Show HN: NomadHouse – A network of houses around the world for nomads - <AUTHOR> https://nomadhouse.io <comment><USER2> I'm interested in co-working/co-living spaces, but I'm a bit older (late 30s), I don't want to do the "hostel" thing, and I want to be around others who are successfully running real remote businesses with decent income.

My problem with the whole nomad thing is that most "nomads" are just bloggers starting out. It seems most have just saved enough money to live off of (frugally), and are calling themselves digital nomads. Not much different than regular travellers.

Even the founders of Nomad House look like they've never done anything before - if you read their profiles, they are "builders of businesses" and "growth hackers", whatever that means.

That being said, this might be fun if you're a 20-something, and a bit different than staying at a hostel, but I wouldn't expect to get much more out of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I'm a freelancer since 4 year and I'm trying to change the world to be a better place, but I understand you that I never done anything before.

<comment><USER3> Well, I hope your aims are sincere... I am getting a little annoyed with these digital nomad 'startups' that just want to make money off of other digital nomads, like they're any other market segment to fit a product to. "The Digital Nomad Space." Sucks where it's heading. Like the recent poster doing a similar thing as you but more pricey with a REIT investment group potentially backing him (he's also promoting you, so I don't know, maybe you, him, the nomad list guy are all working together... not that it really matters)... or the "nomad year" venture where you throw down a ton of money to have everything planned out for you (kind of the opposite of being digital nomad IMO), or that IMO unjustifiable digital nomad 'insider' forum where you have to pay simply to chat with other digital nomads. I'm not a cheap person, I just want to keep SV profiteering out of digital nomad land. There are some main culprits, individuals, that come to mind (nobody I'm going to name)... but oh well, what can you really expect?

On the bright side, there's a huge opportunity for someone to sweep through all of this and just offer free concierge services for digital nomads. I met someone working on this, I imagine there are others. That will ultimately take the day when someone gets that formula right. Something more of the spirit of couch surfing.

I'm ranting. Anyways, if you can manage cheap rates at really cool pads, in a way that's better than just splitting an AirBnB with other nomads, then that is something pretty cool.

<comment><USER4> From the outside, the blogging culture for "digital nomads" already seems like hopeless, sell-out garbage. Frequent low-content posts that have the same promising-but-never-delivering feel as "long copy" marketing, blog-format where something more like a privately-editable Wiki or simple traditional informational site (do people still do those?) would be far more helpful (but, crucially, may have worse SEO to drive traffic to their "funnel"! [vomit]),

"Sign up for our newsletter!" pop-ups.

"Learn how I make money to travel using credit card affiliate links (spoiler alert: it's by writing articles about how I make money from credit card affiliate links)".

"Buy my awful book! Here's a crappy CG render of what it might look like if I had even bothered to on-demand print it!"

It's like all those "growth hacking" marketing sites that started popping up a few years ago. Or Mister Money Mustache, for that matter ("how I live free and cheap and don't even have a job! Spoiler alert: it's by already being kind of rich so I avoid most of the expenses _and risk_ that poor people have, and in fact I work three part time jobs, one of which is this website, so that was simply a lie. Click my affiliate links!") I haven't read Timothy Ferriss, but I see him referenced all the time in relation to these sorts of things. Is he responsible for this explosion of cynical, manipulative, garbage websites that now infest the Internet, or is someone else to blame? The whole thing feels like Amway.

To sum up: speaking as someone on the outside of all this, I'm not sure throwing a few start-ups in to the mix could make the digital nomads' public online presence much scummier[1].

[1] NOT saying even a substantial fraction of people living this life are scummy, mind you!

[EDIT] Tim Ferris -> Timothy Ferriss

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I live on the India/Nepal/Thailand "Digital Hippie" circuit and can confirm the following living costs if you're doing it on your on your own without booking anything else in advance:

Thailand (islands like Koh Tao or Koh Phangan): $700/month. Kathmandu/Pokhara: $300-$400/month. Big cities in India (Pune, Bangalore, Calcutta): $1000/month, small towns in India (Goa, Dharmsala, Naggar, Leh): $500/month. These costs include apartment, food internet. All my luggage is carry-on and check-in baggage under 20kg.

I've been doing this for 6 years with occasional runs to Canada or South Africa to visit friends and family. I'm usually in Nepal for the trekking season, India for the Indian classical music season, and Thailand between those gaps.

<comment><USER6> Man, those are some nice prices. I'm currently traveling in Europe (mostly Western) and my monthly spendings hover around $2100/month on average. (Would be a lot less if I didn't go out to eat so much!) How is life on those islands? Is there a social scene?

<comment><USER7> There's as much or little social scene as you want, including (to an extent) a choice of whether to hang out with tourist-friendly locals, medium-term Western freelancers/divers/hippies and travellers/holidaymakersof all levels of maturity

Those beach bars and boat trips can drive your monthly spend up quite a bit, but eating out certainly won't blow your budget.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this might make me sound like a jerk on this site, but my main concern with NomadHouse (and the previous TheCaravanserai) is that they sound very "startuppy". Is the goal to get VC funding and spin them off into multi- million dollar businesses? I fear this might infuse them with a particular kind of Silicon Valley culture that many of us would in fact like to get away from.

There's also my fear that this strategy will make it more about the business, not the people. At least with Airbnb, the hosts still retain all the control; Airbnb only functions as a distant rental agency and insurance provider. With the startup model, will these communities be able to make their own decisions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I'm not into investors and I would like to keep this startup on the track to get more and more houses around the world.

<comment><USER6> That's good to hear! I'm very much looking forward to what you'll have in stock for London and Berlin.

<comment><USER8> Exciting stuff indeed :)

I also wrote a while back about what me & a bunch of other people in London have in mind..

[https://medium.com/nomad-house/nomad-house-london- project-58...](https://medium.com/nomad-house/nomad-house-london- project-5826d0916e39)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm loving the whole Nomad theme going around at the moment. Its made me really think about where I want to be and I have a feeling its going to be anywhere and everywhere.

What I haven't seen much of is horror stories on working remotely -- specifically from people traveling around the world. Does anyone have any links?

<comment><USER10> I'd also be interested in any horror stories - I suspect they mostly don't get written.

What I rarely see (which is part of my vision) is nomads successfully travelling the world with: 1) A Significant other / spouse 2) Children, and/or 3) Assets (eg, a house in their home country they rent out; a business that's worth something because it's more than them) [1]

Most seem to be single people in their 20s / early 30s, who talk of 'living on the road forever'. I fear (but again, this is linked to what I am creating for myself) many wake up one day and realise they have built nothing in their lives - true, the experiences are priceless and may be worth it, but I don't want to discover at 40 that I have no close friends, no family, that even if I knocked someone up tomorrow I'd still be in my 60s when the kids moved out, and while I've lived off $20,000pa for the last 15 years I don't intend to retire into decrepitude in Thailand but have zero net worth put aside to support me.

I guess I hope that comedown for those who experience it doesn't take away from the awesome life they've led for many years. But when they talk of doing it forever, maybe they're not appreciating the moment as much as they could. Maybe I'm just getting old.

[1] Loving these guys [http://www.escapingexpectations.com/](http://www.escapingexpectations.com/) because they actually tick all 3 boxes. Would love to hear of more.

<comment><USER11> throw-away account, because i'm a lurker.

There is some selection bias, the people that are busy doing stuff, typically don't write blogs "How to live with 500$ in chiang mai".

to give you some perspective: i've been doing the "nomad thing" for 5 years, although I'm not actively travelling around much, and mostly based in an asian city. All my belongings fits into one suitcase and 2 duffel bags - 80% is clothes. I am earning above 100$/hour coding, typically as remote contractor with the occasional onsite visit, not simple CRUD-stuff, but interesting and challenging work. I usually do full-time contracting with one client exclusively for about 1 year. Two years ago I spent 3 months exclusively on open source work (that itself opened up very attractive work opportunities itself). My living cost is also pretty much the same as back in Europe, but I live a life in luxury here.

Most DNs eventually "settle" down, and stay in one place for a longer period (think months), and everyone seems to have their default city/place, where they often return to because of friends, they like the vibe etc.

What I found was the close friends you have at late 20ies, you won't lose them, when you go back and most probably you will go back at some point.

Re 1: There's quite a few digital nomad couples, or people who find their significant other. 2) Children not so. Re 3: These all exist, but it's not (yet) the majority.

Re: Horror Stories: I have not yet heard of something worthy the title of a horror story, and i am somewhat involved in the digital nomad community.

<comment><USER12> How do you find your contracting gigs? Is it from your offline networks or did you find them online?

<comment><USER11> First one, was a classical onsite job, which i transitioned into a remote thing. Second big one was offline network, there too it started with onsite for a few months, now quite remote. It helped here being nomadic, as employees were already spread out geographically. I had smaller ones in between that i found online, but they were not fulfilling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Looks like a less polished version of [http://www.thecaravanserai.co/](http://www.thecaravanserai.co/)?

Which was previously on HN - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9022311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9022311)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the links. They're actually linking to NomadHouse as "something more immediate and affordable" in their section on comparative costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> At the very least you should inform potential customers that they require the correct paperwork in order to work in the countries specified.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll add it now. It's a legal gray area for sure and it will take some time for the law to catch up on the reality that many more of us will start traveling and working from different places.

<comment><USER15> Customs and immigrations everywhere provide official processes people can follow for living and working in a country. Enforcing this stuff happens on a country-by-country basis and detecting it can be slow and difficult or not even close to a priority but that does not make it a gray area. Here in Costa Rica they've made many steps in the last few years to address "perpetual tourism", it used to be easy to live here on renewable tourist visas and many people took advantage of that.

[http://blog.therealcostarica.com/2009/08/13/the-new-costa- ri...](http://blog.therealcostarica.com/2009/08/13/the-new-costa-rica- immigration-law/)

<comment><USER14> As in your example, I don't see the situation as the law playing 'catch-up'. At least not in the sense that Nomads wish - which is legality.

It's more likely that Thailand will continue to tighten the tourist visa rules in order to prevent people staying more than a few months.

People should remember that Thailand is protectionist, xenophobic and cares very little of it's foreign population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In case you are still watching this and want more feedback, let me quote someone else here:

> it's like airbnb but with less privacy?

A lot of these "nomad" ventures have a huge focus on networking, socialising... I'd like to see something catering for introverts as well. Something that ticks all the boxes - self contained room + kitchen, Wifi. Desk, with chair.

Kind of like Airbnb apartments but with a more razor focus, a place with quality control where I know I can get work done. The Airbnb of (small, low budget!) serviced apartments.

General "serviced apartment" facilities might fit this, however they all appear to focus on the premium end - large spacious apartments fit for well salaried business travellers, not freelance tech guys just scraping by.

Heck, all I want is a sound proofed box with Wifi, bed, and a tiny Kitchen. Somewhere I can work in absolute peace, self cater if I wish, but also venture out from now and then.

I understand this is not what you are aiming for, but if you ever need any other ideas... ;)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm getting sick of this whole nomad thing. Brand it for "nomads" and you have another way to sell stuff to travellers. Even more ridiculous is the idea of building an online community for "digital nomads". What could you possibly have in common? The fact that you work online while travelling to a foreign country?

<comment><USER17> _The fact that you work online while travelling to a foreign country?_

That alone represents a huge swath of possibilities. Which countries have no problem with foreign workers on tourist visas? Where are co-working locations? Who's a good, affordable tax accountant who can deal with the intricacies of money earned while outside the country? Where are the best locations for connectivity vs. price?

You'll find heavily trafficked websites for all sorts of foreign working and expat situations (e.g. retirees in Thailand, teachers in Japan), so surely the "nomadic" tech workers would have a lot to talk about.

<comment><USER12> _Which countries have no problem with foreign workers on tourist visas_

Working on a tourist visa is illegal in most countries I've been to. If you talking about working online on a business which is not tied to the country you are staying in, then you can do that on a tourist visa for a short period of time, but eventually if you are staying longer you are no longer a tourist and need to somehow justify your presence in the country. As much as those laws don't make any sense to people working online, that's the current legal framework in most of places.

 _Where are co-working locations?_

I don't see a point of working in a coworking space. Wouldn't you rather explore nice cafes in the area? The only benefit of a coworking space for me is networking, and this is huge, this is what distinguishes a "I'd rather go to a coffeeshop" coworking spaces from "I belong to this community" type of coworking places. Those are extremely difficult to find, and in my experience are impossible in high-traffic nomadic locations, due to their nature (travellers just pass by).

 _Where are the best locations for connectivity vs. price?_

You look at the spreadsheet at nomadlist, and some places look like paradise - live by the beach, very cheap, etc. But in my experience everything comes with pros and cons. For example, SEA is cheaper than Mediterranean countries, but the climate is nowhere near as good. USA is better when it comes to networking, but it's also more expensive. Everything comes with a cost, and there is no magic bullet.

<comment><USER17> _Working on a tourist visa is illegal in most countries I 've been to._

It was just discussed the other day that Thailand now allows remote work on a tourist visa. You've provided a pretty good example of why such a site would have value in disseminating information.

 _I don 't see a point of working in a coworking space._

Uh. Okay? How is that relevant to the discussion in any way? And what makes you think that cafes would somehow be excluded from consideration? You wouldn't find value in knowing what connectivity a cafe offers before traveling there?

Everything in your final paragraph just further supports the need for sites dedicated to providing information on these topics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Nice idea, this seems like something that effectively parcels out an exotic AirBNB that has good internet for a monthly rate, which is something more easily accomplished by the traveling tech worker by simply setting search filters on AirBNB. If there was a way to immediately sign up for a month I see there being the possibility of someone impulse buying a space.

<comment><USER6> Here's the thing about Airbnb, though. If you compare their typical monthly rates to a more accurate cost-of-living calculator like numbeo, you'll find that the rentals tend to be 1.5x-2.0x more expensive than finding a flatshare the "normal" way. Unfortunately, doing the latter is annoying and somewhat difficult. And you never know what you're going to get. Is the internet going to be stable? Is the heating going to work? Are the hosts going to be amicable?

If the other NomadHouses are going to be as affordable and beautiful as the Bali one ($1000/month would be reasonable), it'll be a fantastic deal. You get your own room; a wonderful house; a community of like-minded people to spend time with; and all with a simple click of a button. Perfect for people like me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Moin atudute,

you have !NOTHING! to show, at least not to me from the viewpoint of a search engine author. You show an empty page without JavaScript.

 _ok_ ... lets be a nice human and allow scripts. Allowing nomadhouse.io: still blank page. Google maps sounds interesting, when looking at the 3rd party scripting domains. But still a blank page. Mixpanel, Segment, Addthis, ... _hey_ ... how many evil 3rd party tracking scripts does this site run? And still a blank page.

Finally: Stripe _w-hat_ ... I need to enable scripting of a payment provider to view the page?

Where are the google maps, I hoped to see with maps.bigbrotherapis? Or are they also only include to add an other tracking?

Clicking on Berlin, I get a popup asking for registering a user. So you basically have a big expensive, complicated landing page, with a lot of tracking, but search engine blocking, that does nothing but asking for my mail address.

 _sorry_ ... no bounty. I'm harsh now, but your site fails completely, even if the service might be interesting. You might get a good peak now with postings on HN, but ensure your site is accessible without JS for search engines. You have only a few days time, that good links might result in a good SEO. Change your site asap.

<comment><USER6> Frankly, the people who want to live in a place like this will figure out how to work the site. Maybe it's better that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hmm, this takes the point/fun out of being a nomad for me. I'm going to another country to work, effectively rather than going to experience the country and work on the side. Good idea though, sure there will be lots of people who will love it.

</comment><comment> X-combinator Similar idea on HN a few days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9022311](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9022311)

</comment><comment><USER21> What does that price next to Bali (Ubud) mean? I have no idea and it is not explained anywhere. Is it a monthly fee? Weekly fee? What?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, there is a tooltip when you hover the price, but I will make it more visible. This is for one month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What average house size do you expect for these? Or will it vary by the popularity of the city?

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope we will have houses around 5-10 places.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is it air bnb with less privacy?

</comment><comment><USER24> The site is real buggy and slow on my iPad Air. Also crashes the browser a lot.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sorry for that, I will add responsive for iPad Air.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> grammar error you could fix: "We are scouring to globe"

<comment><AUTHOR> I will fix that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> the webpage takes incredibly long to load and open.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for this problem, I will take care of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Good Article

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Good stuff atu!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you</comment></comment>


Beautiful Racket - <AUTHOR> http://beautifulracket.com/first-lang.html <comment><USER2> One of my favorite classes in college was designed around building a C-like language interpreter (not compiler, I know, but the syntax was C-like) in Racket. It was a fantastic, eye-opening experience.

However, DrRacket the IDE was a huge pain for me. I often felt that what the language offered in power and sophistication, its development environment lacked.

<comment><USER3> I haven't used DrRacket for anything of any reasonable size, but I actually think it does pretty well. I was just asking some people on #racket about if DrRacket suites their needs for a development environment. I think it's interesting that a good number of Racket developers use DrRacket instead of emacs or vim, whereas other Lisps tend to favor (especially) emacs and vim.

So my question is: What about DrRacket didn't seem like enough for your project?

<comment><USER4> I'm not who you're asking the question to, but I dislike DrRacket because (when I used it last year) it took too long to load (iirc, intellij started up faster and they have to support a lot more features)

<comment><USER5> The IDE i use (phpstorm) - i load it once, and it just sits in the background until i restart or logout. I can't see how load time is really a big deal? unless you're talking 5+ min?

<comment><USER6> It takes ~5 seconds on my macbook pro with just the standard set of tools installed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > If a datum sounds like a syntax object, that's no coincidence — a syntax > object is just a datum with some extra information attached. The #' > prefix notation we used for a syntax object now connects logically: we > can think of the # as representing the extra info that gets attached to > the datum

This is not clear, can someone explain please?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure which part isn't clear.

First, syntax objects are data, but with extra information, such as binding information, source location, etc.

Second, the #' form (written out it's called `syntax`) is similar to the ' form (written out as `quote`). But the first one includes the extra information to make a syntax object. Also, it has an extra character, which the chapter points out can be seen as going along with the extra information.

<comment><USER8> This is why I wish I could ask comments about books without going to Stack Overflow. Is there a publishing system that allows you to put up a work as it is being produced and solicit input from people on what they find unclear?

<comment><USER9> Gitbook. I've used it for two small (unpublished) books.

[https://www.gitbook.com/](https://www.gitbook.com/)

E:

I may have misparsed your question, upon re-reading it and had an overly liberal understanding of "solicit feedback". Apologies in advance if my answer isn't quite up the alley you were looking for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks like a very well-written, easy introduction to making simple, dynamic programming languages (not surprising given the author's writing background).

But everyone writes about how to build these kinds of basic Forths, or Lisps, or reverse polish notation calculators. To be honest, once you've learned the basic technique, writing a toy dynamic language interpreter is pretty easy. Even adding a toy JIT isn't very hard, and there are multiple guides online on how to do this using Luajit, or Libjit, PyPy, or LLVM, etc.

What I want more than anything is a guide written on the same level on how to build a toy statically-typed language, with algebraic data types. And even better, some basic discussion on how to learn about implementing advanced techniques like refinement, or linear, or dependent types (I realize these are extremely complex topics).

Every discussion I find on these topics is in dense academic papers. I'm slowly making headway, but it's a slog.

The only good resource I've found so far (and it's an excellent one) is Andrej Bauer's Programming Languages Zoo. But as far as I know, it's all (very helpful and instructive) source code, with no accompanying tutorials.

Is there no very simple introduction on writing a simple ML, with type checking? Any recommended resources?

It's possible that Butterick intends to cover these topics in later chapters, in which case I can't wait to read the book.

<comment><USER11> There was a great textbook by Sam Kamin around 1990 ([http://loome.cs.uiuc.edu/kamin/pubs.html](http://loome.cs.uiuc.edu/kamin/pubs.html)). I think that might help.

<comment><USER12> There is also an abandoned book on implementing Scheme by Paul Wilson:

ftp://ftp.cs.utexas.edu/pub/garbage/cs345/schintro-v14/schintro_toc.html

Yes, an ftp url.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the only sane way to reduce complexity in your programs.</comment>


Ask HN: PC I can buy today to add/make Hackintosh? - <AUTHOR>

I know I can DIY a PC Hackintosh but I want to buy a PC and put my legal OS X onto it. So what PC can I buy today? <comment><USER2> If it's a hobby machine go for it. They can be a lot of fun and a good way to learn more about OS X, but if it is a work machine I wouldn't recommend it. Things break all the time, updates will Bork your system. Sometimes the App Store won't work. Power use issues, it's just a lot of work.

If it's a work machine I recommend buying a base Mac mini, then adding an ssd as a second drive and maxing the ram yourself. You will get a screaming fast machine for anything that isn't too graphics intensive like hardcore gaming. And it will probably cost you about the same or less as building your own hackintosh.

<comment><USER3> Just this, great for a hobby machine, but honestly it's next to impossible to use as something you have to relay on.

For me, it's just about updates and iMessage. I use iMessage a lot, and their security means it doesn't work on a hackintosh. Next are the updates. The issue here, is that graphics doesn't work, or the machine doesn't boot, etc. All fixable, but often you have to debug it once or twice.

Problem I had with the Mac Mini was I bought mine as the basic model, and its so slow to use, the hackintosh is better. However, nothing works as well as my MacBook for actual work.

Right now, personally, I'm waiting for the 5k iMac and when it can be used as an external monitor. I upgrade my computer every couple years, but my old Apple Cinema Display is 7 years old now, so I really need an iMac to be usable as a 2nd display. Hopefully september will bring that update.

<comment><USER4> Why not the Dell 5k monitor as your second display?

<comment><USER3> Yeah could do, but the problems with the hackintosh are a pain. I honestly can't wait to upgrade. My current CPU is the intel 3770k and the 4.0ghz iMac processor is around 30% faster at max usage.

I've moved most gaming to consoles, just not super interested in PC gaming and the iMac can still do most of it.

If Apple bring out a Mac Pro though with a gaming performance GPU I might consider that too, but thats never going to happen any time soon, lol.

Also finally I love the glassy reflective screens. Just so used to them these days and using anything but is just odd to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Strange how most of the comments don't address the actual question- what off the shelf PC makes a good hackintosh?

The only off-the-shelf PC I've seen used recently is a Gigabyte Brix (Gigabyte does make motherboards too but this is a complete computer).

Dell, etc. use their own BIOSes and while they may be compatible with hackintoshing, not many people are putting much effort into making them compatible. You may not be able to turn off certain instructions from the BIOS that cause crashes.

Avoid AMD processors and AMD/ATI graphics chipsets; not as much effort has been put into making them compatible.

One other detail- your legal OS X still has licensing terms that basically say if the box you install it on doesn't have an Apple on it, you're violating them.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would really advise agains even trying, unless you are simply bored. I created a system with exact parts recommended by tonymacx86 and it took days to get everything up and running. Even then basic stuff kept braking like sound. Speed stepping didn't work at all so I abandoned that ship...

</comment><comment><USER7> Even if you don't build it, it's not a plug and play process. I'd read everything here: [http://www.tonymacx86.com/](http://www.tonymacx86.com/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Been running Hackintosh for 5 years and have always used Gigabyte Motherboards. They generally work out of the box using tonymacx86 installation tools including upgrades.

Get an Nvidia Card (Any current model will work) if you want to avoid installation issues and get the best performance (Nvidia have native drivers for OS X) and make sure to enable TRIM on SSD's.

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh](https://www.reddit.com/r/hackintosh) is another useful resource.

</comment><comment><USER10> Back in college days, I made my dell laptop a hackintosh, at that time ati was not supported by osx, so it was very troublesome to install - patching dsdt, kexts and all. It broke when I updated to Lion and I stopped and installed Arch Linux. I used to check [http://www.insanelymac.com](http://www.insanelymac.com) forum, [http://wiki.osx86project.org](http://wiki.osx86project.org), and, [http://www.tonymacx86.com](http://www.tonymacx86.com) a lot. There you will find most of the resources you need.

You might find these links useful in finding a compatible pc if you don't want to do diy:

[http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.10.3/Port...](http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.10.3/Portables)

[http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.10.3/Desk...](http://wiki.osx86project.org/wiki/index.php/HCL_10.10.3/Desktops)

</comment><comment><USER11> There are few OEM that are actually Plug'n'Play, and even with those, you will most likely have problems with OS X updates.

If I were you, I'd really go with DIY, fewer problems and you will gain experience.

johng linked to tonymacx86 which is a useful resource, although I don't really like MultiBeast since it's not actually the All-In-One solution it's supposed to be.

insanelymac.com is also quite useful :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Depending on why exactly you want a Hackintosh you might want to check out Elementary OS [1]. It's a Linux distro that has the same sort of feel as Mac OS (and it's free).

If you're looking to do development for Apple products though you're probably better off just buying a Mac.

[1] [https://elementary.io/](https://elementary.io/)

<comment><USER13> I would never understand advising getting a derivative of Ubuntu for the sake of the UI. But I agree that if the OP wants to use Apple's environment he should consider buying their product. I personally would rather use a Linux/BSD system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are optimized parts for a hackintosh, which is why it is best to DIY.

As far as buying, the retailers will skimp on areas that are negligible or ignored by the consumer, e.g. motherboard, RAM, PSU. This makes it difficult to work with compatibility & OSX from a straight buy perspective versus choosing each optimized part in a custom build.

As a warning, you might run into issues with seamless integration that is normally experienced with Apple products via MBP/iPhone/iPad. The 'ecosystem' doesn't like Hackintosh :D

Seconding Korni22 and insanelymac forums.

</comment><comment><USER15> I built a hackintosh a few months ago because I really prefer OSX for development compared to working in Windows or Linux. I spent around $700ish on desktop parts, (i7 cpu, 16gb ram, no video card but using the intel HD default graphics) I've been using it as my every day machine and it runs great. Including running windows VM's in virtualbox etc. Only thing that doesn't really work is the USB ports, which in the grand scheme of things is kind of minor.

</comment><comment><USER16> Have you considered virtualization? Before adopting OSX, I went the virtualization route myself 4 years ago. I know it works on vmware (at least for me back then with vmw player running on Dell Linux laptop).

It probably depends on your requirements. YMMV

If you're going through this to save a few hundreds, get a mba refurbished.

<comment><USER17> I have Lion, Mountain Lion, Mavericks, and Yosemite running in VMWare Workstation. They work well enough to do web testing in Safari, but the video performance has been too slow to do much else, so I don't use them for anything too serious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Would you be assembling a desktop machine or buying a laptop?

</comment><comment><USER19> Out of curiosity, is this Oculus VR related?</comment>


Boeing 777 accident due to software failure? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2008/01/19/boeing-777-accident-engineers-giveth-and-programmers-taketh-away/

<comment><USER2> What ever happened to triple redundancy? If it's all within the software, then it is not redundant.

<comment><USER3> Even if it wasn't all within the software (which I would strongly doubt), the problem with safety and of complex systems is that the safer you try to make it, the more complex the system becomes and that in itself reduces the reliability and safety of the system.

If you add a monitor to check to see if a critical piece is running, then you need another to check if that is running, etc... This applies to both hardware and software. Then you layer on top of all the features of the system layers of process like CMMI, ISO whatever, etc. and designs are reviewed by committee after committee and eventually the design has to be approved and the cost keeps skyrocketing.</comment></comment>


Recently re-written HSL/HSV wikipedia article: feedback welcome - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSL_and_HSV

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys,

Every once in a while, a color-related topic comes up on here, so I thought maybe it would be a reasonable place to look for feedback. There are still a few parts that can use fleshing out, but this is mostly complete I think. And it's a relatively in-depth and technical approach to the subject, so I figured some of you might even learn something. :-)

Anyway, the main questions I have are: do the arithmetic/geometric explanations make sense? Do the diagrams do a decent job showing how they work for people not wanting to work through formulae? Does the article properly convey that these models are relics of the 1970s that should really be scrapped in favor of better ones?

Thanks.

<comment><USER2> Thank you so much, I was working on a computer vision utility for testing embedded medical devices over the summer, and used HSLA representations in a bunch of places. The old Wikipedia article was the best resource for explaining it to people, but it was still pretty crappy.

Your new one is a great improvement! I edited it to <!-- comment --> the TODOs to help avoid the wikisharks.

Now if you could only do the same for the articles on Y'CbCr and chroma subsampling :)

<comment><AUTHOR> If there's anything about its current organization, structure, diagrams, etc. that could be improved, suggest away. Otherwise, thanks for the vote of confidence!

*edit: Do you know what the most important papers are about the use of HSL/HSV in a computer vision context? I've tracked down a bunch, but haven't really done a thorough search of the literature, to figure out which are seminal. (You'll notice that the "use in image analysis" section is still a total stub.)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which game would you go for? - <AUTHOR> I'm making a game and can't decide of a title..<p>"SuperDash" or "Speedy Doggy"<p>Which game would you go for if all you had are those 2 titles? <comment><USER2> Which one has the better screenshot?

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd play "Speedy Doggo"

</comment><comment><USER4> another +1 for speedy doggy

that title will definitely catch my eye a lot more

just make sure it achieves 5 stars next to it's name too ...

good luck!</comment>


How do you make programming fun again? - <AUTHOR> I remember enjoying and looking forward to programming. I saw shapes and structures as I imagined programs. Recently, it's gone and I don't look forward to it. I am now changing projects, but in the past that used to, on the contrary, excite me in anticipation of a new start. Another thing I remember is feeling this positive rush just after waking up, thinking of the things I'll do. Do you know what I'm talking about? If so, what do you have to say about it? Tips? <comment><USER2> I'm a C/C++ programmer for more than 10 years for Windows, and these last years waiting for compile/link and a lot of annoying errors absolutely nonrelated to what I was doing it is really disappointing.

So I began to code in Python to test things and as my hobby language in free time/other hobby projects. Changing from a old well-known world to a refreshing and problem solving focused world was one of the best things I made last year.

I believe learning a new language has to do with this feeling, but if you are going to learn something new, try to choose a modern language that turn the problem solving in the main track, not compile error hunting.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am going to suggest you download and read the free PDF from "A Theory of Fun" \-- [http://www.theoryoffun.com/theoryoffun.pdf](http://www.theoryoffun.com/theoryoffun.pdf)

These are slides for a talk based on a book the author wrote.

You might want to check out the book "Flow" as well

The short answer is that we get bored when the challenges and skill level are misaligned. To keep something fun (or enjoyable), it has to keep getting challenging at a pace we can handle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Helpful. Thanks. I enjoyed a TED talk ([http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow](http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow)) by the author of the book you suggested, I might read it.

<comment><USER3> Reading it now -- it's somewhat academic, but comprehensive. Many people have recommended Dan Pink's "Drive" as a good popular summary of the findings.

Flow would be a deep-dive after that -- I skipped Drive, because I was already reading a lot about it, and was looking for deeper information.

Peopleware also covers this topic from a programmer-centric perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Programming is like writing - in the main the subject matters much more than the writing itself.

So perhaps (in deference to your new project) you should look at the projects - do they add value to the world, are you selling adverts to Silicon Valley or water purifiers to the Great Rift Valley?

Sometimes the kick comes from helping other people learn and grow as programmers - maybe you are just ready to program less ...

</comment><comment><USER5> Projects I liked:

\- Projects I worked alone on or at least was the single person responsible for my code (I do like to work with a good designer or a smart guy for the API)

\- Projects that involved learning new techniques

\- Projects where I was doing a healthy balance of new code vs maintenance

\- Projects with very little red tape and lots of responsibility

Technology by itself can be interesting and rewarding but it's never the reason you'll like a project.

I had a lot of fun doing a very simple CMS backed website in Python with Django where I did basically everything I already knew in another language, only targeting IE9 or more sane so I could use CSS Animations and other nice stuff. The subject itself was not appealing itself although the client was nice and the designer was very good.

If you find yourself using cool hip framework x in hipster language y and you are still not happy: perhaps you're just doing too much maintenance on an application that really starts to remind you of that old Java Enterprise stuff you so desparately was trying to get away from, dragging yourself from meeting to meeting while you wait for that half-assed designer to finally give you the design you are now asking for for two weeks on end already.

My goals for the future are:

\- Do more small projects that I can rule completely on my own, until I

\- Find a product that will either be completely mine, or

\- Get into a startup with brilliant people

</comment><comment><USER6> So when I started my job 3 years ago, I went from Perl based tedious stuff, to building a database and web front end for my organisation. I decided to learn Django. That took away a lot of boring boilerplate, letting me concentrate on the _create_ interesting stuff. The documentation is good, and its very well thought out (not what I find when I am trying out JavaScript frameworks). That helps.

Now the application is built, I get to do more tedious data cleaning, fixing all the crap data that the users put in. I don't enjoy it as much. Sometime I get a feature request that is challenging, and my interest picks up again.

I deficiently find that when I am creating something that it inspires me a lot more. Also having worked on a coupld of maintenance programming jobs before, I am not going back to that.

</comment><comment><USER7> How do you make programming fun again? You learn Haskell.

<comment><USER8> I found both learning and just writing in Haskell a joy, and I can recommend it full-heartedly. It might be a little hard to get started with ( especially if you're not familiar with functional programming ), but it's really awesome, interesting, and just flat out fresh once you get into it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Take vitamins & get more sleep. Sometimes its not the coding - its you (please read in a good way - once you overwork its easy to go in a downward spiral.) \- Been there, done that

<comment><USER10> Correct any vitamin deficiencies, rather than take vitamins generally. The most likely is probably vitamin D deficiency. Indoor office worker in a northern latitude? Even if you do spend some time outside you are likely deficient during the winter.

And eating nutrient dense food is the best way to get vitamins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For me, it was moving from Java to Scala, but YMMV

<comment><USER12> That was me a while back with just learning Scala.

Years later I got a gig doing Scala. I did not like it at all working with Scala and other people code.

The libraries and their classes or traits expect a certain type and juggling between them via type casting several time until you get the correct type wasn't fun. The reflection class, at least for me, was hard to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I try to learn a new language or framework when I enter this mode. It works best when I dive in and code through an actual tutorial first because there is a specific achievable goal.

Beyond that I've discovered working on programming challenges frequently helps as this leads me to research topics that are new to me and stokes the passion fire.

</comment><comment><USER14> I know what you're talking about. I remember feeling it often when I was first hacking away at QBasic in high school. I don't have any good suggestions on how to bring that "sparkle" back, other than to find projects that you're passionate about.

<comment><AUTHOR> That might turn out to be a very good advice. I may have been increasingly approaching my projects as senseless chores.

<comment><USER15> I know how you feel, a few months ago I was working on a game with a friend just for fun (I was coding, he was doing everything art, music, etc). At one point I realized I was putting off working on it because I wasn't enjoying it, so I just told him that I didn't want to make it anymore and moved on to projects I found more interesting (like cryptography :D). If your projects feel like chores, I would recommend learning about a field you don't know much about and starting from scratch there :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Learn how to make iPhone or Android apps, it will be fun

</comment><comment><USER17> Join an open source community! :)</comment>


Facebook + Googlemaps + ChatRoulette = FaceRoulette.net  - <AUTHOR> http://faceroulette.net New version.
Simple concept: 1. Facebook: integration to avoid perverts, you only share your firstname/gender/location. You can easily share your profile if you like someone. 2. Googlemaps: integration to show partner location on city level (instead of pretending that people are anonymous, see chatroulettemap.com, we used it as a feature!) You will hop around the world, a whole new experience!
It's pretty new so at this moment almost nobody knows it exists, everything has a start. Let's try to get the buzz on, try it and if you like it spread the word! <comment><AUTHOR> New version.

Simple concept: 1\. Facebook: integration to avoid perverts, you only share your firstname/gender/location. You can easily share your profile if you like someone. 2\. Googlemaps: integration to show partner location on city level (instead of pretending that people are anonymous, see chatroulettemap.com, we used it as a feature!) You will hop around the world, a whole new experience!

It's pretty new so at this moment almost nobody knows it exists, everything has a start... Try it and if you like the concept spread the word! Any comments, harsh critics and any other feedback are more than welcome.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you establish hosting for sites you build for clients? - <AUTHOR>

I build a variety of small websites for clients.  Sometimes these sites will require ongoing maintenance, but many times these are one-off creations that have no requirement for future enhancement.  I've hosted some of these sites in my own shared hosting account ... but for these 'build-it-and-forget-it' sites with no prospect of future development I'd prefer to setup the site's hosting so that the web site owner is responsible for the hosting account and I don't need to maintain the relationship with the client.  In other words, I don't want to have to go back to these clients a year from now, and ask them to pay the annual hosting charge that just hit my credit card for the hosting account I setup for their site.  On the flip-side, I've found it difficult to have non-technical clients order the correct hosting since they usually don't know what they need, and it's not an ideal solution to be asking them for their credit card information so that I can place the order myself.
An alternate solution is to order the hosting myself, then transfer everything over to their name and credit card ... but that still feels like a less than elegant solution to what must be a very common problem .... and even with that solution, I've experienced cases where the hosting company still charges my card despite telling me they had switched everything to the client's name.
Without hosting these sites in your own accounts, how do you guys go about getting the hosting-angle of thigs setup for clients in these types of scenarios? <comment><USER2> Heck, that's what reseller accounts are for with most hosting providers. Part of your business model should be to (re-)sell them hosting; it'll give you recurring (monthly) income for the lean times.

Plus, there really aren't any one-and-dones. Down the road they'll want changes; if they host it themselves, it's a quick road to making something easy, difficult.

Also, think of it from their POV: most business owners want a single POC for their website. Not one guy to develop it, another company to host, a third to do email, etc. They're willing to pay a (smallish, generally) premium to keep it smooth. Heck, I know guys who buy the $5 godaddy shared hosting and split it among like 10 clients, charging them all $15 / month. (Note: I find this a little unethical, but very profitable. Not what I'd do, but there are lots of folks who do it.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Suggest a hosting provider / plan for your clients. In some cases you may even insist on certain hosting or charge more for dealing with horrible hosting. If a potential client were to find purchasing a hosting plan based on my suggestions too challenging, then I'm not sure I would want to work with that client for a website.

DO NOT get into providing hosting for your clients. It's not worth it. It's great if you are making decent money from your clients in monthly hosting fees... and then something blows up and your client needs hosting support when you are in the middle of some other project with a short deadline. Sure, you can get whitelabel support but the client will still be beating down your door for help.

Hosting providers make a tiny profit on each client and only break into the black by having huge numbers of paying accounts. That's not a business model you want to be messing with. Instead, leave the hosting to the people who are best at it. Offering some sort of "maintenance" option is fine though.

</comment><comment><USER4> I always set the customer up with their own account, that they are responsible for paying for. I might lose $10/month, but I save at least that much in my time worrying about collecting, plus it reduces my responsibilities. Mosso (Rackspace Cloud now) has a nifty little feature that lets you setup clients on your account and set the rate they are billed at etc. Mosso worries about getting the money, you just sit back and profit. They even have a support service you can pay for (I think its $5/mo/domain), and throw all of your customers at. They will relay the information to you, and answer any questions about downtime that has to do with Rackspace etc, all while acting like they work for you.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a single box for 'friends', if they can support it themselves they're welcome to use it, if it costs me too much time or if they do something commercial I ask them to take it to a party they pay for that.

Another thing I did was to set up a free hosting environment using 'drupal' in order to get them to be as self-supporting as possible.

I understand that you're in the business of building the sites themselves, maybe you could partner with a company that does hosting and get a referral fee ?

</comment><comment><USER6> Why don't you give your customers both the options? If you host and manage charge them a little more than what the hosting company takes in yearly fee, for maintaining it and don't order it using your credit card. If they rather buy hosting and manage it on their it is still good for you since you don't have to spend time on maintenance.</comment>


Ask YC: What have you learned that rocked your world? - <AUTHOR> My question is meant to be open-ended and not limited to programming. My examples:
Meta-programming, in ruby (the power of code that creates code, being released from the tyranny of typing)
Social psychology (Social proof, hacks for relating to people, hacks for appealing to the opposite sex, hacks for reading people)
Economics (Why the minimum wage is damaging, why free trade is good) <comment><USER2> Social psychology was a big one for me too. Cialdini's book Influence gave me a lot to think about.

The role that biases play in my own thinking. Charlie Munger's speech that was on this site a while ago articulates a lot of things I was beginning to realize (<http://vinvesting.com/docs/munger/human_misjudgement.html>)

I struggled for a long time with procrastination and low productivity. When I realized that abandoning the parts of my life that were not deeply fulfilling (browsing the web aimlessly, refreshing RSS feeds, wasting time in forums, watching tv etc) would not actually be as painful as I thought it would, it changed how I live and work in a very fundamental way.

<comment><USER3> If you guys like Munger, pick up his book, "Poor charlie's almanac"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"... What have you learned that rocked your world? ..."_

Mostly about empirical observations about the natural world. One very simple idea while in High School studying physics & chemistry that _"the iron in your blood flowing through your arteries is composed of left over bits of exploded starts (Iron)"_. Another is how little we really observe and notice things. Every week I make a habit of exploring & looking for new things mostly flora or fauna [0] in the bush. It sharpens your observation skills and keeps you fit at the same time. It never ceases to amaze me finding a new variety of insect. [1] Last weeks was a huge fly. [2] Never seen them before. I'm still hunting after a huge flying insect approx: 4-5cm in diameter that I've only seen around 500+m elevation.

[0] <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600203012569/> and <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600195813933/>

[1] <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600195955778/>

[2] <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/2294889518>

<comment><USER5> To take it up a notch, _everything_ in your body is composed of left over bits of exploded stars.

<comment><USER4> _"... everything in your body is composed of left over bits of exploded stars ..."_

Sort of.

It is Iron with Atomic #26, the 6th most commonly abundant element, that in massive stars where stellar nucleosynthesis occurs is the point where the energy generated through fusion. The binding energy to add a neutron or proton, releases energy. After Iron (Fe56) the binding energy required to add a neutron or proton requires extra energy and can result in a collapse with _heavier than Iron_ elements being generated in a _super nova_.

While stars up to our sun convert H->He and heavier elements it is Carbon, Nitrogen & Oxygen cycle (especially Carbon) that allows larger stars to create energy and finally the advanced fusion stages required for elements up to Iron. So you could probably argue that the existence of Carbon in humans is the just as significant.

Elements heavier than Iron requires explosive nucleosynthesis or a super nova to be created. These elements have unstable half lives. Hence the importance of Iron. [0]

[0] I've butchered a lot of physics here. Feel free to pick me up on the finer points.

<comment><USER5> Okay, true, but I'll stand by a "nearly everything" since a very large subset of organic molecules are composed entirely of atoms lighter than Fe. We're probably safe to say that only small parts of your body require more exotic cosmological phenomena for their base material.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Complex and emergent systems. Certain systems can have only local interactions but have global effects. Some effects in nature are not the result of a single cause, but from the interactions of many local parts. One can design robust behavior (though not necessarily optimal) in the global system through only defining local interactions. Many biological systems have this architecture, such as ant colonies, immune systems, and neural networks, and flocks. So do non-biological ones, such as capitalistic economies, traffic jams, and choosing neighbors. The Atlantic's "Seeing around corners" is a good intro to the topic, as well as "The computational beauty of nature"

Sexual selection is the second child of Darwin that people haven't paid as much attention to, but he spent a significant amount of time devoting study to it. It poses interesting questions on the canonical natural selection mechanisms, when mate selection is factored in. When you look at the mating systems of other animals, there's a wide wide variety. From males that care for the young, polygamy being the norm in birds, homosexuality not all that uncommon in the animal kingdom, and factors that affect male:female size ratio. After learning about it, you dismiss arguments people make about how this or that aspect of nature is 'unnatural'. Chances are, they've never looked, and think all mating systems are like human ones.

Quitting the for-loop through functional programming styles. Hello map, inject, and each. Understanding the power of Lisp, and why it has parens everywhere. Understanding continuations are functions that don't return, and you merely chain them together. Still working on monads though.

<comment><USER7> Emergent phenomena were a big one for me, too. One of my favorite pieces on the topic of economics is Hayek's: <http://www.econlib.org/Library/Essays/hykKnw1.html>

Dawkin's "The Ancestor's Tale" showed me this pattern in biology, too, and drastically rewrote the way I see the world.

Being able to follow and understand mathematical proofs for the first time was also enlightening. I prefer the simple, clever ones, such as Cantor's diagonal proof of the uncountability of the real numbers: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor's_diagonal_argument>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Euler's equation.

That conservation laws follow from deeper symmetry principles (Noether's theorem). Symmetry under translation corresponds to conservation of momentum, symmetry under rotation to conservation of angular momentum, symmetry in time to conservation of energy!

<http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NoethersSymmetryTheorem.html>

<comment><USER5> This has to do with the context where I learned Euler's Equation, but I can never separate it from Fourier and (later) Laplace transforms. Those are all so beautiful and mind blowing.

<comment><USER9> I'll second that Fourier transform. The idea that you could represent basically a list of numbers with a sum of sines, or any other orthonormal set is mindblowing to me. Nothing in math has blown my mind as much as functional analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That the hack is the architecture.

Architectures are designed to solve the known set of problems at the time of inception. When that problem set changes people try to adapt the architecture to solve the new problem set. Usually this is done through the path of least resistance. The easiest to implement with the least known side effects.

My favorite example: Web browsers were never ever meant to host applications when they were first designed. They can only passably do so today through elaborate hacks. This is why writing a good web application is so difficult and time consuming. These hacks are now well known established parts of what is the accepted architecture of web browsers but they were once hacks and are still hacks.

Similar examples exist all over the place. Design for the future and build for today...

</comment><comment><USER11> "We can implant entirely false memories"[1]

I also remember being really suprised when I first learned the Central Limit Theorem[2] a long time ago.

That said, Hofstadter's "Gödel, Escher, Bach"[3] probably had the biggest impact on me.

[1] [http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/dec/04/science.resear...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2003/dec/04/science.research1)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_limit_theorem>

[3] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel,_Escher,_Bach>

<comment><USER5> I don't know that I was surprised by the CLT itself. What surprised me about it was how _nice_ it made everything else. In some sense there are whole books full of theorems which go from tedious and complex to 12-year-old simple in just 3 letters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 1\. I could learn how to be attractive to women. Everything I learned when younger was wrong, and relationships don't just happen, you must work to make them happen. Intelligence actually can be used for sexual attraction.

2\. When I am sure I am being totally logical, something analyzing myself shows very clearly that my motivations aren't what I think. People who deny their irrational humanity the most often are extremely irrational humans in many obvious ways (to someone other than themselves). A whole lot of extremely complex things are really a form of very simple, and often counterproductive, fear.

3\. I really don't have to be what other people want me to be.

4\. A lot of deeply held and complex human phenomena have extremely simple explanations, which you aren't allowed to say, but which can be extremely useful to know nonetheless. (For example, take the tapestry of specific social and philosophical beliefs about religion, all constructed out of transparently motivated falsehood or meaningless gibberish.)

<comment><USER6> ditto on #1. What women sometimes view as happy coincidences in romantic fate is actually the work of meticulous planning on part of the guy.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another: Joel's law of Leaky Abstractions was forehead-slappingly good at expressing what I had never put into words.

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.htm...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LeakyAbstractions.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Selfish Gene, social dynamics, sexual attraction, status.

It took me a few months of reading and thinking about all this stuff to comprehend it and put any of it into action. When I did, and saw the results, it broke my brain and forced me to re-evaluate pretty much everything I understood about the world... not just human behaviour and relationships but business, economics, politics, the lot.

</comment><comment><USER14> Girls like sex too.

<comment><USER9> On this tangent. I think that the moment I realized that nobody thinks as complicated as we think they do. Basically it boiled down to this thought, "If that girl came up to me right now, how would I feel?" "I'd feel great thats what!". And then I get up the balls to go and talk to her. The idea of putting myself in other's shoes really changed my attitude on a lot of things.

<comment><USER15> You know what's funny? What you said is true for pretty much everything else in life, too. Not just sex.

Here's something I've learned that rocked my world: most things are not nearly as complicated as I make them in my head. Apparently this comes from some kind of childhood issue with pleasing parents. But if you're smart, chances are you can do a lot more than you give yourself credit for.

I just wish I'd learned that earlier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> * Q-BASIC, when I was in kindergarten.

* Lisp, then all over again with Haskell.

* Anarchocapitalism.

* The proof of Turing's undecidability theorem.

* Positivism (even though I'm a Platonist).

* How compilers work.

* RSA.

</comment><comment><USER17> Stack three polarizers. Orient #1 and #2 parallel, orient #3 perpendicular. See no light come through.

Rotate #2 to 45 degrees. See light come through.

Remove #2 completely. See no light come through.

</comment><comment><USER18> Just about anyone can do just about anything, eventually.

Too many people prevent possibility by discounting others because they fail to distinguish between the words "eventually" and "never".

</comment><comment><USER19> Fun question. First thoughts: logo (the computer language), the proof of the infinitude of primes, calculus and Newtonian mechanics, general relativity, the idea that thinking is a learnable skill.

It's interesting to me what I've learnt but which didn't make my list: most things related to programming, mathematics, and physics, including quantum mechanics. Generally speaking, most of that knowledge was more incremental.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen The Selfish Gene.

<comment><USER20> The Selfish Gene changed my life, along with Phantoms in the Brain By V.S. Ramachandran.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Differential equations. That the world could be described by calculus was a revelation to me.

</comment><comment><USER22> Godel's incompleteness theorems.

<comment><USER23> How did that rock your world?

I'm not asking you to explain the theorems -- I understand them -- just indicate why or how they are significant to you.

<comment><USER22> In brief, they're mathematical proofs that certain things are unknowable. Mathematics rarely gets so close to theology. And religion is rarely so certain.

<comment><USER23> Oh, so before you learned about the theorems, you thought you could know anything, and the theorems set you right on that point? And somehow that was a theological or transcendental experience?

<comment><USER22> There's a big difference in the emotional experience of thinking you know something, and actually having proof of it. I think most theists would be similarly amazed by an encounter with a deity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Mathematical things: A clever geometric proof of the AM-GM inequality, the Monty Hall problem, functional programming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. The Monty hall problem is definitely a mind-bender in a good way. I started with Erlang, but haven't found a project that begged for it yet, though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Differential calculus. Lisp. The circle of fifths.

<comment><USER26> For sure on the Circle of Fifths, and the whole "music theory is stacks of thirds, fourths, or fifths all the way down" thing is pretty neat.

But what blew my mind even more in music is that our 12 tone even-tempered scale is arbitrary and only firmed up a few hundred years ago. Everything before that (and for many years after, and in many non-western musical cultures) was written assuming just intonation. Modern electronic instruments have brought just intonation (and all sorts of weird stuff) back into reasonable usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't have any mind-blowing scientific proof to quote, though I am a trivia and wikipedia junky.

Just the other day I was watching my dog 'dig a hole' inside my house and attempt to bury one of his toys. The problem was that he wasn't actually digging anything up, and was covering the toy with 'ghost' matter (there wasn't anythying there, it was make believe dirt).

This got me to thinking that our entire universe has conspired for planet Earth to harbour life, and for life to evolve through millions of iterations to create the genus canus, and animal behaviour has developed to this exact point in time, where my dog innately knows how to dig, and he has no idea why.... and for that matter, neither do I. We're all such a fluke of existence, and we never take a moment to realize that.

</comment><comment><USER28> The thing I'm most thankful to have learned in 2007 is that there is a _lot_ more that I don't know about programming than I thought there was.

</comment><comment><USER29> That a single photon can pass through two slits at once, and interfere with itself.

</comment><comment><USER30> If you create a good product, some people will take you seriously and buy it.

</comment><comment><USER31> Darwinism, Evolution and survival of the fittest. Such a simple idea that has such broad implications.

</comment><comment><USER32> Diagonalization. Undecidability. Arrow's Theorem.

</comment><comment><USER33> The most influential thing I've learned is that people act by their individual set of incentives. Apply choice aspects of psychology and economics – then you got something big. Think game theory.

Also, I'm waiting for the Human Genome Project to help elucidate more on the placebo effect.

I think it has a major correlation with the phenotypic vs. genotypic expression of faith - something all humans display toward an institution, ideology, themselves, and/or another person.

This will be immensely powerful information.

</comment><comment><USER34> That my child puts everything I've ever done into some lame also-did-this category.

Other parents will understand.

</comment><comment><USER35> 1\. Ludwig Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico Philosophicus" (the extremism of the idea, the solemn (poetic?) tone that nevertheless emerges from the sentences of such a rigorous work)

2\. RMS reflections about morals in software programming (I may not wholly agree, but he taught me a whole new way of thinking about software)

3\. Prolog declarative approach (instead of describing how to solve a problem, just describe the problem)

<comment><USER36> You actually read the Tractatus? Wow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The universe rewards boldness

</comment><comment><USER38> Computability and runtime efficiency. (I've productively applied this to problems in every domain of my life.)

The importance of limits. (From testing limit cases heavily, to time being the limit of being, to value sources being the limiting horizon of personality. Paul DePalma, Martin Heidegger, and Charles Taylor being to thank for teaching me those, respectively.)

</comment><comment><USER39> 1\. Systems Theory with Buckminster Fuller and Russell Ackoff.

2\. Recursion, not just in programming, but in other parts of nature.

3\. Memory and social size approximations, such as memory chunking in seven plus or minus two, and Dunbar's number.

</comment><comment><USER40> Quite a long list actually and hard to put in words.... Functional programming in general..especially its roots( halting problem, church's thesisetc...),reading about ENIAC .... small-world problem(miligram) and modelling such networks,beauty of primes and number theoretic algorithms,quantum mechanics. Several books have also influenced deeply...textbooks/sci-fi/cyberpunk...works of hofstadter,stephenson etc....

</comment><comment><USER41> Discovering many of the beliefs and attributes I had grown and fostered within myself fall within what is described as the Law of Attraction (though I can't say I have as much stock in it as many do). There just seems to be an attitude that people who I see as successful have, and every time I see my attitude relating to theirs, I sit back and think, "wow."

</comment><comment><USER42> Economics. After years of studying earth science and natural processes, economics taught me that economic drivers dominate everything, including everything about the natural world. It also taught me that economics is completely amoral. It doesn't look for good or bad, it just achieves results that society wants - versus what society says it wants.

</comment><comment><USER43> Airway, Breathing, Circulation... Everything else is details

Carl Jung's ideas of Myth and Robert Johnson's "He"

Wealth is what people want. If you have what people want, you have wealth. You can create what people want.

The point of working is to make enough wealth to retire. You can do that all at once, or by selling off hours of your life in exchange for money.

The "money problem" can be solved.

Recursion.

Code == data == code

</comment><comment><USER44> That an interpreter or compiler is just another program.

Metaprogramming and higher-order functions.

Squeak the IDE.

That there is no magic in computers or programming.

</comment><comment><USER45> Most people do not like when I'm telling them about my startup. Especially online. Somehow talking about what you care about is taken as a self-promotion and counts as spam in their eyes. Go figure.

</comment><comment><USER46> Don't know why, but I really liked network calculus in university: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_calculus>

</comment><comment><USER47> Being smart and working hard only mildly correlates with success.

</comment><comment><USER48> To talk

To write

Gravity

Newtonian laws

The scientific method

Although only now I'm starting to realize how amazing all those things were. And I took it for granted for all my school years... They were all just means to pass a class. What a shame.

</comment><comment><USER5> Haskell (not just monads, though they were impressive too)

</comment><comment><USER49> Parenting is harder than it looks - and much more rewarding than you might expect.

I didn't have an appreciation for how amazing my parents were until I had children.

</comment><comment><USER50> Soloing on the guitar.

That working for a company isn't the only option.

</comment><comment><USER51> I second Euler's equation.

Also, two books that really rocked my world (though I guess it's not really an answer to the question) were Dune and House of Leaves.

</comment><comment><USER52> hey ericb, can you tell us how you learned social psychology? maybe what books, sites ... etc ?

also im checking the material that FleursDuMal mentioned ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely. I was a psych major. Another huge thing I learned, btw, was that my persistence (stubbornness, if you ask my wife ;) lets me learn most anything, which is how I came to be a developer.

Instead of how I learned it, I'll point you to some topics in social psych:

Read Cialdini, the psychology of influence.

This doubles for attracting investment and women: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_proof>

Social skills-the parens are part of the link: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirroring_>(psychology)

Halo Effect <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect>

Interesting experiments:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment>

<http://www.prisonexp.org/>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments>

If an area I listed here or in the original post is of particular interest, let me know and I'll reply with the specifics of what I meant, or pointers to some info on it.

<comment><USER52> thanks!, supercool! ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Basically anything by Greg Egan, particularly Permutation City.

Also nanotechnology, the singularity, and friendly AI, in order of learning about them.

</comment><comment><USER5> The simplicity and difficulty of Bayes' Law.

</comment><comment><USER54> GIZA++ and statistical machine translation tools.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hilbert spaces.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lisp macros

</comment><comment><USER55> POKER IS NOT JUST A GAME

First, thanks for posting the question. I've read a lot of good info in this thread and I'd like to reciprocate.

The most important lesson I've learned in my life is that the people who have any influence over you are most likely playing you. And most "dirty tricks" are not done directly, but through their proxies. If this is news to you, you wont even be able to tell whose pulling the levers.

People may be moral on Sunday, but, come Monday, the boss can pretty much define what's right and wrong and people will fall in line, even if it's to conspire and betray. Most people have the morality of a squirrel: they will steal your nuts, but only when you aren't looking.

Their justifications for screwing you:

1\. as long as they don't get caught, they think it's OK;

2\. they assume they are being played, too, so it's just the way they think the world works;

3\. the ends justify the means;

4\. some people (salesmen / head hunters / egotistic managers) play it for the game: playing people like a puppet on a string, what's not to like, especially if it puts jingle in the pocket?

5\. better him than me; it's a dog eat dog world;

6\. who can afford morals when you have a mortgage payment due? Family first;

7\. the naive deserve to be played if they're this easy;

8\. bacon cheeseburgers, chocolate, and over-generous salaries go a long way towards assuaging the guilt;

9\. some think saying a prayer every Sunday absolves them;

10\. periodically spreading graft in the form of gifts, bonuses, perks, plush job positions, etc., is an embodiment of their good intentions and shows what swell guys they really are. In reality, they are trying to buy you.

Here's a few clues that should draw your attention:

1\. if it seems like your manager is doing no better than flipping a coin whenever he makes a technical decision, it's not because he's a moron when it comes to technical matters, it's because he is factoring his decision into his scheme of playing the maximum number of his employees to his benefit.

2\. if the boss makes totally random statements that technically don't make any sense at all, it's because they weren't intended to make technical sense. He's sending you a message in manager-speak, the only code he understands. (More on this below.)

3\. if buds that used to pal around with you start avoiding you, the boss has gotten to them in some way.

And here's one anti-pattern: don't think that being outwardly religious means that one is less evil than the non-religious. It just means the evil is cloaked in religious vestments.

Here's an example of how to decode a totalling random thing your boss may say. "Put the prototype in production now." Those six words have a totally different meaning to a manager than to a person naive enough to take this statement literally. Translation: "What I want you to do is this: rewrite the prototype and turn it into production code, test it, and install it before the end of the day, or, if you prefer, you can work all night and install it first thing tomorrow morning while I'm pounding away on my trophy wife. I know what I said may have sounded kind of funny, because I don't understand the stupid details that you techies masturbate over, but if I had said anything truly insane I'm sure that you idiot techies would have either corrected me, or made the proper translations from manager-speak to geek-speak. I mean, surely you're smart enough to do that, aren't you? You say you can speak all these different languages. Well, why don't you start with English? I own all of your asses, so you will either find a way to do this or else tell me in the most obsequious manner how my grand plan may be amended in a manner such that I will save face and still get what I want in the quickest way. And, oh, by the way, if this causes the database to start hemorrhaging data, it's all your fault because I hereby give you total responsibility and zero authority to actually get the task done. Deal with it, and get out of my face already. I have no clue how to actually do anything that I asked you to do, but that's not my problem, now, is it, you fooken mooches? Now I've got to get back to my office and covertly read the email you've been sending each other. Suck it! Uh, I mean, good luck on getting this done by my totally meaningless deadline!" There, that wasn't so hard to decode, was it? The reason why it becomes easier and easier to decode manager-speak is because a lot of the words and phrases remain the same, especially the phrases "idiots," "suck it," and "don't bother me with details, you ass-wipes! I can't even remember the passwords to half my accounts. How the hell do you think I can help you with your petty problems? Now, for Christsakes, leave me alone!"

Most people are amateurs at being pure evil, however, and have tells. They avoid looking you in the eyes, or give short, evasive or noncommittal answers. They often don't face you while talking to you, and their voice is lower than it is normally. They may look at their computer monitor as if it's revealing the answer to the universe and they are too busy soaking in life's answers to attend to your silly, silly questions that deal with boring things like databases or how we might make their company some coin.

The Pros, on the other hand, have learned the tricks to hiding their culpability: they have learned to control their emotions so that they can appear charming and look you straight in the eyes while lying. Finding the Pro's tells is much harder.

The most common way for a player to judge whether his conspiracies have been found out is to occasionally "ping" you and judge your reactions. The simplest form this takes is a cheery "Good Morning," except this is not a pleasantry, your boss is using it like radar. The naive wont be able to control the bile that starts to well up in the throat when they see somebody who is playing them, and they will immediately give it away on their face, and this is of course instantly readable. The ping succeeded. If you understand how the game is played, however, you will immediately give a reciprocating cheerful "Good morning," not because you give a rat's ass about your boss' well-being, but because showing your hand makes it even easier for your boss to play you. The corollary is to never let on that you know the rules of the game, which is why you almost never see these missives in print, and they will be quickly disavowed or shrugged off as casually as Bush shrugs off the fact he belongs to a secret society (Skull and Bones -- look it up). Who said poker's just a game?

Some indicators of Pro players: they pay a lot of attention to their appearance (one exception: they think they can cover up their rolls and rolls of fleshy fat with really expensive leather coats); they attach a huge amount of importance on being able to tightly control their emotions (or use them to personal gain, to wit, watch Hillary turn on the waterworks when her words are no longer effective); they tightly control information: they only release information that either makes them look good, is benign, or is vitally important to getting the job done; they know how to put the best light on a sucky situation, and, conversely, are quick to throw mud at others, even when they are three levels down the ladder and have absolutely zero authority, they still try to divert the responsibility onto those who are either unable to defend themselves or are unwilling to stoop to this nonsense. Most of the time, however, you wont even know it's happening. Most of it doesn't surface, but some eventually bubbles up from the depths. The most insidious members of our society are cowards, and prefer maneuvering in the shadows.

So amoral and base are these people that they will even try to play you after you give your notice. While you desperately try to break free from the beady- eyed little monsters, they will ask for that last pound of flesh without even blinking. From the most evil there is absolutely no remorse; and from those trying to buy back a piece of their souls, a generous severance. Take it -- you deserve it more than you will ever know.

Those weird things people have said to you in the past that you just write off as unimportant or meaningless, well, they weren't. The motivations behind those weird statements were most likely guileful, trying to get you to expose your cards, or manipulate you.

How to know you're being played? Aside from the clues I list above, you need to totally clear your head and let your subconscious pick it apart at night. I literally woke up one morning and knew what had happened because my dreams had played it out for me. Then once you know what happened, and understand these unspoken rules I've laid out, it's not too difficult to confirm. And to be specific about clearing your head, I mean eating like a cave man, and exercising like a cave man. Don't even ingest caffeine if you are trying to get to that point where your subconscious is able to tell you important things and you are capable of listening.

However, I just may be over-sensitive. And I suck at poker. But I'm learning.

</comment><comment><USER56> XKCD

</comment><comment><USER57> Stuart Kaufmann's "order for free" in complex systems.

His books are insightful and also a pleasure to read.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Kauffman>

</comment><comment><USER58> Epistemology from The Fabric of Reality (to start)</comment>


Windows Azure vs Amazon EC2 vs Google App Engine - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/791447/windows-azure-vs-amazon-ec2-vs-google-app-engine

<comment><USER2> I hate seeing EC2 compared to Azure or GAE - it really doesn't make sense. Do you want to manage your own instances or do you want to just push up an application? Make that decision and then decide between EC2/Rackspace or GAE/Azure

Also, Heroku is missing here - I would use that before Azure or GAE.

<comment><USER3> You can use EC2 in somewhat similar ways to GAE. They have Elastic Map Reduce (which runs the MapReduce side of Hadoop) and SimpleDB/S3 for storage. SimpleDB is even one of the backends that Django nonrel supports. The only real instance you have to manage is the web/app server. Amazon also offers a level of free service:

<http://aws.amazon.com/free/>

So I'd say they are at least somewhat comparable.

<comment><USER4> It is important to note that this feature started today, and is only available to new customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This post is a bit old. And, for example, there were some changes with Azure announced last week at PDC, like the VM roles. But this article is a good baseline.But definitely make sure to look up the latest on the various services before making a decision.

<comment><USER6> I'm not even sure it's a good baseline. For example one of the discussions involves EC2 and .Net and the main criticism of EC2 is it doesn't support Windows 2008. Anyone who knows EC2 will tell you that hasn't been true for a while and that's kind of an important distinction.

I don't keep a close enough eye on App Engine to know about it but as someone who knows Azure and EC2 both of those are mis-represented here and that makes this next to useless imho.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just thought you might want to know that web applications hosted on GAE are not accessible to Iranians, and presumably to people of other countries in OFAC sanction list.

Google responds with a "403 Forbidden".

</comment><comment><USER8> "On GAE Mail just works. At the time of writing, Azure doesn't offer SMTP out so you need a 3rd party server. "

Eh, not really, since GAE IP addresses were abused by spammers, mails go out but how many of them hit the inbox?

<comment><USER9> In my experience you need to use a third party vendor like SendGrid regardless of what cloud platform you use. This is probably increasingly true of traditional hosts as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> See also [http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/5/26/end-to-end- perform...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/5/26/end-to-end-performance- study-of-cloud-services.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reposted from Programming SubReddit by user PanosJee: [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/dzegn/windows_a...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/dzegn/windows_azure_vs_amazon_ec2_vs_google_app_engine/) (I'll delete mine repost if he posts)

<comment><AUTHOR> OP on Reddit didn't mind (I asked him). But give credit where credit is due.</comment></comment>


Why is Australia building a FTTH network that is only 100Mbps? Why not gigabit?  - <AUTHOR>

The Australian government is constructing a brand new, purpose built from scratch nationwide fibre to the home broadband network.  However sights are set extremely low when it comes to performance.  They are promising 100Mbps which seems slow.  Hong Kong offers symmetric gigabit home connections over fibre.  Why is Australia constructing a superhighway and not making it fast?  Surely the cost is in getting the cables laid and that gigabit would cost little more than 100Mbps? <comment><USER2> Probably because for one, you're not going to get gigabit speeds in practice; the servers only have limited amounts of bandwidth, so you'll probably only be getting a few megabits to tens of megabits most of the time anyhow.

Also, fiber is generally pretty scalable. Once the fiber is laid, you generally have an awful lot of unused fibers; the limiting factor is the routing hardware, which can be upgraded later. The initial investment, for getting the fiber in the ground, on the poles, and to the homes, is the important part.

Heck, in the US, there are places where they're still working on 10 Mbps FTTH networks, and places where there aren't any FTTH network plans at any point within the near future. 100 Mbps FTTH would be great.

Also, remember that Australia (like the US) is a heck of a lot bigger and more spread out than Hong Kong. That means a lot more miles of fiber for the same number of people, which means more of the initial investment needs to go into just laying the cables.

<comment><AUTHOR> All true, but surely the cost of implementing gigabit instead of 100Mbps is trivial relative to the cost of laying all that cable? Why lay a formula one racetrack and only drive pedal cars on it?

<comment><USER2> Er, no, as I said, the real difference between gigabit and 100 Mbps fiber is in the routers (and repeaters, and switches, and the like), not the cables. And it would cost significantly more to implement gigabit than 100 Mbps, and it wouldn't really make sense anyhow until the backbone infrastructure catches up. But if you build out the 100 Mbps network, you can then just upgrade the hardware later on, having already spent the cost on laying the fiber.

100 Mbps fiber to the home is no "pedal car." 100 Mbps is pretty damn fast.

Take a look at the global speedtest.net averages: <http://www.speedtest.net/global.php> . Note that even places with high penetration of FTTH, like South Korea and Hong Kong, only have averages for real-world performance a few times higher than, say, the US, which has very little FTTH penetration (the US is at 9.72 Mbps, Hong Kong at 14.18, South Korea at 32.26, and Australia currently at 7.12). Given these sorts of results, gigabit vs. 100 Mbps FTTH will likely make _no difference_ in real- world performance, while gigabit will cost substantially more. And they both use the same fiber; once the backbone infrastructure and hosts are in place to support that kind of bandwidth, you can upgrade from the 100 Mbps to gigabit hardware at that time, rather than spending the money now when the extra bandwidth will go unused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Money and Monopoly is why. Australia has too little competition between big providers of anything and by laying out a 100MB/sec network they want to make sure that they stay in vision to provide the 1GB/sec network next (in ten years or so) while milking the users of said 100MB/sec network. Just business.</comment>


U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra is stepping down - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-57367507-52/u.s-cto-aneesh-chopra-is-stepping-down/ <comment><USER2> Working with CodeAcademy to bring an abbreviated Codeyear program into the new summer jobs program was forward thinking.</comment>