6 ms·

Looks like another case of the old myth about porn innovating or "pushing" technology, as usual with nothing to back it up.

unethical_ban 10y ago
He literally gave a case (from memory) about the industry being an early adopter of technology. Not every anecdote needs a citation. Where's your citation about it being a myth? Man, posts like this are so prevalent on HN. Why can't people stop and think about whether their words are useful to the conversation?
- idlewords 10y ago
  Another tired accusation about negativity on HN, with no examples.
  - wernercd 10y ago
    Another tired accusation about tired accusations about negativity on HN... We have achieved irony inception.
    - idlewords 10y ago
      We must go deeper.
      - seangrogg 10y ago
        BOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
  - ionised 10y ago
    The example was the post he responded to.
    - quirkafleeg 10y ago
      How would you have phrased it then?
- quirkafleeg 10y ago
  > He literally gave a case (from memory) about the industry being an early adopter of technology. Not every anecdote needs a citation. No, he didn't give a case (of porn pushing technology), and he also didn't say his claim was from memory or was an anecdote. So what are you talking about? He claimed porn used credit cards before "virtually anyone". Which is vague to the point of meaningless, concedes porn was in fact not first, and has zero to back it up anyway. It's simply a boring "observation" people love to repeat when the topic of porn crops up. That it's actually the top comment here, rather than something about the actual story/submission, is unbelievable. > Where's your citation about it being a myth? The fact that there is nothing to back up the claim that porn innovated or pushed technology makes it a myth. You cannot possibly not understand this, so I don't know why you're asking for a "citation". > Why can't people stop and think about whether their words are useful to the conversation? If you want to go down that route, what's so "useful" about trotting out an age-old hackneyed myth about porn? What's so "useful" about your reply to me?
  - gknoy 10y ago
    I thought it was common knowledge that porn drove innovation in tech. :-) I had a hard time finding info on the web about Richard Morgan, but the NY Times is probably a decent citation. Mr. Gordon, 62, played a significant role in the birth of electronic commerce. While Amazon.com and eBay were still fledgling enterprises, the companies that Mr. Gordon founded in the early 1990s were already laying the groundwork for electronic transactions conducted with credit cards — a development that opened the doors to the first generation of e-commerce start-ups. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/technology/18gordo.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/technology/18gordo.html Also, credit card processing was used to verify age: In 2001 ... these companies ... were imperative for the industry’s existence: Adult Check, CyberAge, CCBill and Internet Billing Co. [E]ndorsed for age verification by ... in the Communications Decency Act 1996, the credit card [was] like a magic wand. [B]y requiring one, porn industries could immediately side step anyone accusing them of displaying porn to minors. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/07/cybersex-ascii-pinups-celebrity-fakes-how-the-internet-created-a-97-billion-porn-industry/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/07/cybersex-ascii-pinu...
- mikestew 10y ago
  The top-level post gave an anecdote that is culturally-assumed to be true, with nothing to back it. Let's suppose the story was instead about vaccinating children. Someone comes in, says "yet another example of how vaccines are harmful; they already give kids autism". You're just going to let that slide, and criticize those that point out the false assumptions? Where's your citation about it being a myth? The burden of proof does not lie with...oh, c'mon, you know this. Personally, I've given a fair shot at finding the boolean answer to the question. Best I can find, and the facts are sketchy at best, is the porn industry sucked at payment processing and the early card processing was done by a company that saw the need and filled it. But selling picks and shovels doesn't make you a miner. Man, posts like this are so prevalent on HN. Like what? The kind that call out urban legends, or the kind that perpetuate them?
  - quirkafleeg 10y ago
    This is really blowing my mind. Top comment is a hackneyed myth I didn't think anyone - even in porn - seriously believed. And any comment even remotely to the contrary is downvoted. WTF is going on here?
    - mikestew 10y ago
      The down votes I don't care about; I've got more points than I'll ever be able to spend (I can spend these points at the HN Company Store, right?). But the "but everybody knows that!" mentality that wouldn't be tolerated on any other topic just...mystifies me. Meh, we all have religious orthodoxy that dare not be questioned, and for some it's apparently "pr0n drives the tech industry".
      - quirkafleeg 10y ago
        I don't care about the points (otherwise I wouldn't have posted again, knowing the same people will just neg more), I'm just amazed some people believe this myth so strongly that they immediately downvote any and every post, from multiple posters, making different points challenging it. It's a totally a bizarre reaction.
- DashRattlesnake 10y ago
  >>> I think most innovations in technology come from either the military, video games or porn. >> Looks like another case of the old myth about porn innovating or "pushing" technology, as usual with nothing to back it up. > He literally gave a case (from memory) about the industry being an early adopter of technology. Being an early adopter is not really the same thing as innovating.
Guest98123 10y ago
I'll give a few examples. When you rollover the timeline of a video you're watching, you get a little popup showing a screenshot at that time, allowing you to know what's there prior to clicking and changing the video to that point. YouTube and other video sites finally adopted the same, but from what I recall, it was a feature of porn sites for years first. Most video sites have a list of related videos, which include thumbnails. When you rollover those thumbnails on porn sites, they typically animate the thumbnail so it shows various screenshots from the video at different time periods, so you have an idea of the video content, before actually opening it. YouTube is still missing this feature, some other video sites have it, but like the above, I remember it first released on porn sites for years. Since this article is regarding PornHub, they actually further innovated on this feature. Instead of a series of static screenshots, PornHub now shows short video clips at different times throughout the related video when you hover it. Once again, not a feature I've seen anywhere else online, but when you try it, you quickly realize it'll be standard for video sites in a few years. xVideos has an improved timeline showing which parts of a video are buffered. If you're watching a video, and it buffers the first minute, then 0-1 minute will be highlighted in red on the timeline. If you then skip later in the video to the 3 minute mark and watch for another few seconds, it might buffer the 3-4 minute time period of the video. The timeline would then show 0-1 minute in red, and 3-4 minutes in red. You could then click anywhere in red on the timeline and the video would instantly start playing, since as the timeline shows, that part is buffered and ready to go. I've never seen the same feature anywhere else, YouTube and Vimeo would display the timeline as having 0-4 minutes buffered, which is incorrect, since they don't accurately display the gaps missing. I don't know if those qualify as innovations to you, but they're all big improvements in user experience when it comes to watching videos online, and I believe they all originated on porn sites instead of YouTube, Vimeo, or elsewhere.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  >xVideos has an improved timeline showing which parts of a video are buffered. // IIRC YouTube used to do that but they stopped doing proper buffering a year or two ago. Presumably they were wasting a lot of bw sending content that was never viewed.
- quirkafleeg 10y ago
sctb 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12855320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12855320 and marked it off-topic.

unethical_ban 10y ago

He literally gave a case (from memory) about the industry being an early adopter of technology. Not every anecdote needs a citation. Where's your citation about it being a myth? Man, posts like this are so prevalent on HN. Why can't people stop and think about whether their words are useful to the conversation?

idlewords 10y ago
Another tired accusation about negativity on HN, with no examples.
- wernercd 10y ago
  Another tired accusation about tired accusations about negativity on HN... We have achieved irony inception.
  - idlewords 10y ago
    We must go deeper.
    - seangrogg 10y ago
      BOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!
- ionised 10y ago
  The example was the post he responded to.
  - quirkafleeg 10y ago
    How would you have phrased it then?
quirkafleeg 10y ago
> He literally gave a case (from memory) about the industry being an early adopter of technology. Not every anecdote needs a citation. No, he didn't give a case (of porn pushing technology), and he also didn't say his claim was from memory or was an anecdote. So what are you talking about? He claimed porn used credit cards before "virtually anyone". Which is vague to the point of meaningless, concedes porn was in fact not first, and has zero to back it up anyway. It's simply a boring "observation" people love to repeat when the topic of porn crops up. That it's actually the top comment here, rather than something about the actual story/submission, is unbelievable. > Where's your citation about it being a myth? The fact that there is nothing to back up the claim that porn innovated or pushed technology makes it a myth. You cannot possibly not understand this, so I don't know why you're asking for a "citation". > Why can't people stop and think about whether their words are useful to the conversation? If you want to go down that route, what's so "useful" about trotting out an age-old hackneyed myth about porn? What's so "useful" about your reply to me?
- gknoy 10y ago
  I thought it was common knowledge that porn drove innovation in tech. :-) I had a hard time finding info on the web about Richard Morgan, but the NY Times is probably a decent citation. Mr. Gordon, 62, played a significant role in the birth of electronic commerce. While Amazon.com and eBay were still fledgling enterprises, the companies that Mr. Gordon founded in the early 1990s were already laying the groundwork for electronic transactions conducted with credit cards — a development that opened the doors to the first generation of e-commerce start-ups. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/technology/18gordo.html http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/technology/18gordo.html Also, credit card processing was used to verify age: In 2001 ... these companies ... were imperative for the industry’s existence: Adult Check, CyberAge, CCBill and Internet Billing Co. [E]ndorsed for age verification by ... in the Communications Decency Act 1996, the credit card [was] like a magic wand. [B]y requiring one, porn industries could immediately side step anyone accusing them of displaying porn to minors. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/07/cybersex-ascii-pinups-celebrity-fakes-how-the-internet-created-a-97-billion-porn-industry/ http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/10/07/cybersex-ascii-pinu...
mikestew 10y ago
The top-level post gave an anecdote that is culturally-assumed to be true, with nothing to back it. Let's suppose the story was instead about vaccinating children. Someone comes in, says "yet another example of how vaccines are harmful; they already give kids autism". You're just going to let that slide, and criticize those that point out the false assumptions? Where's your citation about it being a myth? The burden of proof does not lie with...oh, c'mon, you know this. Personally, I've given a fair shot at finding the boolean answer to the question. Best I can find, and the facts are sketchy at best, is the porn industry sucked at payment processing and the early card processing was done by a company that saw the need and filled it. But selling picks and shovels doesn't make you a miner. Man, posts like this are so prevalent on HN. Like what? The kind that call out urban legends, or the kind that perpetuate them?
- quirkafleeg 10y ago
  This is really blowing my mind. Top comment is a hackneyed myth I didn't think anyone - even in porn - seriously believed. And any comment even remotely to the contrary is downvoted. WTF is going on here?
  - mikestew 10y ago
    The down votes I don't care about; I've got more points than I'll ever be able to spend (I can spend these points at the HN Company Store, right?). But the "but everybody knows that!" mentality that wouldn't be tolerated on any other topic just...mystifies me. Meh, we all have religious orthodoxy that dare not be questioned, and for some it's apparently "pr0n drives the tech industry".
    - quirkafleeg 10y ago
      I don't care about the points (otherwise I wouldn't have posted again, knowing the same people will just neg more), I'm just amazed some people believe this myth so strongly that they immediately downvote any and every post, from multiple posters, making different points challenging it. It's a totally a bizarre reaction.
DashRattlesnake 10y ago
>>> I think most innovations in technology come from either the military, video games or porn. >> Looks like another case of the old myth about porn innovating or "pushing" technology, as usual with nothing to back it up. > He literally gave a case (from memory) about the industry being an early adopter of technology. Being an early adopter is not really the same thing as innovating.

Guest98123 10y ago

I'll give a few examples. When you rollover the timeline of a video you're watching, you get a little popup showing a screenshot at that time, allowing you to know what's there prior to clicking and changing the video to that point. YouTube and other video sites finally adopted the same, but from what I recall, it was a feature of porn sites for years first. Most video sites have a list of related videos, which include thumbnails. When you rollover those thumbnails on porn sites, they typically animate the thumbnail so it shows various screenshots from the video at different time periods, so you have an idea of the video content, before actually opening it. YouTube is still missing this feature, some other video sites have it, but like the above, I remember it first released on porn sites for years. Since this article is regarding PornHub, they actually further innovated on this feature. Instead of a series of static screenshots, PornHub now shows short video clips at different times throughout the related video when you hover it. Once again, not a feature I've seen anywhere else online, but when you try it, you quickly realize it'll be standard for video sites in a few years. xVideos has an improved timeline showing which parts of a video are buffered. If you're watching a video, and it buffers the first minute, then 0-1 minute will be highlighted in red on the timeline. If you then skip later in the video to the 3 minute mark and watch for another few seconds, it might buffer the 3-4 minute time period of the video. The timeline would then show 0-1 minute in red, and 3-4 minutes in red. You could then click anywhere in red on the timeline and the video would instantly start playing, since as the timeline shows, that part is buffered and ready to go. I've never seen the same feature anywhere else, YouTube and Vimeo would display the timeline as having 0-4 minutes buffered, which is incorrect, since they don't accurately display the gaps missing. I don't know if those qualify as innovations to you, but they're all big improvements in user experience when it comes to watching videos online, and I believe they all originated on porn sites instead of YouTube, Vimeo, or elsewhere.

pbhjpbhj 10y ago
>xVideos has an improved timeline showing which parts of a video are buffered. // IIRC YouTube used to do that but they stopped doing proper buffering a year or two ago. Presumably they were wasting a lot of bw sending content that was never viewed.
quirkafleeg 10y ago

sctb 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12855320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12855320 and marked it off-topic.