If Apple didn't hold $181B overseas, it would owe $59B in US taxes - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/10/apple-google-microsoft-hold-more-than-336b-overseas-via-legal-tax-loopholes/ <comment><USER2> This is a subject in dire need of some non-partisan, fact-based reporting. This piece is not remotely close.

I'm not a tax lawyer, but as I understand the recent spate of "tax inversions," that is when a US company buys a foreign company and make the non-US entity the new HQ are much less of a dodge than is often reported.

My understanding is that the US company still pays the full US tax rate (which is the highest in the world) on all sales in the US. They then pay the prevailing tax rates in the countries in which they operate.

If they didn't have the foreign entity, they would have to pay the full US rate on sales they make in China, Spain, and South Africa—all of which have lower rates.

In that light, Apple isn't dodging taxes, rather they're just not additional taxes on sales that happen outside the US. There's still an argument that can be made that they should still pay the US, but I think it strikes people as less fair. So instead we get amorphous reports designed to stoke fear, uncertainty, and doubt with regard to these companies.

If nothing else, the reporting should be clear that the US wouldn't be getting all that money back, just the portion that exceeds the tax rate in the various countries they operate in.

Like I said, I'm no lawyer, or even accountant, but this piece is garbage from a logical perspective.

<comment><USER3> "... the full US tax rate (which is the highest in the world)"

not really.

" the Congressional Research Service put the U.S. effective rate at 27.1 percent, slightly lower than the OECD average of 27.7 percent."

( source : [http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/...](http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/sep/09/eric- bolling/does-us-have-highest-corporate-tax-rate-free-world/) ).

Actual corporate taxes paid are below the average developed country

<comment><USER2> From the same link:

"Out of the 34 countries in the OECD, America ranks first with a 39.1 percent corporate tax rate, compared to an OECD average of 24.1 percent. The OECD figure is what's called the statutory rate, meaning the base rate applied to corporate profits."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've become even more skeptical of "the government needs more money, think of the children" after learning a bit more about how the sausage is made in The Box (about containerization). Subsidies and the games that go around them create a world that incents gaming the government and regulatory capture. If you think $59 billon wouldn't attract more sharks, you're really not paying attention.

<comment><USER5> Everyone in my family except me works for the government, and most of my friends do as well (I was born and raised in DC). Lots of them (the friends) are contractors who work from home, smoking weed all day, literally working 30 minutes per nine hours of billable time. I have friends who were hired (and paid six-figures) but not even given any work for their first year and a half. Everyone constantly talks about how easy their jobs are. My sister works in a Diblert-esque office where nobody actually knows what their role is or what specifically they are supposed to be doing. My brother got his job through nepotism.

Government lives in an alternate reality without the pressures and incentives of free market competition. Ninety-nine percent of its revenues come, at the end of the day, from people robbed at gunpoint (try not paying your taxes and then refusing to go to be locked in a cage). It doesn't operate at all similarly to how small businesses operate. And no, I don't have a better idea.

My point is that I'm all for people paying less tax because I think there's a decent probability that that's literally more beneficial than paying more. The government is like a fat pig. Giving it more food doesn't help. Giving it less (to a point) forces it to operate more efficiently.

<comment><USER6> You give examples of contractors you personally know that rob the government and then go on to say the govt steals money from its people and wastes it. You say the govt is a fat pig that needs less money to operate more efficiently, but fail to see that means your friends will be out of a job if that were true.

Seems like every time there is a story about govt waste, there is a greedy private company that was contracted to do the work. They charge rates only the govt can stomach to pay, because their choices are limited to a small number of approved companies in the procurement process. Who's fault is that?

I've lived in DC too and have friends that work in and around the government. Yes, it is inefficient and bureaucratic. Yes, the work culture is Office Space. Everyone wants the govt to save money, but no one wants to vote themselves into unemployment.

<comment><USER7> I worked for the Federal government for a number of years, and those employees are not stealing anything. It is how the government works. It is the most wasteful, incompetent organization I have ever had the misfortune of working for. I too fully support anything companies and people can do, within the law, to avoid paying taxes because the Federal government is capable of living on much, much less. They just refuse to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think I understand what the complaint is. Let me see if I understand this right:

Tech is developed in the US, and then licensed to a subsidiary in a different country, for a fee. The US entity pays taxes on the income produced by these fees. Then the subsidiary sells products based on this tech, and pays taxes on the profits in the country where this happens.

Is the complaint that the fee charged to its subsidiaries too low? The article itself addresses that by saying that the fee is set in an "arm's length" transaction.

Or is the complaint something much stronger, namely that Apple should pay taxes on all the income produced everywhere in the world? If so, what is the reasoning behind that? Is it because the software is written and hardware is designed in the US?

<comment><USER9> The issue is more that companies should pay US taxes on profits made in the US. However they can use IP to move those profits to countries with lower tax rates.

The way it should work is:

\- Apple makes an iPhone for $200 in China

\- Apple sells the iPhone in the US for $600

\- Apple pays US taxes on the $400 profit

The way it actually works is:

\- Apple creates Apple of Ireland as a PO Box in Ireland

\- Apple gives one of its iPhone patents to Apple of Ireland

\- Apple makes an iPhone for $200 in China

\- Apple sells the iPhone in the US for $600

\- Apple pays $400 to Apple of Ireland to "license" the patent

\- Apple pays $0 of US taxes because it sold the iPhone "at cost"

\- Apple of Ireland pays negligible taxes on the $400 profit due to low tax rates

<comment><USER10> Not quite. Apple's Irish entity owns the IP for non-US sales only. US sales fall under Apple Inc and are not subject to IP transfer, royalty or licensing and therefore attract the full tax rate. Minus whatever incentives apply of course.

What's actually happening is that Apple (and other companies using this system) are paying significantly less tax in countries outside the US where they operate.

This arrangement arguably benefits the US government, as it makes US-based companies stronger at the expense of the rest of the world's tax revenues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If governments didn't charge ridiculous taxes, Apple and millions of other businesses and individuals would bring back billions of assets.

<comment><USER12> Works really well for Somalia!

<comment><USER13> Actually it has. Somalia improved by almost all metrics during the period in which it did not have a state.

[http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf](http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the paper! Great read

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's an implicit assumption in these articles that the US Government should maximize its revenue by revising tax law to capture these funds. That's not obviously true.

If Apple provides more value to US citizens with those funds than the US Government would, then these tax management tactics are beneficial to US citizens.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is not true at all. The correct way of stating matters would be :

If Apple paid out all of it's $181B to shareholders, it would owe $ about half the claimed amount in US taxes. Apple however has not made this decision not to pay out to shareholders, and it would be extremely impractical to attempt to force it.

Note that Apple hasn't actually paid out this money to shareholders, so it probably will do so at some point in the future, and still pay these taxes. These taxes are deferred, not "avoided". It's just doing so at a slower rate (and probably waiting until negotiations with the IRS yield a better deal)

If it was outlawed to hold this tax overseas, Apple would still not pay it out to shareholders. Instead it would simply invest it, in overseas real estate, overseas data centers, overseas financial holdings or whatever. It seems to me very unlikely that it would make a different decision (not pay out vs. pay out) simply because the US govt. would try to force them.

Or worse, Apple would do what companies did before WWII. Never pay out profits. Instead have a deal that roughly amounts to this : "if you have $xx of apple stock, you get a director position within Apple, which comes with an expense account, free disneyworld access, a yacht, ..." and never pay out anything (and then have 10 tiers of this deal ...). And yes, that is legal.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm curious though, how much of this offshore cash was earned in the US?

For example although Google's advertising algorithms and engineering may be largely based in the US, its advertising revenues come from all over the world. Generally it's required to have a presence in the places where it operates, with revenue accounted for there and taxed by the local governments.

Are these people arguing that that revenue needs to end up in the US and be taxed there too instead of taxing it once then investing it elsewhere (like treasuries)?

Anyhow, the companies in question aim to increase their profit as much as possible within the law and are required to do so [0] by said law. If people don't like it, change the law.

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_v._Ford_Motor_Co).

<comment><USER17> I've heard the "change the law argument" a lot but there is a problem. The politicians are bought and paid for, people like the Koch brothers write the laws. Or their lobbyists do. So the laws are rigged in favor of corporations. Didn't use to be like this but it is now, it's crazy how skewed things are for big money.

"Change the law" assumes that the politicians are working for all of us. They aren't.

The tech companies benefit hugely from being based here. If you don't believe that then please recreate Silicon Valley in another country and show me how well that works (spoiler, been tried, didn't work). So long as they benefit from being based here they should pay their taxes.

Source: CEO of a Silicon Valley company that is 18 years old and has paid every penny of tax owed without whining and without trying to off shore it or hide it in any way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> About 3.4 days of US government spending.

</comment><comment><USER19> Dirty tax dodging bastards.

<comment><USER19> Anyone care to justify the downvotes?

Or maybe better any downvoters care to justify Apple's behaviour?

<comment><USER5> During the height of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, for every dollar you paid in tax, 50 cents went to buying bullets [edit: incorrect?]. Let's just say you and I disagree on whether or not people should be paying more or less tax. I respect your dissenting opinion and don't believe that mine is objectively superior, but your use of "dirty" and "bastard" implies that the respect and humility is not mutual.

<comment><USER3> 50% of taxes paid by Americans went to military spending?

Link?

<comment><USER5> Sorry, looks like it is +/\- 50% of 'discretionary spending'.[1] Wikipedia adds: "The U.S. Department of Defense budget accounted in fiscal year 2010 for about 19% of the United States federal budgeted expenditures and 28% of estimated tax revenues. Including non-DOD expenditures, military spending was approximately 28–38% of budgeted expenditures and 42–57% of estimated tax revenues." So, more than I'd like, but also significantly less than I claimed. My bad.

[1] [https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/military- spendi...](https://www.nationalpriorities.org/campaigns/military-spending- united-states/)

But the point I was fumbling to make is that there are a lot of people who minimize their tax and honestly believe that they are doing the morally right thing in doing so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is such a big deal, and I feel like we are so powerless against it.

If it was easy for governments to get the money owed, it would allow them to cash in votes for finally lowering taxes (in France especially...).

The fact that they did not succeed so far is proof that we need the system to evolve against these abuses. My only way of going in that direction is to scrutinize officials' campaigns and vote for the ones who want to tackle that problem, but that's so little it feels cowardly.

<comment><USER21> I disagree with your opinion, but tossing an upvote because it seems you were downvoted and I can't tell why other than some people disagreed with you.</comment></comment>


Ask Yc:are there any other popular essayists - <AUTHOR>

i love reading PG essays are there any other popular essayists ? <comment><USER2> George Orwell. I recommend "Shooting an elephant":

<http://www.george-orwell.org/Shooting_an_Elephant/0.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> E.B. White, Emerson, Addison, Steele, Johnson, Montaigne, Bacon

<comment><USER4> +1 for R.W. Emerson</comment></comment>


Ask YC: What's wrong with getting linked to from blogs and prominent sites? - <AUTHOR>

Honestly, I think getting linked to a major blot such as TC or any other is not worth it for most startups. Unless your product is so superior and so obviously necessary, I can't see how getting covered or linked to will produce anything more than short-term success.<p>Maybe a discussion of how many major sites have grown 'organically' vs. getting major coverage.. <comment><USER2> I think trying to create a product that is superior + obviously necessary should be the goal for most startups... Getting on TC is then just a resulting symptom.

That said, top-tier blogs are a good way for many in the startup scene to really jumpstart their project, but getting a writeup there is certainly not a requirement to success, and there's plenty of echochambering that goes on in them too, so I can see why many choose an alternate route all together.

Perhaps you'll find this post relevant to your question: <http://redeye.firstround.com/2008/01/after-the-techc.html>

For us, getting on TechCrunch//GigaOm//etc was a strong benefit. Those blogs have a big reach. It got us a lot of other coverage, investor interest, and established some level of credibility out of the gate.

<comment><AUTHOR> good article, and a good link to one of Riya's co-founders: [http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/2006/05/episode_...](http://munjal.typepad.com/recognizing_deven/2006/05/episode_1_march.html)

I have no doubt that it can be and is extremely helpful to a lot of startups, but I've seen a lot of products that aren't superior nor obviously necessary, but have some news item (i.e. funding or alpha/beta/public launch) and therefore get covered

just throwing a thought out there -- I guess if the product's already well- made it will only spur the rise to app stardom, and if its not, just be the "cocaine high" that Riya talked about

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Getting linked to from those sites helps more than you think. For one, it's exposure to a million plus people. True, most of them never click through, and most of the ones who do never stick, but if you even get 50 customers out of it that's pretty sweet given that it takes zero time on your part. I wouldn't recommend putting a lot of effort into getting Crunched or Dugg, but it's certainly a good thing when it happens.

You'd also be amazed how many people contact you after a TechCrunch. Dell salesmen, other people in your niche, and all sorts of assorted nutjobs wanting to partner with you or sell you something you don't need. I don't know of anyone who got anything useful that way, but I'm sure it's happened.

I'm told there was a day when being featured there meant something, and instead of crazies contacting you it was investors, but those are long gone. Still, it's certainly not bad.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think a TC post is worth nothing to most startup unless

1\. you are targeting thier audience

2\. you are after hype to get some VC's interested

3\. you are targeting a mainstream audience and hope that other bloggers or mainstream media will pick you up after seeing you on TC

You are better off targetting blogs aimed at your target audience.

A blog with 2000 readers is going to have more value and be easier to get coverage on.

Anyone know of any where that list these b and c list bloggers by niche? I would pay for that list.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that would be a great list. I think you could compile one by browsing Technorati a whole lot.

<comment><USER4> I looked at that but you can't really get any feel for audience size from Technorati. If you could mashup a service like compete.com with Technorati then you would no doubt have a powerful tool. I was thinking of hiring someone to get started on a list. Who knows maybe there is a startup in it because it would be useful to marketing companies as well as startups.

<comment><USER6> I've been working on compiling this type of directory. When its finished its gonna go up at www.buzzfolder.com . Email office at unchartedventures dot com if you want me to let you know when i finish it. should be about a week now...

<comment><USER4> cool, I have dropped you an email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It definitely won't hurt your startup. It will bring in some sales/users, but it's not a magic bullet. At worst, it's a free link from a high pagerank, relevant site.

<comment><AUTHOR> so high in fact, google search a company they've covered (try weebly or rescue time ) that they're pretty often the #2 search result

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Maybe a discussion of how many major sites have grown 'organically' vs. > getting major coverage..

Explosive growth 100% organically is a total myth.</comment>


Ivy, an APL-like calculator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/robpike/ivy

<comment><USER2> The video is here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXoG0WX0r_E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXoG0WX0r_E)

</comment><comment><USER2> Install: go get -u github.com/robpike/ivy

Though its giving me an error:

        C:\Users\swah>ivy
        3 + 3
        <stdin>:1: after expression: unexpected error: unrecognized character: U+000D

<comment><USER3> > C:\

> 000D

It's expecting Unix newlines, and is confused by Windows' \r\n.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is it different from k/q ([http://code.kx.com/wiki/Reference](http://code.kx.com/wiki/Reference)) ?

<comment><USER5> If you are informed enough to ask that question, the Ivy readme will answer it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Amusing to see robpike play with APL,since Go is severely at odds with the APL philosophy.</comment>


How Much Equity a Technical Cofounder Should Get - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nahurst.com/how-much-equity-a-technical-cofounder-should <comment><USER2> No, no, no, no. This is exactly the kind of thing a business guy would use to make what should be an exercise in research and negotiation into seeming like it's "scientific". Bullshit. Research and negotiate for what you're worth. This is the biggest mistake I see technical people make with businesspeople - ask for more, don't be meek and buy the business-guy "this is how it is" BS with unnecessary totally subjective fancy charts. And I say this all as a business guy, by the way.

Edit: Here's how I'd reply: "That's a great chart, it makes total sense to me, I can see how you'd come up with the 20% number... just from the research I've done on how much exits are usually worth, I'd be looking for something around 30% to come onboard, and I'd expect to work my ass off to be worth that. I'm making pretty good salary right now, but I am really excited about this project - how can we make this work? What would you expect out of me for me to be worth 30% vesting over XYZ timeline?"

In other words, don't argue, indicate you've done some research, don't trip the other guy's ego defense mechanism, state what you want simply without grandstanding, focus on delivering value, and then ask what you'd have to do to be worth that. It'll work. Really, unless they were offering something overly fair to begin with to be cool, a businessperson will respect you more if you negotiate with them a bit. Makes you seem like you've got a spine.

<comment><AUTHOR> "This is exactly the kind of thing a business guy would use..."

Thanks for your comment. I didn't mean for this to come across that way. I wrote this is because I keep seeing technical cofounders getting the shortchanged on equity, and I want them to know should get more. And I want non-technical cofounders to know that they should expect to give the technical cofounder a larger % equity than they often expect (unless they've really got a lot to offer).

Here's a scenario I see a lot: a non-technical cofounder has just received their MBA, they have no startup or industry experience, they have no prototype, they want a "code monkey" like YuriNiyazov says in another comment to build their product for them, they offer them 5% equity with no salary. For some reason, I keep seeing developers take them up on their offer! Under this scenario, I'm saying a developer should get 50% of the company because the non-technical founder is probably ok (maybe not great) and hasn't contributed a lot to the business yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd argue that the prototype is worthless, unless it's validated by an active user set and/or profitability, and has been through at least one iteration where features were added or changed.

I've seen a good number of technical prototypes built by non-technical people, nominally via outsourcing, and in every case the only path forward was a full rewrite. Crazy interdependency and tight coupling make it easy to build a 'demo' version of a codebase, but they also make it very expensive to bolt on new features.

Similarly, I think the percentages are high, and don't account for any business skills that the technical founder brings to the table -- what about a tech guy who's gone through the VC dance, and built successful products in the past?

<comment><AUTHOR> I see what you're saying about the value of the prototype. How would you account for whatever risk the non-technical cofounder took on to build it? Risk has to coordinate with value added though, so if a prototype didn't really generate any new value, it's worthless. Perhaps there is some value in "lessons learned" from messing up the initial prototype, but maybe future investors/partners shouldn't be penalized for them.

You're right about not accounting for business skills the technical cofounder brings to the table. I need to state that somewhere. Great point.

<comment><USER3> Wow, you're on the ball. :)

We have a very convenient way of expressing value here. If the prototype has proven solid enough to support an active and growing user population, then it has value, because it's cleared the first hurdle of software design -- making something people want and can use.

A few iterations on said prototype before bringing in a technical cofounder is also a big plus-point. Those iterations are where you find out whether or not your prototype will be flexible enough to turn into a real product.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is exactly the reason why NYC is an awful place for technical founders, and part of the reason why I left. Zed Shaw has blogged about this incessantly - even when someone tries to recruit you as a technical cofounder, the usual treatment you get is "Look, you like making technical decisions? Great! All the technical decisions will be yours. You will be my pet technical-decision- making code monkey, here's 10%". Yuck.

<comment><USER5> The situation with an MBA trying to get a tech guy for 10% (usually much less, actually) happens just as much in the Bay Area. In fact the culture of the first dot com boom was almost entirely comprised of startups structured like this.

There are more opportunities for nerd/nerd startups in the Bay Area, though.

Also, this article is a good example of a dude you want to avoid working with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What if the technical cofound has contributed significantly to the business idea & is doing more than his share of product development? This chart seems to be unfairly biased towards the non-technical cofounder because it assumes a clear dichotomy between technical & non-technical skills.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right. The chart is biased toward the non-technical cofounder. I'm assuming they've done significant work on the business before recruiting a technical cofounder. I say it in the assumptions section, but I should probably make it more prominent.

<comment><USER4> The point is that the "assumption that they've done significant work on the business" is simply not valid. Before you have a product, all the "significant work done on the business" (usually listed as 'doing market research, incorporating, and having an email from an investor that says 'I am interested in talking more when you have a product' which is investor-speak for 'please go away') is just as much of a risk and a liability as software that will inevitably be rewritten.

When you launch and all those business assumptions change later on and you need to pivot, rendering null all the business work you did previously, it's not like you would go back to your technical cofounder and say "I was wrong about that market, all the work I previously did is now worthless except for the 'lessons learned' part, so here's the extra 20% I subtracted from your equity originally".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How exactly does a non-technical co-founder start earning revenue or have over 10K users? Someone must be doing their development? While this situation is possible, it seems unlikely.

Also, why do you get extra equity if you have raised VC funds. To me the point of a business is not to raise VC funds but to make money.

I also dislike the 'has significant experience or connections'. If you polled every single non-technical co-founder, I'm sure they would insist they have both those things. That is not really quantifiable.

I don't think this really makes sense and this will apply to only a very small set of start-ups.

I hope no one uses this...

</comment><comment><USER8> A technical cofounder should get as much equity as he or she is able to negotiate.

Technical cofounders end up feeling burnt - or walking away from opportunities feeling like non-technical cofounders are completely delusional jerks - because they don't have as much experience negotiating. When that non- technical cofounder puts an offer of 10% or 20% on the table, he _might_ just be an idiot, but he might be expecting you to press back hard with a counterproposal because that's what _he_ would do in this situation.

Instead of working out formulas which will allow you to justify why your equity is what it is, learn to negotiate. The best book I've read is Roger Dawson's 'Secrets of Power Negotiation'. Then, practice.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is the biggest piece of BS that I have ever seen. If you want to work with a reward system then _hire_ someone as an employee and give them a bonus (money, options, whatever) when they reach those goals.

Having this sort of stuff between co-founders only builds up pressure, tension and will ultimately lead to people leaving.

</comment><comment><USER10> This article reminds me of an actual life situation I'm currently living. A friend of mine is an entrepreneur; MBA guy he has under his belt, couple of well funded, failed, heavily tech startup.

The guy is very smart and has tons of ideas, most of them requiring a lot of tech implementation. His downfall according to my own analysis: his lack of respect for tech guys, he is stuck with the ninety outsourcing mentality, he basically sees a tech guy as some dude that work can be outsourced anytime to India or any other place in the world.

I think a non tech guy, an MBA guy who wants to succeed in Tech startup need to get in trustful and respectful partnership with tech guy(s). Tech guy should have an equity base on how important his contribution really is to the business. With my friend startup I have seen poorly executed tech companies failing miserably despite being well funded.

</comment><comment><USER9> Also, I've been in numerous situations where the technical team (and techie co-founder) deliver time and time again while the non-technical co-founder does not manage to sell or monetize the product. If you want to play the blame game then this should work both ways.

</comment><comment><USER11> Pfffft. I already have a working prototype, with 10k users and I'm only getting 35%? You can take a walk pal.

<comment><USER12> No, the -x% is subtracted off the techie's part. The non-technical founder gets 50% or more.

If you're a technical founder and have a prototype & users, the article isn't for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What does the non-technical founder do that the technical founder can't?

I have see alot of cases where the biz guy says he has the connect or he will sell the product but when its built, he expects the techie to come along with him and sell it. Or he simply says the connect fell thru.

Alot of times I sit and think what would I have a business guy do? Write a business case? Write a marketing plan? Raise capital?

Then I say to myself all these can be done by me and more than likely the the biz guy has just as much experience as me in accomplishing these goals.

But the point is i'm confused about a biz guy's value.

</comment><comment><USER14> The guy who builds - he gets half, minimum.

</comment><comment><USER15> I stopped reading this once I saw the huge flow chart. Not only does this over-complicate things, but it is the completely wrong way to allocate equity among founders.

I'm a strong believer in founders splitting equity evenly. If you want this technical person to act like a founder, he should get an equal share. If you want an early employee, treat him as an early employee, but don't expect him to work like a founder.

</comment><comment><USER16> Add 100k for every engineer on the team, subtract 150k for every MBA on the team.

</comment><comment><USER17> this is nonsense. the numbers and starting points are completely arbitary. Every business is different, every founder will have different skills and contribute in varying ways and to differing degrees.

</comment><comment><USER18> Here's how to value past work.

Imagine that you are sitting in a coffee shop with your biz person. Someone walks up, shows you a prototype and offers to sell it and the idea. For the sake of argument, said someone is selling exactly what the biz person claims is so valuable.

How much will you pay for it? How much will your biz person pay for it?

That's when you find out that the biz person feels that their contribution going forward is significantly more than yours.

</comment><comment><USER19> Unless the non-technical founder has a lot of involvement in the business (e.g. the founder is a designer, the idea is very business development intensive / sales, etc...), I think the chart should be updated to start the tech founder at 95% ownership or more if all that's there is just an idea.

Ideas are cheap.

</comment><comment><USER20> Great, now how about an article that is based on going in the other direction... technical founder has an idea and has it X% implemented ( where X can be 0-whatever) and is seeking a non-technical co-founder to focus on sales/marketing/bizdev/etc?

</comment><comment><USER21> Supply and demand applies to equity distribution, whether you're technical or not. If you have skills that are rare for a particular startup, then you should be able to demand a larger share of equity.

Every cofounder should get equity based on the question "What is this idea worth without this person?". If you could hire any skilled programmer to replace the technical cofounder, then they shouldn't get a large amount of equity. If they are bringing domain knowledge, specific experience or an uncommon level of expertise, then they should get a lot of equity.

<comment><USER18> > Every cofounder should get equity based on the question "What is this idea > worth without this person?". If you could hire any skilled programmer to > replace the technical cofounder, then they shouldn't get a large amount of > equity. If they are bringing domain knowledge, specific experience or an > uncommon level of expertise, then they should get a lot of equity.

And the same applies to non-technical co-founders.

Combine this with the "how much would you pay to buy" answer wrt valuing the "idea", prototype/power-point, or other past work, and the equity division is "done".</comment></comment>


Quora goes (more) viral - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/05/quora-surge/

<comment><USER2> It's featured on the front page of The Guardian today, described as "the hottest question-and-answer website you've probably never heard of"

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/05/quora- quest...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jan/05/quora-question- answer-facebook)

That column will be in the print edition today as well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been using Quora for quite a while now. The quality and quickness of the responses, along with the personal discussions between scholarly people, make the site what it is. In a way it reminds me of Hacker News, as the site is in a whole different league than other Q&A sites in its quality.

<comment><USER4> I imagine as Quora gains more publicity and wider usage then the quality of questions and answers will go down. I hope not though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So it's basically the evolution of forums/bulletin boards?

<comment><USER6> It's more like Facebook. Minus all of the content about your single friends drinking and all of your married friends talking about how their newborn baby just pooped/peed/barfed on them. Add people asking smart questions with domain experts answering (I've seen Ev Williams and Dennis Crowley answer the same question.). [http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-process-involved-in- launchi...](http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-process-involved-in-launching-a- startup-at-SXSW)

It has real identities like Facebook. The information density and structure of Wikipedia where each page updates in real-time. The follow model of Twitter where you can follow smart people and topics.

<comment><USER7> So it's nothing like Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What sets Quora apart from the StackExchange sites?

<comment><USER9> Quora is very different from StackExchange sites. There are no badges or karma. Users aren't ranked. The site revolves around following people, questions and topics that interest you and your homepage reflects those. The design is much cleaner and pages update in real time. You also pull in your social connections and can follow your friends.</comment></comment>


TutorSpree (YC W11) shuts down - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/08/tutorspree-shut-down/ <comment><USER2> I worked at a startup that was an alternative to TutorSpree and midway through our attempt at creating traction as a tutoring marketplace I spoke with a VC who had previously invested in a online tutoring marketplace. He told me he found the biggest challenge in the space is the sheer number of people who want your services but do not wish to pay/do not have money to pay. In his words "There are a few people that will pay anything to give their children the upper hand and they trick you into believing there is a market for something like this."

The other problem is the people who will pay the most for tutoring are not going to use your platform. With Airbnb people find ways to spend money on travel because they want to travel and Airbnb makes it more affordable. Starting a business like this you hope the more affordable access to a tutor, the worse-but-better alternative to high priced tutoring agencies, is your app but you're competing with increased self directed learning and schools that are trying to provide tutoring to their students for free (both my high school and undergrad institution provided this and my HS was public). You're left with people who don't have free options, some of whom can't afford any private tutoring and people who want something nicer than the available free options but don't quite want to spend the money and it ends up being not much of a market.

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone who worked as a private tutor in a high demand area and knows this industry very, very well, I think everyone is missing an important dimension here: the existence of dozens and dozens of competitors, both offline and online, many of which are a.) much bigger b.) provide IDENTICAL functionality.

The cost to entry of building an online marketplace for tutoring is pretty negligible, to the point that many have done this already. Consider these alternatives for parents, many of which come up on top in a google search for tutoring: wyzant.com, universitytutor.com, revolutionprep.com, veritasprep.com, preply.com, etc. etc.

<comment><USER4> I'm no expert in this field, but it seems to me that it was very similar with airbnb. I.e. lots of big competitors with the same functionality.

<comment><USER3> The room rental industry isn't something I'm familiar with, but it seems to me like Airbnb was strongly differentiated from other services in the industry, in a way similar to how Lyft and Uber are different from traditional taxi services.

By contrast, there are tons of websites that offer _exactly_ what tutorspree offers, both in terms of customer experience and quality of service provided. When I say identical competitors, I really meant _identical_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Official link: [http://blog.tutorspree.com/post/60655061386/thank- you](http://blog.tutorspree.com/post/60655061386/thank-you)

</comment><comment><USER6> I was puzzled when they switched from the marketplace model to an agency model. From the tutors' perspective, it was much better to have direct control over interaction with the students, scheduling, and the ability to adjust and test pricing dynamically. They switched to being an agency, which meant tutors started getting paid significantly less and now had to deal with a middleman to work out scheduling and decide whether it made sense to work with a particular student.

<comment><USER7> When I was in school, I tutored a significant amount for some pocket money (all freelance). Towards the end, I tried Tutorspree for a bit, just to see what it was like.

I was disappointed, because I really wanted them to succeed for so many reasons. But scheduling was a nightmare, because going through a third-party, by definition, will always be less efficient than speaking directly. Also, after a while, this pattern emerged:

1) They call me (or send me an email), asking me if I could take on a student for $SUBJECT (usually Python or Machine Learning).

2) I respond and tell them that I can

3) I never hear back from them

I imagine they were calling multiple tutors and trying to find a combination of low price and good reviews, and then recommending that tutor to the student, but this process was incredibly frustrating.

I eventually just stopped responding to their emails and phone calls, because they had a lower signal-to-noise ratio than unsolicited recruiter emails sent to group mailing lists!

Also, their payment was handled entirely through Paypal, and I would have to send them an email to tell them that I had tutored the student (so they could pay me). I almost never logged into the website. For a tech startup, it was surprisingly reliant on old technologies. Not that this is necessarily bad, but for a market of college students and (primarily) young tutors, this is a poor fit.

Finally, they cut they took was HUGE - 40% at one point! That's more than I pay in taxes, and I live in one of the most heavily taxed cities in the country! On the very first day, my first client asked me before leaving if I would be interested in continuing tutoring outside of Tutorspree if we could split the difference.

 _That_ is a very bad sign for any agency or marketplace: if the fees are so high that they actively drive away repeat business, you're walking up a down escalator.

<comment><USER8> Wait, they would ... call you? It's a startup and this is the internet. Whats the point with taking VC money if you want to be another agency.

<comment><USER9> Because starting a startup is not about using the "coolest technologies", but running a business. In many ways, a typical old-fashioned business. Startups that revolve around the "coolest technologies" will almost always fail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://mystartuphas30daystolive.tumblr.com/](http://mystartuphas30daystolive.tumblr.com/)

this one?

<comment><USER11> No.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's not fair for me to second guess this move without knowing details, but this is a bit odd to me. Here's what I'm trying to figure out... If it was actually a business, but just a slow growing one they wanted to get out of, why didn't they hire someone else to run it? What am I missing here?

Anywho, they sound like smart guys. I'm sure they'll move on to something bigger.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seemed like it was scaling pretty well to me, so I was a bit surprised that scalability was cited as the problem. What went wrong?

<comment><USER14> Lots of these marketplaces face the same major challenge of offline commerce once first contact is made. Basically, there's little to nothing to stop the seller from taking the relationship offline and make 2x the money as the relationship continues. Services try to mitigate this with value adds like scheduling services and providing more leads, but it's so difficult to police that most just try to continue to fill the funnel.

Airbnb is different because the relationship is long distance and trust, payments, insurance, etc are a much larger issue. It's also typically a one- time transaction and there's little need to take the deal offline. I'm sure they deal with this with people wanting to stay beyond their trip date or trying to book directly, but Airbnb can easily track this stuff with the scheduling feature and seeing discrepancies when users try to go offline.

<comment><USER15> That definitely is a problem marketplaces face, but it actually wasn't the problem that we had. When customers started working with us, they stayed with us - repeatedly booking new lessons and packages.

As strange as it feels to say it, we had a business that could grow over time, and that's something we'll always treasure. What we didn't have was something that we could grow at the rate we wanted, at the economics that we thought made sense.

<comment><USER16> When you say it that way, it basically sounds like greed.

You assert to have had a good, long-term business going; but screw that when you can take another spin of the VC wheel, right?

I guess if the yard stick is always "become the AirBNB of <random industry>..."

<comment><USER17> And this basically sounds like passing judgement. Not everyone has to share the same goals. Some want to go for the billions, others are happy with a few million. It's not your place to judge someone else's goals as greed. Just like it wouldn't be Aaron's place to judge your goals as settling.

<comment><USER16> True.

I suppose I was mostly nit picking on the portrayal of "oh, hey, we had a _good_ business, but, meh, so what."

When, for a lot of people, myself included, that sounds pretty nice. E.g. (from another reply) 2-3% _monthly_ growth is meh? I suppose...

But, yes, as you said, different goals and circumstances (I of course know nothing about the company/VCs/etc.).

So, yeah, akharris, sorry for being an ass--shutting down a company definitely sucks, and you have to do it in front of your friends/hecklers on HN. Good luck on the next thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I hope they do a more detailed post-mortem. No doubt there is more to this story - why didn't the business scale, why did they fall out of love with it etc?

</comment><comment><USER19> Aaron is a dick and after meeting him I immediately wondered why anyone would view him as a good CEO/invest that much money in his empire of greed.

</comment><comment><USER20> wow. just a year ago I was using this site as a role model for another 'dual market' project.

although, this isn't the first time a similar startup in this space died - teachstreet survived for a couple years before shuttering and the founders joining the amazon local team - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teachstreet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teachstreet)

</comment><comment><USER21> i think they would have sold it off. Their idea seems amazing and would have worked even in Kenya where I live and thats saying something. But it seems they had passion which may serve them elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER21> how about crowdsourced tutoring, where tutors pay for the app, and students apply and pay for tutors who teach at most 5 students a session? Could it feasibly work?</comment>


Anonymous Is Going After Zynga For Mistreating Employees - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/28/anonymous-is-going-after-zynga-for-mistreating-employees-and-is-prepared-to-leak-documents/ <comment><USER2> As a current zynga contractor who is losing his job there next Friday, I have to admit I have mixed feelings about this.

Firstly, I don't see the employees being let go as victims, most are getting 3 months severance. Secondly, I don't think there is any real evil going on by Zynga; they accidentally hired more people than they can afford, it sucks as I'm one of them, but I fundamentally agree with the notion of at-will employment in the US.

<comment><USER3> How do you "accidentally" hire more people than you can afford?

I could see two people both hiring a janitor without realizing it, but not "accidentally" hiring a lot of developers, designers or whatever else.

<comment><USER4> You are a middle manager. Do you say "bob in the other department hired 5 people, so I guess I'll stick with the three I have"? Nope. You go straight to your VP and say a rival VP just got five guys, where's mine. If hiring is decentralized and no one is concerned about costs you end up growing exponential.

<comment><USER5> That sounds like what would happen at Strawman, Inc. I've worked at a bunch of companies, big and small, and have never seen hiring justified like that.

Now, getting people and teams transferred once they are hired? That's a whole different story.

<comment><USER4> What do you propose caused Zynga management to vastly overhire and conduct layoffs?

<comment><USER6> They expected faster growth than what actually happened. It's possible that the CEO approved each individual hire and they still could have overhired.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would be shocked if this isn't actually just a post-rationalization for previously completed hacking activity (which has been the majority of their previous M.O.)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for saying this as sometimes I'm afraid that Anonymous gets too much respect around here. You mention their M.O. which seems to basically be hack something, release tons of private or damaging information then say its because the people they hacked were evil. In reality its a bunch of bullshit. If they had hacked the American Cancer Society or even Piratebay or Wikileaks they'd come up with some reason they were evil.

Shit was cute at first but now its just looking like a reason hack for its own sake. And the whole grandiose "Hacktivist" identity they've garnered is now looking more and more like its also bullshit.

<comment><USER9> Right, but they __didn't __hack the ACS, or Piratebay, or Wikileaks. That's worth keeping in mind.

<comment><USER10> No, but there _was_ the Epilepsy Foundation, back in the day. I tend to draw a distinction though between Chanology, /i/, Op Payback, and OWS flavours of Anonymous, despite a great deal of overlap in the people involved.

This idea of Anonymous being (or seeing themselves as) a force for good is actually pretty new. I'm thinking it can probably be traced back to the financial blockade against Wikileaks and the response thereto. Coming just as it did after the resurrection of Anonymous during Op Payback, I think the response to Wikileaks' trials probably brought in a lot of new people with a much different set of ideals than those who came before.

<comment><USER11> Epilepsy Foundation was widely speculated to be a Church of Scientology false- flag operation. Don't know if anything was ever proven either way.

I'd say the idea of Anonymous being a force for good goes all the way back to the Hal Turner raid. Before then it was all about spoiling other people's fun (Habbo Hotel etc.), but after targeting this white supremacist (basically by accident) suddenly people realised that maybe this power could be directed against those who really deserve it. Chanology and all the rest of it came out of that.

<comment><USER12> > Epilepsy Foundation was widely speculated to be a Church of Scientology > false-flag operation.

A curious thought: are false-flag operations even possible with Anonymous, which is a label anyone can take, not an organisation?

If Church of Scientology decides to hack Epilepsy foundation and call themselves Anonymous, _then they are Anonymous_. And hacking to troll and upset some group of people is certainly within the usual motivations of Anonymous activity.

<comment><USER11> >A curious thought: are false-flag operations even possible with Anonymous, which is a label anyone can take, not an organisation?

Meh. Ultimately Anonymous does describe a particular cluster of people and behaviours, however loosely affiliated - and rightly or wrongly, they do have a reputation to discredit. When one incident is an outlier both in terms of action and (alleged) perpetrators, I think it's fair to call it a false-flag operation.

>hacking to troll and upset some group of people is certainly within the usual motivations of Anonymous activity.

Absolutely, but hacking to cause actual physical injury is far less so IME.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The inner nerd in me would love the opportunity to take a peak at some Zynga game code, but the exterior sensible adult in me has mixed feelings about this. The employee's weren't terminated without pay, the employees are being gracefully compensated, I don't see what Zynga have done wrong here other than failing to predict how many employees they actually needed. Any company regardless of money in their bank is entitled to make their own decisions and trim excess staff, it's called business and I am sure even a profitable company like Apple if in the same situation would do the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER14> So releasing employees from their _ahem_ employ is mistreatment? These kids need to stick their noses back in their schoolwork.

<comment><USER15> More likely this is a build-up of many offenses, like Pincus' past threatening to fire employees if they didn't surrender their stock.

Pincus is a scum-bag of the first order and is ruining startup employee confidence in the value of their equity. He's poisoning the well for the rest of us.

Anonymous is silly in their own way, but you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss things or actions you don't understand.

<comment><USER16> Actually, you don't understand Zynga since you're relying on rumor and hearsay. I've worked as Zynga. Things aren't as black and white as you think they are.

<comment><USER17> I don't think he has to have worked at Zynga to understand the problem. Zynga is hardly the only one, but they are one of the biggest of the new crop of startups that grew huge and IPOed to the benefit of very few employees.

Back in the "old days", even when you move the "old days" up to include Google's IPO, a company with such a massive liquidity event could be expected to result in a lot of wealth spread out among early employees. Even receptionists, chefs, etc could cash out big paydays.

With the way things are now, companies are often structured such that unless you're a founder with an ironclad paper trail of equity ownership, you probably aren't going to be walking away with much more money than what you'd get from a particularly good yearly bonus at a large company, and that's absolutely best-case. More likely is that a liquidity event will occur where nobody but preferred stock owners will see a single dime.

This perception is absolutely a problem for the overall startup ecosystem and plays into why everyone involved wants to be a founder and not just an early employee and this in turn plays into why all these startups all these founders are founding are having massive problems hiring non-founder employees.

As a potential startup employee, your biggest concern shouldn't be whether the company fails spectacularly. Failure sucks, but that's easy enough to get past psychologically. Your biggest concern should be what if the company is extremely successful and you get screwed anyway. Because while this is statistically less likely than spectacular failure, it is much harder to deal with and more common than a lot of people think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> All this will do is hurt Zynga employees further. Releasing sensitive data about a company will push the stock price down further. Most employees have equity in the company. Equity is (was) one of the major incentives for working at Zynga. Zynga is not forcing anyone to work there. If employees feel mistreated they are free to go work elsewhere. I say all of this as a former Zynga employee.

<comment><USER19> Zynga's stock price is below book value, and it hasn't been an incentive since about 2 days after IPO. The employees have already been hurt by the company themselves much worse than any outside influence can at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't see the evil in a company needing to lay off employees after shipping a bunch of games that didn't do so well.

Zynga should be more careful the next time they hire somebody wearing a Guy Fawkes mask in their profile picture.

<comment><USER21> I think that if Anonymous want to protest dodgy labor practices there are certainly far more compelling targets in the US.

However, I would say that if as a CEO you're laying off 5% of your workforce due to poor company performance you should really evaluate your own compensation package, because as a CEO you're meant to stop that kind of crap from happening. I doubt that's going to be happening for Marc Pincus.

<comment><USER22> "I would say that if as a CEO you're laying off 5% of your workforce due to poor company performance you should really evaluate your own compensation package, because as a CEO you're meant to stop that kind of crap from happening"

This isn't really true. A CEO is there to make sure the company stays profitable. Sometimes, cutting a percentage of the workforce achieves this goal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So they're going to cause Zynga employees problems (who, after all, will have to deal with the fallout) in an effort to protest the fact that problems have been caused for Zynga employees?

</comment><comment><USER24> I am guessing that Zynga games don't have a lot of security, and that a targeted attack would be disastrous to their players and analytics.

</comment><comment><USER25> The gamers I know (who are the only people I know with an opinion about Zynga) would like to see Zynga no longer exist as a company, which entails all the employees having to find a new job. What's with the sudden sympathy for the employees?

</comment><comment><USER26> Tackling the big issues...

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd rather Anonymous go after Zynga because they use flash. It's about time we get some quality client-side code that doesn't eat 100% CPU just to plant some seeds on my stupid little virtual farm.

Another legitimate motive is to reduce the amount of time people waste on *ville. Even if they just DDOS, that means 2+ hours more productivity per person! That leaves bored programmers with nothing to do to waste their time, and we might just get some quality games out of it!

</comment><comment><USER28> Anonymous is now composed of jilted Zynga employees?

<comment><USER29> My first thought exactly!

To claim that Zynga employees were taken advantage is like claiming that the bankers were taken advantage of during the 2008 collapse.

If you don't like your employer, find another one! These guys work in San Francisco, plenty of jobs to go around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> These sort of news posts should be a game, take an article like this and put the top comment against an article about SOPA or any other internet "oppression" policy:

From a "Hacker Advocate" at Spotify

        The internet needs policing

Really?

</comment><comment><USER31> _> The offensive has been dubbed "#OP MaZynga"_

A pun for Mazinger[1]?

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazinger_Z>

</comment><comment><USER32> Getting really tired of how internet news is acting like mob vigilante justice is a good thing.

<comment><USER33> Calling it vigilante justice is giving it too much credit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Meanwhile at Walmart employees are receiving great treatment.

</comment><comment><USER35> At which point do these guys simply become a lynch mob?

<comment><USER36> They're not now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have mixed feelings about this. Laying people off, for business reasons, and providing three months severance, is not worthy of this kind of attack. Most of these people will get better jobs. Companies commit injustices against their employees all over the place, and Zynga is justifiably disguised, but this isn't a case of that.

I think the _general precedent_ of increased employee empowerment (by increasing the consequences, currently at zero, of treating employees badly). I'd like to live in a world where employees have some power and a few hiccups or overactions on which I don't agree with all the details is something I have to accept. So that is to the good.

I don't think they deserve this for laying people off. Every company has to lay people off. The clawbacks, on the other hand, earned Zynga this.

<comment><USER36> Exactly. Zynga should have been punished back when they did the clawbacks and the CEO made that idiotic statement about the "Google Chef". Not now that they're behaving pretty nicely (3 month severance? In the US?).</comment></comment>


Show HN: Search the open social graph - <AUTHOR> http://needlehunt.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I know a lot of you will complain about the Facebook-only sign in. This was a deliberate decision on our part. There are several features in the product (most importantly, searching your own graph) that require some sort of social sign-on, and Facebook was the best option for us. A Twitter signin is in the works - we'll bump up the priority if anyone here is interested.</comment>


The Anti-Social Web - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sanspoint/the-anti-social-web-d261f3626cf3?sourceIndex=4

<comment><USER2> This is an excellent article, with a thoughtful approach and helpful links for further research. It has put words to an expectation I have of all web content - clear, non-demanding information.</comment>


Ask HN: Finding my place as a developer - <AUTHOR> I am currently a sysadmin but finishing up a degree in programming and planning on making a move to development which has been what I really wanted to do since for decades
I doubt I'm the only one who has ever been in this situation and I'm hoping for any advice.
On the one hand, I like FOSS, on the other I feel that, from a more practical standpoint, systems like Windows and macOS make more sense. I like the cohesiveness and polish they can bring as well as less workarounds. My MBP died last year and I've been using Linux (using Linux since the 90's) but am strongly considering another MBP (stupid touchbar is holding me back). Linux is fine, but I personally think both Windows and macOS just look better.
So, first question is: how does one really decide which is more important? Software freedom or convenience/usability/etc. For instance, know Windows has telemetry and the updates suck at times but there are workarounds and besides those, I like Windows 10. I've always read that developing on Windows supposedly sucks, but I don't see an issue. Maybe because most of what I did was contained in MS ecosystem.
My second question is related to the first. How do FOSS advocates who are devs deal with the reality of developing in the real world where there's a good chance they're working with closed systems? My thought is if I'm working on all in-house stuff, it's irrelevant anyway. But, what if I ever move into something that develops for clients?
Final question: How does one know where they belong re: startup vs corporate? On the one hand, I like the freedom that seems to come from startup but on the other, I used to be in the military and I appreciate structure. I'm also not sure I'm a great culture fit for many of the startups I see (both from a dev standpoint and from a personal one). Granted, I may not have a choice. I'm hoping to go into remote work due to health issues and I'm not sure how prevalent remote work is in the corporate realm. <comment><USER2> IMO, best thing to do when starting out is go where the opportunity is. You have an entire career to form opinions about licenses, OSes, org size, etc. Those opinions limit you more than help you. Also, accept you are going to be underpaid for a while. Stay with it and it'll be worth it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The good thing is I'm underpaid now so I'm already used to it!

Fair point about the opportunity. Sometimes I get too far into my head. I _think_ that's why I end up taking the pragmatic approach so often (as in using Windows or macOS and VS or Sublime Text) and abandoning the idealistic (Linux and vim or Atom for instance). I try to be practical.</comment></comment>


Inside Look at Google's Android Auto in Action - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2899245/opensource-subnet/inside-look-at-googles-android-auto-in-action.html?nsdr=true

<comment><AUTHOR> I was given a test ride in a Hyundai Sonata featuring Android Auto, and got a glimpse into the future of the in-car experience.

There's no question that this is the future of driving. The computer in the dashboard that runs the steering wheel controls and dashboard display will adapt to the driver's smartphone and preferences. A friend's car or a rental car will adapt and operate with an individual's smartphone in exactly the same way as the driver's own car.

Seeing the operation of either the Pioneer after-market head unit or the integrated Hyundai Sonata unit will make every smartphone-owning driver want one. This integration will become a differentiating factor that will determine the car that buyers choose to buy.</comment>


RAM Is the New Disk - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/thought-frameworks/ram-is-the-new-disk-b94df9bbd7b <comment><USER2> Well yes, I think RAM has been the new disk for awhile now, and not because (anecdote about database disk structures) or (any recent change to cost of RAM).

If you use Linux, the fastest way to test how much faster your application is off disk is to simply make a filesystem in RAM, and run the whole thing from there. Because library-chasing to build a chroot is a hassle, I would recommend simply putting a container on a RAM-backed block device, then installing your application on the container.

I have personally designed, built and managed large clusters of diskless machines and find that the mix of RAM-only and PXE[1] boot is an excellent one for maintaining state (and security) across well managed infrastructure. Disks be damned. For permanent storage, consider sharing a DRBD[2] cluster from dedicated nodes.

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

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

<comment> old-gregg I don't recommend this anymore. With a typical developer machine containing 16GB of RAM, and especially on Linux, you will that all of your daily-touched files are in FS cache after a few minutes of work. Even with default kernel settings Linux is pretty good with eating up all of your unused RAM for speeding up disk access.

Here's my anecdote based on 16GB workstation with NVMe SSD (Samsung 960 Pro):

Watching my project compile I occasionally open iotop in another terminal and don't see anything above occasional write flushes. To confirm, I did create a tmpfs volume and did not observe any improvement. `free` reported my buffers to be at ~4.7GB, which is basically all of my /bin, /usr and all of Golang sources+libs.

<comment><USER3> One memory leak and your cache is gone.

[edit] Not sure if ramdisks are pinned though.

<comment><USER4> > Not sure if ramdisks are pinned though.

Ramdisks will go to swap. A memory leak will force the entire ramdisk into swap, and reading it back into memory afterward is 10 to 100 times slower than reading normal files off of a disk.

<comment><USER5> > Ramdisks will go to swap.

Assuming that you have swap. I don't; I want my SSD to stay alive.

<comment><USER4> If you have a memory leak, and a ramdisk, and no swap then the OOM killer will trigger.

Hopefully it will target the program with the memory leak, but this is not guaranteed.

Swap is useful because you can shift unused memory onto disk. There are many programs that allocate (and write) a lot of memory that they never afterward use.

By having swap you make more room for cache in memory.

SSD doesn't matter here - this is not swap thrashing, but rather occasional writes.

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

I was the third engineer at VoltDB and spent six years making that bet. It's not a good bet.

Maybe there are other factors, but if VoltDB could page out cold data to disk I think it would be at least 2x if not more successful. No one agreed with me so it never happened.

I saw so many use cases go out the door because hey you know what? RAM is expensive and it's cheaper to page out cold data. The scale where that cost starts to matter is not that big.

<comment><USER7> Have spent 6 years I think working on SAP HANA. The one feature I've always asked for is seamless paging of even warmish data to disk.

In memory is fast and awesome, but it doesn't have to be as mind boggling expensive as it is. Why are we all making the same mistakes?

<comment><USER8> I would really like to hear something about your experience with SAP HANA. Do you have a blog or anything you could share?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The price of disk has dropped at nearly the same pace as ram. As has the cost of compute. At the same time data growth has increased faster than either has dropped... so I'm not really sure the price argument holds water. If I can buy ram at 1/100th the cost but I need to store 500x more data... that isn't a net win on cost.

From ~$1000.00/gb to $0.03/gb

[http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per-gigabyte-update](http://www.mkomo.com/cost-per- gigabyte-update)

<comment><USER10> It would be interesting to see that chart updated to 2017 data. It appears the downward slope becomes significantly less steep around 2009 (looks like the price dropped as much from 2006-2008 as it did in the five years 2009-2014), and I'd be interested in seeing how recent SSD prices affect this. As far as I can see, rotational HDD technology is at the end of its S-curve, whereas SSD technology is still relatively new.

<comment><USER11> Backblaze recently updated that data through Q2 2017 [1]. Hard drives have only dropped to $0.028/GB. For comparison SSDs are still ~$0.40/GB (~14x).

[1]: [https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-cost-per- gigabyte/](https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-cost-per-gigabyte/)

[2]: [https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/internal-hard- drive/](https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/internal-hard-drive/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem with asking a programmer to keep track of the locality of their data, is that most modern programming languages make reasoning about locality hard to do. With the exception of C and C++. Even for those languages, unless all relevant data is in simple arrays, making assertions about locality is hard.

For interpreted languages like Python or Javascript, figuring out RAM storage and access patterns of data is very hard. So we probably need programming language mechanisms to help with understanding the locality patterns of our programs and probably tooling to help change it.

<comment><USER13> Even for C++, most designs are OOP, which treats data layout as an afterthought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> And 99% of developers spend their entire careers without giving as much as a passing thought to cache locality. Quick, how long, in cycles, does it take to retrieve data from RAM? About 200 cycles. 200 cycles is a very long time if you miss cache often. Scattered RAM reads can be _slower_ than sustained linear disk reads (that is, once the disk actually gets around to reading, which takes a while).

<comment><USER15> 90% of developers are working in languages where you can't really do much about cache misses, or doing so will at least involve some very non-idiomatic code. If you can't do much about the problem it's not really helpful to be thinking about it much.

<comment><USER14> I don't disagree. And for 90% of them worrying about cache locality or branch mispredictions on a daily basis would be a waste of time. It's fine to deliberately ignore such concerns. It's somewhat less fine to know absolutely nothing about how programs are actually executed, and what makes them go fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If a terabyte is a lot of data to you -- and it is for many, many things, then this post is right; you should buy as much RAM as you have data, and access it accordingly.

The commenters who are saying disk has a different price/performance trade-off that is still valuable are also right, but that applies to large data sets.

<comment><USER7> I worked on a petabyte in memory hana cluster. It all depends on what you're doing, and how important it is to you.

I don't even know what a large data set is anymore. I think my general definition is one you won't put into memory, whatever your threshold is for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> May be with very high-end servers it is. But generally it's not. I can buy 4TB HDD For $200. I think, I'll have to add 2-3 zeros for 4TB RAM machine, and I'm not even saying only about RAM, I need some server motherboard, some server processor, while I can use 4TB RAM HDD with pretty much any computer. And SSD isn't going to be even with HDD in near future as well for $/Byte. So optimizing software for HDD won't go anywhere. But, of course, it's awesome to have some alternatives if you have money and need more performance.

<comment><USER18> NVMe drives which are approaching RAM speeds are a good compromise if RAM and server components are outside of your financial reach.

<comment> dis-sys many NVMe drives on the market are useless jokes. try some from the now biggest semiconductor company, test their fsync() performance and don't get a heart attack for seeing those ugly numbers. ;)

<comment><USER19> This!

[https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/did- some-w...](https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/did-some-write- benchmarks-of-a-few-ssds.15231/)

<comment> dis-sys hi olavgg, I was searching for fast fsync & low cost NVMe SSD a few months ago, so I looked into consumer NVMe SSDs. Samsung 960 Pro was the first I tested, the results were just shockingly bad. It was so bad to the extent that I started to question whether my kernel/installation caused the slowness issue. Searched online and found a few of your posts talking about the exact same problem you saw. That saved me quite a bit time. :)

Yes, totally agree with the conclusion in your link above, consumer SSD (NVMe or not, high end or cheap) doesn't worth a dime. Cheers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are you sure latency stayed around 100ns?

[http://pics.crucial.com/wcsstore/CrucialSAS/images/campaigns...](http://pics.crucial.com/wcsstore/CrucialSAS/images/campaigns/c3-speed- vs-latency-table.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very interesting. The estimate of 100ns came from here: [https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_l...](https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_l..). and is probably not very precise (maybe because it is only capturing rough order of magnitude). I have now updated the post. Thanks for the feedback! Specific constant aside, the point about latency not improving much still holds.

<comment><USER21> Your link got truncated with ellipses. Here we go: [http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_laten...](http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~rcs/research/interactive_latency.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Ive wondered in estimation how much of "my" data is stored in various types of memory. CPU cache if I am actively browsing a website, those last couple IMs stored in the RAM of some server? Any content i have ever uploaded to the internet is probably on a hard disk ready to be brought to cache at a moments notice. Then there are all the backups on tape.

</comment><comment><USER23> Extensive use of "RAM" disks was commonplace in the 1980s.

<comment><USER24> And old is new again :). The ratio of ram to disk cost has historically varied wildly. The pendulum will come around again in a few years when huge SSD's are cheap.

I have a feeling with multi terabyte SSD's at cheaper prices we'll be shuffling all our data back to "disk" again :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think the insight here may be that ram should be optimized for sequential access, just like the disks of old.

<comment><USER26> It is, that's what "fast page mode" was in the late 90's and what prefetch queueing is in DDR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This might be the single most important article I have read in the past one week, because Adrian Colyer is on vacation! May I add that even SAP HANA is designed for in memory computing? As far as disks are concerned, NVM should soon replace them.

</comment><comment><USER28> with "serverless" applications you can read the whole app into memory and run it and then clear it for the next app, which i'm sure speeds things up.

<comment><USER29> That's not how it works; programs are kept "warm" for some time after each requests, or indefinitely (e.g. in App Engine you can choose dynamic or resident instances).

<comment><USER30> Just chiming in to say this is also true for Lambda and Azure Functions.

What Id really like is for them to scale up to full fledged VMs once some usage or performance threshold was hit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If only programming languages supported "offsetted pointers", we could use mmapped files and store arbitrary data structures in them without hassle.

<comment><USER29> Many programming languages use references to other objects liberally. Wouldn't it be hard to keep it all contained so that you could restore it later?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Excellent insights. If cost is not a factor, how does improvements in SSD space stacks against RAM ? Thanks

</comment><comment><USER33> Not sure i agree, on Server spec the ram cost 10% more than CPU like if CPU cost 2000 then ram cost would be like 2200. Also it is not scalable for amount of data and not sure if I agree on laptop as well , 8gb ddr3 is about $80 while I can get 128gb ssd or 1tb magnetic disk so really can't use memory instead of disk. Except in few cases

</comment><comment><USER34> This post is 10 late

</comment><comment><USER35> > If anything, I would suspect that the developers have become costlier over > time, at least in the last 10 years or so.

Really? Have developer costs _actually_ increased in real terms in the last 10 years? Have _your_ developer costs (if you're outside the VC/SV bubble) increased in real terms? And how much?

This seems like a terrible assumption.

<comment><USER36> The real point is that developer time has not kept up with the rate of RAM price decrease, and unless you plan on seriously defending the claim that developers only cost 1/6000th of what they used to twenty years ago, the points in the blog post stand.</comment></comment>


WebSockets Follow-Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2012/03/28/WebSockets <comment><USER2> Not related to the question of spec and standards processes but it is interesting to ask the question of whether web sockets are architecturally sound.

It certainly seems that for games like BrowserQuest they are more or less necessary. But they do have a crucial property that a long lived connection lives on one server - for a long time.

I have a location service where users are notified about other nearby users. However, whenever I look at scaling the server responsible for this across multiple threads or machines, I am always concerned by this massive fan-in effect. Where multiple servers or threads will have to send nearby notifications back to a single process to have that information sent down a specific connection. This seems like it may become a bottleneck.

I don't know how this approach will turn out. I have thought about using Server-Sent Events instead, but that is newer than websockets and is getting less attention, so I don't feel secure that the support will be there.

I think that forgoing long lived connections is a very useful tool for simplifying and scaling up web services. If we use websockets unwisely we could end up painting ourselves into a corner.

Anyone has any thoughts on this? Some experience would be great to hear about.

NB: I put this same question to the blog itself.

<comment><USER3> WebSockets could easily end up doing terrible things for scalability of a service. However, so can misusing Comet, improper database structures, etc. At the end of the day, developers need to make an informed decision about what technologies to use and not use; in many cases, that'll mean foregoing WebSockets in favor of other solutions, but sometimes they're simply the best tool for the job.

<comment><USER2> This is definitely true. My question is more along the lines of "what scalability lessons will we have to learn now that the World of Warcraft guys already know" (more or less). It'll be a different world from the firestorm of short lived (often stateless) connections we worry about now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone here involved in the decision not to allow raw TCP/UDP/etc.? That would've really let us do some fun things. :)

(I waned to write a self-hosting webpage, but WS doesn't get you there--the real-time communication stuff might, though.)

<comment><USER5> Websockets is designed to work over all of the existing HTTP proxy systems that currently exist. Could you imagine a system that's backwards incompatible with the world wide web? In many institutions (schools, workplaces), internet access is filtered through a proxy server.

<comment><USER4> Oh, no, I absolutely appreciate that. I'm just saddened that lower-level stuff isn't exposed. Even just TCP access and listening would be great to have-- especially as raw TCP connections are pretty much the standard transport exposed for HTTP (please correct me if I'm wrong in this assumption).

I'm not suggesting that it would be foolproof for consumer applications or what have you--but being able to write something like netcat in javascript for my browser would be pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _> I don't know, myself; I haven't worked on any apps in recent years that needed this sort of persistent-binary-connection architecture. I have noted a buzz of conversation in the last few days around BrowserQuest, a Mozilla.org offering based on lots of HTML5 gooey goodness notably including WebSockets. So maybe they really are a big deal._

WTF? It's like Tim Bray took a long vacation from relevance when he went to work at Google, and never came back.</comment>


Realusers.club – Real user interviews, delivered weekly - <AUTHOR> https://realusers.club/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

I'm John, publisher of realusers.club. I'm creating this newsletter because I find reading user interviews really useful and interesting, and I thought this would be a great resource for indie makers, entrepreneurs, and product and UX designers.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated, and please feel free to ask questions. :)</comment>


Show HN: Hacker News channel on Denso (Videos from popular posts on HN) - <AUTHOR>

We're still in private beta but would love to give more invites and get feedback. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: <http://getdenso.com/denso/hacker-news>

There's also a Foundation channel (by Kevin Rose) - <http://getdenso.com/denso/kevin-roses-foundation></comment>


Fitbit data just undermined a woman's rape claim - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/story/158292/fitbit-data-just-undermined-a-womans-rape-claim/ <comment><USER2> Good. Fake rape claims are extremely damaging, not just to the people they're made against, but also to every single real victim of rape.</comment>


Ask HN: What was the best off-topic online discussion you have ever observed? - <AUTHOR> Off-topic discussions happen all the time. It's the internet after all. However, were there any memorable, funny, weird off-topic discussions that stayed in your memory? I'm mainly referring to (semi-)-professional mailing lists, forums etc. where you normally wouldn't expect those discussions. <comment><USER2> I'm reminded of the classic quote:

"Is this anime channel?"

"Yes"

"How do I patch KDE2 for FreeBSD?"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I seed this with a discussion about the Arc on a PL community mailing list ([https://email@example.com...](https://email@example.com?page=5#post- mailman.5579.1599151768.31109.digitalmars-d:40puremagic.com))</comment>