HN user
My friends in Mumbai, India are beta testing a beautiful travel journal Web app at http://serai.me/ (after a year of hard work) to share those beautiful trip photos with friends and they can contribute/comment so each can share his/her photos of the trip to a unified journal !
Heard about PG essays from a friend in Mumbai , then saw HN for first time and got addicted to it since , and now it's in my default tab in chrome !
Well, I have been a adsense publisher for over 5 years now and they are pretty clear about their commission rates they give us 68% for content ads - https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/180195?hl=en (earlier it was 70% i think )
and to me it's not unfair as even if someone was to make such a OS system , he still has to manage server cost/support/advertiser acquisition/marketing cost etc. & so wont be able to pay as good as adsense also the ads initially wont be that diverse & so ads might not be in context or even blank spaces , kind of chicken and egg problem !