Who's doing this to my internet? • Hacker News Board

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#251

Post by eevilspock » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 5:28 PM UTC

mcphage wrote: post #237

eevilspock wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about an idea that would solve this for bloggers and other small-time publishers: Readers subscribe to a federation of publishers for, say, 10 or 20 dollars a month. They now get to consume as much as they want on those sites. After they read an article, they can click either a "worth it", "meh" or "garbage" button. At the end of the month, all subscription fees are distributed to each publisher pr…

> Readers subscribe to a federation of publishers for, say, 10 or 20 dollars a month. They now get to consume as much as they want on those sites. Federation isn't a very catchy name. Maybe you can think of it as a bunch of strings, all wound together. Like a cord, or... or like a Cable! Yeah, call it "Cable".

@Roodgorf:

> It seems this could devolve into clickbait hell pretty quickly.

Avoiding clickbait and rewarding actual quality is the point of the simple rating system. The garbage rating actually penalizes clickbait further.

Clickbait happens today because of the advertising model, where the click not the content generates revenue.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#252

Post by protomyth » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 5:29 PM UTC

yebyen wrote: post #245

protomyth wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is "iTunes is a premium service"? Its claim to fame is what you said, being able to buy songs at $0.99. Its more a bargain basement service.

I don't really think I need to explain any more, but go ahead and look for cheap CDs online and tell me $0.99 per track is a bargain basement price. Half.com has CDs for $2.99 or less section, with many whole CDs coming in under $1. Even Best Buy has a CDs: $5.99 or less section on their website. Those are more like "bargain prices," in my opinion, and those are physical media that had to be shipped in and no doubt y…

The bargain basement part came from sound quality and being able to buy single songs. Apple's iTunes does have $.69 and $.79 songs along with bargain album prices of $6.99 (on the front page with links to cheap albums under the category headings near the bottom of the front page).

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#253

Post by maxtheman » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 5:30 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #135

yc1010 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a better and safer online payment method its called Bitcoin But the existing financial and payment companies realize that this new technology makes them largely redundant hence they lobby and make it hard to acquire bitcoin for the average person with existing payment methods. The attitude of banks and regulators towards bitcoin is the same of the motor industry and governments towards the electric car, some…

People may also not like bitcoin because they want a democratic say in the design and operation of their currency. Bitcoin has economic features built into it that its users simply have no democratic redress to change, even if they wanted to. Power should be to the people, not some guy who likes deflation and baked that in years ago.

The federal reserve system was designed to be resilient against the democratic whims of the people; any minuscule control you have over the management of the US Dollar is a bug, not a feature.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#254

Post by maxtheman » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 5:32 PM UTC

Frondo wrote: post #158

mcv wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's true that you can't change how bitcoin works. I'm no expert, but as I understand it, if more than half the network agrees with you, you can change it. I think the main problem with bitcoin is that it doesn't scale, because every transaction has to be approved by the entire network. More payments and a bigger network means the number of validations goes up quadratically.

"change half the network" doesn't meet any definition of democratic access to power that I am familiar with. People don't need to do a turn on a garbage collection route to vote on how their municipal garbage service is run.

"change half the network" is almost the textbook definition of democracy.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#255

Post by eevilspock » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 6:02 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #247

eevilspock wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can all handle 3 or 4 subscriptions. The dollar amount I came up with was an example. A small federation might charge $1. The invisible hand of the free market decides. The federation would fail if it charged more than the amount of good content it produced. An author could also syndicate her/his content to more than one federation. If we're not willing to pay for good content, i.e. the writer's livelihood, then w…

I'm willing to pay for good content. But I also live in a place where a good software developer (net) salary is €14k/year, and that's still much higher than the average national salary, so I'm wary of these subscription services. They usually end up with a single price (since geo restrictions work poorly on the web), which the invisible hand pushes up to accommodate the disposable income of wealthier places. As bad a…

So would you be in favor of the advertising business model for books? All books would be free, but there would be ads on the cover and interspersed throughout the book, sometimes on separate pages, sometimes in boxes between paragraphs. There would be product placements, as well as “native ads” which appear to be integral chapters of the book.

What if authors who refused ads just couldn’t compete against the deluge of free books?

What if books had a way of tracking who read them, and this previously private information was sold on the information markets?

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#256

Post by eevilspock » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 6:03 PM UTC

kuyfiuyg wrote: post #213

eevilspock wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been thinking about an idea that would solve this for bloggers and other small-time publishers: Readers subscribe to a federation of publishers for, say, 10 or 20 dollars a month. They now get to consume as much as they want on those sites. After they read an article, they can click either a "worth it", "meh" or "garbage" button. At the end of the month, all subscription fees are distributed to each publisher pr…

You're thinking of flattr, I think

Actually, it's different. See this discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008960

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#257

Post by logicfiction » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 6:14 PM UTC

RUG3Y wrote: post #203

I think the reality is that content is just not worth anything anymore. There is SO MUCH content out there. The internet has democratized content creation. Now that anyone can publish content, record an album, what have you, the value of content has dropped to nearly nothing. I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. I'm a musician and artist myself, and I think that many artists and musicians feel entitled to s…

I'm also a passionate hobbyist when it comes to music, but I can't disagree more.

Worth is not solely measure in terms of material gains like food and bridges. Art and music have massive amounts of cultural and entertainment worth. Sure one probably requires their basic needs to be met along Maslow's hierarchy to have their life enriched by art. But I believe it's well established the impact and relevance art has.

The problem with music being fragmented into groups of passionate hobbyists with day jobs is that you cannot reliably create high-quality art this way. A lot of the luxuries afforded to hobbyists, particularly in music these days, are gained from riding on the shoulders of the professionals who are innovating and driving the industry forward. Not to mention only a certain subset of day-jobber professions can actually afford to produce quality art or music (instruments, equipment, and/or professional services).

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#258

Post by CHY872 » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 6:19 PM UTC

whyaduck wrote: post #250

CHY872 wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can honestly rationalise it like that. You could similarly rationalise selling an iPad for $2,000 by 'We have a bajillion engineers, who all went to top schools after decades of non-stop education, who worked 80 hour weeks to refine every single component of this, who tested 100 different chamfers for this edge, who polished it, who ...' The price of something should absolutely be dictated by how mu…

I think the fact that music is so easy to get for free makes it difficult to assess what value people would place on it if that outlet wasn't there. Surely some portion of the pirates would pay for the music they're torrenting if it wasn't available for free.

The specific reasons for how people place value on music aren't hugely relevant; all that should matter for the label in most cases is maximising the total revenue (as for digital downloads the marginal cost is irrelevant).

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#259

Post by icebraining » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 6:26 PM UTC

eevilspock wrote: post #255

icebraining wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm willing to pay for good content. But I also live in a place where a good software developer (net) salary is €14k/year, and that's still much higher than the average national salary, so I'm wary of these subscription services. They usually end up with a single price (since geo restrictions work poorly on the web), which the invisible hand pushes up to accommodate the disposable income of wealthier places. As bad a…

So would you be in favor of the advertising business model for books? All books would be free, but there would be ads on the cover and interspersed throughout the book, sometimes on separate pages, sometimes in boxes between paragraphs. There would be product placements, as well as “native ads” which appear to be integral chapters of the book. What if authors who refused ads just couldn’t compete against the deluge o…

No, I wouldn't. But I wouldn't like if most authors published in "book subscription services" either - ads might actually be less bad.

Thankfully, they don't.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#260

Post by baoyu » Tue, Jul 28, 2015, 6:27 PM UTC

72deluxe wrote: post #127

freehunter wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only way you could get to Hacker News was over a dial-up connection, would you switch to dial-up or would you just go to a different site that loads a broadband speed? Waiting two days to then have to deal with the unpleasant experience of getting a physical CD sucks. Wait two days, then rip the CD, then move the file to your phone... or just find other music you like that can be immediately downloaded. I love…

I've done that with my entire music collection. I have only ever bought one MP3 in my entire life. The rest of it is ripped from the CDs that I have bought. If the artist has gone to the effort of recording, mixing, mastering and designing sleeve notes and documenting who took part in the process, then that's really something worth buying. If we only consider music to be as valuable as background white noise, then do…

It’s two days if you live in the US. I don’t, so the CD will have to travel for weeks to finally get stuck at the customs in the airport—and CDs are much more fragile than MP3s or FLACs. Moreover, I don‘t have a single device to put this CD into.