The SEC has charged two initial coin offerings with defrauding investors - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/29/the-sec-has-charged-two-initial-coin-offerings-with-defrauding-investors/?ref=t <comment><USER3> Well it was about the damn time! A lot of ICOs are borderline (or just straight) scams. There have been even cases where the ICO funds have been "stolen" but rumours say the founders just took the money and ran.

A lot of the so called "products" and "businesses" pitched by these ICO companies are just well known already working models somehow _forced_ into the blockchain with the only reason being the ability to do an ICO (and generate an absurd amount of money for the founders).

Another common feature of ICOs: there's never any equity on the table. The founders are gonna cash in on the ICO and then later do an exit (sell the company, IPO, whatever). ICO "investors" are not gonna get much for their money here.

At least during the dotcom bubble some companies made it and the investors then got real equity for their money.

<comment><USER4> The whole thing is just a ball of insanity. I'm not sure what it is about cryptocurrency and ICOs, but it seems the representation is heavily populated with insane people.

I will recommend reading this sub-thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15369840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15369840)

Now, there is someone _bragging_ that they are _intentionally and willfully_ going to break multiple laws. They are already breaking laws, so they are also going to break some SEC regulations.

They think that being nice is going to keep them from going to prison. On top of this, they are posting about it in an open forum. They quite happily admit their criminal acts and intent to commit more.

If you're curious, their profile has more information.

I'm no psychiatrist and a few Internet posts aren't enough to diagnose someone, but I'm pretty sure they are crazy. Not 'so crazy they might just get away with it' crazy, but 'should seek professional care' crazy. Also, a lawyer... They should also seek legal council.

I'm not sure if it is the ICO and cryptocurrency that attracts crazy people, but it seems to have strong correlation. It may just be the cryptocurrency?

<comment><USER5> Ah yes, that guy.

I've been following him for a little while. Lurk his slack channel. If you think he's going to jail, you may be underestimating him: [https://medium.com/@PinkApp/pink-app-trading-latency-for- ano...](https://medium.com/@PinkApp/pink-app-trading-latency-for-anonymity- and-other-techniques-815ee21c6da4)

Do I think he is in it for the money? Oh yes. There's no doubt. But he clearly has the energy and drive to be creating something new. It's either a new kind of scam or a fundamentally-new type of enterprise, but either way, it's new.

Very few people have used tor to forge a public persona that they use to influence a ton of people and spark debate about a central issue. Satoshi and maybe gwern.

I am holding out hope that he's genuine, because as far as I know he's already received a ~crapton of money with his ICO and yet he's still here, still risking his neck.

And at the end of it, maybe sex workers will end up with protection. Maybe the system will become regulated. I don't know whether it's a good thing or bad thing, but my point is that it could change things. And that, I think, is worth watching for.

If he's genuine, his business model is the first public execution of the cyberpunk dreams presented in Snowcrash. Hopefully he doesn't get himself publicly executed, ha.

On the other hand, yes, there is a _high_ probability he's outright scamming everybody. If so, then I'll be a bit sad, but scams have existed since the beginning of time. The interesting thing here is that there's nothing fundamentally preventing this idea from being real the next time. It's theoretically possible! It wasn't possible before, and ICOs are the reason.

If you think any of this is a defense of either ICOs in general or his actions in particular, you're misreading me. It's important to look objectively about what's going on and notice any new trends in the world. Especially when they're due to shifts in technology.

EDIT: Interesting that no one is addressing the argument. Quite a radioactive idea.

<comment><USER4> I make no comment about the morality. If you read the linked thread, you will see that I make absolutely no judgment about the morality of the business in question.

In fact, morality hasn't anything to do with my statement. It's not an argument that I need to make, nor is it one I'm interested in making. In fact, it dilutes the conversation at hand.

I believe that's colloquially known as a 'red herring.'

No, my comment is that he is going to go to prison. My comment is that he has already opted to violate the law AND that he intends to break additional laws. My comment is that he not only is going to go to prison, he openly discusses his plans in public, completely ruining every possible legal defense he might have.

My comment is that he is openly conspiring and mocking the legal system. My comment is that he is going to have his comments submitted in a court of law, or that there is a good probability that those comments will be read aloud and submitted into evidence at his trial. My comment is that he is very likely to find out how angry a judge gets when one mocks the legal system and announces intent to violate the law - and then carries through with it.

My comment is that it isn't a very sane position to hold and that he should hire a lawyer.

Your reply completely chooses to ignore this and, for some reason, tries to change the topic to a morality conversation. I am not sure why you'd do such a thing? I'm not sure why you think it matters. I'm not sure why you think it needs to be addressed when it is, quite pointedly, not the topic.

I don't care who is having sex with whom, nor do I care if it is paid for - <USER2> long as there is consent. Even if I did care, it is not relevant to the topic at hand. The topic at hand is that they are going to go to prison and that they do not appear to be sane.

I don't know you but, if you think his actions are reasonable, then I'd suggest you consider seeking council from a qualified mental health professional. That's not pejorative. Mental health issues are real and should be addressed before harm occurs. If you think they are reasonable, look at their replies where they insist they will commit more crimes and where they believe they are impervious to the law.

Seriously, this is not meant to be derogatory. If you think they are reasonable and exhibiting rational behavior, you may wish to see a mental health professional. There is nothing good that can come from you ending up in prison beside them.

You will not like prison. My last years as a Marine were spent working at a detention facility. Prison is not a nice place. That's kind of by design. Buying sex and intentionally defying the SEC are not good reasons to go to prison.

<comment><USER5> Hmm? I think we're just talking past each other. I didn't mean to imply it was about morals -- it seems inherently amoral.

His motive is clearly money. He wants to get rich. That's a fine motive and he's not killing anyone or defrauding anybody (yet).

Why is it only ok to tap into a market when the legal system says it's ok? He's not even a drug dealer; drug dealers really do ruin lives.

Your argument here appears to boil down to "If you think it's sane to climb Mt. Everest, I suggest you rethink your actions. You'll probably die."

Except it's more along the lines of climbing a mountain no one has ever climbed before. Yes, you certainly have a point. He'll _probably_ get caught and probably go to prison. But... So? It's his life to risk.

In the meantime, you've got to respect the raw determination. We'll see if he delivers. If not, then it's just a bunch of hot air. But he's onto something. The legal system is going to have to adapt to something it has never had to deal with before outside of cartels: the ability to operate a full business completely anonymously.

Even if he fails, someone else will come along and do the same thing. You want ten million dollars? Heck yeah you do. Tap into that feeling and amplify it by 100x, and that's the drive that pushes people to do this kind of thing.

Really though, as long as he's not hurting anybody I don't understand why we have a right to trash on him. He hasn't stolen anyone's money yet, and he's trying to build something new. I'd like to interview him, to be honest.

(I agree you weren't really trashing on him, just pointing out how crazy his plan is. That's true, but he's not a run-of-the-mill lunatic, which is sort of what your comments imply.)

<comment><USER4> No, my argument boils down to he is willfully breaking the law while openly stating his plans and that the judges aren't going to appreciate that, the SEC isn't going to find it funny, and the prosecuting attorney is going to submit it as evidence. He is doing this while he is fully aware that prison is the likely outcome.

That's not rational. That is irrational thinking that is likely to result in harm coming to the actor.

That's pretty much the definition of mental illness.

They aren't even alone. They are just one example. Watch the comments about ICOs and cryptocurrency. You'll see comments that are saying the government can't stop them, them the individual.

No, the government can't necessarily stop an idea. They can't even really prevent cryptocurrency. What they can do, and do very efficiently, is stop the individual.

That is irrational thinking. It is how people end up in prison. I'd like it if, you know, HN visitors didn't end up in prison. I'm kind of fond of some of you. Prison is not a nice place, I've worked at one.

When you start mucking about with things with real-world implications, it's no longer a game. It's no longer something you can talk your way out of. It has real-world penalties. There are negative consequences.

The government can, and will, stop those who draw negative attention. They really, really hate it when you negatively impact the economy, as a general rule.

However, you're right. It is their life to risk. That doesn't actually make it sane.

It's not like they are going to go to prison rich. No, the government is going to issue fines to go along with their prison sentences. Do not taunt the men with guns. Taunting men with guns only works in video games and movies.

<comment><USER6> KGill if you have a specific criticism that we're being irrational, please contact us. Info in profile.

This country was founded on taunting men with guns and winning. Every bit of social progress does too. I am a small actor in comparison but the ideas are what matters.

<comment><USER7> Aye,

When there's nothing left to believe in,

It's time to make believe something better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I spent 30min on the phone with Mark Vilardo, special counsel at the SEC and the guy who will call you if you all questions about ICOs.

Basically, ICOs are 99% of the time classified as securities in the US. The main exception is if the token is non-transferrable or can be returned for what you paid for it. So, if you can't make money selling our trading it, it's not a security, which defeats the purpose of an ICO.

It sounds like who the SEC goes after is subjective, but at any point in time they could bring a suit against an ICO, even gimmick coins.

<comment><USER9> My followup question is, if exchanging World of Warcraft gold for currency was supported or facilitated by Blizzard, would the SEC classify it as a security?

Could Blizzard have an ICO for WoW gold that could only be used as it is now with no attached ideas of selling equity?

<comment><USER8> The SEC uses the Howey Test:

1\. Was there an investment of money? (money is actually broadly defined to mean anything of value)

2\. Was there an expectation of profits from the investment? (this is easy to prove because it's the opinion of the investor)

3\. Was the investment of money in a common enterprise? (this means are the interests of the investor and company aligned, or does the investment go into running a business)

4\. Does profit come from the efforts of a promoter or third party? (This means is the investor mostly powerless in having their investment go up our down in value)

In your WoW example:

1\. Yes

2\. Probably for someone

3\. Yes, the money is used to develop the platform

4\. Yes, if Blizzard hypes their coin or if you can trade it on an exchange

I think the biggest difference between an ICO and a digital good is that ICOs are traded on exchanges. If you buy a digital good and can only use/redeem/trade on the company's platform then it is not a security.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure you can hand wave the "expectation of profits" factor as easily as you did. Seems like it would have to be a reasonable expectation of profits and would probably have to be true of the majority of the purchasers.

Imagine that I bought $10k worth of Chuck E. Cheese tokens and I could convince the SEC that I sincerely expected the value of those tokens to go up substantially. I doubt that would be enough to meet the Howey requirements, even if my expectation was sincere.

<comment><USER8> From my conversation, I understood "an expectation of profits" to mean from a reasonable investor. In fact no one even has to complain if the SEC thinks someone could have expected profits then it satisfies that bullet in the test.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's nice to see action like this being taken in cases so blatantly fraudulent. One thing to take note of here is that the reason why the SEC is taking action is not simply because of reasons related to tokens or securities, but instead due to defrauding and lying to investors.

Hopefully we'll see more cases like this happening to the actors that deserve them the most. I need not mention names since I think others will do that for me.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. I heard an ocean of hype about how freedom from regulation would unlock untold innovation. It's been fascinating to watch this space rediscover the reasons that the regulations were created in the first place.

One of the interesting questions for me is the extent to which the space will start to self-regulate. Once an investment type develops a bad reputation, it can be very hard to recover. That's why major stock and commodities exchanges are serious about regulating participants, and can be much more stringent than governmental regulators. Contrast, for example, the way investors feel about NYSE or NASDAQ stocks, versus the penny stock market, which is rife with scams. [1]

Based on the history so far I'm not optimistic. But maybe they'll turn it around.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcap_stock_fraud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcap_stock_fraud)

<comment><USER13> > It's been fascinating to watch this space rediscover the reasons that the > regulations were created in the first place.

I've found that ICO's are almost identical to OTC pump and dumps - they're much less sophisticated versions of the same thing

Opportunities that are marketed as investments first, products second. Website homepages that resemble the "investors" section of ordinary website with no actual "product" presence. Vague products in markets that are easy to obfuscate or fake. Affiliations that can be purchased. High profile board members or investors who can be purchased. Social media footprint where people talking about the stock outnumber customers, etc.

If you've spent any time in Yahoo! message boards or Seeking Alpha looking at the hundreds of reverse-IPO's and pink sheet startups you'll recognize all of the same scams (and some of the same names! _cough_ McAfee _cough-cough_ )

<comment><USER14> This is why the hype typhoon of ICOs makes no sense on HN. If you did a "Show HN" with a site that was all pedigree and vagaries, no product, it would get torn to shreds. But by and large, ICO coverage seems breathless and overblown.

It's nice to see the SEC take a more active role though. Maybe they can be a decent enough filter where the ICO world can grow enough trust to be a legitimate vehicle for investing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Here's the site for: ReCoin - [https://101recoin.com/en](https://101recoin.com/en) DRC - [https://drc.world/en](https://drc.world/en)

Couple of things which are noticeable first up are: a. ReCoin at least attempts to appear legit by having a "team". DRC doesn't even do that.

b. While some (most?) ICOs do not have a convincing reason for using ethereum or blockchain, this one takes the cake. The only reason for using blockchain is..well because "blockchain".

c. The sidechain is called "Altcoin" for Recoin. DRC doesn't even get that mention. On looking through the whitepaper for DRC, there is a mention of the sidechain but nothing on site. So DRC site looks like a rush job when compared to Recoin ;)

d. Quite a lot of coins avoid SEC by kinda of ensuring they are not shares in something but paying for an unreleased product. They also try and mention that coins don't have an explicit real world value. But DRC and RECoin do neither of these.

e. These guys are based out of US, so quite easy for SEC to take action too.

Devil is in the details. It will be interesting to know how the complain landed on SEC's desk.

<comment><USER16> That video on DRC's website is absolutely ridiculous. It almost seems a parody of itself.

They also spelled their name as "Diamond Reserved Club" but on the website it's "Diamond Reserve Club" (noticed the extra d).

<comment><USER17> There are at least a few typos on the site, such as 'memebers'.

<comment><USER18> Intentional or ironic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This one sounds bad, but the problem with the Howey test is that it's overly broad. Anything from presales in a Kickstarter to ICANN selling those new domain names (like .attorney) to selling tickets to a yet-to-be-arranged event could all be considered a security under the Howey test. It's just too broad and nobody knows where the SEC will draw the line. It would be good for everyone if the SEC would simply explain on what would make a ICO legit, because currently their guidance is still too unclear. It's like they want the ability to selectively prosecute anyone, not caring that the regulatory uncertainty is keeping legitimate, risk-adverse teams away, which doesn't help.

<comment><USER20> They did say what would make an ICO legit: proper registration with the SEC.

<comment><USER4> Has any company tried to do proper registration with the SEC? If so, we're they successful?

I just hit up the mighty Google and it was interesting, but not helpful.

Search terms 'ICO proper registration SEC' yields some interesting results, including some stuff that I'm not sure made HN, but doesn't reveal any companies that have done so or tried to do so.

I'm not suggesting this, but I bet the first one that properly registers with the SEC (even if it fails horribly and was bordering in scammy) would make a mint. The tag line of 'Officially sanctioned by the SEC' would go a long ways, even if it was doomed (intentional or otherwise) from the start.

Again, that's not a suggestion to make something meet the bare minimal requirements, register, and then make a killing.

<comment><USER21> Filecoin did their ICO by the book. The biggest constraint is that the purchasers need to be accredited investors.

<comment><USER4> Thanks! I will see if I can find some stuff to read about them later. I want to see how hard it was, the process, etc...

I believe they changed some VC funding rules, not that long ago. I'm not sure if the apply in these types of cases, but I think 'regular' people are now allowed to invest, but only a small amount. I seem to recall it was $2000/year.

It's not much, but it is a start? I didn't pay much attention to it, so I don't remember all the details. Sorry, I don't even remember the name of it so that I can dig out some info. I noticed it in passing. I'm not into the VC game and prefer investing elsewhere. So, I didn't pay much attention to it.

Edited to add:

[https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/16/11685832/sec- crowdfunding...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/5/16/11685832/sec-crowdfunding- rule-update-startups-investors)

Chances are you know more about it than I do, but there's a link if you don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1\. The amounts raised so far are small, a few $100k. That's tiny compared to what ICO lose in hacks.

2\. These are not high tech crypto startups, as most ICOs are. This is some guy selling diamonds. The text from the website sounds ridiculous and makes no sense.

> "By acquiring at least 1 DRC you will claim the membership in the exclusive > Diamond Reserve Club (DRC) with privileges such as access to the blockchain > transactional databases"

A non-event for ICOs

<comment><USER23> The SEC deciding that coins fall within its jurisdiction is anything but a non-event. They're picking lowest hanging fruit, but it shows they're willing to regulate the space.

<comment><USER24> [https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-and- bulletins/ib_co...](https://www.sec.gov/oiea/investor-alerts-and- bulletins/ib_coinofferings)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It looks like the SEC is starting with the worst scammers. They've also been phoning up ICO promoters, and having a little talk about what's a security.

CoinMarketCap lists values for 265 known tokens.[1] The biggest market cap is OmiseGo, for which a market cap of over $1 million is claimed. As far as I can tell, owning an OmiseGo token lets you do absolutely nothing.

As a joke. someone did an ICO of the Useless Etherium Token. It's totally worthless. They tell you that up front. They raised $95K.[2]

[1] [https://coinmarketcap.com/tokens/](https://coinmarketcap.com/tokens/) [2] [https://uetoken.com/](https://uetoken.com/)

<comment><USER26> >>As far as I can tell, owning an OmiseGo token lets you do absolutely nothing.

You know very well that the value of OmiseGo tokens is based on the token- compatible platform they have said they are developing, and not what can currently be done with the tokens. Leaving out this point is disingenuous.

<comment><USER25> It's not clear that their own platform gives value to their own tokens. They talk about wallets on their platform holding BTC or ETH.[1] Their own token mostly funds them.

[1] [https://cdn.omise.co/omg/whitepaper.pdf](https://cdn.omise.co/omg/whitepaper.pdf)

<comment><USER26> It's absolutely clear, given the plan is to make OMG the staking token used for securing the OmiseGo sub-chain. It's right there in the abstract of the white paper:

>>It uses the mechanism of a protocol token to create a proof-of-stake blockchain to enable enforcement of market activity amongst participants.

It's no crime to be ignorant of a subject. It's intellectually dishonest to criticize projects while in such a state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In addition to these blatantly fraudulent ICO's, I contend that even the "legitimate" ICO's are a total shitshow.

It's not that they raise far too much money for their projects (although they do), its just that without equity in the company performing the ICO you simply don't get alignment of incentives.

Guys like Juan Benet talk about this utopian fantasy of coins funding open- source protocols, but think about the reality. A legitimate project raises 15-45million dollars with a stated intention. Even being well funded, it is still highly speculative, and most startups "fail". So the team raising money has 2 options. Spend the entire amount trying to get the protocol going - which will probably fail (as most projects do), or have a half-hearted go at getting the protocol going, and keep the rest of the money - a 100% chance of getting comfortably rich, but further decreasing the already small odds of the project succeeding.

If the protocol/token model is so good, then companies can launch a token and use that to feed profits back to equity-holders. There is no reason why investors should have to take their chances on some made-up instrument that puts an extra barrier between their interests and those of the founding company.

<comment><USER28> Same is true for startups, except that startup funding carries fiduciary responsibility. If you are not spending money in the best interests of the investors, they can sue you.

Current token sales waive this responsibility, but investors should demand that it is there.

<comment><USER29> They would, if any of them were interested in going long. That they don't leads me to believe that most of them are just doing short-term speculation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> These are really bad ICOs (even calling them that is weird because of how bad they are). I think other ICOs aren't likely to succeed for other reasons, but I could say the same thing about most startups. I think it's obvious that an ICO is a more-entrepreneur friendly financing path when compared to really almost any other capitalization method. That doesn't mean it's the right answer, but it is obviously the path that an entrepreneur should choose right now if they can. This is because ICOs are the cheapest cost of capital of any funding source available today.

I am not good at predicting how the SEC will act, but I expect this action is a good thing over all. If people think twice before doing an ICO it feels like a step in the right direction. I do think there are some company narratives that make sense as an ICO, but maybe that's just survivorship bias. It's really too early to tell in the lifecycle of crypto.

In short, I think ICOs are the cheapest cost of capital so doing one makes sense right now. That might not always be true, which may or may not be a good thing depending upon your perspective. I think it's nice to see some action from the SEC that's clearly aligned with the interests of the public.

</comment><comment><USER31> All big ICO's are through Switzerland and only allow accredited US purchasers if they allow US at all. SEC will kill the next decade of technology companies and let the EU take it over unless they issue clear guidance like the Swiss. You can apply to FINMA for $15k CHF and go through a standard process to be a verified token. Would love that in USA. After Brexit, expect more ICO's in the UK as well (Funfair is a good example) as they try to do anything possible to boost their economy.

Fact: crypto currency will be a mechanism for fundraising startups. Either deal with it or stick your fingers in your ears.

<comment><USER32> You make it sound like VCs and CoinList don't exist.

<comment><USER31> I am well aware, but YC is extremely anti-ICO as is HN, so I am trying to communicate reality to the general commenters here.

<comment><USER20> You'd think HN would be pro-ICO, but there's too many people here with sunk costs in the VC paradigm.

<comment><USER31> VC isn't against ICO, VC has a very important part to play in the ICO system in terms of due diligence and "stamp of approval". I know many prominent VC's who are serious about tokens, but usually they are spinning out new funds without the LP agreements they currently have.

The scary thing to the current system is that entrepreneurs are getting more power. The bullshit common in fundraising (i.e. last minute changes that threaten to blow up the raise, unreasonable asks from capital, multi-month full-time fundraising, I can go on...) will become abnormal as raising money gets easier.

<comment><USER13> People forget that VCs also raise money. Setting up a venture fund that is backed by an ICO token would be a good way to give public accredited investors access to the private market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I mean I'm totally sure that the Paris Hilton coin and the Floyd Mayweather endorsed ICO were 100% legitimate business models and that these two examples were just a couple of outliers. /sarcasm

</comment><comment><USER34> The Colony is looking pretty damned bright right about now.

[https://blog.colony.io/the-colony-token- sale-7ac14c845bc0](https://blog.colony.io/the-colony-token-sale-7ac14c845bc0)

<comment><USER35> Colony took a very conservative view of the way things may turn out. But even if they went ahead, they would have been far far far away from the cross-hairs of the SEC.

Colony are a legitimate business and honest. The SEC is only going after the egregious ones, as they don't want to kill nascent crypto/ICOs in the USA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Why is the SEC so fast to target initial coin offerings but terrible at actually reining in the financial sector. To be fair I don't know a ton about the inner workings of the street, so maybe I've just consumed one too many movies/articles/whatever but it seems like the SEC is a just handing out slaps on the wrist over there.

<comment><USER20> You don't know the inner workings of the street, so why do you think it's fair for you to say the SEC is doing a terrible job reining in the financial sector?

<comment><USER36> Because things like the financial crisis of 2008 happened? Because as far as I know the SEC hasn't introduced any sort of uniform fiduciary standard for financial advisors? While I don't know the inner workings of the street, everything I see seems to point to the SEC not doing enough to penalized well- established players, and is allowing a culture in which firms do their best to not get cauhgt/apologize for transgressions rather than follow the law. Maybe it's just that my news sources are biased, but I try and vary them and pick generally considered good publications (when it's written form at least).

It seems objectively difficult to find anyone that's going to say the SEC is doing a great job at reining in the financial sector -- so my question stands, why are they doing such a good job at reining in ICOs, using tech that's barely understood by the general populace (though it's probably easy to spot how scummy they are), and in an absolutely new regulatory landscape?

<comment><USER20> Can you accurately and properly trace the blame for the financial crisis of 2008 onto the failings of the SEC?

<comment><USER36> Can you accurately and properly trace the blame for any large scale malfunction of society on one small bureaucratic group?

Even if you pin the blame on bad actors that took control of ratings bodies and propogated bad CDOs, are you suggesting that the SEC was blameless? Would you not say it's within the purview of the SEC to manage/monitor/influence CDO product selling/purchasing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Docket: [https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/36kxb8b9n/new-york- eastern...](https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/36kxb8b9n/new-york-eastern- district-court/united-states-securities-and-exchange-commission-v-recoin- group-foundation-llc-et-al/)

</comment><comment><USER38> I think they should get the list of ICOrating and start working on it from the worst to the least worst.

</comment><comment><USER39> This is very similar to the .com bubble in the late 90's. Everyone wanted to get in, there was massive FOMO, and there were legit businesses along with scams, and terrible ideas.

There will be a reckoning at some point, but the tech is here to stay. I invest in ICO's that have the focus, vision, and team to build something lasting.

</comment><comment> wav-part Wrong Headline.

SEC has not charged with _fraud_ rather than with _violating anti-fraud and registration provisions_. Since almost no ICO implement anti-$FCRIME provisions, even honest ICO can be charged similarly.

<comment><USER40> If the ICO is US based and not complying with the law it is not honest.

<comment><USER41> How far does that go? If an Uber driver goes over the speed limit on the highway, are they not honest?

<comment><USER42> Legitimately yes they are being dishonest. When you get a license you are telling the government you know the laws and will abide by them.

Whether a law that nearly 100% of the population ends up violating is a good law is a different discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Bitcoin's a bubble and ICO's are a scam. I feel for those whose hard earned IRAs are being invested in these.

</comment><comment><USER44> Obviously we don't know all the facts about these particular ICOs but otherwise this is great news. By going after the least famous, it really shows the SEC is trying to pro business. I expect some sell off in the market from the panic but it's good news for the ETH

</comment><comment><USER45> These ICOs are bad for the value of ETH, often millions are raised and then dumped the next day.

<comment><USER46> Volume is great for Ethereum. If you ignore speculative value, and long term savings value, Ethereum's value is pegged to the float required for its pure transactions. If they are transacting a billion dollars a week in ICOs, and the typical ICO user holds for 6 months, then that puts a floor on ETH at $24B. That's $24 billion of real value. As valuable as $24B of petroleum, so long as there keep being ICOs... even if none of them are worth anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Good. This further legitimizes crypto currency as a legitimate environment for creating fully-functional markets.</comment>


Ask HN: How did you get started as a freelancer? - <AUTHOR> How did you land your first customer? How did/do you market yourself? ... <comment><USER2> I write a lot online about machine learning (especially for a broad audience). I don't do it intentionally as a marketing strategy, but people researching those topics naturally read what I write and some email to ask if I can help them with their projects. That leads to connections and sometimes to new projects. That's the best way to market other than just meeting people and networking.

The real skill you have to develop is who to say "no" to. One good customer can keep you busy for a year and pay really well. 500 bad customers with small projects and small budgets can require 500x the work and result in less overall money.

I got my first customer that way and most of my best customers that way. But once you get a couple of customers and do a good job, that naturally leads to more work and other opportunities through word of mouth.

Another strategy that has worked for friends is to contract part-time for a place they used to work that needs temporary help. One friend made nearly his full-time salary working half-time doing this. That left him with the other half of his time to work on his other projects.

One other strategy that works well in a big city is to go work in a shared office like a WeWork. It's easy to meet people that way just through proximity and end up doing projects together or get new leads.

<comment><USER3> "he real skill you have to develop is who to say "no" to. One good customer can keep you busy for a year and pay really well. 500 bad customers with small projects and small budgets can require 500x the work and result in less overall money."

This. So important to ensure that you find the "right" clients that fit what you are offering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was working at a mom and pop shop, and we used a saas web application for managing online shipping. For funzies I cobbled together some python that would poll a usb scale upon http request which would get called from a button on the web app injected by a greasemonkey script and fill out the lb and oz fields with the weight.

When I got it working I was so excited that I immediately opened up their live chat and asked support if it'd be something they were interested in. They were a small operation and it ended up being the businesses owner who was on the other side. After a few emails back and forth we agreed on $3500 (plus our shop would get to use their app for free) in exchange for windows and mac versions of the code.

Oh man, now was I really excited. $3.5k for a couple weekends of work, I've hit the big time!

Later they sold to stamps.com for $50 million. I've since learned to charge more and to better estimate my time.

</comment><comment><USER5> After I proposed to my wife, we did a pre-marital counseling class about budgeting. She knew that I had credit card debt but she didn't know how much and it shocked her when I laid out the real numbers (over $10k). We had about 10 months until the wedding so I told her I was going to try to pick up some moonlighting projects to pay down the debt.

Fast-forward a couple of months and I've picked up a few really simple websites, blogs and a simple web application that I found through responding to ads on craigslist.

I did these types of pretty crappy jobs for a few years until I finally got enough of a portfolio to start bidding on larger and more interesting projects.

Currently I no longer prospect but work as a resource for other creative agencies who need devs on various projects for a few months at a time. It's good work and all started by realizing that I could take more control over my debt and get it paid off quicker if I was willing to give up my tv time in the evenings.

And I did eventually pay off that credit card debt, but not quite before the wedding.

</comment><comment><USER6> Worked in a specific industry for a while, made some connections in that time. Left my full-time job and let my contacts know I'd be doing freelance/consulting work. Landed a few starter clients from this, then just asked for word of mouth referrals (by far the best leads for me).

I'd also suggest having a landing page for your business/service, and maintaining a blog on this site where you write commentary on things relevant to your focus. Post links to your articles across social media. At the beginning and end of every post, make it known you're available as a consultant.

It's mostly just about putting yourself out there a bit. This didn't come natural for me at all, so it was a learned skill. But after a while you get kind of used to it. Routinely posting on LinkedIn et al. when you're looking for more work (phrase it like "I have room for a new client in my consulting portfolio..." or something along those lines, see who reaches out).

Just a word to the wise, if you're new to the freelance game, you'll probably accidentally undercharge all your clients for your first year (or few years). Don't be afraid to raise prices on them when you recognize what you've done.

Take your hourly rate from a full-time position and basically double it.

<comment><USER7> This is really good advice. In addition:

1) Your network will be your main source of work. I've been freelancing for just over a year and every single job I've had has come as a result of relationships I made when I was in full-time employment.

2) In terms of billing do not be afraid to charge a lot more than you would expect to make if doing the same work as an employee. You'll get better at this.

3) It also helps if you can save a few months worth of money before hand. I've found that it helps psychologically when negotiating if you know you don't need to take a job. In practice you will (ideally) a fair amount of what you are offered, this can be because some jobs simply aren't worth taking and the opportunity cost of a mediocre pay-day.

4) Take time off when you can and always sleep well. You will switch between periods of no work and periods of too much work. Relax during the former so you are ready for the latter.

5) Know your stuff and work hard.

<comment><USER8> IMHO "Know your stuff" in this case means _specialize_ (in tech) and find a niche (in an industry/domain and the market/clients you work with). Speaking from experience of doing the opposite for the better part of a decade. Cannot recommend. Would not do again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm doing freelance EE hardware design.

About 5 years into my career I worked for a small consulting firm that did a lot of mechanical engineering and a little electrical. The owner could not find enough work for the mechanical guys and was tired of the ups and downs of consulting so he closed the business. I asked him if I could continue working directly for one of his old clients and he said sure. So that would give me one customer if I wanted it, but I would need to find more.

I was pretty young and wasn't sure I could do it. I interviewed for one full time job with a startup. At the end of the day I met with two people: 1) my previous mentor who was consulting there at a high level and 2) the CEO. I was open and honest with my mentor and told him I wasn't sure the startup was right for me, and I was considering striking out on my own as a freelancer, like him, even though I recognized I was probably too young to do that. He, being a compassionate and reasonable person, encouraged me and said "well, people should do what they want to do". So, when I met the CEO, I felt I should tell her what I was thinking - I was leaning strongly toward consulting work. Why was I so honest with her? I don't know. It's just my style. But, she blew up. She started yelling at me, saying "You are too young! People become consultants after years and years of experience for a reason! Let me tell you what you need to do! You need to get a job!!!" And she basically threw me out of the building.

From that moment on I was resolved to prove her wrong and become a successful freelancer. It's now 15 years later and I am sure I made the right choice. All my advertising is via word of mouth / previous clients. I've been busy every day I wanted to be busy.

<comment><USER10> Got a portfolio you can link to?

<comment><USER9> Sorry, I'm new to HN and not sure about posting it here. I could contact you offline via email or some other means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No joke my first client was from a HackerNews "Who is Hiring" thread. I had been doing part-time freelancing while working a full-time job, and had enough of a portfolio that they took a chance on me. That was my first 5 months, and now I'm in month 11 with a 2nd major client that I got through my network of people in my local city.

</comment><comment><USER12> In 1999 I'd been building websites for several years. I learned how to build a "Database driven site with PHP and MySQL" from a SitePoint tutorial. My youngest brother was into making modded cars for Need for Speed 3. I built him a website so people could download the cars.

I showed the site to a neighbor. A few days later, I got an email from the neighbor's sister's husband's cousin, looking for a quote on building a MLS real estate search system. I sent a quote, he accepted, and I've been working freelance ever since.

I think all of my customers, over 19 years worth, have been referrals either from people I know, people I've volunteered with, or previous customers.

(And both those sites from 1999 are up and working to this day.)

</comment><comment><USER13> The smoothest way to get started is to transition from employee to contractor, bringing your employer or some loyal clients (if at an agency) with you into your new independent venture.

This provides some even ground to help the bills get paid while you explore the growth techniques that will work best for you.

That's what I did.

I worked for years in a contracting firm, and -- with their blessing -- took a couple long-term clients out with me. It was easier for me to keep working with them than to force a transition.

To gather new clients, I also identified a specialty/niche, created a clear brand for myself, and started marketing it in the places my potential clients would look. It really helps to narrow things down this way in the beginning, so you can have some focus in your pursuit of clients.

Over time, growth became more word of mouth and holding to the niche became less important. When new clients are referred to me now, I just assess whether it's work I want and sell them on it.

</comment><comment><USER14> My first consulting gig was mostly born out of necessity. At that time (2011), I was one of the founders of a startup, whose product was an enterprise / intranet search engine.

As is common with enterprise products sales was hard. Not being Microsoft, IBM or any other of the big names in the industry didn't exactly help either. Suffice it to say, the company didn't do too well.

However, trying to sell an enterprise product came with the benefit of making a lot of new contacts, many of whom needed bespoke software development and consulting (rather than a turnkey enterprise search solution).

Hence, I quickly transitioned into the IT consulting business.

In more generally applicable terms, networking and becoming known for an area of expertise in my opinion is absolutely key for continued, sustainable success as a freelancer / consultant.

So, here for some more general pieces of advice:

Go to events / meetups. Talk to both people from the industry you market your services to and fellow entrepreneurs and engineers. When doing this continuously and consistently consulting gigs almost inevitably will come up.

Create a professional website that describes the services you provide and the value you create for your clients. This is essential. Don't just put up a CV and be done with that. If you want to stand out you have to explain why you're not just a commodity paid by the hour but how you can solve a problem for your clients.

On that website, write about your current work and your area of expertise in general. If such opportunity presents itself (which it also almost inevitably will once you start networking with others at meetups or other events) give talks about these subjects.

</comment><comment><USER15> To be honest, I've never really marketed myself as a freelancer. That's one of my weak spots. So here it is, I'm looking for customers with an idea that want a webapplication built. I focus on educational customers. I'm also for hire writing python code.

After working a couple years with python and going to meetups I started to know some people in the community. That paid out. First getting a different job. (Thanks Reinout)

One of the people I knew recommended me. That was a part-time gig. Since then, most customers got a recommendation from someone in my network.

Other freelance jobs were via recruiters. They search mostly on linkedin.

If you've got questions drop me a note.

</comment><comment><USER16> I was already working remotely, but I'd quit a job of several years because of a disagreement.

Someone wanted to give me work, but they preferred to give me a job through a company-based contract rather than being an employee (for work permit reasons). It was pretty straightforward to make that happen from my side. Once I was in that game of "you contract for some of my time, but not all of it", I just carried on.

That someone found me through word-of-mouth / personal recommendation, which is also how everything after that has come along.

I don't market myself particularly hard, but I like to think that my reputation is "brutally honest".

</comment><comment><USER17> Self taught programming while making a web service that I thought was ace while in university but never made any money after overstaying in university and finally quit and I had to get a job.

Joined some startup who was struggling to get their services right as they didn't have any proper programmer. I just kept fixing stuff left and right with my 10 years experience and it was apparent even from their clients who the guy was that kept fixing stuff.

I was planning to quit the place in a year (without planning anything ahead) but as I quit, everyone started asking me for work, even from the company I left.

</comment><comment><USER18> A friend of mine was interning as a creative at an ad agency, and they wanted a webpage done for waaay to little money. I was currently just living of my savings and had nothing better to do, so I did my best and took the project on. It was hell, but eventually my first webpage ever was done!

Now I've been freelancing for eight years, doing quite the variety of web and iOS projects. Never did I really need to find customers, friends always directed enough work towards me.

</comment><comment><USER19> Started overseas, right after dropping from school and landed my first job by pure chance, in the so-called creative industry. Had no money, knew nothing and had to learn the ropes in real life situation. The fact that this was a completely different environment helped a lot. I had to start from scratch and pay attention to everything. Luck played a large part. My first client was a big ad agency so this gave me a bit of a buffer time and also helped to get new clients—that job led to the next, building a portfolio and clients references. For a long time, I didn't know how to market myself, however. It took me years to learn some of the basics in that regard. These are things you only realize in hindsight, after trials and errors, in my case. When you are freelancing one of the danger is that you get a false sense of freedom. When things go well you tend to believe that you are at the steering wheel of your career. But at the end of the day, you depend very much on clients and things that are out of your control. If not careful you can quickly become expendable.

</comment><comment><USER20> If you're currently working at an agency, one trick is to see if they have any smallish clients that you could take with you when you leave. For an agency those customers can be more noisy than they're worth so they're pleased to see the back of them - but they can be valuable as a freelancer. It's worked out well for me in the past (and was a win all round).

<comment><USER21> I'd just point out that you probably want to be very clear what your existing contract forbids here, and get any exceptions/releases to that very clearly spelled out in writing before attempting this. Companies can get vindictive if they think you're stealing their clients without permission.

A client is seldom worth a lawsuit that you'll likely lose.

<comment><USER20> I guess I've just worked at friendlier places? When I did it, it was at a small agency and they were happy to send the clients over to me because it was best for everyone. Yeah, don't go about poaching clients, that's just trouble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I built up connections during employment and open source communities (the latter was much easier 2 decades ago). Ever since, my "marketing" is:

* Try to over-deliver in some aspect important to the customer (time to delivery, documentation, client integration)

* Try to detect clients I cannot interact with properly and refuse them upfront (refer them to a friend who can deal with this type of client!)

* Bring lube. As an extern, you are causing more friction than an employee. A small present to whoever has to deal with the extra overhead and lots of work towards making his/her work easier help a _lot_.

* Be professional. Never ever talk bad about a client in public, no matter how bad they are; when you want to mention them in a positive public statement, ask for permission (most will say yes anyways and you pointed them at the free advertising you do for them)

Works for me; I don't even have a website nor any picture of me online with my real name. I don't make public appearances at all.

</comment><comment><USER23> i worked for near free for a few months to prove my chops and built up a bunch of clients + a portfolio and started from there.

<comment><USER24> Where did you find clients?

<comment><USER23> i reached out to a bunch of start ups and offered to work for free basically -- it was 8 years ago, so i think times were a lot different, there were a lot less start up backs then, i think its probably a lot easier to find paid work

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I used to work at a startup and got fired. I always wanted to try freelancing but didn't have the courage to leave a well paying full-time job and take the risk. This gave me that opportunity.

My family wanted me to take another job but I asked for 3 months and if I couldn't earn equal to my last salary I would take up a job.

It was very hard in the beginning, I emailed people, posted on social forums but the response rate was very low(we all know that now) which was again emotionally challenging.

I had a good profile working with Ruby and JavaScript so some of my clients got interested. And I still work with them it has been almost a year.

@ageitgey said a very good thing about finding the good client, which stays longer and pay well.

I have also realised that in the freelance world the turnaround time is slightly high. What I mean by that is even after a client says yes, it takes almost 15 to 30 days before you really get started.

That's my story!

</comment><comment><USER26> I did really well in college, so when a company contacted the school and asked an advisor who'd they recommend, my name came up first.

fyi, I spent my time in school actually learning, when I felt a class assignment was worthless, and I saw slackers getting A's by pandering to the teacher, I'd focus on learning something new and screw my grades. (did just fine, but wasn't straight A's because of this)

My methods paid off. I got an internship my second semester (teacher in my first class at school told me to apply at his work place), was hired as employee after 9 months in related field while still in school, and got my first freelance gig the last month before I graduated. Freelance ever since... been working on a startup for too long now though, lol. (I think many people here are working on startups)

</comment><comment><USER27> I started freelancing a few months ago, what I did to land my first gig was:

\- Specialize in something during normal employment (Python backend/cloud infra).

\- Build and contribute to a few Open Source projects. Thanks to that I have a small portfolio to show to potential clients.

\- Use an agency to help me find clients. Since I didn't really know where to start I looked for advice. An old HN thread mentioned Toptal so I registered without really thinking it would work. After a quite long interview process I got into the platform and landed my first customer a few days after. Overall it is a positive experience and a good way to get started, but other HN comments are more nuanced so YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER28> On three occasions I've consulted for my previous employer (three different companies). Once while I was in grad school, once after I had left but the company still wanted some of my time, and once on a project for a company that had let me go when they moved operations but wanted to collaborate. From that, and through entrepreneurs I know, I've gotten several other jobs. I've been full-time nearly five years now (Formlabs: we are hiring: [http://formlabs.com/jobs](http://formlabs.com/jobs)) but before that, consulting had become a pretty regular thing to do between full-time employment.

</comment><comment><USER29> My first freelance gig was a friend whose startup just came out of a YC co- hort and needed UI/front-end help (I had just left the company both of us had worked together at at one point).

He already knew what I was capable of so there wasn't much marketing/selling involved. That came after, through local networking and finding odd projects on Dribbble and hiring websites that had a section for remote designers. I had kept my main site sparse—and still do—so I had an easier time to drive initial conversation towards business goals instead of pixels and colours.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is anyone on gigster or upwork ? I've taken a few months off work and I want to do some freelancing to make money on the side and also stay up to date but I'm unable to find quality work out there.

<comment><USER31> You can get work from gigster or upwork but you will not make the rate you should be making. They have access to the clients - find your own clients and charge hourly or weekly, 2-3x per hour what you made as an employee. As everyone else has said, use your network. That's the best way to get good work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I worked at a company for a few years then moved overseas and went freelance for them then. Also at the same time started working for friends who had a promising startup.

</comment><comment><USER33> I got started by using an organization's API on a platform they didn't support and then offering to be a contractor when they sent me a cease and desist.

I found other odd dev work through family friends and by making a well- performing app for a small platform. This was all a nice supplement during university and internships, but not enough to compete with full-time remote work.

</comment><comment><USER34> I started with a service:

[https://digitalmicroenterprise.blogspot.com/2018/05/starting...](https://digitalmicroenterprise.blogspot.com/2018/05/starting- with-service-as-way-to-learn.html)

Proviso: Not really a programmer, though I do little plug-and-play websites these days in addition to freelance writing and resume editing.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't do contracting as much now, but I used to get work through referrals and also blogging. If I toss an item on my blog, do a few blog posts:

[https://austingwalters.com/](https://austingwalters.com/)

And I'll probably get some hits within a week or so.

</comment><comment><USER36> Started with message boards (the physical kind!), went from small/private jobs to b2b jobs by using the small/private people's references to get in to their employers and business networks (the people network kind).

In the space of about 6 months went from 100% private jobs to 50% private, 25% small business and 25% medium business.

As much as people seem to be busy with their CV and references, it's often more the presentation of your skills in-situ and the impression you make on potential sources of jobs that will get you a constant flow. In the space of about 18 months I was booked about half a year in advance. This is in a western european country with about 17 million people to give you some context.

About said context: it really depends on your location, rules, lawyerisms and style of capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER37> Someone previous mentioned target a coding niche.

I have had a good amount of success on upwork.com, targeting financial / stock trading algorithms.

Check my profile for details...

</comment><comment><USER38> Reach out to your network.

</comment><comment><USER39> I started

</comment><comment><USER40> Still brand new to this, but have pretty much hit the tipping point from "unsure if enough work" to "too much work" immediately.

If the goal is to be on your own, one thing that is incredibly useful is to build a network of people who would be in a complimentary business to yours, are likely to stumble across work that you would be able to do, and aren't in the position to do themselves. For me, that's working with a former coworker whose business is data science + the strategy around it, or a larger consulting firm where I used to work that has projects come across their plate for steady clients that are too small to be worth their time, but can be quite lucrative for an individual.

<comment><USER41> Curious but what business are you in that's complementary to data science?

<comment><USER40> I'm primarily an engineer, though I have worn the data scientist hat in the past. There's a bunch of data engineering/plumbing work that's necessary in any data science organization, as well as data visualization for things that are beyond a standard chart.

<comment><USER41> Interesting. Do you have a website?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I used to work at a multi-national and got fired. I always wanted to try freelancing but didn't have the courage to leave a well paying full-time job and take the risk. This gave me that opportunity and I went ahead to started a productized content-as-a-service [http://contentiskey.co](http://contentiskey.co) which offers unlimited content for $250/mo Right now am busy searching for customers, you can join me</comment>


Code in the cloud with your favorite OS X text editor - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nitrous.io/2013/07/09/nitrous-for-mac.html

<comment><USER2> I assume one of the main benefits of cloud coding is that every developer has access to the same code and environment. How does this application handle multiple people working at once on the same code?

Also, why would somebody choose this over editing files locally and committing to github? People can do that in one click if they want.

<comment><USER3> We don't have support for multiple people working on the same code yet (at least with the Mac app).

But the benefit of editing locally and committing to Github is that that's not typically work flow - with Nitrous.IO for Mac - you can edit code, run tests (or refresh a page), make more edits, run tests again, repeat, and when you're done, then commit to a remote git repo (all with your dev environment being in the cloud, making it accessible from anywhere)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is this coded in, wouldn't it be possible to create a Linux or something version too?

<comment><USER3> Versions of the app for different OS's are in the pipeline

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> What advantage does this have over mounting a network file system (or whatever it's called)?

<comment><USER6> They've done a nice job of implementing seamless ssh and tunneling, and it is free to start with. Aside from that, not much.

<comment><USER3> well there's a file-system sync too, so you can edit code locally and it gets synced in real time with your cloud-based box. This enables you to use SublimeText, Textmate, MacVim or any OS X text editor but with your entire dev environment being hosted on the cloud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's important to note that this means that your code is instantaneously updated to the cloud with remote box SSH directly from your OS X machine, not that you can somehow virtualize your favorite text editor and use it to edit code from a browser.</comment>


Clean Thesis – A clean, simple, and elegant LaTeX style for thesis documents - <AUTHOR> http://cleanthesis.der-ric.de <comment><USER2> If the creator is reading this: Your web pages would be immediately improved 100% by adding a link to a PDF file generated using this style, showing most of what goes into a typical thesis. (You could use your own thesis for which it was developed, or just a pile of lorem ipsum.)

I see that you have links to JPEGs of sample pages, but this would be much better. [EDITED to add: I am not suggesting that you remove the JPEGs. They don't do any harm.]

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://github.com/derric/cleanthesis/blob/master/thesis- exa...](https://github.com/derric/cleanthesis/blob/master/thesis-example.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Very strange for me to see an example thesis in latex without any mathematics in it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Many institutions, including mine, require a very specific style. Many even provide templates. Irritatingly, mine only provided a Word template, so I had to spend a day or two creating a LaTeX style. (Procrastination bonus: I was "working on my thesis" without actually working on my thesis). The mere fact that the provided style uses color would disqualify it as a thesis in many institutions. Also, it's somewhat distasteful that the linked site uses significantly more words on how I can donate for this derivative work than it spends on convincing me to use it.

<comment><USER5> In fairness, the donation is not monetary. It is probably more aptly described as "Contribution".

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't the LaTeX stylesheet for your thesis usually dictated by your university? It was for me at least..

<comment><USER7> At the University of Chicago, the thesis office didn't give any indication that they'd ever heard of LaTeX. But they did hand us a long list of formatting requirements (precise margins, contents format, lots of other details) and it was clear that any deviation from those would result in your thesis being handed right back to you.

Fortunately, there was a LaTeX style file that had been handed around the physics department for years that generations of grad students had tuned to meet the requirements. Doing my part, I tweaked it a bit to handle some special cases that came up in my thesis (and, I think, to clean up the code in one or two places) and passed it on to the next generation. (I shudder to think of how many forks there must have been; I saw at least two or three while I was preparing my version. Maybe someone has put a canonical version on GitHub by now: nothing of the sort was really on our radar back then.)

<comment><USER8> University of Chicago can't afford secretaries? What do they put academics through this crap? This is part of why PhD students drop out and become dotcom millionaires instead of academics.

<comment><USER7> Nobody ever explains to grad students that they can ask the secretaries to do this stuff. I didn't figure it out until I got a tenure-track job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thought the default style(s) were the results of years of micro tweaking and deep studies of the impact of character positioning and flows by Knuth and that only the default \LaTeX{} style could give that 2% head start or that A instead of a B++ for any essay.

Now we add blue titles ? And sans serif font ?

Sarcasm apart, it looks good. Some links are 404 on the page though (classic thesis, etc.).

<comment><USER10> +1. The blue titles, the unnecessary lines and the fact that he branded it with the whole Clean<bold>Thesis</bold> thing doesn't really sound clean in my book.

I'm currently looking for a thesis template as well, but the more I come across (1) the more I just want to do something like [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/).

(1) [http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/326/latex- templates-f...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/326/latex-templates- for-writing-a-thesis)

<comment><USER11> This link got me started in TeX (I was just barely aware of its existence before). [http://nitens.org/taraborelli/cvtex](http://nitens.org/taraborelli/cvtex)

Not a thesis template at all, but great ideas and it sheds some light on how to get decent typography.

On a side note, I think it would be great to have a good WYSIWYG TeX editor for office/basic user level of proficiency. Typesetting _does_ matter, it profoundly impacts reading, which is particularly relevant when you're giving 300+ pages of your hard work for someone else to read. It would be very good for everyone to get decent default typesetting. Unfortunately, our alternatives are:

* Word/typical word processors, which are are horrible at typesetting;

* TeX, which is good, but it's hard for most people and has an aura of complexity (it's code, after all...);

* Publishing software, such as Adobe InDesign, which are indeed great at typesetting, but only if you know what you are doing. This is professional software, which is clearly not aimed at common users.

<comment><USER12> Check out Lyx

<comment><USER13> +1

I've wrote my Bachelor thesis in LyX and it's awesome, especially for math!

If someone is interested (it's about Bitcoin and in German), here's the source: [http://www.math.uni-bremen.de/~jhasse/Bachelor- Arbeit.zip](http://www.math.uni-bremen.de/~jhasse/Bachelor-Arbeit.zip) And here's the PDF: [http://www.math.uni- bremen.de/~jhasse/Kryptografische%20Grun...](http://www.math.uni- bremen.de/~jhasse/Kryptografische%20Grundlagen%20von%20Bitcoin.pdf) Nothing fancy like Clean Thesis though. I like the [http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/) approach better ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In many universities the problem is that you need to produce a thesis according to the university specifications. A generic thesis document may help with this, but will unfortunately never solve the complete problem. Fortunately, however, most universities also have a local LaTeX guru, or you can just copy the style used by previous students.

<comment><USER15> Where I did mine, they required submissions in strict word formatting.

<comment><USER8> What's going to happen whem Word is dead is 20 years and they have all these useless files?

<comment><USER16> There's a very good chance that they'll end up being transformed into PDFs before being released, and will also end up in print.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [http://cleanthesis.der-ric.de/img/ct_toc.jpg](http://cleanthesis.der- ric.de/img/ct_toc.jpg)

Using 2 different sans-serif fonts in the same document (here: Helvetica and the TeX humanist) is usually frowned upon by typographers. One reason is that differences in size, style, color, etc. should always be noticable. Two sans- serif fonts will always look superficially similar; the eye has to get used to different letter forms when it expects the font to stay the same.

Beyond that, I think the template is _really_ beautiful. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER18> For mine I used KOMA-Script Package (scrbook) [http://www.dickimaw- books.com/latex/thesis/thesis-screen.pdf](http://www.dickimaw- books.com/latex/thesis/thesis-screen.pdf) (and for official documentation: [http://www.ctex.org/documents/packages/nonstd/koma- script.pd...](http://www.ctex.org/documents/packages/nonstd/koma-script.pdf)).

</comment><comment><USER19> Stop wasting time coming up with elegant thesis formats and finish your thesis!

<comment><USER20> What on this site told you he did not already? And why your tone of voice, emanating from your comment?

<comment><USER21> The only time anybody cares about the formatting of a thesis is when they are not finishing one. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "This text should contain all letters of the alphabet..."

Except for Z and Q. Those don't count.

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone have a good template / project for homework assignments that typically have code snippets, graphs, images and formulas?

<comment><USER21> If I were teaching right now, I would gladly accept iPython. It is what I now use for reports containing similar content, doing R&D in industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Another excellent template... [https://github.com/kks32/phd-thesis- template](https://github.com/kks32/phd-thesis-template)

<comment><USER25> no example?

<comment><USER26> [https://github.com/kks32/phd-thesis- template/blob/master/the...](https://github.com/kks32/phd-thesis- template/blob/master/thesis.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A quick look on Github told me you are not using the memoir package for this. Could the author please elaborate why it is not using memoir?

<comment><USER28> Because he's using scrreprt from KOMAscript as base class.

<comment><USER27> Ah, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> LaTeX rule them all when it's time to write a thesis. This template is nice. The code is simple so a beginner can start to play with at any moment. Keep working hard I love what you did.

</comment><comment><USER30> Anyone got a similar resource for self publishing ebooks? I had some stuff hacked together with org-mode and some other bits a while ago, but would like to know of anything better.

<comment><USER31> You can look into softcover/polytexnic here: [https://github.com/softcover/softcover](https://github.com/softcover/softcover) , I believe it had a decent .tex style for a book. Also very powerful pipeline for producing .epub/.mobi from .tex

Another excellent style sheet to look into is the Tufre-style book: [http://www.latextemplates.com/template/tufte-style- book](http://www.latextemplates.com/template/tufte-style-book)

I'd also be happy to share some of the .tex header I use for my book---just some customizations on the vanilla book documentclass. It's fairly hacky stuff, but it works ;)

<comment><USER30> Softcover looks awesome. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> My university dictates the style of a thesis so no chance there but it looks good.

</comment><comment><USER33> That's thesis style infinity out of infinity +1. Nothing special, weird fonts, lots of wasted space.

</comment><comment><USER33> That's just thesis style infinity + 1, nothing special, a lot of wasted space due to huge numbers.

<comment><USER34> wasted space = more pages!</comment></comment>


New Lit Hub Project Aims to Make Critics Vital Again - <AUTHOR> https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/77277-new-lit-hub-project-aims-to-make-critics-vital-again.html <comment><AUTHOR> The "Rotten Tomatoes for book reviews" mentioned in the article can be found at [https://bookmarks.reviews/](https://bookmarks.reviews/)</comment>


The Many-Worlds Interpretation of JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://hachibu.net/posts/2020/the-many-worlds-interpretation-of-javascript/ <comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Thanks for educating me on the subtleties. It seems like I was mixing up a Level 3 multiverse with a Level 2. I made a small edit to remove the sentence about constants changing. And I also added a note that I edited the post.

</comment><comment><USER2> > The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics imagines our universe as > one node in an infinitely branching tree of universes where every possible > quantum outcome exists in its own universe. And each time a universe > branches, it creates a child universe that is slightly different from the > parent universe, e.g., universal constants such as gravity and the speed of > light might differ.

Pretty sure this is flat out wrong; the Many Worlds hypothesis does not include universes in which universal constants differ.

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Sorry, I guess I misunderstood that part of the hypothesis. Do you have a source, so I can edit my post and correct it?

<comment><USER3> It seems you're mixing up MWI with a Max Tegmark Level II multiverse: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse#Level_II:_Universes...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse#Level_II:_Universes_with_different_physical_constants). Tegmark considered MWI a separate idea from that and used the label "Level III" for it.

MWI is just one of multiple multiverse ideas. Most multiverse ideas (like Tegmark's Levels I, II, and IV) are basically what-if ideas without any direct evidence, but MWI specifically happens to be a more-grounded idea based on trying to make sense of what the (well-tested) Schrodinger equation says about reality.

The first part of your description of MWI ("The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics imagines our universe as one node in an infinitely branching tree of universes where every possible quantum outcome exists in its own universe.") is pretty good, if a slight though common simplification (different branches aren't entirely separate, so envisioning it as a tree is only mostly correct; different branches can sum together or cancel each other out if their configurations are identical).

<comment><USER4> > trying to make sense of what the (well-tested) Schrodinger equation says > about reality.

Nitpick: The Schrödinger equation predicts unitary time evolution (which is another way of saying that physical systems evolve in a deterministic manner). Interpretations of quantum mechanics exist to make sense of the part of quantum mechanics that _doesn 't_ follow unitary time evolution, namely the measurement process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This idea seems like it might be useful for anonymizing code.

</comment><comment><USER5> > According to the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, your > universe branched into many universes the moment you decided to use a for- > loop. In this universe you wrote a for-loop, but in another universe you > wrote a while-loop.

Nonsense. If universes branch into many other universes, they do so when an event on the quantum level needs to be resolved. I presume that during any single decision-making operation, there are trillions of probabilistic quantum events took place in your brain, but your decision to use the for loop was _almost certainly_ fully deterministic, because at this point in time you personally almost always pick for-loops.

<comment><USER6> I was actually delighted to discover that I've matured (ossified?) enough as a programmer that my source code is in fact fairly deterministic: the other day I somehow managed to completely wipe a fairly complex function (100+ LoC) from my repo before I committed it. I did this a week or so after I initially wrote the function. I then rewrote the function from scratch, with very little memory of how I wrote it the first time, just knowledge of what it needed to do. Ironically enough, almost as soon as I finished writing this function, I found a copy of the original one that I'd somehow stashed and forgotten about, and the two functions were literally identical.

<comment><USER7> Interesting, I've noticed the exact opposite. For me, rewriting a program produces a slightly different program with different trade-offs. It's rare to have the time to build a bunch of different implementations of the same code, but when I have time it results in code that I'm very happy with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I sort of wish I could trade places with the version of me in the universe where Flash wasn't murdered.

<comment><USER9> You liked flash programming??

<comment><USER8> I think I would appreciate it now, and the JavaScript that replaced it is really horrible. We haven't really gained any ground in about fifteen years, in real terms, there's just been a lot of swirling.

Even WebAssembly's best case scenario is... Java Applets done a smidgeon better.

<comment><USER10> WebAssembly's best case scenario is "native software compiled to run to the web." Unlike Java applets, WebAssembly isn't tied to a specific language or runtime, so that "smidge" in the case of being inclusive of so many languages is pretty big.

You could even run Flash sites in WebAssembly, the only thing stopping that from happening is copyright law. It would probably be even safer and run faster than Adobe's plugin.

<comment><USER8> Or you could just run native software...

I dunno, I don't get the point. If it gets rid of the dumpster fire that is JS applications, good, but it'd be better if the web could be for documents and applications could be for applications.

I'm too cynical and I've seen too much to believe that it'll be silver bullets and rainbows.

The write-once, run-everywhere idea always falls down, and pushes everything to lowest common denominator shovel-ware.

<comment><USER10> >but it'd be better if the web could be for documents and applications could be for applications.

I disagree. Being able to compile software in practically any language and have it run both natively (because native runtimes for WebAssembly do exist) and in a browser would revolutionize the way people access software.

I mean, someone wrote Pong in COBOL[0] and I can run it in a browser without having to find a COBOL runtime for Windows 10. That's pretty damn cool, and it's significantly better than what Java and Flash could provide for both developers and the end user.

[0][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23189918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23189918)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is art, I love it.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's funny that there is such a pro and anti js movement in the hardcore professional programming world. I know it's a bit off topic. But in every js topic here at hackernews you can feel this tension. I have never seen this before. And this place is visited by the best programmers out there . Very interesting

<comment><USER13> Here is my theory: it is a limitation of the medium of the web. In other software fields, one can use the tooling they like. But with the browser, JS is a must (nascent webasm may change that though). The Go people don't really fight the Rust folks, they just go off to their own camps, occasionally comparing and contrasting. But in the web/js world, everyone is forced to commingled, and so preferences collide.</comment></comment>


Love What You Do - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mailchimp.com/love-what-you-do/ <comment><USER2> If you want to read it, the work-around while their blog is down is hop over to Google Reader, click Add Subscription, and paste in the URL of their blog (<http://blog.mailchimp.com>). This is my go-to work around for accessing blogs which were killed by traffic.

But what is the work around for writing blog posts such that they don't get killed by routine events such as showing up on the HN front page? Turn off Apache KeepAlive. Apache KeepAlive is to dead blogs as smoking is to lung cancer: not only does A certainly lead to B if you give it enough time, the existence of B strongly implies A!

For more on this topic: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/19/running-apache- on-a-memo...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/19/running-apache-on-a-memory- constrained-vps/)

</comment><comment><USER3> In my opinion taglines are a bit overrated. It seems like something you "have" to be like the big boys and brand yourself properly. The problem is that taglines tend say very little, "Love what you do" is a great motto to live by but does it tell me anything about your company, no. At worst you get enterprisy taglines like "pursuing synergestic excellence". I think companies, like people, should show who they are through their actions rather than telling others who they are. Also, when you create a tagline you kinda limit yourself to "being" that, while if you actually do excellent things your brand will contain a host of different positive aspects. The only proper uses of taglines I can think of is products where the tagline is descriptive in a way that the customer "gets" what they're about

</comment><comment><USER4> Just logged off MailChimp after scheduling our next newsletter send.

This article is particularly relevant because of my business - our tagline is 'Love Business', and we're best known in many places for the packs of coloured pens we use with our clients ([http://www.shirlawsonline.com/blogs/136-the- big-picture-show...](http://www.shirlawsonline.com/blogs/136-the-big-picture- shows-a-colourful-future)). Here's hoping I'm one of the random clients sent a colouring book, since I already carry the equipment to colour it in!

</comment><comment><USER5> text only cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:esCUDVy...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:esCUDVyHZZ0J:blog.mailchimp.com/love- what-you-do/&hl=en&strip=1)

colouring book: <http://mailchimp.com/guides/guide_LoveWhatYouDo.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER6> MailChimp is fantastic. I just wish their newsletter composer was more like the MadMimi.com guys. Is just SO easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER7> Always been a fan of MailChimp. I've grown to really respect the culture (and ethos) they have.

</comment><comment><USER8> So I was wondering why numerous pages on mailchimp weren't loading this morning. After giving up I decided to cruise hacker news... then I find this made the front page... everything makes sense now.

<comment><USER9> MailChimp is the biggest company of it's kind, I doubt HN's traffic could be the reason why some of you couldn't load the site.

<comment><USER10> Both of these are quite the anecdotal statements to say the least. Not really sure what you mean by "of its kind", but there are plenty of other companies in the email marketing space, and to the GP's point we really have no clue why their blog went down (MC has been on the frontpage of HN in the past w/o incident).</comment></comment></comment>


Amazon reacts to Nook price drop, Kindle now $189 - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/news/amazon-reacts-to-nook-price-drop-kindle-now-189-20100621/

<comment><USER2> The prices of these ebook readers are finally dropping to match their value proposition. $200+ is way too much for a battery, a 3G radio, and an e-ink screen, especially considering that ebooks do not sell at any significant discount to their paper versions.

<comment><USER3> It's subsidizing the losses amazon is sustaining by selling e-books for cheap while keeping publishers happy.

<comment><USER4> Except Amazon is being forced to stop doing that by at least some publishers now, hence the "price chosen by the publisher" blurb on the kindle book pages now.</comment></comment></comment>


Startup Chile Company Looking For First Engineer - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1Gz9H2dgkYpbYSVvbPIyAYIrtGSwqpT5wFNGL62TLtyw

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, Thank you for the comments. I wanted to clarify a few things: first, I normally wear a t-shirt and jeans (or shorts here in Santiago), not a suit. Second, we are looking for a Founding Developer/CTO, not an employee. They will be treated as such in terms of equity, decision-making, everything. Please email us by tomorrow if you or anyone you know is interested! Jenn

</comment><comment><USER2> Why would an engineer do this? Why not found the company yourself and skip the suits?

<comment><USER3> Looks like a paid vacation to South America for the right unburdened young web hacker, plus the "suits" in this case demonstrate a useful ability to impress powerful people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If I'm reading the details right, the bit is for a "founding CTO".

Ms Turly seems to be bright, capable and organised, but so far has only won a lot of competitions.

... which is more than I've done.</comment>


The Slow Death of the University (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.socjobrumors.com/topic/the-slow-death-of-the-university-by-terry-eagleton-uk <comment><USER3> [http://edge.org/conversation/geoffrey_west-why-cities- keep-g...](http://edge.org/conversation/geoffrey_west-why-cities-keep-growing- corporations-and-people-always-die-and-life-gets)

Tldr; Universities used to be structured like cities, or be an extension of a city. Cities are so far essentially immortal. In keeping with modern doctrine, universities have been transformed into commercial corporations. We know that as a form, corporations have a limited lifespan. The average lifespan of a company in the s&p 500 has decreased over the last century from 67 years to around 15.

If you turn a university into a corporation, you limit its lifespan and should expect it to die after a few decades. The evidence is clear.

<comment><USER4> I don't think the lifespan figure usually accounts for mergers and acquisitions. It is not always clear that a company "died" if it still continues under a different corporate brand.

I haven't found any articles that try to sift the data based on this, so it's possible that it isn't a significant factor.

It might be interesting to compare this recent period of consolidation with the turn of the century when Pres. Theodore Roosevelt became known as a "trust-buster".

<comment><USER5> Interesting point. I remember that the University of Denver ended up with the physical plant of Colorado Women's College, but to what extent it assimilated it otherwise--faculty, staff, students, programs--I don't think I ever heard. Apparently Yale once had the notion that absorbing Vassar would be a quick way to go coeducational. I can't offhand think of other consolidations or proposed consolidations of colleges, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While I think that many of the world's higher education systems are moving towards optimizing throughput rather than focusing on truly engaging with students, it is wrong to assume that this trend only affects the humanities.

As a researcher in a STEM field (at US university) for only ~7 years I have often posited that many of the ideas which appeal to administrators result in a degraded academic experience for students. In turn, this can negatively impact research efforts.

I understand that this must be more frustrating to those in the humanities, as funding is more abundant in STEM, but my guess is that these same trends are harming the quality of research in all fields.

<comment><USER7> > As a researcher in a STEM field (at US university) for only ~7 years I have > often posited that many of the ideas which appeal to administrators result > in a degraded academic experience for students. In turn, this can negatively > impact research efforts.

Just wondering if you can give some examples. I work at a Liberal Arts University.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The UK universities are considered by many others in europe as degree factories; i think they're the ones who invented the business.

Universities were once respected as the bastions keeping humanity's precious knowledge. There is no reason for that anymore, we need more online and freely accessible courses, data corpuses, libraries, and education material, funded by national governments. Education should be a fundamental human right, and it is not up to some startup or non-profit to fix that.

</comment><comment><USER9> Couldn't agree more. I got my BS in Comp Sci from a traditional university. Got out, got a job, did okay, got promoted out of day-to-day development & eventually lost my ability to dev. Now, in my 40s I've decided to get back to my tech roots. With all the great free resources & contributors online, as well as shops like Udemny (& others) I am getting better & more practical instruction than I originally received at a university.

<comment><USER10> That's not Eagleton's point. The guy's a literary critic and is upset that STEM fields have taken the prestige position in universities, which to him means universities are "dying". While I have probably more respect for the humanities than most people with a scientific background, Eagleton makes the error that a lot of people with his background do, which is to assume that only people trained in the humanities are capable of critical thinking and that STEM fields generate robots with no interests outside their technical fields.

<comment><USER11> I wonder what people with scientific backgrounds actually think about humanities. I live in a town where you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a scientist. Just a couple of anecdotes: 1) My kids participate in a youth music program, and several of the most prominent donors who support the program are retired scientists. 2) The parents who clamor for more liberal K-12 education, with arts, humanities, and even gym, are the scientists. 3) My parents, both scientists, have always been interested in the humanities.

<comment><USER12> I have a science-field PhD, and am about to start an assistant professorship in a STEM field. This pretty much echoes my feelings on the humanities - <USER2> they're a worthwhile thing that people should absolutely be exposed to.

And also, that playing the "Whose field is more important" game is a losing one for all involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The counterpoint is that at no other point in history has it been that (1) having a higher education was crucial to success and (2) the middle class (or what used to be the middle class) had access to higher education.

That having been said, most people in the broader economy still need to fill roles with practical value as opposed to e.g. working at a think-tank. The critical skills the author describes are nonetheless important, and one of the terrifying things about this whole education business is that large parts of the middle and upper classes lack this, in spite of said higher education. But I digress.

The point is that we have more people going to university. So you put that together with the needs of the students and of course there will be an overall de-emphasis on ivory-tower activities. But I wonder if the total amount of such activities hasn't changed much, with regards to the size of the country or economy.

That said, we still need a place for those sorts of things to happen. And it does feel like it's been pushed off into "grad school," whereas undergrad has become a career mill much like how high school has become a college mill.

What I'll give the author credit for is the value of the mill. He's right that there isn't that critical thinking, and isn't that what we needed to begin with in the creative economy? And I do remember what that was like in school, and even today. People like the idea of creativity and critical thinking until you make them do it.

<comment><USER14> The first point kind of is the biggest issue with modern universities and education. Not all jobs should require a degree, and people shouldn't be forced to get one in order to get a decent job. The fact so many do is why a lot of students only attend university for a piece of paper rather than an interest in actually learning anything, and why universities don't want to really challenge people any more.

If the first point wasn't true and the second point was, the world would be much better, since everyone who wanted to go to university could do so and everyone who didn't wouldn't be forced to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Eagleton used the same exact phrase twice about teaching and research. So much for his great writing skills.

I stopped reading after that.

This rant is like anything else that could be posted to Crooked Timber. "Oh no! Humanities professors have to work like anyone else, with measurable results. The university is dying!"

I do respect the humanities, but there's only so much you can do with them. Whereas the knowledge, technology, wealth, and all-around good stuff gained from electrical engineering, astrophysics, materials science, etc. is as limitless as the universe.

<comment><USER16> >I do respect the humanities, but there's only so much you can do with them.

I believe someone from the humanities would have trouble with this statement. Of what use is all the techno gadgets if we lose what makes us human? I'm a techie, but I've also studied some humanities, and delve into some in my spare time, things like communication, psychology, arts these all make life a lot richer, even if they do have less flashing lights.

Humanities professors on the other hand have had it pretty easy, and that seems to be coming to an end, the same for universities in general. It's something I'm torn about, I always loved my time at university, but the reason I went there was for the knowledge, because that was where it was stored. Now universities are in many ways obsolete - all the knowledge is in the cloud. If you need to ask an expert then just ask online, so we still need experts, just the renumeration model is being disrupted - like everyone elses pretty well.

What we do need is critical thinking, and traditionally this was what was taught in an arts degree. In many ways the academics have done this to themselves, by dumbing down degrees and focusing more on 'business' outcomes they've eliminated what was the defining characteristic of a degree and it is now just a set of check boxes, which of course you don't need a uni for. I blame the MBA's - the cultureless hoards of middle management that suck the life out of everything that's not quantifiable and can be entered on a spread sheet.

<comment><USER15> I got a degree in the social sciences and most of the stuff they talk about is just made up. As in, psychology studies cannot be replicated, literature criticism is all just opinion, political science insights are just common sense with weasel words. It's fine as a dalliance or avocation, but there's no there there, intellectually. Science and engineering are so much more honest about the truth and what constitutes knowledge than the humanities and social sciences. The latter two nowadays are mostly rhetoric with a political slant, anyways.

<comment><USER17> And yet at this moment you are engaged in philosophy.

People should grapple with these questions in a sustained, deliberate way, with reference to what's already been said and where arguments are evaluated critically by many eyes. That's what academia is for.

<comment><USER18> You can engage in philosophy without having to have a humanities department sucking up tonnes of state money. You can prepare yourself for philosophical and critical thinking without some people leading cushy life doing nothing in state funded humanities departments.

He engaging in philosohpy doesn't necessarily justifies the existence of humanties departments in universities. With spread of internet and MOOCs the first even departments that should cease to exist on state money are the humanities departments.

<comment><USER17> I'd say the exact opposite: if industry requires trained worker bees, it can pay for their training. It is not our collective responsibility to meet workforce needs. State-funded engineering and CS programs are corporate welfare.

Humanities are the _only_ departments that should exist on tax money.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Earn cryptocurrency each time you ship to product hunt - <AUTHOR> https://www.demandrocket.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! I have been working on the project recently and would love some feedback. Earlier this year I was researching mental health and motivation within entrepreneurs. It lead me to discovering that us entrepreneurs, makers and hackers are highly intrinsically motivated, however lack the extrinsic motivation to push through tough times and lost intrinsic motivation. Therefore I came up with the idea of Demand Rocket. A platform which would reward you with our own cryptocurrency each time you shipped to product hunt, and the faster you shipped, the more coin you earn. The coins can then be used to purchase partnered products on Demand Rocket's store. What do you guys think?

<comment><USER2> the problem i see is with "the faster" you ship, which seems to me a way to reward a lack of engineering, rather than promote it.

maybe my job as devops tends to cloud my judgement.

but on the overall, i think your idea has merrit.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! Definitely something I have to think about.</comment></comment></comment>