Launch HN: Modern Labor (YC W19) – Paying People to Learn to Code - <AUTHOR> Hi HN,
We are Modern Labor (https://modernlabor.com). We pay you to learn to code. We take people with little or no software skills and pay them a livable wage[1] for 5 months while they learn to code, using our content, most of which is open source. In return graduates pay us 15% of their income for 2 years if they are earning over $40,000.
The company is born out of a phenomenon I've been fascinated with for a long time: many people wake up every day at 7am to work at a low-paying job but they often have difficulty completing a class that might help their future. For some people, it might just come down to money. A job pays now, a class pays off in the future and only maybe. For many reasons--time, energy, motivation, financial pressures--many choose or are forced to choose the job that pays now and their long-term income sometimes suffers as a result. So we had an idea: Why don't we just pay people to learn? So that's what we do: we pay people, now, to learn an in-demand skill.
I remember back when we were building Leif, a startup we sold last year. I told Dickie, one of our co-founders, if I only had an extra $10,000 I could build out the product to an acceptable quality for a couple months. Otherwise I had to work. He ended up giving the money. We sold the company the next year for a good outcome. That couple months of being able to focus made a big difference in the quality of the product and I think ultimately on how successful we were with customers. We think Modern Labor can give people enough time to make a real change in their lives.
Our program isn't for everyone. It's full time. We pay $2000 for 5 months. Sometimes that's more than enough to live on, sometimes it's not, especially in the Bay Area. Nearly impossible with a family. You need the right to work in the US. The program is mostly self-directed and online. We guide students with a learning pathway and code reviews, but it's ultimately up to them. If they don't do their lessons, we don't pay. It's far too short for some people. Right now the curriculum is JavaScript (React, Redux) and Python and focuses on the web, which is only one sliver of the software universe. Most of the content is open source. Some of it's from places like Freecodecamp, which is available for free. If you have money, you don't need us.
15% of gross income is a lot. Why so much? It comes down to simple risk/return: returns must be adequate given the risk. If it sounds a lot like Lambda School (YC S17), you're right. Our former company Leif arranged financing for them. We discovered Austen (CEO) here on HN. It's a big space, though, and our program is different from theirs. We have fewer mentors and our focus is on giving money to students.
How many people will do our program? About 50,000 people pay to attend coding bootcamps in the US each year. We believe, and may be wrong, that a lot more people will choose learning when we pay them to do it.
Thank you HN -- HN was the first thing people told me to read when I was learning to code and it's been a big part of my life ever since. Happy to answer any questions and looking forward to hearing your ideas and feedback!
[1] Right now it's $2000/month <comment><USER2> This is a cool idea and I'm all for it. However, I'd like to observe that software seems to be one highly skilled profession that is trying to eat itself. All other skilled professions try to protect themselves by limiting supply. That's why you need 10+ years of medical school + residency to become a doctor. Same with law school etc. Not saying I agree with them, but just pointing it out.

<comment><USER3> I think level of safety is higher for other professions; if you mess up as a doctor somebody dies, if you mess up as a lawyer an innocent person goes to jail.

If you mess up a CRUD app as a junior full-stack developer, prod is broken until somebody fixes it. And you can learn enough to not break prod pretty quickly on the fly. It's a very reversible mistake in comparison.

<comment><USER4> That is exactly why I required all of my software engineering students to write a research paper on software flaws that injured or killed people. I wish I could be more confident that all companies producing products that can harm people spent the time and money necessary to discover and remediate all defects but corners are cut all too often and the lure of cheap labor is just too tempting to resist.

Maybe Boeing and Airbus will never have an Ada developer make an error that kills a plane full of people but there's already a push for javascript to be used in embedded systems and I'm sure it's coming from someone seeing the large numbers of javascript programmers coming out of coding boot camps and similar programs.

<comment><USER5> > spent the time and money to remediate all defects

Surely you mean to design systems with modularity that helps RAM-limited brains made of meat to avoid defects and defense-in-depth which reduces the impact of defects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is actually very similar to the apprenticeship system that my dad went through in order to become an electrician. They essentially paid him to train through apprentice to journeyman.

That said, it was through a union and they have certain guarantees about the level of pay and conditions that are acceptable for work, and the usual benefits of collective bargaining. What are your thoughts on software developers / engineers and unionization?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's similar what we're going for, apprenticeship. We think that hands-on projects help people learn very fast. Some of the projects are from us (specifically designed for learning), and some of them are real-world.

As for unionization, I am not sure. The demand is high enough for software developers that we are willing to take risk to not get paid back if they earning below $40,000. So we don't guarantee a salary but we make sure they don't pay us if they are aren't earning enough.

<comment><USER7> Love this, fwiw. I'm in the UK, or I'd be on it.

Anyway, is it literally $40k you pay 15% ($6k), below you pay nothing?

Is there any sort of tax saving, do "graduates" pay tax on the full amount but pay out 15% to an "educational trust"?

Are you a non-profit?

<comment><AUTHOR> Under $40k, nothing owed.

We are for-profit. We think that model can help us scale faster than the tax advantage of the non-profit can help us. Larger non-profits can play a role in the future of this market though, with various guarantees and cheaper capital.

<comment><USER8> Have you considered bracketing it or is this a purposeful marketing point? If a graduate is offered 2 jobs at 39k and 50k, would they make more at the 39k job in the short term?

<comment><AUTHOR> Marginal rates (brackets) are a good idea. Right now, too complex for the capital markets around this product and we think (possibly) for the customer, so we're sticking to the flat rate.

<comment><USER9> You certainly know more about this than I do (running a company and all that), but the situation described in the GP strikes me as a likely real-world scenario, and a bad outcome for both you and the customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For some reason, the name "Modern Labor" immediately associates in my head with terms like "slave labor" and "child labor". Perhaps that is just me. But I can't help but feel a slight revulsion to the name just hearing it. Sorry for the criticism - mostly just voicing my opinion in case anyone else shared it and it is actually worth giving a second thought to.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're not tied to the name. If it ends up being a major issue, we will change it for sure. We think of it more along the lines of "Labor party" or "labor rights" or "labor market" than what you mentioned. Perhaps this theory is wrong though and we'll need to adjust.

<comment><USER11> If I search for modern labor, I get you (great!), also on the first page are "Modern day child labor", "how business can tackle modern slavery and forced labor", "what is modern slavery"; the rest are relatively benign. I'm not sure that's too helpful.

My _first_ association would be for a newly modernised incarnation of a Labor Party, just like Tony Blair gave us New Labour.

I'm from the UK, so my first impressions may not be thought relevant. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it has something to do with the UK search results/expressions. The US one (the one I see, from our IP) is about "modern labor economics" and "modern labor market"

<comment><USER11> That was the benign ones. I used US spelling and every result was a US site. Maybe not representative of results if I were on a US ip.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congratulations, this is great! I'm glad you'll be reaching an underserved group.

I hope, though, that you'll be honest with your students about what your program will deliver.[1] While it's currently still possible for many non- programmers to achieve upward mobility just by learning to code, there's a huge skill gap between those who can cobble together a few libraries to make a website, and those who understand theory/systems well enough to build something novel.

While compensation levels for both groups are currently still comparable, the steadily increasing supply of bootcamp grads and self-taught engineers could result in a pronounced bimodal distribution in a matter of years. Some subset of folk will have the motivation and resources to make the jump;[2] others may end up in end-user programming roles that pay poorly or aren't fulfilling.

Somebody entering your program should have a realistic view of what it takes to reach the parts of our industry that they hope to find themselves in. If they know that Modern Labor is step 0, and see themselves on a long road of learning and growth, they're likely to do very well!

[1] I wouldn't have worried about this, except that I've seen some bootcamps tell their students that they should consider themselves "senior" upon graduation, and that their skills are comparable or superior to graduates of top computer science programs.

[2] I run [https://bradfieldcs.com](https://bradfieldcs.com) and maintain [https://teachyourselfcs.com](https://teachyourselfcs.com), both of which aim to help such folk make the jump. As much as I try, many people aren't interested or driven enough to start, let alone persist for the years that it takes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point, right now we're trying to filter for that desire to be in the field for a while, but ultimately I think we will add a lot of material that gets people ready for the long road ahead of learning. We see ourselves right now as a way to get a foothold, and climb from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some junior developers I have worked with are grossly incompetent even with a CS degree from well respected schools because they treat their education as a trade school, ignore the standards that govern their profession/technology, and are utterly reliant on unnecessary abstractions to write any code at all. The negligence is so common it has names like imposter syndrome.

I wonder if an educational program like this is far superior. I would be curious to hear about the results.

If you are teaching JavaScript and client-side skill I recommend teaching the standard DOM methods and how to efficiently "walk the DOM". It is becoming a lost art, but there is no alternative. The DOM methods remain the only true standard to access markup as everything else is an abstraction that compiles down to that at an incredible performance cost. It's little things like that that add up over time that crush an application and complicate what are otherwise quick and simple architectural decisions. I am biased because that kind of standards based approach has made me more employable.

<comment><USER14> I'm confused on who or what misled you to believe that imposter syndrome only exists within the CS bubble. It's a human phenomenon. Sometimes it is purposefully fueled by junior developers being talked down to be senior developers who at best feel threatened of being exposed (do I really deserve to make double what a junior dev makes?) or at worst are simply misanthropic. Many of these senior developers are surely skilled at walking the DOM but due to their toxic attitude must be managed with kid gloves like so: [https://hbr.org/2016/10/how-to-manage-a-toxic- employee](https://hbr.org/2016/10/how-to-manage-a-toxic-employee)

<comment><USER13> > I'm confused on who or what misled you to believe that imposter syndrome > only exists within the CS bubble.

There is a big difference between lacking confidence and feeling like an imposter versus a fraudulent qualification. This is solved in most industries through licensing/certification. If you want to practice medicine, law, or nearly anything else you need a license. You need a license to be a truck driver. With such licensing comes testing, a validation of experience, background checks of your professional employment. Software has none of this.

That being said how do you identify if a potential software applicant is a fraud to the skills they claim to possess? You really don't. You interview them and hope to separate the capable from the incapable, but often it isn't clear until after they are hired and spent some time on the job. The second order consequence is when you hire only weak developers that weakness is the new (lower) baseline of acceptable competence.

> Many of these senior developers are surely skilled at walking the DOM but > due to their toxic attitude

I think that is a gross generalization to suggest that somebody has enviable valuable skills they are therefore toxic. They could be, in fact, abrasive. It could also be that the people without the valuable skills are defensive and insecure. The best way to answer this is if everybody in that scenario had the valuable skills would the toxic nature still be present? In my experience toxic people remain toxic even when the environment changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a product idea for you. You could offer me, as an employer, a part of what they pay you as an incentive to hire your graduates. Essentially I'd be getting a discount on my employee costs for the first two years in exchange for helping your program be more attractive because you'd be able to show a higher post-graduation hire rate.

I'm still working out the ethics of this in my head though. Is this ethical or exploitive? I think the answer depends on the employer. I feel like it's good for the student, since after two years they will have had a chance to learn on the job at a discount to me, and if I've done a good job training them further, they'd be valuable enough to me to keep on board without the discount. But I worry that an unethical employer might only keep them two years and abuse them and then cut them loose when the discount runs out. So you'd have to prevent that somehow.

<comment><USER16> That sounds like a very convoluted way to ask for what is in essence a discount.

<comment><USER15> It's a discount for the employer but also good for the future employee. As an employer I'd be willing to spend more time on training knowing that I'm getting a discount from market rates, and the employee wins because at the end of the two years, their base pay is higher to calculate raises against or to take to their next employer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow. Great introduction. Love how you headed off snarky comments such as the percentage of income, the fact that $2K/mo isn't a lot in some places, that 5 months of learning is only enough to start a new journey, not reach the destination, etc. I need to incorporate this tactic into my communications.

</comment><comment><USER18> > Become a Full-Stack Developer

I don't think 5 months is sufficient for most persons with "little or no software skills" to reach a level at which they can work as programmer, software engineer, or (maybe even) computer scientist.

<comment><USER19> So what do you say to the 50,000~ bootcamps students doing this currently?

I did a bootcamp in 10 weeks and got hired immediately. People may be against that for whatever reason but I was able to meaningfully contribute to my company, and it allowed me to learn while working in the industry. Been going 2.5 years now, and admittedly, I still have a ton to learn, but I'd like to think I'm not a fraud at this point.

<comment><USER18> What do you say to the students that do not get hired?

<comment><USER19> YMMV.

My bootcamp had 90% placement rate within 90 days and has for years. This question kind of ridiculous though, no education system works for every single participant. There are plenty of people with B.A.'s not getting hired. Even people with law degrees occasionally. Much less financial and time risk with a bootcamp tho.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So, basically, your company is part school, part loan agency. The loan business is offering to students a loan which covers scholarship in the school + 10k, and then bets on the job market for interests at 2 years terms.

This way to put it is sure less appealing than "we pay you to learn" but closer to the actual business model.

Looks like you could have partnered with an existing program (or several) for the teaching part, and only run the lending/revenue sharing. What pushed you towards handling the school yourselves? More confidence in the results? Difference in the legal/financial stuff due to the business structure? PR value? Taste for teaching? Bit of all that? Something else?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think we would put it more like staffing platform + a trainee/school program. But we combined them because we saw a gap in the market. Pure schools need to make money on the school portion (they have to have high gross profit per student). A lot of schools hover around 50% gross profit per student. So we thought, if are able to integrate vertically (and have both school and staffing platform), we can finance the school portion extremely aggressively (and scale really really fast), and meanwhile actually turn a profit on the staffing platform side. That's the business model reason.

The second reason is that we think that by paying people to finish tasks, assignments, and learning material, we can actually incentivize completion in a much cheaper way than employing a lot of supervisors. So not only are we able to grow faster because of our integration (like above), we can be more efficient at producing students. I think if we weren't trying to scale extremely fast and sustainably we would probably focus on the training portion.

<comment><USER20> I see. It makes sense, I'm curious to see how it will evolve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Is there a cap on the maximum that students pay out? Many similar programs cap the total payout expected from students.

Further, do you work with students on actually getting recruited and getting through interviews? Coding is great, but whiteboarding and interviewing are their own skillset.

<comment><USER22> this clause is interesting too, they have first dibs on you as long as they make competitive offers

> After the program, graduates pay 15% of their income for 2 years if they are > earning over $40,000. Furthermore, graduates agree to work for us directly > if our offer is as good as their other employment offers.

<comment><USER23> That latter clause seems unenforceable. At-will employment.

Or are there some monetary penalties if they match other employers' offers and you don't take the job?

<comment><AUTHOR> No penalties, we actually think this clause is probably not necessary. We work with trainees for so long during the program that ideally they would find it natural to work for us (or for our staffing clients).

<comment><USER24> It's unnecessary, unenforceable and off-putting. By definition, if you make an offer of employment to someone and they choose a different one, then your offer wasn't "as good". Maybe you're offering the same salary, but that's certainly not the only thing that goes into an offer. I get you want to keep students around for yourself or for your staffing clients, but this is not the way to do that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think in the end, we will remove it or change the language so dramatically as to remove it. We have been surprised by how many people are totally fine with this clause, though, about 99%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Love the concept!

Some feedback on the website: The image of the man on a laptop sitting in the dark gives off an eerie feeling and reminds me of those cheesy stock images of hackers wearing a ski mask. A man sitting in a well lit room and smiling may be more welcoming to a potential applicant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha! Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Three questions I haven't seen answered yet...

1) What if you make $40k even? Is the 15% adjusted based on your salary?

2) What happens if you lose your job 1 year in? You've paid back half your debt... what about the other half? I would feel bad telling people about this to see them do it, and then get jobs (either with Modern Labor or somewhere else), and then a year in they get cut, have no job, and are thousands in debt.

3) What if someone is in the program, and halfway has to drop out for xyz reason? Do they owe the money back?

I really like the idea, just wish there were some more details so I could feel confident telling friends about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The $40,000 threshold is inclusive. So if their income is equal to our greater than $40,000, they owe 15%. If they ever dip below $40,000 payments stop until it goes back up to $40,000.

<comment><USER27> You should consider making these payback rates marginal (such as 20% of all income above $40k instead of 15% of all income).

As is, there's a weird gap in incomes ($40-47k, roughly) where you'd end up taking home more money by taking a voluntary pay cut.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree. I think in the future -- as the market for income share agreements becomes more sophisticated there will be marginal rates. Right now the complexity tradeoff for the customer and the financing means we aren't doing it for a while though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow, this really has the ability to open up the door for bootcamps for people that otherwise couldn't afford to do it, that's commendable!

I don't think 15% is a lot at all. Assume $60-70k for first job out of a bootcamp (which is more than reasonable) and you are essentially charging $10k tuition for a 5 month program.

I hope the numbers work out for you, as it sounds exciting!

I'd love a similar program for experienced or senior engineers that want to shift into an entirely new space (spend 4-6 months learning data science and machine learning, for example. Or low-level programming for embedded devices. Etc)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Up-skilling as opposed to learning junior-level skills only is where we think the market will expand to generally in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> You are doing an obvious right thing to do and I wish you huge success.

</comment><comment><USER30> > In return graduates pay us 15% of their income for 2 years if they are > earning over $40,000.

How do you enforce this? I.e. what stops someone from simply lying about their income?

<comment><AUTHOR> We use a company called Leif (my former company). They handle all of the income verification and collection. The ultimate truth is from tax returns. The vast majority of people self-report accurate incomes, however.

<comment><USER27> So students are required to share access to their tax returns?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, the income share agreement has a clause where, if Leif asks, they need to share their tax information. This is only if other methods have failed, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I might be interested to make my siblings enroll in this program if you take Canadian citizens?

Also, I know some people in the US who might be interested in this. But, can you give me the stats about how many people enrolled, and succeeded to get a programming job?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now you need the right to work in the US, so if they have that, then yep.

We will have meaningful data in six months to share.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> How many money 2000 is varies both by where the person lives and the person and indeed that persons families medical expenses.

I was wondering if the money effectively lent to the learners would be income or a loan.

For practical purposes the money paid to learners bears little resemblance to income. Someone who receives 10K while learning must necessarily pay back at least 12K over 2 years at 40k per year or 18k at 60k per year.

This bears on two matters. Taxes paid and benefits received.

In the first case if the money paid is considered income the user may be paying in effect a substantial fee to the us government to borrow money in the form of income tax.

In the second health care is presently ridiculously expensive and 2K monthly income is just enough in most places to opt the user out of the free medical care that might otherwise render the 2K very livable.

Essentially users who opted to participate in modern labor could find it impossible to pay for medical insurance for any reasonable ammount while "earning" just enough that the state wont pick up the tab either.

Alternatively the user could opt to work 2 full time jobs and face a much higher chance of failure.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now we treat it as income for tax purposes but this may change in the future, as we optimize the model and the tax treatment. Due to this, depending on a person's situation, the $2000 might not nearly be enough.

We think of ourselves as underwriting, in the financial sense, someone's near- to medium-term earnings. Some of the negative tax treatment is offset by our assumption of risk. If a person has the skills to go out and freelance and earn $10,000 over 5 months -- and can bear the risk of not earning that -- then we aren't necessarily the right fit. In the freelance case, income would be 1099, which includes both sides of FICA tax, but it also includes the risk of not finding enough clients. When people use us, they are guaranteeing $10k which allows them to plan and learn without worrying.

This is actually similar to how IPOs work. If you are company who wants to sell public stock to investors, there's a possibility that not enough people will buy your stock at a reasonably price if you sell directly to investors. So historically, investment banks would underwrite this transaction and price your stock and buy 100% of your offering. The company gets enough money at a reasonably price and then the investment banker goes out and sells it to investors. In this case, the company may have left money on the table, but their absolute risk is lower, since it's now the investment banker who bears it. Some companies, however, are in such a strong position (like Spotify) that they don't need the investment banker and they just sell directly to the market. Similarly, some individuals have such good prospects/finances that they don't need us, and that's not our market.

<comment><USER32> Lets take a hypothetical. A family with medical insurance costing $660 and medical expenses with insurance of $200 with 1 person able to work and no monetary help forthcoming from the state.

Paying just over the threshold for free medical care for the state means substantial costs for the learner who will pay hundreds of dollars more for earning literally $50 too much to qualify for free medical.

We aren't talking about people whose prospects are to good to need an option like this we are actually talking about people who are trapped in poverty because earning slightly more ends up being ruinously expensive instead of a step up.

It's profoundly depressing.

<comment><AUTHOR> We definitely need to dig more into this, but I think you're right, sometimes income from us would push people over limits -- at least the way it's currently structured. Could you share what thresholds you are talking about?

E.g. if the threshold is 5k, we pay 10k, medical insurance goes to $1000 from $0, it might be still positive for the trainee (earning $10k - $tax - $1000 might be better than no earnings at all).

<comment><USER32> In WA state the threshhold is 138% of the federal poverty line. 1940 I believe for a family of 2. 1900 would literally be more money than 2000 sad to say.

Stupid question time. It seems like the money would more accurately be expressed as a loan. Is there a reason it's expressed as income? Complexity of lending regulation? Lending regulation particularly disallowing the chosen model?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a loan and more akin to equity; there are parallels to the talent agency world. If you wanted to do our program and get paid less than $2000, we could accommodate this via a side agreement or other arrangement potentially.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've applied. I don't know if this will be shooting myself in the foot but I am a little concerned by the ask for a LinkedIn profile. Leaving any and all social media behind has been the second greatest force for good in my life. The first was spending a couple months meditating in a monastery.

With GitHub now turning into a Facebook for programmers, I've anonymized my profile there too. I'm happy to provide code on request or complete challenges but turning everything into an altar for Self may be the greatest mistake of our generation.

<comment><AUTHOR> The LinkedIn profile is a convenience for us but not strictly necessary, we'll make the form field optional in the future. If that was a blocker drop us an email at email@example.com and we'll get you an interview another way.

<comment><USER33> Thank you for the response. I just wrote, "I don't have any social media" in the field.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> While teaching web dev, do you put any focus on accessibility for users with disabilities and other special needs? Is your platform accessible to students using assistive technology like screen readers? You're possibly offering something here which could have an impact on the high unemployment rate among disabled people, many of whom are lacking skills or opportunities to obtain them. Would be happy to talk with you more about this if you're interested - full disclaimer: accessibility and usability are my dayjob :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we need to integrate more of this -- Please drop an email to firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Curious how you're going to balance mentor expertise with the fact that a business generally requires multiple non-overlapping skillsets.

Lots of bootcamps crank out a disproportionate number of web development juniors compared to other specialties, but surely a business will also require other roles, many of which aren't strictly software engineers or which may involve more investment than a macbook (e.g. designers and wacom hardware + Adobe licenses)

I'm also curious how you plan on tackle tech debt in your platform, given that from my personal experience, some of the scariest codebases I've worked on were ones where there was a lot of newbie turnover.

Another thing I'm curious about scalability. At some point, adding more workers tends to not scale and you start to need a ballooning number of middle-level managers, whose required skillset might primarily be soft skills.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of the program is project work and those sometimes require several people with different skills (e.g. UI/UX, a couple full-stack, manager). I think ultimately we'll be taking in different skill-training simultaneously (i.e. project managers learning beside programmers).

As for the core platform, we keep that to more senior people for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > You need the right to work in the US.

You should mention this on the website.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, we will add this

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> How about expanding beyond coding? The U.S. has a shortage of skilled people that goes well beyond coding. E.g. machinists, pilots, nurses, etc.

Also, I think your business model would be much more scalable if you left the educating to others and instead focused narrowly on being a financial program.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep -- 100% -- right now it's web development but in the short term we'll bring in other types of software development. Medium term, other knowledge work like data science and finance. Longer term, nursing. Nursing (and other fields where there are more immediate safety issues and logistics issues (hard to do nursing totally online) are very big areas and we probably need cheaper capital to do it (unless VR/AR changes that).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> >In return graduates pay us 15% of their income for 2 years if they are earning over $40,000.

What if graduates don't get (or decide not to pursue) a coding job, and instead return to their original or similar field? Do they still need to pay part of their unrelated jobs salary to you?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment they pay back regardless of their field. On the one hand, we are giving out cash (not just instruction). On the other, we believe that coding skills can be used in many areas outside of a software development job (business, product, technical sales, data science etc) and that their productivity should go up in general.

<comment><USER38> So, I get the reasoning, but a realistic and frankly inevitable outcome (not 100% of the people you accept are going to end up with software job, no matter how good you are) is that a person ends up in the same field, with the same salary they had before, but now has to pay 15% of their income for 2 years to Modern Labor.

That's a pretty horrendous (and possibly incredibly destructive) outcome for someone looking to improve their outlook, and will definitely give me pause in recommending they apply to the program.

It also contradicts your mission:

>We believe that money should never be a barrier to learning and that with the right motivation and funding, anyone can learn new skills and make a better life for themselves.

At the very least people shouldn't be punished for either not succeeding in finding a job (a failure that could be partially the responsibility of Modern Labor), or simply deciding coding isn't for them.

<comment><USER39> Making the payback at marginal rates (0% for below $40k and 20% for everything above that) would largely fix this issue.

If you are making around $40k per year, you have nothing to lose; if the program doesn't improve your state in life at least you don't have to pay too much back.

Non-marginal (15% of everything) plus the "you must work for us if we beat offers" theoretically could lead to them offering everyone a $40,001 per year job, essentially forcing them to work that for 2 years and incur high payback costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I love the model, but $2k/ month seems like it would only work for people who don't live in tech areas, where it's more affordable. Being based in those locations, it seems like it will be harder for them to get a FT tech role afterwards.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of the current cohort lives in high cost areas but there is probably a subsidy (like free rent) or savings in there somewhere. I think with a family especially $2000 is not enough without other savings. We hope in the future we can make this $4000 or stretch $2000 longer, but that depends on cost of capital.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This honestly sounds like a pretty cool idea, but I'm a little concerned about something you say:

> Most of the content is open source. Some of it's from places like > Freecodecamp, which is available for free. If you have money, you don't need > us.

If you are not offering much value in terms of the educational content (since it's freely availabe), then aren't you essentially just loaning people money. They get money now, and they promise to pay you back a higher amount in a while.

Wouldn't it be simpler and cheaper for someone to just get a 2k loan on their own and study the freely available content on their own?

<comment><USER42> Yeah. For a $10,000 loan, assuming a $100k salary when you're done, you're looking at a $1,250 monthly payment/a whopping 139% interest rate[0]

[0] [https://www.calculator.net/interest-rate- calculator.html?clo...](https://www.calculator.net/interest-rate- calculator.html?cloanamount=10000&cloanterm=2&cmonthlypay=1250&x=0&y=0)).

<comment><AUTHOR> The one difference here is the risk component of equity financing versus debt financing -- with debt, you have to pay no matter what, with equity, you pay only if there is money left over. I think in the future, as the cost of capital comes down, the percentages of income will come down a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> What is the selection criteria ? I feel many folks who have flexible jobs (waiter, uber driver, etc) would love to join your program, work on assignments for a say 5 hours and do part time work rest of the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> We like to see some evidence that they want to do software development. E.g. they have some small projects or they've been doing some self-study or courses. We have several uber drivers in our cohort right now actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> What's the general tone toward folks coming to the program later in life? Possibly without a strong tech background but smart and looking to start a new career. How about folks with a criminal background looking to start a new life? A lot of the coding bootcamps I've seen have been geared toward the young or very specific demographics (e.g. women). Do you have a specific demographic that you are targeting?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment, the primary drivers for acceptance are evidence of interest in the field and evidence of grit, regardless of life stage/demographics. Criminal record is OK too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think it's a great idea. So many people would like to learn CS but don't have the time bandwidth; paying them to learn is a win/win.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome thanks! We believe this model can be helpful and at scale

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Is the 15% adjusted based on salary? Because right now you it looks like you would take a $6,000 pay cut to go from $39,999 salary to $40k salary

<comment><AUTHOR> 15% is from gross income. There's an indifference point, you're right, but most people don't optimize like that we found at Leif with a lot of other schools.

<comment><USER47> Still, why make this perverse incentive at all? It would be easy to structure it more like taxes...?

P.S. I think this is a great project and I am very interested to see how this goes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think in the future it will be more like marginal tax rates. Right now it comes down to how we finance the program. The market for income share agreements has been, so far, flat percentages. As it develops, this will change as the various funds/institutions get more comfortable with the general product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Can I take this idea and use it in Germany? There is a huge demand of IT / programming skills, but the market is simply empty, because of the traditional crafts in industry, where most of the young people go.

Offering this would possibly rise the interest in IT related skills and capture intelligent people.

<comment><USER18> [https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Missing-Link- Migrati...](https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Missing-Link-Migration-in- die-Industrie-4-0-Fluechtlinge-als-Software-Entwickler-gegen-4310106.html)

<comment><USER48> There are plenty of smart germans around. They seem to go with the tradition because it will always pay.

I'd like to change that. IT is hard,. it pays double.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> What differentiates you from Lambda School if (when) they start offering a stipend during their course?

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now (without the stipend) they cost 17% of income for 2 years (for income over $50k) which is just (slightly) more than us. Adding a stipend their prices either have to go up (3 years instead of 2 years paying back, for instance) or they have to remove/change some of their product features since skilled mentors cost money. We want to make sure we give the maximum possible amount of money to people during the program and are prepared to deal with the implications of that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Have you considered something like Lambda Co-op?

[https://lambdaschool.com/blog/announcing-lambda-co-op- commun...](https://lambdaschool.com/blog/announcing-lambda-co-op-community- driven-projects-built-by-students-for-free/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep - we think client projects are a big part of the learning process. We haven't designed it to be like their program but it's in the same ethos.

<comment><USER50> Cool. Any way to get updates on this?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've got a newsletter, drop a line at firstname.lastname@example.com and we'll get you on it -- otherwise we'll put a newsletter signup on our landing and can sign up there

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> throwaway-1283 _Furthermore, graduates agree to work for us directly if our offer is as good as their other employment offers._

What does this mean? If I get a job offer for $100k but you match I _have_ to accept your job offer of working for your company?

Strange...

<comment><AUTHOR> Right now there's no penalty if they don't take our offer. It could turn out in the future we don't need this clause at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> >Right now the curriculum is JavaScript (React, Redux) and Python and focuses on the web, which is only one sliver of the software universe.

And I highly doubt you will expand beyond this given who you are likely to be contracting with.

</comment><comment><USER6> Third question: would you consider this for more highly educated roles like machine learning or Recurse Center-like fellows? Basically people who are already highly technical who want to become more specialized.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, we aren't set up for that right now but that's where this is going - giving people, at various stages in their career, a significant block of time/money and guidance to focus on increasing their skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Is it possible for experienced backend developers to get into the program? I'm thinking someone like myself that has been programming in C# and would like to make a transition to frontend development.

<comment><USER53> the problem right now is, let's say you are earning 80K as C# dev, you take 5 months to learn front-end but you don't get a front-end job.

So you take another C# job that pays you the same. But now you have to give Modern Labor 15 % of your pay.

You are taking a chance that the new job will pay you at least 15% more than your current one after 5 months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> (already answered in the site chat but re-posted here)

Have you considered custom pricing tiers based on skills set and/or progress speed through the program?

Do you take remote students?

How is the 15% of income you take from students spent?

<comment><AUTHOR> \- Right now there is only one income percentage tier. We are trying to keep it simple for the trainees and the financing side.

\- Everything is remote (the program is online)

\- The 15% goes back to other students and the rest covers our other costs and expenses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Congratulations on the launch!

I am curious if there are other skills/jobs that would be viable to teach in a similar manner (definitely outside the scope of the launch, but I'm curious).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We think that we can do this model with most knowledge-based work: data science, business, product, finance, paralegal, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> This is an awesome idea. Speaking from experience as someone who transitioned into engineering. I would have totally tried this if it was around 4 years ago. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER57> How long will it take to get to profitability doing something like this? Really interested in the business model part of this and how the numbers pan out.

<comment><AUTHOR> If we wanted to, pretty soon actually -- we have been involved in the financing side of income share agreements for a couple years now so we can do this competitively. As for sustainable profitability, that will depend on our relationship (network) with employers/staffing clients and how much they value our supply of talent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Does the 15% only apply if they land a job as an engineer? What if they do half the program, realize it's not for them, and take a job in marketing?

<comment><AUTHOR> If they drop out, they owe in the proportion they attended. So e.g. if they drop out halfway, they owe 12 months instead of 24 months. Also they owe regardless of their field. We do this for two reasons. We are giving people straight cash and number two, we believe their overall productivity should go up. For instance, a marketer can scrape the web or write marketing scripts (e.g. parsing bulk emails) that can make them more efficient, produce more value with less effort, and ultimately could translate into higher income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> This looks awesome, I just submited my info. Is there a chance of getting selected to do it remotely from Chile or in the USA without a Work Permit?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's all remote but, how it's currently set up, you do need the right to work in the US at the beginning of the program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Is it actually possible to make such a contract legally binding and enforceable or do you plan to depend on the honesty of your students?

<comment><AUTHOR> The income share agreement is strict (Leif helps us handle that). For the staffing agreement, there's no penalty if they decide to work somewhere else. Ultimately we have to rely on the positive relationship we have with the trainee.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> You said the work is "self-paced", does that mean there are no instructors and no set times I have to be "in class"?

<comment><AUTHOR> We make sure they do the work (code reviews) and we want them to spend a reasonable amount of time actually coding (we log how much time they spend on items). But there's no "class" per se, other than check-ins with us

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Are the actual terms of the student agreement available? I can't find them on your website.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://leif.org/api/products/5c70f3b7e59b74688df0996f/pdf](https://leif.org/api/products/5c70f3b7e59b74688df0996f/pdf)

<comment><USER62> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Is it possible game the system? Take the $2000 outsource the learning to someone for far less.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have enough check-ins, code reviews, and logging that this would be hard to do, but in theory someone could try. The income share agreement identity verification/collection is pretty efficient though so it would be hard to do at any meaningful scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> How do you differ from Lambda School? What do you think you do better than them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Our focus is on paying the students a livable wage to have time to learn. We want to pay as much money out to them as possible. Most of our work is self- paced or project-based, and while their are people to help guide them, we want the maximum amount of money going to students. Lambda is a great program but a lot of money goes to more attention from mentors. They are experimenting with stipends, but overall it's more expensive. We think there's space in the (growing) market for different models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Second question - would you consider alternate tracks, like UX design?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, UX is one of the fields we think work well with this model although we aren't doing it right now, I think we will in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Do you have plans to extend this outside of the US at some point?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep - although not for a bit. We have to do a different collection model than income share agreements to do it effectively right now.

<comment><USER34> Do you have some sort of announcements list or a way I can be notified when you expand to other countries?

As an aside, while teaching web dev, do you put any focus on accessibility for users with disabilities and other special needs? Is your platform accessible to students using assistive technology like screen readers? You're possibly offering something here which could have an impact on the high unemployment rate among disabled people, many of whom are lacking skills or opportunities to obtain them. Would be happy to talk with you more about this if you're interested - full disclaimer: accessibility and usability are my dayjob :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> You're paying a third of what someone on the US federal minimum wage would make during that time (7.25 x 40hr/week x 20 weeks).

Edit: oh, I thought it was 2000 total, not per month.

Never mind then, though I do think this is would ideally be a government program.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you might have the math wrong there.

7.25 x 40 x 20 = $5800

we pay $10,000

Second, virtually all the work is not for any gain (it's purely instructional)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Is it only for US people

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment, you need the right to work in the US in order to do the program.

<comment><USER67> Specific locations? Greater Seattle Area?

<comment><AUTHOR> No specific location, just need the right to work in the US - Everything is remote/online

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Are you considering mobile (ios/android) training?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep - not in the next 6 months though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> This is an interesting concept. What comes to mind is the company Reviture. I'm not sure if they pay students to code I think they cover boarding and have an online platform to boot. But as far as Modern Labor goes it sounds like a nice idea but after looking at the comments and information I've gathered so far it seems the makings of Uber all over again.

In this case, I get the the sense that drivers(or paid programmer apprentices) are sold on the idea that they can make good side money whereas they're not factoring all the other expenses or finances that would come up front or even worse over time such as car maintenance, gas, tolls and etc. For the paid apprentice and everyone's living situation is different when you factor in location cost-of-living and etc.. to receive a set amount of $10k over the course of five months where it's being asked that you dedicate 40 to 60 hours a week for 5 straight months. You are essentially as the individual who signs up for this course committing to 800-1200 hours which also amounts to living off of roughly to $8 to $12.5 an hour just to learn to code.

Maybe if I was a high school student not looking to go straight into college yet or someone in somewhat desperate situation seeking a way out may consider this. I understand that Modern Labor is a company/business the word loses me is the commitment of taking 15% salary for two years straight or how to commit to work for the company if they match a competing offer.

This gives me the impression that the individual who signs up to be part of their program provides more value to Modern labor then they do for themselves. Kind of like Uber pays the driver, takes a % of gross revenue from the trips while they're being still funded by venture capitalists. Guess it's like how big Daddy Kane says, pimpin ain't easy..lol

Anyways, this may not be the best example but this is what comes to mind. Modern labor good luck to you guys if you guys becoming successful in this endeavor and perhaps some company will buy you guys out and in return we have a growing labor force the scale of uber where the promise is to take you from novice to master developer in 5 months where has a person who signs up for this program takes $10k up front but pays back 15% of their salary over two years or a maximum of $30k. Perhaps this is a small price to pay when it comes to doing business. Makes you wonder who's benefiting from from who.

</comment><comment><USER69> When does this program start?

<comment><AUTHOR> We have rolling cohorts starting every two months right now, eventually it will be every month.

<comment><USER69> Does that mean the next one starts in april ? I'm really interested in doing this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another one starting in May

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Looking for instructors?

<comment><AUTHOR> Drop us an email at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Indentured Servitude?

<comment><USER9> The income sharing is only for two years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Thank you "Modern Labor" for being yet another force that is determined to make software development go the way of Woodworking, Welding, Automotive Manufacturing, etc.

We're already on the path toward blue collar salaries thanks to big pushes from government and big tech (Google,FB,etc.) to lower labor costs by inflating the supply of workers. You've heard it before - "not enough software developers!"... Yet salaries are barely moving? We didn't need it, but now startups like "Modern Labor" further incentives an ever growing influx of programmers into a market which is destined for over saturation.

Get ready folks. Your white color job, is turning blue faster than you even realize it. Find something to specialize in and do it fast.

<comment><AUTHOR> In some sense this is very true. Michael Porter (Harvard prof, wrote Competitive Strategy), thinks that basically everyone in an advanced economy has to constantly increase their skills, but as a result, everyone produces more for less money, and the living standards go up collectively. Is this right? Maybe, maybe not.

<comment><USER73> It sounds right to me, except that the living standards don't go up, the surplus goes to the edu/housing/healthcare rent seekers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> Thanks, I hate it. If you go to school for CS and have to work with people that go through boot camp programs like this, it is a pain. They are elevated script kiddies that don't understand what they are doing. You are going to create a bunch of people that have such limited skill sets that they can be readily outsourced. What happens when technology changes? Will they have the perspective and skills to adapt? This is actually a nightmare. People in a tight spot will inevitably be lured in by the pay, then find themselves beholden for two years? Honestly, screw you scheming silicon valley wraiths. You don't care about the well being of people and just look to manipulate people into building your fortune.

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the things we try to filter really hard for is demonstrated interest in software, which usually means they've been learning on their own for while or sometimes it's a degree in a technical field, but not cs per se. The really big push during our time isn't going to put them into senior-level positions (for the current program) but we think the program can kickstart their life of learning.</comment></comment>


Summary of new quantum gravity theory by Chris Lee - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2010/02/gravity-demoted-entropy-rules-the-roost.ars <comment><USER2> I wish I knew what exactly "information" is in this context. I know a couple of definitions, but none seems to match.

<comment><USER3> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_information>

<comment><USER2> What is needed, I believe, is a definition of information that is as rigorous as, say, the definition of energy. By the way, a fundamental tenet of Shannon's theory is that (quantity of) information is defined in terms of the _expectation_ of its recipient, so it seems a rather different beast than the quantities with which physics deals.</comment></comment></comment>


German Reunification - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_reunification <comment><USER2> How is this news?

<comment><USER2> Seriously. These "news" are older than me.</comment></comment>


Recovery.gov uses jQuery on Drupal - <AUTHOR> http://www.reynoldsftw.com/2009/02/recoverygov-uses-jquery-on-drupal/

<comment><USER2> Went to recovery.gov. Tried to access the already famously slow Government Printing Office resources. Crushed. The Obama team might be running Drupal, but they need to take a trip over to GPO and bring _those_ services into the 21st century.

Come to think of it, shouldn't the GPO be at the leading edge of information distribution? What's going on over there? Anyone want to bet they're running uncached Oracle on a leased 8 year-old Sun server?

</comment><comment><USER3> Drupal itself uses JQuery, so "JQuery on Drupal" is redudnant. Recovery.gov uses Drupal.

<comment><AUTHOR> noted :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An easy way to find out what framework a site uses, is this bookmarklet: <http://blog.olicio.us/2008/11/08/wtframework-bookmarklet/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Odd. They went out of their way to hide the /node/ extension, which on Drupal typically returns a list of new entries.

Since it's pretty easy just to not display information on /node/ at all, it's interesting that they took the time to hide their CMS identity.

<comment><USER6> I don't think they were trying to hide the identity of their CMS. It seems more likely that they were just tidying up by removing pages that weren't part of the plan, or didn't want to have draw attention to new content in such a plain and uncontrolled way.

<comment><USER5> Hm. I suppose they could be editing out the stuff from .htaccess.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple's new patent copies Illumination… Kinda. Poorly. In theory. - <AUTHOR> http://lunduke.com/?p=2753

<comment><USER2> If it were me, I'd be terrified.

The patent will likely be granted - the America Invents Act changed the patent process to first-to-file rather than first-to-invent, and so Apple doesn't have to prove that they were the first to invent this system to be granted the patent (though prior art may still be used to invalidate the patent). Apple is notoriously litigious. Apple can - without blinking - spend more money on a court case than you will earn in your lifetime.

The combination of those factors should scare the shit out of anyone working on a technology that Apple files a patent on. Our patent system is not your friend. Apple doesn't even have to win the court case - they can just tie it up in court, bankrupt you and drive you out of business.

Good luck. I hope it doesn't become a problem.</comment>


Thinking Under Uncertainty - <AUTHOR> http://nathanmarz.com/blog/5-tips-for-thinking-under-uncertainty.html

<comment><USER2> Nassim Taleb might have a word or two to say about this article.</comment>


Minimum Viable Brand? - <AUTHOR> http://patrickwoods.tumblr.com/post/24622927395/minimum-viable-brand

<comment><USER2> I fundamentally disagree with the thesis that because a product is centered around a "lifestyle brand," it is ineligible for lean, iterative development.

As someone currently investigating a product like this as a side project, I definitely see the warning of only having one chance to show off your product to an audience. However, the fallacy is the assumption that you have one audience.

For example, I am much more willing to burn my reputation with someone coming inbound from an AdWords click over someone coming from the front page on reddit. Why? The person in the latter case has significantly more political capital and has much more influence in accelerating my growth.

I think a much more safe strategy is to validate your assumption that pushing something to the front page of reddit will yield a good impression of your brand by building up to that launch through experiments carried out across much smaller, more disposable audiences.

I mean, this is precisely the sort of product space Eric Ries was in with IMView. He was offering teenagers a great chat experience, and was able to iterate on his product until there was a solid brand behind it by spending just $5 a day on AdWords.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting question, but it doesn't seem to provide any sort of an answer.</comment>


Airbnb Horror Story Points to Need for Precautions - <AUTHOR> http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/15/your-money/airbnb-horror-story-points-to-need-for-precautions.html <comment><USER2> See also this thread from a day ago (63 comments) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064782](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10064782)

</comment><comment><USER3> > Still, logic and decency would suggest that when you're in danger, as Mr. > Lopez claimed to be, Airbnb would come to your rescue.

Does it? AirBnB doesn't have duties to guests because they're just a transaction middelman. Hotels are liable for the safety of their guests, but they also have control over the premises they rent, which AirBnB does not.

Of the various criticisms against AirBnB, this is the least sympathetic one in my opinion (the tragedy of Mr. Lopez's individual situation aside). When you rent off AirBnB, you're renting from some random stranger, with all the attendant risks. You're not renting from a company that bears liability for your well being. That's just the nature of the transaction.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps the case here is that AirBnB is misleading guests into _thinking_ that it'll assume responsibility equal to the responsibility a hotel would take, when it really doesn't.

Anyway, sadly (and obviously) this submission has been flagged, would be better to carry discussion to a lessly-YC controlled platform: [https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/3h7ivz/airbnb_h...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/3h7ivz/airbnb_horror_story_points_to_need_for_precautions/)

<comment><USER5> I'm beginning to become annoyed with you for insinuating the same falsehood every time one of these stories comes up. You've done it countless times, and it puts us in the position of either saying nothing and letting the falsehood stand—which isn't right—or having to answer it, a dreary chore that steals cycles away from things that actually help the community.

It's time you supplied some evidence (which you won't, because we don't do the things you say), or dropped this. Repeating the same falsehood ad nauseum is not legit.

The only thing that happened to the present post is that users flagged it, presumably because it was an obvious duplicate. We didn't see the post until a few minutes ago, and the only moderation we did was unkill it so discussion can continue. That's standard practice.

<comment><USER4> > I'm beginning to become annoyed with you for insinuating the same cheap > falsehood every time one of these stories comes up.

Every time? That's very much an exaggeration! Secondly, if you read my comment you'll see I did not accuse YC of flagging the story, I was myself thinking it was user flags (though, when one considers that flagging privileges are sometimes revoked... and only "good" users are left to flag, userflag starts to seem very much like a YC-flag - but that's a story for another day). Anyway, I do think I didn't choose my words very carefully, there's arguably some connotation of YC being `directly` involved in flagging in my comment, that was unintended.

<comment><USER5> Many more times than I have energy for.

Your oft-repeated claim/insinuation/smear that we censor anti-YC stories isn't true, nor fair, nor even reasonable, since to run HN that way would be stupid and the whole thing would have fallen apart years ago.

It's also mean—you have no idea how hard we work to make sure that stuff like that doesn't happen.

And in this case it was lazy as well: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=airbnb%20horror%20story&sort=b...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=airbnb%20horror%20story&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story).

<comment><USER4> > since to run HN that way would be stupid and the whole thing would have > fallen apart years ago.

That's just not true though. Huge governments have survived through propaganda, brainwashing, etc. (not necessarily accusing YC of doing that, just making a point). Forums can persist in any direction you want if they're carefully and meticulously managed, one can partake in rampant banning, censoring, etc. and it'll all still be fine, it happens everywhere all the time.

<comment><USER5> You're arguing technicalities, but the important points are: (1) we don't censor stories for being negative about YC because doing so would be wrong and bad for the community, and (2), it would be a stupid risk to take with HN if we did. "Whatever you do, don't do _that_ " is literally the first thing pg said to me about how to moderate HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The thing we need precaution against is AirBnB hosts who've turned renting out apartments into full fledged businesses. Because in my experience when someone doesn't actually live in the apartment, quality drops and there's no actual home-iness. One exchange: "Is this a mattress? Is it not just a box spring?" "I'm sorry you don't enjoy this type of mattress... For this price point for this rental, this is what you can expect."

As far as full apartments go, I'd seriously like to meet one AirBnB host in Japan or China (the main places I've used it) who aren't part of AirBnB based businesses, just 1 person who is actually sharing their home while they're away for a bit, or whatever AirBnB claims it's all about.

This is the giant elephant in the room about AirBnB, and I doubt they're ever going to discuss it publicly.

<comment><USER7> The majority of AirBnB rentals in NYC are "entire place", or at least they were when it was easier to compare available numbers. This despite the fact that renting out your entire place when you're not there is illegal in NYC unless you've specifically been licensed as a bed and breakfast. Not just illegal as in 'violating your lease' (the majority of AirBnb) but illegal as in a violation of the law. Interestingly, AirBnB's NYC commercials only highlight the private room with the family also present since they own the place aspect - which is a very small portion of AirBnB's NYC business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Companies and products get their reputation damaged often because of the people who answer the call lack of common sense and empathy... At the same time, they expose the problems more effectively than anything else.</comment>


Ask HN: Which javascript libraries/frameworks/tools you use? - <AUTHOR>

Wondering which javascript libraries, frameworks or tools you use in your projects? Wanna know if I am missing something.<p>I frequently use jQuery,jQuery UI, Closure, node.js, backbone.js. <comment><USER2> I'm currently using dojo/dijit/dojox (for good or bad, work requirement). Kinda the same purpose as jQuery/jQuery UI, but I believe that it does not focus on bringing in HTML 5/CSS 3 functionality quite as much.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have always used jQuery adn jQueryUI for all my javascripting work. I find it easy to understand, code and debug. There are loads of javascript libraries out there but i find jQuery the best to work with.

</comment><comment><USER4> I currently use JQuery, JQuery Topbar, JQuery Validation, JqPlot, CSS3, HTML5

</comment><comment><USER5> jQuery mostly but not I have been playing with backbone.js and underscore.js. I Would love some helpful tutorials to help pick them up faster.

</comment><comment><USER6> underscore sammy (with jquery-urlinternal-plugin) uglifyjs

</comment><comment><USER7> www.techwales.com</comment>


Visualizing Large Datasets on the GPU with Vega and MapD - <AUTHOR> https://www.mapd.com/blog/2017/07/22/vega-makes-visualizing-big-data-easy/ <comment><USER2> > MapD uses Vega to drive the rendering engine directly on the result set of a > SQL query without ever requiring the data to leave the GPU

How big is the dataset? If it can't ever leave the GPU then it is at most a few GB? Unless there are several GPUs at play then it's N * (a few GB). If there are a few GPUs at play then this dataset would fit into DDR3 RAM on a single mainstream Xeon node, or entirely into MCDRAM on a Xeon Phi node.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> MapD customers typically run our product on multiple servers with multiple GPUs per node. So 4 servers with 8 Nvidia P40s each has 4X192GB = 768GB of VRAM. Note MapD compresses data and also keeps data in CPU RAM as needed. Even two servers with these GPUs or 4 servers with gamer GPUs is enough to query and visualize an 11B record shipping dataset without a hitch ([https://www.mapd.com/demos/ships](https://www.mapd.com/demos/ships)), a demo running on four servers with 8 Nvidia 1080 Tis each.

Other customers with smaller datasets (i.e. less than a few hundred million records) are able to run with a single GPU.

We're not going after petabyte size datasets (where <100ms querying is rarely important), so ability to scale has rarely been an issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Note that although we can run on CPU, CPUs do not have the graphics pipeline and the memory bandwidth necessary for interactive server-side visualizations like this.

<comment><USER2> Cool, thanks for the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> At first, I thought it was referring to AMD's new Vega GPU family. I was hoping they found a particularly good use case for it.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I feel tricked frankly, given the proximate mention of GPUs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, as the OP that wasn't the intention (the Vega rendering API has been around for some time and predates our porting it to GPUs).

<comment><USER4> Fair enough, name collisions are becoming very hard to avoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> @tmostak large dataset visualisation like this looks great, but one of the most appealing parts of Vega for me is interaction. It's just as easy with Vega to create composite interactions for filtering and navigating data as it is to visualise it. Is there any scope for this type of architecture to support more than just serving rendered PNGs? (Can it do that at 60fps? :P)

<comment><AUTHOR> We've considered video rendering using the H264 encoders on the GPU, another approach might be to create a format that has all info needed for interactions and that could be deciphered on the frontend (i.e in WebGL). So it's something we're definitely looking at.

We already do provide some support for hover interactions in our charting library on top of Vega, but it would be nicer to do this in Vega.

Right now customers still get a lot of value from server-side rendering simply bc we can render visualizations of billions of records interactively and in real time, which is difficult or impossible to achieve in other platforms without some sort of pre-computation.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for your reply, and yes I can imagine your tools are already very useful. Are there any examples of real-time online? It would be interesting to see what your SoTA is!

<comment><AUTHOR> We do support real-time ingest (helped by the fact that we do not need to index on insert). The only example we have online of that now is our Tweetmap demo ([https://www.mapd.com/demos/tweetmap/](https://www.mapd.com/demos/tweetmap/))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of these visualisations would benefit greatly by using 2d or 3d kernel density estimates instead of a simple scatter plot. See for example: [https://youtu.be/Xz_7Ej6JsMY](https://youtu.be/Xz_7Ej6JsMY)

<comment><AUTHOR> We can already do simple histograms (heatmaps). More complicated features such as Gaussian weighting and hexagonal bins are coming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can I use it on a MacBook Pro? My concern is that it doesn't have a dedicated GPU.

<comment><USER8> you can use MapD on your MacBook pro in CPU mode, but it will not be able to do any vega rendering because that requires a GPU.</comment></comment>


Tutorial: Apache Spark on GPU(s) - <AUTHOR> http://iamtrask.github.io/2014/11/22/spark-gpu/

<comment><USER2> Did you happen to run any benchmarks against CPUs using one of the simple examples? For example, what's the difference in run time for 1,000,000,000 iterations of the Monte Carlo for finding pi?

<comment><AUTHOR> benchmarks like that coming soon :)</comment></comment>


Copyright Office Adds DMCA Exemption for 'Abandoned' Online Games - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/copyright-office-adds-dmca-exemption-for-abandoned-online-games-181026/ <comment><USER2> Very interesting.

The article mentions, that the exemption only applies when archivist legally have the source code for the game (usually provided by the original entity that created it).

What are some examples of companies providing the source code to projects? I'd like to support those companies buy purchasing their other products if possible

</comment><comment><USER3> I never before thought much about archiving multiplayer games, but this made me give it a thought. I imagine wanting to show my children Fortnite in 15 years and actually being able to play with them- that would be incredibly wholesome

</comment><comment><USER4> Would love to get the server code for Landmark.

</comment><comment><USER5> (from 2018)</comment>


Sean Parker's Start-Up Struggles - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/daily-report-sean-parkers-start-up-struggles/

<comment><USER2> The Airtime interface is pretty cool, but the struggle various social start- ups face is that they need to convince people why they need to join yet another social network. If Facebook bought it and incorporated it into its existing platform, that might be a way forward for Airtime. Google made a bet on promoting Google+ Hangouts, and I think its paying off.</comment>


Disputed Shakespeare Play Is 'Proven' Genuine - <AUTHOR> http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/books/disputed-shakespeare-play-is-proven-genuine <comment><USER2> Here's a longer description of the research methodology:

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/13/shakespeare...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/13/shakespeare- unmasked-by-pronouns.html)

As much as I would like this to be true, I'm extremely skeptical of any claims to have "proven" something via a method like text analysis. There's just too much room for selection bias (i.e., did they apply their methodology to every play written between 1550 and 1620 to see how many false positives it resulted in? What if the use of function words in the Shakespeare corpus was less distinctive than they imagine?) Though to be fair, I think that language like "proven" is being added by journalists interpreting the study rather than the authors themselves. It's certainly an interesting lead for future research into the provenance of the play, at any rate.

<comment><USER3> Exactly, it's not like they were scoring William Shakespeare versus every other (possibly unknown) playwright alive at the time, nor do they have the training data they'd need for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's fascinating to think of Shakespeare reading Don Quixote and adapting a story from it for one of his later plays.

I knew that Shakespeare and Cervantes had died within 10 days of each other but was surprised to find out that Cervantes lived to 68 while Shakespeare was only 52.</comment>


FB Google Easter Egg - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?q=facebook+health+center+menlo+park&oq=facebook+health+center+menlo+park&aqs=chrome.0.69i59.2439j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 <comment><AUTHOR> I mean, it shows some poor Iraqi guy with a bloody child when I google the FB health center.

[https://i.imgur.com/URhantv.png](https://i.imgur.com/URhantv.png)

<comment><USER2> Come on, You could just literally add a photo to this. Perhaps some people took advantage of that feature on Google Maps.

Nice find though, but you better pray that this doesn't get flagged.

<comment><AUTHOR> A friend of mine on FB campus noticed it. I thought it was pretty funny, and no, I didn't do it (you can add photos to a search term?).</comment></comment></comment>


Why David Hume Is Popular Now - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/why-david-hume-is-so-hot-right-now <comment><USER2> Reposting this terrific (long) article:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/how- davi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/how-david-hume- helped-me-solve-my-midlife-crisis/403195/)

Hume, along with the Ancient Roman Stoics and some Taoism, have a good deal in common (and complement each other where answers may be lacking). They are very rewarding, read together.

</comment><comment><USER3> I very much agree with the evaluation that philosopher/biographer James Harris concludes with here: it is easy and extremely common to misunderstand Hume as a Moral Anti-realist or as a Moral Subjectivist.

Reading David Hume's arguments concerning our ability to locate the source of morals convinced me of Moral Realism and Moral Objectivity and is what ended all of my opposition to Christianity. I explain Hume's perspective here: [http://liamk.org/is-love-real/](http://liamk.org/is-love-real/)

<comment><USER4> Religion just like everything else is a tool for survival, nothing more. Many religions revolve around disciplinary structures; if you don't do what is "right", it's typically viewed as not optimal for survival in this world or what they may view as an afterworld. You seem to put these emotive features of love, beauty and whatever tickles your fancy as above all when there'd be none of those observed without the survival of an observer; the Machiavellian means of survival does have moral validity whether you see it or not.

You generalize atheists and atheism so much as to dilute your target, a common and cheap practice in debate. Atheism is already diluted enough because it's a non-belief, nothing else, so there's little target for generalization there even though you love to employ it in a desperate attempt to find something to latch on to and debate. And the atheists I know, most are relative moralists. That doesn't mean they don't think humanity doesn't have a moral compass, in general, but they tend to mean that there's no facts to demonstrate moral code, as you just said in your link. There's so much wrong with your arguments there, I don't know where to start.

<comment><USER3> Can you refute the Is-Ought problem or not?

<comment><USER4> Let me put it in simple terms, moral code tends to be derived from a variable mix of reason and emotion for us. Because pain tends to make us withdraw from the situation that entices it, we conclude that pain is not something we want, ie, "bad". No one knows ultimately why we receive negative/positive stimuli for certain situations but the best we can conclude, morality can be derived from reason and emotion. If you're assuming morality isn't tied to either and rather derived from the illogical, mystical, magical, whatever it is you're implying, then it would be a fool's errand because you can't use logic to debate illogic. But anyone can claim their moral code or gods are beyond logic but in this world, to be of value, you need it backed by something more substantive. Basing your life on that which is beyond logic is a dangerous game and I'd conclude not morally optimal.

I'd recommend you looking at life more in a thermodynamic fashion. It's simple, elegant and you have no magical and mystical unproven qualities that need reconciliation. From thermodynamics, you can learn theorize better to why life behaves as it does and helps take the mystery out of a lot of it. I'd argue morality is a thermodynamic function, even. Morality being derived from pain/pleasure senses, which derive from chemical processes, etc but of course, no one ultimately knows. But to me, saying "definitions of right and wrong are not based on the relations of objects nor can be perceived by reason" is false. Many people who convert to a religion do so because that religion may make some sort of sense to them. That's one of the reasons I became a christian early on, because it made some sort of logical sense. Not much but just enough to lure me in. You can use that tactic with people for all kinds of uses, to tell just enough truth to get them to believe you and if they like it enough, you can get away with falsehoods. Many use reason to justify their statements about how their gods or moral codes don't have to abide by reason, ironically.

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics- theory...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of- life/)

<comment><USER3> >> _moral code tends to be derived from…_

No one is foolish enough to deny that various societies develop moral codes, generally based on their experiences (eg, pain). The question is whether moral statements (eg, "Humans should not murder") are objective and Real (they refer to some objective Moral Fact) or whether this was just a delusion we invented and used to survive.

>> _but the best we can conclude, morality can be derived from reason and emotion_

No. This is the entire Is-Ought argument. Saying "Hume is wrong" does not refute Hume. You would need to give a reason.

>> _looking at life more in a thermodynamic fashion_

Materialism cannot point to a source of objective moral values. Period.

>> _But to me, saying…is false._

As expected, that's not a refutation.

>> _That 's one of the reasons I became a christian early on_

In my opinion, based on your given conceptions of metaethics, rather than dismiss this avenue of inquiry with the reasoning "it made some sort of logical sense [but not enough]" you could likely have explored the concept further.

<comment><USER4> You capitalize "truth" in other comments and say we should seek it yet you don't realize this endeavor is also prone to the is-ought problem. Because man seeks truth, does that mean he should morally seek it? The principle you adhere to destroys itself with even the faintest intellectual rigor. The more you try to make logic of illogic, religion, the more it waters down your version of truth. It happened to me also. What I then believed as a Christian became so watered down that it was far and away anything resembling Christianity.

>>Materialism cannot point to a source of objective moral values. Period.

Yes, it can. Whatever the material is derived from, it's chained to a more objective link. So yes, you can use relative morality to argue that it, in itself, has objectivity. For example, someone higher in rank says Saturday is a day off yet he gives the order to his inferior that he can then order that Saturday can be either. You have relative order coming from objective order.

>>In my opinion, based on your given conceptions of metaethics, rather than dismiss this avenue of inquiry with the reasoning "it made some sort of logical sense [but not enough]" you could likely have explored the concept further.

Ah, the old 'because you don't believe, you haven't been spending enough decades of your life exploring the religion I want you to believe in'. Meanwhile, hundreds of other religious people want me to explore their hundreds of gods and hundreds of interpretations through hundreds of years of philosophical wankery. I just could as well say you haven't explored atheism enough and that's why you haven't arrived to it.

<comment><USER3> > _You capitalize "truth" in other comments and say we should seek it yet you > don't realize this endeavor is also prone to the is-ought problem. Because > man seeks truth, does that mean he should morally seek it?_

You're right that if the reasoning given for seeking, knowing, or relying on truth was "because man seeks truth" this would be an invalid reason, subject to the Is-Ought problem. But that's not the reason I encourage you to know truth.

> _The more you try to make logic of illogic…_

As far as Christianity, there seems to be sort of a divide between a Western tradition that intended to show Christianity as ultimately reasonable (ie, scholasticism in the Church of Rome, the Church of England, many Protestant denominations) and groups that sort of just admit the system is fundamentally unreasonable and mystical such as the Orthodox, Roman mystics like John of Ruusbroec, Baptists, and Pentecostals. I sort of side with the latter.

> _Yes, it can.…_

It metaethics, an individual human's decree/decision is subjective. Maybe start by looking at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism)

> _I just could as well say you haven 't explored atheism enough and that's > why you haven't arrived to it._

"I used to be a nihilist but then I thought, what's the point?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "...the existence of the self, a subject that's still scientifically unsettled."

Shit like this, philosophers, is why scientists don't (and can't, and shouldn't) engage. The words to use are "scientifically undefined", not "scientifically unsettled" \- you can't just argue over definitions for centuries and then blame science for that fact that none of you can agree on what you're talking about, if anything.

You enter the realm of science when you have a testable hypothesis, not just some vague idea that reeks of dualism that you can't conceive of not being a "real thing", like consciousness or self.

<comment><USER6> I would attribute the (mis)use of that word a little bit more to the author of the article, and a little bit less to 'centuries of philosophers' \- many of whom were scientists.

<comment><USER7> To add on to that: science is based on philosophy, and philosophy also tells us where the limits of science are (see: Problem of Induction).

By using the scientific method, scientists are taking a strong philosophical stance (and certainly not a universal one) whether they like it or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is disturbing about this is that Hume or any other philosopher is popular because people today agree with him. There were other philosophers who lived during Hume's lifetime, but they are not popular. Why? Because people today don't agree with them. So, what is popular from the past are things or philosophers that have similar views of people today.

Basically, we like Hume, because he confirms what we already believe.

If Christianity was very dominant, then Hume would not be as popular.

What this shows you is that idols are not chosen by looking whether they have anything insightful or true to say, but how well they conform to current dogmas.</comment>