skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
This is pretty close to ad fraud.

However, I agree with you that display ad networks suck. I'm also not sold on the idea that the web should be free. The happy medium is to have users pay for content, making it so advertisers don't need to track users to verify that they're real humans, and improving the web for everyone except poor people.

One way that this could be done is to use bitcoin for tiny micropayments, billed frictionlessly. Rough for legal reasons among others, but ideas like this are sensible if only for human verification reasons.

If you want the web to largely free content, to pay for that you must accept privacy-destroying ad networks to bear that cost. We've created a situation where the choice is to free ride on other people, or to surrender privacy.

If you want the web to be largely teasers for paid content, then you can have significantly more privacy also. Instead of the articles being articles, you will get articles that are actually big ads for paid content (already the case for a huge number of popular search results).

Spreading tools like these kills free content like snaps fingers loudly that. I'm indifferent. Users might not be.
The World of Mobile by the Numbers
It is worth noting that while a Chromecast doesn't store stuff (aside from maybe cache), the Amazon stick will need to (e.g. games).

So they need to tell you so you know how many games you can install from their app store. For the Chromecast it is irrelevant.
Wrong income stream.

Charge directly. The users have control now, better make with the changes or face loss of business.
suppression of free speech only shows the world that I am right and you are afraid of the truth. When your argument is based on pure emotion and little to no logic or fact (like the responders below)!know I already won anyway.

I suppose it's now time to find and report all of the MJ doctors giving out fake scripts.
There isn't really a dominant hardware platform. So, you can build an app for wii, Xbox, Samsung, etc and jump through their platform hurdles (both technical and business). But when you are Amazon, why bother? You have the resources to create your own platform.

If the cable providers weren't so stupid they could have been that platform since everyone already has their set top box.
SSL/TLS Certs are trying to deal with two separate problems:

1. Over the wire encryption - where most of the criticisms in this thread are focused. Which I will also defer to tptacek's knowledge.

2. Site identification as an anti-phishing mechanism. For even the cheapest certs (domain+email validated) - the CAs will reject SSL cert requests for anything that might be a phishing target. Detecting "wellsfargo.com" is pretty easy, where it gets tricky is things like "wellsforgo.com", "wellsfàrgo.com" etc.

This has even gotten weird as the browser makers have started to really de-emphasize domain certs vs ev certs (cheap vs expensive), to the point where in most cases now having a domain cert does not know green at all.

Screenshots: https://www.expeditedssl.com/pages/visual-security-browser-s...
Then don't visit those websites. If you haven't paid money to access the content, immediately turn away from websites that are free and ad supported. If you don't agree with it, why do you have the right to not only "steal" the content on the website, but also needlessly shut down their revenue source just because you not only want the data for free, but you actively want to harm this person supplying the data for free.

Edit: I can't reply further down. However, I included in my original statement that using adblock is an acceptable measure. Why do you actually have to shut down the publishers revenue stream and ultimately their website to show off your dislike for ads? If you want to go with your street musician example, the way I see it is that you are free to not pay him money, however to punch him in the face after listening to his music (and presumably enjoying it) is completely pointless.
You really want to live in a world where every single site is behind a paywall? because that is what you are advocating.
It is interesting. I have a streaming subscription to Amazon Film (previously Lovefilm) and Netflix.

The Android Lovefilm app (even for just choosing discs on a rental service) is hopeless. Despite being a massive company, they managed to employ what appears to be buffoons to write the software - it seems to embed a browser for showing film data and slow data parsing at that; there is no obvious navigation within it (guess where back goes - who knows if you follow down more than one tree node?!); it may crash if you press "BACK"; it doesn't cache images within the list (there's an article on Android Developer reference they could probably copy); it crashes frequently and has the largest licence list ever which makes me believe it was badly managed or written by an inexperienced developer. Surely it just needs to return JSON about the film and an image URL?
I can't comment on the streaming app as it isn't supported on my Android tablet, but it had been a long long long long time coming. Oddly, YouTube works on my tablet as does Netflix so the tablet can't be incapable of decoding video (it's a Motorola Xoom)....

The app on the LG TV was discontinued (it was an under-performing LG TV) so they sent me a Sony Bluray with the Amazon Instant app on it (and an ethernet port for network connectivity, not wifi) - thanks Amazon! Not only was the Amazon app slow in loading, it was slow to do anything. Starting to stream takes a while as it has to spend 30 seconds (?) working out what Internet speeds you have, and don't even attempt rewinding - it may or may not crash the Bluray player! (I have fibre Internet so it's not a bandwidth problem). Searching for films within it was an exercise in frustration.

The iOS app was far superior but didn't like me plugging it into a TV, limiting its use - unlike others, I don't want to sit around a tiny coffee table watching a film in mono out of the one tiny speaker on the back of the iPad.

Contrast this with Netflix - it started quickly on the Bluray, started films quickly, didn't take forever to use the menu system and actually coped with rewinding and fast-forwarding. And on Android and iOS too!

Additionally, Amazon streaming appears to want you to BUY all of the films you'd actually want to see, as they are not included in the subscription cost, making the subscription pointless. The only films they offer are horror films, from what I can see; if you want mindless violence and people hurting each other as entertainment (why would anyone want that???), it might be good. You get better films for selection if you go with their £2 disc option and get Blurays in the post - far better value and selection.

I would heartily NOT recommend Amazon streaming, but do think that the Lovefilm disc system is a good deal! If I were Amazon, I would even think twice about using Amazon Streaming as a selling point - it really is quite bad.
my main gripe with NoScript has been performing transactions and buying things online... if you don't allow all JS or enable JS on exactly the right domains then your purchases can fall through or fall in to limbo. and I don't have any resource problems with AdBlock.
but the content is free - just ad supported.

They can construct an "ad-wall" in the same way they construct a "pay-wall" and are free to do so. Otherwise they are offering free content.
Have you tried an Amazon Fire TV box? Then it'd be instantly clear why they are doing this.

Prime Instant Video has enough of a selection - split between a decent-but-not-comprehensive selection of the most recent releases, and a huge back-catalog of older movies (I spend half an hour or so just marvelling at the selection of 70's Kung Fu movies and 50's through 70's sci fi B-movies).

BUT, when you fire up the Fire TV, you are "assaulted" by a home screen that, while they are not at all shy about pushing the Prime Instant Videos at prime spots in the interface, is full of movies, games and apps you have to pay for, all nicely intermingled with free content. It took my son about 5 minutes to talk me into spending 5 pounds on the first game.

It also provides instant access to any music in my Amazon account, giving me one more reason to consider putting my music there.

In other words: This is a sales channel with massive potential. I'm expecting it'll become possible to buy music directly soon enough too - it'd be silly not to (though Amazons MP3 app is curiously not yet compatible with the Fire TV). And why not the full shopping app?

It's also a sales channel they need to address, because Amazon is a size where letting someone else win that market would be a substantial risk to their own sales: Streaming will eventually eat their DVD sales, and continue to eat their music sales and others.

Online content and mobile platforms is not at all so strange for Amazon when you consider that what they are really good at is selling lots of cheap things at minimal margins while shaving logistics costs to the bone. Selling bits of data is the ultimate target for that, and mobile platforms (and the Fire TV) is to Amazon as it is to Google: A way of increasing the amount of time users spends engaging with their products and services.

> these products are mediocre at best

I've not used the Fire tablet or phone, but the Fire TV is fantastic, and the box itself looks and feels amazing. The only thing preventing the Fire TV from being "Apple level" design quality is that they've crowded the interface too much (it's great to use, but too busy for Apple's design sensibilities). Frankly, I'd have expected a light, cheap plastic-y box.
Will let you play personal videos - but only from the cloud, so far as I can see.

I'll stick to the Matchstick, which is promising DLNA access.
As someone who just implemented automatic table layout and is now intimately familiar with the details of how it works, I'd like to suggest that the problem with table-based layout is that it's excessively complex and largely undocumented and unspecified. The results will differ between browsers. Even the parts that have draft specs (which don't include, for example, percentage heights) are much more complex than CSS blocks and inlines: look at sections 4.1 through 4.4 of [1] for example.

[1]: http://dbaron.org/css/intrinsic/
H-P seeks local buyer for China networking business
It's cool and detailed, but I really don't think the author should be running the app server with root privileges. It's a really bad thing, especially if you're putting together a tutorial.
So, in other words advertising you like should be allowed but advertising you don't like should not be.
> Controlling western media on a useful scale is way beyond this limit.

Define "useful scale". There are many examples of the government controlling mass media.
FYI there are a variety of MoCA products out there that support 175Mbps Ethernet over coax up to 300':

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B008EQ4BQG?pc_redir=1414247414...
Theoretically, my TV already does this (mine in particular is not a smart TV, but apparently all the rest are), so why do I need this?

To me, this looks like Amazon is marketing to an audience that is slowly dying off anyway. Which doesn't seem like a good way forward.
That's awesome!! Keep on rocking!
You are free to ignore or block their ads. Sites may complain about blocking, but (almost?) none prevent it. But the sites are also free to put ads on their sites, why wouldn't they be, and how do you feel that this is "beyond the pale"? The people who run those sites are just trying to make a living in the same way that most popular media has tried to make a living for the past century.

But actively trying to disrupt how they make a living goes beyond that. Imagine a museum that has a donation box but where you can go in for free if you want. You don't have to donate, but gumming up the slot so no one else can donate either goes beyond being not thinking the museum is worth paying for (although, for some reason, you're in it) to not thinking it should be in business at all.

By arguing that instead of taking donations they should just charge admission, you're just rationalizing bad behavior.
My favorite NASA sound story is while still on planet earth. I can't find the article right now, but space shuttle launches were so loud that they produced some sort of buffering in the atmosphere. So what sounds like bad audio quality on recording, what actually how it sounds in person because of the intensity of the sound.
Why do you say that?

With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that Android phones didn't get AIV until it was clear the Fire Phone flopped. And unless you mess around with sideloading, it still isn't supported on Android tablets (non-cellular ones, at least). And, from what I've heard, Android TV (or at least ADT-1) doesn't support the Google TV app even though it probably works (or, at worst, can be trivially made to).
I don't have a positive proposal as to how we might get there or what it would look like, sorry.
Yes, I am not paying for the content, but the content creator also doesn't pay for the right to present his website publicly. It only pays for the webserver space and bandwidth. (I am following your logic).

World Wide Web works in a way, that I can create a http request, and then do what I want with it, for example I can only take the text and throw away anything else. I paid for the data transport, as you said, and then I don't have any other obligations after downloading those data.
> Look at an area that "cheap" has destroyed: the Internet. The Internet is full of crap.

Ironically, people used the exact same argument against the printing press and pretty much every single development in publishing. Remember when the gramophone destroyed the live performance? When TV killed theatre?

All of those developments lowered the price of production and/or distribution radically, and allowed the production of new cheap crap, but did not kill the incumbent as predicted.

The same is true today. Before the Internet, you would probably be subscribing to a newspaper, probably at quite high expense. If you limited yourself to free reading, you would only get crap - as true then as now.

If the traditional newspaper is largely irrelevant, there's a large and healthy selection of paid-for journalism out there, just get out your wallet. I'm a fan of The Economist, but that's far from the only selection.
Anecdotally—noting I'm probably not the typical consumer—the fact that they mentioned the specs is a big plus for me.

I travel with a Roku Streaming Stick (plus a small travel router) as it's a great way to use Plex and others from a hotel room. The one problem, however, is that the Roku feels sluggish and underpowered (minutes to boot, minutes to open netflix, etc). If Amazon's stick avoids that problem, I'll be getting one.
Auto-clicking bots will punish the people who run sites, not the people who run ads. They'll get shut down for fraudulent use.

Meanwhile, unless this has something like >50% adoption, ad networks won't even notice.

Edit: When I say "people who run ads", I mean the ad networks, ad suppliers, etc.
Predictions in Petite Aiguille category in Grand Prix dfor watches under $8,500
That's bog data for you. Works well after a little why. No immune data mining algorithm I know of.
Cowboy is the name of an Erlang web server and Heroku uses Erlang for their routing. I imagine the reason Cowboy is showing up is due to Heroku's routing layer.
HN is so oblivious about ad industry, it isn't even funny. The ad industry is moving towards action-based model of payment, where advertisers pay for the purchase, lead or download. This ad blocker will just provide more data about users to advertisers.

Also if this succeeds, many small publishers will die and large publishers will accelerate the introduction of native ads.

Also if this succeeds and most sites switch to paywalls, most poor people(billions of them) won't have access to quality content.

The short-sightedness is so strong, I doubt the general ability of the HN community to reach an educated consensus on the topic of ad supported business models.
Codenvy pivots from cloud IDE to Docker-based orchestrated dev environment
C vs C++ perhaps?

I would choose Qt myself, but that's because I prefer writing in C++. Linux land is typically the C Fortress, is it not?

(Vala is making inroads in GNOME land though I think?)
I wrote Qt stuff years ago and found it well documented. I didn't even know where to start in GTK land. I have since moved to wxWidgets as it appears to be free of politics and fits in nicely under Mac OSX (some Qt stuff was obviously Qt under OSX I noticed)
> If you care about reading or ideas or literature, the choice between these visions is not a difficult one.

Is it really an easy choice though?

As a reader, I want access to interesting content and it seems that pushing the price down to the cost of production makes it harder to produce good content.

Another way of looking at it is the following. We as a community say that we ought to charge based on value produced and not cost of production. Shouldn't book sellers and author's be able to do the same?
>my AdNauseam motivation is paywalled revenge.
So instead of paying for access (which is a decent way to earn something) you are mad that you don't get everything for free?
I can't see that in the spec, so no. Like most things, if you don't like an app, you can revoke it's privileges and uninstall it.

The questions you keep asking are basic things solved by reading the article - you seem to have concerns, but you haven't done the minimum amount of work necessary to determine whether your concerns are valid.
well they will be able to identify that the user is responsible, not the host. hopefully
Speaking for Chromecast, it's mostly an incredibly easy way to "fling" video from my browser up to my TV (and over my TV speakers) for YouTube video, webcasts, class lectures, etc. I've also used it for slideshows. I have various other TV connected devices (plus some built into the TV) but using Chromecast takes me all of 15 seconds or so.
255 Terabits/s: Researchers demonstrate record data transmission over new fiber
> It's sick that sites show one price to mobile users and another to desktop users.

Out of curiosity, which is cheaper?
Live flash drive to test out Linux
Nope, sorry, not seeing that. Apple takes every opportunity to shove spec down our throats ("Retina HD display," "first 64 bit phone," "A8 chip," "motion processor," etc).

Back when the iPhone first got released it was all about the UX and they were very careful to avoid specs. This was a Jobs inspired strategy that was very effective at conveying the product's feel over its power.

However, and for a while now, Apple has become just as specs obsessed as Android and are letting the product's feel/UX fall by the wayside.

Just look at their main iPhone page:
https://www.apple.com/iphone-6/

It is primarily about specs (screen, processor, etc). Heck the entire iPhone 6 product is about power/performance/bigger-is-better.
If I had a book I would never consent to digitize it--ever.
I know it will probally be scanned and uploaded, but until
that time I would hold out. As to what books sell on
Amazon and elsewhere; I am always shocked by what people
will read. A wealthy person who has some notoriety (even for having just a big butt) can hire a ghost writer and with
the right exposure(like being pimped on Imus, or the like)
can sell a huge amount of books? I feel for the writter who
is truly gifted, but isn't famous. I've noticed a huge void
for good authors in the Technical fields. By good authors
I mean good writers. Most of the computer books I have tried to read of the years are literally like reading a phone book. I don't expect Nabrokov, but if you can't write
well--don't try to fake it. People will buy your book even if you
have to use numbers, or steps like directions in consumer
products. Keep the words down. Write like you are trying
to convey information to an eighth grader. I have wondered
why editors let these phone books fly off the presses with
just a pretty cover. I have a feeling they don't have a
clue to what you are writing about--ROR, Apache, Git, all
programming languages, ip addresses, etc.? I'm a horrid writer so when I need to convey information I just use
numbers to convey important information. If I have a paragraph of information I try to funnel the paragraph from
the first sentance. I only mention this because I do buy
technical books. Actually, that's all I will pay for.
I'd be very interested in whether the deleting continued after disabling internet connectivity. I've met enough reporters to know that soda on the keyboard can cause this sort of behaviour.
Out of curiosity, why don't you get a Chromecast or why doesn't it meet your needs?
Very cool but before clicking on some dots I was wondering why everyone feels the same. The colors are not ideal for red/green colorblind people (is it blue and purple?)

Maybe include a feature to select the colors for happy/sad/average with a button to return to defaults?

Black for sad, light grey for neutral, something like a medium bright green for happy would be my picks.
Plane Cabins with Augmented Reality
When I go to McDonald's I don't have to pay for wear and tear on the roads because I already put gas in my car!

Wait, that is actually how it works. In US typically you pay more for the gas because it has rolled into its cost the cost of maintenance for the roads.

It is a flawed analogy line to begin with. But even here you can see how there are cases where this happens.

It would probably be more accurate to say that you get a free McDonald's if they can send one of their clowns home with you and he can watch you eat it and records everything. Here the author just block the clown from following him. And presumably would prefer to actually pay for a McDonald's sandwich.

(I personally would pay a negative sum for it, but that is just me).
>> Auto-clicking bots will punish the people who run sites, not the people who run ads.

If you've got ads on your site, you're someone that runs ads...
Not that I disagree with your point.
How does the fact that you were decent after six months refute the argument that you can't get decent in less than six months?
Teutonic town centre rush was ridiculous.

I miss that game.
Erlang. The syntax really isn't that bad, once you get over the initial shock. In all honesty, grasping that the variables are immutable and how you need to change your thinking is much more difficult than the syntax itself.
Little-endian vs. big-endian
Share (dangerous) short urls with a warning message
Yes and that will screw up the advertiser's stats, but in terms of tracking you actually give more third parties access to your data.

All they need to track you is either access to your device (by serving you code, or saving data in it, like cookies), or ip address + http headers and timestamp (which they would definitely get if the HTTP request goes through by clicking on the ad).
Buy, I sure wonder what made you think that wouldn't be popular here.
Permission for what?

To see a single text ad? To see a series of gifs? To have an autoplay video start? To accumulate tracking cookies? To accumulate permanent flash storage? Permission to do some reverse lookup and call your phone? Permission to capture later browsing and re-write links in a i-Frame?

I am not currently using an adblocker/clicker (broke too many things). By a similar argument if the site doesn't want to serve content to those not reading they ads they can selectively choose not serve it. Isn't something being placed in public implying some permission? I really don't understand why so many people are unsympathetic to attempting to defend oneself.
Can you show me a single example of a website making enough to sustain itself on Flattr?