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Who's doing this to my internet?

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Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#261

Post by Roodgorf »

eevilspock wrote: post #251
mcphage wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Sure, but the level of responsibility required by the user as a curator doesn't seem like it would hold past a critical mass. The insane amount of reposts that Buzzfeed-esque garbage gets just isn't all that encouraging to me. Short of the decidedly undemocratic method of only counting a certain group of users' ratings, I'm just not confident it would change things at scale.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#262

Post by pd1 »

erglkjahlkh wrote: post #171
golergka wrote: post #52

Users. Users always talk that they would love to pay. The problem is, they never do. They blog and write on forums about what they would like to see, but the things they write are always very, very different from what they actually do, according to the data. You remember how in this whole Reddit debacle Pao said that "most of users don't really care about this scandal" and got downvoted to hell? It could very well be…

Taking a look at Alexa, the trend for Reddit has been and still after the "Pao debacle" is upwards. They are constantly getting new users, probably much more than what they lost. So from the viewpoint of the management all is well. These new users are also probably more susceptible to their monetizing efforts. The fact that Reddit has in the last 6 months lost most of their high quality content creators does not seem…

Reddit is still mainly a content aggregation site, it'll be fine.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#263

Post by eximius »

There was a discussion... some time ago (maybe even a few years ago, actually), regarding a hypothetical web service where users deposited funds (say, a few dollars at a time) and enabled it on websites of their choosing.

When they loaded a website, it could check if the user had that installed and enabled for their website. If so, it would charge them a microtransaction (a few cents, etc) and not load ads. If they did not, it would load ads.

In this way, they paid services they used frequently as they used them and in increments they didn't mind.

Of course, there is a lot of things undefined in this model about how it would be implemented, but it was an idea I still think has merit.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#264

Post by CHY872 »

nine_k wrote: post #227
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 always thought that the initial 99¢ per song in iTunes was partly influenced by the fact that people usually give $1 bills to street musicians (at least so they do here in NYC). If you can pay 100¢ for a 3-4 minutes of street performance, can't you pay 99¢ (or less) for 3-4 minutes of a high-quality recording which you can listen to as much as you like?

I think that's apocryphal; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961530 suggests so anyway. The cause is probably the same; $1 is seen as an irrelevant amount of money by most people.

Even so, you compare very different things, and the result is not terribly informative.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#265

Post by mcphage »

eevilspock wrote: post #251
mcphage wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> The garbage rating actually penalizes clickbait further.

But the reason that clickbait works, is that people like clickbait. So I'm not sure you'd get much success with getting people to rate them "garbage" when they like them. Sure, maybe not en masse, but on an article-by-article level, people do like clickbait.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#266

Post by logfromblammo »

jameshart wrote: post #248
logfromblammo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just last weekend, I saw the episode of "How It's Made" on Science Channel that covered vinyl pressed records. Here's a comparison of the processes. Vinyl: - Manufacture lacquered master discs (50% QC rejection rate!) - Ship lacquered discs to recording studio - Put master in recording machine - Cut test groove - Inspect with built-in microscope - Cut lead-in - Cut audio tracks, in 2-channel stereo - Cut lead-out, la…

Multi take, multitrack recording was a thing "in the vinyl era". You make it sound like the recording was done directly to master disc.

They didn't cover reel-to-reel recorders in that episode.

Obviously, recording the raw studio performances directly onto the masters that were to be reproduced would be a waste of resources. Multi-track reel-to-reel recorders were still pretty costly, even if the tape was relatively cheaper than the other costs of recording. That tech also improved up until the digital era, but I imagine most of the progress now goes into computer software.

People haven't really recorded directly to a groove in a plastic medium since wax phonograph cylinders. When you cut a vinyl master, you were probably doing it from tape.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#267

Post by eevilspock »

betenoire wrote: post #219
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…

he with the biggest voting ring wins

Ehh… no. The subscribers in the ring would only be gaming its own payments, no one else's. They'd be paying themselves, less the federation's operating fees.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#268

Post by dragonwriter »

mcphage wrote: post #265
eevilspock wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@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.

> The garbage rating actually penalizes clickbait further. But the reason that clickbait works, is that people like clickbait. So I'm not sure you'd get much success with getting people to rate them "garbage" when they like them. Sure, maybe not en masse, but on an article-by-article level, people do like clickbait.

> But the reason that clickbait works, is that people like clickbait.

No, the reason that clickbait works is because the clickbait itself (which is the thing which is presented before you click the link) looks like something that the user is likely-enough to like that they are willing to click it to find out.

The whole reason that its called clickbait is that that impression is often deceptive. So, getting feedback of the quality of the target of clickbait links would be potentially useful in weeding out the garbage.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#269

Post by Steuard »

freehunter wrote: post #118
Steuard wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part that stuck out to me was when the author talked about her desire to have a long-term archive of her favorite music, but wasn't willing to "wait for 2 days for a CD to ship". I can understand not wanting to deal with CDs or not wanting to spend money on less-favorite songs on the album, but focusing on the delay just doesn't click for me.

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…

Sure, but the author was talking about being worried about long-term access to her favorite songs. I think she said that soundcloud still has most or all of them right now: the next two days are presumably not the big concern here. If she wanted a constant stream of curated but non-specific new material, I agree that that would be a different issue.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#270

Post by awj »

pjc50 wrote: post #89
TeMPOraL wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the problem is that services now start without a way to monetize themselves immediately - they rely on external money reserves to support growth. People get used to getting quality content for free. At some point said services finally need to make money, at which point they fuck up (from the user's point of view) their product, and so the users move to another party who has fresh investor money reserv…

You know, I'm actually OK with this in the medium term as a global wealth recycling scheme. Just as many of the private investors who built railways lost their money but gave us a useful network. We just need to keep promising vast wealth to investors as a result of global dominance while never letting any particular one take the whole cake.

The problem here is that there isn't too much recycling being done. In the process of trying to become profitable companies seem to destroy their products so thoroughly that there isn't much left to salvage by the end.

It's like railway investors deciding that selling off all the metal from the left side of the track is the best way to recoup their losses. By the time that's done, there really isn't much of value left for anyone to pick up and use.

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