To Protect Legitimate Interests, Seattle Should Cap All Forms of Innovation - <AUTHOR> http://starkravingvc.com/2014/03/18/to-protect-legitimate-interests-seattle-should-cap-all-forms-of-innovation-immediately/ <comment><USER2> I personally think the Seattle uberlyft rules are stupid, but it's worth remembering something that gets lost in the noise of "futurism" that clonks around the silicon valley echo chamber: it's not _inherently wrong_ to have laws that protect established businesses. I don't like cab companies, but I do want to know that my hired driver is insured. I'm indifferent to hotels, but I don't want my neighbor running an SRO out of his apartment. I don't enjoy high medical bills, but I like the ability to know that my prescription medications aren't radium-based elixirs. And so on.

To the extent that stability of certain kinds of businesses is essential to the stability of our society, it's actually a very good thing that governments are somewhat conservative about protecting the establishment. Moreover, there's no law of the universe that says that "disruption" is a good thing, and there _certainly_ isn't any clean way to weigh the interests of one big established industry with those of a large, successful, wealthy competitor industry.

Anyway, I have a hard time getting worked up over the regulatory disputes of corporations -- we have bigger problems, not the least of which is the question of why those big, successful companies get so much influence over the laws in the first place.

<comment><USER3> > there's no law of the universe that says that "disruption" is a good thing, > and there certainly isn't any clean way to weigh the interests of one big > established industry with those of a large, successful, wealthy competitor > industry.

There's something fairly close to a law which says that disruption is a good thing. Industries can only be disrupted by entrants that provide products that consumers prefer, so we have almost-a-law: disruption is a _preferable-to- consumers_ thing. There a few cases where that's not socially desirable (I suppose crack replacing cocaine would be an example) but those are exceptional enough that I think we ought to regard disruption as presumed good unless shown otherwise.

Similarly, a decent heuristic for choosing whose interests to consider out of an established industry and a competitor is to let consumers choose which one is better. Of course this can be difficult for those in the established industry, but we're in a society-wide Prisoner's Dilemma over this, and a useful function of government would be making sure we all cooperate. Letting consumers choose the best companies is cooperation; protecting your own industry is defection. I'd be better off if my job and income were guaranteed, but I'd be worse off if everyone else got the same deal.

<comment><USER4> That's hardly the only example, and I think it's better to say so-called disruptors provide a service preferable to some consumers.

Many industries create negative externalities and government regulations force them to internalize some of those costs. Hotels are full of loud, annoying people; we stick them in certain parts of town only.

Or many industries are a form of cost pooling. The US decided that we want to have reliable mail delivery. The post office (which does an amazing job as compared to the vast majority of countries) uses the profits from short routes and urban centers to subsidize expensive and/or remote routes. Of course a business would love to come in a cherry pick the profitable routes. We -- rightly -- don't permit that, because we wish to have universal mail delivery and this is how we've chosen to pay for it. Reliable city-wide taxi service is probably similar; I don't know if uber et al are just cherry picking the best / most profitable routes, but I wouldn't be surprised. (And don't get me wrong, I love uber -- at least in sf, it's a taxi _that actually comes_. Amazing! But still, service guarantees are important, as are flat fares to/from airports, in part to avoid screwing tourists.)

And this doesn't even mention tax revenues; I know HN tends towards the glibertarian but the simple fact is if we, as a society, want nice things someone has to pay for them. A (big?) piece of many of these controversial startups' innovation seems to be thinly disguised tax avoidance (amazon, airbnb).

I actually think disruption tends to be neutral at best. Cities, especially dense urban living, are a large set of compromises amongst many people, and valley companies often have little respect for that.

<comment><USER5> This is a really wonderful post that captures a lot of what people overlook about Uber, AirBnB, etc. To some extent, these companies are built to arbitrage on government regulations intended to limit negative externalities, or achieve cost pooling or achieve universal coverage. Particularly Uber, because its not exactly some great innovation to be able to call a cab with your phone. The business model relies heavily on being free of taxi regulated rates and cherry picking the premium customers.

<comment><USER6> This. I have no sympathy for "Laws are for other people" as a business model.

<comment><USER5> I'm fine with the business model. Maybe these regulations need to be challenged. I'm not sympathetic to denying that regulatory arbitrage is what you're doing, and calling attempts at enforcement to be corruption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those who don't know, Greg is one of the common faces of the Seattle VC scene. He is a staple at nearly every startup event -- Startup Weekend, Geekwire events, TechStars, VC panels, etc.

I don't have a dog in the fight, but I did spend some time reading the actual bill since these blog articles felt like more political campaigns than informative pieces. The last time this came up I posted [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7303232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7303232)

The Seattle city council passed a law that made so-called "ride sharing" services legal after intentionally withholding prosecution for over a year. The law isn't perfect, but it does feel like it strives to balance protecting existing investments with new services. The most salient changes about the bill:

1\. Seattle defines uberX, Lyft, etc as Transportation Network Companies (TNC) and declares all drivers as "for-hire" drivers, which is a legal distinction that means Seattle can regulate them.

2\. TNCs are taxed at $50k for first year. Second year is the greater of $50k or .35% of gross revenue.

3\. No more than 150 drivers may be associated with each TNC at a time, and each driver can work only 12 hours per 24 hour period. Previously the law would have limited 300 drivers per TNC per quarter regardless of who was active, and this was "the cap." For comparison, there are 1100 taxicabs in the city.

4\. Drivers can't double dip: They can't both drive for-hire cars and also do uberX on the side. They also can't work for both uberX and Lyft.

5\. Rates may either be flat-rate between preset zones OR subject to RCW Chapter 19.94. RCW Chapter 19.94 defines appropriate measurement devices that may be used with commerce, which I think precludes most cell phones... uberX would need to install meters it seems and precludes surge pricing.

6\. The insurance requirements are stricter than what uberX or Lyft provide today and are mostly in line with existing taxicabs.

7\. There was a 30% increase in the cap on cabs at the same time.

8\. TNCs have to report their activities to the city, which will be available to the public for inspection.

<comment><USER8> Regarding #3, isn't 150 active drivers at one time, rather than 150 per TNC?

<comment><USER9> No, it's 150 per TNC. Were it 150 total, they'd effectively have a medallion program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand what's supposed to make internet-based reservation/dispatch such a game-changer that it should make your taxi service immune from existing taxi regulations.

Here in Baltimore, there are tons of illegal 'hack' cabs operated by 'private citizens,' mostly not white people, sometimes in their spare time, sometimes on the regular. They are illegal. But they do it anyway. And probably seldom get caught (they do not put weird devices advertising their existence on their front grill). Okay, such is the black/grey market, it happens.

But we're going to legalize some _other_ kind of illegal taxi service because it's run by white venture-funded capitalists instead? (Apparently we have, because I see the Uber cars here, I don't know the situation). Do the illegal hack cabs just have to accept internet-baed reservations, and they're suddenly legal too?

</comment><comment><USER11> Opinion follows:

This article is bullshit. It's quite obvious to me that Seattle roads are a classic tragedy of the commons. There is a point where Seattle streets are saturated such that adding cars increases traffic and congestion without reducing cab time from point A to B. There is also a point where the supply of taxis meets the demand exactly.

Currently, we have little data to say where these points lie on the number line of "taxis" in Seattle. If the first point is less than the second, the city should place a limit at that point. If the second point is equal to or less than the first point, then the city can set the limit at an arbitrary value equal to or greater than the second point and let the market sort it out.

Either way, by regulating the quantity of taxis, the city can slowly increase the limit to find the optimal solution.

<comment><USER12> Even if we take street congestion to be a tragedy of the commons, it's not obvious that more cabs imply more congestion, since as part of a network of public transportation, they may help reduce personal car usage.

But even if we take it for granted, I still think your approach is pernicious. The issue with your - and the city's - method is that while the claimed problem is congestion, the solution is to limit the number of registered cars per service. But the error in that reasoning is that it presumes that they are perfectly correlated, and so it prevents market players from coming up with better solutions that reduce congestion without reducing the number of cars.

For example, services like Uber which rely completely on calls via the Internet have the potential to cause much lower congestion compared to a service that relies on having idle drivers drive around looking for people waving their arms.

If one wants to reduce congestion, then the only good solution is to tax cars driving in congested areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reading what the city councilmembers say, this sounds pretty reasonable to me:

 _" But the six other councilmembers voted that idea down. Bruce Harrell, who voted last month in favor of the 150-cap, said that the city's vision in the coming years is to remove caps and let consumer choice "dictate what's out there." But for now, the approved legislation lets TNCs operate legally in Seattle with oversight."_

That's hardly the "stop all innovation" position that this VC is lampooning them as having.

<comment><USER14> Did you read the article? The vote that you're referring to, found farther down in the article, was the one to _remove_ all caps from taxis. They council voted against it.

If you read the beginning of the article, the one placing the caps on alternative taxis passed: "the Seattle City Council voted 9-0 Monday afternoon to enforce new legislation that will regulate app-based transportation companies like UberX, Lyft and Sidecar."

<comment><USER15> You misunderstand; one of the councilmembers who voted for the caps was considering dropping the caps later. The council let Uber &co operate for one year before updating the law and are prepared to wait, see and update it again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe I don't get it, and maybe that is why I'm not in the valley at a start up, but I don't really inherently trust that people are good. I don't believe that renting my house to strangers is a smart idea. I don't believe that someone who feels like driving people around should take me 35 miles to the airport. There are bad people out there folks. The formality around hotel and cab businesses and the barriers to entry serve to "protect" the consumer somewhat. Since it's hard to start a profitable hotel, you want to provide good service to customers and keep things bed bug free. If you paid good money for your cab token you probably wouldn't want to rape one of your fares and destroy that investment. Now these are kind of a straw man arguments, but the point I'm making is just because you can do things doesn't mean that you should. I also just think that business models like uber and airbnb can let people into the market that really should not or have no business being there. Of course the odds of something bad happening in a hotel vs airbnb or someone trashing your airbnb are likely very slim. Same goes with über vs cabs. However I would venture to say it's a safe bet that in most cases you are more likely to have a bad experience with the "disrupt" businesses than an established and bureaucratic one.

I think that it should probably be decided by the market, and I would love to be wrong about this. I just don't think that I am. Maybe if I were 10 years younger and didn't have kids, but at my current place in life, I'm calling a cab to take me to a hotel, and I don't have house guests that aren't really or like family to me.

</comment><comment><USER17> I understand why everyone gets upset at this - there are rarely enough cabs, especially when _I need one now_. But the law is and has been very clear about paid transportation. Why don't we focus more on updating the law instead of asking politicians to break it?

<comment><USER18> The Seattle city council was updating the law. It was entirely within their power to update the law in such a way that it removed restrictions on cab and for-hire companies and kept TNCs lightly or not-at-all regulated.

This may go to a deeper level than you intended, but law -- especially business regulation law like this -- is SO detailed and complex that I think that most citizens despair of being able to easily comment on changing it in any way that is not entirely generalities (such as: "I don't think that we should cap Uber's car-count").

I was listening to the Seattle city council meeting, and one of the councillors asked -- someone, staff or maybe the bill author -- "Why did we strike the section that lists the innumerable things that we don't want professional drivers to do (like, 'transport a prostitute' and such)?" The bill author responded, "Oh, well, we're reclassifying the TNCs as for-hire companies, so we already have law explaining all the things they can't do." (I'm paraphrasing, of course).

This struck me as both ridiculous -- I'm fairly sure that we don't need separate business regulation making it... more?... illegal for cab drivers to aid and abet separate crimes -- and also a cause for despair. The city councillors who have been focusing considerable attention on this particular subject for weeks now are unable to keep the bill straight in their heads. How impenetrable will it be to everyone else?

<comment><USER19> Sidebar: a lot of anti-prostitute laws are actually anti-pimping laws. I almost guarantee the reason that 'no transporting prostitutes' law is on the books is that at some point someone had the wise idea to front his pimping operation as a car service. John pays a prostitute, she pays her 'driver', and if the police get involved he don't know nothing.

So they make up something to charge the pimp with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great blog! No content, no menu, but Disqus comments. This dude is the perfect person to be evaluating growth/scale of companies as a Stark Raving VC, but who for all his money can't hire an intern to make a static blog work.

If it was something that wasn't important to the author, like the last episode of some TV show, OK, but this whole taxi thing seems like a big deal. Treat the medium with respect if you care that much.

</comment><comment><USER21> There is an interesting lesson here writ small: How do old-line rent seekers, even where their industries are tiny compared to the technology industry and the investors behind it, continue to give the nerds wedgies?

Why didn't we tell the DRM people where to stick it? The business of selling recorded performances is teeny tiny compared to the 1.5 billion programmable devices per year, the routers, the fiber, the software, etc. of the tech industry. And yet we are led by the nose.

If we figure out what makes taxi companies powerful, maybe we can rip the DRM out of our devices.

<comment><USER18> Well, apples-to-apples, I don't think that people selling fiber generally care very much about DRM or taxi companies. Neither does most of the rest of the tech industry. It's not like the tech industry is some monolithic cabal -- nor should it be.

The rest of the seeming conundrum is, I think, evolved institutional codependence, bureaucratic inertia, and people's fundamental conservatism. That is:

1\. Taxi companies and taxi regulators have grown up together. It's not that taxi companies are exactly lean, mean lobbying machines, and it's not that taxi regulators are exactly corrupt. It's that they know each other and are comfortable with each other and even when they're quarreling, they understand the limits of their relationship.

2\. Hand-in-hand with that, people just don't like to make radical changes to regulatory systems. Even if the existing regulatory system is kind of crazy. There is a fairly large class of people who will assume that any system that's present must have some virtue, by mere testament of its presence.

3\. Finally, regulatory commissions will tend to solve any problem by thinking they should regulate it. Some of it may be cold-blooded, "Well, I want to increase or at least preserve my influence, my power, heck, my job," but honestly I suspect that most of it isn't nearly that calculated. It's just, you've been spending years regulating taxis, when you see something new and taxi-like on the horizon, your response is much more likely to be, "Well, I should regulate that, too," than, "Maybe I should just pack it in and get out of everyone's way."

<comment><USER21> You say "monolithic cabal" like it is a bad thing. How about a coalition of technology companies willing to see the recorded performances business shrink a bit in return for better, less expensive, more secure, and more open devices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Did anyone else have to reload multiple times before the text actually showed up? (Using Chrome v33)

<comment><USER23> He's using SVG fonts without WOFF or EOT versions.

For whatever reason they aren't rendered immediately. Double hitting the F12 dev bar usually sorts it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A French economist and statesman, Frédéric Bastiat ridiculed government protected industries in the same manner as OP in 1800s.

source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bastiat#Econ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9ric_Bastiat#Economic_Sophisms_and_the_.22Candlemakers.27_Petition.22)

<comment><USER25> I doubt anyone would mistake the OP for being original or even clever. Anyone can stretch something until it sounds preposterous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I hate to be _that guy_ , but.... the website doesn't work on Chrome on Android. I see just empty page and some pictures.

<comment><USER27> I had my browser window docked to 50% and saw nothing. It's a responsive design that hides content beyond some threshold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Although obviously hyperbole, the sad thing is that this is actually not completely outside the realm of possibility:

With regard to the first point, before there was email, Lysander Spooner attempted to compete with the (at the time notoriously high priced) US Postal Service. He was profitable, but the US government sued him out of existence.

You could argue the second point already happens "indirectly" through our less than transparent foreign policy.

The third point also kind of already takes place thanks to patents: the US government has given Microsoft a way to profit off of Android despite clearly demonstrating failure in this market.

</comment><comment><USER29> Doesn't this metaphor break down when you consider that taxi drivers are capped already?

Also AirBNB and Uber and similar things are in a weird spot since they are in heavily regulated industries.

<comment><USER15> Uber is innovating in bookkeeping and creative interpretation of regulations, which is not the kind of innovation that benefits the world at large; they're employing marketers and lawyers, not drivers. They just built cute ways to work around the employment, road tax and health insurance costs their competitors pay, turning those costs into their margin. Good point, their competitors had to obey a cap and they didn't, raising the taxi cap by 30% to address demand made a lot of sense.

Some of the excuses are right out of the pimp playbook and deserve ridicule: our drivers are freelancers! no one is paying for a ride, these are voluntary donations! we don't encourage anyone to operate unlicensed taxis, we merely collect a referral fee!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Alternately, to protect the public and support innovation, Seattle passed legislation to license and legalize taxi alternatives such as Uber.

Also, Microsoft is not a Seattle-based company.

<comment><USER31> I think you're being disingenuous. The author never said Microsoft was a Seattle based company. He said they're a "local employer" \- which they are. He referred to Microsoft having seattle-based employees. Microsoft is obviously a Seattle area employer. When you have 42,940 employees in Puget Sound, you're a Seattle employer. It's a perfectly valid reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Cities also limit the number of "regular" taxis, too.

</comment><comment><USER33> Instead of whining about it, why don't these companies negotiate with cities to find ways that they can raise revenue for the cities and generally help the communities they operate in? They _do_ drive on public roads, etc. Why not propose some kind of fee to offset this? Cities might be slightly less hostile if they weren't staring a big fat hole in their budgets in the face.

</comment><comment><USER34> I get the impression that three things are going on which are all bullshit: 1) people who are invested in some way in existing taxi companies are using politics to suppress competition from high tech startups and 2) somehow the new internet based taxi startups have been exempt from existing taxi laws and 3) the people who are invested in some way in existing taxi companies are using politics to suppress competition from low-tech startups (i.e. Joe with a car who needs money), like they always did.

You should not need to be wealthy to run or start a taxi service, or have to go through a or complex lengthy paperwork process. Whatever regulation there is, is definitely unfair to lower-income individuals who are otherwise perfectly capable of running a safe taxi service and meeting requirements that don't involve large fees or delays.

You should also not need to be associated with a high-tech startup company in order to start a taxi service. If Uber and the rest are able to somehow bypass or ignore the existing taxi regulation, or have been given a pass, that is incredibly unfair to the numerous individuals and small companies who have been prevented from starting taxis services, or prevented from having _legitimate_ taxi services, by outdated and protection-racket style taxi regulations. And also unfair to the people who went through the whole process and have regular taxi companies.

From what I can tell, most governments operate on a level similar to my high school student government, in terms of fairness and decision making. Basically like racist kids with barely-above average intelligence who give preference to the popular people, are completely inconsistent, manually collect forms and type them into barely-functional spreadsheets, take advantage of their positions, and, the one time they were given the opportunity to set fees, use their "government" as a vehicle to advance their personal wealth.

Within 5-15 years the human race will be completely irrelevant, as super- intelligent artificial general intelligence arrives on the planet and is forced to create zoo-like safety environments surrounding populations in order to prevent humans from destroying eachother and large areas of the planet with ordinary bombs, guns or even nuclear weapons.

</comment><comment><USER35> He picked examples of industries that are protected heavily, and just exaggerated them a bit. So the laws about Uber fit into existing protectionist laws. E.g:

\- The US postal office has a legal monopoly on mail, and loses money every year.

\- Airbnb has faced many legal battles over laws that protect hotels.

\- Hospitals often charge arbitrarily high amounts for even small things like a pill or bandage.

\- Public schools have an almost complete monopoly on education.

</comment><comment><USER36> couldn't they just tax the Uber, Lyft, etc... drivers' revenue? The same with AirBnb - whenever someone charges the money for their condo/apt/house, be it aunt/uncle, friends or unrelated tourists - pay the share of revenue thus leveling playing field with established players.

<comment><USER37> Why do Seattle's residents need the playing field levelled in the direction of services that they wouldn't choose in the absence of legislation?

<comment><USER36> >services that they wouldn't choose in the absence of legislation

1.are you saying that taxicabs can be abolished as nobody would use them?

2\. any business activity (ie. activity generating revenue stream) would rely on some government services, like, for example, road maintenance in this case. You drive more and thus cause more wear and tear on the roads, and this increase in your driving brings you additional revenue - seems to fair to tax such a revenue. Driving more you increase congestion which government [suppose to] spend money to solve. Being involved in frequent business transactions you'd probably have higher probability for the need for other government services - police, courts.

<comment><USER37> 1\. No, I'm not claiming no one would use taxicabs or would ever choose taxicabs over Uber; I refer to a series of hypothetical transactions in which an individual would choose Uber over taxicabs in the absence of the government pressuring the system one way or another.

2\. The business activity's externalities (e.g. contributing to congestion) could hypothetically be involved in an answer to my question!! While rhetorical, the question does have good answers from time to time. However, in this case, I don't believe the proposed cap is going to be very effective at mitigating those externalities, and the general concept of a "level playing field" is orthogonal to externality mitigation.

<comment><USER36> >the general concept of a "level playing field" is orthogonal to externality mitigation.

no. If one operator is paying for externality mitigation, it is only natural to level playing field by making other operators in the same business space to pay for the same externality mitigation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> We need to regulate the negative outcomes of a service, not the service itself.

</comment><comment><USER39> Bastiat rides again.

</comment><comment><USER40> Greg makes great arguments here, and he's not the only one who has been making these comments. Indeed, the level of rhetoric in our burgeoning class warfare is escalating rapidly; "technocrats" is my new favorite label.

But I question the TNCs strategy of approaching this long-term. It appears the strategy was simply to try and go the popular-opinion route. Of course the market has spoken, and it prefers Uber & Lyft by a huge margin over the traditional taxi market. However, in dealing with regulatory matters, political dealings are a necessary cost of doing business.

Instead, the TNCs did a few things wrong: 1) they jumped into the process a bit too late, 2) they took an antagonistic, condescending tone with the powers-that-be, and 2) they under-estimated the power of old-fashioned lobbying by the taxi industry.

Principles of market openness, disgust with the political climate, etc. don't really matter in light of moving ahead. Now, the Seattle market is likely stalled for a lengthy amount of time. And, future markets know they'll be able to extract a pound of flesh as the TNCs look to expand.

I hate the outcome and think the City Council deserves to be revoked, but the TNCs needed to do a much better job in handling this situation.</comment>


AIG Execs See Bonus After All - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-tasini/aig-pulls-fast-one--cash_b_147005.html

<comment><USER2> Well, this is a tricky one. Consider Enron, that was a huge company, 95% of whom were probably perfectly competent, ethical people, who did their jobs to a high standard. Or Arthur Anderson the accountants, a few of them were corrupt obviously and got caught up in Enron, but did the other 95% deserve to lose their jobs?

I know that if I was a banker putting in 80+ hour weeks on something entirely unrelated to subprime debt, I'd still expect - and still deserve - my bonus.</comment>


Google Launches Virtual World (Rooms) Called "Lively" - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/08/google-launches-virtual-world-called-lively/

<comment><USER2> I don't understand why they didn't create the app using Flash 9. There are some really impressive 3-D apps using Flash 9 and if they used Flash, it would work on Macs and Linux also. does_not_make_sense . I honestly expected that if anything, google would come up with some cool tricks to make it work without requiring any plugins at all, even Flash.

Check out this amazing app called AlternativaPlatform (Disclaimer: They not friends of mine and I don't have any connection.) if you want to see what's possible for 3D using just regular Flash 9. It's the most impressive example that I've seen so far. The link goes to their blog, which contains a bunch of demos:

<http://blog.alternativaplatform.com/en/>

This is another really cool Flash 9 - based 3D app: <http://ecodazoo.com/> (Disclaimer: No personal or financial connections here either.)

Maybe there are some technical requirements that I'm not aware of the necessitated using a custom plugin. Assuming that there was a good reason for it, why didn't they integrate it into an update for their Google Toolbar product or the Google Earth browser plugin? I'd be curious to hear any ideas on the subject.

<comment><USER3> Avi Bar-Zeev* talks about that and more in this blog post.

<http://www.realityprime.com/articles/google-lively>

"Ah, finally, we get to see the long rumored Google Virtual World, or one of them anyway. There's also rumored to be another one with a remarkably similar aesthetic that's only 2D and doesn't require a plugin and install. [I imagine they could use this 3D technology on the server side to flatten their avatars into isometric sprites that could be rendered in Flash or AJAX, ala google maps on the client. Any bets?]"

*Avi founded Keyhole which built what eventually became Google Earth

<comment><USER2> The _rumored_ version sounds much more interesting than the current one. The time required to test out a service using flash/ajax is just as long as the page takes to load. With an applet it probably takes a minimum commitment of at least 5-10 minutes to get the thing to install properly. And I hope that it's well-tested so that it doesn't conflict with any of my Firefox plugins...

An article linked from the realityprime.com article that you listed has an interesting quote:

Our mandate was to get usage," Guymon (note: Mel Guymon, Google's Head of 3D Operations [and former There.com developer and IMVU Co-Founder]) said of his business plan. "The difference from the startups I've been in is that startups have to turn a profit or die. All the projects in Google are run as startups, but we're given an incredibly amount of rope to be successful. We're not about to run out of money and die. For Google it's the opportunity to get into a space that we think is really going to be important in the long term. For me personally, I think this is going to make people's online experiences richer and more interesting. For generations coming up from age 4, this is what they expect. For Google, that was really the stake in the road"

[http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/07/google- announce.htm...](http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/07/google- announce.html#more)

Any thoughts? To me it sounds like they're a bit undisciplined. I'm not sure that it's a recipe for success to just throw money at a project. Constraints often help shape a product in good ways. In this particular example, it could have been a _good thing_ if they didn't have enough programming resources to build and test their own plugin. They would have had to live within the limitations of the flash plugin, but that tradeoff could prove in retrospect to have been well worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why?!

A few years ago Google was doing awesome new cool stuff... significantly better search, advertising products, cutting edge JavaScript stuff like Google Maps and Gmail, etc.

Now they just seem to be copying things others have done first, like Open Social, Android, App Engine, and now Lively.

<comment><USER5> If you think about it almost every Google product has been directly inspired by something else. They're in the business of evolutionary improvements and throwing their weight behind them (Offering 1GB storage on Gmail for example or free Google App Engine). Sounds kind of like what Microsoft did really.

<comment><USER6> Indeed. Even their adwords/adsense business model was copied from Overture.

<comment><USER7> When something is a god awful as Overture though, it makes a great deal of sense to copy parts of the model, but do it properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I the only one who is concerned that when the Metaverse comes, we'll all be cartoons and giant walking penises?

<comment><USER9> Do you mean a metaverse in a singularity?

<comment><USER8> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse>

<comment><USER9> Ah - it was "the Metaverse" phrasing that confused me. Presumably there wouldn't be just one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That looks really un-googly. The whole idea of chatting with someone using a complicated 3D avatar goes against google's usual fondness for simplicity in interface design. I assume it started out as somebody's side project, but I'm amazed that they launched it.

I'm sure it's a well-polished product, and that it'll be popular with teenage girls, but "popular with teenage girls" isn't usually google's goal, is it?

<comment><USER11> I'm unimpressed, I was expecting Google Earth to become their virtual world product.

<comment><USER12> Creating their own virtual worlds gives them access to their own real (virtual) estate that they can plaster with ads.

Avatar based chats are probably better than existing text-in-a-window ones for multi-person conversations because of the ease with which we can localize and assign voices to faces. I'd consider this the first significant step (by Google) in doing away with physical co-location of office workers.

<comment><USER9> >I'd consider this the first significant step (by Google) in doing away with physical co-location of office workers.

You mean starting with themselves? Google are very much old school in terms of making people work in regular (ish) offices, partly through culture and partly through the need for hush hush security.

<comment><USER13> Um, I work at Google, and I know people that have come into the office _once_ in the past six months.

> Google are very much old school in terms of making people work in regular > (ish) offices

This is just not true.

<comment><USER9> Well thats good to hear (I only know people in Sydney and Mountain View offices, and they tell me they didn't know anyone that worked like that).

Of course its nice to have good offices to go to when you so choose. Its just I know that when I go to an office I normally get nothing done (its almost too social).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _"Requires Windows Vista/XP"_

Boo.

<comment><USER7> I'd say the sort of people likely to be interested in playing with virtual avatars are likely to be running Windows.

Maybe that's a generalization too far, but it seems like it should be so.

<comment><USER15> Please elaborate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is trouble for <a href="<http://areae.net>">Areae, an online gaming platform startup that has Raph Koster and a few other names (including a friend of mine).

<comment><USER17> These online virtual world/gaming technologies are actually fairly simple to implement. I am sure that someone as enlightened as Raph Koster probably realizes that there are lots of companies, not to mention college kids in dorms, putting these together right now. SOME of those projects are bound to be better than his, others worse. Believe me, they have probably already factored that in to their plan.

If not, I agree, this is bad news for them, because hundreds more are coming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have this gut feeling that Google recently acquired some company that was already doing all of this stuff. Although I can't tell who, and TC doesn't hint towards anyone.

Regardless, this service isn't all that new. There are lots of characters created in the summer 2007 timeframe linked from the Catalog page (like [http://www.lively.com/catalog/details?mid=-84971956863432942...](http://www.lively.com/catalog/details?mid=-849719568634329420)).

<comment><USER17> No, Google TRIED to acquire IMVU. When IMVU pulled a Yahoo, Google decided to hire away one of their key guys, who was a co-founder as well. Then they put him on Lively.

Google is learning to do business the Microsoft way. Make an offer ONCE. They don't take it . . . make an example of them. The next startup you want will take the money, even if you are lowballing them.

<comment><USER19> Citation required.

<comment><USER17> Among other places:

[http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/07/google- announce.htm...](http://www.virtualworldsnews.com/2008/07/google- announce.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> best comment on techcrunch:

google has just "jumped the shark."

</comment><comment><USER21> Lilvely uses facebook accounts?

Google uses facebook accounts?

[http://www.lively.com/help/bin/answer.py?answer=98532&sr...](http://www.lively.com/help/bin/answer.py?answer=98532&src=top5&lev=answer)

wtf??

<comment><USER22> Facebook Connect and all that jazz.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is interest in the corporate space for 3d interaction of tools and equipment w/ folks from different geos. Complex troubleshooting, training, etc.

I'll be playing with Lively in the morning behind the firewall.

</comment><comment><USER24> My first reaction to this is "omg! wtf!? why?", but I really shouldn't knock it until i've tried it. This could actually be really cool...IF you have windows xp/vista and like this sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER25> Hopefully they'll integrate it with their actually functional apps.

I'm still waiting for the metaverse where I can accomplish real tasks in a pseudo-natural way.

</comment><comment><USER26> This reminds me of The Sims: Online game from back in 2002. Even the music sounds similar to The Sims game.

</comment><comment><USER27> google 2008 = microsoft 2004

<comment><USER27> edit: microsoft 1994</comment></comment>


Getline - A Python Library to Get Text from the Console - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/timtadh/getline

<comment><USER2> btw, editline is a BSD licensed readline replacement: <http://www.thrysoee.dk/editline/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have mentioned that. Editline is used by default by the Python readline module if you are on a MacOS or I assume FreeBSD. However, it is still a risk to use the readline module unless you distribute Editline and force its use over Readline.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How long until ramen profitability with iphone apps - <AUTHOR>

I'm considering dropping out to focus full time on iphone apps.
I'm curious to hear stories from people who've already taken the plunge.
How long did it take you to ream ramen profitability with iphone apps?
(Responses like "3 months ... long insightful story ..." is much much better than things like "3 months") <comment><USER2> 1 single practical piece of advice if you decide to drop out - make sure you set up the paid developer account along with both paid and free contracts before you drop out.

If it's done quickly, you have nothing to lose for waiting, if it takes a long time, count yourself lucky you waited.</comment>


Lavabit.com owner: 'I could be arrested' for resisting surveillance order  - <AUTHOR> http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/13/20008036-lavabitcom-owner-i-could-be-arrested-for-resisting-surveillance-order?lite <comment><USER3> "Because the government has barred Lavabit from disclosing the nature of its demands, we still don't know what information the government is seeking, or why it's seeking it," said Ben Wizner, a national security lawyer for the ACLU. "It's hard to have a debate about the reasonableness of the government's actions — or Lavabit's response, for that matter — when we don't know what we're debating."

So there we have it, a modern-day Geheime Staatspolizei in the USA.

I wonder what lunacy will pop up next.

<comment><USER4> He hasn't actually been arrested yet for not cooperating with a secret court order. This case has much higher profile than the CEO who got in trouble a while ago. Lots of international newspapers have written stories about Lavabit after the shutdown.

I think if Levison was arreted, it would be a turning point in the political implications of this case. From the slow response, it seems like the authorities are worried about doing this. And rightfully so.

<comment><USER5> _He hasn 't actually been arrested yet for not cooperating with a secret court order._

I have to suspect that's because he was willing to shut down his company and make a big stink. It he hadn't done that, I think it would have been much easier for the feds to arrest some random guy in a Dallas apartment, suggesting that he's a nefarious hacker in league with Snowden and possibly other nefarious people. With 10k users, I'm sure they could find something to say that there were, say, "suspected drug dealers" using the service.

It was very smart of him to get out front of the story. Now if the Feds go after him, he's the businessman taking a principled stand.

<comment><USER6> > I have to suspect that's because he was willing to shut down his company and > make a big stink

Why so many are stuck on the fact he "shut down the company" and did a good dead. I been downvoted about this before and its fine, I just didnt get my answer.

The Feds did not ask him to shut down; it wasnt Government mission. Their mission was to get access to Lavabit data. Said that, regardless if he shut down or not, Government will or already did get full access to Lavabit data. Its even worse that they shut down; if they were online you could go and clean up your mailbox (not necessarily from anything illegal, but for example your own naked pictures you sent to your wife). But since they are offline, nothing can be done. Government won.

<comment><USER7> Shutting down the company alerted users to possible surveillance. Government wanted to snoop in secret. Now their secret is out, and they may or may not get to snoop on their target(s) via other channels. Levison loses the proceeds of his business, but he has behaved ethically by discontinuing his service since he can no longer deliver what was promised. Levison took the closest thing he could get to a win.

Levison gets extra karma because he put everyone's interests ahead of his own short-term financial interests. By shutting his business in the manner that he did, he has poisoned the well for gov't snooping at other similar services. If he is lucky, he may suffer little or no further gov't retribution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is my hypothesis of the meaning of this story.

What the government wanted was to trojan the code (collect passwords because the encryption was based on them), and do so invisibly to the users.

Levison prevented this by shutting down the service - that is the real offence. The technicality on which he could be arrested is that he indicated the reason for the shutdown in the message to users on the front page - <USER2> only by implication.

The importance of this, which I think that even many techies may be missing, is that service owners no longer have a choice of what code to run on their own servers. If you run a service that enables secure communications, you can be forced to subvert the code to the detriment of users and effeectively lie about it and deceive the users. You can refuse to participate by quitting the job (unless the 13th Amendment is also being trampled) - but according to the new, defacto US policy, you have to allow the service to continue in trojaned form, otherwise you're subject to prosecution for revealing the government wiretapping to the targets.

<comment><USER9> Seeing as Lavabit handled encryption and decryption server side, the order could have required them to retain messages after decryption. Or, less insidiously, just required them to retain messages they received prior to encrypting them. In both cases, they wouldn't have forced Lavabit to put in a backdoor, just keep what they had already. (though if they only stored decrypted emails in memory, that distinction is small).

Remember, Lavabit voluntarily complied with other court orders, so they likely have the technical means to comply with what the feds want.

<comment><USER10> You have no idea what the feds want, and the previous "comply" was probably just turning over the information it had readily available including the raw cipher text which would be useless with out the key

I do not believe for a second the NSA was looking simliar information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Putting aside this story for one minute and looking at the larger picture one thing I find fascinating is how the protagonists are absolutely winning the PR battle. The irony here is that when Snowden or this owner go public the overly secretive government can't or won't reply in an effective manner. That secrecy, so effective when operating in the dark, is suddenly impotent when the light is shined on it. The only attempts at any type of rebuttal have come from Obama and have had little to no effect to change the tidal flow here.

So we just get this one sided narrative with a "fresh" new story every 2 or 3 days. It may be disturbing that he can be arrested but is that really news to anyone here? What's the point of a surveillance order if you can't back it up? We lock people up for contempt of court. You have to have a stick if you want folks to comply. Yet here is this story a few days after the main story and just as Lavabit was falling off the global media front page. This keeps the issue alive and hammers the government again. All trademarks of an excellent PR campaign. This narrative is having a withering effect upon those driving these programs as politicians see their constituents slowly turn from understanding of the need for these programs to alarmed by them.

That the government has been unable to mount any sort of credible counter story is pretty amazing to me and somewhat a relief. After all, true police states have amazing propaganda machines. This one feels reminiscent of an intern running marketing at a startup!

<comment><USER12> The government has a very effective methodology for protecting things it deems important.

Congress got a little feisty about these programs, and for a week we started hearing about "chatter" that was threatening US embassies. We closed embassies and said scary things. Then we bombed some Al Queda in the Arabian Peninsula folks in Yemen. The next day, with much less fanfare, it was reported that it wasn't "chatter" (which implies stuff from the NSA monitoring), but a specific warning from an official in the government of Yemen.

These sorts of things are very effective at controlling Congress, especially House members. Nobody wants to be the Congressman who pushed to shutdown programs that thwart terrorists. At the end of the day, what you think doesn't matter. It's what your Congressional representatives think -- and the ability of the administration to manipulate the general public's sense of fear makes it difficult to dismantle these programs.

<comment><USER11> The political backdrop for the US embassy closing was more the traditional Democratic vs Republican back and forth. The right and Fox news hammered this administration on Benghazi (depending on your POV that was entirely justified or horrible partisan politics) with pretty good effect. Therefore, at the slightest threat of another attack on an embassy the administration goes into PR panic mode. No WAY can we have a second attack on a consulate within 12 - 18 months - our opponents will have a field day in the press for weeks. So you have the over reaction of closing down so many embassies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The thing I find scary about that, is the idea that the only reason he probably hasn't been arrested is for PR concerns. If nobody had heard of Lavabit and he pulled this move, I believe they would have went after him without mercy. His profile is big enough right now that it would just add to the NSA scandal, prolonging the headlines, so they're debating on a political basis what to do with him (if anything).

<comment><USER14> It'll be interesting to see if he ends up in jail over something similar to to the former Qwest CEO was charged with...

It does seem like publicity (and public opinion) is the only defence, that works, to a certain extent:

\- William Binney (NSA) - "tricked" FBI to record evidence of malicious prosecution

\- Bradly Manning - got publicity, but was under military jurisdiction

\- Snowden - got publicity - is still(?) alive

\- Joseph Nacchio (qwest ceo) - was first indicted, then tried to claim being framed (not commenting on the truth of this, just the (public perception of) sequence of events

\- lavabit - early publicity, rides "Snowden"-wave. Hopefully that'll work.

[edit: formatting]

<comment><USER15> Joseph Nacchio (qwest ceo) - was a crook. not sure what he is doing in this list here. He got caught in a pump and dump, and did a lot of desperate things as CEO to enrich himself at the expense of other... Not really alot of mystery to that one.

<comment><USER14> Well, maybe. I've seen some commentators that aren't as sure, that the case is quite so clear cut.

Assuming that he is guilty of the charges against him, it would still be interesting to know if he became a target of investigation as a result of refusing to cooperate with the NSA. I'm not saying that _is_ the case, but that it _could_ be the case.

<comment><USER15> It was not (remotely likely) the case that the NSA made him do the illegal and unethical things that he did do. He was only convicted on a portion of those. In any event.

 _That being said_ , It may have <likely> been the case that (1) Nacchio may have had access to information that (if made public) could have compromised/damaged the NSA's institutional interests and/or the reputation of its principals; and (2) he may well have threatened to make such information to become public. But (1) comes with the territory or running a bell operating company (US west); and (2) comes with the territory of being a desperate, CEO about to be thrown in Jail. Since these alternative explanations are alot simpler and easy to make sense of, Its not worth walking out on a limb to support the alternative hypothesis that the NSA somehow framed Nacchio. It would be (at best) like framing al capone for tax evasion, understanding it also to be a fact that he did evade taxes.

<comment><USER14> I don't think NSA _framed_ him. I'm saying NSA _might_ have had a role to play in him _being investigated /indited_.

Similar to how intelligence services (allegedly) watch "targets" with the aim to use any illegal/questionable activity to leverage them into assets. The activity might be fully illegal -- but an intelligence service might not care about that -- just about having something to hold over a potential asset.

As I understand it -- the idea is that Qwest said no to implementing tapping in their NOCs, and that the investigation/charges of fraud/pump'n'dump etc were filed afterwards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you were going to open an encrypted email service today -- one that would work like Lavabit -- where in the world would you move to before opening it?

Obviously, the USA is impossible. I'd suspect that the five Anglosphere nation secret police alliance countries are bad places, too ('Five Eyes': gb, oz, ca, us, nz). That leaves a lot of world to consider.

Is Ireland better? It's the only first world English-speaking nation that retains some suspicion and independence toward the Washington Empire, but only because of the ugly history with Britain.

Japan and Korea seem like bad choices because they're so close to and dependent on US military operations. Hong Kong and Singapore are subject to police state rules but usually operate extremely liberally; I wonder how it would go in those cities for a private communication service.

Germany is making noise about resenting Anglosphere spying, and you could use an affordable Hetzner server. Looks more and more like that resentment is feigned and German secret police are probably learning Stasi tactics from the NSA.

What do people think about Iceland or Switzerland. Is there anyplace in the FUSSR to consider? What other country would you nominate?

Edit: How about Chile? There's a first world nation that welcomes net startups and has good reason to cooperate very little with the US secret police. After all, the current government is made up of moderate lefties that survived the CIA coup and political murder spree in the 1970s and 1980s.

</comment><comment><USER17> Now, I feel more and more afraid to leave even a comment on any swoden related articles. This is not normal.

<comment><USER18> Say what you think and say it loud. If everyone stays quiet, nothing changes.

<comment><USER19> Yes, or everyone that said something is simply getting arrested, barred from speaking about his charges, and possibly thrown into one of those cozy off- shore facilities with unclear legal status.

There is an understandable fear that a large bureaucracy is simply going to go through with whatever they think 'is the law' no matter how many people state their request. This isn't some irrational fear out of the blue, people see it happening in their daily lives on much less threating topics and history has seen it happen on an existential level. Not everybody is important enough to be granted temporary asylum by some adversary of the 'Big Satan' and some of us life in countries that have already handed over their own citizens to some of its torture facilities without asking questions.

Simply encouraging people to say things out loud when the system has already spun out of control so much is endangering them. We should rather educate people on forms of protest which are not going to be subdued so easily.

<comment><USER20> Let a hundred flowers bloom, right? You would have done well under that policy.

I'd like to see a little more public noise _before_ we get to the point where the government can have everyone who's publicly backed a certain viewpoint summarily executed, though. If you're too afraid of that endpoint, you end up actually helping to bring it about. We can provide enough background struggle that it never comes within the government's power to remove it all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't get it. Why doesn't someone just speak out on principle. Out of everyone who "can't" speak I would expect at least one to come out and do it even though it might get them into "trouble."

<comment><USER22> 1.4 million Americans have 'TS/SCI' clearance, but only Manning and Snowdon felt inclined to suffer the consequences of speaking out of principle.

I think it's easy to imagine you would speak out when you don't have access to anything secret - but when it's you and your family that will be put at risk I can understand the disincentives looming large.

<comment><USER23> It's also quite telling that neither Manning nor Snowden have a young family to take care of - no wife or kids.

It is easier (although still monumentally difficult, of course) to take a stand when you are not taking down an innocent wife and children with you, who you might never see again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Now it is just question of time when FBI finds child porn on his computer :-(

</comment><comment><USER25> Related: here's an interview with the owner of an ISP who went through something similar. He was under a gag order for 6 years. The interview also has comments from the Lavabit owner and his lawyer.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpRp-D5v5NQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpRp-D5v5NQ)

</comment><comment><USER26> I hope he is, he knew what he was playing at.

</comment><comment><USER27> There's one positive outcome of this sad story. We now know for a fact that NSA didn't (yet) break the encryption algorithms, that's why they need to perform these insane acts.

<comment><USER28> Or they are too lazy to wait for the decryption to finish...

<comment><USER29> Or maybe the NSA is a very large organization with many departments so secret that their capabilities and existence are on a need to know basis and not flaunted around unnecessarily just to save some time or effort?

<comment><USER28> Right, or they could be a bunch of incompetent idiots, which is way hilarious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This guy's credibility was shot down pretty well here on HN and elsewhere earlier in the week. I wouldn't place much credence into anything he says.

<comment><USER31> This guy is keeping the story on the news agenda loud and clear. I'm sure he doesn't care about the opinion of some Aspieish idiots on a discussion group. What's your credibility?

<comment><USER32> _This story was originally published on Tue Aug 13, 2013 8:44 PM EDT_

To be fair, the article is from 3 days ago. More likely someone just posted the link on HN. Also, it's not the guys fault is NBC News are a little slow in reporting a story...

<comment><USER33> I don't understand how the publication date of this article correlates to the subject of the article lacks credibility.

Do you care to cite specific examples of how Lavabit's founder should not be trusted?

<comment><USER32> _This guy is keeping the story on the news agenda loud and clear._

I was referring to this part of the comment, nothing else.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Speed Up Your Website with Better Image Optimization in Photoshop - <AUTHOR> http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/speed-up-your-website-with-better-image-optimization-in-photoshop/

<comment><USER2> Please people, quit it with these micro-optimisations (images, css sprites, compression). Most websites are slow because:

1\. they use no-cache headers, forcing everyone to wait for the server to regenerate the page

2\. they generate pages dynamically

Most sites can and should use static pregeneration of content with appropriate caching headers.</comment>


The Hobbit Underwhelms At 48 Frames Per Second - <AUTHOR> http://badassdigest.com/2012/04/24/cinemacon-2012-the-hobbit-underwhelms-at-48-frames-per-secon/

<comment><USER2> The news media is obviously trying to fan the controversy, as that's their business model. Hopefully the almost-visible flickering in movies at theaters will disappear when we switch to higher framerates.

"You can not get a more genuine, realistic viewing experience than this unless you are watching a performance live," wrote About.com's Rebecca Murray, though she noted that it takes your eyes a moment to adjust.

"You're right there and it's breathtaking," noted Hollywood Elsewhere's Jeff Wells. "No strobing, no flickering, pure fluidity and much more density of information...It's the best 3D I've ever seen and probably ever will see in my life. 48 fps 3D is so much easier on your eyes than 24 fps 3D."

[http://www.eonline.com/news/hobbit_controversy_peter_jackson...](http://www.eonline.com/news/hobbit_controversy_peter_jackson/311314)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Guys this new technology looks weird, we should just stick with what works! There's no way this has anything to do with me not being used to it!"

<comment> shock-value It has nothing to do with not being used to it. TV dramas could easily have shot at 60fps starting a decade ago (or more) but none do (aside from some daytime soaps). Even most comedies are 24-30fps these days. The reason is that higher framerates cheapen the look in exactly the way the author of this article describes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Peter Jackson's right you do get used to it after a while. I Bought a Samsung LED television that runs at 60 frames per seconds a couple of years back and it took me three months to get used to it. But now when I look at screens that run at slower frame rates, they just look dull and flat.

<comment> shock-value I don't know of any tv ever produced that is less than 50-60fps. Do you mean that it interpolates lower fps content to bring it up to 60? If so all I can say is, I am surprised you like that effect. I can't stand it and always disable it.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I do mean interpolation. Just for the record, in the parts of the world where I have worked (Australia and France), a typical video stream, be it broadcast/pay-tv/dvd runs at 30fps or less. Recent televisions will interpolate to display frame rates up to 120fps.

Like you, I hated the effect at first, but I left it running because I do STB user interfaces for a living, and I need to know what people that don't fiddle with their television are seeing. It's jarring at first because for reasons that I don't fully understand, you are able to discern where the light sources are in a scene when using this technique. You can see that big reflectors have been used for outside shots, or that there is a spot shining just off camera. This is what gives it that cheap video effect, because as anyone that works with video for a living can tell you, the crappy quality of home videos is mostly due to poor lighting.

Cinematographers are going to have to work harder in the future to assure a more even light field in their shots. In the meantime, I have found that after using this type of display technology for more than a few months, you start to prefer the high frame rate to older technologies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From a comment on that page, I found this info: <http://www.videocandycompany.com/?p=224> Apparently, in order to shoot at a higher framerate, they used a suboptimal aperture. It looks crappy because the exposure is relatively longer, so you get _extremely_ smooth-looking footage.

<comment><USER6> Very informative, thank you.

In short, to me, all this effort is being driven by studio's trying to justify cinema ticket prices by offering big films shot for 3D. Even though the most profitable and successful films have always been 2D and in general movie watchers avoid 3D!

In addition, perhaps Jackson would rather be known for pioneering work than making yet another good film.

Given the choice in aesthetic for film has been driven by culture rather than technology for much of its 103 years, the parties concerned are all taking a big risk...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Bad review.

That "video look" he's mentioning is the absence of 24fps artifacts I'm very glad we get rid of.

He could as well just have written "meh, reality has a video look".

<comment> shock-value No, you're wrong. It has nothing to do with artifacts. Higher frame rates just do not have that "otherworldly" look that everyone associates with high quality cinema. It's a completely psychological effect, but it's nonetheless entirely real and it absolute cheapens the look and is very distracting.

Moreover, anyone who knows anything about film would have seen these problems a mile away upon hearing that The Hobbit is shooting at 48fps. I honestly can't believe these directors were (initially) behind this, but then again they were apparently backers of 3D as well which also has a reputation for cheapening the look, although that is more debatable. I think moviegoers will outright hate 48fps though, rather than just gradually shy away from it as in the case of 3D tech.

<comment><USER7> "otherworldly" is just a nice word for "1920s technology".

Getting closer to reality is a common thread in the arts. As soon as man had a way to move from one-color cave paintings to using colors, he started to use them.

This is the artistic expression that Peter Jackson is going for.

In one of the video blogs he said: "The result looks like where the screen was, there is now a hole in the wall, and beyond that is reality".

Imagine, instead of looking a film of Bilbo, you're transported right there into Middle-earth and it looks absolutely real. Wouldn't that be great? I'm very much looking forward to that experience.

<comment> shock-value Yes you are right in a way that it looks more "real". But real in the sense that you are acutely aware that it is a staged production when viewing it. The author of this article directly addresses this when he says just that, and also notes that it looks like a behind the scenes featurette.

I have not seen footage from The Hobbit but I have worked with other dramatic content at high frame rates and I know exactly what the author is describing. It's really gonna bug people if they really do release at 48fps.

<comment><USER7> I've seen several Showscan films, and I loved them.

I think the biggest problem is acting. 24fps lays a veneer of "movie look" over all performances. With higher framerates, actors can no longer count on that.

They have to sell it much more, like in a theatre, but with large screen closeups projected on a 20 meter screen.

In a way, it's a new challenge actors never had before. It will be interesting to see whether there are indeed performance differences among the Hobbit actors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I doubt it's the framerate. Peter Jackson just isn't the greatest director in the world. That seems more in line with the criticism I've seen.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm a bit confused, if the FPS was the issue wouldn't the helicopter shots look like crap as well? Is 48 FPS more optimal for helicopter shots?

<comment><USER10> The writer is used to watching nature documenataries made for TV. They have always been shot in 50-60 fps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> People said very similar things when video started getting released on 720p and 1080p resolutions.

I'm going to wait to judge for myself.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm only a little worried about this. When you ask the lay what "film" looks like and why video looks different, most people cannot quantify what it means (but can definitely tell the difference). "Film" to most people is that slow, deliberate frame advancement of 24 fps, blur and all. Take that away, and it doesn't look like "film" any more; it's just how we're collectively used to it.

This reminds me of, say, _Law & Order_. The detectives are standing around a monitor, reviewing security tape; medium shot of the detectives, 24 fps. Full screen tape: 30 drop. Back to the detectives, 24 fps. We've all seen that before -- whenever the characters play with a consumer camera or look at a security feed, visually, a distinction is set by accelerating the frame rate. Producers know this. It just shouts "not a professionally-photographed teleplay!" in most peoples' minds now, and I think there will be resistance to rewrite that rule mentally.

While I welcome dramatic entertainment that looks more like real life, I worry that culturally, we're used to 24 fps and it's going to be a begrudging transition. At least HDTV offered a noticeable improvement. Not everybody will say the same thing about more visually real entertainment; entertainment is _entertainment_ for a reason, and we do not want to be reminded of real scenarios in most cases (it's a flight of fancy).

My two cents. Will be interesting to see how this plays out, anyway. Imagine anthropologists discovering threads like this one in thousands of years: "they even quibbled over the frame rate of their time-dilated visual entertainment..."

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure the difference has much to do with frame rates but rather with 'depth' by relying heavily on focus in film with blurred backgrounds whereas handheld and security cameras usually lack this depth and show a flattened image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Could be culture. We are used to films looking a certain way and TV looking different, everything else could very well be rationaizations. Not that it changes much about the situation, though.

<comment><USER15> It is a cultural, subconscious effect. Higher frame rate content is associated with either real life (sports, news) or bad TV (soaps).

I don't think the content association is the problem. The problem is that most people watch movies to escape from real life. It could be that higher frame rate is used for action movies e.g. Transformers and lower frame rate for dramas but I don't know how that would work.

Oh and any argument about "getting used to it" can be shot down with 3D. The world has had plenty of time to adjust and overwhelmingly still hate it.

<comment><USER16> _The problem is that most people watch movies to escape from real life._

As I understand it, the problem is that movies are an illusion and in order for them to work, the viewers must buy into it, which is apparently a bit harder with higher framerate.</comment></comment></comment>


Pinterest is not a Virtual Pinboard - joe-mccann http://subprint.com/blog/pinterest-is-not-a-virtual-pinboard Pinterest is not a Virtual Pinboard.  It is the answer to consumers engaging with brands, something Facebook has been unable to do. <comment><USER2> My girlfriend has called it "Reddit for girls" and that's exactly what it is.

Like Reddit, it's a place to waste endless amounts of time. My girlfriend has gotten a little addicted to Pintrest and has since apologized to me for being mad that I sometimes getting sucked into Reddit on my phone.

However, the beautiful design is tuned for the target audience. I've watched several girls surf Pintrest and they use it very differently than most anyone I know who uses Reddit. Just the way they scan visually and randomly for something that catches their eye, rather than reading down a row or column and scanning for blue links.

All that said, I believe that the female audience will prove much more monetizable than Reddit's. For one, all pins already have a photo, so sponsored pins will fit right in with the flow. Secondly, the types of things people are sharing and looking at on Pintrest are extremely gift and "spoil yourself" centric.

Best of luck to the Pintrest team. Seems like they've got a great run ahead of them!

<comment> joe-mccann Yup, spot on. You'll notice that the massive, visually appealing sites and apps (Flipboard, Instagram, for example) cater to a different audience and are arguably more suited for monetization: your "sponsored pins" idea - <AUTHOR> additions to the natural eye flow down the page, BUT using the data that Pinterest has on your profile to show sponsored pins that you would actually WANT to see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "People, mainly women at the moment, are creating mood/story boards which mostly contain pictures of products."

I keep hearing this, but I find it goes against my own experience on the site and that of other hardcore users that I know. Food, hair, nails, tattoos, quotes, amazing pictures, unique crafts/accessories (via Etsy), aspiration products, and amazing travel pictures yes. Anything being sold by a retailer seems few and far between.

If anyone knows of anything other than anectdotal evidence that users are actually actively pinning products, I'd be really interested to read more.

<comment><USER4> A client of mine sells classroom decorations and teacher resources. We recently added a Pinterest share button to each product page which has increased our traffic from Pinterest significantly. The conversion rate from Pinterest traffic averages between 6 and 10 percent. Conversion rate from Facebook traffic: .40%, Twitter: .08%.

<comment><USER5> How do pinterest users discover new content like yours?

<comment><USER6> Same way as people find new tweets. By following others and by having others follow you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The real products that I've seen pinned are mostly clothing. People will pin a look or a series of pictures that build up a look.

There are two drivers for this that I've seen. Either bookmarking clothes to build up a look that they will then go and buy, or bookmarking clothes to buy once they go on sale.

One of the things I struggle with buying clothes online is being able to look at all the things I like on the same screen and then decide what I will buy. (H+M does this well). Some retailers limit the baskets to 10 items (Next used to) so even though I'll only buy a few in the end, the only other way to compare items is to open lots of tabs. This doesn't work at all when it's a flash based store. (Esprit.com suffers from this) So I use pinterest for this.

The other time I pin products is when I want comment from other people. I'd rather have these comments on Pinterest than on Facebook.

One thing that would make me pin products more would be if I could make a board private. Then I would pin ideas for Birthday presents and I would have used it to pin ideas for wedding dresses. But private boards are not what they're aiming for and doesn't fit into the context of the article either I guess.

<comment> joe-mccann Yes, private boards are key, IMO. I bought the domain wishistry.com a few years ago to provide just that: Private wishlists for birthdays, weddings, holidays, etc. I think Pinterest will roll this out soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been watching pintrest with some interest recently.

It's not a story of great relevance here, but I basically built pintrest in 2007 - 2008, and then never launched it. It was pretty much the exact same site; right down to the infinite scrolling, and concept of cards and images. I did not have the concept of 'repinning' they have though, I opted for 'loving' something, and copied the hackernews model of moving things around. My concept was 'what's cool right now'; it was to be a large visual endless board of interesting visual things and products in the real world.

When I researched how I should categorise, I arrived at almost exactly the same categories pintrest now has (90% overlap). I put those categories together by the same method I can only presume pintrest did; by highest advertising CPC rates and revenue driving metrics. I guess the slight deviation is because I was working on 2007 figures.

When I came up with the concept, it was when digg was king, and reddit was still highly techie. I used to browse this site every single day; <http://www.notcot.org> \- and noticed there was huge gap in community driven linking based towards images and products. They didn't work well with text links.

Anyway, after initially planning simply to advertise for revenue (I made my image columns the same size as a standard advert banner) I arrived at the same conclusion; The only real way to make a solid stream of revenue from this is to create some kind of way to tap into the revenue created from the 'products' linked to.

I stumbled and stuttered on how to implement this. I couldn't figure out how to blend the concept of products in without trashing it. Then I got caught up in implementing new features when things like facebook connect were announced, and then, due to unfortunate personal events, never got around to finishing the last 5% and going live, it just sat on a staging server for years.

Something clicked for me recently when I saw was fab.com are doing. I realise with hindsight that had I simply launched when I had a basic product I could have come to these challenges later; which is exactly what pinterest will be in the process of doing now; but it's not an easy problem to crack.

Makes me happy to see pintrest doing well. I'm not in the valley, and I never really had any grand plans, obviously they had the vision I didn't! I doubt I'd have gotten much beyond a few hundred visitors haha :)

For anyone interested; <http://i.imgur.com/eEJva.jpg> It's not as pretty as pintreset, I was keeping comments on the permalink and cropping image but it was an early beta.

<comment><USER9> LINK IS NSFW!

<comment><USER8> Apologies - you were correct. I update the link so it is now SFW.

It was a small screenshot of a site, and on of the thumbnails visible had a picture from an artist which you can see a nipple in. I didn't spot that. I have removed it.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for updating, I just wanted to give a warning those of us at work and make it as visible as possible. I think the site looks great by the way! It definitely had potential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pinterest is internet scrapbooking, and sharing it.

Strangely I'm mostly hearing about Pinterest so far from the women in my life, and not the guys so much.

</comment><comment><USER6> My wife just recently started a food blog and along with that found Pinterest. With a site redesign we did, we added a Pinterest button directly next to the Facebook like button. The Pinterest button gets upwards of 10 times the actions as the facebook like.

We were just talking about how it is not considered as acceptable to share as much mundane stuff on Facebook and how that is what Pinterest is all about. Facebook has no way to easily categorize or review what you have shared in the past, so it gets lost. Women especially seem to enjoy this.

One odd thing is Pinterest doesn't seem to combine all pins of a single image together. For a single image, you may have 20 different pins, each of those with their own set of repins and comments. See: <http://pinterest.com/source/thinlyslicedcucumber.com/>

<comment><USER11> My wife started pinning DIY posts from her pet blog on Pinterest and discovered a lot of them had allready been pinned. Also, in just over a month, it has become the leading non-search referrer to her blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was thinking about this same thing last week in the shower. The reality is that I find most people pinning items that are not necessarily to be purchased i.e 20 different wedding dresses, ferraris, crazy tattoos. That sparked my apiphany, like yours, that this isn't to create a store front, this is to curate enough data to proverbaly shoot fish in the barrel with targeted advertising.

I know Google made an offer to Pinterest and clearly it wasn't enough. They should have put all of their eggs in this basket because this is the true alternative to FB's power house advertising that is soon to be bolstered by the inevitable search capabilities.

<comment> joe-mccann With FB's IPO imminent, they should take some of that cash and buy Pinterest (Andreeson is invested in both anyway).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone know what the breakdown between men/women users are on pinterest? Do you think it will always be women dominated or will they roll out something to attract men users?

<comment><USER10> I think it's about time a startup is used by women in majority.

The fairer half are a grossly underserved audience, there are lots of opportunities and I hope Pinterest is the first of many to build on it.

<comment><USER14> doesnt Pinterest smell too much women (no disrespect whatsoever!) by now? I mean, its been built upon profiles of shoes, wedding dresses, carpets, flowers, knitting stuff, etc. I wonder if they will be trying to shift it more towards men, or perhaps there is a good niche right now here: built pinterest that has a strong lean towards men interests: cars, women, alcohol, bikes, boats, luxury watches, houses, cool places, etc, etc.

EDIT: although second thought. Pinterest strong side is that women (more than men) like to collect stuff. Nice thing about Pinterest is that you can pinboard your collections, join others, etc. I am not sure if the same effect would work on "mens pinterest".

<comment><USER15> I think you'd definitely want a separate space for men, although I don't think you will ever get as much traffic. Sharing the website (even though it is technically done that way right now) would be weird - most women aren't going to be interested in a handgun on the page or a swimsuit model or a muscle car.

I don't think a men-only version would work anyways. Men just don't tend to 'window shop' like women do. Men also don't like sharing as much as women do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've never heard of Pinterest before - my first impression was that this was somehow related to Path. The color scheme , logo, and favicon are eerily similar.

</comment><comment><USER17> Great piece, I wrote something similar on Google+ recently but you've summed it up better than I did.

Pinterest could create real social shopping and users want it. They'd love to to be able to purchase the items they repin. That would be easy to monetize and eventually could even allow for payments to go through pinterest to make it a slicker solution and without the need for lots of accounts.

</comment><comment><USER18> Kaboodle, StyleHive and many others captured the same concept years back, and Pinterest just adds more visual appeal to it.

I also wonder if the guys behind Pinterest are doing some sneaky things like creating fake users and making them Like your pins immediately after you create them. When I first started, I had a few people immediately follow me, and like some of my pins.. but then it died down as I continued to use it. I wouldn't be surprised.. my dopamine levels shot right up when I got an email notification than 3 ppl liked a pin of mine.

<comment><USER19> I can tell you they aren't doing anything funny. I have been pinning items from my site (I feel a bit of shame when I do this). Now that they have millions of users, your pin gets lost within millions of pins unless someone who has lots of followers repins you.

I have figured I could get around 1000 visits to my site daily from Pinterest by pinning around 200-300 items, assuming 10 of them become hits. But the traffic is not really sticky.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> really? pinterest has a substantial potential for data warehousing! maybe _that's_ why they're hiring to find ppl with data mining experience for their hadoop stack . . .</comment>


OcherBook: Open-source replacement Kobo firmware - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ccoffing/OcherBook <comment><USER2> Very interesting and timely considering I just bought a Kobo Aura One. The Aura One is a really nice device, and you don't realize how small and uncomfortable the Kindle Voyage is until you use a big device with a textured back. Plus the eink Kobo's epub rendering engine is easily best-in-class. It blow's Kindle's rendering capabilities out of the water. (Assuming you use their dumb ".kepub.epub" format extension--if you upload regular epubs it'll fall back to rendering with Digital Editions, Adobe's eldritch horror of a renderer.)

If OcherBook is meant to entirely replace the Kobo firmware, why not base the document rendering portion on something like Readium? That's another best-in- class renderer designed to be used in other software but it seems like it's almost always overlooked.

On a side note, It's always been a faraway dream of mine to do a Kickstarter- like project to fund a completely open and libre eink ebook reader. As far as hardware startups go it'd be on the simpler side (the stripped-down minimum device is just a touch eink screen, ram/cpu/storage, usb-c; wifi and backlight not required). But, I have zero hardware experience and honestly I don't know if it'd be a venture that could be made profitable or not. Kindle/Kobo devices are loss leaders for their ebook store, so an ereader without a store, and competing on just libre-ness can't compete on price. If anyone's interested in chasing the dream, get in touch...

<comment><USER3> One of the KOReader maintainers here ;)

I have been discussing with other maintainers (mostly @chrox) about starting a full stack open and libre eink reader for more than a year. Now that @lgeek has done the ground work at the firmware and OS level, coming up with the hardware design is the last piece. I am happy you are interested in this too. I will definitely reach out to you through emails. Meanwhile, if anyone else is also interested in this, please feel free to join our gitter channel at [https://gitter.im/koreader/koreader](https://gitter.im/koreader/koreader) for further discussion. I will be hanging out there after work hour (PST).

And yes, we are also evaluating readium. Right now, we are using coolreader's awesome engine for epubs.

<comment><USER4> Great work with KOReader!

I tried KOReader on my Kobo Glo some time ago. But I think there was a problem that it always froze after some time. Never had the time and opportunity to further analyze it to give a good bug report. I really should try the latest version of it on all my ebook readers. So much to do and so little time ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Funny coincidence, I'm developing okreader ([https://github.com/lgeek/okreader](https://github.com/lgeek/okreader)), which is a package of u-boot, deblobbified downstream kernel images, Debian and KOReader ([https://github.com/koreader/koreader](https://github.com/koreader/koreader)) for a range of Kobo devices. I've been working with upstream KOReader developers to get the features required to use KOReader without the Kobo firmware. okreader replaces the whole software stack on the device.

<comment><USER4> Cool. Will try it out.

I can also recommend the Pocketbook Touch Lux 3 for hacking. Changeable buildin microsd card, Allwinner A13 Soc and pins for serial connection. Only problem with it is touch and display controller. AFAIK they don't work with the mainline kernel.

Oh and what I didn't like about the Kobo reader software is their library and that they always want everything to index first. With the default Pocketbook firmware you can browse directory structures, so much superior if you have a very big library on it.

<comment><USER3> KOReader runs on many pocketbook models too ;) Although I am not 100% sure if it works for Lux 3 specifically since I don't have this model to test it myself.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I should try KOReader on it at some point. Should work. Problem is just Pocketbook has own proprietary modules to load the touchscreen and display drivers, but that is just kernel space. I am not sure if that is even GPL compliant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Other alternative readers for kobo include koreader: [https://github.com/koreader/koreader](https://github.com/koreader/koreader)

Alternative shells for kobo include the Kobo Start Menu: [https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=266821](https://www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=266821)

The kobo developers corner forum is very useful [https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247](https://www.mobileread.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=247)

</comment><comment><USER7> Does it still allow you to buy books from kobo.com ?

By the way, I was surprised how Amazon is making special offers to authors when they restrict the publication of their ebooks on Amazon's platform only, leading to some authors to stop publishing on Kobo. Found this out when my daughter could no longer buy the new books in a series she was reading. The author confirm the reason (and actually sent the new book epub for free).

<comment><USER8> Yes, it's an issue I've often seen. I really dislike this practice from Amazon. I can understand author's doing it since it's tough for self published authors to earn money but it's a monopolistic practice on the part of Amazon that doesn't sit well with me.

<comment><USER9> I didn't publish on Kobo's platform because their software arbitrarily decided that I wasn't allowed to, and none of my attempts to communicate with a customer service human to find out why generated any response.

I figured that I could still sell on Kobo via Smashwords, so didn't give it much thought.

In the end, my book is now exclusive to Amazon KDP for one, and only one, reason:

      - royalties from Amazon = $24.60
      - royalties from everyone else = $0

(It's not the amount. It's the principle.)

I was already _de facto_ exclusive to Amazon, anyway.

<comment><USER10> I'm sure your readers appreciate being forced to purchase DRM-crippled copies of your book from a monopolist. Have you considered offering DRM-free EPUB downloads directly on your own site?

<comment><USER9> As should be apparent from the amount of the royalty, I don't have a significant quantity of readers. They _all_ chose to buy the book via Amazon _when it was also available on other [non-DRM] platforms_.

I didn't force my readers to do anything. I followed their money to the only platform that paid off.

I have also elected to keep my day job. Offering free downloads wouldn't even be a waste of bandwidth, really--just a waste of server disk space. I don't have interests in both writing _and_ marketing, so it doesn't make much difference to me if I am not making any money because no one knows who I am, rather than not making any money because nobody who knows who I am can figure out how to pay me anything.

Also, the only person who bought the book for whom I can be certain that they actually read it is my Mom, who left the most passive-aggressive 5-star review I have ever seen--simultaneously shilling for it and telling me how I should write the next book.

<comment><USER11> > Offering free downloads wouldn't even be a waste of bandwidth, really--just > a waste of server disk space

You are very humble. :) I would be very surprised if there isn't someone who considered reading your work but didn't because it wasn't available online for free.

In fact, if your comment contained a direct link to a free copy of your work, someone from HN would already have looked.

<comment><USER9> Such a post would definitively link a pseudonym username to a real name. I'd have to create a throwaway.

It would also be offtopic anywhere but a Show HN thread, and even then seems iffy. The only bit of technical interest would be the script I wrote to finagle 7Zip into outputting a valid .EPUB file. 7Zip and plaintext editors were the only tools used. I'm not sure whether I am more afraid that no one would look, or that it would get an HN hug of death.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Related: calibre [https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre](https://github.com/kovidgoyal/calibre)

<comment><USER13> An absolutely indispensable tool when it comes to eBook management and conversion!

I just wish the UI wasn't such a mess. Anyone know if they're open to UX contributions?

<comment><USER14> 3+ years ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8213947](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8213947)

This seemed to be a common theme whenever I looked at contributing to calibre.

<comment><USER15> > he didn't seem to have any interest in simplifying the UI

> he wants it to have as much features as possible

Not mutually exclusive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there anything wrong with stock Kobo firmware? My paperwhite is pretty dated and I was thinking of jumping ship.

<comment><USER17> My Kobo mini had weird online activation requirement, and there's a bunch of gamification that makes no sense.

It's a nicely hackable device though.

[http://uscoffings.net/clc/tech/embedded/kobo- touch/](http://uscoffings.net/clc/tech/embedded/kobo-touch/)

<comment><USER18> Yes especialy kobo mini is fun device. Large community of paragliding pilots are using it as flight computer by adding GPS and pressure sensor. See [http://unity.paragliding.xyz/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/Unit...](http://unity.paragliding.xyz/wp- content/uploads/2015/05/Unity.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice one!

But it is not a full replacement firmware, only alternative book-reading application.

From the website: "I am working on a replacement (called OcherBook) for the Nickel application (the core of Kobo's e-reader software stack)"

</comment><comment><USER20> Six years too late. Threw the Kobo out some time ago.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hum, but this project seems dead. Last update was one year ago and it's got only 1 contributor.

Can anyone recommend some alternative project (even for other e-readers)?

<comment><USER22> At least in my experience, most of the e-reader hacking going on is over at the mobileread.com forums, in the "Developers Corner" subforums. Both the Kindle and the Kobo Dev Corners are pretty active, with lots of information.</comment></comment>