skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
The solution, (IMHO) is don't visit those sites any more. Vote with your feet.

Ad blocking means the market will never correct itself. You're cutting off the feedback loop.

If an ad annoys you, just don't visit that website again! Simple. It's not like there's a shortage of websites to visit.

edit: Yeah downmod me. It's a crazy idea! If you go into a shop, and the owner beats you with a bat, you'd resolve to wear full body armor when shopping from now on, and go right back there wouldn't you.
Gursikh,

You should check out the posting guidelines:

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon."

I have a broad filter, but this is just a screed, no new ideas are presented.
2) Sure it does - just click on any add and blacklist the domain. Takes two seconds.

(I'm actually surprised more sites haven't started responding by proxying ad content through their own servers to make it harder to block.)
Advertising is a risk, and always has been. I'm tired of advertisers (and content providers that depend on advertising) trying to shift responsibility to the consumer. If you spend money on a campaign and it delivers results beyond your initial expenditure, then the campaign was successful. There's no guarantee against failure, and it's absolutely certain that the majority of consumers simply won't care about your ads. It's part of the game. Accept it, or look for alternatives.
Even some basic analytics would help: How are people finding my app? What are they searching for? What web sites did they come from? What languages do they speak? etc.
the BIGGEST problem is scaling it (at any scale). All these companies have enormous sales forces running around. That does two things: a) causes less % of media buy to go to actual media b) causes the companies to have to raise tons of capital.

If someone can figure out a unique way to scale sales without adding more human capital,they will do very well. On the flip side, most of these people don't want to "do it themselves". You can outsource most of the actual service work at a scaleable expense. I look at it this way, sure anyone can learn accounting, but you want an accountant to do your taxes. Same thing with local businesses and web advertising- yes they could learn it themselves, but they'd rather have a pro do it. They just want to run their business.
HN needs the ability to rescind an accidental misvote for at least a few minutes after a post, doesn't it? I've done that before as well.
The music and movie industry are having a hard time, too! Soon it will be the newspapers and book publishers. People realise that they don't need publishing companies and soon people will realise that they don't need advertising. But I think that people will always need musicians, actors, and writers.
As far as this is true, this is the result of the massive immigration from Mexico and Central America.
Those Wikipedia numbers are improper to use as an argument. Real GDP per Capita should be used, not nominal.
People probably don't realize how much they are blocking.

You install ABP to get rid of Flash/animated ads... and accidentally end up killing off everything including the ones that aren't objectionable.
I can confirm this. I run a service that specializes in digital product delivery. Spreadsheets are also very popular.

The hard part is identifying the niche and being patient enough to see it through. A lot of people seem to think they can setup a sales page, put the buy now button on it, and start making $500/mo in 7 days. It doesn't usually work that way.
Yeah, mouse wheels and touch scrolling have pretty much eliminated that problem for me, so it's jarring whenever I have to use someone's machine without those features.
Yes, I may have a geek crush on her, but that doesn't matter. I read her stuff because she's smart and has built some good things in the past. You can't go wrong reading what smart people have to say.
The issue is this:

If you install adblock "Fingers in ears" (ignore everything), you're not even giving websites a chance. You're not even giving them the benefit of the doubt that they could ever provide you useful advertising. You're assuming they're going to annoy you, so you're sticking your fingers in your ears.

You can sort of see why that's disheartening to people who are trying to provide useful advertising.

I personally think installing adblock is a crappy move. It's like walking into a conference with hands over your ears incase someone tries to sell you something. You just look like an idiot, and lose out.

It's sort of common courtesy to not assume someone is going to irritate you when you meet them. That's why, when we meet new people, we don't cover our ears, we extend them goodwill, and assume they're going to be nice.

Sadly, adblock users (Ones who block everything) don't seem to have any common courtesy.
Clarification: My full-time, paying job is being said public figure. Just for fun, lets say I'm one of the top-rated personalities at one of the news stations in town.
http://adblockplus.org/en/

"Right-click on a banner and choose “Adblock” from the context menu — the banner won’t be downloaded again. Maybe even replace parts of the banner address with star symbols to block similar banners as well."

The AdBlockPlus documentation explains how to limit specific rules to certain sites. (EDIT: http://adblockplus.org/en/filters#elemhide_domains) If you get filters from someone else, you're probably blocking ads that don't bother you on sites you enjoy, which sounds counterproductive to me.
Is 9 taken yet?
Only a tiny amount of people think ads suck. It's a very small minority.
Alright, trash patents right now - tell me what would happen.

"where is the evidence..." I was having this discussion with a friend of mine, an engineering PhD. At first, I took your side, and ideally, I still do. Don't get me wrong: I WANT a patentless world to work.

He put it like this: what do you do when you work for years on an idea, you finally get enough to publish, and to get your idea patented. You know that your career depends on your getting the "first stake" on this idea - others (who you can name) are working on the idea too. If you cannot patent it, then you cannot build the rest of your career on your having gotten there first.

Now I know, immediately, this notion sounded utterly evil to me. You SHOULDN'T, I protested, be able to found your career on having gotten there first. You should want to share your idea with all of those people who are also working on it - and afterall - isn't this how academic science moves forward?

Yes, he said, but still - if you cannot patent your idea, then somebody who ALREADY has the resources will snatch it up and use it to dominate the field BEFORE you can acquire the resources to do it youself. And so you end up just giving somebody an idea for free, and you get nothing in exchange for your years of work.

Ideologically, I am still rubbed the wrong way by this argument - on the other hand, what else is my friend the engineer supposed to do?

The benefit of patents is not to civilization as a whole - that is the problem with them - their benefits are local and incremental to individuals - and even that benefit is imperfect. The system requires reform - but I do not think we are ready for the system to be abolished.
That's what I do, but it's enough of a hassle that I'm not far from going to a full block list. The main problem is that, perhaps on purpose, ad networks use pretty random URLs that make it hard to block particular ads. If, say, Evony ads all included the string "evony" in the URL, it'd be a lot easier to selectively block them.
Etacts (YC W10) releases first implementation of Gmail OAuth for IMAP
Advertising is actually more about providing information that the viewer did not know.

It's actually a pretty useful service y'know?
Their business isn't free to operate and that's their point ... a business is run by people that have families and need a regular income.

> Imagine running a restaurant where the food is free, and your business model is getting a cut of the mariachi band's tips.

I would like such a restaurant and would gladly give the mariachi a tip. What I definitely wouldn't do is go there with a smug on my face as if it's my right to eat there for free.

I don't use ad-blocking at all ... websites that get too offensive I just stop visiting. Tried an ad-blocker for a month ... but with an ad-blocker active it's harder to punish the bad guys, while rewarding the respectful businesses. And flashy advertising is also a good indicator for (the lack of) quality.

If it stops working for publishers, they'll move more and more to a subscription-based model, and we will see a bigger push for DRMed content, not to mention that the Internet will probably stop being used as a distribution channel for professional journalism.
Hmm, if you mean people opposing the very concept of advertising, then I agree, most people don't. But I hear complaints about the increasingly offensive/intrusive nature of online ads in particular from pretty much everyone I know, including elderly relatives. I think a lot more people would use AdBlock if they knew it existed / knew how to install it.
Then don't use that service, or pay a subscription that frees you from watching ads.
Relax. Soon everybody will browse from iPads, which do not have ad-block for Safari (that I am aware of).

The perfect platform for paying for stuff: music, software, books and web reading...

Not sure if I am sarcastic or realistic here, you know?!
I just gave away about 20 books using http://bookmooch.com/ - good overview here: http://bookmooch.com/about/overview

For each book you send to someone, you get points you can use to request a book from someone else.

It even has an API: http://bookmooch.com/api/
This is considered a valuable comment? A site is telling its readers that their actions are hurting its ability to produce content they enjoy. Believing that they should find a different source of income is a perfectly valid position, but if you just don't care that content you enjoy might stop being produced, as your comment suggests, then you're unreasonable.
I said "most people" and not "all people" and I don't know that many effective people since everyone I know is in the education sector and they all simply follow conventions be it in their research or teaching. It's like you said, very few are willing to break the mold but that doesn't mean one can't attain powerful positions by following conventions and not being effective.
"I don't think bandwidth limitations are your true reason for blocking ads."

I don't have the ability to downvote comments, so I'd just like to say that accusing someone of being deceptive in such a trivial context with so little evidence is really unbecoming.
Ok, thanks though you can't do it per site so you have to click on all the ads that offend you and they may change ad supplier.

Also your effectively blocking a particular ad supplier not a domain that has a poor ad policy.
Darkness Increases Dishonest Behavior
In 10 years I've had maybe 5 bugs in Haskell caused by foreign language code mutating objects under the hood, and that breaking referential transparency guarantees in the Haskell code.

I would not consider this "dangerous". It's a side condition you'll need to check. The language can make this more or less easy to establish.

Typically it looks like your value is changing under the hood. It's relatively easy to debug -- since the result is so unexpected.

It's rare in Haskell. I imagine it is a bit more common in Clojure, where they rely more on Java code than Haskell does on C code.

I don't believe Clojure is an optimizing compiler -- it's not doing any optimizations based on static guarantees of referential transparency -- so that simplifies the issue. If the compiler can't guarantee purity, there's less it can do with to your code to take advantage of that, so less unusual semantics.
I would accept it as a last ditch attempt.
What do you think came first?
You said it - they bought the ticket, now they can take the ride. Is Arstechnica really claiming they didn't know what they were getting themselves into when they put up a free online news site?

The terrible irony is that they are now using the same argument that dead tree media has been saying for a decade now - support our ads or we go away.
Nokia N900 finally supports bluetooth keyboard, no need for a notebook anymore
I practically have to use AdBlock on my N900 just to use some sites. Some flash advertisements are so processor intensive that my phone slows to a crawl.
No, it's not particularly valuable. But it's short and sarcastic and these comments tend to do well, except when posted as replies to these types of comments.
It's called Google Chrome adblockers.
It's amazing how upset people get over ads. I wonder how these same anti-ad fanatics deal with other forms of advertising in their day to day life.

If I were Ars or any other site that relied on ad revenue, I probably wouldn't remove any features, but I would put up an atrocious, gigantic, red, flashing banner on the site that was only shown to Adblock users saying, "Please don't use AdBlock! It's hurting us."
Very interesting stuff. Probably the greatest value will be the wealth of data gathered from the biobanking you agreed to. Glad you consented to that. DNA is mind-boggling, and Watson & Crick made the most import discovery of the Century elucidating its double-helix architecture in 1953, in my opinion.
I disagree. It's a small niche thing. Like people who don't own a TV.

adBlock is fundamentally bad for the web. I think a lot less people would use it if they understood that.
Well it's a big enough minority that ars technica is noticing it. And most people just tend to tolerate ads, it doesn't mean they like them.
It seems perfectly fair to me on all sides. It's the user's right to modify their browser to load/display only portions of content on their computer if they want; it's website providers' right to display users different content if they do so; and it's the users' right to avoid visiting and linking to the website if they do that.

All sides come out having some reasonable points and some entitled-kids feeling IMO. In particular, the "wahh, my ads were blocked" websites sound a lot like the RIAA at times (though Ars avoids most of the more annoying rhetoric), attempting to blame someone else for the fact that their business model no longer works, instead of finding a new business model.
If you're going to make a TV comparison, I'd say it's more like people who own a TiVO.
Ask HN: How many of you are working on an iPad-optimized web app?
If the iPad isn't a flop and it does take off, a lot of people will be using it as their main internet device. So, you don't necessarily have to go through Apple's closed app store ecosystem when you have the internet available.

What I'm trying to say is that there is potentially a bunch of success to be made by creating browser-based games/apps/novelties for the iPad crowd (web-based fart apps, anyone?).

Are any of you are working on such projects in anticipation of this?
It's more like trusting your secretary to do a good job of screen useless calls. You outsource the screening to an list provider rather than making a decision for every site on the internet.
For downvoting, I think it's 200.
I'm no a fan of elance, but at least you can search for jobs without registering, whereas oDesk seems to force me to register.
Proxy – gen-class little brother
could somebody do a tldr on tradeoffs between skip lists and, say, balanced binary trees like avl/red black?

Come to think of it it would be great if this was in the wikipedia article as well, or if there was a table/google doc somewhere that had

Sorted List Data Structure
name - description - pro - con

anything like this out there?
Proof that you don't need to have market dominance to make a lot of money.
if only flash was bearable on linux or macs.
From some spot-checking, ads are around 1/2 the bandwidth typically at major websites, not "a tiny fraction". Flash ads are the main culprit, because a single one can be pretty large, so the problem could be partly solved by just blocking Flash ads instead of all ads.
If I understand the problem correctly, then it's much like a problem that plagues most hashmap/associative array implementations: when an object that is used as a key is modified (without removing and re-adding it around the modification), you'll often not be able to find it again.

It takes some debugging to find this is happening, but in five years of writing Java and Python, I've only had it happen once in either language.
Agreed. Passion and 'killer instinct' outweighs raw talent
You could also hardlink them.
I wouldn't wish Turk on anyone unless their currency level is very low compared to the USD or other stronger Western currencies. I mean, spending several hours just to make anywhere from $5 to $10 -- that's not worth my time and there are faster ways to earn a buck online.

Besides, for anyone, I would recommend they get a relatively easy regular day job, such as paper-pusher or something -- anything where they work 8 hours exactly, never get asked to stay late, and can go home. Then, at night, work very hard for two years on passive income niche forums and blogs, small scripts, products, and eBooks. Once that builds up steadily, quit the day job and do online freelance work whether that be for PPC Management, SEO Management, programming, whatever. Mix the two -- active and passive income -- such that you can live a comfortable life. Then, use the Dave Ramsey Snowball method to pay down debts as fast as possible. Then move into site flipping, then small-time angel investment of websites and products in your interest, and eventually full-time angel investment work.
Yeah, I'm curious what the culture of Evony users are like, since it seems that they're attracting one sort of customer (horny men) and then providing a completely different product (fantasy computer game). Is the game world filled w/ a lot of adult role players or something?

I'm not curious enough to go and try it, though.
I agree. It's a shame. TBH If I were a woman, I'd likely create a male online persona just so I could compete on a level playing field without the silly reverse sexism and condescending "oh wow! You're a woman, well in that case this is even more impressive then! Well done you."

The problem is, often online if a woman steps into a geeky world, their comment/post/whatever is voted up into the stratosphere, by probably well meaning men who want to prove they're not sexist.

Judge stories/posts/comments on their merit. Not the identity of the author.
It is still available. Send me an email, and we'll figure things out.
Thanks for the pointer Derek. I will put the remaining books on BookMooch.
What’s Wrong With Blocking Ads?
Thanks for the feedback, I think those are some good suggestions. I admit ad placement is not something I'm good at. I'll continue to work on the layout a bit.
Back up your Mac using Time Machine to TonidoPlug
Yeah, that's the Forer Effect[1] at work.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forer_effect
+1 for mentioning the switch to Chrome. I'm in the exact same boat.
You could ignore it, just like you ignore dozens of other stories every day. You could flag it if you think it's inappropriate for Hacker News. You could write a blog post about the problem you see and submit it. You could stop reading the offending sites. You could develop a CulverBlock browser extension and share it with like-minded people.

Or you could complain.
I don't like ads, and I don't like subscribing. What you need to offer is micropayments. Figure out a way I can pay one cent (maybe 5 or 10, no more) when I like an article and I'll pay you sometimes, and that will be more money than you get showing me ads.

It needs to be something I only set up once, not once per website. It should probably be integrated into my browser so I don't have to find the button on the webpage (and then type in my password or something -- it better be one click).

Of course feel free to continue with ads for the people who don't block them.

You may object that people don't care and won't pay. But the article is saying "please don't block ads as a way to voluntarily pay". If you think sympathy or voluntary payment will work, set this up as a superior option for people to pay with.

Doing sufficiently good micropayments is a lot of work, but there are a hell of a lot of other websites with the same problem Ars has, so either license it to them or get them to help create it.
Markdown sucks and org-mode is my refuge from it.
Knuth on Robert W Floyd
Awesome. I think there's a "minimum" level of talent you need, and then at the margin it's about the killer instinct. Really it's about who wants it more since ideas are pretty much a commodity.
New York Isn’t Silicon Valley. That’s Why They Like It.
HN -- just want to let you know that we listened to your collective feedback on our Etacts launch post last week
Skype lands in Nokia's Ovi Store
You're the ones who came into my Internet and put ads on everything. I don't owe you anything.
Hi, great advice. I'll be reviewing the current design and will certainly take this into account.
The lone inventor defeating entrenched interests with the power of a patent is a fairy tale.

The only patent holders large organisations fear are non-practicing entities (aka trolls) because anyone actually trying to build a product can be undermined in any one of a thousand ways.
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-origins-of-facebook-and-m...

This is who you would be working for at Facebook.
ars technica is an extremely tech orientated website. It's going to have more than general websites.

adblock usage overall is probably 0.5% - 1% if that.
Clojure isn't an optimizing compiler because the JVM is the optimizing compiler. Clojure datastructures are all declared static final which allows the JVM to work a lot of magic.

I've been using Clojure for a year and half and never run into such a bug. You learn quickly that you lost all of the benefits of persistent datastructures if you're putting mutable objects into them.

As a side note, Rich Hickey has been working on a project called "cells" which allows you to use even unsafe mutable Java objects with the same safe concurrency guarantees as Clojure persistent data structures.
Sure, there are tons of annoying ads that get in your face and make you want to commit suicide. But there's an easy solution: FlashBlock. Regular ads come through, and ridiculous ads turn into a little box with an activate button.
Global Warming: For the record
It sounds like it should be relatively easy to write a function that checks in case of doubt if any of the objects have their contents changed compared to their hashes.

You could enable something like that during the debugging phase of your development to get 'peace of mind' that such behaviour is not the source of any bugs.
More like a fundamentally stupid mistake of inverting my parameters when I checked the number, getting a result in tune with the article, and then not thinking it through at all. It'd be possible to have a whole great deal of families with 0.1st children, but that's just the egg on my face.