mahranch

Appealing and persuasive aren't the same things; Trump is "appealing" to a certain demographic and mindset of the U.S population and that's how he bulldozed the GOP - he was charismatic to the right group of people at the right time. The GOP really did it to themselves... they moved so far right over the last 30 years that this happening was inevitable. I remember saying back in 2008 that if the GOP keeps this up (anyone remember Palin or Huckabee?), they're going to have have some batshit crazy candidate running for president. And here we are. He's not convincing anyone who believed something different; he's just pandering to an already primed base (a base which has been moving further right ever since Reagan beat Carter). I think opportunist would be a better word here.

Sure, there's a certain stigma attached to anyone who enjoys Japanese culture -- older white men included. But even then, one of the words that pop into my mind when thinking about said stigma isn't rape. It's weeaboo, nerd, otaku, geek, parents basement, neckbeard, etc etc etc.... I say that as someone who enjoys japanese culture from time to time myself. Not anime, but j-dramas, movies and their music. Especially their music. It reminds me of how music was here in the 90s (not as manufactured, still a lot of experimenting going on, etc).

> it would have all the problems Reddit has: terrible people controlling the conversation.

I take serious offense to this. I am a moderator on reddit and the communities I help out in are amazing. He paints all of reddit with the same brush but reddit is too large for that -- it's now the 9th largest website in the U.S according to Alexa. Sure, there are some horrible & trash communities. Perhaps there's a lot of them, but there's also a lot of amazing subreddits run by fantastic mods. Reddit is what you make of it - if you subscribe to those shitty subreddits, then your experience will be shitty. If you subscribe to great subreddits, then your experience will be equally great. Reddit is like a snapshot of the internet as a whole; there's the bad, there's some meh, and there's also some amazing content out there. You just have to look for it and tailor your experience for those things.

If reddit is terrible, it's because you're not using reddit correctly. My reddit experience is great.

My father is a truck driver; He says he's not worried. There's too much other stuff to consider before robots replace him. Like the maintenance that needs to be done during the trip. That can't be automated.

This might be good for short one day jaunts, but multiple day trips cross country are another story entirely.

Your comment presumes an equal education (that rape is equally "bad"), it presumes that both cultures are taught the same thing. They are not.

In fact, it is currently legal to rape your wife in India.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/05/asia/marital-rape-india/

Think about that for a moment. What kind of effect do you think that would have on their rape statistics? In the U.S, Marital Rape accounts for half of all reported rapes. In India, those rapes aren't even being reported because they're not illegal.

> You make it sound like Apple can easily move out of China.

And you make it sound like cheap labor only exists in China.

Sure, those are facts. But here's another fact: Just because you have a large population doesn't mean your economy is destined for greatness. It doesn't mean you're destined to overtake the U.S and it doesn't mean your destined to evolve, improve or exceed. All it means is that you have a lot of people living in your country (poor people). Will they become middle class? Maybe. But it's most definitely not "certain".

The fact of the matter is that they do have a large population size and that presents its own problems for economic growth, believe it or not. Hell, it presents problems for the long-term stability of the country. Right now China's biggest threat is itself - corruption in China is a pervasive and massive problem (Source: https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results). China isn't the only country with a massive population; India has one too. Ben Thompson's facts are also true about India.

> In fact, you cannot have a success with socialism without a large number of wealthy (or well-off) people to tax, and a society cannot tax itself to prosperity.

And you can't have success with capitalism without a healthy and prosperous working/poor middle class to be your consumers.

I'm thinking of democratic socialism. It's capitalism with a heavy emphasis on welfare and super strong social safety nets.

If you look at the quality of life index (the "where-to-be-born" index), you'll see that the top 10 countries all employ a form of democratic socialism. That's saying something right there.

> Are you saying that "troll" now means

I think the overall meaning of his comment is basically "Languages evolve." And I agree with him. It's as inevitable as death and taxes.

> Maybe it's time for a new kind of journalism without journalists or ads, with a focus on primary sources, and empowering interested communities to report and verify for other readers. It's unlikely to emerge from old media though.

I don't know, but it sounds a lot like you're describing reddit.

> t's like I'm saying "moderating reddit is easy, I barely see any spammers or trolls there" (as a user).

Except since I have 6 years experience, I truly can get a feel for what their "before" looks like just by looking at the "after". That's what I meant. I can get a pretty good baseline on what their before looks like because at one point, our subreddits were smaller and had a similar baseline. Their comment system is about what reddit's was like circa 2011-2012. Coincidentally, I think reddit was approximately the same size traffic-wise.

Speaking of engineering, why not either place the motor in the seat/seat-post itself which would obscure those infrared cameras (as the heat would look natural) or insulate the area around the motor and let the heat exhaust through the seat which would accomplish the same thing? Maybe they didn't think someone would bring an infrared camera....

Only 70k comments a day?

As a someone who has been a reddit default moderator for 6+ years (I help out in more than 1 default subreddit), I'd say they're still small time. It's so bad over on reddit that even with a fully active staff, we have to utilize bots to automate much of the work. Without those bots, it would be impossible to have a community at the sizes we're talking. We simply wouldn't exist.

He overstates how bad the job is because they've never experienced "true" bad... The author should see if he could intern for a month on one of reddit's busier subreddits. If he asks, I'd be more than willing to give him an inside peek into one of our subreddits. Weekly 4chan raids, intra-subreddit brigades, people (spammers, SEO types, marketers, etc) trying to game us to reach the front page for profit, and then to add on top of that, we have all the same trolls and racists and psychopaths theguardian has to deal with. That's actually not true, they're not the same, there are more of them on reddit. Many, many more.

I know this isn't a competition, but I look at the average comment there and I can get a feel for what moderating there must be like. And I have to say, it looks like paradise compared to reddit. It would be a vacation and even that would probably be an understatement. Though, TheGuardian is the 128th largest website in the world while reddit is 28th (9th largest in the U.S). That's quite the discrepancy.

Lobbying was made legal because it was (and will) happen regardless of legality. With legality, it can be documented and the details publicly released. If we made it illegal, it will just go back to being an "under the table" thing and we won't know who has been bought by whom.

Do I think lobbying (as a system) needs to be fixed/changed/altered/tweaked? Most definitely. But making it outright illegal is like making drug use illegal, people are still going to do it regardless. At least with it being legal, we can keep tabs and utilize harm reduction when necessary.

Black and white thinking. Content creators still need to get paid. I'd be quite upset if my favorite sites had to shut down due to the rise of ad blocking and non-viable alternatives to ads (like "subscriptions", etc...)

How is this a story behind "China's" camouflage? It's clearly a small blurb about the history of digital camo (or "texture match" camo") in general. The U.S has been using this for a long time, as well as dozens of other countries. Yet, the article doesn't do much to talk about China's application other than noting they too, use it (sometimes).

> Other services and models will take their place.

You're missing the point. You fail to grasp the scope and size of the reach that ads have on the internet. I saw what the internet was like before the masses arrived, I was here online back in 1995 and while the lack of ads was nice, "the internet" was a ghost town. Those sites wouldn't, couldn't exist without ads. Hell, google isn't a search engine, it's first and foremost an ad company. That's where 95% of their revenue comes from! Their search feature is just a vehicle to display ads. Literally.

> This argument is simply a scare tactic employed by monopolies of every kind.

Except it's not a scare tactic and it's not an argument, it's a fact. Even if it it was both, it doesn't make it any less true. Advertisements actually do spur innovation and there's tons of data and studies to back it up:

PDF warning: www.voez.at/download.php?id=1152

> Allow me to point out that you have just posted this comment on the future reddit.

Hah, this place is not the future reddit. Not remotely close. This place has been around just as long as reddit and has never tried to be reddit. In fact, they work towards trying hard not to be reddit. This place is the old reddit. This is actually a lot like how reddit circa 2007 was. Reddit evolved, HN did not. Reddit and hackernews serve different purposes. HN isn't trying to grow larger like reddit was. Reddit became about community building while HN is trying to remain a tech oriented link aggregator.

> If making money from ads is the primary motivation for a site or app, then it shouldn't exist.

So you're saying anyone designing a website or an android app needs to be creating their wares purely altruistically? And if not, their products shouldn't exist? Because that's essentially what you're saying.

Sure, some people create content or products because they are passionate about that particular thing. But those people are a tiny minority. Most people make things and create content for a paycheck.

Seeing it as anything else is a bit naive and idealistic. It's far removed from the reality in which we live.

> but that still doesn't refute the argument that you're selling your audience to someone else without their consent

You watch the big bang theory and they play an ad during the commercial break for colgate. Did you get sold something without your consent? It's literally the exact same thing.

When you browse the web or when you watch TV, it's inherent to the media that you will see ads and that ads subsidize that content. Admitting to anything else but that inherent truth is (to me) just technicalities and/or pointless pedantry. Unless it's your first time on the 'net, you understand ads subsidize the content you see. Pretending like it's some injustice is almost laughable. It's like you're saying commercials on TV are taking advantage of you every time they cut to a commercial break.

> Lots of people say that if we all start blocking ads, then lots of content will go away. I'm perfectly fine with that

Except it's more of a butterfly effect than people realize. Not just "article" type content, but also innovation. I doubt sites like reddit would exist (at least in their current form) without ads. Hell, they barely get by with ads. Google wouldn't exist without ads, etc etc... Sure those sites exist now, and you take ads away, they're already entrenched, but what about the future google or reddit or facebook?

A lot of innovation has been spurred from people's passions and their hobbies, but much more innovation has taken place as a result of people trying to make a quick easy buck. And that's what ads promise.

Everything from your favorite news website to your favorite android app wouldn't exist (or likely wouldn't exist) if not for ads. I don't think people (hackernews users) really have thought about how much innovation on the internet is directly and indirectly related to ads. If you actually stop and think about it, the complexity can boggle your mind.

> But then the notion of earning an income on ads came along

That's unfair, and almost flat out wrong. Content and ads pretty much evolved hand in hand. Sure, there was some content up before ads came along, but ads came up almost immediately after. There was also practically no content on the 'net compared to today. The net back then was... almost non-existent. It was a ghost town. You had sites like prodigy and compuserve hosting a large chunk of the 'net and they did have ads. This was in the mid 90s.

> I want high quality content, and I'm willing to pay for it.

Now if only the other billions of people on this planet felt the same way.

That's why I don't like this sentence. Every time the topic of ads come up here or on reddit, people always say "I'd pay for high quality content". And it gets upvoted, dozens of children comments of people agreeing with them, and everyone pats themselves on the back for such an easy and obvious solution.

Unfortunately, that's simply not the reality we live in. The vast majority (95% or more) of internet users would rather have their content subsidized by ads than have to pay. This has been proven time and time again by the countless subscription model failures over the last decade. Sure, some sites have found success, but those that do are the extremely rare exceptions, not the rule. And none have found fantastic success. How many subscription model websites are in the top 10? Top 100? Top 1000?

Subscription models just don't work. Nuff said, really. There's 10+ years of data to back it up.

I think many of these problems could be minimized, mitigated or some completely eliminated if millennials would actually vote. But they don't. And I don't foresee that ever changing. It was the same problem with my generation, gen-x (born in 1980 so I'm not quite a gen-x, not quite a millennial). We just didn't vote. I don't believe the <30 crowd has ever been a big voting bloc, at any point in U.S history.

Though, I noticed many of my facebook friends started voting once they hit their early 30s. I think that's when people start to settle down in life and either have the time to study/figure out politics, or get more interested in it. It might be the time where their youthful naive idealism vanishes and they realize that true change is a slow process. They become more pragmatic and more realistic. Much of their concerns tend to be more local/regional where their votes actually hold some power. It's less about voting in a president who can wave a magic wand and create their ideal utopia overnight and more about voting in a local city councilman or state senator who will best represent their interests. People they have actually met in real life and shook their hands.

> Microsoft spends over $1B/yr on maintaining and improving Bing. So yeah, search does cost a fortune

I doubt that figure, but even if it is true, you're still talking about a final product (not a new start up). It's a figure that includes things like marketing and insane web traffic. These are things that a new search engine would not have initially.

I'm not saying running a search engine is cheap. It's not. But the implication is that it's like the pharmaceutical industry where you need billions just to get in the game. It's not like that at all. In fact, there have been a few search engines which have tried to get in the game. Search engines like Cuil (anyone remember them?). They may have failed but that doesn't mean it's impossible. And it certainly doesn't take hundreds of millions of dollars to get started.

And what about user experience? It's times like these where I do not feel guilty about using an adblock, despite being a publisher myself, and hosting google ads on my website. Is it hypocritical? Probably. But I would think the issue isn't completely black and white.

Also, as a publisher who provides educational content (I'm not mentioning my website's name, but it's very, very similar to mentalfloss.com or the TIL reddit subreddit [even though my website has been around longer than both]), increasing the top ads is going to hurt my traffic. It's a bit of a selfish reason but at least I know the people who are searching for those terms are looking for exactly what's on my website. In many cases, my site is the only one with that information.

> Nor could it: those things cost hundreds of millions of dollars per year to run and maintain.

I vehemently disagree. The early web crawlers and indexes did not cost hundreds of millions of dollars to run. Granted, there is significantly less web results than there are today, but the cost you're referring too is the entirety of google's servers. That price tag also includes the cost to host the web traffic of being the number 1 website in the world. You're talking a price tag which is indicative of a final product.

A new search engine would not have those costs initially, and if managed properly from the very beginning, would be able to scale and cover their bills, remaining profitable up until reaching (and hypothetically) replacing google.

> Lubin supposes that the system could propel crafts to an "unheard of" 30 percent the speed of light.

> "There is no known reason why we could not do this"

Yeah, no. There is a known reason. What do you think happens to a spaceship hitting something at 30% c? What do you think happens to the front of a spaceship or craft hitting something the size of bead or pebble at 30% c? The ship will disintegrate.

Granted, the ship could be shielded or employ some sort of plasma/magnetic deflector technology (still in proof of concept stages of development), but now you're talking technology that's just as far away, if not further than the propulsion system they're talking about using. It's also why things like project Orion really never got off the ground or are feasible in their current forms. Sure, we can get up to those speeds, it's surviving at those speeds that's the challenge.

Also, they talk about the weight of a ship being ultra light. If you had to shield it to survive the impact of tiny particles and other space debris you'll inevitably encounter on your trip, it's no longer going to be ultra light.

> Why would you have to be a nationalist to post about China?

Because the guy I replied to said: "Surely, you're more likely to submit a post about your home country"

I'm an American but my grandparents are from Ireland. I personally feel no connection to Ireland nor do I have any idea what's going on over there. It's any other country as far as I'm concerned. I wouldn't post news about the country to HN. However, if I did, I would be a Irish Nationalist. Feeling any sort of loyalty to a country (whatever the reason or justification) is nationalism. It's literally the definition of the word.

> "This only counts news stories posted, not comments."

I'm not sure that distinction matters for my comment. It may for the study, but my comment was a bit of a tangent anyways.

But would that really work in this case? China is the number 2 mentioned country and while I don't have any demographic information, I find it hard to believe that there would be that many Chinese on HN. Well, not just any Chinese, but Chinese nationalists (people who still feel like China is "home")?

I guess it's possible it could be the work of their "reputation management" online guerrilla tactics. Though, the people engaging in that work generally aren't even Chinese, they're usually subcontractors paid by the Chinese to promote a "positive China" (in my experience, promoting a positive China usually means downplaying or mitigating whatever bad news has come out that day, or if nothing is going on, Japan bashing is on the docket).

For whatever reason, people are under the false assumption that China only tries to manipulate public opinion and spread propaganda domestically. This couldn't be further from the truth. I remember Digg.com having to sue and fight to get the Chinese to stop gaming their system (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Water_Army#Legal_prob...)

People know that the U.S government does it, but they either forget or ignore the fact that other countries do it too. Maybe they just underestimate the scope, or are wholly ignorant of it because they believe they haven't encountered such propaganda before (believing something like that would be "obvious"). But it isn't. Hell, RussiaToday (RT.com) exists almost exclusively for this purpose (to spread russia's narrative of world events). China has their own government ran/directed version as well, Xinhua.com. You see these two websites submitted in excess to reddit and other social media sites.

And do you know what's so great about reddit and HN to a person looking to spread or push an ideology or narrative? The points. They can keep track of what works, what doesn't, how well it works, and they can keep track of their employees. They can see how well each employee is doing at their job. It provides a measurement for them. A quantifiable piece of information to gauge the value of their work. Something they can bring to their bosses.

I know I'm getting off topic here but I'm actually (surprisingly) not surprised India is so high if xkcd's premise holds. While I don't see many Chinese commentors, I do see loads of highly intelligent Indians here. I met one last year on HN who I had do some freelance work for me.