries of VPAA: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act>

<comment><USER15> Right but if you were matched against other anonymous users with similar likes, it would be legal</comment></comment></comment>


Google Glass Mirror API Emulator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Scarygami/mirror-api

<comment><USER2> Is there any way someone in the developer program can confirm how accurate this emulator is?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can partially evaluate it for yourself from the recently released SXSW video: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57578072-93/google- releases...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57578072-93/google-releases- full-google-glass-explainer-video/)</comment></comment>


Coherent Extrapolated Volition [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://intelligence.org/files/CEV.pdf <comment><USER2> Nice :)

Maybe this is the basis for Hannu Rajaniemi's zoku. The Jean le Flambeur trilogy is outstanding.</comment>


Are Facebook page builder companies dying? - <AUTHOR>

Almost all companies on this page have beven acquired. Is Facebook move for enabling timeline killing all these businesses? http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/11/30/9-top-companies-that-provide-facebook-page-management-tools/ <comment><USER2> I think you partially answered your question, but I think some of it has to do w/ Facebook's growth overall. At the time of that article, I think company's offering the service preyed on an assumed barrier to entry. Over the past few years, as even more people of all ages became more accustomed to it, they felt less inclined to bring in an "expert."

</comment><comment><USER3> Facebook is still growing and have not quite finished defining itself yet. Further, Facebook as it is, is not really a platform. So, as it grows and introduces new features to enhance user experience, the third-party developers will become obsolete, one by one.</comment>


Google wants to get rid of URLs but doesn't know what to use instead - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/google-wants-to-get-rid-of-urls-but-doesnt-know-what-to-use-instead/ <comment><USER2> Let's assume (mostly) good intentions from google. The article mentions that users don't understand URLs.

Pause to allow a moment to blame users for not trying. Then let's actually approach the problem constructively instead of blaming users.

As I see it, the URLs contain two parts that matter to the user: the domain and then everything after that. (Scheme they can either handle or has been made moot by https everywhere, port is rarely used for the average user, etc)

Domains actually ARE bad for the average user, because they identify a machine (or machine group) while the user cares about a company/individual identity. This is why it took 15 years to get people to stop assuming all websites started with "www". The domain works fine...for techies. It is poor for what users expect.

As for everything else...the path, query params, and hash are all interpreted by the end machine. Some sites try to make it human usable (my thanks), but even those are consistant from one to another. So to Joe or Jane User, these are meaningless.

It is easy to blame google and even easier to blame users. I love the url and hate efforts to hide it... but there really are tasks it does a poor job of that we have no particular good option for.

Rather than blame the url (or these other parties) we should figure out a good way to address (pun unintended but appreciated) these issues.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't know why we would assume mostly good intentions. URLs are a way to link directly to online data. Without such a direct pointer you would have to .. I don't know ... 'search'.

</comment><comment><USER4> Syntax highlighting is all I think they should do. If they want to color "http:" red to show that it's insecure, fine, but don't hide it entirely.

In 69, the version that just came out, they have begun to sometimes hide the subdomain. It threw me for a loop, because someone sent me a link to the mobile version of Wikipedia:

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/

but the URL bar said just:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/

The page layout was very different, and I wanted to switch to normal. But at first it looked like I was at the normal URL and maybe Wikipedia had changed its look and feel overnight.

Thankfully you can disable this in chrome://flags, at "Omnibox UI Hide Steady- State URL Scheme and Trivial Subdomains." But this still doesn't bring back "http:"

Firefox too now hides "http:" but you can get it back in about:config, by setting browser.urlbar.trimURLs to false.

<comment><USER5> Chrome and Firefox developers have been actively pushing the trimURLs concept for years and will actually fight you about it, claiming that users won't care or understand.

> > [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=41467](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=41467)

Misrepresentation of URLs by default is becoming increasingly common. The URL doesn't have to fit in the box on every device, and if I don't know what resource I requested and how I can't troubleshoot my problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I believe that getting rid of URLs will further take control away from users of the web towards search engines, which is likely Google's actual intension behind these efforts. If you have a full URL that you can write down on paper, there's still a way to get around the search engine. Once we lose the technical detail of URLs, that won't work anymore.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this AMP 2.0?

<comment><USER8> No. AMP addressed a problem that had been solved for years; we already knew how to make websites that load quickly. URLs are different; they have issues that nobody is quite sure how to solve. Any solution Google comes up with that isn't purely cosmetic won't go very far unless Mozilla, Microsoft, and Apple agree to implement it.

<comment><USER9> It's exactly that: an issue of standardization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> URLs might have security issues, but they are one of the main reasons the internet became such a success.</comment>