Giving away my Rails 3.0 book. Code examples also available on Github. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bryanbibat/rails-3_0-tutorial <comment><USER2> "You are free to distribute this book to anyone you want, so long as... it is not altered..."

That doesn't seem consistent w/ the intended usage patterns of git and github, e.g. github's 'Fork' button is displayed prominently on every src page, for the purpose of alteration and distribution of src.

<comment><AUTHOR> Noted. Any suggestions on a good license to use for this document to allow non-commercial derivative works?

<comment><USER3> You're looking for this: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/>

Although, there is one that prevents modification as well if that's what you're looking for.

<comment><USER4> No, that license allows remixing and adapting the work. That would let people butcher the book and leave broken copies that frustrate students.

<comment><USER3> Zed, that's what he wanted. As I suggested there are alternatives to prevent someone from changing even one word.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. While it is true that allowing others to modify my work will probably bite me in the ass in the future, there are also some arguments for allowing this.

For one, the book is targeted to Filipino students - teachers may want to modify the names/scenarios to better suit their country. Sure, gives them a low-hanging trolling fruit (e.g. putting vulgar words in the i18n section), but I really don't have the time to review these forks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Even though I consider myself an intermediate Rails programmer, I read through every beginner guide I can find to pick up the small nuances that differ from programmer to programmer.

Thanks!

<comment><USER6> You're in good company. Mikhail Botvinnik, many times world chess champion, was known to watch tv programmes about chess. The theory being that you can never reinforce the fundamentals enough. I concur, in any field of study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> thanks for taking the time with this.

1\. Any plans to update for 3.1 ?

2\. I think its strange to address the dsl rspec for testing vs the standard rails unit test and not address other dsl like haml, sass, coffeescript (3.1). I think if you're going to go by rails community conventions vs rails framework convention then haml and sass should of been introduced.

<comment><USER8> While I can't answer #1, I can give a reason for #2. When you're teaching people Ruby on Rails you would/should be teaching them what exists in the framework by default. The default templating language for views happens to be ERB-powered HTML, and so that should be taught.

Teaching haml and Rails at the same time would only confuse people as they will need to learn Rails AND haml at the same time. If anything, it would be better to introduce this as a "bonus chapter" or an appendix and let people choose for themselves rather than forcing them to learn something excessive.

Now, you may think that I would argue the same point for SCSS too. But now that SCSS is the default within Rails 3.1, it is "right" to teach it at the same time as Rails. The "leap" from CSS to SCSS is not as large as the one from HTML to haml, either.

<comment><USER7> >When you're teaching people Ruby on Rails you would/should be teaching them what exists in the framework by default.

this was exactly my point. You introduce RSpec rather than rails unit testing.

<comment><USER8> I would do the same thing, as Test::Unit's syntax is more confusing to a newbie than RSpec. For instance: assert_equal 2, @thing.method vs @thing.method.should == 2.

RSpec is also used by the majority of Rails developers (based on a random stat I pulled out of the air and due to my experience on many, many Rails projects) and it _should_ be treated as the default, even though it is not.

<comment><USER9> > For instance: assert_equal 2, @thing.method vs @thing.method.should == 2.

...what makes you think this is less confusing? Test::Unit is blindingly simple, your assertions are plain old functions that take plain old arguments. I can build new assertions through simple function definition.

Rspec, on the other hand, adds methods to everything to let you structure your code so it reads like English. The goal here is _not_ to be less confusing, but to be _easier to read_. RSpec is a lot harder to learn, and writing custom matchers is a lot more work than gluing together assertions.

Seriously, watch somebody new trying to figure out RSpec ... it's a bit of an ugly sight. Their first experience with automatic predicate matchers typically is a true wtf moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> upgrade) that app to 3.1 with this screen cast

</comment><comment><USER11> Byran why don't you sell the book to your own students? I know a lot of my professors sell their own books through the book store (with no real publisher) they just print it out and put a cover on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ethics, I guess? LOL. Not really keen on selling a typo-filled book on a non- current version of a software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thank you. This is coming at a very opportune time for me.

</comment><comment><USER13> THANK YOU - sorry for caps but thanks are big.

</comment><comment><USER14> Off topic: what is the font you used in the PDF book?

UPDATE: ...and thank you much for the materials!

<comment><AUTHOR> Inconsolata (<http://www.levien.com/type/myfonts/inconsolata.html>) for code and Ubuntu (<http://font.ubuntu.com/>) for everything else

</comment></comment><comment> g-garron Thank you very much.

</comment><comment><USER15> this book is a gem! (pun intended)

</comment><comment><USER16> how do you download the book?

<comment><USER17> [https://github.com/bryanbibat/rails-3_0-tutorial/blob/master...](https://github.com/bryanbibat/rails-3_0-tutorial/blob/master/student_manual.pdf?raw=true)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thanks!</comment>


Cortana: Focused on your productivity with enhanced security and privacy - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2020/02/28/cortana-in-the-upcoming-windows-10-release-focused-on-your-productivity-with-enhanced-security-and-privacy/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Consumer skills including music, connected home and third-party skills will no longer be available in the updated Cortana experience in Windows 10"</comment>


Show HN: Operation Go: A Routine Mission - <AUTHOR> http://gocode.io <comment><AUTHOR> Operation Go is an online programming game for Golang. Developers play as one of two agents on a mission to defeat the notorious cyber-criminal Epoch.

It was a ton of fun to make. I hope you enjoy it too.

Happy coding :)</comment>


The math of mass shootings - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/mass-shootings-in-america/ <comment><USER2> I am curious if we would be able to prevent these sorts of things even if we couod gather all this data. How quickly could we link threatening posts on an online forum to recent gun purchases? That would be a tremendous amount of data processing and moving it around.</comment>


New frontiers in freedom for a new year – Free Software Foundation - <AUTHOR> https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/new-frontiers-in-freedom-for-a-new-year-1 <comment><AUTHOR> they quote that "smart home appliances" are bad - but i am amazed by the new voice interfaces - and if Free software abandons the voice interface it will be as calamitous as not having a foothold on mobile</comment>


Apple shows us how to compete with Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10132368-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20 <comment><USER2> Except why the hell would Dell buy Red Hat when it already has a working partnership with Canonical to develop and distribute computers pre-installed with Ubuntu Linux? Dell doesn't _need_ to buy a giant Linux vendor to have a well-designed Linux computer package; they already have that without buying anyone at all.

</comment><comment><USER3> All this does is show how antitrust (and the fear of antitrust legislation, which has no objective criteria for prosecution) cripples a company's ability to fully compete. Instead, the (market-wise) leader was forced to prop up it's competitor by virtue of the fact that they were unable to compete.

Yes, Apple makes good products now and can compete on it's own terms, but it floundering when it accepted money from Microsoft.

This isn't a good example of how to compete with your competitors at all, unless by compete, you mean "get money from them and constantly poke sticks at them, while they have no real recourse for fear of getting prosecuted."

</comment><comment><USER4> My favorite bill gates quite from years ago was something like: "on average we make more money on each Apple computer sold than Apple does." MS wants to protect Windows but they are not willing to let someone else create a dominate office sweet for a popular platform.

PS: IMO Red Hat has little to offer Apple over OS X.

</comment><comment><USER5> good point. and, yes, what a move that would be on the part of Dell!</comment>


The Hellburner Was the Renaissance Equivalent of a Tactical Nuclear Weapon - <AUTHOR> http://warisboring.com/articles/hellburners-were-the-renaissance-equivalent-of-a-tactical-nuke/ <comment><USER2> Also relevant is the Battle of the Crater during the civil war, in which Union forces dug a giant hole underneath the Confederates defenses and packed it with gunpowder. The resulting explosion was so impressive that none of the soldiers were able to capitalize on the sudden opportunity.

General Burnside had trained _special black troops_ to head this assault because of just how complicated this mission was compared to anything else in contemporary existence. They were pulled at the last minute by General Meade for a combination of PR reasons (can't have black people winning the war), personal glory reasons, and skepticism.

The entire thing is a very sad story.

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

<comment><USER3> Tunneled bombs were used in a major way in WWI too.

        In January, 1917, General Sir Herbert Plumer, gave orders
        for 20 mines to be placed under German lines at Messines.
        Over the next five months more than 8,000 metres of
        tunnel were dug and 600 tons of explosive were placed in
        position. Simultaneous explosion of the mines took place
        at 3.10 on 7th June. The blast killed an estimated 10,000
        soldiers and was so loud it was heard in London.

[http://spartacus-educational.com/FWWtunnelling.htm](http://spartacus- educational.com/FWWtunnelling.htm)

The craters are still there and form ponds in the fields where the battle took place.

<comment><USER4> The Battle of Messines was portrayed in an excellent Australian film called Beneath Hill 60 from 2010: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneath_Hill_60](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beneath_Hill_60).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another early advanced weapons technology is Greek Fire ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_fire)), the exact composition of which is still being debated. Water intensified the flames when it was used in naval battles.

<comment><USER6> The management and level of secrecy around the technology is impressively "modern". Or maybe we're not that modern.

<comment><USER7> Eh, anything related directly to humans has been done before. Computers, internal combustion, electricity and medicine are the only major advances we've got over those living 1000 years ago...

<comment><USER8> > Computers, internal combustion, electricity and medicine are the only major > advances we've got over those living 1000 years ago...

What about external combustion engines? Also, read about agricultural and industrial revolution.

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile)

Although it seems that it may never have been used for any practical purpose, it is often considered to be the first steam engine and was documented in the 1st century AD.

<comment><USER8> Yes, they had some nifty toys.

Modern steam engines took off because they managed to make accurate pistons and cylinders. (And a myriad other factors.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What does "tactical" mean in the phrase "tactical nuke"?

<comment><USER11> Strategic nukes take out cities, tactical nukes take out tank formations, fleets, bunkers, etc.

<comment><USER10> So, "small" then :)

<comment><USER11> Not necessarily. It's more about range and use, but generally the yields are smaller. Some tactical nuclear weapons had yields larger than the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs. Tactical nuclear weapons were generally on shorter range (rather than intercontinental) delivery systems and generally were tasked with taking out an objective, which may or may not be mobile, than fixed infrastructure or a population/industry/control center.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And that is why HN is worth coming back to time and again. A perfect nugget of history in amoungst the mud and dirt of day to day tech.

Thank you - that's brilliant. And explains why such a few fire ships had such an effect - always wondered what the problem was.

</comment><comment><USER13> Tiny correction: "fortuyn" instead of "fortyn" was the name of one of the ships.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting that this weapon was like a Nuclear Weapon in other ways:

Too powerful to actually be used, but the knowledge of its existence acts as a deterrent to war.

<comment><USER7> I'd say it was too expensive to be used, otherwise they'd be used more often. Also one of them did not explode as intended due to the primitive detonation mechanism, so there was some technical difficulties involved (at a time when they barely started using matchlocks, not even the more advanced and successful flintlocks).

It was basically the equivalent of a boat filled with TNT as I understand, not _that_ powerful.

Could've been very useful at wiping out ports, cities and fleets, at the time, I doubt they had _any_ qualms about it :-).

Also, not that much of a war deterrent, as history can attest, lol...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Something similar was tried during WWII. See [1]. This was an explosive ship used to attack an important drydock. The explosive ship part worked fine. But there was a complicated commando raid on other nearby objectives attached to the operation, which didn't go as well.

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

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd never heard of hellburner ships, but I _have_ read C.J. Cherryh's novel Hellburner ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_to_the_Belt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil_to_the_Belt)). I wonder if that's where she got the name.

</comment><comment><USER17> Hellburners are is no way equivalent to any nuclear weapon. The renaissance had no such equivalents. The description of any ancient weapon in terms of weapons of mass destruction is disingenuous. It lessens the term and suggests that such weapons are nothing new in history. That leads to arguments for their regulation and use in historical terms: Elizabeth used hellburners then, so we should be able to use tactical nukes today.

<comment><USER18> As in another thread, it seems like the word "Tactical" is key here. The new weapon that was recently released to the US is particularly objectionable to many because it allows its' yield to be 'dialed down'.

There are also air-to-air nuclear weapons designed for planes to shoot at each other, which might not have a yield much larger than a Hellburner.

I share your concern about an interpretation of history that lends arguments to dangerous attitudes in present-day politics, just having recently read a great deal about nuclear yields, the humongous detonations we imagine are not the only type possible, they're just the only type of weapons which have ever been deployed, with many weapons simply not even having been ever tested.

<comment><USER19> The problem with that comparison is that the only place I've heard of tactical nuclear weapons being used is Starcraft.

<comment><USER8> Read some texts from the cold war, perhaps?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The turtle ship is another interesting tactical weapon that comes from these era but in other parts of the world. It would ram deep inside enemy formations and fire cannons on all sides which resulted in some astounding victories given Chosun Navy had only a dozen ships vs. thousands of japanese ships. You couldn't land on the ship because it had spikes and would spew smoke for evasion.

<comment><USER7> It's really surprising that turtle ships and detonating fire ships weren't more commonly used.

Maybe most thought it was just a myth, stories told by travelers, or maybe it was ungentlemanly?

The Civil War and even WW1 saw a lot of losses because of this inability to adapt, by WW2 (and forward) everybody used the latest advances they could get their hands on...

<comment><USER20> interesting point that we rarely see tactical weapons of mass destruction being frequently such as nuclear weapon. It's interesting that Japan lost both wars to sudden technological advancements from opposing side and they aren't ever used again.

The turtle ships weren't alone but it was a gifted korean naval commander who ironically never commanded a navy before and figured shit out as the war was unfolding. The Korean general would even be hailed as a mythical figure and admired by WW2 Japanese naval generals.

<comment><USER21> The turtle ship wasn't sudden (the Koreans built the first examples over a century earlier) and didn't alter the war. Toyotomi Hideyoshi had the entire peninsula under his control until the Ming Emperor intervened.

<comment><USER22> For some definition of "control." Admiral Yi fought twenty-something battles (seems like the exact number is hard to say because it's difficult to define what constitutes a "battle"), and never lost a single one.

(That's not to say the Korean navy didn't suffer devastating losses... but that was when Yi was in prison thanks to the idiot king who bought the disinformation supplied by Japanese spies.)

Anyway, that raises a philosophical question: if your troops and their supplies need to be delivered across the water, and if your enemy is controlling that water, how much are you controlling the land behind?

<comment><USER21> > Anyway, that raises a philosophical question: if your troops and their > supplies need to be delivered across the water, and if your enemy is > controlling that water, how much are you controlling the land behind?

Depends on how much that is true. Replacements are definitely a problem, but medieval armies had significant ability to supply locally. On top of this, the Toyotomi army was never blockaded on the peninsula; Yi's actions significantly disrupted the sea lines of communication but never truly cut or controlled them.

Without the Ming army to fight Toyotomi would not have been under significant strain. Even with a Ming army on the field and Yi disrupting his SLOC Toyotomi was still able to extract a truce while he held the southern half of the peninsula.

Regardless, what the Joseon navy was able to accomplish it did because Yi was a badass admiral, not because of turtle ships or other special weapons. That was the original point.

<comment><USER22> Well, I have no problem with your last paragraph, but I think you overestimate the mobility of medieval armies. "Finding local supply" basically means sacking towns, which is not always a viable option (ask Napoleon), especially in a war that lasted seven years.

The Japanese army did succeed in initially overwhelming Korean forces with supreme military tactics, so much so that they entered Seoul basically unscathed, only to find that the king and his courtiers have fled north.

From what little I know, it seems that the Japanese forces didn't quite understand the situation. In traditional Japan (from what I've heard), if your force wins the battle and enters the enemy castle, you have won. The enemy's people are now under your rule and their food and supply is yours.

Instead, Japanese forces found itself surrounded in a sea of hostile troops and militia bands, who will (incredibly) fight to the bitter end. Not unlike what the US found in Iraq, but without the ridiculous military advantage. Korean army's major military victories included the battle of Haengju (near Seoul) and Jinju (southeastern Korea, near present-day Busan), which all happened within one year since the war broke.

A major reason why Toyotomi could parley for truce that involved Japan securing the southern part of Korea, was that Chinese forces had no reason to stake their lives for someone else's country, yet they still had enough political power to force Korea to the talking table.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Obama Officials Weigh Drone Attack on US Suspect [video] - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/us-suspect-possibly-targeted-drone-attack-22438384

<comment><USER2> I didn't get past this:

 _" And Obama's new policy says American suspected terrorists overseas can only be killed by the military, not the CIA, creating a policy conundrum for the White House."_

So much WTF in one sentence.

<comment><USER3> CIA runs covert ops to kill terrorists by both CIA operatives and by drones

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Okay folks, here's what I want to know:

The US, by law, is supposed to treat all people the same regardless of nationality. In a court of law, for example, illegal immigrants get the same rights as full citizens.

So far so good, right?

Well guess what? That means that in situations wherein it's legal for the military to kill a foreigner, it's legal for the military to kill a citizen as well. Equality works both ways. If an American citizen is engaged in terrorist/hostile military activity outside of US legal jurisdiction, then the military has just as much legal authority to kill that citizen as they'd have to kill any non-citizen.

Tell my why I'm wrong.

<comment><USER5> Read _any_ history text on the American Revolution to see why that's a bad policy.

The opposite policy is interesting though, following from "all men are created equal", we won't kill American citizens without due process or cause therefore we shouldn't kill any person of any nation without due process or cause.</comment></comment>


Microsoft Invented Google Earth in the 90s, Then Blew It - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/microsofts-terraserver-was-google-earth-before-there-was-google-earth <comment><USER2> Microsoft invented it? I recall working on a digital mapping system in the late 80's that was very similar. We had a very large drum scanner that we used to scan paper maps and imagery at various scales. First we'd rectify the result, then we'd do a color reduction to both cut down the file size and to match the capabilities of the machines of the day. Next we'd slice the image up into 128x128 pixel tiles and assemble the result into a database of various scales that allowed a user to zoom, pan from map to map, overlay symbology, etc. At the time we were working with 300 MB drives, so we were very restricted and had to create specific databases that matched a user's need.

<comment><USER3> That's very interesting. How was the digital mapping system named? Which company did you work for? Who were the customers?

<comment><USER2> I named it. I called it the "Digital Application Map Manager" or DAMM. That way my boss had to ask "When will those DAMM maps be ready?". We had a sub- contract with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory but the ultimate customer was the US Army.

<comment><USER4> Having worked on one or two SIBR proposals, I appreciate a good (mis)use of the government's perverse acronym fetish. Bravo!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Important to note that there were a _lot_ of mapping companies in the 90s/early 2000s, but the breakthroughs were really Google acquiring a number of mapping companies like Keyhole, where2. The big leap forward, of course, was the hyper responsive Ajax interface that google introduced around 2004.

<comment><USER6> Yeah. The seamless "scrolling a map in a browser thing" blew everyone's mind. It did a lot in cementing the image of Google as a visionary company.

<comment><USER2> Oh yeah. I remember when Google Maps first came out. Nobody thought that this degree of interactivity was even feasible in a browser. It was really revolutionary.

<comment><USER7> revolutionary ...

The emergence and craze of AJAX blew everyone away after that point. People realized there was a thing called XMLHTTPrequest. That technology had been my dream ever since I learned HTML. The tech came out in 1996 by Microsoft and nobody used it until 2003.

At this time, Firefox took the torch of keeping the web moving forward. So a whole buzz around web tech reignited.

Those were my days of inspiration.

<comment><USER8> Ironically, though, the original Google Maps didn't actually use XMLHTTPRequest, at least not for the trackable maps— that was all just moving <img> tags around and changing the src attributes on them.

XHR may have been used to fetch search results, although it later switched to a JSONP interface with generated script tags so that the various APIs (geocoding, directions, etc) could be used by third party sites on other domains.

<comment><USER9> Ironically, neither Google Maps nor Google Mail (GMail) used AJAX/XMLHTTPRequest in their first version. The first Google product that used AJAX came later, it was Google Instant Search (search box improvement). Google Maps and GMAIL used hidden iframes to load data in the background. Around 2004/5 only Internet Explorer 5+ and very recent Mozilla builds supported XMLHTTPRequest (without bugs). As far as I remember Maps and GMail switched to AJAX approach around 2006.

<comment><USER10> Indeed hidden iframes were the original way in which these effects were implemented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I used this and it was incredibly slow. Clicking the arrow buttons moved the map by a fixed amount. In my opinion the breakthrough of Google Maps was the Javascript interface that let you slide around and zoom in and out, plus the engineering behind it that served the map tiles quickly.

<comment><USER6> I also used it just when it was introduced, but with a 2 Mbit/s uplink at work. And a 10 Mbit/s student residential uplink at home connected to a 34 Mbit/s link that the Linköping University had via Swedish University Network (SUNET). (Back then 34 Mbit/s was something fantastic!) I probably used a P133 with Linux at home and a 110 Mhz Sparc 5 at work. And Netscape was the browser in both cases.

My vague memory from then is that the server was super slow, and that my connection wasn't the limiting factor. Still, it was fascinating to play with for a few hours.

This was before P2P pirating was a big thing. Pirating was mostly done via SMB shares in the local network (no-one was afraid of getting caught since the authorities had no clue at all, and also because it felt like we were spearheading something new and interesting), so the external link didn't suffer. Online video at that time was like 50 kbps RealVideo streams, at most.

<comment><USER12> >Back then 34 Mbit/s was something fantastic!

I can't even get 34 Mbps _now_. This was 20 years ago?

<comment><USER6> Well, it was shared by like 20k (occasional) users and 1-2k students with campus Ethernet network connections. (Still, it never really got saturated. There wasn't that many interesting AND bandwidth-consuming services out there in the rest of the world.)

I think Sweden was quite good at getting people connected at decent speeds. In retrospect, I think this was a very wise way to spend tax money.

My personal Internet-connection history goes like this:

1994: 28.8 kbps modem at home in a small village. It cost like $2/hour.

1996: 10 Mbit/s - residential student university network, for like $10/month

2000: 10 Mbit/s - moved away from the student area to an apartment with a commercial connection (Bredbandsbolaget - they got loads of investements, some of it in the form of hardware from Cisco). $30/month

2002: Upgraded to 100 Mbit/s. $30/month

2009: My homeowner association accepts a 10 year deal where all apartments get 100 Mbit/s Ethernet-based access for $10/month (in exchange for "monopoly" \- everyone needs to pay $10).

(Since 1996, it's been all direct Ethernet, no silly old stuff like DSL or cable.)

<comment><USER13> "There wasn't that many interesting AND bandwidth-consuming services out there in the rest of the world."

MIT had a video capture system. If you told it your IP address, and did the xhost + correctly (we were so trusting back then), it would pop up an X window on your machine and show video. We watched part of the 1994 World Cup that way, at a few frames per second and 1/3rd of a continent away. And no sound.

Regarding network in Sweden, part of me drools over the $100/month 1Gbit/s offerings from Com Hem and Bredbandbolaget. The bigger part of me wonders if the extra bandwidth would be worthwhile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This headline is pernicious clickbait. Why not say "Microsoft Invented a Google Earth precursor, but never took it seriously"? Because that would not force you to click through to understand how they "totally blew it."

Spoiler alert: They built TeraServer map service to demonstrate that their database product could handle a terabyte or more of data. They got tons of user interest, but didn't use the information they got from searches or the user emails to iterate on their project. They could have developed a dominant mapping service (the author's thesis, sort of), but they let the project languish.

</comment><comment><USER15> "According to a USA Today article from June 22, 1998, the initial plan with Terraserver was to list every single transaction in the history of the New York Stock Exchange online and make it searchable. But that was only a half terabyte of data. Microsoft needed something larger."

I'd be curious to see what the size of that collection is now, post advent of high frequency trading.

Side note, the article in no way explains why Google Earth would be considered a success story. The lead engineer from this project went on to Bing Maps, it's not as if MS decided geographic data wasn't worth doing.

<comment><USER16> The US equity market does about 4b in transactions a day; let's say the average trade size is $1000 dollars (probably an aggressive estimate; I'd expect it actually to be higher), and you record the ticker (4bytes) + price(8) + quantity(8) for all the transactions, you'd get --

(4+8+8) _(4e9 /1000) _ 252 (trading days) / 1e9 = 20GB/year

lets say you have these for 100 years, you'd still only have 2TB. And this if for the _entire_ US equity market -- NYSE is only one of 11 protected exchanges (and only trades tape A), so the above estimates are pretty optimistic.

Now, if you wanted to record every _message_ and not just every transaction, then you get into serious data (on the order of ~2-5TB/day).

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Heh, I remember TerraServer. It was pretty amazing to me at the time (late '90s), the first thing I did was find my grandparents' property and sure enough saw a few shadowy figures which might as well have been me with them and the dog given the date on the tile. When Google Maps (and maybe MapQuest too?) started doing maps _in color_ I was a suitably impressed kid.

</comment><comment><USER18> I almost feel bad for Microsoft. I think they were far ahead of their time in many ways, and ended up getting in trouble for it.

They had some pretty cool tablets, but unfortunately the hardware / internet infrastructure wasn't really there to support it. They were the first (major at least) to build an OS underpinned by a browser. They were early to the game of running a real OS on a phone.

Unfortunately they weren't really able to take advantage of those. They seem slow to get into the tablet game the 2nd time around, and even now they're still playing catch-up (although I've heard the Surface things are pretty good). Their phones are consistently underachieving for whatever reason. They're still struggling to find the right model for Windows ever since XP/7 (I think they've finally gotten on board with the Apple model of the OS is freely updatable, but I'm not 100% sure of that).

They've done some great work, but man, they can't seem to get out of their own way sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER9> The TerraServer project split into two branches, read both Wikipedia pages: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraServer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraServer)

Also NASA World Wind got popular, just before Google Earth, and was initially more advanced: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_World_Wind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_World_Wind)

</comment><comment><USER19> I completely forgot about the response to aerial photography when it first came out. I remember having some concerns about the privacy implications and feeling 'exposed' on the internet that anyone could see my home. Funny how much my mindset has changed.

</comment><comment><USER20> Except if you look at the screenshots, there's no information.

That's the key thing with google maps or google earth, it's the information around what you're looking at that is important, and google understood that.

</comment><comment><USER21> I remember using this on my first 486, maybe a 386 on a CD that came bundled with Microsoft Encarta. This was just a hair before the internet started taking off on modems and such, I beleive we might have had an internet connection but it was still at the point where sharing floppy's and CD's were the best way to share software.

</comment><comment><USER22> Heck, Google didn't even invent Google Earth, they bought a company named Keyhole and renamed it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Fun Fact:

Microsoft had Instant IMAGE Search over 10 years ago when they launched the live.com product (if anyone remembers). Much much before google had instant web search. Start typing and images would instantly fill the screen. This was at a time when AJAX was getting popular. Like a lot of cool Microsoft tech, they didn't invest in it for the long run and just killed it along with EXPO, the craigslist competitor.

</comment><comment><USER24> I am sure there were other things like this kicking around at the time as people have been discussing. I worked on improving the performance of the terraserver project a little bit. I was part of the team that designed and wrote sql server 7.0 (a db rewrite from scratch of the purchased sybase, including parser, optimizer, QE, storage engine, but keeping the stored procedure programming language that was from sybase). I believe this was 1998.

We all knew it was a pretty impressive combination of maps, jpeg image, software and web browsers. Microsoft definitely had an idea that they didn't want to make the web too great, because that could lessen the importance of windows. As others say, Microsoft didn't know what they had with ajax.

I remember this was one of the first, early, high query examples we had, other than tpcc and tpcd. There was a stored procedure call in the application that accidentally lead to basically a lock that was held, blocking everything else. That was a really hard problem to figure out.

</comment><comment><USER25> I used terraserver to manually download the entire tile set for my town (right click, save as). Then I laboriously used Photoshop 5 to align and remove the watermarks. It took an entire week but by the end I had a clean ~150 MB jpg that I could scroll around in as needed.

</comment><comment><USER26> We were writing web based GIS in 1996, using ESRI's MapObjects IMS. Tiling, projections, yes these were solved problems by then using available commercial software.

We were storing data in Oracle or DB/2 with ESRI's SDE sitting on top, because at that time no mainstream RDBMS had spatial types.

I don't recall if SDE supported SQL Server back then. That aside, you could have built TerraServer with COTS tech in 1997.

TerraServer was impressive due to being publically available. Nothing we built at the time was available to the public as far as I remember. But it existed.

And that's just web based stuff, which really is the easy part. Large scale GIS had been around for decades prior.

</comment><comment><USER27> They're not the only ones apparently:

[http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/origination-of- googl...](http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/origination-of-google-earth- focus-of-patent-infringement-lawsuit-by-artcom-innovationpool-246345841.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> They invented Google Earth, yes, but looking at satellite images is mostly a novelty unless you're searching for concentration camps in North Korea or nuclear plants in Israel.

Google Maps is a much more generally useful product. And Microsoft was well ahead of Google, they sold numerous offline mapping products.

</comment><comment><USER29> How I wish MSFT executives were more competitive and less dismissive of non-OS related technologies back in the day. I am really glad that things are quite different today and they are -atleast- competing with other tech companies if not leading them.

<comment><USER7> I wish they were more open to let the whole world use the standards they set. MS was an amazing platform company they set some of the greatest standards we have come to known. It is sad to see those standards hit the dust in the face of more inviting technologies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> AFAIK, Microsoft used public (US Government) imagery. Google bought Keyhole and that enabled them to own the sensors which gave them more power in terms of capturing content.

</comment><comment><USER31> If you're interested in developing virtual globe applications, take a look at [http://cesiumjs.org](http://cesiumjs.org)

</comment><comment><USER32> Whenever I read stories like this about Microsoft I have to chuckle about all the similarities to Aperture-Science from Portal 2...

<comment><USER33> It's been a while since I played the series, but what similarities exist there?

<comment><USER34> Developing all kind of cool tech, but never releasing it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I remember that good old around year 2000 Microsoft web design playing with them fonts and such. Ah, good memories!

</comment><comment><USER36> > _Microsoft, the corporation, didn 't seem to care very little about..._

Very _much_.

</comment><comment><USER37> Microsoft Invented Google Chrome in the 90s, Then Blew It.. Eleven times.

</comment><comment><USER38> Microsoft's focus in the 90s was to kill Netscape, they never had a grand vision for the internet.

</comment><comment><USER39> Wow, I had totally forgotten about Terra server. I remember this now.

</comment><comment><USER40> SQL Server Rocks!

</comment><comment> X-Factor Similarly, The first pc user interface was created in Xerox Labs, But Apple was the first realizing its importance.

</comment><comment><USER41> I use Google Earth almost daily, and they've never made a penny off of me. It doesn't even have in-app ads. I guess these days "Totally Blew It" means "Wisely decided not to spend the next two decades hemorrhaging money on the thing."

<comment><USER42> So you think Google has been needlessly hemorrhaging money for two decades? Seems like an odd statement.

Clearly Google sees the value in it. Even if it is simply brand identity, or "vendor lockin" _(for lack of a better description)_. Clearly there is something that is very meaningful to Google to do it.

I bet there are a ton of companies that would love to have their maps product as the "maps app" of choice by the masses. Likewise, i'm sure Microsoft would love if i had to login to bing every time i used Navigation, compared to me __never using bing for anything ever __. So yea, i don 't think "Totally Blew It" is that far off the mark.

<comment><USER6> To list just one value: Google maps is a very strong reason why Android device manufacturers feel like they need to go with a Google-service model and follow Google's requirements, rather than do it Amazon Fire style. This alone is worth billions in search revenue. (And Google was smart enough to let it take a decade for this value to materialize.)</comment></comment></comment>


Out-of-this-world spaceship designs based on everyday objects - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1WlFTQNbQMd1tXD4Km9F98p/out-of-this-world-spaceship-designs-based-on-everyday-objects <comment><USER2> I don't have the drawing and artistic skills to do something similar, but I've been doing this mentally with my imagination since my childhood after I was introduced to sci-fi films and books. Glad I'm not the only one (weirdo) doing it :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> There is a Pedro Medeiros pixel art tutorial about spaceships shaped from ordinary things: [https://www.patreon.com/posts/spaceship- design-16838125](https://www.patreon.com/posts/spaceship-design-16838125)</comment>


GOES 3 satellite - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOES_3 <comment><USER2> GOES 3 is scheduled for final decommissioning on 23 June 2016.[1] :(

[1]: [http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/21278](http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/archives/21278)

</comment><comment><USER3> AO-7 is still kind of going, again. It was launched in 1974! [http://ww2.amsat.org/?page_id=1031](http://ww2.amsat.org/?page_id=1031)

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow:

Total number of operating satellites: 1,381 (includes launches through 12/31/15)[1]

Wasn't aware that the +15,000 satellites (loosely defined) currently orbiting the Earth (according to SATCAT) are mostly junk...

But one other really interesting thing I found once in this data was that a huge percentage of all earth orbiting satellites are debris from China's Fengyun 1C sat, which they blew up into currently over 5000 pieces to test a missile [2]. I just think it's funny that China did this, and now we have to track every single piece indefinitely. :)

[1] [http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-weapons/space- weapons/satellit...](http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-weapons/space- weapons/satellite-database) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fengyun](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fengyun)

<comment><USER5> I don't think it's really indefinitely. Sun-synchronous orbits are usually 600-800km up, and atmospheric drag makes orbits at that altitude decay eventually. It'll probably take decades before it's gone, but it's not stuck up there forever.

Another big debris incident was the 2009 collision of an Iridium satellite and a dead Russian communications satellite:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_satellite_collision)

When you think about the volumes involved, it's pretty amazingly bad luck that they managed to bump into each other. These were fairly low and the debris is deorbiting reasonably rapidly, so it's not as big of a deal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We're working in Antarctica and the South Pole team is involved in the GOES decommissioning. Pretty interesting stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> Listening to GOES with a handheld radio (they couldn't fit the entire signal in one channel because it was so wideband) was so cool. I never figured out how to decode APT signals but so sad that with the goes satellites goes the amateur ability to get weather images directly from space :/

</comment><comment><USER8> fun satellite thing: there's actually a LOT of old geostationary orbit telecom satellites which are still alive for command and control, and their transponders still work, but they're out of mainstream commercial service because they've long ago exhausted their station keeping propellant. So you need an earth station dish with two axis tracking motorized servos/gears/stepper motors to talk to them reliably.

[https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=inc...](https://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=inclined+orbit+satellite&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

</comment><comment><USER9> Does decommissioning mean that they will be dropping it out of orbit? Will it be visible?

<comment><USER8> no, they'll just turn it off, in the entire history of geostationary telecom satellites nobody has launched one with enough reserve delta-V/propellant to deorbit itself. To go from a 36,000 x 36,000 km circular orbit to a 36,000 x 250 km orbit (where the atmospheric drag would cause it to reenter) is a LOT of retrograde delta-v required). There's talk of requiring enough reserve propellant to boost to a new 'graveyard' orbit 1000 km beyond geostationary before turning off a satellite, but it's rarely implemented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Was still going. GOES 3 is scheduled for final decommissioning on 23 June 2016.[5]

<comment><USER11> > Was still going. GOES 3 is scheduled for final decommissioning on 23 June > 2016.[5]

Presumably the date is for the East Coast of the US, so that's tomorrow.</comment></comment>


Why Silicon Valley needs Washington DC - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/10/17/people-in-silicon-valley-yawned-at-the-shutdown-they-shouldnt-have/ <comment><USER3> This is a good article. I'll take a dig at Chamath Palihapitiya, because of the irony of his comments. He knows as well as anyone that the LP money VC's play with comes from government regulated banks, mutual funds, retirement plans, etc. Without the Fed's "easy money" credit policy, the VC industry as we know it today, flush with cash despite exhibiting poor historical returns, would simply not exist and neither would Silicon Valley as we know it today.

I'll also address one of Lee's comments: "Now, maybe you'd like the government to have a smaller role in these issues to start with." In some cases, it wasn't an option for government to have a smaller role to begin with. Consider spectrum allocation. Today, we're getting to the point where radios can mediate spectrum usage issues amongst themselves. We aren't there yet, but we're getting there. I think long-term we need to modernize our regulations to accommodate these advances. But for the vast majority of the wireless age, this technology did not exist. There simply was no practical alternative to government regulation, in one form or another.

<comment><USER4> On a systemic level, what advantages does government provide to solving these various problems that private individuals couldn't? Beyond blindly asserting that "there simply was no practical alternative to government regulation", or citing historical examples of government projects (when private alternatives were not legally allowed!) like roads, please explain what fundamentally allows government to perform these tasks better.

VC money more often comes from highly successful past ventures, not grandma's retirement savings plan (which are terrible investments anyway). How many ex- Facebook equity holders are building their own companies? How many ex-Paypal before them? It's simply dishonest to attribute Silicon Valley's wealth to DC and the Fed's easy money. Most of that money heads to Wall Street, the most government regulated industry in existence, fueling rampant corruption with examples too numerous to list. The inflation the easy money inevitably brings causes the average middle-class investor to invest greater and greater portions of their income into the markets and their retirement accounts, feeding Wall Street account managers, the federal government, and ultimately, the bubble-prone stock market these investors need just to break even on their savings.

Silicon Valley does not need DC, it is hindered by DC. The democratic, lobby- based, "law-for-sale" system is systemically disadvantaged to the classic survival of the adaptable. While the Valley develops our next innovations, DC puts bandages on debt limits while the other powers of the world seek reserve alternatives to our hemorrhaging currency. Please, do not talk about government success. It does not exist.

<comment><USER3> > On a systemic level, what advantages does government provide to solving > these various problems that private individuals couldn't?

Private action in a free market suffers from numerous issues: free rider problems, collective action problems, problems involving positive and negative externalities, problems involving information asymmetries, etc. These are well-developed areas of economics that libertarian-minded policy folks tend to ignore, but which simply cannot be ignored. Most government programs, from environmental protection (negative externalities) to Social Security (irrational hyperbolic discounting), are rooted in one of these economic phenomena.

> VC money more often comes from highly successful past ventures, not > grandma's retirement savings plan (which are terrible investments anyway)

See the sibling comment about private equity fundraising after changes in ERISA. Some VC money does come from people taking money from past ventures and putting them into new ones. But the bread and butter of VC involves raising money from limited partners, specifically pension funds, mutual funds, etc. The other major sources tend to be endowments, banks, insurance companies, and sovereign wealth funds.

See: [http://fisher.osu.edu/supplements/10/12707/LPReturnsJanuary2...](http://fisher.osu.edu/supplements/10/12707/LPReturnsJanuary2013.pdf) (p. 1).

<comment><USER5> You know whenever I see spats like this I feel compelled to point that governments cause such profound economic distortion that we really can't speak of what a 'free' society would be actually be like - it's so far removed from anything humanity has known in a very long time.

We're all (more or less) coders here, right? What happens when we tinker with a big, complex, undocumented system that nobody really understands? _Government_ as a concept isn't so much tinkering as it is a blindfolded child refactoring by typing with his elbows.

<comment><USER3> The economy is itself a distortion caused by government. In the state of nature there are no economies because as soon as you accumulate a little capital someone clubs you on the head and takes it away. This is why most libertarians are of the statist variety. They talk about the economic distortion caused by government, but what they mean is the distortion caused by the parts of government they don't like (I.e. besides the police, courts, etc). This is a perfectly fine position, but is susceptible to the economic arguments I listed.

<comment><USER5> As an economist I assure you that if I noted a correlation between head clubbing and capital accumulation I would take offensive and defensive steps to protect my head. In fact most would, leading to a nice little equilibrium where head clubbing is not a worthwhile strategy. They may even form a protection racket, and call it "Police".

Economics is not the study of capital, it's the study of trade - <USER2> incidentally is _so_ natural we even observe it in the animal kingdom.

Few libertarians would deny the need for at least occasional collaboration, but that is not the same as government. Governments are universally wasteful of resources, susceptible to corruption, resistant to changing needs, and have a nasty habit of claiming absolute moral authority on things...which in turn has a nasty tendency to start wars. It is, objectively, a limiting and archaic system that does us all a great deal of damage.

<comment><USER3> > As an economist I assure you that if I noted a correlation between head > clubbing and capital accumulation I would take offensive and defensive steps > to protect my head.

With what? You're an economist, not an MMA fighter.

> In fact most would, leading to a nice little equilibrium where head clubbing > is not a worthwhile strategy. They may even form a protection racket, and > call it "Police".

Right, so the nerds get together and beat down the MMA fighters and create laws against "murder" and "theft" and pretty soon you've got government. We're _living in_ your nice little equilibrium.

<comment><USER5> > With what? You're an economist, not an MMA fighter.

A) you don't know that, B) everyone else would be an MMA fighter?

> Right, so the nerds get together and beat down the MMA fighters and create > laws against "murder" and "theft"...

Premise construction

> ...and pretty soon you've got government.

Magic

> We're living in your nice little equilibrium.

Conclusion

I can't even accuse you basing your argument on a logical fallacy, because there isn't an argument present.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gosh, what about the whole Military-Industrial complex, which transfers billions from the public treasury into high-tech research and development.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSJjlaggbK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSJjlaggbK0)

</comment><comment><USER7> We need a Washington DC much better than we have.

<comment><USER8> I'd like to see this explored more. I can wholeheartedly agree that the US government is hugely problematic–that's not exactly a big concession–but that's not a challenge. The challenge is in defining a better system and then getting us there.

My own explorations are currently dealing with the latter by deliberately presuming that half of my ideas won't get implemented and making sure the rest are functional despite that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't buy it, and he starts off eloquently on the tired argument that a privatized company could never handle the burden of maintaining roads.

Ah yes, big government. We would never had the ingenious ability to tar and pave roads without your bloated schemes to pocket large percentages for politicians.

Politicians ladies and gentleman are the big problem in Washington. They are expensive, and if you look at their net incomes year over year astoundingly they continue to make absurd profits regardless of the functioning American economy or not.

If politicians were willing to volunteer their "Services" then I would agree with the sentiments. However, as long as they are able to be bought relatively easily, it allows more corruption and extortion to take place. There is a libertarian solution to everything, and in every instance a free market perspective should be applied to government officials who can't seem to cut the fat out of their vicious diet.

<comment><USER10> I would think the acquisition of the land on which the road is built would be a larger problem for a privatized company than the actual construction and maintenance of the road.

<comment><USER11> And where's the incentive for private corporations to build infrastructure for the public? Government isn't the answer to everything, but neither is the free market.

<comment><USER10> um, they collect tolls?

<comment><USER3> Toll roads run into the problem of positive externality. Specifically, transportation creates large positive externalities. A road creates economic benefits not just for people who use them to get from point A to point B, but direct economic benefits for stores, developers, and employers along the route. Tolls capture only the part of the benefit felt by people traveling on the roads. As a result, if you fund roads using only toll revenues, you'll end up building less roads than your economy needs.

<comment><USER12> So ask the stores / developers / employers along the route to buy-in on the road. Ask them to help pay for construction and give them a cut of the tolls proportionate to their investment. This lowers external capital requirements to create new roads. Tolls could be used primarily for maintenance and upgrades, but may have some profit associated to pay back the initial investment. If the associated nearby economic interests are invested in the road, incentives seem pretty well aligned to me. Thoughts?

<comment><USER3> Why should the stores along the route buy-in? They'll get the benefit of the route for free even if they don't buy-in.

As for giving the stores a portion of the tolls, that doesn't help, because you're still trying to recover all the costs of construction from a subset of the people who benefit from the road. Think about the math: say drivers benefit X from the road and stores and developers and employers benefit Y. Total social benefit is X + Y. With tolls, your incentive to build roads is F(X), insensitive to Y. So whether Y = 10x or 0.5X doesn't change your incentive to build the roads at all. In other words, the incentives aren't aligned with the social benefits.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Advertise on CNN and get one conversion for over $2,000 in ad spend - <AUTHOR> http://cnn.sl.advertising.com/admin/advertisers/indexPl.jsp

<comment><USER2> It may be the wrong image to advertise their ad product but I can imagine $2000 ad spend for a $8,000 LTV being pretty good :) (1k/mo at 8 months)</comment>


Google employee lives in a truck in the company's parking lot - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/A-23-year-old-Google-employee-lives-in-a-truck-in-6579549.php <comment><USER2> I've thought of doing something similar to that. I might try it at some point, probably just for a chunk of a few months. But I'm thinking more along the lines of buying a more maneuverable VW minivan, and retreating to the Santa Cruz hills or Big Sur over the weekends, because I currently miss nature terribly while living in SF.

A few thoughts (I don't work at Google, but a similar large tech company in the south bay):

1) Yes, $2000 a month is expensive for corporate housing. But if your goal really is to save money, you can find a room in San Francisco for under $1000 in a co-op or such and just take the shuttle to Google every day. It won't be the most beautiful house in the world, but it'll beat a truck.

2) If you like bringing home cute girls/boys, that's going to make things significantly harder.

3) I have a fair amount of expensive equipment (photography + music gear) that I would not be comfortable leaving in a vehicle for extended periods of time. It'd just takes once to lose a pretty significant chunk of cash (probably something like $5k in photography gear and close to $10k in music gear, for me).

4) Even if his name and face were withheld, anyone working at Google will remember that truck very distinctly now. Not the smartest move for him, he's probably going to be found out in the next week or two.

I have friends who did similar things - whether to save money, or to entertain a more minimalistic lifestyle. I'm still very curious about it, mostly for the latter reason, and would love to read any detailed experiences if anyone here has done it.

Here's one link for a few years back: [http://austenallred.com/voluntarily- homeless-in-silicon-vall...](http://austenallred.com/voluntarily-homeless-in- silicon-valley/)

<comment><USER3> #2 doesn't sound like a problem for this use case

<comment><USER4> phrasing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is both savvy and ironic.

Being a Google employee, this guy is probably earning +100K per annum, which puts him into the top 1% income-earning bracket IN THE WORLD.

Yet this gentleman has chosen to live out of a truck... albeit a worse option when he could have purchased an RV instead.

Looking back, I am guessing he will not have many fond memories of his 20s.

<comment><USER6> > Yet this gentleman has chosen to live out of a truck... albeit a worse > option when _he could have purchased an RV instead._

This is what stood out to me the most, and made me wonder why someone would do this in such a half-baked way. Granted, he's a young kid just out of college so maybe he wasn't thinking practically, but on the other hand it reeks of extreme hipsterism. "Look at me, I'm living in a box truck! I'm so original and minimalist!" For the $10k he spent on that hot, bare truck he could instead be in a comfortable RV with appliances, a shower, and solar panels for powering his gear, missing practically no luxuries of apartment living.

No, I think the last paragraph of the full article sums it up; he claims he's doing this so he has a good idea of how uncomfortable living conditions can be when he starts his world travel itinerary. He doesn't know the half of it.

<comment><USER7> $10k for an RV? Try ten times that for the specification you've suggested.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't have to be a new one, nor does it have to be a 40 foot luxury model. His truck is nearly 10 years old and he certainly overpaid for it. I've window-shopped for good used RVs and a small model in decent shape can be had for under $10k. Even with improvements like solar panels and new upholstery, he would have come out spending the same amount and been more comfortable for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's cool to see other people doing this. Until a couple weeks ago that's what I was doing. This is even my throwaway account for topics like this.

I lived in my car and didn't work for a big company so accomodations were a little less plesant. However even after 6 months I didn't really mind it. I went to the gym and lift every morning then cleaned up and went to work, then when I was unemployed I went to the library.

Not having an 'official' place to sleep was the worst part. I slept in Walmart parking lots. I rotated between 3 but had one main one. I got harassed by cops pretty frequently which was the worst part. Never had a single person (not cop) bother me, and I wasn't exactly in the best areas (as many walmarts aren't).

That wasn't the first time I was 'homeless' so I guess I'm used to that lifestyle now, and I'd do it again in a heart beat. (I live in a cold state now, so it's a little more difficult)

<comment><USER9> It's legal, as long as the lot owner doesn't mind, right? So why are the cops bothering you?

<comment><USER8> It's a phishing attack for them. They want to know if I'm drunk/high/or up to trouble(yes even though I'm sleeping) and they ask question after question to interrogate me and get me to slip up (implying they think I'm just feeding them bs about not being a criminal). They'd follow up with trick questions like 'well do you have any weapons to protect yourself?' they'd circle back and ask me multiple times why I was there trying to get me to change my story.

After a couple times of this you know their tricks and it becomes a game. I wasn't sure if it was illegal to be transient so I would always just stick with being too tired to keep driving.

Not once were questions out of sincerity or to offer help, just to find ways to pin me with a charge. It was despicable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My suspicion is that this fellow crashes on a friend's couch pretty often. Unless Google allows him 24 hour access, he doesn't have a bathroom at night or on weekends.

>"It's really hard to justify throwing that kind of money away. You're essentially burning it — you're not putting equity in anything and you're not building it up for a future — and that was really hard for me to reconcile."

Equity and saving for the future are things you do after you've established a home. Comfort and time off of work are essential to a well-balanced and healthy life.

What's sad, to me, is not that he lives in a truck, it's that he works so much that doesn't value any time alone in his own space. I know the rent is exorbitant in the bay, but his pay from Google has that factored in -- he's no Mission artist getting evicted, after all. I happily pay a significant portion of my income to have a home, even a rented one.

<comment><USER11> > Unless Google allows him 24 hour access, he doesn't have a bathroom at night > or on weekends.

Google allows 24 hour access, unless that's changed recently.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, large companies seem to allow badged access after hours.

A chemical toilet is also a wonderful thing.

<comment><USER13> Large companies? Any company leasing office space with a badged security system (is, any modern office tower) would allow this.

<comment><USER14> Really not all companies even with a badged security allow this, in many places you need an authorization/pre-registration if you are going to come in late (say 2-3 hours past normal work day) or during weekends.

<comment><USER13> Well, clearly you're not in the valley, where people are expected to sleep under their desks and thank their employer for the privilege. ;)

Agreed, certainly at any company that has strong security policies (I'd imagine telecom, for example, is a lot more strict in this regard), after hours access might be an issue.

<comment><USER14> Nope and I would probably never want to work under those conditions :P

Most office buildings I've seen have restrictions, the office tower i work at in London (Reagent's Park) requires you to enter and sign in with security from 7pm till 7am and if you want to enter during the weekend you need to register explicitly for the day and tie and it has to be approved.

And this is pretty much the case for most shared offices / office towers I've worked in, if you own the campus and want to keep the same level of security staffing during the night as you would during the day I would think that 24/7 access wouldn't be an issue to facilitate in all other cases they rather that you wouldn't be hanging around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> More power to him, it is his life after all, but I've seen this attitude of extreme frugalness/cheapness and it seems to be a trait that engineers are almost proud of, and brag about. __Disclosure: I am myself an engineer, but also founder. __

I 've heard engineers complain about $49 a month for X or Y SaaS solution that would save a bunch of their time and effort. "That is expensive, I'll just build that myself..."

It is like they try to optimize everything in their life. In my opinion this attitude is toxic, especially in startups.

</comment><comment><USER16> I knew a guy who did this years ago: lived in his van, ate the free food, showered at the gym, and had basically 0 cost of living. When he got a serious girlfriend, he bought a house in cash.

</comment><comment><USER17> Amazing how with all the complaints about overpriced real estate in SF/NYC/LA/VAN etc that more people don't opt to own a vehicle that also serves as a sleeping space.

The world is so car-centric yet there's still somewhat of a weird stigma against people who choose to live out of cars/vans/westfalias/RVs etc..?

Also surprised no one's bothered to produce affordable tiny mobile homes for 3rd world countries or college kids: [http://www.designboom.com/design/cornelius-comanns- bufalino/](http://www.designboom.com/design/cornelius-comanns-bufalino/) (Elio's enclosed motorcycles are retailing for $6800..?!)

<comment><USER18> Not everyone's got a workplace that has free breakfast, free lunch, free dinner, free gym, free shower, enormous parking lots, and laid back policy.

<comment><USER19> One way to get access to gym and shower is to sign up for a course at a university and pay a small extra fee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Don't most companies' liability insurance policies prohibit employees from sleeping/living on company property outside of work hours because of their liability for injuries that happen while the employee is squatting in a truck in their parking lot? I would be surprised if Google's legal team didn't shut this down real quick.

<comment><USER21> It would be unreasonable if they were deemed to have liability, but that doesn't mean they don't.

On the other hand, what's the worst case scenario? Some miniscule probability that one day he'll fall out if his bunk, break his neck, and google will be on the hook for a few hundred grand. In the meantime, they're probably getting hours per day of extra work out of him, and he's less likely to leave for a new job at a startup without a giant parking lot, showers and free food. So overall it's a net win... at least until thousands of others start to do the same thing and google has a shanty town on its hands.

<comment><USER20> > On the other hand, what's the worst case scenario?

(1) I'm sure the city of Mountain View and its zoning committee will have some issues with illegal housing units

(2) I'm sure the fire marshall will have some issues with someone permanently inhabiting a flammable structure (literally _on top of a barrel of flammable liquid_ ) with no fire-abatement equipment

(3) I'm sure the California DMV will refuse to license a vehicle where the owner's home address is the vehicle itself with no real street address, or a street address where the applicant is not a legal resident and cannot receive mail. And if the vehicle is registered out of state while being in California for more than 60 days, he's violating vehicle licensure laws as well.

(4) OSHA is going to have issues with an employee sleeping on company property -- for his safety. OSHA fines are a bad time.

(5) If the vehicle burst into flames and the occupant locked inside suffered a slow and agonizingly painful death, you can bet that Google will be found to have some liability for wrongful death, including lost wages and suffering, because they knew about an illegal squatter and did nothing to remove him from the property. Double their financial liability if another occupant was having a sleepover with him.

So: the worst case scenario is being in trouble with many local, state, and federal entities, as well as 7-8 figure wrongful death lawsuits.

> at least until thousands of others start to do the same thing and google has > a shanty town on its hands

I hadn't even considered the moral hazard here if Google does nothing about this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> In light of this article, won't he be kicked of the lot? But well played by him. My only worry is if he will be able to get/attract a "little action" in the truck parked in the lot you know..

<comment><USER23> First thing that came to mind, too. However, he can always go to his partner's residence for action.

<comment><USER22> >However, he can always go to his partner's residence for action.

You are right I suppose. That thought process eluded me:). It all works out then.

<comment><USER24> Well, not if they've also decided on this money-saving option. Coming soon to downtown Mountain View: Japanese-style love hotels.

<comment><USER22> >Coming soon to downtown Mountain View: Japanese-style love hotels.

I had to google that. Interesting concept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> C'mon man, at least do it right and get one of these guys:

[http://www.tonke.eu/us/collection/woodline](http://www.tonke.eu/us/collection/woodline)

</comment><comment><USER26> I give it a week before this is spun into some sort of attack on the culture of the tech industry.

<comment><USER27> I doubt it, what this guy is doing is standard practice in the oil fields in North Dakota and nobody seems to have anything to say about that.

<comment><USER21> Journalists don't go to the oilfields of North Dakota and don't socialise with people who work there, so they might as well not exist.

<comment><USER27> Hi, journalist who went to North Dakota and socialized with oil field workers here. There were dozens of stories written about workers there last year, as well as photo essays and documentaries.

<comment><USER21> Heh. Well, there's always an outlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder if he stays overnight on the campus, or if he parks the truck out somewhere. Not a bad idea, but ill take commuting via motorcycle and staying at my pops place. Although traffic on 880 is absolute shit.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is cool and all but sometimes you need some distance between you and your workplace. Being there all day wouldn't be optimal for me.

</comment><comment><USER30> I would so do this if I didn't have a family. Also, I don't think he's the first one at google to do this.

</comment><comment><USER31> According to his blog, his savings will have broken even as of today and since early this morning, his savings have reached nearly $200 in the black. Thats pretty impressive all things considered, he's payed off the truck and other expenses and is now making money of this setup.

</comment><comment><USER32> Lockheed has allowed employees to live in its parking lot for at least a decade if not two.

</comment><comment><USER33> If only there was any sort of work in tech outside of Silicon Valley, us engineers wouldn't have to choose between saving money and pooping indoors.

Imagine that.

<comment><USER34> Try NYC, Boston, or London.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wonder how popular arrangements like this can get before Google puts a stop to it. It would be easy.

</comment><comment><USER36> companies could build a bunk bed on top of each cubicle, that would solve this issue perfectly.

</comment><comment><USER37> how expensive is it to rent a normal studio apartment near Google? I seem to be the minority here, but it seems crazy to me to live out of a van, rather than a normal apartment.

edit: somewhere around 2200 a month? it doesn't seem worth the savings to not have an appt

</comment><comment><USER27> Ladies and gentlemen, meet the smartest person working at Google.

<comment><USER23> I would do something very similar, in fact.

<comment><USER38> There was a guy who slept inside AOL's campus too, except on the couches: [http://www.cnet.com/news/meet-the-tireless-entrepreneur- who-...](http://www.cnet.com/news/meet-the-tireless-entrepreneur-who-squatted- at-aol/)

<comment><USER35> Google has sleep-pods specifically designed for naps. It would be easy -- and very comfortable -- to sleep in them through the night. I suspect security has orders not to disturb people who do this.

<comment><USER38> These sound neat. Surprisingly high tech too. From the pictures I just assumed it would feel claustrophobic and have that "tunnel sound" effect. I'm assuming they're meant for naps though, at least their original purpose. Google is also special in a way because they offer pretty much everything so people don't have to leave if they don't need to; they do call it a campus.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


UK Man Invents Aluminum-Air Battery in His Garage - <AUTHOR> https://cleantechnica.com/2019/10/20/uk-man-invents-aluminum-air-battery-in-his-garage/ <comment><USER2> I don't know, but the final note on the article doesn't seem like inspiring much confidence:

>[Author's note: A Google search for "Austin Electric Essex UK" failed to turn up any information or website for the company. The photos in the Daily Mail story are proprietary and cannot be republished by CleanTechnica, but nothing prevents you from reading the Daily Mail story yourself. I have guests from the UK staying with me at the moment and they suggest the Daily Mail may not enjoy the highest reputation for journalistic excellence.]

Link to the Daily Mail article:

[https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7592485/Father- eigh...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7592485/Father-eight- invents-electric-car-battery-drivers-1-500-miles-without-charging-it.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a battery. It's a fuel cell that's "burning" aluminum by oxidizing it.

Once the reaction is complete, you end up with basically aluminum ore that has to be re-refined, at great energy cost.

My guess is that this is highly inefficient and will not turn out to be very useful.

<comment><USER4> Refining is just electrolysis though and which could be done in the sunny parts of the world.

What you have here (potentially) is solar storage that can be shipped in ingots</comment></comment>


Gemini Crypto Exchange Integrates with Privacy-Focused Brave Browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.coindesk.com/gemini-crypto-exchange-integrates-with-privacy-focused-brave-browser <comment><AUTHOR> > The Gemini Trading Widget is now live in Brave's Nightly version, the > testing and development version of Brave, and will go live in Brave's > general release in the next few weeks, the companies announced on Wednesday.

> Brave-verified content creators can now also custody their digital assets in > a Gemini Creator Wallet.

</comment><comment><USER2> I used to be a fan. Now they should change their name to shameless. Time to support braver.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you recommend things to your friends? - <AUTHOR>

If you want to recommend something, where do you go? Twitter? Facebook? Topic-specific networks like Yelp, Goodreads, thesixtyone, etc? Email/IM?
Similarly, if you're looking for a recommendation, do you use Vark? Google? Twitter?
Since I know someone's going to say it: Yes, I'm using HN for research. Is there something wrong with that? <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I usually ask people I trust directly via email, phone, IM or face-to-face.

When I tweet asking for stuff, I tend to get people I do not know recommending things, usually things that they have some interest in pushing on me. Ick.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't write TripAdvisor or Amazon reviews, but they can inform my choices (both +ve & -ve) if I'm considering a purchase.

</comment><comment><USER4> Depends who I want to recommend it to. Different networks reach different audiences.

But for most tech stuff: Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER5> Twitter, if it's of a broad interest, or aim, if it's of a specific interest to 1-2 friends.

</comment><comment><USER6> Email.</comment>


Entrepreneurs Starting Up With Fewer Employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/business/entrepreneurs-starting-up-with-fewer-employees.html?ref=technology&_r=0

<comment><USER2> There is an interesting study link (<http://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WR637-1.html>) towards the end of this article (which was pretty good by the way). The study suggests that employer-based health care inhibits entrepreneurship. The study supports this thesis by showing that there is a spike in new business creation (in the US) for people around age 65 (presumably because they have access to medicare).

</comment><comment><USER3> I've always found this interesting. Their are so many successful startups you don't hear about that outsource most of their development. Does a power- monster startup really need hundreds of silicon valley engineers? Obviously talent brings you further, but what about for the tedious development tasks and leaving the problem solving to your founders?</comment>


Computer Scientists Attempt to Corner the Collatz Conjecture - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/can-computers-solve-the-collatz-conjecture-20200826/ <comment><USER2> How solving the Collatz conjecture solves any ''real world'' problem? (Why will they give any funding for solving it?)

What examples do you know of where the Collatz conjecture is somehow related to seemingly unrelated things in other parts of math?

Do you think you will be able see it solved in your lifetime?</comment>


Digg's Decline by the Numbers: Plummeting Traffic, Waning Power - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/09/24/digg-traffic-stats/

<comment><USER2> Digg's decline, IMO, is due more to the efficiencies that have been created centered around URLs as a currency. Digg first became popular because its up/down voting was somewhat novel, and it reached critical mass. It became _the_ place to get fresh URLs. Nowadays, it's nowhere near the monopoly on fresh links it once was. URLs spread like wildfire on any number of social media sites (reddit, google/yahoo buzz, delicious, twitter, etc), and derivatives of them (popurls, alltop, etc).

You no longer need to visit or take part in Digg to reap the rewards of having fresh content delivered to your doorstep everyday.</comment>


Looks like you can now run Linux on the Nintendo Switch - <AUTHOR> https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/looks-like-you-can-now-run-linux-on-the-nintendo-switch.11675 <comment><AUTHOR> A more direct link to the source article about the exploit itself: [https://fail0verflow.com/blog/2018/shofel2/](https://fail0verflow.com/blog/2018/shofel2/)</comment>


Why Gmail needs a way to schedule e-mails for future delivery - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/internet/111018/why-gmail-needs-a-way-schedule-e-mails-future-delivery

<comment><USER2> I couldn't agree more. I've come across the need for this feature and wondered why it isn't available.

I hope it doesn't put the small guys out of business.

Gmail also needs a follow-up option. I don't know if its available elsewhere, but the ability to send an email and 'flag' it for follow up is helpful for some but not all emails.</comment>


Clojure 1.2 released - <AUTHOR> http://clojure.blogspot.com/2010/08/clojure-12-release.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Changes: <http://github.com/clojure/clojure/blob/1.2.x/changes.txt>

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm not sure what to make of the dramatic upvotes for this item, and the lack of comments. Is it that many people are interested in Clojure, but haven't used it yet?

<comment><USER3> Personally I've got little to say, but I think it's an important news, that should be displayed prominently (especially in this community full of LISP fans). So I up-voted it.

I'd also like to learn Clojure at some point (or some other LISPy language like Nu), but haven't had a chance yet, so it wasn't really an upvote because I like Clojure. :)

<comment><USER4> Head over to <http://www.try-clojure.org/> and click the "tutorial" link. You can go through the tutorial in about 30 minutes -- there's not a lot there yet (looks like it's a work in progress) but it's enough to give you a quick flavor of Clojure-scented Lisp.

Then upvote me if you end up liking Clojure ;-)</comment></comment></comment>


WebOS legacy lives on as next-generation Enyo framework exits beta - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/webos-legacy-lives-on-as-next-generation-enyo-framework-exits-beta/

<comment><USER2> I logged into the sampler site and toyed around with it in the different browsers (IE 9, Firefox 15, Chrome ??) on Windows 7 with only input boxes behaving in different ways. Escape key could be used in IE to cancel input but not in others. On my iPod Touch, Safari could not render anything and Opera Mini could only show the front page but did not allow interaction. On my Nook Color, the Browser app also could not render the site either.

Overall a nice little library with most of the expected widgets. Too many issues with the older mobile browsers that I'm not sure I would use it just yet but I would give it serious consideration as it does look like it might improve the experience for business apps we currently deploy in-house. I would probably need to actually download and toy with it for a more complete experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Which OS version is on your iPod Touch? We tested with iOS 5.1 mainly, so I'm not sure how well things work with a 4.x one. We've also done a bit of testing on Android versions, and it's quite a headache working around WebKit bugs there.

<comment><USER2> iPod Touch was 3.1.2 (about 2 years old) which I will readily admit is rather old but I have reasons for sticking to it on that device. I don't believe 5+ is available for my hardware. Now I don't really expect it to work but it would be one of those nice-to-haves if it did. The Nook I think is up-to-date as of a week or 2 ago.

My company does not enforce a standard browser but iPad and Android Tablets would be expected for anything I adopt as well as the standard Windows browsers. I'm not aware of anything that works well everywhere and gives a nice experience which is what this framework tries to do so. Anyway I totally appreciate the work and understand the difficulties involved.

<comment><USER3> iOS 3 on any device has a tiny marketshare - Instapaper showed it at less than 1.2% of iOS, and that was nearly 9 months ago. ([http://www.marco.org/2011/11/30/more-ios-device-and-os- versi...](http://www.marco.org/2011/11/30/more-ios-device-and-os-version- stats-from-instapaper))

The support matrix for Enyo is here - <http://enyojs.com/docs/platforms/> Opera Mini and mobile are just not supported.

You need to draw the line somewhere. 'Broad' support is good. 'Everything' support is futile, for the feature set desired in a mobile application framework, with the resources the Enyo team has.

Enyo is good at creating 'apps' - often things delivered in a PhoneGap-like container or something with defined browser support like Chrome Web Store.

Its probably not the general framework for any and all website development needing to support all platforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We've picked this for our mobile presence, the real selling point for me was the pretty much native speed animations out of the box, which is a killer on things like jquery mobile. There might be more work up front for us as there is less reuse possible from our web front-end but that is our issue to solve once, having a clunky, unresponsive UI is a problem every user would suffer every time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Kudos to the Enyo team for making this happen (despite it being widely and inaccurately reported that Google hired "the whole team" a few months back).

Clearly there are still some very talented engineers working there, can't wait to see what they do with Open webOS 1.0 later this year.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's great to see Enyo survive the HP touchpad train wreck of last year.

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks very simple yet powerful.

</comment><comment><USER8> is it me or the sample apps feel quite sluggish on the nexus 7?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're just starting to optimize for Chrome on Android. It's a quite different code base than the WebKit used on Android 4.0 and earlier.</comment></comment>


Presans Is Hiring Back-End Developer and Front-End Developer and DataScientist - <AUTHOR> http://www.presans.com/jobs/ <comment><AUTHOR> Presans ([http://www.presans.com](http://www.presans.com)) is a French company, based in Paris.

It proposes a platform designed to allow internal stakeholders of a company to build and engage on-demand teams of international leading experts to shed light on technological and industrial innovation issues.

Sofia, the big data web app developed by Presans, maps expertise worldwide, builds our network of over 6 millions experts and streamlines the on-demand expert engagement process. It is composed of: \- X-Search: a search engine for world-wide experts – 6 millions unique experts today [http://presans.com/search/](http://presans.com/search/) \- X-Call: a specific CRM, designed to hunt, interact with, select and hire experts ([https://presans.com/sofia/x-call/](https://presans.com/sofia/x-call/) , with restricted access).

We are currently hiring: \- a Front-End Developer, in charge of extracting users' needs and implementing the interfaces; \- a Back-End Developer, in charge of implementing the core processes (data consolidation, etc.); \- a DataScientist, to improve user experience and business value: personalizing search results based on previous user interactions, categorization of scientific publications, extraction of named entities (names, addresses, etc) in documents, etc.</comment>


Show HN: ShredReel – A collaborative platform for snow sports videos - <AUTHOR> http://www.shredreel.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello friends!

I want to introduce ShredReel to you all which just went live a few weeks ago. ShredReel is a collaborative platform for organizing, finding, and sharing videos from the ski slopes.

ShredReel allows you to upload unedited videos from any camera (GoPros, smartphones, point & shoots) and tag friends, tricks, locations, bloopers, basically anything done on skis or a snowboard using a vast set of pre-defined tags. You can also search and filter by any of those tags so it's easy to find videos featuring specific actions or at specific locations. It allows you to perform cross-sectional searches of different tags (basically like a pivot table (for my Excel nerds) for videos). This is actually why the site was created - it is very difficult to find videos of specific actions since you are at the mercy of the person titling the video.

Lets say you did a 360 rotation on skis, you would add the tag for a 360, but if you didn't land it, you could also add the tag for bloopers. If you also did a a grab, you can add a tag for a grab as well. That moment will then show up on all searches for 360s, bloopers, and grabs. The best section will most likely be the bloopers as I'm sure you can imagine.

We are still trying to get more content up there so pardon the fact that videos are sparse. I would love any feedback this talented community has to offer!

Hope you enjoy it! Thanks!</comment>


Ask HN: Is part time freelancing possible - <AUTHOR> A good friend of mine is looking for ways to boost his income as his third child is on the way. He is a youth worker full time, that's his passion but it doesn't pay well. He can write software but hasn't professionally.<p>My gut feeling is that it's going to be hard to make money without experience and connections but I'd love to be wrong. Has anyone had experience doing this sort of thing? <comment><USER2> If he isn't trying to get "startup rich", and really just wants some extra income, just knock on the door of every mom & pop shop on your local main street and offer help with their web site. You'll find a few takers, and that starts your portfolio and network. You won't make great money on such things, but you'll start to get some folks who need simple projects - a script to copy data from email into an accounting system, for example. So he can start to write software professionally, and add that to his portfolio.

It will take time. The first few projects won't pay much. But that is how you start - with small projects. Then you ask the people who couldn't afford much more than a website with a couple scripts if they know anyone who needs help. And you work your way up to bigger companies. With bigger problems. And bigger budgets. Eventually, you'll see a pain point that multiple companies have asked for. Write software to fix the pain point. And expand that software into a business.

This is exactly how successful "lifestyle" software companies are built. Do small things until you find the bigger things.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's possible, but not easy unless work falls in your lap. If it doesn't fall in your lap, you have to find it and finding it is hard. The difficulty is probably proportional to how rich the people you know are. Rich people are more likely to have a rationale for hiring a software developer and more likely to have the wherewithal to pay for the work. In other words, the kids your friend works with probably don't need software development and don't have much money. Or to put it a third way, you're not hiring your friend which is not a criticism of you just an example of how far up the food chain freelance software clients have to be.

</comment><comment><USER4> >> My gut feeling is that it's going to be hard to make money without experience and connections but I'd love to be wrong

Yes. You can do this by: Building lots of products and launching them and reaching out to people who are looking for contractors online and sharing similar/relevant products you're launched.

It sounds like you're describing the classic problem for getting started in a new career (no work experience & jobs like experience). The numbers likely won't be pretty for trying to get clients. For example, I know someone who is a self taught designer, and very good too, and had to apply to 100+ jobs in this market to get 5 interviews, and then had an offer from 1 and decided to end the process and take the job. Those numbers can be discouraging but it only takes 1 yes to get that first real work experience, and from there it only gets easier.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've done it for a long time. The demand is so high that they'll keep raising the prices even as you turn them down. Once you get clients, you'll keep getting them.

It sounds like the hard part is just meeting enough people to consider yourself qualified. A third of the work in freelancing is marketing, another third is research and/or selling off prototypes at a loss. For example, it's costly to figure out how to make an app with Google+ sign in, but it's easy to do the second time.

It could be possible to start cheap, by letting experienced developers outsource that kind of work to you for something like $10/hour. You can also look for Fiverr style stuff like assembling a Wordpress site or writing tests.

<comment><USER6> If you start at $10/hour it won't hurt a company at all if you rise prices, for like, 100%... But who will charge that much and still make a living?

Part-time freelancer might work, but you need to know your customer and your customer needs to know what you provide him. Otherwise you might to loose customers over "I'm sorry I'm only availble Fridays".

<comment><USER5> I think it's a fair price for someone who has no reputation, poor availability and little confidence. They can always increase their prices later with experience. Lots of people are also happy to outsource to someone who works slowly and cheaply, as long as the work isn't core. For example, we had a lot of side features that nobody in the company had time to do, or things like converting a hybrid app to native, where a lot of the work was porting screenshots into XML.

Cheap, hourly makes sense sometimes, because a newbie might take 2 hours to do one layout while an experienced pro might take 5 minutes. This lets them experiment at their own pace and eliminates risk for a company. It also pays better than say, doing Uber.

Ironically charging too high can be detrimental for someone new as they tend to get paralyzed with trying to do too much in a compact amount of time. It might take someone an hour just to get into the flow if they're new at it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The answer always depends on clients. Can you find and keep them? Are they adequate? Does the work amount to 'part time'?

And many 'full time' freelancers (I've been one) find themselves repeatedly being 'part time' when there's a slow month.

Freelancing is hard, and is a combination of luck, timing, and seriously hard work. There is no formula. Ever.

</comment><comment><USER8> What I don't understand is why people pop out more kids if they have to pick up another job to pay for them.

You already have 2. Isn't the point of having kids to spend time raising them? Now there has to be a third and you have to pick up a second job so you hardly spend time with them.

<comment><AUTHOR> In this case he will be dropping his hours in his other job. He will do this either way. His current job is for a charity and pays below minimum wage.

<comment><USER8> That would make sense. I didn't see that in the post.</comment></comment></comment>