Toyota plans 3.8M vehicles recall. 2007-2010 Camry, 2004-2009 Prius... - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE58S69820090930

<comment><USER2> "Before the crash, a passenger in the car had called 911 and told dispatchers that the accelerator was stuck and the car had reached 120 miles per hour (193 km per hour).

The recall will cover the Camry and Avalon sedans, the Prius hybrid, the Tacoma and Tundra pickup trucks and luxury Lexus models, the IS250 and the IS350 as well as the ES350."

Yikes that's tragic. I am not familiar with floormats in Toyotas and what they might look like in comparison to the accelerator pedal, but I was taught in driver's ed and at the racetrack where I run my car that should you ever run into a situation where your pedal gets stuck there are a few things you should do (which I know might not be apparent during a panic situation):

1) put your foot under the gas pedal and try to lift it up. never attempt to crawl down there to figure it out

2) turn off the ignition. you can safely brake and steer to safety without power. just takes a bit of force as you don't have power brakes/steering..

3) worst case scenario put it in neutral. engine will rev to hell without load and potentially get damaged but at least you can control the car safely and get to safety/pull over.

<comment><USER3> _turn off the ignition_

Careful - a kid recently crashed into oncoming traffic here in Sydney because his car locked the steering wheel when he turned the key. (He was trying to save fuel by coasting.) I know my car does the same thing.

<comment><USER4> Yup, tried it once at low speed, same effect. Technically if you only cut the power but don't turn the key all the way down, it won't lock. But the chances of being that careful in this situation are null.

I'm surprised simply braking doesn't work. AFAIK, break power should be (much?) greater then engine power.

<comment><USER5> It'll definitely slow you down, but it might not last long. If I was in that situation I'd definitely try unsticking the gas pedal first. I'd also say be prepared to cut your ignition, because if your brake pads fail (brake pads are designed to cool down between use and I'm not sure what prolonged heating would do to them, I know when your callipers get stuck you can wear out the pad and the router pretty quickly) you're going to be up shit creek without an anchor.

I'd always suggest trying to slow (by whatever means necessary) before turning your ignition off. Probably #1 would be to unstick the gas pedal, #2 would be to put it into neutral, #3 would be brake like a nut and #4 would be turn off the ignition (if you can't get it into neutral for some mysterious reason, or if you stopped safely of course). In reality your ignition really shouldn't be turned off until you've got your parking/hand brake on, turning it off while driving is dangerous, especially if you're on a highway.

<comment><USER6> Very complicated in an automatic transmission car it seems. Very simple in a manual transmission car. You just press the clutch. You could even stop and start again and drive around with a little abuse of the clutch pedal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm sure it's bad and all, but don't recalls happen for car models all the time? BMW "recalled" my car a bunch of times; what it meant was, if I didn't get the car to the shop for a free repair, I'd have a harder time suing them if the (I think it was the) gas pump caused the car to explode.

<comment><USER2> I think the story here was that it was 3.8 million cars. That's high enough to get it into the top 10 car recalls, of all time. Top is probably the 10+ million cruise control switch issue Ford had to recall on virtually all 1993+ cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't drive, so I am curious: what is the effect of pressing the brake and the accelerator at the same time?

<comment><USER9> That'll slow the car down, and bring it to a stop if the brakes are in good condition.

It's really simple to recover from a jammed open throttle (it's happened to me) - and I think it's the kind of thing that ought to be taught in driving lessons.

You have heaps of options, either knock the car into neutral, turn off the ignition (before the steering lock), stand on the clutch (if it's manual), stand on the brakes or as a very last option gently start to apply the parking brake.

Forgive my ignorance, but is a "state trooper" a cop? I can't believe an off duty cop would let the car get up to almost 120mph. Aren't they trained?

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the answer. This is what I would have guessed. (The first thing I would try if my car was gaining speed too quickly would be the brakes.)

 _Forgive my ignorance, but is a "state trooper" a cop?_

Yes.

 _I can't believe an off duty cop would let the car get up to almost 120mph. Aren't they trained?_

I guess everyone can panic when something that they consider safe starts going out of control. You'd think cops would be trained to handle this, considering they are in stressful situations with a loaded handgun everyday.

I have a feeling that we are not getting the whole story here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how many people were labeled as crazy, "got their license at sears" or drunk before this was taken seriously? (note how it goes back to 2004)</comment>


Show HN: A Media Server Based on Docker for Plex, Radarr, Sonarr and More - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/phikai/htpc-docker-standup <comment><AUTHOR> OP Here... This is my little project to setup my media server in the house. It's been working really well for me and I've been receiving some great feedback on it. I'd love to get any comments/questions or help with the project that anyone has to offer.

<comment><USER2> What kind of system requirements are needed to run this correctly?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a 10+ Year old AMD based system with a small SSD, and 4GB of RAM running the whole thing with plenty of capacity to spare.</comment></comment></comment>


An older poster of the moon before tonights - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-03/digital-maps-moonscape-could-reveal-safe-landing-spots-and-traversable-terrain

<comment><AUTHOR> What I'd really like to know is the source for the hopefully uncropped version. I assume this is from NASA, but between servers that are down and search failures, I'm thinking that one of HNs readers might already know...</comment>


When Irish Eyes Are Crying - Michael Lewis - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/03/michael-lewis-ireland-201103?currentPage=all

<comment><USER2> The tale of the global financial crisis has yet to be told, but Michael Lewis is piecing it together chapter by chapter, country by country. We live in interesting times. Lewis's prior articles on Greece ([http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/10/greeks-b...](http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2010/10/greeks- bearing-bonds-201010)) and Iceland ([http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland2...](http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/04/iceland200904)) are also worth reading.

<comment><USER3> Sort of P.J. O'Rourke's _Holidays in Hell_, the financial edition...</comment></comment>


DJI Phantom Drone Open Source Alternative - <AUTHOR> http://dronegarageblog.wordpress.com/2016/cx-20-the-open-source-alternative-to-dji-phantom <comment><USER2> The 3dr solo is probably the closest feature-wise, but it is not exactly charp compared to the phantom, neither Open Source. BTW, parrot drones really sucks. Don't even think about them if you are looking for something similar to the DJI phantom. Their products are children toys.</comment>


Ask HN: Informal survey about editors - <AUTHOR> 1. How many years ago did you last switch your main text editor? 2. What is your current age? 3. What did you switch to? 3. What did you switch from?<p>(I'd love to analyze formal results of such a survey, conducted properly) <comment><AUTHOR> 1\. 0 2\. 42 3\. VS Code 4\. Notepad++

</comment><comment><USER2> 0, 25, cudaText, sublimeText

</comment><comment><USER3> 4 39 SublimeText Npp

</comment><comment><USER4> 0, 28, vscode, emacs

</comment><comment><USER5> 2, 48, vscode, npp</comment>


Webapp Death Match: Google vs. Apple - <AUTHOR> http://informationarchitects.jp/webapp-death-match-google-vs-apple/

<comment><USER2> The author laid out a pretty clear bias from the beginning and followed through to the end to let the reader know that "graphical froufrou is bad". While he's certainly entitled to his opinion, he really only represents a small subsection of users. On the whole, I would've liked a more open-minded analysis rather than "text is good, images are bad".

<comment><AUTHOR> He compared more than just images. Although, the post should have been a comparison of MobileMe and GMail.

I do agree with the conclusion:

 _The media-appropriate approach of Google shows that the interface is not a matter of graphic design, it's a matter of how it works. With all the glitz Apple brings to the Web in an attempt to win a beauty contest, they lose the true contest: the beauty of usability. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't give your Web app a manicure._</comment></comment>


Ask HN: what was the best life/programming choice you ever made? - <AUTHOR> For me:
Life: deciding that I wanted to take care of my body.
Programming: deciding that I wanted to master 1 new tool and a language every year. Last year was Python/Emacs and this year it is Rust/DTrace. <comment><USER4> Life: forgiving my wife after she had an affair. It was hard, but a single mistake doesn't negate the fact that she is a great mom, we are good together and our son deserves a shot at having his dad in the house.

Programming: learning by doing instead of by reading. I started learning Rails when I wanted to build PicDigest and the mistakes I've made have helped me learn faster on a broader foundation.

<comment><USER5> You are a weak man!

<comment><USER6> No, he is a strong man.

<comment><USER7> he is, who he chooses to be, instead of a sterotype

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Life: Having a child. The first six months were mad hard. But he's been what gets me up in the morning now... Literally

Programming: Not caring about trends. I've realized I can learn pretty much anything on demand. So I find interesting problems and try to solve them, rather than spend alot of time learning frameworks and languages and hope to apply them. And I've found learning on demand for real problems causes me to learn In a way that sticks better too.

<comment><USER9> Having a kid was amazing for life and didn't affect my programming at all... they sleep a lot :)

<comment><USER10> Here's a thought: you probably have an awesome spouse.

Which is not to say your spouse is doing all the work for you (I don't know that. Maybe they are, maybe they're not.) But when a couple works well together as a team, that's when they can be relaxed about having kids. Unfortunately, many people don't work well together (and don't know it until they actually have to _do_ something major together.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Giving up video games in my 20s.

If I hadn't done that, I'd still be stuck in front of a game somewhere.

Those things will eat your life.

<comment><USER12> I only gave up video games because my favorite game got shut down...Tanarus - anyone ever heard of this game? It was run by Sony Online Entertainment during the last years of it's existence but it was put out by Verant Interactive in the mid 90's...probably one of the most addictive "FPS" tank games of it's day...was fun as hell

<comment><USER13> I played a bit of Tanarus but never excelled at it. I was however much better at Infantry, and kept up with the game from when I was in 3rd grade up until early college

<comment><USER12> I got really good at it lol..it did have a steep learning curve though, I remember when I was in 5th and 6th grade, it was literally my life, I sucked so bad when I first started so I would play from the time I got home from school until I went to bed every day for over a year...my summer was spent playing all day...and I ended up getting really good at it, and it was at that time that the player counts started going down by the time I got to highschool...was a fun game while it lasted though

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Life: starting to read again and reading broadly: psychology, architecture, software, theatre, business, anthropology, great literature, philosophy, linguistics.

Work: realising that I am not stupid and that I can make a difference, I began to apply a three-word philosophy to life: "Belief, Thought, Action." _All beliefs that withstand scrutiny must be acted upon._

<comment><USER15> You should write and if you do I want to know where you put your writing.

<comment><USER14> I don't write enough unfortunately. I have something like 20+ text files in a folder on my machine with notes... that I'm meant to at some point turn into blog posts. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Life: Doing my MBA - hear me out before you guys go all nuts. I have a BA in Computer Science and I wanted to learn more about business, so I chose to do an MBA in Finance.

Best. Decision. Ever.

The reason being is that I now see the world through a different lens. For instance, when everybody blames bond markets for trashing the bonds of Greece or Argentina - I understand why it is the fault of the government and the markets are just speaking truth to power.

I also understand why populism is so dangerous.

Understanding economics & finance has liberated me. It is easy to be conspiratorial about the world and the things you see happening on the news - but once you have a solid Econ & Finance foundation it is interesting how different you look at everything.

So even though I am a hacker, I am glad I now have the glasses of 'objectivity' for world affairs - that I don't think I would have had without my MBA.

Programming: Deciding to learn to Ruby & Rails (it is the first time that I can say that I can 'program', despite having a BA in Comp Sci and learning C, C++, Java, etc.).

I hated those languages in school and while I did good in my classes, because I was always a geek and it didn't come particularly hard for me, I hated working in them. So after I graduated I gave them up, for a few years as I worked as a project manager.

The best decision I ever made was to learn it all on my own. It has been the hardest 2 years of my life, but easily some of the most rewarding.

Now I can build anything I want - that is the 2nd most liberating feel ever!

<comment><USER17> Life: Quitting a stable software job to do a PhD in Finance. The additional technical skills (Writing, Mathematics, Finance, Law, Accounting) and interpersonal skills (Networking, Explaining complex topics) I've gained have been invaluable. I now look at the world in an entirely different way.

I share the same feelings as marcamillion regarding having the "veil" lifted on world affairs. I have a BEng in Aerospace Avionics (Electrical Engineering for air and space craft) but have always worked as a Software Engineer / Developer. After a few years of working full time (big multinational then small ~20 person company) I was wondering "there has to be more to life than this."

While reading online I came across recommendations to read this weekly magazine called "The Economist". It was super hard to get through at first: I didn't know the people, some of the countries, or the financial jargon. But I persisted and each week I'd go and buy it at the newsagent. I'd systematically read each issue from cover to cover. Those first ~15 issues looked like a rainbow; multicoloured post-it notes fanning out from three sides. Whenever I came across a person, word, country, concept I didn't recognize I'd write it on a post-it and affix it to the page. Later, I'd systematically revisit the notes and resolve my ignorance using Google + Wikipedia.

A lot of the time I didn't want to read the whole thing, only the Business, Finance, and Technology sections. However, I forced myself to read about issues in Sudan, or Kyrgyzstan, or politics in South America. I am now so much more aware of the way the world works, what's happening in world politics, financial markets, business, literature. As marcamillion mentions, acquiring this knowledge was liberating.

Programming: Persisting with Haskell until it "clicked".

Over the past 5 years I've revisited Haskell a number of times. Reading tutorials and books; watching videos. I "got" Monads as a mathematical concept, but didn't have a strong grasp of how and why they should be used.

On about 6th crack at it I just sat down and read code. Thousands and thousands of lines of code. Once I'd "groked" a concept from seeing how it was used in real world code I'd go and implement it from scratch. I'd recreate Maybe, then build the Monad typeclass, and finally implement the Monad typeclass for Maybe. I'd do this for Monad transformers, Monoids, Applicative, etc. This was really hard for me. Looking back I realise I was optimizing my learning by always pushing the edge of what I could do.

Over time I gradually became competent at writing Haskell as well as reading and understanding other people code. This additional understanding of functional programming has dramatically change my programming style. I now create a lot more immutable data types. In C++ I'll liberally use const, in Python namedtuples. I get frustrated when a language prevents me from easily mapping and composing functions. I really really value algebraic data types and use them wherever I can.

tl;dr Read The Economist and went to grad school. Learned Haskell and now use immutability and pure functions much more often.

<comment><USER16> Funnily enough, now that you mentioned it, The Economist did the same for me too. So both my MBA and The Economist completely changed my world view.

One tip is, I actually find the magazines hard to read. Something about the typeface and spacing just screams "dense" to me.

But...what I have done is get the audio version. They are hella long, like 3.5 hours total, but so well produced and VERY nice to consume. Each "article" is about 4 - 7 mins on average, then there are a handful that are 20 minute special reports.

When I think of product/market fit, I think of my addiction to The Economist. I don't think there is a price they could raise it to, that I wouldn't buy it at. And...if I couldn't afford it, I would definitely pirate it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Life: Start questioning everything. That is, questioning accepted wisdom with respect to nutrition, medicine, sport and everything, accepting things I can verify myself, but most importantly, disregarding things I can disprove myself. I'm healthier, wealthier and happier as a result.

Programming: Same; in this respect, that's ignoring common wisdom about OO and TDD. These things have value, but not of the type (and not really the magnitude) that they are assumed to have. It's much more mainstream now, but 10 years ago, I was considered a crazy heretic.

<comment><USER19> Your ideas intrigue me sir, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

<comment><USER20> agree

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Life: Accepting Jesus as saviour. I have prayed for wisdom and understanding. This has helped me to deal and understand every kind pf situation am facing and also understand people.

Programming: Having an understanding of every situation i face.

<comment><USER22> Are some people seriously downvoting this?

<comment><USER23> I'm not surprised if they are. 'Programming: Having an understanding of every situation i face.' - that's not a decision, that's preaching. 'Look I am religious and magically understand every situation I face'.

<comment><USER24> If you take the programming statement to be "take the time to get an understanding of situations" then that is a pretty good change. It would imply that previously the GP made decisions rashly, based on a programming ideology, or without all of the facts.

If the statement means exactly what it says, then you're correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Life: The day I learned to stop worrying and love the chaos.

Programming: The day I pulled my head out of my ass and started learning from my peers.

<comment><USER6> Yes! A close friend told me a few years ago: "life is chaos". At the time I didn't understand how this shed any insight. My immediate reaction was to think: "but life is a mixture of order and disorder – is not your statement obviously false?" A year later it hit me. Perhaps this is not what she meant, but I formulated it for myself as follows:

"The universe has absolutely no compulsion to be orderly or just."

Your life will be a mess. The world will be incredibly unjust. Billions do and will suffer. You are helpless to affect this in any meaningful way. Your task is to learn to cope with all this and find path to inner serenity.

\--

Reading Stephen Mitchell's translation of the Tao Te Ching helped form some structure around this idea for me by fitting it into a framework for positive action and providing a number of helpful mantras: [http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote...](http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/taote-v3.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Life: dropped the TV subscription, stopped reading newspapers and generally disconnected myself from the mainstream world. Thinking outside the box becomes natural then.

Programming: Teaching myself Lisp and Emacs, dropping Agile methodologies, ditching OOP for functional, writing my code as if I'm replaceable and the next guy needs to pick up where I left without any trouble. The last point actually gives me more value in the eyes of my employer!

<comment><USER27> Not questioning your choice, I disconnected myself from the mainstream world once as well. But now I'm starting to think that our tendency to do this (specifically stop reading newspapers) may be leading to a disconnect from participating in the community. Which leads to a lot of decisions being made against the interests of the community due to people not participating in local governance issues. This combined with the fact that governments don't particularly attract attention to issues [1] is leading to serious problems in society. Also, aren't you worried about being trapped in a filter bubble [2] by sticking to your own world? Looking for your thoughts.

[1] [http://www.ted.com/talks/dave_meslin_the_antidote_to_apathy....](http://www.ted.com/talks/dave_meslin_the_antidote_to_apathy.html) [2] [http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu...](http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles.html)

<comment><USER28> There is positive value in participating in the community, but negative value in reading newspapers or listening to the news on TV or radio; those things will make your decisions worse not better. (An analogy: news media are like a bottling company that takes a thousand liters of slightly dirty water, separates it into 999 liters of pure water and one liter of concentrated poison - and throws away the pure water and sells the poison.) Much better to spend your time instead doing something that will bring you into contact with people in real life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not a programmer, but may be of use:

Life: continuous learning, whether it be a new language, a new skill, travel. Whatever I learn usually produces benefits in unexpected ways, years down the road.

Runner-up: barbell weight-lifting, three times per week. If you've never been strong, you owe it to yourself to try. You get a physical sense of capacity to match whatever mental sense of capacity you've achieved.

Work: Trying my own thing. I had no clear plan, but I had criteria to evaluate whether what I worked on was paying off.

Two years out, I've got steady monthly passive income, and am working for a startup doing work I'm passionate about (selling an online LSAT course) while continuing to pursue my own projects.

Casting off the set path of law school/a job opened my mind to new possibilities and forced me to find my own way.

<comment><USER30> I want to second your weight lifting suggestion. Also, when you're strong, people treat you better. It's probably related to the halo effect surrounding attractive people. [1]

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect>

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Life: To get a early realization, that money is the most important thing in life.

Work: To work towards the 'Life' goal. To work smart, and make clever savings and investment moves.

I've read enough of the 'money is not everything' quotes. Its almost a given and keeps coming back to me from my own experiences and from what others tell, Money is definitely the most important thing in your life. Having lots of it means most of your needs, wants and requirements taken care of. You realize this more as you age, having lots of money to never work puts you in a far more better situation than getting up every day and running to work regardless sun, rain and cold. No matter what your work is, no matter how passionate it is.

Having financial security will alone change you life so drastically, you will never worry about having to take risks, failing and putting pieces together after that. You will never have to worry about getting fired, reporting to office despite your highest dislike on a day. You will never worry about 'What if' scenarios. You will never have to worry about paying your bills, sending your kids to school etc.

So the most important thing to realize in the early part of your life is to get to financial security.

And yes tool religion, micro optimization craze, technical pedantry isn't much of value while the other part of the world is building stuff and making millions with duct tape.

As a programmer your job is to worry about solving problems which people need solutions to, and then monetize it.

<comment><USER32> I had the same realization at about 23 (I'm 26 now). I'd like to talk. What's your email? It's not in your profile.

<comment><USER31> Mailed you, Hope you will get it soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Life: Learned a little bit late to stop being a totally selfish/asshole boyfriend, leaving me open to finding a great relationship and now two kids. It's helped other relationships as well, and there's a few exes to whom I should apologize if it weren't so socially inappropriate to do so. :)

Programming: leaving a couple of fun and well-paying jobs to go to places where I wasn't the best at everything. Learning from others (and teaching others in areas where I excel) has given me more happiness/satisfaction/growth than any single language, project or other discrete event.

</comment><comment><USER34> Life: Realising that I am in a privileged position and have the freedom to do what I want / where I want, and realising that although I love my job, the bugs will still be there if I leave the computer for a couple of days.

Programming: Deciding that I only wanted to work on open source software, Its not global to open source, but the culture of sharing, building on top of giants, and encouraging + learning from each other has been incredible.

</comment><comment><USER35> Life: Learning how to break psychological barriers so I can pursue my interests culminating in living a happier life. (examples: Public Speaking, Schooling level as a self-value system). By doing this I seem to have created a self-selection process for my potential social circles. (example: some people I've met seem to equate dropping out of college with being an utter failure. They usually never contact me again.)

Also for Life: Learning how to Learn. (Currently putting this to the test: [http://christopherbiscardi.github.com/blog//coursera/2012/11...](http://christopherbiscardi.github.com/blog//coursera/2012/11/30/the- coursera-experiment.html))

Programming: Lisp.

</comment><comment><USER36> Life: Leaving my comfort zone and moving abroad.

Professional: Working as an independent developer, instead of as a wage slave.

</comment><comment><USER37> Programming: embracing the fact I came from a design background instead of trying to hide it so I wouldn't get cast out as a jack of all trades, I now do exactly that and love it -- and knowing you can deliver end-to-end solutions is very empowering and casts a new light on deciding who you should be working with since you don't need the other roles you can simply try and work with people you like.

</comment><comment><USER38> Life: {I'll put the family stuff aside, since its my wife saying Yes and the arrival of our kids is just beyond best, but probably not the intent of the question} Working abroad with an IT consultancy. After school I intentionally sought out a consulting gig in Germany. This produced 2 great changes that profoundly affected the rest of my life. (1) Working/living in another culture changes you forever in so many ways ... politics, patience, view of humanity. Big changes. (2) I encourage young programmers to get consulting jobs early on. Exposure to problems. Exposure to mentors. Exposure to systems. Exposure to corp politics. Exposure to business. Exposure. All these will make you less dogmatic and more of a problem solver. When it's time to leave (go contract, start a business, join a company/startup full time) your abilities and, importantly, confidence will be high.

Programming: Get meta. Whether it be programming languages or frameworks or methodologies, at some meta level they are all 90% the same. They desire to the same result. That 10% is for ninjas and specialists ... which is great. But the world needs more of the meta folks. Once you "get" it, all fear of taking on something new changes, and you feel totally cool with trying it out. Immerse in anything for a while and you start to get the other 10%.

</comment><comment><USER39> Flying across the country to meet the girl I met online. We've been married for 15 years.

</comment><comment><USER40> Life: Getting fitter. I wasn't too overweight at my peak weight but I was getting a beer belly from sitting all day, feeling extremely tired at the end of each day (I'm only 20 years of age and it's not normal) and I decided to do something about it. I've always been intimidated by what other people think which is why I didn't join the gym earlier but I sucked up and joined 11 weeks ago and it's the best choice i've ever made. It's motivated me so much.

Work: Scoping out and learning new technologies. I've been iPhone programming for ages and realised I hadn't really dived into other stacks such as Rails or JS programming. Definitely need to do more of this though.

<comment><USER41> My advice: start climbing. It's like going to the gym but fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Living on my bicycle for a year instead of going straight to graduate school.

I bicycled across the US each summer for two years, and the next summer took a full year off. I rode from Seattle to Maine, down to Florida, over to California, and all the way north to Alaska. It was the classic "find yourself" adventure of a 20-something. It has grounded me in everything I have ever done since.

Facing a grizzly at four feet, alone in the middle of the Yukon, really does put everything else in perspective for the rest of your life.

Programming: Build something that people use, and start freelancing. I am not a full-time programmer, so I could have gone the rest of my life only programming for my own intellectual satisfaction. But I watched my dad pass away never having polished any of his projects, and that made me commit to releasing code. Programming has been much harder, but much more satisfying, since I made that decision.

Freelancing has let me ease into using my technical knowledge professionally, while maintaining my day job as a high school teacher.

<comment><USER43> > Facing a grizzly at four feet, alone in the middle of the Yukon, really does > put everything else in perspective for the rest of your life.

That sounds incredible! I am going to sound incredibly stupid but that would be something to experience. Details?

<comment><USER42> I was heading north on the Cassiar Highway in BC, a mostly dirt road which parallels the more heavily-traveled AK highway. I had been seeing black bears every day from a fair distance.

I was on a flat stretch of road with grassy banks. I saw a matted-down patch on my right and thought to myself, that looks like a bear slid down on its butt right there. Then I glanced to my left and found myself face to face with a grizzly.

It's funny, I knew what I was supposed to do from reading and talking about bears. But it was my experience responding to stray dogs that had trained me in how to respond. I just stayed calm and kept pedaling, same speed. It stepped into the road and huffed in my direction, but it didn't start chasing me.

I have kept that moment in mind during every "stressful" situation in my life since then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Life: Going Paleo (not 100% strict but maybe 80%) and focusing on everything that alters my mood and testing it to see if removing it makes a difference (alcohol, caffeine, excess sugar, etc)

Programming: focusing on building a business with software and not getting so anal about every line of code. Learning to be lean in all ways possible really helped here.

<comment><USER45> This is very interesting. I have been able to tell that so many foods, not just alcohol, caffeine, and sugar are able to impact my mind and mood. Specifically, I am referring to different amounts and types of fat as well as the effects of different foods based on the glycemic index spectrum.

What effects have you noticed?

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Life: Don't generate human waste - be lean. Make everything you do have a value (even if its gaming - it has mental value). Stop watching syndication TV/Facebook/IM etc.

Programming: Be very aggressive with learning. Set a goal of books to read, programming languages to learn, per half a year. Read a TON of code in the process.

</comment><comment><USER47> Hard to put just one, so I'll cheat.

Life: having a family, emigration, travel, stop caring about money beyond what I need for day to day living

programming: read more code instead of writing more code

</comment><comment><USER48> My most important decision was having a child. Returning to my first love, Lisp, pales in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER49> Life: Deciding to view large decisions/situations with "Whats the worse that can happen?" And finding solutions to all of the worse case scenarios. All of a sudden, things you thought were scary and impossible become approachable and you almost feel dumb for not doing it for so long.

Programming: When I decided to stop focus on being a "Programmer" and focus on being a business owner. My code isn't what gets me paid. I still do all the programming at my company, but now I do the minimum that needs to be done that will still allow me to make changes. I'm in the business of making money, not pull requests.

</comment><comment><USER50> Life: Leaving financial services voluntarily, never taking unemployment while I was without work, and going all in on whatever future that meant for me.

Programming: Committing to the idea that ideas must, must, must be expressed cleanly.

<comment><USER51> Never taking unemployment while without work -- may I ask why?

<comment><USER52> I also would never take unemployment, and it's because I don't believe it's the role of the state to provide for me.

<comment><USER16> I am sure this means that you've never been starving with all your help fully tapped out.

Until you reach that point, please don't make such concrete declarations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Life: Slow carb diet and P90x. (a little embarrassing, but true)

Programming: Diving farther into photoshop. I know thats not programming, but I really like to play around in photoshop during long code sessions. It helps my brain relax.

<comment><USER40> I want to try P90X soon and was wondering if you've felt it's made a difference?

<comment><USER44> P90x will work, but the key is diet. CrossFit will work too, but again the key is diet. P90x provides that meal planning. Stick to that and workout and it will work. Or go slow carb and hit up CrossFit. But the key thing to remember is that you can't out train a bad diet. Garbage in == garbage out.

<comment><USER52> Diet does not build muscle.

Maybe you're talking about losing body fat. I'm not sure why you're preaching about that, though, since the parent/GP didn't mention weight loss being a goal.

<comment><USER54> A good diet does not imply being calorie deficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Life: (1) Learning to choose the most productive and rewarding options even (for example I could spend a day tinkering on the next ProjectEuler.net problem or I could focus that effort on studying or finishing my latest project). (2) Learning never to cease working. This is subjective but personally I tend to find it hard to start working after a long break but once I get the momentum I can keep it up very well without stress. (3) Opening my mind up to the possibilities. Learning and knowledge are never bad and it's not healthy to be overly sure of yourself.

Programming: (1) Getting into the functional programming mindset. I am not going to completely ditch OOp but there are times when I find functional programming much more intuitive. (2) Getting the basics of algorithms and data structures. This was a long time ago but I remember it affecting my whole perspective of what programming was about. (3) Implementing non-intuitive algorithms to solve hard problems, mostly still considered as research areas. For once the solutions were not "obvious" and a mechanical approach, however complex, was not enough. I started with game theory, and am now trying to get into machine learning and overall I'm finding this experience a very pleasant. (4) Tools wise, discovering the free software "ecosystem", especially GNU/Linux, vim, tmux, tiling wms, learning to use the shell and utilities productively...etc I still have a long way to go but these tools are already paying off.

</comment><comment><USER56> Life: Giving up the entire notion of a proper job being a 9 to 5 daily grind in the office. Have not had a 'proper job' for a while and instead I have been doing freelancing/contracting which gives me more time to try out and learn new things.

Also, like the OP, taking good care of my body which means quitting cigarettes, 2-mile runs every day and watching what I eat.

Programming: I'm lucky enough at this point of my life to be able to choose the projects that I take on. These few years have thought me never again will I compromise on my promise to deliver quality projects to people. It really stresses me out when bosses change deadlines on a whim and expect you to meet it. Now that I'm older, I would tell them respectfully to get someone else if they really need to meet that target that bad.

In my experience, 90% of the time, nothing good ever came out of imposing stupid/unrealistic deadline. All you get are burnt out programmers, code which resembles a travesty rather than a working application and a mountain of technical debt.

At the end of the day, some people measure themselves from the car they drive, the houses they live in, how much money they make and to me, that's perfectly fine(whatever motivates you, man).

For me, just being able to help people with projects that are meaningful to me, and not having to stay at a job because I needed the money is to me, the best thing in the world right now.

</comment><comment><USER57> Life: stopped doing overtime, stopped eating meat and started living minimally (items I own total expenditure of £600).

Programming: ignoring fads and applying engineering discipline to problems.

</comment><comment><USER58> Life: leaving the academic world and doing things that actually affect / matter to people.

Programming: writing an Atari ST emulator (it landed me a job offer by a prestigious game company)

<comment><USER59> I feel you on the 'life' part. Only people that have been deeply commited to academia, and realizing its role in this era, can understand the emotional impact on this choice.

<comment><USER60> Quick question for you and the GP, if you would be so kind:

I'm currently working on a project which is set to become my master's thesis (I'm writing my final undergrad exams this month). I started it a few weeks ago; before that I never thought I would go to grad school and I had a severe distaste for academia.

Now I'm feeling academia suck me in. It's hard to describe, but I'm "good" at the aspects of academia that I hate--the bizarre politics of it, for one. I also really enjoy having the freedom to work on hard problems without any immediate paths to monetisation.

Do I get out now? Is it okay to do this for a while? I am obviously not asking strangers on a message board to make my life decisions for me, but I'm very curious to hear your thoughts.

<comment><USER58> An academic career was my dream job while I was an undergrad, but it disappointed me later when I actually reached that goal. I'd say go for it if you feel it'll be rewarding, but don't stick with it out of stubbornness when it no longer makes you happy. There's more freedom waiting elsewhere if you don't shun the responsibility (in entrepreneurship). But just because it didn't work for me, it doesn't mean it's generally bad. Many people seem to be quite happy working in academia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Life: Realising that the worst that can happen is almost always "not that much" and that by giving something a go, even if it doesn't work out, you're still a long way ahead of a lot of people.

Programming: Focussing on the end product at least as much as technical elegance.

</comment><comment><USER59> Life: Knowing life _is_ pointless, and it's _completely_ up to you to make a point.

Programming: Common Lisp. And... not being overzealous about it.

</comment><comment><USER62> I started caring more about what the code does than how the code works or what it looks like.

</comment><comment><USER63> Realizing that being happy was more important than achieving an arbitrary goal (a PhD) that was (a) making me miserable, and (b) didn't matter to anyone but me. Getting past that mental block was basically necessary for a lot of amazing things that have happened since, both in work and life.

<comment><USER64> As someone doing a PhD who only got into it because I didn't know what else to do really... this really hits home. What changes did you make?

<comment><USER63> Basically, I wrote a Masters thesis and exited my program with as much grace as possible. I actually managed to tie up a fun side project and assist with a couple of other students' projects on my way out (more productive than my PhD thesis!), but the most important thing is that I left.

Second-order results were an awesome new job doing something more fun; a huge increase in my day-to-day happiness and satisfaction; getting married; and an even more awesome job, and a move to California.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Life : To stop taking things too seriously, enjoying the ups and downs of life, and making little progress every day in various roles I play in life.

Programming : Working for myself and not for a monthly pay-check. To do work that I enjoy doing while earning enough for day to day living.

</comment><comment><USER66> Life: Taking a few months off work to do something creative, fulfilling, relaxing, exciting...etc.. I work less (but since I'm consulting my yearly take is about the same, if not more). But the biggest difference is down- shifting. I've gone from spending 90% of what I earn, to about 25%. And, if anything, I do far more travelling...

Programming: Quitting my permy job, then starting my own consultancy has given me so much more autonomy. It's scary, but fun. And while I'm still selling my time for money, I am transitioning to doing my own thing. Still blown away that people pay me money to do something I love so much...

</comment><comment><USER67> Life: Reading more books. I've read more book in the last two years than I have in the rest of my life, both in physical and in audio forms. It's amazing what little bits of information you pick up from all kinds of different books.

Programming: Learning Node. It got me excited about development again, which caused me to get out and meet other developers in my community. I was so enamored with it that I quit my day job in order to have more time to learn Node and many other new web technologies. As a bonus, I used the stuff I learned in that time to get a new job that I like more and make nearly twice the income at.

</comment><comment><USER68> To never get overly attached to my tools - programming languages, frameworks, paradigms, patterns etc. and to always choose the right tool for the right job, by putting aside my own personal bias.

<comment><USER69> I'd like to do that but could never actually achieve it.

<comment><USER65> I have an exactly opposite problem. I always want to work in a new language/tool. Once I learn the language/tool I lose interest in it unless the work I am doing is challenging in itself.

<comment><USER69> True, that also happens to me. The grass is always greener even as I move from my house to my neighbours, and back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a great comment and I can echo much of its sentiment.

Another commenter wrote something very similar to mine.

There are three things that I consider to have had the largest impact on my life:

1\. Learning to Learn - sounds obvious and simple but it truly isn't. There's a lot of _un-learning_ that generally happens first before you can truly become someone that loves to learn on their own or with a _partenaire dans le crime_.

2\. Crossfit - which introduced me to powerlifting and olympic lifting - <USER2> combination of diet (keto, paleo, zone), metabolic conditioning, and strength is basically _hacking your body_. My quality of life in a very physical existence has improved tremendously by becoming more athletic and much stronger.

3\. Co-founding a technology company. This one most people here should relate to the most.

To elaborate a teensy bit on these points; none of these convictions/events/understandings happened at once, it was a gradual aggregation of different experiences and micro-choices along the way that ultimately culminated in these distinct three "pieces".

I also find it mildly interesting that I've _after the fact_ identified these "three". What happens to be the most stable configuration in our physical environment? THREE! The tripod, three perceivable dimensions, blablabla; I might write about this now.

<comment><USER70> My biggest issue powerlifting/weightlifting is the amount of time it takes. I've had to cut back for other things because it's hard to have the time to get 8+ hours of sleep.

I love lifting but I'm curious how it has affected you when starting company, something (from what I've read here) is notoriously time consuming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Life: It's all about love, not personal ambition. I love and am loved by my family. I do meditation and find there that I love and am loved by my higher power. I love others I don't know (and possibly even some I do know) by writing software for intensive-case unit medical devices. Finding a way to use my programming skills to selflessly help others has been transformative.

Programming: Two for the price of one:

1) Really understanding locality of concerns. I.e., creating and using granite-like abstractions so that when I use them I don't have to think at all about what is under the hood. So, when I need to reason through a given piece of code, I have a local and finite amount of the rest of the system that I have to load into my finite brain. I can inductively assume that the abstractions I am viewing as primitives are themselves reliable.

2) Beginning programmers write simple code. Intermediate programmers write complex code. Master programmers write simple code.

</comment><comment><USER72> Life: Making the decision last year to do things outside of my comfort zone in an attempt to bring them inside. I went travelling for a few months, moved to London, and now have a lot of paths open for work

Programming: attempting to build an MMO each year and getting further each time. The problems are hard and very interesting to me, so I love to learn in this area

</comment><comment><USER73> life: read Walden. <http://blog.fogus.me/2006/10/26/the-floating-books/>

programming: going to college

</comment><comment><USER74> Life: Quitting my graduate studies in astrophysics in 96 to start a company, which ended up growing to 125 people in 7 countries and being acquired. Making the decision to leave the cool yet predictable world of science in favor of a startup took some hard thinking and talking, but looking back this obviously was the biggest career choice I ever made.

Second biggest choice probably was to leave said acquiring company, to venture out again. I can't say I found my next big project yet and leaving the new comfort zone definitely took away some comfort, but I felt it was the right choice. Like Steve said: Never settle ;-)

Programming: Taking a week-long course by BNR to learn iOS programming. Following an intense week-long program is very different from working through a book in your own pace, learning alone. Having a neighbour asking you things, or to ask things, makes learning incredibly more effective.

</comment><comment><USER75> _Life: ultimately not caring about what I'm told to learn/do, but instead learning what I'm interested in._ My current career started as an impicit decision that "math homework is boring" and "making games is fun". I was 13 then. This choice led me to programming, to technology and made me a man I now am. (Maths grades did suffer and never recovered even until university - <USER3> ended up learning everything anyway, but usually a year too late; but there were also many bits, mostly related to game programming, I knew years before I should have)

 _Programming: Discovering Lisp 3 years ago._ It turned my programming upside- down, gave me a job in Erlang (that I had since quitted) and seriously expanded my thinking. Also led me to pg's essays, HackerNews and LessWrong, all of which transformed my way of thinking and - I feel - made me much more rational person than I was.

</comment><comment><USER76> Life: Quitting an MMORPG when I was 13(nearly 13 years ago) and deciding never to play one again. I can't imagine how I would have ended up if I hadn't.

Programming: Finally deciding to just dive into a project rather than continually reading books. I'm not a very good programmer by any means though so take that as you will.

</comment><comment><USER77> Life: Figured out the loud "noises" in my life that were pinning me down. - Day job and unwanted social relationships. Gave up television, politics and anything that seem to bring a very high bias into thinking. The best outcome has been that it has helped me leave my comfort zone time and again.

Programming: A worry of mine was how much was I thinking about things, that needed a deeper/rigorous computer science understanding. Coursera and some other courses have been a life saver here (in my case). Have been taking courses that I felt I needed to understand better conceptually. This seems like being in a maze that leads all the way to very basic fundamentals that I have forgotten; So adding math skills now (Calculus, linear algebra etc). I hope connect the dots.

[Edit: Grammar]

</comment><comment> Throw654- Life: Trying LSD. Gave me a new perspective. Allowed me to fix relationships.

Programming: Reading research papers and the academic basics, and learning functional programming. Gave me the ability to go far beyond simple apps on frameworks, and tackle problems I thought out of my league.

</comment><comment><USER78> Life: After a certain age you stop working to better your life and start working to better your children's.

Programming: Working on side projects that use technology I want to work with. It gets out that urge to do your own thing and employers love to see your side projects.

</comment><comment><USER79> Life:

\- Reflecting myself constantly. (Looking at things from another perspective often allows you to learn not only from your own, but also from other peoples mistakes)

\- Completely turning off TV and other mainstream media for several years.

\- Starting to leave my comfort zone occasionally to extend it constantly.

Programming / Profession:

\- Accepting the fact that, although being good as a programmer, I'm even better in managing things and mentoring/coaching. (accepting this was hard: i love doing programming)

\- Focussing on the big picture and final results instead of wasting time with unimportant details.

\- Reading/Reviewing/Discussing more code than you write actually results in writing better code and being more productive.

</comment><comment><USER80> Life: Knowing who I really am. Like I thought I could be like every other kid on the block but I later accepted the fact that I'm just a geek with not much of a social life and I'll be acknowledged if I do what I do best

Programmimg: I wasn't offered computer science in college(my country has a bad system). Rather I was offered math. I didn't see myself good enough in math so I decided to give up on programming for a while. I later read the quote "never stop doing what you love doing best". It really told me I made a fool out of my self. Now, I'm back to the keyboard.

</comment><comment><USER81> Life: Started getting up early and going to the gym every morning. I wake up at 0530 and then I go to the gym, shower, and eat breakfast before I leave for work at about 0800. Having that much time in the morning greatly reduces stress, so I do it even if I skip working out for a day.

Programming: Joining the local meetup groups, attending both areas where I am very knowledgeable and areas I want to know more about. I've learned a lot and I've met hundreds of inspiring people. Giving talks at the meetup groups is also very rewarding and highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER82> Life: Moving to Netherlands Programming: Leaving .NET behind after 6 years.

<comment><USER83> What language(s) did you leave .NET for? I'm still stuck on .NET (and I like it) but I know I can't build decent web or mobile applications with it.

<comment><USER84> I use .Net and Java stack, I don't want to start a war here but I never felt held back due to any reason for developing web apps in either of the two. For mobile apps, its a different story, I stick to phonegap.

<comment><USER82> I don't know that much about Java world, however what I can say about Windows + .NET is you are less productive. Why ? 1\. Linux > Windows ( For .NET ) 2\. Python + Django/Flask are really powerful. Ruby & Rails as well. 3\. You're basically writing and reading more code. Most of them is unnecessary. .NET is designed for enterprises. 4\. Especially for startups, time & speed matters a lot. I also think some of the above reasons applies for the Java world as well. Fantastic OS projects though in Java world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Life: moving to London.

Programming: quitting permie jobs and going for a contract in London.

<comment><USER86> Having just quit my job for a contractor role in London, I am so glad to see this here.

<comment><USER40> Also a Londoner here and would love to go into contracting sometime in the not too distant future. Please keep us updated on progress

<comment><USER86> Well if that's not an invitation to finally start my blog, I don't know what is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Life: Quitting Google in 2007 after only 7 months of employment to do my first startup. I was 24 years old, I had spent almost one full year applying to Google and while I didn't have my dream job, I was certainly at my dream company. I was approached by a previous colleague to do a startup in the Philippines and I spent a couple weeks thinking about it before deciding that I was going to leave Google and do a startup. I was 24, if I failed at the startup, I could always try to go back.

7 years later, leaving Google was the best choice I've ever made.

</comment><comment><USER88> Life: starting to exercise regularly, going on paleo/slow-carb diet

Programming: hmm, not sure. but the worse choices are 1) not blogging more, and 2) not learning a full stack backend language.

</comment><comment><USER89> Life: Haven't really figured it out yet, I'm only 20.

Programming: I remember thinking "I mean I guess it's neat I can draw snowflakes with computer code, but isn't this a waste of time?" when I was around 11 or 12. I'm glad I stuck with it. There was a simple enjoyment and feeling of achievement even though I was just drawing simple shapes with QBASIC - I didn't really know why. But it felt good, so I kept doing it. I learned a lot, and it's gotten me to some pretty interesting places.

</comment><comment><USER90> Life: Meditation. Zazen practice specifically. Redefined my values and "self" through introspection.

Programming: Realizing I'm not so great at it, moving towards programming as a hobby.

<comment><USER91> Yes. Zazen... If I could go back in time and give myself any advice, it would be the daily practice of silence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> I'm only 20, not sure I have a lot to say, but here it is so far:

Life: Deciding to stay with my girlfriend through a long-distance relationship. It's hard, but definitely worth it. We've not seen it all the way through yet, though, so it's hard to say yet if it really is a good decision.

Programming: Getting into game programming. That's where I started six years ago, and although I've moved on, if it weren't for the joy of making my own 3D games, I would have never dug deeper.

</comment><comment><USER93> Life: Seeking help for depression, seeing a psychologist after years of trying to battle it alone.

Programming: Building stuff and learning by doing rather than reading text books.

</comment><comment><USER94> Hard to say what my best life choice was, I tend to live my life as a series of small choices rather than one or two overarching big ones.

But programming - definitely the decision (back in college) to actively commit my hobby and professional life to the linux (and concomitant open source) ecosystem. I can still look around today and marvel at how much it has enriched not just my overall career, but the day-to-day experience of being at work.

</comment><comment><USER95> Life: Very recently I learn that relatives is not all about those people who are "Imposed" by nature on you but those who remember you and take care of when you are in trouble. I had been going thru family and financial crisis when all so called blood(sucking) relatives tried to make life hell of me and my wife and some strangers came forward and tried to help us out.

No wonder Humanity is not property of family relatives only.

</comment><comment><USER96> Teaching myself photoshop when I was 9.

A family friend gave me a copy of photoshop 4, and I kind of got addicted to it. From there I grew a love for art and design, which I did as a hobby for quite some time. After I graduated college with a CS degree, I had a ton of design experience and a solid programming background. The two together have really done well for me, for obvious reasons.

</comment><comment><USER97> Life: incorporating exercise into my daily routine in a way that I enjoy (walking, biking)

Programming: switching back into programming from management

</comment><comment><USER98> Taking a year off school to do a startup.

Didn't work out but allowed to filter life and _actually_ figure myself out. This allowed me to restructure my degree/education/learning to support the rest of my life and not just my next startup.

You'll ask this again in 5 years and hopefully my answer wouldn't have changed much.

Programming: never saying no. Biting off more than I thought I could chew.

</comment><comment><USER99> Accepting that there are better programmers than myself, and subsequently listening to what they were saying a bit more closely :)

</comment><comment><USER100> Life: Giving up WoW and starting to socialize instead

Programming: The 2½ years I spent at a small startup as the only full time developer

</comment><comment><USER101> Giving up a stable job as a sr. dev at a good company with interesting projects to co-found a startup in a competitive market. All with a 1 year old at home, a second on the way and no savings other than some assurances from my previous employer that they would take me back should things fail.

It was scary at the time. But worth it.

</comment><comment><USER102> Life: To buy only the minimum number of things I need, and work out the rest as I go along.

Programming: The realisation that once you understand the same basic structures (declarations, loops, recursion, data types) and the underlying paradigm in one programming language, you can easily learn any other programming language.

</comment><comment><USER103> Life: switching careers from hospitality management to software development (I don't think any developer who has never been anything else can really appreciate how great we have it)

Programming: learning C++, even though at work we use Java and Ruby, I feel the more I learn C++ the better I become at higher level languages

</comment><comment><USER104> I know I'm late to the party, but...

Life: Believing Jesus actually said "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." <http://esv.to/john+14>

Programming: Leaving a Megacorp to work for a small development shop to do Python work.

</comment><comment><USER105> Life: work for and achieve Eagle Scout as a kid. Not only did it keep me focused, I got to spend every weekend with my father who unfortunately passed away early.

Code: listened to The Dip from Seth Godin and followed his advice. Dropping everything I wasn't the best at and focusing on just what I was.

</comment><comment><USER106> Life choice : better internship over grades. Programming choice : giving up php in favour of python.

</comment><comment><USER9> Getting married to a women who drives me to be better person. Has improved every aspect of my life.

<comment><USER95> Congrats Bro! I did marry one 3 years back who brought nothing but good changes in me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> Programming: Had an idea and spent over a year learning how to code while implementing the project to completion. Gave up QA testing after working at cool game companies like Blizzard, wasn't making the salary I deserved. Now I am.

</comment><comment><USER108> Life: Quitting my my full time dev job to go freelance (less money, but I've always got a smile on my face now)

Programming: Putting aside spending all my time learning best practices and paradigms and just creating something I have in my head.

</comment><comment><USER109> Life: Moving to the United States Programming: Discovering Lisp after 15 years.

</comment><comment><USER110> Starting to learn about art (aka going to Museums, art galleries, reading art books). It soothes my soul. By far the most intellectual challenging activity I've ever done.

<comment><USER111> Could you recommend some introductory books? I've always felt bad not having clue about art.

<comment><USER112> A great light-handed introduction to Modern Art was produced by the BBC in 1999: This is Modern Art: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoSjRRv6ZrE>

A book was also written by Matthew Collings: [http://www.amazon.com/This- Modern-Art-Matthew-Collings/dp/18...](http://www.amazon.com/This-Modern-Art- Matthew-Collings/dp/1841881007)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> Life: finding/having exercise related & outdoor hobbies (snowboarding & rock climbing)

Programming: switching to Linux at ~16 and recently making the move to a Macbook

</comment><comment><USER114> programming/life: taking up a project i thought i would never be able to pull off but now am 70% done after almost 9 months and countless new stuff learned.

</comment><comment><USER115> Life: Letting go Programming: Choosing to learn simple code before going to complex ones. Revisiting code I do not understand and learning the logic.

</comment><comment><USER116> Life: Deciding that my family was more important than my job title.

Programming: Getting a degree in hardware even though I was pretty sure I wanted to write code.

</comment><comment><USER117> Life: Doing what I loved first, consistently and without fear. Programming: Switching to emacs and dvorak.

</comment><comment><USER118> This should be on Quora.

Life: Deciding that I want to make a difference in the world. Programming: To start programming.

</comment><comment><USER119> Probably beginning to practice Judo in 2003. I dropped 50 lbs and changed the trajectory of my life.

</comment><comment><USER120> life: going to study abroad as an exchange student.

programming: learning ruby in 2001. Not the language per se, but the community at the time was full of smart people (lispers, smalltalkers, random PL geeks) and dumber people like me would learn a lot.

</comment><comment><USER121> Life: Immigration

Programming: Embracing the cloud

</comment><comment><USER122> Life: While I still play sometimes, I have almost left computer games behind.

Programming: Learn python

</comment><comment><USER123> Life: Losing money in a scam. Disillusionment is the greatest gift.

Programming: Stopped being scared.

</comment><comment><USER7> life: becoming a father, stick with it and try my best (i was twenty)

coding / professionally: just say yes, you cant fail - and if you fail its much much better than having said no from the get go. (oh, and know your pricetag)

</comment><comment><USER124> Started riding motorbikes. I never knew such fun could be had.

</comment><comment><USER125> Life: Saying no.

Programming: Saying no.

</comment><comment><USER126> Live: being honest

Programming: Learn how to program.

</comment><comment><USER127> Programming : learn javascript

</comment><comment><USER128> Life: Lived what I wanted.

Programming: Programmed what I wanted.</comment>


Bauhaus: A Failed Utopia? - <AUTHOR> http://the-easel.com/essays/bauhaus-a-failed-utopia/ <comment><USER2> I don't think Bauhaus failed, at all. It's influence lives on in the design of many buildings, especially in Europe. For example, Frankfurt kitchens.

The fact that it has blended so well into mainstream architecture is a testament of its success.

Bauhaus was also highly influential to kick off Scandinavian mid-century design.

<comment><USER3> 1\. "utopia" literally means "no place." 2\. Bauhaus design affordances are geared toward humans-as-machines 3\. Bauhaus design has become ubiquitous. Ergo, human-humans have no place. Ergo, Bauhaus succeeded in building a utopia all around us and in our homes. (Florescent light flickers on after Alexa and Siri fight for the privilege)

<comment><USER4> Side note about 1: utopia is a pun. The "u" doubles as a transliteration of the prefixes eu- and ou-, meaning "good place" and "no place" respectively.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find it curious that the Bauhaus movement is celebrated over and over while other significant art and design movements, like the Wiener Werkstätte, are seldom mentioned.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_Werkst%C3%A4tte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiener_Werkst%C3%A4tte)

<comment><USER6> That opened my eyes. A lot falls into place. See more of the now-familiar visual language they pioneered, which seems to intersect a big with the Craftsman movement.

[https://www.theviennasecession.com/a-history/](https://www.theviennasecession.com/a-history/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is sad to know how the actual style differs so much to the original. I usually see the modern architecture and design and perceive it as a cold, spirit lacking functional thing. The start of this project was a more socialy sustainable utopy but it became a much simplier praise for materials and geometry.

</comment><comment><USER6> Have no idea how this ended up in HN, but I'm delighted. It's a wonderfully interesting re-introduction to a subject I didn't know as well as I thought I did.

<comment><USER8> Just recently I read about Frankfurt Kitchens on HN. HN seems to be more topic-diverse than I expected.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How much did you sell your startup for? - <AUTHOR> I have a small site (about ~10k active user) that lets users watch movie trailers and create watchlists to get alerts. A buyer is offering $50k for the site. I don't know if this is a good amount or not. Its a decent chunk of money for me but not life-changing or anything like that. For all the folks who sold their startups or sideprojects, how much did you sell it for and what was the experience like? How did you value your startups? <comment><USER2> This sounds like an eminently fair deal for this site unless I'm greatly underestimating how lucrative your advertising is or you have subscription revenue you didn't mention.

You've made something people like. Congratulations. Nothing I say about operating the site as a business detracts from that.

Playing the probabilities:

You probably do not have a defensible business. Your users are loyal to Marvel trailers, not to your site; it is merely a way they know to consume Marvel trailers. They would switch in an instant to a similar site if yours went away or was dissatisfying.

You likely do not have any durable advantage in marketing your site. A durable advantage at your scale is one that a smart person given a month and a $5k budget couldn't duplicate.

The nature of your revenue is likely non-recurring. You have to claw your way up from $0 every month. A change in the advertising market or your biggest source of traffic is an existential risk to your business. Next month's revenue might literally be half of this month's without you doing anything wrong.

All of these factors are going to push down the market value of your site to people who want to buy it and operate it as a business. If you speak with a broker (I used FEInternational, twice), you will probably told that the value is ~2X the annualized cash flow you got from the site (revenue minus hard costs), when using the last six months average as a baseline. (i.e. 24X average of last 6 months)

If that calculation comes up with an answer well above $50k, and you want to sell, talk to a broker.

Otherwise, the offer reads (to someone with only educated guesses of revenues to go on) as generous. Many offers do not turn into transactions; sometimes they do.

Separately, do you want to sell? What are your goals for yourself and this business more broadly? Are they helped more by you continuing to run it or by having $35k or so in the bank?

<comment><AUTHOR> All good points. Thanks a lot for the reply.

I'm not sure i want to sell but $50k is a decent chunk of money. I'm emotionally invested in the site but don't think about it as a revenue- generating business (or at least haven't so far)

<comment><USER3> >emotionally invested in the site.

Sorry but can you elaborate more?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its something I built without much expectation and now there's thousands of people using it everyday. I get emails from them saying how much they love it. So in that sense, I really want to keep running it.

<comment><USER4> >I really want to keep running it.

Is the buyer planning to shut it down? Or you mean you enjoy running it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Instead of asking is this price fair ask if you would pay that price to buy your site and ask yourself what you would do to make it worth more. If you don't take the offer you're essentially buying your site for that price.

<comment><USER6> >> If you don't take the offer you're essentially buying your site for that price.

a fantastic way to look at it and a great view on opportunity cost

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I once sold a site with a similar setup. It was the kind of site that generated a lot of interest from a lot of people for a while. Some good interest, a fair amount of interest from certified crooks and every once in a while the type of interest you have.

Not going to go over the financials but I will say this:

If you care about the project, and specifically about its future, than $50k is bullshit. Opportunities are random and far between. It is extremely hard to envision, start and successfully grow something meaningful. So don't sell.

Else, if you just don't care anymore, $50k is fantastic amount of money. You can go on a trip around the word, get season tickets to a ski resort or just buy a made-to-order device that rocks your boat. It will allow you to care even less about that project, you didn't care about no more. So sell.

<comment><USER8> Season tickets to a ski resort (where I live) are less than $1k.

<comment><USER7> For life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why not sell 75% ownership and stay on to assist with the continued development and growth of the site? That way you are still invested and you reduced your risk in a reasonably fair way. For a small site with limited revenues, valuation is somewhat subjective as you are projecting forward with many unknowns.

<comment><AUTHOR> 25% ownership doesnt appeal to me as much since I'd lose control over the direction and in that sense, I'd rather sell than work on it for someone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Back of the envelope calculations ;)

Video pre roll ad rates ~$10 per 1000. Let's say you directly realize half of that. Or $50 per day. So $50K represents about 1000 days (3 years) of passive income, at zero growth. So its decent. Provided its offered in good faith. And you could use that capital to repeat your success in another related vertical. Say, popular music videos, that tend to get 10x viewership numbers.

Best of luck mattleblank!

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://feinternational.com/blog/saas-metrics-how-to- value-s...](https://feinternational.com/blog/saas-metrics-how-to-value-saas- business/)

<comment><USER12> Thomas Smale is a great guy. Glad to see his resource shared on here. Definitely worth connecting with him if you are interested in selling. I met him on Summit at Sea last year and have kept in touch. He's a great resource for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I sold a tiny site that took me a weekend to build for $40k. It was rolled into another site a few years later, and sold for $25 Million :(

He approached me via email. Went smoothly. To be fair, it was probably only worth $10k, but the work and advertising he did to it really did value it at $25M.

<comment><USER14> Can I ask how it went legally wise? Did you involve lawyers etc?

<comment><USER15> At least in the US, hiring lawyers for a transaction less than US$100K is very problematic and generally does not make sense.

There are some other legal options (like those express legal advice websites, or places where they proofread the agreement for US$200).

<comment><USER14> Yes, that's why I asked if they used lawyers for this relatively small sum. But it's not minuscule, so I was interested if they used contacts/agreements, escrow or something like "you send me money I send you password for account". Would like to read about such small-scale legalities for small personal sites- startups if it's available anywhere.

<comment><USER15> Try negotiating a fixed sum for the drafting the agreement. I think under $3K - $5K it can be doable, but also do a lot of sanity checks, e.g. provisions that you get everything back if the money is not paid in full, etc.

Professional lawyers do make mistakes, no matter how much they are paid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ideas for things you can use to argue for a better valuation: multiple acquirers (this is the most important by far and can easily double valuation), better understanding of the buyer's position/motivations/alternatives, macro industry trends (usually easy to find), your continued involvement over the handover period, external audits and metrics (eg. security, deliverability, user growth, etc.), team or documentation maturity, best growth metric extended over the future income projection. We've just done the final week on acquisitions in the _Venture Deals_ course[0]. I've posted my notes for you here.[1] While some of the stuff only applies to larger deals, it shows you how such deals are viewed by mature, larger scale investors and entrepreneurs experienced with larger exits.

[0] [https://kfatechstars.novoed.com/#!/courses/kfa-venture- deals...](https://kfatechstars.novoed.com/#!/courses/kfa-venture-deals-fall17)

[1] [https://gist.github.com/globalcitizen/9806cfc11bd10cac7cf68e...](https://gist.github.com/globalcitizen/9806cfc11bd10cac7cf68e9d85fc8e99)

</comment><comment><USER17> Take a look at patio11's blog post describing his sale of bingo card creator. Iirc similar ballpark

</comment><comment><USER18> How much effort have you put in to date? How much are you willing and able to do over say the next two years? Since you said you haven't tried to make money from the site, do you actually want to turn this into a business?

I think you might actually be asking "50k sounds okay, can I get more?". I'd suggest asking yourself "What's the lowest number I'd obviously say yes to?"

</comment><comment><USER19> You were already given some solid advice.

If it generates no revenue and you don't want to be bothered by monetizing, the offer is definitely a no brainer and you should accept it!

There are two major advantages.

First, you will learn about selling a business.

Second, you will have money to bootstrap your next venture.

The amount you were offered is not a life changing amount aka fuck you money, but the entire experience is absolutely a gamechanger.

</comment><comment><USER20> Q is what do you want to do with the site. If you think in your heart of hearts, you want to grow it, get that offer in writing and raise a seed round , or ask the guy to be an angel.

If you do want to sell it, ask your buyer how they came to that conclusion. $5/user is okay but on the low side if you are monetizing per user

</comment><comment><USER21> If you study a bit of corporate finance, you can learn the mechanics of valuation. At the end of the day, though, how do you determine the market value of any asset? You auction it off. If you keep it, you are saying it is worth more than $50K. If you sell it, you are agreeing that the market value is whatever the other party is offering you.

Rather than trying to calculate explicitly what it's worth, have you considered trying to find other buyers?

Edit: Another thing to consider is, if this isn't a life changing amount of money to you, you could treat this like an empirical experiment to learn the process of selling your company. This will be invaluable experience in your next start up/side project, or for any future business endeavor where you engage as an owner or potential owner of a company in a transaction like this.

</comment><comment><USER22> I did a similar price but for a bit more traction - we had about 3k MAU but they were all really obsessed with the product.

I had a lot of debt at the time and not a lot of options. Was burnt out. And I hated my target market (they were literally cultish).

I think I could have gotten more for it, but we'll never know. We calculated the value as the revenue but the acquriers looked at downloads, number of emails in the database, brand name.

The trick is don't talk about price if you don't want to sell. Just keep going, keep getting good growth until it hits a plateau where you'd like to stop.

[http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/corpdev.html)

</comment><comment><USER23> Hey, Matt

A lot of founders who are looking to sell their businesses can't estimate what their company is worth, mainly because they are too emotionally invested in the project. A good way to see what's a fair price in your case would be to let the market decide it. I made Soochi [1] so founders who are interested in selling their business can see how much can they get for their business, as well as find the right seller i.e. someone who can actually take the business forward. Let me know if you'd like to list your business on our site? We're running a $30 off promotion right now!

[1] [https://soochi.co](https://soochi.co)

</comment><comment><USER24> Try to frame it in terms of $/user/mo over the next n months.

So $50k up front is ~$4K/mo for 1 year (or $5/user/month).

If you monetize, what would be your expected $/user/month? Your buyer certainly has some figure in mind already, and they're no-doubt low-balling you.

Is user growth rate positive or negative? What percentage growth have you seen MoM or YoY?

I would spend some time modeling the various scenarios to put the $50K into perspective. For example, if you plan on running this site for the next 5 years and you make $x/user/month and you have positive user growth (say 1% net user growth each year), etc.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why not monetize it instead of selling it? That's probably what the buyer wants to do. right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Monetization is a bit tricky without making the userbase feel like we're selling out. I was more focused on making the user experience better before I think about monetization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why not counter with ~100K USD or so? Squeeze more out of it, might settle negotations around 75K.

Then you can make another similar site, maybe for books or video games. :)

</comment><comment><USER27> Do you have any revenues from the site?

<comment><AUTHOR> No revenues but the opportunities are all there because they can buy movie tickets/etc.

I decided not to monetize it for other reasons.

<comment><USER28> Given that, it might be instructive to get a handle on what the buy values at $50,000. Could just be the domain name and/or the "host authority" (when a lot of other (legitimate) sites refer to your site on the web it is perceived by search engines has having a bit more 'authority' than other sites.

If it's the latter you might find they buy it and replace your content with a bunch of links to porn web sites. You'd want to be ok with that before you sold it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> 42 million U.S. dollars.

</comment><comment><USER30> This should easily have a $1Billion dollar valuation. Settle for nothing less!

<comment><USER31> It really is 1999 again.</comment></comment>


Ahoolee is the world's first search engine for products - <AUTHOR> http://ahoolee.io <comment><USER2> Anyone can help to explain how the hell search engine need to integrate to blockchain platform? ICO purpose only?</comment>


Enigmedia: KVC algorithm, three times more robust and 90% more efficient - <AUTHOR> http://www.enigmedia.es/en/

<comment><AUTHOR> This Spanish startup has been showing in local media this past weeks. I submit it because they claim to have invented a revolutionary encryption method based on chaos theory with awesome properties. My limited crypto knowledge says this is unlikely.

They have zero technical information online and I personally think that their product smells. They trade extended technical info for twitter follows and there are other non positive signs around.

I still would like to read your take on this.

</comment><comment><USER2> I tried to find more data. I read [http://enigmedia.es/en/rdi/encryption/](http://enigmedia.es/en/rdi/encryption/) and the Spanish equivalent. It has very few details, I classified it between "too good to be true" and "too many buzzwords".</comment>


Show HN: Balance – A Work-Life Balance App Using the Moves API - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/balance-quantify-your-work/id877270460?mt=8

<comment><USER2> I don't like how I have to have two apps installed for it to automatically accurately track my time at each location. I feel like this app should include that functionality.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great. It's like Mint, but instead of showing how you're spending money, it's how you're spending your time.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are you worried Facebook will kill moves? I heard a rumor the whole team has moved on.

</comment><comment><USER5> Quite a cool idea!</comment>


Firefox 4 beta 8 now available for download - <AUTHOR> http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/12/21/firefox-4-beta-8-now-available-for-download/ <comment><AUTHOR> someone please tell me, how many beta and RC versions are more before final release?</comment>