Focus: Executive pay and performance  - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/02/focus-0?fsrc=scn/tw/te/dc/executivepayandperformance <comment><USER2> It's interesting that the cause for spiraling CEOs salary is similar to the cause of spiraling Civil Service salaries over the past 30 years. In both cases compensation is not based on performance but rather on what others in similar positions are receiving and control of the compensation process.

In corporations there will be board compensation committees that hire outside compensation consultants. The consultants will come back with a suggested salary that is the current standard for similar companies plus an additional amount to insure that they "get the best". There are only a small group of such consulting companies and it is in their self interest to inflate executive salaries. Suggesting lower salaries would mean a loss of future business because it is the very same executives that hire them.

For civil service contracts their will be independent government boards set up to negotiate salaries. To insure that the boards are independent they are usually constituted using a political process. As a baseline for salaries they will use formulas based on what other unions make plus a little something extra because "well everyone deserves a raise". As with the executive compensation committee, it is in the self interest of the government compensation boards to be generous. The government boards are appointed positions based on the party in power. Given the capabilities of unions in voter organization, it is fair to say that they at least indirectly hire the compensation board members.

The net result in both cases is spiraling salaries that have no relation to performance.

<comment><USER3> The right likes to scream about this phenomenon in civil service. The left likes to scream about it in the private sector.

Incredibly good point... it's the same phenomenon.

We need -- collectively -- in all spheres -- to take a good look at some people and start asking questions like "what exactly is it that you do here? what value do you create that is commensurate with your salary?"

In government this has to happen at the management or political level. In the private sector this needs to happen via shareholder pressure. If shareholders had a brain, they would start agitating for long-term merit-based CEO pay.

<comment><USER4> The best solution, in both the government and private sector, is to keep things small. Smaller governments and smaller companies.

On the small scale, it's very easy to ask "what exactly is it that you do here?" to everyone involved in the entity.

<comment><USER5> Small companies don't generally change the world until they become big companies.

<comment><USER4> Wrong order. Small companies change the world and as a result, become big companies. Such is the nature of the beast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Paying CEOs for 'performance' may not be a significant improvement unfortunately.

Daniel Kahneman, and Nassim Taleb have spoken about this - essentially that there's no good reason to think CEOs of large companys have any significant control over their company's outcomes. Our judgement is clouded by a combination of hindsight and narrative biases along with a significant underestimation of 'luck'. Kahneman quotes something like a .6 correlation IIRC. So, it CEO performance exists, it's just overestimated.

Kahneman's new book - Thinking Fast and Slow - is an excellent read.

[http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/in-dumb-luck-we-can- trust-2012...](http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/in-dumb-luck-we-can- trust-20120127-1qldb.html?skin=text-only)

</comment><comment><USER7> I really don't understand why people think any amount of pay over, say, a few million, for any position, makes any difference to anyone.

Think about the people you know who are good at their job. Do they give a fuck about money if you give them enough that they're taken care of? No, they probably care a lot more about prestige, interesting problems, other ego- feeders besides a silly 8-digit number.

Of course, CEOs are bound to be good negotiators and will negotiate themselves a higher number because why not. But is anyone going to argue that there's a serious quality of life difference between 20 and 100 million?

<comment><USER8> Because I want to have enough money to say hey, people should go to Mars and so I'll start a company that does that. I want to pursue social, medical research, and technological policy on my own terms which needs my own capital.

Because I want that apartment on One Central Park that costs $17 million and I want a chauffeur at 50k a year and a PA at 100k a year and someone to take care of my kids for 100k a year (no sketchies). I also want to be able to hire a plane when I want to do I can zoom out to Tripoli or Nigeria when interesting things happen and no private charter will go.

Maybe I'm being the stereotypical New Yorker, but I can see 30, 50, even 100 million dollars whisking away rather fast. You know what traders call $100 million of personal income? A unit. It's the starting point.

Note: CEO pay is not, when done sensibly, where the Board goes "Mark, you look damn handsome today - here is a hundred million. Go wild." It is a structured pay where you try and align incentives, that is, give the CEO upside when he does well and some downside when he doesn't. You want to encourage sensible risk-taking, remove principal-agent issues, and deal with moral hazard. Most pay for CEOs comes in stock grants or via other non-cash instruments. It is also usually not guaranteed up front.

<comment><USER7> So, corporations should pay CEOs bigger salaries, because it's the most effective way to boost human space travel?

This is the highest voted counter-argument?

<comment><USER8> It's a broad metaphor for companies giving executives incentives to earn income that comports with the value they produced for shareholders. The incentives drive these executives far beyond where it has material significance for them because there are things beyond the material which money can increase the probability of attaining and that many people aspire towards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Zero correlation is a surprising number. That seems to imply that CEOs are paid fairly; I had thought they were overpaid.

If they're underpaid, there should be a positive correlation between CEO pay and corporate performance (i.e. the companies that pay the most can hire the best people). If they're overpaid, there should be an inverse correlation (i.e. the companies that pay the most are likely to overpay the most, and thus waste the most money). So the exact middle ground implies--the exact middle ground. I didn't realize the market was so efficient.

The other possibility is that CEO pay or market performance are totally random. But all you need to do is identify a few very effective and very well- paid CEOs to argue that this is false. Just look at e.g. JCP's new CEO (they nabbed him from Apple thanks to, in part, a generous options package).

This might be clearer in another context: it wouldn't surprise me to find out that your average hunger in a given day has no correlation to your daily caloric intake. That wouldn't imply that calories don't satiate hunger; it would imply that most of us eat something close to our daily calorie requirement.

<comment><USER10> > all you need to do is identify a few very effective and very well-paid CEOs > to argue that this is false

No. If there's no correlation between CEO-pay and performance/market cap, finding a few interesting counter-cases doesn't further your argument. Inherent randomness and lack of accounting for other factors are far more likely to be the culprits here than market efficiency.

EDIT: Further, zero correlation isn't a "middle-ground" between positive and negative correlation. If it implies anything it's that one variable (performance/market cap) doesn't depend on another. If there's _no_ correlation, CEOs can still be overpaid, they just can't do worse for their companies as pay increases.

<comment><USER9> I'm presenting two possibilities:

1\. There's an efficient market, and CEO pay reflects the extra value they create. In other words, a $100 million CEO is worth $50 million more than a $50 million CEO, so your economic outcome is the same regardless of which one you hire--except that larger companies will extract more value out of a given level of managerial talent, since they can amortize it over more underlings/revenue/whatever.

or

2\. CEO pay and company performance are totally random. But for that to be the case, you'd have to deny that there's any such thing as being able to identify and pay for a talented CEO. Maybe! But every time I've interacted with large company CEOs, I've noticed that they tend to be very bright, and they work extremely hard. People who are in the 10th percentile of public company CEOs-- the kinds of people who bankrupt companies--still seem to be in about the 90th percentile of smarts and energy.

I don't know of another theory that could explain the data as presented. Either the process is random, or it selects for people with certain valuable skills. If the system tends to promote skilled people, you'd expect the companies they run to have a higher return. Unless, of course, they capture that value for themselves.

<comment><USER11> _[CEOs] tend to be very bright, and they work extremely hard._

You can be extremely bright and work extremely hard and yet fail to produce a desired outcome due to forces beyond your control or understanding. It's human nature to overestimate our degree of control over events, and indeed, CEOs are probably selected for this trait more than other professions. Who wants a CEO who admits he really doesn't have much influence over the fate of a $100B enterprise? No, you want someone who is self-confident to the point of delusion.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure if this is deliberately obtuse, but: all else being equal, the smarter and harder-working person will win, right? The existence of some randomness doesn't mean that skill and judgement are immaterial--if you disagree with that, let's play poker some time.

<comment><USER11> _[A]ll else being equal, the smarter and harder-working person will win, right?_

But in actuality, all else is _never_ equal. Then we use the outcome of that unequal scenario to judge _after the fact_ who was the smarter and harder- working. In poker you have a very regular, controlled game. Imagine a tournament where some players were randomly given extra aces, then try and figure out who the best players really are. _That's_ the corporate CEO market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Conflict of interest where the CEO (or his friends on the board) decide how much to pay him? Say it isn't so.

</comment><comment><USER13> The headline is probably true in the statistical sense. The sample size is undoubtedly small and economic data are often tainted by the efficiency effect --the 'experiment' is uncontrolled and actors might already be choosing the results that are best for them, dramatically reducing the apparent statistical effects of their decisions. Finally, CEO pay is often negotiated before performance becomes apparent, and for something like CEO I'd imagine it's really hard to tell how well they'll do in advance, even if you're trying to pick the best people for the job. It's not like there's a CEO aptitude test, it's not like the skills picked up being CEO of Pepsi are necessarily transferable to being CEO of Apple Computer (for example).

The headline might also be true in the economic sense. I'm not especially qualified to judge this.

The article, however, is quoting the apparently private data of one obscure financial research firm. So I'm filing it under Not News.

(I also just noticed that they call Warren Buffet 'underpaid'. The guy earned fifty billion dollars being CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Calling him 'underpaid' seems like a bit of a technicality.)

<comment><USER8> I think the point is the board should structure pay so that when the company does well the CEO automatically earns more and when it doesn't he doesn't.

<comment><USER13> CEO pay is frequently structured like this already. CEOs will often get half or more of their pay in restricted stock and options, and it's not unheard of for their salary to be a token value like $100 or $1. They also have the incentive of not being fired, and being re-signed if they're on contract.

The alleged problem is that the vesting/restriction periods for these stock and options is too short, like a few years. I have a pet idea that CEO pay should be mostly in stock that vests quickly but is restricted for a very long mean time, like 20 years. But that's just a pet idea and I bet it would be a very hard sell to potential CEOs.

I also think pay for performance is overrated. It won't help if you have the wrong guy in the first place.

<comment><USER14> You are forgetting that this compensation is then discounted for time. And 20 years would incur a very substantial discount. Every CEO knows how to do that math.

Radically increasing the vesting time means that you would need to grant several times the number of options that you would need to grant for shorter vesting terms, just to maintain parity. The potential dilutive effect for other shareholders (including employees) would be rather large.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is an interesting podcast with Steven Kaplan about the same issue. His research showed a similar result: CEOs are paid fairly and have had wage growth similar to other highly skilled fields (doctors, lawyers, etc).

Conversely, he found that hedge fund managers have absolutely skyrocketed past everyone else. They have totally blown past any type of normal wage growth and are the real culprit for the "1%" phenomenon.

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/11/kaplan_on_the_i.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/11/kaplan_on_the_i.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> This makes me think back to the TED talk that discusses that higher pay actually decreased performance and employee motivation when innovation is required.

Interesting that the overpaid industries are those that i would consider to be less innovative and those that are considered underpaid are the move innovative industries and companies. That is just my opinion however.

<http://blog.ted.com/2009/08/24/the_surprising/>

</comment><comment><USER17> I recall a study some years back on Australian CEO's of public companies and they found a negative relationship between pay and company performance.

I tried to find the article to no avail. This article says no relationship between pay/performance but mentions many previous studies have found a negative correlation: [http://www.sef.hku.hk/upload/faculty/42/officer- remuneration...](http://www.sef.hku.hk/upload/faculty/42/officer- remuneration.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if they would find a correlation between board members not getting voted out and CEO pay. Maybe shareholders tend to be pleased if boards hire big name CEO's?

<comment><USER5> Many companies have what basically amounts to a board exchange where a high- ranking official from company A serves on the board of company B which has an official on company C's board and company C has an official on company A's board. In the end, it has the potential to be an "I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine" arrangement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> And how would the company have performed if they hired a less expensive CEO?

Fantanomics.

</comment><comment><USER20> I would love to know the break down by type of business. Surely a CEO is more important at a product lead company than a service company?

</comment><comment><USER21> And this is a surprise? I didn't need research to determine this, I just kept up with the news.

<comment><USER22> <http://lesswrong.com/lw/im/hindsight_devalues_science/>

<comment><USER21> It's not hindsight as I'm reading the news article that day.

<comment><USER22> Yes, it's hindsight because you're reading the conclusions of a study and saying "I could have guessed that." But you didn't _know_ that, you _suspected_ it. The point of doing such studies is to _know_. I also suspect, but obviously can't demonstrate, that someone would have said the same thing ("I could have told you that") were the conclusion the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> i don't know how you could possibly say Steve Ballmer is underpaid for his performance.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's actually a steep negative correlation if you take a historical context. In the 1970s, CEO pay was much lower and companies were well run. Now, CEO pay is very high and the results are awful. I explained this "paradox" in a blog post a year and a half ago:

[http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/pay-more- get-...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2010/11/22/pay-more-get-less/)

<comment><USER19> They also wore more hats. Or the market was different, or they weren't dealing with labor shortages, or their predecessors set the stage differently, or inflation has increased 580% since 1970....

It's not possible to tease out the cause and effect.

Fortunately there is an easier way to figure it out; if the businesses are hiring idiots, at far to much money the easy way to tell they are doing it is their stock price will plummet and they will go out of business.

<comment><USER25> _Or the market was different, or they..._

A really significant difference that I rarely see acknowledged in these discussions is that the _means of compensation_ has changed drastically in the last few decades.

It used to be that executives got part of their compensation through perks like generous expense accounts, or country club memberships, or keys to the executive washroom. Changes in tax laws and other cultural norms have eliminated these _as such_. But the corporations still need to be able to compete for the same pool of executives, and so the money that had been going into those perks now surfaces as monetary compensation.

In other words, much of the apparent increase in salaries is actually just that part of the old-days compensation wasn't reflected as income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> my gut reaction was "so what?" the article doesn't attempt to explain. why does this stat matter?</comment>


Ask HN: What would you include in a tech curriculum? - <AUTHOR> Imagine you're asked to add your own topics and courses in a tech curriculum. What would you want to include? <comment><USER2> I'm going to talk about CS. And first, a disclaimer: I didn't major in CS, and my degree was 34 years ago. This is based on my impressions of where CS is, and may not reflect reality.

But I think that CS departments need to be split. There needs to be a CS department, in the College of Science ( _not_ the College of Engineering, where CS usually is), and a different Software Engineering department in the College of Engineering.

I say this because it seems to me that CS and Software Engineering are two separate sets of concerns, related but different. If someone had a chemistry degree, say, we would not expect them to be prepared for a career as a chemical engineer. At the same time, we expect a chemical engineering degree to require a fair knowledge of chemistry.

My perception is that our current system is not preparing people for careers as software engineers. It's preparing them for careers as computer scientists, which is not the same thing. And, of those who graduate who stay in computers, I'd guess that 95% of them will work as software engineers, and only 5% as computer scientists.

What specifically would I change in the curriculum, to make a software engineering (rather than CS) curriculum? At a minimum, I'd have a class where the students had to add a feature to an existing 200,000 line code base, where the original authors were not available to them. I'd have a class that covered several languages, with emphasis on the real-world strengths and weaknesses of those languages - when to use them, and when to avoid them. I'd have a class on tools used in software engineering - source code control systems, bug databases, requirements databases, static analysis tools, profilers, and so on. I'd have a class on dealing with social aspects, including detection of psychopaths, dealing with toxic people and environments, dealing with management, interviewing, and probably several other things I forgot. I'm sure I missed some classes that are needed.</comment>


If US loses triple-A, its citizens will pay - <AUTHOR> http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international-business/if-us-loses-triple-a-its-citizens-will-pay/articleshow/8023609.cms

<comment><USER2> Can we be real here?

If they were to downgrade the U.S. credit rating they'd be shooting themselves in the foot. Because the dollar would plummet and the dollar is still the world's reserve currency.

And as the article itself says...

 _"One of the reasons why the U.S. dollar is still the reserve currency is the lack of other options, and in two years there may still be no other options," said Tom Simons, a money market economist at Jefferies & Co. in New York._

The only real competitors are the euro (Europe has bigger problems than the U.S. does) and the Yuan (I'm sorry but most countries aren't going to trust China as the keeper of the default currency).

So what is S&P really up to?

They're trying to influence policy. S&P released the same warning in regards to the UK and the result was a flurry of austerity programs. Clearly they're hoping for the same result here.

I don't disagree with that goal by the way. I'm just saying call a spade a spade. This is a naked attempt to influence policy

</comment><comment><USER3> I am genuinely curious: What does S&P claim their credit rating reflects?

It is obvious that the US government will always be able to pay both interest and principal on treasury bonds, because they are the ones who run the monetary system: they are sovereign. There is no way that they could ever become unable to fulfil their contractual obligations. To believe that the US government may become unable to pay out US$ is as absurd as believing that Blizzard may become unable to pay out World of Warcraft in-game gold.

So again, what is it that S&P claims to be measuring?

There is a chance that the US government defaults voluntarily for political reasons, whatever those may be - is it that possibility that S&P claims has now increased? Or something else that I am missing?

The reporting reads as if the US government is subject to the inability to pay like some private borrower, or like non-sovereign countries like Greece. But that is not the case. So what gives?

Edit: This confirms my suspicions and also the sentiment voiced by the sibling comment: [http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/04/18/is-anyone- li...](http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/04/18/is-anyone-listening-to- the-standard-poors/ignore-the-raters)</comment>


Developing cross-platform Web apps for smartphones - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/09/01/20/03TC-phone-web_1.html

<comment><USER2> Rhomobile, <http://rhomobile.com>, is taking a cross-platform approach by building a framework to develop ruby applications from mobile phones (with html interfaces). They use xruby a java complier + a tiny web server to make this happen. The apps will work on iphone, blackberry, symbian and windows mobile. It might not be as powerful as a native java/j2me app but its has a lot of benefits over a mobile web app in the browser.

It launched recently and it looks like it might have some potential.

</comment><comment><USER3> All on one page: [http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis...](http://www.infoworld.com/archives/emailPrint.jsp?R=printThis&A=/article/09/01/20/03TC- phone-web_1.html)

They didn't talk about email as part of the cross-platform strategy. By asking iPhone users about the limitations around emailing photos, I was able to make OurDoings much more suited to them: <http://ourdoings.com/ourdoings- startup/2009-01-19>

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me, or does the phrase "cross-platform Web app" remind you of the JVM fiasco of the 1990s?

</comment><comment><USER5> amazed that it took them until page 3 to mention PhoneGap. As far as I'm concerned, that is a huge opportunity to alleviate the issues they build up in the first few pages.</comment>


Introducing Jake: A Build Tool for JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://cappuccino.org/discuss/2010/04/28/introducing-jake-a-build-tool-for-javascript/ <comment><USER2> This is one important part of our efforts to bring JavaScript up to par with other general purpose scripting languages.

Also check out Narwhal (our current non-browser JavaScript platform of choice: <http://narwhaljs.org/> ), Jack (a port of a Rack: <http://jackjs.org/> ) and all the work being done by CommonJS (attempting to standardize some of these APIs: <http://commonjs.org/> )

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like I'm about to ask a really stupid question:

Why not simply set your server up to serve javascript files nicely gzipped? The end file will be way smaller than anything minified, which will have much more of an effect on the end-user surely?

<comment><USER4> If you aren't using gzip, you're crazy. But gzipping is one small piece of the puzzle. Even the simplest web application would benefit from the concatenation and minification of its scripts. Plus, as it turns out, those aren't the only things that real apps need to do.

In Cappuccino, we have a whole suite of tools that operate on applications, and Jake is the conductor. Our preprocessor gets run ahead of time before deploying for performance, a process easily automated with Jake. Images get base64'd and combined into a single file to improve download speed and perceived performance, again completely automated with Jake. We have a tool to strip dead code that Jake knows how to run, and a tool that combines apps into a single file as well.

Our jake scripts handle our deployment process too, creating zip files of everything that's relevant and preparing them for upload to our servers, incrementing version numbers automatically, etc. Turns out automation is important.

<comment><USER3> Grr, how did I forget to mention concatenation ;)

Anyway, I agree that there are lots of little tricks, and you've got me thinking now. My only gripe with spriting images etc has been the pain of maintenance. If that's taken away with nice automation, well, that could be very good indeed :)

<comment><USER5> If you look at the end of the article we link to the post explaining our unique way of handling image spriting that is completely automatic in Cappuccino projects.

<comment><USER3> Nice one, am enjoying reading about how it works now. I think you've converted me :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IronRuby Nears its 1.0 Release - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/10/IronRuby-Update

<comment><USER2> _"CRuby is licensed under the GPL"_

Somebody didn't do their fact checking! From the Ruby Source ([http://svn.ruby-lang.org/cgi- bin/viewvc.cgi/trunk/COPYING?re...](http://svn.ruby-lang.org/cgi- bin/viewvc.cgi/trunk/COPYING?revision=25184&view=markup)):

 _Ruby is copyrighted free software by Yukihiro Matsumoto <firstname.lastname@example.com>. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under either the terms of the GPL version 2 (see the file GPL), or the conditions below_

...where it then goes on to describe the conditions commonly referred to as the "Ruby License" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_License>), which is half-way between a MIT/BSD style and something with explicit copyleft.

Probably the reason Microsoft didn't go directly to the MRI implementation has more to do with them wanting it to run on the CLR.

</comment><comment><USER3> Even if the stuff about not being able to look at the source was true, they're testing against RubySpec tests which are written by people who can and do look at the source, so this post seems nonsensical.

edit: on a reread I notice the author actually disses RubySpec as being a "long way from completion" and then praises IronRuby for meeting 97% of the same (allegedly limited) tests.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Most teams trying to implementation a Ruby compiler simply look at the CRuby > source code, but this isn't an option for Microsoft. CRuby is licensed under > the GPL, which Microsoft is afraid of for numerous legal reasons. This means > they have to reverse engineer it, a daunting feat.

Interesting. If the reference implementation of a spec is GPL licensed, can the spec reasonably be called open? (I'm not claiming that the Ruby spec is open.)</comment>


Ask HN: What is an example of a super simple SaaS that is profitable? - <AUTHOR> Looking to make 500$ a month - any examples of super simple SaaS that make at least 500 USD per month? I don't know where to start, so looking for inspiration/examples etc <comment><USER2> I run a number of tiny services in this category, such as an autoresponder for Google Hangouts: [https://gchat.simon.codes/](https://gchat.simon.codes/). I originally built it for myself - I forward many gmail addresses to one and was missing chat messages - but these days most of my customers are small business owners or employees of larger companies.

I recently summarized all my projects and my numbers here, if it's of interest: [https://www.simonmweber.com/2019/01/07/side-project- income-2...](https://www.simonmweber.com/2019/01/07/side-project- income-2018.html)

<comment><USER3> I maintain a very similar service to your autoplaylist at [http://getsongbird.io](http://getsongbird.io)

However I was not really able to monetize in any form (needs permission from Spotify, and Stripe shut down the account before it got to even do anything). Did you encounter similar issues and if so how did you circumvent them?

I'm at a loss now and on the verge of shutting it down, but I have a few hundred users that periodically email me to ask for fixes / new features, and it pains my heart to just give it up like that, but it's just not making any sense economically for me now.

<comment><USER2> I'm not too familiar with Spotify integrations, but I'm surprised to hear you need their permission. Is that an api terms thing?

In my case it's been a better-to-ask-for-forgiveness-than-permission situation. I've had almost no official contact with Google and do my best to abide by their terms.

Feel free to reach out via email if you'd like to chat! There's a chance I'd be interested in buying it if you're planning to shut down.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the offer! I'll definitely reach out if I'm planning on shutting down

I believe Spotify has some API terms that say that explicit permission must be granted for monetization. I initially also went for the 'ask-for-forgiveness' route but Stripe didn't allow my account to get started at all as it was considered high risk.

For now I'm going to fix some issues and try to do more reaching out / marketing, and then I'll try reaching out to Stripe again - hopefully this doesn't look that shady / high risk anymore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I realize that might not be what you want to hear, but my advice would be to target a different (larger) MRR. $500/month is not a sustainable or even reasonable business. It's fine to start something "on the side", but I believe you should immediately set your goals to something that in the long term will be sustainable, unless it's really supposed to be only a hobby/toy.

If you've never ran a business before, one important bit of advice is that you should assume revenue targets of 2-3x of what you'd like to actually earn in post-tax personal income. Most people underestimate the costs of running a business and forget that they will need to pay for a computer, software, accounting services, and lots of other things.

Depending on where you live, I'd say target $3k-$10k in MRR.

<comment><USER5> Downvoted for what should be a very obvious observation.

Start with one $500 / month business. Next month do another $500 / month business.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

After 10 months, it's $5000 / month.

After 36 months it's over $15,000 / month.

<comment><USER6> Now you are running n businesses — tuning just one is tough enough.

"Hey Bob, we have a customer support ticket for business 65"

"What does 65 do again?"

<comment><USER7> Name your businesses better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I guess not the simplist once you get under the hood, but I've started two nice profitable SaaS products and just launched a third:

[https://www.simplecrew.com](https://www.simplecrew.com) \- street team reporting/tracking tool (2012 - present) [https://www.crewfire.com](https://www.crewfire.com) \- social media brand ambassador platform (2014 - present) [https://www.chainfuel.com](https://www.chainfuel.com) \- telegram analytics/anti-spam/management dashboard (beta release last week)

<comment><USER9> What's your stack for these?

<comment><USER8> SimpleCrew = NodeJS/React CrewFire & Chainfuel = Go

<comment><USER10> Only Go? Like, WebAssembly or something?

<comment><USER11> Just Go and plain old html Go templates/css/js.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For me, [https://ipdata.co/](https://ipdata.co/) is a perfect example of a super simple SaaS application.

Jonathan, the founder, also wrote a great piece on how he built it [https://hackernoon.com/how-to-build-a-saas- with-0-fed2341078...](https://hackernoon.com/how-to-build-a-saas- with-0-fed2341078c8?source=search_post</comment><comment>---0)

If you're interested in learning more about micro saas checkout Tyler Tringas Micro SaaS series [https://tylertringas.com/micro-saas- ebook/](https://tylertringas.com/micro-saas-ebook/)

<comment><USER13> I really like the smooth scroll on this site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I essentially resell DNS hosting.

I allow users to store their DNS records in a git repository, then when they make commits & pushes I initiate an update to the live-zones on Amazon Route53.

It'll never make me rich. Low-end users use their domain-registrars. High-end users probably have lots of AWS-based infrastructure, so they can handle DNS themselves.

But there is a middle-ground, and I've been lucky enough to sell services to a couple of (European) universities. So different departments can handle different sub-domains.

Fun anyway, and although I do need to handle user-support the churn-rate is minimal:

[https://dns-api.com/](https://dns-api.com/)

<comment><USER15> How did you learn how to create this app? I work best with tutorials or books or videos that go through how to build an entire app. Learning individual components is fine but learning how to integrate them is the tough part.

<comment><USER14> It isn't an app, but a website. As for how I learned I guess years of practice ..

<comment><USER15> Did you consult books, or courses online, or videos? I'm just asking because there is so much info out there, what specific paths would be best? Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been pretty impressed with pullreminders.com - it is a Slack bot that alerts you for unreviewed pull requests. Seems to actually solve a real need and since the author, Abi Noda, has been pretty open about talking about it, seems it's been pretty profitable.

More info:

[https://www.indiehackers.com/product/pull- reminders](https://www.indiehackers.com/product/pull-reminders)

Friendly reminder that the important components of a successful SaaS is marketing, marketing, marketing, and code, so how to market the app should be considered just as important as how easy it is to code.

I'd probably recommend you take whatever your idea is and offer it as a consulting service that you do yourself manually. If people won't buy that, they won't buy your app, and you can prove the idea without doing any coding at all. Once you have an audience for the service, you can just sell the automated version.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the shout-out David! If anyone's interested here's the link to the website: [https://pullreminders.com](https://pullreminders.com)

<comment><USER18> Is it built with Rails? I'm curious what tech stacks are used in one-person SaaS.

<comment><USER17> Yep, Rails

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I always thought Patrick McKenzie's Appointment Reminder was a perfect example of something really simple executed very well:

[https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-i-grew-my- appoint...](https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-i-grew-my-appointment- reminder-business-to-12k-mo-2b8720ca25)

And he is an excellent communicator; in particular look up his older podcasts.

But I think today it is getting harder and harder; so simple projects won't cut it anymore and more effort needs to be put into both product development and marketing to get any sort of traction.

<comment><USER20> _But I think today it is getting harder and harder; so simple projects won 't cut it anymore and more effort needs to be put into both product development and marketing to get any sort of traction._

I'd be willing to bet people have been saying that for at least 5000 years.

<comment><USER21> It's only easier if you're entering a greenfield industry, with no saturation. IE. the internet in the late 90's, or the App Store in 2007.

In any new industry, there's always very low-hanging fruit ideas to pursue. Like restaurant reviews (Yelp) or an app to track your calories (MyFitnessPal). It was also easier to market it because more people had the need for those types of products back then, and thus willing to try it. Now? Nobody will listen to you unless you have a truly compelling, original product ("Oh, that's been done already. I don't want to hear about it")

And SEO and ranking in Google for competitive keywords was _much_ easier in the 2000's, even as late as 2008. 2010-2011 was when things started to turn, and became insanely competitive.

<comment><USER20> _And SEO and ranking in Google for competitive keywords was much easier in the 2000 's, even as late as 2008. 2010-2011 was when things started to turn, and became insanely competitive._

If your approach to marketing is "Google will send me enough traffic to succeed" then you've already failed.

<comment><USER21> When did I say that? Search traffic is a major part of marketing (along with PR, word of mouth, ads) for lots of companies, including public ones (tripadvisor, yelp, zillow, demand media). And to dismiss it is simply delusional.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I run a saas that is profitable: [https://PhantomJsCloud.com](https://PhantomJsCloud.com)

It's a pretty simple concept: providing PhantomJs or Chrome Headless as a REST API.

The thing is, the SaaS itself is only about 1/3 the work. You need a website, account management, and billing too. Today, there are perhaps other services you could leverage that can help reduce this initial burden (Kong?) but a few years ago when I started my SaaS, nothing really met my needs. Hope it's easier for everyone now!

<comment><USER23> Isn't PhantomJS basically unsupported at this point?

<comment><USER22> yeah, bad name choice. right now the default browser I use is Chrome, but people can still use PhantomJs if they want.

I'll make a more generic domain name sometime in the future (lots of stuff to do....)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My biggest inspiration is [https://www.placecard.me/](https://www.placecard.me/) by Cory Zue ([https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=czue](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=czue)).

He has been documenting the whole process very well both on Twitter ([https://twitter.com/czue/status/958993008543830017](https://twitter.com/czue/status/958993008543830017)) and his blog ([http://www.coryzue.com/writing/](http://www.coryzue.com/writing/)).

<comment><USER25> Thanks for the shout out Vivan! I even got my very first grumpy hacker news blog comment out of this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Great suggestions here so far and a common thread I noticed is leveraging platforms such as Slack/Gmail/Trello/Shopify etc. - essentially an B2B platforms. My friend and I currently run cardsync.xyz on Trello which allows Trello users to sync their cards and it generates under $1000/month. We spend about 2-10 hours a week on it.

You will be at the mercy of these platforms when (not if) they decide to change their rules but until then, it can be a good source of side income.

<comment><USER27> Did you mean to say "just under $1000/month"? It seems kind of strange to claim that you make under an amount, because technically $0/month is under $1000, and "actively losing money" also counts. Just curious.

<comment><USER28> Probably means "close to $1000/month" rather than any value under $1000

<comment><USER26> Correct, close to $1000/month.

<comment><USER29> Congrats! How long did it take you guys to reach that MRR?

<comment><USER26> Thanks. We had a free trial version for about three months and then started paid plans based on customer demographics around last summer. So it's been less than a year. Note that I'm based out of Toronto and my friend in South America.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Keep in mind that "super simple" usually also means "easily reproduced". The dream of cranking out a profitable SaaS offering in a weekend is possible, it's just not sustainable past a year or two unless you also incorporate some differentiation.

It's usually the differentiation that makes the SaaS more complex than an MVP.

</comment><comment><USER31> Fomo.com is doing a few million and is owned/operated by 1 individual (although he has a small team). Believe he acquired it and grew it like crazy. I'd reckon (if he chose) the company could do a 100k a month in profit.

<comment><USER32> This is an example of a product that probably does something cool, but really doesn't do a good job of explaining what it does or why I would use it on the front page. But it looks pretty.

<comment><USER33> thanks for the feedback.

this homepage is actually our 3rd and probably most abstract implementation.

1st, 2016: [https://web.archive.org/web/20161108025452/https://www.usefo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161108025452/https://www.usefomo.com/)

2nd, 2017/2018: [https://web.archive.org/web/20190107040431/https://fomo.com/](https://web.archive.org/web/20190107040431/https://fomo.com/)

indeed, the numbers speak for themselves. over the last few weeks since deploying we saw lower signup conversion rates. but, we also have a few product launches forthcoming.

balancing between "be short and to the point" and sharing a vision is perhaps more art than science, and that's why we have so much art on our website.

<comment><USER32> Second one seems to come closest for me. I prefer something clear like "see that notification at the bottom left corner of the page? We do that". But I get it; you're selling why someone should use the product (a bit abstractly, perhaps). As a tech product though, don't forget to highlight the actual product(s) and to be specific.

The "Install Fomo in 29 Seconds" section from the first iteration makes me feel confident, as a developer, that there's a clear path to get your product working for me and it won't be a pita. A documentation link at the top, rather than hidden at the bottom, would be nice - see how Facebook presents their tech offerings (granted, open source) at [https://reactjs.org/](https://reactjs.org/) etc.

I'm just one guy who makes decisions about what techs to use for myself and others though, so yada yada grain of salt. Maybe I'm not who you're targeting as much as salespeople themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Fill a niche that is difficult to solve for, but easy to scale once you do. Fix a problem that you've had.

In the end, there are a lot of opportunities for SaaS, imho the DBaaS are the main reason to consider a cloud provider. Getting setup, failover, backups, hot recovery etc are middling to difficult even with dedicated resources, but tend to have solutions that scale well once you do.

Not suggesting that as something to do, the bigger cloud providers are likely to edge you out eventually.

It could be as simple as a better whois lookup service that is fast and deployed to multiple regions on the major cloud services. Whois in particular is difficult because the resolvers for some of the less big TLDs aren't as responsive, there's inconsistencies in standards and normalization takes work.

Again, it's a matter of figuring out a niche and filling it.

<comment><USER35> quite a few SaaS products I've used -- they set out to make application A, ran into a problem building application A (like "wow looking at these logs is difficult, let's build a quick tool that solves this problem") and the solution they built became their real SaaS product.

<comment><USER34> Absolutely... which is usually my point when I say build something that solves a problem you have/had. It's often the best opportunities for either an open- source contribution or a SaaS product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm doing well with Checkbot, a Chrome extension that tests websites for SEO, speed and security problems that has a subscription model:

[https://www.checkbot.io/](https://www.checkbot.io/)

It's simple in terms of day to day running now that it works well but getting to that stage and the implementation behind it was a ton of work.

I don't think you're going to easily find a project that's easy to implement, requires little maintenance, has low running costs, markets itself, scales etc. You'll have to put in effort somewhere.

I think if you look into the projects being posted in the thread, you'll realise few are simple if you want to make something people will pay for.

<comment><USER37> I came across this a few months ago - this is a perfect example of how to execute, great job. How's your revenue growth?

<comment><USER36> Thanks! Growing but slowly. I need to make more progress on the marketing side now as I don't think much on the coding side will change this.

I think the story is similar with simpler products too. Getting the word out and optimising your sales funnel takes much longer than you'd think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I can't speak for the simplicity, but by all accounts the backend of this system is (it was at some point) a single ec2 instance and is a single person project.

Granted that person is cpercival but whatever :)

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

<comment><USER39> A little bit of trivia for people who might not know: cpercival was an integral part of one of the favourite HN threads of all time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079)

<comment><USER40> That thread was a nice little rabbit hole in the morning, thanks. There's also an appearance by Drew Houston with early mention of dropbox in there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> [https://ngrok.com/product](https://ngrok.com/product) It's SSH forwarding as a service. Not super-simple, but not too hard either I think.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've built a petition system that allow users to publish their own petitions and download signatures lists. Got a handful of loyal customers acquired threw relations. MRR is ~500€ since +10 years. Won't give the url here because it's running on a ultra cheap dedicated server at 5€/m, HN would blow it down in one minute :)

<comment><USER43> > ultra cheap dedicated server at 5€/m Dedicated? How? Where?

<comment><USER44> Probably from Kimsufi (OVH) [https://www.kimsufi.com/us/en/servers.xml](https://www.kimsufi.com/us/en/servers.xml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Probably far from being "super simple", but I made a bot to automate different tasks in a online game.

Customers can either self-host the software them-self (min $5/month) or pay a higher price (min $10/month) and use my "cloud" service where I host and install the software for them.

I use Golang to build everything, caddy for https, Hetzner for hosting, and docker to deploy cloud instances.

[https://www.ogame.ninja/](https://www.ogame.ninja/)

<comment><USER46> Wait, hold up. Ogame is still popular enough that you have a good userbase for this?

<comment><USER45> Short answer: yes. It even surprised me :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm not sure if I'd call it simple, but the product itself is fairly straightforward (at least to me :). I run a SaaS product called browserless ([https://browserless.io](https://browserless.io)). Goal here was to make it really simple to run headless browser work in a production environment, without worrying about all the provisioning and maintenance.

However, like anything simple on the exterior, there's still layers of complexity behind it. How do you charge users? Where do you host? How do you acquire users? How do you interact with customers?

Don't mean to be cynical, but even $500/mo is going to have some cost and time complexity. Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER48> I have a Shopify app that generates a little under $1K a month. I feel like if I put some dedicated effort into it, I could probably double that. Right now, I probably spend about 4 hours a week max on support.

I would discount all the people who say it cannot be done. There is a ton of opportunity out there if you are willing to do your research, take sensible risks and do the hard work to build and launch stuff. The trick (at least for me) is transitioning from the side-project to the fully self sustaining stage. There is a messy middle where the investment required (in terms of time and money) imposes a much higher risk.

<comment><USER49> how did you conduct your research phase?

<comment><USER48> I went through the Shopify app store to find app categories with lots of negative reviews. This suggested to me that there was unmet demand. I then reached out to some shop owners to ask what they needed and used the insights from those conversations to design a better solution than the competition.

It is a pretty simple straightforward approach but just takes time and discipline to grind through the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> [https://commits.io](https://commits.io)

Pretty simple code poster creator.

</comment><comment><USER30> For a list of projects + revenues, check out IndieHackers: [https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1](https://www.indiehackers.com/interviews/page/1)

It might provide some inspiration of related projects that are in your wheelhouse.

</comment><comment><USER51> Depends of your definition of simple, but I really like [https://cronhub.io/](https://cronhub.io/). Does 1 thing and does it well.

<comment><USER52> I've found [https://healthchecks.io/](https://healthchecks.io/) great for my use, and it has quite friendly pricing for non-profit hobby projects.

<comment><USER53> Just to chime in and also say that I'm a very happy healthchecks user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I don't have anything to do with Toggl besides using it briefly years ago, but apparently it is (or was) profitable: [http://purde.net/2012/09/keep-it- simple-talk-to-users-how-to...](http://purde.net/2012/09/keep-it-simple-talk- to-users-how-toggl-has-gotten-to-20-000-paid-users-and-counting/)

</comment><comment><USER55> There is no single "To Do" application that meets the needs of all of the users since everyone thinks differently. Find a niche that the others haven't really addressed yet and build your application in that space.

The same applies for email clients or calendar applications. Basically anything that orients around organizing information and priorities.

<comment><USER56> It's funny this thread exists.

I actually created a to-do/note app that works for loads of users, I called it Thought Train because I kept losing my train of thought as I tabbed through Slack/Skype/Email all day.

It's not "The answer" but it's helped me daily since I built it.

The trick to creating something like this in a crowded space is not to compete against the others, but compliment them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I run [https://awardfares.com](https://awardfares.com) with a friend, it's not making much money but it's certainly profitable.

<comment><USER58> Is there a consolidated list of alliances/carriers that you support? I couldn't see anything on the site

<comment><USER57> Only Star Alliance so far, however the availability might not necessarily match for your specific carrier, as they have different rules between each other. Both me and my friend use SAS Eurobonus and the availability lines up quite well.

We're working on adding other alliances too though!

EDIT: Actually I see now that my partner added the list if you scroll down on the first page (Only visible if you're not logged in though).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> What about a simple wordpress plugin? I instantly thought of a grammar checker and ran into this:

[https://wordpress.org/plugins/perfect- tense/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/perfect-tense/)

Marketing wise, I would try initiating an affiliate program. If you tap into a power blogger network, you might be able to get hundreds of customers over an 18 month stretch.

</comment><comment><USER60> Not a simple SaaS but my brother (personal finance blogger), best friend (journalist) and I (engineer - P.Eng Ontario, Canada) just started a copywriting subscription for fintechs in Canada.

Please note that we had worked with a few fintechs for about a year on a service basis and made a pivot to a subscription service just last week. This resulted in most of our existing fintech clients coming on board right away after we emailed them even though the website ([https://moosecopy.com](https://moosecopy.com)) is still under construction i.e. no writing samples on it yet. Our mixed background provides an excellent value for our clients and we have been fortunate to work with some great clients as well.

Lastly, as a few people have suggested wisely, it's a good idea to offer a service initially and then look towards building a product out of it (similar to Paul Graham's idea of doing things that don't scale during early development stage).

</comment><comment><USER61> [https://certsimple.com](https://certsimple.com) \- faster, easier verification for websites, so they can prove they're run by a specific company (with an EV SSL cert). It's essentially a UI and a bunch of APIs that connect to different data sources to pre-check info, then pass that on to a CA.

<comment><USER62> Curious how this is so much cheaper than all the other EV cert companies that charge thousands!

<comment><USER61> Ha, thankyou, but we're definitely in the middle of the market. If your main thing is price you can find cheaper companies, our main thing is reducing verication time and hassle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> There's BuiltWith: [http://www.startupdaily.net/2015/09/builtwith-is-perhaps- one...](http://www.startupdaily.net/2015/09/builtwith-is-perhaps-one-of- australias-most-profitable-online-companies-and-has-zero-staff/)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is not simple at all! There are hundreds of corner cases to code for, you need a swarm of machines to crawl etc.

When he started more than a decade ago, there was zero competition and it was a novel idea. Now there is stiff competition.

This is far from simple - this is actually a very serious project, not an example of 500$ stuff!

<comment><USER63> The idea is quite simple - crawl websites and figure out what makes them tick. Of course you're not going to enter the exact same market. No one is obligated to find a competition-free, low-hanging niche for you to occupy.

<comment><USER21> A lot of billion dollar company ideas are simple too like Facebook, Salesforce and Yelp. But I doubt 1 person can build those.

Those BuiltWith folks probably have hundreds of regression tests running daily. Maybe a bunch of freelancers who check for newer versions of software too every month.

<comment><USER63> You are aware that BuiltWith itself was built by one person, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I run [http://pullreminders.com](http://pullreminders.com)

</comment><comment><USER64> One source of ideas is the Indiehackers products listing. They also include revenue figures. Here's a list of all products with >= $500 in MRR (some are Stripe-verified, rest are self-reported so take it with a pinch of salt).

LINK => [https://www.indiehackers.com/products?minRevenue=500&sorting...](https://www.indiehackers.com/products?minRevenue=500&sorting=lowest- revenue)

</comment><comment><USER13> What gets me is the amount of people making money on low budget basic bootstrap themes here. I like it. I'm just surprised.

</comment><comment><USER65> I made [https://www.beadifier.com](https://www.beadifier.com) and the paid version [https://www.beadifier.pro](https://www.beadifier.pro)

It provides an optimized solution for a very niche type problem (making fuse bead patterns from images).

<comment><USER66> That's neat. Do you get a lot of people using it and signing up?

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Not highly complex to set up, profitable without massive scale, not labor intensive. Pick two.

</comment><comment><USER68> I run [https://equinox.io](https://equinox.io), a service for distributing and updating Go applications. I'm not sure if it falls into the "simple" category, but the product targets a small market.

<comment><USER15> How did you learn to make all this? I haven't been taught anything like this in my CS program. What resources did you use? Books, videos etc. are very helpful. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I co-run a SaaS company targeted towards funeral homes. We offer a CMS and white labeled obituaries that don't look like they were built in 1998. The subject matter might be a bit mundane but it's very profitable.

</comment><comment><USER70> Aftership looks like a fairly straightforward SAAS offering that could use a competitor.

It does deliver value, and I'm sure there's more to it than you might see at first. But, it does seem a simpler space than many.

<comment><USER71> ahh.. supporting 400 different providers is a full-time and fairly painful job. Anyways their space is pretty crowded as well.

<comment><USER70> Supporting 3 would handle a pretty large market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> [http://www.mlreader.com](http://www.mlreader.com) \- MLReader - it extracts invoice information. It is as simple as there's only one API.

</comment><comment><USER73> You could try buying an existing very small SAAS which you know you can grow and build into something bigger. Then either keep it running or sell it on again at a higher value.

</comment><comment><USER74> Are there other websites like [https://indiehackers.com](https://indiehackers.com) that you would recommend?

</comment><comment><USER75> pinboard.in

</comment><comment><USER76> park.io is making $120K per month using an automated set of scripts that catch up pendingDelete domains from various registries.

<comment><USER77> Honestly this kind of pisses me off. automated domain parking. this should be illegal.

<comment><USER78> I've used them more than once and am very happy with their service.

Squatters do this kind of thing already, but they demand an exorbitant price or have some kind of opaque bidding process. Park.io at least introduces some consistency and trust in this process.

I'd much rather pay a small premium ($99 for the domain vs however much a particular registrar charges) to avoid that hassle and still get a great name I would never have gotten otherwise by scanning for pendingDelete domains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> I think a great place to start is places where there's a marketplace, like Shopify, BigCommerce, Github, etc.

</comment><comment><USER80> droplr & Cloudapp both come to mind ... essentially branded filesharing/url shorteners but I'd love to see either of them support adding custom favicons or otherwise completely removing their branding

</comment><comment><USER81> Look into writing apps for Shopify, many are quite simple and charge a fee.

</comment><comment><USER82> Check IndieHackers website!

<comment><USER83> [https://www.indiehackers.com/products?businessModel=subscrip...](https://www.indiehackers.com/products?businessModel=subscriptions&maxRevenue=999&minRevenue=500)

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Plenty of them out there that fit this criteria provided you work full time on it and don't count your hours.

</comment><comment><USER85> Create a Shopify app.

</comment><comment><USER86> www.doodle.com ...

</comment><comment><USER87> segment.com

</comment><comment><USER88> A simple SaaS that gushes profits is so improbable that you might as well call it impossible.

If you want passive income, write code for pay and invest some of the surplus.

If you want to do a startup, find a cofounder and apply to YCombinator. Or find another path to working at a startup.

<comment><USER89> I disagree - I wrote a simple tool for my family a number of years back, left it on my personal website in a way that was usable by the general public, and ignored it. Came back a couple years later, saw it was getting tens of thousands of uses a month, added some relevant amazon affiliate links, and hit that $500 a month mark. I let it run for a couple years like that, then sold it.

So if I can hit the mark accidentally off a weekend project, it certainly is achievable if you put serious effort in.

<comment><USER90> Care to share what kind of tool it was? This story has quite piqued my curiosity.

<comment><USER89> It was an image conversion program that computed designs for various crafts from uploaded photos.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


IA Writer for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://www.iawriter.com/

<comment><USER2> I don't get it. this app seems to be more about making a statement than innovating. I don't agree with the premise that stripping down an app necessarily makes it better. when I use microsoft word, the many features of the app don't cause me to flail my arms in desperation. I'm really trying hard to not use the word "hipster" in my thoughts about this, but I guess I just did. I guess the focus mode is neat, though.</comment>


Show HN: LambdaPHP – Host any PHP website on AWS Lambda instantly - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/san-kumar/lambdaphp <comment><AUTHOR> For the curious here is how it works (this is all setup for you automatically when you type _lambdaphp deploy_ ):

\- Your requests are sent to Amazon API Gateway

\- AWS API Gateway invokes the Lambda function (pretty standard stuff)

\- There is a NodeJS server running on Lambda that accepts incoming connections

\- If the request is for a static file, it just serves it directly.

\- If it is a php file, it sets up the environment vars ($_GET, $_POST, etc) and loads _php-cgi_ and pipes the request to that and captures the output

\- There is a wrapper script in between that creates a File IO wrapper to intercept any file IO and writes them to S3

\- Similarly there is another wrapper to intercept requests to $_SESSION that are written to dynamodb

\- It also loads the composer autoloader so it is possible to load any modules from the vendor directory

<comment><USER2> Why is a NodeJS dependency necessary? PHP can handle and route requests just fine. Modern PHP even comes with its own server.

<comment><USER3> AWS Lambda doesn't support php natively currently. It came out with Node support, and has since added Python, Java, and C#. Of them Node generally has the fastest startup time, so if you want to run an unsupported language (like PHP), you build a binary for that language, and then write a small node script to call it and handle the input and output.

<comment><USER4> Every measurement I have made of startup time puts Python 2.7 at about half the startup time of Node.js.

<comment><USER5> Now that Go is also supported it would be interesting to know what kind of start up time it has.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was just a weekend project. Here are some examples of using LambdaPHP. All of these are hosted on AWS Lambda (i.e. serverlessly):

\- Static site

[https://www.lambdaphp.host](https://www.lambdaphp.host)

\- Handling POST data

[https://www.lambdaphp.host/examples/post.php](https://www.lambdaphp.host/examples/post.php)

\- Creating sessions using AWS DynamoDB

[https://www.lambdaphp.host/examples/session.php](https://www.lambdaphp.host/examples/session.php)

\- File IO on AWS lambda (using S3 wrapper)

[https://www.lambdaphp.host/examples/guestbook.php](https://www.lambdaphp.host/examples/guestbook.php)

\- Simple File uploader to AWS S3

[https://www.lambdaphp.host/examples/upload.php](https://www.lambdaphp.host/examples/upload.php)

\- User signup and login using AWS Cognito

[https://www.lambdaphp.host/examples/auth/](https://www.lambdaphp.host/examples/auth/)

\- Using Custom domains with https support

[https://www.lambdaphp.host/](https://www.lambdaphp.host/)

<comment><USER6> If this post to HN gets your example pages some traffic, it'd be awesome if you shared the stats and performance metrics available to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "This was just a weekend project for my own amusement but I will definitely add more features"

I'm late to the programming party, started at 38 now 43, and mostly regular sites (though I am working on a couple webapps at the moment), but comments like this make me feel like taking my toys and going home.

Nice work, can't wait to dig in and take a look at this both as a user and n00b dev. Congrats!

<comment><USER8> ;) This seems like magic at first glance but actually, it's not too much of a leap when you know how. In fact, there's a step by step guide on how to do something similar here:

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/scripting-languages- for...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/scripting-languages-for-aws- lambda-running-php-ruby-and-go/)

Hopefully, that'll give you some clues into understanding the magic behind this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Excellent work superasn! For those curious the installer that this package depends on to do it's magic can been seen here [1] also by the same author.

[1] [https://github.com/san-kumar/installer](https://github.com/san- kumar/installer)

</comment><comment><USER10> When cloud computing commoditized running your own hardware or datacenters, people started tightly-coupling their applications to these cloud providers. One of the great benefits of containerization is that it commoditizes the cloud providers, allowing you to decouple your service from them. I think "serverless" like Lambda is pretty obviously an attempt to "re-couple" these applications to the cloud provider in a sort of "de-commoditization". Interesting to watch.

<comment><USER11> That's a good point, and I think that it's cool that using this you can grab your website and dump it in any other web server running FPM or mod_php to stop using lambda.

<comment><USER10> It's interesting and brings up a yet-another-interesting consideration which is more broadly what is the "best" place to couple your applications/services to your provider... I suppose that's why I like containerization so much, because it decouples them fairly maximally from any kind of service provider (all you need is a network connection and some CPU to run them by, to sort of misquote something I heard once upon a time). You retain a lot of control with containerization, but without the overhead of a fully virtualized environment. It keeps time and money costs down, too, not having to couple into all those various AWS (or whatever) services. And I like being decoupled from those kinds of service providers because it also reduces the surface area of skills which are _only_ useful with that service provider. Decouples expertise from a single point of failure, which is really important for me personally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What do the page response times look like, since it seems like the included php opcache wouldn't function, nor would user data caches like apcu?

<comment><AUTHOR> For a practical example, you can try speed test on this page: [https://www.lambdaphp.host/](https://www.lambdaphp.host/) (hosted with AWS Lambda). It does use external CDN for CSS framework (cdn.rawgit.com) so you will have to factor loading time for that as well[1].

Yes, PHP opcache and optimizations don't work since it gets cold started every time.

[1] Pingdom speed test results: [https://i.imgur.com/9zg9l3g.png](https://i.imgur.com/9zg9l3g.png)

<comment><USER13> Why is that? Couldn't you keep php running for the lambda lifetime? That way only when the lambda cold starts there would be no cache.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll try to research this. Another user suggested it to me before so maybe that's possible..

<comment><USER8> It would be cool if you could launch php-fpm but it doesn't look like lambda supports port binding/sockets.

Seems like other people have had this idea in the past too!

[https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=624889](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=624889)

Are there any workarounds allowing something similar?

<comment><USER8> I was wrong. From what I've read, port binding == no, sockets == yes. So should be able to use fpm to achieve this.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is the best pointer I have recieved from anyone. A lot of people have told me to do it but nobody can tell me how to get started. This looks something worthwhile that I can research and implement. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great work! A couple things I'd like before I would use this:

\- Cloudfront support for static assets

\- JSON Web Tokens might be cheaper and faster for session storage. Using DynamoDB for user sessions severely limits the number of page loads per second without paying more for DynamoDB throughput.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I guess if you're using cloudfront then it's best to use a seperate sub-domain and link to them directly because you don't want to redirect it through the Api gateway/lambda as it will add to the load time and exhaust your quota.

You're right about JWT. It does seem like a better solution for handling sessions and I'm sure somebody must have already written the wrapper for it, so it's just a matter of integrating. Though with JWT is there a limit on the session data length? Because right now it can be anything. If iirc with Jwt the cookie contains the entire session data, right?

<comment><USER14> I found this JWT implementation which claims to replace $_SESSION [https://github.com/byjg/jwt-session](https://github.com/byjg/jwt-session)

Yea JWT maxes out around 8KB vs DynamoDB's 400KB

Also, the CloudFront storage problem exists with many other serverless frameworks like Zappa so I don't blame you for not solving it yet haha.

<comment><USER15> > This implementation save the JWT into a client cookie. Because of this do > not store in the JWT Token sensible data like passwords.

JWT is designed for authentication claims, and not to completely replace $_SESSION data, although technically you can stuff as much as you want into the payload. The wording makes me uneasy about the implementation - but decent advice otherwise. (Also note that getting JWT implementations/crypto right is somewhat tricky, obvs. Caveat emptor)

On a quick note, storing big blobs of data in DynamoDB is asking for trouble, and AWS actually recommend S3 for this [0]. Best to not find this out the hard way (i.e. huge bill).

[0] [https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerg...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/GuidelinesForItems.html#GuidelinesForItems.StoringInS3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd be really curious to see how something like WordPress runs on this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes that is my next milestone too. Will try to combine it with "Amazon Aurora Serverless"[1] so that's it is possible to host a WordPress site 100% serverlessly and not pay anything or very less for low traffic blogs and websites.

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/serverless/](https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/serverless/)

<comment><USER17> That's an intriguing idea, interested to see where this goes - thanks for posting about it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This looks pretty cool, congrats!

As an aside, does anyone know of a language that is as easy as PHP for programming beginners to jump into Web programming, but isn't PHP?

<comment><USER9> This begs the question, if you want something like PHP why not just use PHP7? Is the stigma that strong?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am not a php guy so this is probably me missing something but I can understand where the source code that creates lamda functions etc is in the repo

<comment><AUTHOR> That is handled by the LambdaPhp installer here:

[https://github.com/san-kumar/installer](https://github.com/san- kumar/installer)

<comment><USER19> Aha! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Did you look at Up by Apex for inspiration? Very similar framework, but for Lambda languages, any language that compiles to a binary, or Crystal: [https://up.docs.apex.sh/](https://up.docs.apex.sh/)

<comment><AUTHOR> No but that looks amazing and much powerful. My focus was a bit different though. I just wanted to adapt Aws Lambda to run existing PHP code without any modifications, so LambdaPhp focuses on deployment but more on the _shims_ that allow existing php projects to run seamlessly on the Lambda architecture, e.g. intercepting file io and redirecting it to s3, capturing sessions to dynamodb, etc..

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It looks like this technique could work for most any old-school CGI language, like Perl too.

<comment><USER22> The Go runtime for Lambda allows arbitrary binaries, with a CGI-like-but- incompatible interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> AWS Lambda needs a generic C/Linux API instead of supporting every language out there.

</comment><comment><USER24> Wouldn't this still incur S3 fees however?</comment>


24, the Monster, and quantum gravity - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/101584889282878921052/posts/9sKMLRJYjna <comment><USER2> For the curious: the reason that this property with 24 holds is because 24 = 2^3 * 3. For any prime number p:

p^2 - 1 = (p+1)(p-1)

And p+1 and p-1 must both be multiples of 2 because p is odd. Furthermore, one of p+1 or p-1 is also a multiple of 4 (because they are both multiples of 2 and only 2 apart). So, we can see where the 2^3 factor comes from in the magic number 24. The remaining factor, 3, comes from the fact that p is prime and not a multiple of 3, so either p+1 or p-1 must be a multiple of 3 (otherwise p-1, p, and p+1 would be three consecutive numbers, none of which are divisible by 3, which is impossible).

As a result, for any prime p > 3, (p+1)(p-1) is divisible by 24, so p^2 - 1 is also divisible by 24.

<comment><USER3> I was just curious, why is 24 x 10000+1 = 107 x 2243 not prime? I was under the impression for any n, 24 x n + 1 is prime.

<comment><USER4> 24x1 + 1 = 25, so we're off to a bad start.

<comment><USER5> You forget the square root: 5 is prime.

<comment><USER6> huh? great-grandparent said nothing about square roots

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So there are lots of facts here. And the facts are connected together at various points. And I like to hear about interesting connections. But it seems to me that unless you have looked at these things in depth (and I have not for the most part) that you would have only a vague idea of what is being talked about here.

But as I said, since I like connections, I am interested in moving beyond vagaries. In particular I am wondering about this connection to quantum gravity, and I have a few questions to this effect.

If this is about symmetries in a field theory then what is the field in this case? If I see a representation of a permutation group or a special orthogonal group factoring out of operations in a field theory I have some intuition about what this is. So what about this Monster group and what, if anything does this have to do with quantum gravity? Is it a gravity thing? Is it a quantum thing. Both?

<comment><USER8> Usually, requiring that the state vector in a quantum theory be invariant under a unitary transformation require other fields (what we call gauge fields) be added that end up being representing physical interactions.

For example, consider the state vector |y>. The norm <y|y> is invariant under local U(1) transformations

|y> -> e^(-I* T(x,t))|y>

For

<y|y> -> <y|e^(I* T(x,t))e^(-I* T(x,t))|y> = <y|1|y> = <y|y>.

(local, as in a function of space-time, is key). Write the state as |y>=v|0> where v is some operator, then saying <y|y> is invariant is like saying v* v is invariant when v -> v e^(-I* T(x,t)).

In physics, a term ~v* v would represent the potential energy of a spring. To represent the kinetic energy of a spring, we need a term like (d^{\mu}v* )d_{\mu}v where the d_{\mu} represent derivatives w.r.t. space and time (\mu is an index which runs from 0 to 3, 1,2,3 are x,y,z, 0 is time). Here, the U(1) transformation does not leave this term valid, because the derivative acts on the e^(-I T(x,t)) too...

However, if one were to make the replacement

d^{\mu} -> d^{\mu} - I e A^{\mu}(x,t)

where when

v -> v e^(-I* T(x,t))

we have that

A^{\mu} -> A^{\mu} - d^{\mu} T(x,t)

one can show (this doesn't have to be obvious!) that then the Lagrangian

~(D^{\mu}v)* D_{\mu}v - v* v

(where D is the new "covariant derivative" we described above) is now invariant under local U(1) transformations. It turns out that this Lagrangian, completely written out, looks a lot like classical electromagnetism, and it is, and A^{\mu} is the "4-vector potential". In fact, A^0 represents the good old electric potential V that I'm sure you nerds are quite familiar with. I'm not sure how enlightening that was, but at least you've seen the start of QED :)

Now, for this "monster group" ... from here [0] it seems that apparently, gravity in 2+1 dimensions seems dual to this particular group, that is, take the quantum state with that operator |y>=v|0> (v is what we call a creation operator in QFT, it "creates" particles mathematically; in string theory, it creates "vibrations on the string") that under monster group transforms, apparently whatever Lagrangian Witten made out of the v's in conformal field theory (something I should note is not my field, so I may be off here) the gauge group that might be needed would represent gravity.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monstrous_moonshine#Conjectured...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monstrous_moonshine#Conjectured_relationship_with_quantum_gravity)

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the response. I think this is a good answer to the question of "why would a physicist be working on the Monster group" that addresses the core idea of required invariants, and one along the lines that I have heard before (I suppose at this point I should confess to be an ex-physicist, although I never studied QED at anything but the most elementary level).

But, having heard it, I feel wanting. As you have deftly illustrated, starting with some basic requirements about invariants (from special relativity) you can end up at the Lagrangian associated with QED. And you can then (after the fact!) point out that the field in question is the electromagnetic one. Having studying electromagnetism enough to know what you are talking about, I can hear this kind of argument and it seems clever to me. There is some difference in semantics of the states, of course (classical solution of of the confined electromagnetic field coming in quanta, but perhaps not understood as "quantum observables" proper). But if I had not studied these things I would probably just be confused.

And I think this is how I feel when I hear about this advanced quantum gravity stuff (once again, I don't mean to complain about your excellent response, I think it just addresses a different issue then the one I am talking about).

If you are willing to entertain me, I'll try to ask a clarifying question in terms of analogy. If someone asked me "why does the Lagrangian for QED looks like it does", I might say to them that "the speed of light (light being made of electromagnetic fields) is constant in all inertial reference frames (lets hope they understand Galilean relativity) and that this fact forces QED to look that way". This explanation makes reference to the "stuff" that the field is made out of and the observations about invariants (stated in ordinary language) that it must satisfy.

So, now if I ask "why does the Lagrangian for quantum gravity looks like it does", you would say...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting that if we used a base-12 numeral system then this would be immediately obvious. I wonder what other mathematical concepts would be more obvious if we used a different base system.

<comment><USER10> Multiply and divide by N, where N is the base

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just as a remark, proving that given a prime n, n^2 = 1(mod 24)[equivalent to n^2-1 is multiple of 24] is pretty easy: i) prove that n^2 = 1(mod 3). Enumerating, n = {-1,1} (mod 3) (mod 3) [since n is prime, n != 0 (mod 3)]. n^2 = 1 (mod 3) n^2 - 1 = 0 (mod 3). Exists m such that n^2-1 = 3 _m.

ii) prove that n^2 = 1(mod 8). Enumerating, n = {1,3,-3,-1} (mod 8) [ n != pair (mod 8) since then, it would be divisible by 2]. n^2 = {1,9,9,1} (mod 8) => n^2 = {1,8+1}(mod 8) => n^2 = 1 (mod 8). Exists k such that n^2 - 1 = k_8.

iii) There exists 2 integers m,k such that k _8 = m_ 3\. m must have an 8 factor and k a 3 factor. Then, there exists j such that j = m/8 = k/3 = (n^2-1)/24\. qed.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is there any other number than 24 with this property, or is 24 the only one?

Well, 2 also has the property: multiply any prime number other than 2 with itself, subtract one, and it's a multiple of 2. This one is quite obvious, all those prime numbers are odd, so of course if you subtract one of their square (which is also odd), it's even and a multiple of 2.

But is there any other than 24 and 2? Is there one larger than 24?

<comment><USER13> The other numbers are 3 and 4. This is what yields 24. I think the comment above [0] explains this well.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7839666](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7839666)

<comment><USER14> The article also mentions 6, 8, and 12 (all factors of 24).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I always wonder why I find things I don't understand so fascinating. It's the same reason I read in depth articles on cryptography and play the 'wikipedia rabbit hole' game.

Because it describes most primes, the ignorant part of me can't help but wonder if it does have anything to do with the magic that is crypto.. but I digress. Wikipedia might tell me more, brb losing eight hours!

Thanks for the share.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's also 42 backwards. Important I feel

</comment><comment><USER17> Can someone link to this story or copy/paste it somewhere? Linking to social media sites on Hacker News is bad news for people that work at companies during the day that block all social media but would still like to read the news here.

<comment><USER18> Here you go:

24, the Monster, and quantum gravity

By Richard Green

Think of a prime number other than 2 or 3. Multiply the number by itself and then subtract 1. The result is a multiple of 24. This observation might appear to be a curiosity, but it turns out to be the tip of an iceberg, with far- reaching connections to other areas of mathematics and physics.

This result works for more than just prime numbers. It works for any number that is relatively prime to 24. For example, 25 is relatively prime to 24, because the only positive number that is a factor of both of them is 1. (An easy way to check this is to notice that 25 is not a multiple of 2, or 3, or both.) Squaring 25 gives 625, and 624=(24x26)+1.

A mathematician might state this property of the number 24 as follows: If m is relatively prime to 24, then m^2 is congruent to 1 modulo 24. One might ask if any numbers other than 24 have this property. The answer is "yes", but the only other numbers that exhibit this property are 12, 8, 6, 4, 3, 2 and 1; in other words, the factors of 24.

The mathematicians John H. Conway and Simon P. Norton used this property of 24 in their seminal 1979 paper entitled Monstrous Moonshine. In the paper, they refer to this property as "the defining property of 24". The word "monstrous" in the title is a reference to the Monster group, which can be thought of as a collection of more than 8x10^53 symmetries; that is, 8 followed by 53 other digits. The word "moonshine" refers to the perceived craziness of the intricate relationship between the Monster group and the theory of modular functions.

The existence of the Monster group, M, was not proved until shortly after Conway and Norton wrote their paper. It turns out that the easiest way to think of M in terms of symmetries of a vector space over the complex numbers is to use a vector space of dimension 196883. This number is close to another number that is related to the Leech lattice. The Leech lattice can be thought of as a stunningly efficient way to pack unit spheres together in 24 dimensional space. In this arrangement, each sphere will touch 196560 others. The closeness of the numbers 196560 and 196883 is not a coincidence and can be explained using the theory of monstrous moonshine.

It is now known that lying behind monstrous moonshine is a certain conformal field theory having the Monster group as symmetries. In 2007, the physicist Edward Witten proposed a connection between monstrous moonshine and quantum gravity. Witten concluded that pure gravity with maximally negative cosmological constant is dual to the Monster conformal field theory. This theory predicts a value for the semiclassical entropy estimate for a given black hole mass, in the large mass limit. Witten's theory estimates the value of this quantity as the natural logarithm of 196883, which works out at about 12.19. As a comparison, the work of Jacob Bekenstein and Stephen Hawking gives an estimate of 4π, which is about 12.57.

Relevant links Wikipedia on the Monster group: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_group](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_group) Wikipedia on the Leech lattice: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leech_lattice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leech_lattice) Wikipedia on Monstrous Moonshine: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monstrous_moonshine](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monstrous_moonshine) A 2004 survey paper about Monstrous Moonshine by Terry Gannon: [http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0402345](http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0402345)

<comment><USER17> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here is an accessible explanation of what the monster group is in more detail: [http://youtu.be/jsSeoGpiWsw](http://youtu.be/jsSeoGpiWsw).

</comment><comment><USER10> Does that not mean it is "trivial" to find all of the prime numbers because you can just go through the 24 times table?

<comment><USER20> I'd say that it makes it at best only 24 times easier. Which cuts the problem down approx. 1.4 order of magnitudes which doesn't matter much when the problem scales exponentially.

<comment><USER10> Ahh, I was thinking that p^2 - 1 = 24n held for any n as well as any p, but I can see that's not necessarily the case. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there any importance of the number 24.

Surely there are infinite such cases for square primes.

prime^2 = ( n * m ) + c

Where n and c are constants.

<comment><USER22> All sorts - read the cited wikipedia articles for starters - the most important being that it's a small finite number that grants exceptional packing efficiency in the Leech lattice, which is then the basis for the CFT tie-in.

Apart from anything else, this sort of thing is just beautiful mathematically.</comment></comment>


Tarsnap bug bounties - <AUTHOR> http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2011-04-21-tarsnap-bug-bounties.html

<comment><USER2> I encountered tarsnap just a few times, but never took the effort to seriously evaluate it. This commitment to security might just have convinced me.

(Or in other words: kudos.)

</comment><comment><USER3> A bit off topic, but every time I hear the name of your product, this is what springs to mind:

<http://images.google.com/images?q=parsnip>

I think it could only help your business if you commissioned a cartoonified version of one those photos to use as your logo.

</comment><comment><USER4> _"Bounties of under $100 will be awarded as Tarsnap account credits. Bounties of $100 or more will be awarded as Tarsnap account credits or via US dollar cheque depending upon the recipient's preference."_

If we accumulate $100 worth of Tarsnap account credits, can we exchange them for real money? Or perhaps food / shelter?

<comment><AUTHOR> _If we accumulate $100 worth of Tarsnap account credits, can we exchange them for real money?_

Yes. If you ask nicely I'll write you a cheque for less than $100, for that matter -- it's really just that I don't want to end up mailing lots of $1 cheques around.

<comment><USER5> Hi Colin,

I found two bugs.

      tar/multitape/multitape_internal.h:124: * missing files. Return 0 on success, 1 if the metadata file does not

      tar/multitape/multitape_metadata.c:406: * missing files. Return 0 on success, 1 if the metadata file does not

Throughout the rest of your source code, you adhere to the standard of French spacing, two spaces after a period. In these instances you deviate.

<comment><USER6> In my opinion the above bug reports deserve a picodollar or two.

<comment><AUTHOR> Spacing after the end of a sentence is pushing things a bit, but I did say that typos were worth $1 each, and these are indeed typos.

<comment><USER5> My only regret is not waiting until the next pre-release to report them.

<comment><AUTHOR> The double-bounty only applies to _new_ bugs, not bugs which were in previous releases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the context of wanting "people to read through the Tarsnap code":

Any reason why the source is being served as a tarball instead of putting it up on github?

<comment><AUTHOR> Several reasons, among them "I don't like git" and "I haven't gotten around to it yet". :-)</comment></comment>


If you live in America, you are 4x more likely to be murdered than in Britain - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/21559617

<comment><USER2> This is nothing more then political propaganda dressed up with pseudo stats. There is little evidence sited to support their claims just a raw number followed up by their preferred solution. How did they derive this number? What is the source of the information? Are they adjusted for population size?

All they are trying to do is scare people, 9000 people a year die!!! If that is the case you have a 0.0026% chance of being killed by a gun in the US. Not to be callus but that is a VERY small chance.</comment>