Mark Zuckerberg donates $500 million - <AUTHOR> http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/12/18/mark-zuckerberg-donation/?hpt=hp_t3 <comment><USER2> I'm getting a bit miffed at the comments talking about this being a "PR move" or helpful for a "tax break". Did I read this wrong or did it not say 500. MILLION. dollars?

The cynicism must be pretty darn strong to try and explain that away by anything other than Zuck wanting to do some good with his shares and money. We should be applauding it, not over-analyzing it for how it benefits him.

<comment><USER3> > Did I read this wrong or did it not say 500. MILLION. dollars?

This isn't directed at Zuck or Facebook, or anything. Because I really don't know him.

But regarding your shock about the dollar amount...

Keep in mind that it's incredibly easy to be generous when you are at the top. It's actually so easy, that it's almost _effortless_.

There really is a difference between a man that writes a check that makes no difference to him (in the amount), and a man with nothing that roles up his sleeves, goes out, and dedicates himself to helping others.

I'll celebrate the latter before I'll celebrate the former.

One throws money away, the other helps change everyone around him.

<comment><USER4> First, "throws money away", really? It's going toward something good, helping real people's lives. Second it's fine if you want to measure someone's charitableness by their personal sacrifice, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with measuring it by the impact of their actions. In your scenario I would say the money being thrown away would have much more of an impact.

<comment><USER3> I've long stopped believing that money helps improve the world. People do.

If you throw money at a problem, often times you create a dependency on that aid, and other times you just end up with even more mouths to feed.

It's not that monetary aid is always 100% ineffective. It's just that once you tally up the bad and the good, you're left with something that's in the red.

<comment><USER5> Money is an extremely effective social organization and incentive system. It's a way to get people to behave in a way you want to. The right investments can help change the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> People can say what they want about Zuckerberg, maybe he doesn't have the amazing charisma of Jobs, or the genius of Torvalds, and Facebook gets constantly hammered in the press (and him as well), but this is a great gesture on his part, I applaud him.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, he deserves kudos for this, but he also deserves much of the shit that people talk about him.

Facebook is a company that is loathed roughly in proportion to the degree that people understand what they actually do to make their money: adorn your baby or wedding photos with fart app ads, put your own face on various ads that you know nothing about, make you play whack-a-mole with their settings UI to preserve what little control of your information they allowed you to have last week, sell your instagram sexts, etc etc.

And he's the guy who calls the shots.

<comment><USER8> I haven't seen evidence that the average facebook user cares that much about the things that you've mentioned.

I fully accept that some of their users (or ex-users) do. I have seen plenty of blog posts and outraged media stories. Yet I haven't noticed any great attrition among my friends on facebook, which is what I would expect to see if people cared much about this stuff.

<comment><USER9> What on earth does "what most people feel" have to do with anything? Nobody in Germany seemed to care that much about what Hitler was doing until they lost the war.

<comment><USER10> Off-topic but:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwins_law>

<comment><USER9> I know very well about the frustrating action on the internet where if you use Hitler for an extreme example of anything to make the point clear, someone's going to link Godwin's law.

<comment><USER10> Well, if you prefer an on-topic response:

The guy gave 500 million dollars to improve something in this world... The way he runs his company (or as someone else in this thread said, the company "runs itself") has nothing to do with it.

Still on the Hitler topic, I don't think you could opt-out of being german, nor could you voice your opinion freely against whatever was happening without fear of the consequences.

What I think, and in this I think you agree with me, is that Facebook should be more transparent as to what is done to your data, so that people would make a conscious choice of using it or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> These comments are so pathetic it kills me. This man just donated half of a billion dollars to a good cause. There is absolutely no way around the fact that a donation of that size is an incredible act of generosity. If he did it to get a tax break or to impress his neighbor it wouldn't change a thing.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm somewhat confused. If $500 million in shares are donated by Zuckerberg, does that mean a tax write-off of that amount? Also, to verify, the foundation would have to liquidize the shares, right? That kind of instant sell-off would cause massive drops in price... I really hate to ask this (as I honestly don't have anything against Zuckerberg, and really don't feel that "rich people" or "all companies" are evil or anything, as I know some people do), but is this not a massive tax arbitrage? Especially so, given that many people feel that Facebook's stock is overvalued (trading at almost $30 when it "should" trade for less than $10)? Even without any possible benefits to Zuckerberg (which I don't particularly really care about, and which brianpam had an interesting explanation for in his comment elsewhere on this post), doesn't that make this number sound much larger than it would ever really mean to the foundation's bottom line, making this insanely large number somewhat for show? (Seriously: please tell me I'm wrong; I just want to better understand these things.) (Although, thinking more, maybe the "show" is also in the benefit of the foundation, as having a massive donation, the largest in the foundation's history, also looks very good for it, even if the money deflates quite a bit in the process of turning it into cash.)

(edit: Someone, in person, points out they could hold onto the stock and sell it off slowly, or keep it for dividends; I don't think this stock has dividends, and maybe it is actually maintaining its value well--my comment was based somewhat on the premise that the various "overvalued" comments from a few months ago would continue into ever-decreasing prices, but in fact the stock went up at some point from its low-point, so maybe that's where I'm wrong?)

<comment><USER13> There is not a lot to write the donation off _against_. Zuck is on a salary and won't be selling any stock for a few more years. This is straight up just giving away $500M.

Zuck wasn't the one who put a dollar value on the donation, that was CNN. Zuck only mentioned a number of shares. He also said he is committed to giving away most of his net worth.

There really is nothing that can be criticized here. You could perhaps discuss his choice of how to distributed his wealth, but the fact that he is giving it away, and starting so soon in his life (as opposed to waiting for when he retires), should be commended.

And if Facebook "should" be trading at $10, then it would be trading at $10.

<comment><USER14> It's likely he can carry the deduction forward.

(I do understand that he only saves some portion of the $500 million so it doesn't make sense to say he is doing it for tax purposes.)

<comment><USER15> I imagine once you have a guaranteed $10-$20 million to your name, you'd not need or have any attachment to any money after that.

<comment><USER14> I would at least believe that there is a point where most people start seeing money primarily as a tool (rather than something they primarily exchange for necessities...).

My qualification there was mostly intended to deflect the impression that I was sniping. I don't have any much knowledge of high end wealth management, but my understanding of it is that it is very difficult to use a charitable gift to actually make money. There is some tax benefit, but it is always smaller than the gift.

Apparently the big charity-as-tax-scam is to establish a bona fide foundation and then stack the board with people you would like to provide with income. But that foundation has to pass a smell test with the IRS, so it is really a tax and wealth management strategy, not a way to escape paying taxes (at least, paying taxes on income that gets used for something or other).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm curious for someone to explain the choice of charity. It looks like Silicon Valley Community Foundation is an organization that specializes in helping people and companies set up large spendings of charitable donations. Does anyone else do that on this scale?

It seems the alternative is spending a fair amount of mental overhead to set up a charitable foundation or donating to an existing foundation institutionally equipped to spend that much money as a non-profit (the Gates Foundation).

<comment><USER17> Silicon Valley Community Foundation is a Community Foundation (in contrast to a Private Foundation), which means that they manage lots of different pools of money from different sources. It also means that donations to them are tax- deductible in the exact same way it is with other charities[1].

I'm not familar with the specifics of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, but it looks like SV Community Foundation, similar to most Community Foundations, does a lot of work managing what are known as donor-advised funds. Check out this Wikipedia page for some good info:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donor_advised_fund>

1\. Private Foundations have a few different rules in place, including lower maximum deductibility for donors, required 5% funds disbursement to charitable organizations, etc. Check out this link for a comparison [http://www.programforgiving.org/charitable/pages/considering...](http://www.programforgiving.org/charitable/pages/consideringDonorAdvisedFund.jsp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't entirely understand why he donated shares of Facebook instead of dollars, can they sell the shares all at once and use the money or is there a catch to that? Did it cost him less money to donate shares in the long run? It's probably my lack of understanding of stocks and economics but it seems like it would be easier for everyone to just donate money.

<comment><USER17> Community Foundations[1] such as the Silicon Valley Community Foundation can receive stock donations that are tax-deductible to the owner. If the donation was in dollars it would also be deductible for the owner, but the owner would need to sell the stock first, which would mean paying capital gains taxes.

1\. Differences between Community Foundations / donor-advised funds and Private Foundations can be found here: [http://www.programforgiving.org/charitable/pages/considering...](http://www.programforgiving.org/charitable/pages/consideringDonorAdvisedFund.jsp)

<comment><USER19> Foundations can get tax-deductible gifts, they just have slightly different other rules.

<comment><USER17> You're right - updated comment

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "shares worth $500 million" They are it worth today. Who knows what they are worth in a year :-)

</comment><comment><USER21> millionaires and billionaires who donate their wealth to philanthropic causes deserve to be upvoted and recognized.

<comment><USER22> I would always prefer the wealth coming from inside the system, not being first taken by individuals and then spread at their whim. Such wealth would much rather be a sustainable source. A well functioning society/government would know exactly how to spend it well.

In many cases, to me, the good the rich do does not nearly weigh in for their wrongdoings.

<comment><USER23> Your comment has been downvoted, but there isn't yet an explanation of why it is incorrect. I'll provide my perspective.

1) Zuckerberg didn't "take" wealth. He created it.

2) Governments don't have particular insight into the best ways to spend resources. We spent a couple of decades comparing market economies with command economies, and market economies won.

<comment><USER24> What wealth did Mark Zuckerberg create?

<comment><USER25> A large social network called Facebook.

<comment><USER24> 1) Myspace provided a large social network with free web hosting and some PHP doodads before Facebook did. Did Mark Zuckerberg create anything new?

2) Facebook is a weapon deployed against the integrity of human personality. Does facebook quality as wealth considering that it is a destructive force?

<comment><USER25> I found Facebook useful for finding my roommates and classmates during college. They took away the classmate finding feature, but then it became more accessible and my grandparents could use it. I just used it a moment ago to get my cousin's birthday.

That's a lot of value to me. When I share something there, it has the broadest reach of real-world friends on any social network, but that's my personal experience.

Facebook is not a weapon. It's a product, definitely, and a medium to some degree. A corporate and focused vision of the internet, sure.

A weapon? No.

<comment><USER24> Whenever a photo is shared through Facebook it is run through facial recognition software and the results are sent to every police agency that is interested. We know that policy agencies have picked people up on information attained in this way.

Some of the worlds police agencies are evil. Whenever you use Facebook to share photos or some other personal information you are equipping potentially evil police agencies with a potent weapon that can be used against you and your friends.

<comment><USER25> Wouldn't they get that information anyways by tapping my phone or internet connection? The NSA probably has my known IP addresses linked together, who knows.

I've not experienced Facebook used as a form of oppression against me and my friends. If I did, I would immediately alert them... on Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Whether it's a PR stunt or not, if the money is used well it'll do a lot of good

</comment><comment><USER27> Many people are asking "why?" Too often we take for granted why we should give to charity, so it's a valid question.

Some quotes below on why.

"The world is complex, and it can't be entirely fair from a what you contribute to what you get - it's very very uneven." \- Ben Horowitz (source: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqI7fa04atc&t=106m0s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqI7fa04atc&t=106m0s) see 1:46:00)

"I've worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions. In short, fate's distribution of long straws is wildly capricious." \- Warren Buffet (source: <http://givingpledge.org/#warren_buffett>)

</comment><comment><USER28> Very nice. It's good to see a lot of rich folks, both young and old (Buffet, Bloomberg, Gates) donating their money. When you're young it's all about accumulating as much money as you can from others in the form of businesses. Then as you get old, you start asking yourself what good all that money is when you're going to rot away in the ground like everyone else. After you win "the game" and enjoy the prize, you might as well disperse it. No use holding onto green paper if it doesn't change the world or make it better. At least Mark, at his young age, will get to see his donation actually used over the next few decades.

</comment><comment><USER29> He gets a bad wrap, but as far as a role model for continued commitment to self betterment and helping other within a positon of power he has done an incredible job.

<comment><USER30> It's bad _rap_ , as in rap sheet. <http://grammarist.com/usage/bad-rap/>

Sorry, this is a pet peeve of mine :).

<comment><USER31> Please don't stop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The part we should be talking about is the people who run these "non-profits" who line their pockets with money. Not saying this one does but MANY of them do.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think the title needs the distinction that it's that amount in shares, not in cash.

I appreciate it could go up, but the more likely is the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER34> Well, lets wait and see if the money is really going to be used, or if it just lies there.

</comment><comment><USER35> This is awesome. So happy to see it. It does make me jealous, though, as my non-profit www.themade.org could run for 3 years on a decimal percentage of that donation. Wish it was being spread around more.

</comment><comment><USER36> Gave half a billion dollars? Awesome! To what cause? We have no clue!

</comment><comment><USER37> perhaps im being naive (or biased), but why donate $500m to a SV foundation rather than say use that money to address those in more needier positions? Maybe I'm misinterpreting the 'Giving Pledge' ideals but I believe they were meaning donate to those in need for day to day life - rather than funding a community of a relatively well-off community. I understand the desire to give back to your community but 500 million can make a large dent into some bigger issues.

1st world vs. developing world problems I guess..

<comment><USER38> Based on the article alone, it seems that the SV foundation focuses on managing donations for both local and global projects, and not only in the Bay Area?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Mark Zuckerberg helped society a lot more by building Facebook (and making these billions) than he ever would by giving away his wealth to charitable causes.

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't think he cares about the money at all. From the start, Mark was always interested in building a cool product. It's a great gesture on his part.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'd rather be discussing Ron Conway's decision to put his muscle -- and money -- behind efforts to stop gun violence.

</comment><comment><USER42> He probably did it just to wind up the haters on HN.</comment>


United shares lose $1B in market value after man dragged off flight - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/11/investing/united-airlines-stock-passenger-flight-video/ <comment><USER2> FYI: United has issued an apology, saying "no one should be treated this way" which I interpret to mean: We did nothing wrong....until our stock tanks and we lose a billion dollars, ok then we did something wrong"

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/business/united- airline-p...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/business/united-airline- passenger-overbooked-flights.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickbaitey title. It _was_ down 3% which isn't drastic. Now it's only down 2% from this week's high. [https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:UAL](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:UAL)

</comment><comment><USER4> As I said in another thread:

So what? It's still above its YTD low of $65.28 from March, and it's 31% up (!!) from the same time last year.

<comment><USER5> my guess is this trend will continue bringing United down for awhile, though.

sure, people have a short-term memory for this type of thing. in two days everyone will be outraged at something else.

but most people don't fly very frequently. and they don't have many preconceived notions about airlines. ask someone what they think of Nike or Apple or Honda and they probably have an opinion. Ask them what they think of Alaska Airlines or Delta and the average person probably doesn't.

So now the next time this Average Person _does_ want to fly, and they have to pick an airline (which tend to be priced around the same amount, except for specific routes), what are they going to think when they see the name United come up? They'll think about really the only thing they know about United, which is they smash people's faces and throw them overboard.

<comment><USER6> One thing is for sure: they could have easily gotten somebody to get off the plane if they offered $1000 for waiting for the next flight, and their company lost more than that money, so it won't worth to be doing this again for any airline.

I'm sure this has happened a lot of times in the past though, the only difference now is that somebody could record it, because of easily accessible smartphones.</comment></comment></comment>


How to get Spork working Now on Rails 3, Rspec 2 and Cucumber - <AUTHOR> http://chrismdp.github.com/2010/11/getting-spork-working-now-on-rails-3-rspec-2-and-cucumber/

<comment><USER2> Thanks for this guide.

I'm following the Ruby on Rails Tutorial book by Michael Hartl and chapter 3 covers tests:

<http://railstutorial.org/chapters/static-pages#sec:TDD>

I was having difficulty getting Spork configured, so this information is great.

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem! Do let me know how you get on setting it up, and if you run into any project-specific problems.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! That's one of the things I'm loving about the RoR community, all the nice, helpful people. :-)</comment></comment></comment>


What is the electrical principle behind LightKeeper Pro? - <AUTHOR> I saw an ad on TV for LightKeeper Pro today. LightKeeper Pro apparently is a tool that allows the user to fix broken Christmas Tree light strings.  Here, you can watch how it works:
https://lightkeeperpro.com/instructional-videos/ You'll notice that the way it works is that you unplug a bulb (any bulb) from your broken/one-bulb shorted set.  You plug in your set to Wall AC.  Then you plug in LightKeeper Pro into the socket for the bulb you just removed.  You pull the trigger (up to 30 times), now the lights come on (with the broken bulb showing itself because it's not on).  How is this working? You see, in Electrical Engineering 101, if you've got a short in the circuit (which you do if your in-series set of Christmas Tree lights is not working), then the whole set shouldn't work.  What LightKeeper Pro seems to do then (I'm guessing), is to use a High-Voltage pulse to somehow get current to conduct THROUGH the non-functioning light. The non-functioning light is, after all (in addition to being an incandescent bulb) a Vacuum Tube, and in theory, if you put enough High Voltage through the Vacuum Tube, it will conduct current through it... is that's what's happening here?  Is that the secret?  If it is, then I don't really have a question -- problem solved... although it's pretty damning evidence that Electrical Engineering 101 / Electronics 101 -- both books and courses -- are well, <i>sort of wrong</i> with what they're saying about short circuits... <comment><USER2> For incandescent bulbs it will use the high voltage to arc inside the blown bulb and hopefully melt the filament back together - the bulb still won't light up but at the very least it will pass current through and allow the other ones to light up again.

This only works for "dumb" lights that are just bulbs connected together in series. Anything else like blinking lights or LEDs will die right away if plugged into this.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an interesting topic with the season. Maybe the high-voltage pulse severs the partially failing connection? I think it's common for community questions to have Ask HN: in the title...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Humble apologies, did not remember...</comment></comment>


Facebook goes ARM with Calxeda - <AUTHOR> http://semiaccurate.com/2013/01/16/facebook-goes-arm-with-calxeda-like-semiaccurate-reported-2-years-ago/

<comment><USER2> This article is a little misleading in that it seems to indicate that FB will trash Xeon servers and drop in ARM processors. Current ARM processors (SOC and standalone silicon) have poor data throughput. You can mask this using media accelerators, e.g. decode x264 video in the GPU so you have smooth playback while saving some data bandwidth. ARMv8 (allegedly sampling in 2014-2015) will double the AHB/CoreLink width and instruction size to 64 bits, but we are not there yet. What is much more likely is that they will incorporate specialized hardware using FPGA/ASIC and use ARM cores as supervisory modules. That way, they can use a general purpose OS and use ARM tools to develop for the supervisor module, and still get the data throughput of the custom controller. This is how data processing is already done on 1080/2k/4k video streams. Xilinx and likely Altera already provide FPGAs with hard ARM cores (in addition to IP for soft cores) which makes it very easy to roll your own data controller with an ARM core managing it. Makes a lot more sense for FB to go this route for custom NAS boxes, possibly network switch/router hardware to follow in Google's path.

<comment><USER3> I didn't get the impression at all that Facebook was "dumping" Xeon, merely that they were adding ARM.

Throughput is not really relevant. Throughput per unit power is better. ARM manufacturers have been optimizing for power consumption and unit cost for a long time, Intel has been optimizing for throughput and speed for a long time. Both sides are aiming for the same target, from different angles. A "low power" Xeon might be 40W for four cores, but the typical range is 60W - 140W. Calxeda sells a sixteen-core, 20W ARM board. By these numbers, Xeon needs to have 8x throughput of the ARM to beat it in throughput per watt.

Now, this is not entirely unreasonable. I've done benchmarking of my Core i5 against my Atom on an audio sample rate conversion library I wrote, and the Core i5 has 6-7x the throughput of the Atom. So, I would believe you if you said that a Xeon core is more than 8x as fast as an ARM core, and therefore the throughput per watt is better. This is all guessing, based on one benchmark I did for a library I wrote. I'm sure that Facebook has done some experiments with the applications they'll actually be running on the ARM.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that these ARM computers will be centered around specialized hardware, Calxeda's website only mentions general-purpose hardware built around ARM cores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As far as I can work out from the details released so far, this is basically a standard backplane for "blade" (or microserver as they are now known) servers, based on PCIe x8 so it is simple and cheap, which just happens to be more of less what Calxeda was using anyway.

I can't work out yet if there is a standard way of attaching RAM as well I don;t think so (yet).

It has taken an open source project to make blade servers standardised by the look of it, should make the whole ecosystem much cheaper than the proprietary systems.

It is not actually clear if Facebook has committed to ARM, although it would not surprise me if they use some. But they have the option.

<comment><USER5> Each microserver has SO-DIMM slots for RAM.

Although this project is vaguely similar to blades, it isn't hot-swap, it can't hold 2S/4S servers, and it's not clear how I/O consolidation will work. So it's pretty different from existing blades.

<comment><USER4> Hot swap would not be that hard to add to pcie but I don't think they care. Sure there is ram per soc but the discussion implied they wanted to break it up more longer term...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminded me of James Hamilton's blog post [1], about 48 Atom servers in 3U, or 624 servers into a standard 42U rack [2]. Shows you where the industry is headed.

[1] [http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2012/12/11/MicroserverMarke...](http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2012/12/11/MicroserverMarketHeatsUpIntelAtomS1200CentertonAnnouncement.aspx)

[2] [http://www.quantaqct.com/en/01_product/02_detail.php?mid=27&...](http://www.quantaqct.com/en/01_product/02_detail.php?mid=27&sid=155&id=156&qs=94)

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting news, but very poorly written article.

</comment><comment><USER8> I hope there could be some ARM based cheap host service soon. some thing like linode, but on an ARM, not on virtual machine.

<comment><USER5> What would be the advantage of such a service?

<comment><USER3> Compared with virtualization, it would be more secure. If a dedicated ARM (or Atom) microserver were competitive with mid-range VPS, people would buy it.

Virtualization is "leaky", there are esoteric attacks against other guests on the same host that allow attackers to obtain encryption keys. Last time I checked, the mitigation strategy was to move to dedicated hardware.

I doubt dedicated microservers will be competetive with VPS for a while yet because you can't oversell them.

<comment><USER9> Dedicated Intel Atom hardware is already competitive with VPS services, for example you can see the Kimsufi stuff from OVH

<https://www.ovh.co.uk/dedicated_servers/kimsufi.xml>

Hosted in the USA or France, prices from £8.99 a month ($12?) for an Atom server with 2GB of RAM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> related post <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5071583></comment>


When did letting your kids walk home alone become a crime? - <AUTHOR> http://grist.org/cities/when-did-letting-your-kids-walk-home-alone-become-a-crime

<comment><USER2> Not yet, though Montgomery County does seem to be making the Meittiv's life more complicated than it should be.</comment>


Show HN: LHTML – local, portable webapps - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/iffy/lhtml#lhtml- <comment><AUTHOR> I should also highlight this important issue about what to name this thing: [https://github.com/iffy/lhtml/issues/2](https://github.com/iffy/lhtml/issues/2)

</comment><comment><USER2> If you like this kind of thing:

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML_Application)

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Compiled_HTML_Help](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Compiled_HTML_Help)

\- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHTML](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MHTML)

<comment><USER3> I always thought CHM was a great format, and surprised it didn't take off... though a more generic .zip (with another extension) where 'index.html' as the start page would be good too.

<comment><USER4> There's EPUB, though it requires some metadata files along with the HTML.

<comment><USER5> The EPUB spec is a pain. It's both overly simple, and overly complicated, and I'm not aware of a single reader that is completely compliant.

For example, JS and XHRs are in the spec, but few readers allow them, for very good practical reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great idea. If people can pass Excel spreadsheets and Word documents back and forth through email, why can't they pass custom form apps made of pure HTML and JS?

With this document format we're almost leaving the 90's and entering the 00's.

Now go get your friends and family to install the viewer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I had the same thoughts, though I chuckled when I read:

> we're almost leaving the 90's and entering the 00's.

Because I feel the opposite: computers were first terminals attached to mainframes, then in the 90s the pendulum swung to personal computers free from the mainframe. In the 00s we swung back to the "cloud" (terminals dependent on the central computer) and LHTML feels like the pendulum swinging back to computers being able to run without the mainframe/cloud.

<comment><USER6> Yes, you are right, but I didn't thought in these terms.

I was thinking that while web technology evolved so much in the last years, people would still pass around documents based on formats from the 90's (Word and Excel).

I've just written "web technology" up there, but that is wrong, and I think LHTML shouldn't use the word "web" in its copy. What we have is "browser technology", "html+javascript renderers", anything like that. That is the technology that evolved. "Web" is a word that designates different things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. +1'd</comment>


Please, My Digital Archive. It's Very Sick - <AUTHOR> https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/please-my-digital-archive-its-very-sick <comment><USER2> This is very sad, but other than donating to the Internet Archive what can we do? Feels like we'll know more about certain periods of the Byzantine Empire than 1996 online culture in the near future.

<comment><USER3> It's just life. Society evolved to make everything a matter of "consume and move on to the next thing". Tbh I doubt anyone care about 99.99% of things that have ever been posted on internet, it's juste like paintings, books, movies, music, or any other medium, most of it disappear, some pieces stay forever, the world move on.

It's nice to dive in the past from time to time but I don't need a 1:1 archive on 1996 online culture. There is so much low quality content dumped every second you'd be hard pressed to archive everything, youtube alone is hundreds of hours of video uploaded every minute, 24/7/365 for years.

Weirdly enough the only pics left from my childhood aren't digital, they're from a 1980s film slr (that I still use to this day).

<comment><USER4> I think this is the real danger, survival of personal data.

Digital media is way more vulnerable if you don't know how to take care of it (taking care of physical photos is pretty straightforward in comparison). There's going to be a lot of people ignorant of the fact that media like CDs or even hard drives degrade, that lose their phones and the pictures in it without a backup, etc. whose memories will be wiped away.

In my country for example, there used to be a fb clone that was all the rage back when I was a teenager (since fb wasn't translated to our local language yet back then). The company pivoted and its social media site went offline after a few years, and many many people lost memories that were exclusively kept there - I met the CEO in a conference a few months ago and he mentioned that he's off social media entirely because of the amount of people constantly contacting him to get their photos back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Digital archives and privacy protection are pretty much at odds with one- another.

Have you looked in an old paper archive? Hundreds of personal letters from Isaac Newton or Benjamin Franklin. They talk about all kinds of private matters, yet are very important for historical research.

Would you be happy with a future digital archive to have all your private chat messages to other people?

<comment><USER6> Once I'm dead, I won't care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh, I can empathise with this .. I had 10 years of self-hosted blog postings that I backed up daily - or so I thought. When I came to try and transfer the database tables I found I'd actually just backed up the definitions, none of the actual data. I'm _still_ kicking myself for that one.

<comment><USER8> Have you given the Wayback Machine a try?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Oh, the impermanence!"</comment>


The Next eBay - <AUTHOR> http://beginwithyou.org/2010/11/03/the-next-ebay/ http://beginwithyou.org/2010/11/03/the-next-ebay/
Disclaimer: this is my site, sorry for the shameless plug.
Like you, I have hundreds of ideas just like this one that are eating me up inside.  This is beyond the scope of what I can do myself, so I decided to just throw it out there with the hope that it comes into existence in two or three years, because I could really use it.
Technical issues like databases, servers and networking are trivialities.  The real work requires large warehouses and staff in every major city, so it's really beyond the scope of what geeks usually do, and falls into the realm of venture capital.  Somebody will make a killing.
Dunno if you have ever been to this site, but I think of startups about once a week, like he thinks of inventions:
http://iotd.patrickandrews.com/
When I read Hacker News, I can't help but think that the intellectual capital here is not just worth millions or billions, but trillions of dollars.  You will all be the pillars of industry someday.
I have another idea like this, but I've decided that it's within the scope of what I can do locally.  I guess if you live in Boise, drop me a note haha.
I'm massively in credit card debt and work at a job that pays the bills but withers the soul.  There's nothing quite like acute suffering to focus creativity.
Unrealized potential is the challenge of our generation. <comment><AUTHOR> <http://beginwithyou.org/2010/11/03/the-next-ebay/>

Disclaimer: this is my site, sorry for the shameless plug.

Like you, I have hundreds of ideas just like this one that are eating me up inside. This is beyond the scope of what I can do myself, so I decided to just throw it out there with the hope that it comes into existence in two or three years, because I could really use it.

Technical issues like databases, servers and networking are trivialities. The real work requires large warehouses and staff in every major city, so it's really beyond the scope of what geeks usually do, and falls into the realm of venture capital. Somebody will make a killing.

Dunno if you have ever been to this site, but I think of startups about once a week, like he thinks of inventions:

<http://iotd.patrickandrews.com/>

When I read Hacker News, I can't help but think that the intellectual capital here is not just worth millions or billions, but trillions of dollars. You will all be the pillars of industry someday.

I have another idea like this, but I've decided that it's within the scope of what I can do locally. I guess if you live in Boise, drop me a note haha.

I'm massively in credit card debt and work at a job that pays the bills but withers the soul. There's nothing quite like acute suffering to focus creativity.

Unrealized potential is the challenge of our generation.</comment>


Kubernetes Has a Ways to Go to Scale Like Google, Mesos - <AUTHOR> http://www.theplatform.net/2015/09/15/kubernetes-has-a-ways-to-go-to-scale-like-google-mesos/ <comment><USER2> > Mesos has been simulated to scale to 50,000 nodes, although it is not clear > how far scale has been pushed in production environments

Apple are "many thousands"[0] to provide Siri, and Twitter use it for pretty much everything, though I can't remember any numbers (15000 springs to mind? But mesoscon was all a bit of a blur now)

[0]: [https://mesosphere.com/blog/2015/04/23/apple-details-j-a- r-v...](https://mesosphere.com/blog/2015/04/23/apple-details-j-a-r-v-i-s-the- mesos-framework-that-runs-siri/)

<comment><USER3> Twitter has 10k+ node Mesos clusters in production right now. At MesosCon, Apple's comments were that they run _the_ biggest Mesos cluster in the world, not "one of the biggest". That would infer it is at least bigger than Twitter's 10k node cluster.

Now a bit of fact checking on the very dubious claims this post pretends are facts which are not.

Indeed, Mesos does scale, but one thing that is often important to remember is that many frameworks do not actually scale to this many nodes. Twitter has battle tested Aurora at scale and Apple's Jarvis (not open source sadly) scheduler also run at scale.

This article is clearly not written by an author that cares about writing facts. It states that Mesos uses etcd, which is simply not true. Mesos uses Zookeeper for coordination and locking / leader election although there is a ticket for making this aspect of Mesos pluggable:

[https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MESOS-1806](https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MESOS-1806)

Mesos can't run LXC as there are native Docker and Mesos containerizers. There is work on the AppC and Rkt containerizers, to be merged into the main Mesos Containerizer, but that is ongoing.

Also note that while Mesos has only been simulated on 50k nodes, at MesosCon 2015, Verizon did a demo of starting 50k containers running actual web services on 1k physical machines in about 70ish seconds. It was pretty impressive. That wasn't theoretical, they actually demonstrated it on stage and the demo gods showed mercy on them.

Mesos and Kubernetes are both great projects. I see both projects working together to build the platforms of tomorrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article does seem unnecessarily negative...

Here's a quick look at some work we've been doing with 1000 node clusters of kubernetes:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bHUsBhPL20](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bHUsBhPL20)

</comment><comment><USER5> > As the first major open source code ever donated by Google to the world

Uhh... what?

<comment><USER6> Check out the comments. The author isn't exactly careful with his claims.

One commenter says:

> "the Kubernetes team is looking to reimplement its JSON parser, which is > also written in Go, in some other language." > Did they say that? I was > under the impression they just wanted to use an alternative parser to avoid > the reflection that > the std lib json parser uses.

To which his response is: > No, I was just speculating way beyond my pay grade. I have put in a call to ask some questions, but sometimes Google talks, and sometimes it doesn't.</comment></comment>


Why Mark Cuban opposes net neutrality: 'I want there to be fast lanes' - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/11/24/why-mark-cuban-opposes-net-neutrality-i-want-there-to-be-fast-lanes/ <comment><USER2> If there is competition to the physical line access, then it might make sense. But in most of USA, there is no competition for that (generally coax) line. I only have comcast and can't choose between them and some other ISP's business rules.</comment>


Lead Gen Spam - <AUTHOR> For a long time I dealt with lead-gen form spam.
You put up a "contact" form, a bot tries to contact you.
Now I'm getting a new time of spam:
A bot is filling in my personal contact information into OTHER companies forms. I then get calls from those companies. This is mostly universities, but also a roofing company a 1000 miles away, etc.
What's the play here? I assume companies are paying for leads, or someone is astro-turfing their own lead-gen mechanism? <comment><USER2> Or it's a form of cyber bullying.</comment>


Mathematical software wish list - <AUTHOR> http://mathoverflow.net/q/213266/7580 <comment><USER2> The coolest piece of mathematical software I've come across in the last few years is Chebfun, [http://www.chebfun.org](http://www.chebfun.org)

Basic idea is to represent functions by high-degree polynomials which approximate them to near machine precision. After each operation, any terms which contribute at less than about 10^-15 are dropped, in the same way as bits get dropped after a standard floating point operation. This keeps the degree of the polynomial from growing exponentially.

The Chebfun team has found or invented a number of efficient algorithms for interacting with such polynomials, which make it practical to find roots, take integrals and derivatives, solve differential equations, combine multiple functions in various ways, and so on.

I think it must be the largest Matlab library anyone has yet built, and while I'm not the biggest fan of Matlab, they've done a great job integrating with the environment. Turns out Matlab has a bunch of object oriented features with operator and function overloading, so Chebfun can adopt most of the operators and functions for operating on regular Matlab arrays and overload them to work on their continuous function approximations. This makes for very clean and readable code for their users, though the internals get pretty complex.

Also recommended is Trefethen's book Approximation Theory and Approximation Practice, which explains the mathematical ideas underlying the library. First 6 chapters are freely available online: [http://www.chebfun.org/ATAP/](http://www.chebfun.org/ATAP/)

<comment><USER3> I greatly admire Trefethen's writing. I worry that there must be some really important aspects of numerical analysis that I ignore, simply because he hasn't written about them and so I understand them less well.

<comment><USER2> +++

The clear exposition seems to have rubbed off on his whole Chebfun team at Oxford; all their papers are very readable. [http://www.chebfun.org/publications/](http://www.chebfun.org/publications/)

I've also been reading lots of other papers in the field recently, and there's at least a 2–3x slowdown and lots of extra mental effort when I try to read some other papers (though to be fair many other researchers are not native English speakers).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This question and answers are gold! The answer with LaTex ([http://mathoverflow.net/a/213268/42557](http://mathoverflow.net/a/213268/42557)) and the diametrically opposed comments to it illustrate problems with Tex.

One thing I didn't see mentioned is better collaborative tools (true for any research but doubly true here due to difficulties with notation, etc.). Note the quick progression of results triggered by Tao's polymath blog ([http://polymathprojects.org/](http://polymathprojects.org/)) but I find the current Wordpress format not very suitable for search and browsing.

<comment><USER5> (I'm the founder of SageMath.) SageMathCloud ([https://cloud.sagemath.com](https://cloud.sagemath.com)) is a highly collaborative online web application for working with Sage, R, Python, IPython, LaTeX, etc that I've been working extremely hard on this for almost 3 years. We'll have a major new release this week with much new polish and functionality (the testing server is at [https://web0.sagemath.com](https://web0.sagemath.com)). Everything is 100% open source. [https://github.com/sagemathinc/smc](https://github.com/sagemathinc/smc)

<comment><USER6> Jim Simons, after retiring from Renaissance Technologies with a cool 15 billion, has spent the last 10 years giving grants to people in the pure sciences. He's a true academic at heart -- a BS from MIT in Math, PhD from Berkeley which yielded a whole new field (heh) of something to do with Riemannian manifolds that's way beyond my ability to grok but apparently it's on par with "oh yeah I invented abstract algebra (a la Emmy Noether)", worked at Princeton for the NSA cracking Cold War codes during Vietnam but got fired because he wanted to do his own recreational mathematics instead. Anyways, he's very fond of academics and gives MacArthur-esque grants, especially to people who want to change the way mathematics is taught. Approach his fund. I'm 100% sure he'll give you a grant on the spot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was surprised there weren't any "ambitious" wishes. Most, if not all, of the answers seem in response to practicality issues. Nothing along the terms of ML for math theorems or an accessible proof library for computers.

<comment><USER8> Scroll down: "I'd like to have on a usb key a user friendly software that could parse a math article to check the proofs in it without having to learn how to use stuff like Coq and highlight the possible gaps. But this may sound unrealistic, at least for now."

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is great. I would love to see these kinds of discussions across different communities/lines-of-work! I had hoped shouldexist, and similar attempts to collect this kind of information, would get there; but none seem to survive.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there a similar thread for software development?

I'm not sure what keywords to google. Reply with links if you got any.

Thanks</comment>


IPad share of tablet OS market falls below 50% - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/software/256292/ipad-share-tablet-os-market-falls-below-50

<comment><USER2> Nice list of sources on this article, yeesh.</comment>


Deploying Clojure websites - <AUTHOR> http://briancarper.net/blog/deploying-clojure-websites <comment><USER2> Why use apache in front of jetty when jetty is a decent server for serving binary data (unlike older versions of tomcat).

Why not just enable jettys built-in automatic file-update-deploy stuff, and just use git to push the data and deploy that way?

I've used .war files and tomcat which is dead simple to deploy with the downside that there's no way to start swank-server (unless maybe disabling the security manager). Another downside is that .war files tend to be rather big.

Why use screen + emacs? Just recompiling things in emacs might probably introduce weird bugs as code is not removed from the system when it is removed from a source file. Seems a bit tough to manually go through all the source files in the right order and recompile them. It'd be easier IMHO to just start a swank server with every jetty started.

<comment><USER3> Under the described setup, you don't have to recompile anything. Using the REPL, you can redefine functions one at a time, without ever taking down the server. For a simple site, I think this trumps ease of deployment.

<comment><USER2> my point is that you can't remove stuff by compiling stuff from emacs to the repl, just add.

the repl is very nice for development, but not as a consistent deployment tool, imho.

<comment><USER4> Clojure does allow you to remove symbol mappings from a namespace. The only problem with deploying via the REPL is that there isn't a function for atomically deploying a namespace, or set of namespaces. I suspect one would have to use a global lock to pause all request-handling threads for the second or so Clojure needs to teardown and reload all its libraries.

<comment><USER2> Looking into this, you mean using (use 'mynamespace :reload) instead of C-c C-k - that is a good idea!

It should be trivial to write a ring middleware to reload everything between every request (for a railsy development environment) maybe a version for production use that checks all files for changes every 1 minute or so.

<comment><USER4> I think it's a touch trickier than that. As far as I'm aware, a reload cannot remove namespace mappings; it can just add new ones and overwrite existing ones. So with continual reloads you might find yourself with old deprecated functions cluttering up your namespace.

Another problem is that Clojure loads up namespaces sequentially, rather than atomically. So you might end up with an a new version of one function calling the old version of another.

In order for your reloading middleware to be robust, I suspect you'd have to (1) wait for any existing request-handling threads to finish, (2) suspend any new request-handling threads, (3) reload your namespaces, (4) resume any suspended request threads.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is it legal to repost job posts on open/closed FB groups to other channels? - <AUTHOR> I want to use job posts posted on closed/open FB groups, posting them on a single site where people can find them easily. Is it legal to use content generated by others? Who owns the copyright? <comment><USER2> U.S. copyright law says that whoever created the content owns the copyright by default (unless it's a "work for hire", in which case the company who paid the employee to create the content owns the copyright). Presumably, Facebook's terms of service grant Facebook a license to display the content, but the creator still retains the copyright. Something that's posted on Facebook does _not_ enter into the public domain.

Thus, unless you have been granted a license to use that content by the copyright holder, you have no legal right to copy it to your own web site.

Companies have valid reasons for wanting to control where their ads are posted:

\- They don't want to be overwhelmed by inquiries from unqualified applicants.

\- They want to be able to remove the ad when the job has been filled.

\- They want to protect their brand by posting their jobs on sites that are well-known and trusted.

You're not doing these companies a favor by re-posting their job ads without their consent.

So you can expect the companies to file DMCA takedown notices against your web site (or to threaten you personally with legal action) if they find out that their ads have appeared on your site.

And by copying FB's content to your own site, you're also presumably violating FB's terms of service, and could have your access to FB revoked.</comment>


Limor "ladyada" Fried was kicked off Facebook and no one will tell her why - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2017/10/18/high-handedness-scales.html <comment><USER2> I've been locked out of Facebook for two years since my account was hacked and "I wouldn't say I've been missing it, Bob!"

For those who don't get the reference: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXsIfpnThFA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXsIfpnThFA)

</comment><comment><USER3> I deactivated Facebook a few months ago and realized my email was tied to Facebook on Kickstarter. Facebook helpfully reactivated my account when I logged in, I unlinked it from Facebook, then deactivated again. It's crazy that I'm worried about deleting my Facebook because I'm not sure if something similar will crop up in the future and lock me out of some website (or I'd have to effectively get a new email address).</comment>


Tomorrow is Tech Open Day with Sarah Lacy. Live in Lagos, Nigeria - <AUTHOR> http://techopenday.eventbrite.com/

<comment><USER2> I have somewhat mixed feelings about Sarah Lacy (who I'll be seeing myself in a few days at the Big Omaha conference). I say "somewhat" mixed as there's a still small part of me that wants to continue to give her a chance rather than writing her off completely, hoping that she'll start doing better research and passing on the opportunities to turn out another hype piece.

The other part is tired of choking down the requisite salt shaker to read her articles or watch her speak.

<comment><USER3> you can hold your breath in too along with that hope and yet in about 4 minutes be gasping for breath..it will not happen in this century or ever

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really hope the tech industry starts taking off in Nigeria, because there seems to be quite a bit of misapplied computer expertise there.

<comment><USER5> Same here... although the "misapplied computer expertise" stigma would be hard to shake off when launching something like cashenvoy.com</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Microkernel vs Monolithic Kernel in a Mobile Context? - <AUTHOR> The business press is writing that QNX and its microkernel architecture is a huge win for RIMM's mobile strategy, allowing RIMM to supply a cut-down OS for low-powered devices and a fully-featured one for tablets: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/86934/20101130/research-in-motion-jefferies-rim-blackberry-qnx-os-harman-kardon-unix-linux-android-playbook-3g-veri.htm<p>I know the Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate on micro vs monolithic kernels has been going for some time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_debate). Will QNX be the commercial evidence that microkernels are superior to monolithic kernels (considering the constraints in current mobile hardware), or is the business press overplaying the kernel architecture when there are other reasons for QNX's potential success in this space? <comment><USER2> Yeah, this really has nothing to do with microkernels. They're great for safety-critical reliability and hard real time, but those aspects don't matter for phones.</comment>


Ask YC: Is it never too early to invite press coverage for a startup? - <AUTHOR>

We're launching our private alpha next week, and I've been in touch with journalists and bloggers for a while now. Of course, everyone wants 'an early look', but is it ever too early for press? We believe in releasing early and releasing often, but am worried about showing a site that's too raw to a prominent blogger/journalist. First impressions count for a lot. What were your experiences like? <comment><USER2> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana>

</comment><comment><USER3> Again with the Wil Shipley:

"Don't announce until it can be downloaded. Don't let it be downloaded until it can be bought."

His argument is actually a bit more subtle than that, and since you're in a similar position I'd recommend listening to his actual C[4] presentation instead of just this isolated quote.

But it boils down to: Yes, you can get the PR out of sync with the product. Yes, it can cost you sales. Yes, it can even tank your company. Go google "Joel Spolsky Marimba Phenomenon": <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/11/02.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> If you can deliver a demo and pitch that gets people excited you're probably in good enough shape for the press. Try it out on some non-press people first. Make sure you get honest feedback and have good answers to the tough questions.

</comment><comment><USER5> Press releases are best used when you have something ready for the masses to use. If what you have is ready for its beta then I would go ahead and get journalists involved, but if it's not ready for the average user, then I would hold off.

Of course if you can use the press to build public anticipation then it would be worth it. Just be careful not to let anything break.</comment>


What can you do with money? - <AUTHOR> Question to the successful guys amongst you: Did you find out what to do with the Money?
I run a successful startup. I dont make a fortune, but all of a sudden I have a lot more money then ever before. And guess what - I have not clue what to do with it.
Today, I read this:
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/07/27/DIME.TMP
And there is a sentence: "The person who sold the dime is Oakland businessman Daniel Rosenthal, who was unavailable for comment, perhaps because a person newly in possession of $1.9 million has got better things to do than answer a lot of questions."
I really would like to know: What are these "better things"?
What are those better things I could do then chillin on my sofa and reading ycombinator and stuff? <comment><USER2> Many startup founders are people who like to make things. So often the kind of work they do after they have the freedom to do what they they want is to make things where they're not constrained by the need to make money.

Oddly enough, YC itself is an example. We may make money eventually, but our main motive for doing it was that it was a cool idea.

<comment><USER3> If I remember correctly you once hinted you had more to say about the benefits of having a decent supply of capital, but the generally hostile attitude people had to talk of success made you reluctant to share. I'm sure plenty of news.YCer's who'd like to know a bit more about life post liquidity event.

Is it hard to be motivated when you know that low risk investments could keep you comfortable? Though I'm sure the pleasure of a fancy car wears off, what about a beautiful home or travel etc? Is there life long satisfaction from the achievement (ie not the money but the job well done)?

<comment><USER2> From what I've seen, getting rich doesn't seem to change most people's level of motivation much. The people who were driven before tend to stay driven.

Getting rich can be a danger to people who aren't very driven. But you don't have to worry about that problem if you're starting a startup. If you're not driven, it's unlikely your startup will make you rich.

<comment><USER4> > From what I've seen, getting rich doesn't seem to change most people's level > of motivation much.

Didn't you write two Lisp books and start Viaweb before you got rich? Would you say you and your co-founders were just as motivated afterward?

As I understand it, the Zenter people darn near killed themselves leading up to the Google acquisition. Realistically, I wouldn't see them continuing at that breakneck pace afterward.

After the Apple II disk drive, Woz took it easy -- _really_ easy. He doesn't even walk anymore, he Segways!

Taking it easy seems to be the norm. The exceptions to this get mega-rich, like Jobs and Gates. I used to wonder why Gates didn't just take his billions and retire somewhere; reading a biography makes it clear that his life IS Microsoft, including his social circle. It's his whole identity; it's not a job. He didn't do it so he could get rich and do something else; he did it because it's the thing he wanted to do the most _anyway_! And of course Jobs has always been on a transcendental mission to change humanity via consumer technology.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I'd say in all three of our cases we're just as motivated as before we got rich.

The Zenters worked super hard more because they had a deadline than because they had no money. I'm just as frazzled before deadlines. I worked 16 hour days for about a month straight to get _Hackers & Painters_ in by the deadline.

<comment><USER5> What was the deadline?

<comment><USER2> Demo Day. Like all YC-funded startups they had to demo to investors after 10 weeks. They worked particularly hard because they had nearly zero written when they arrived in January. The two of them wrote 40k LOC in 10 weeks.

<comment><USER4> Heck, with KLOC numbers like that, Google was lucky to avoid an all-out bidding war with IBM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's no requirement that you have to immediately spend lots of money just because you have it. It's a very normal reaction to not know what to do with a large amount of extra dough. You want to avoid the consumerist trap of retail therapy -- buying _things_ to make you happy, which wears off 5 minutes later. Go ahead and hold on to what you've got and keep on doing what you're doing to make more -- you'll figure out good applications for money over time.

This TED talk says that the key to fulfillment is to grow, so you have more to contribute to others: <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5625548517080716077>

</comment><comment><USER6> "If I had a million dollars I'd do 2 chicks at the same time!"

Seriously, I don't see the issue. Do you have any friends? If you're lacking in the friends department then don't read any further and work on companionship as your number one goal. I find a lot of joy organizing events, outings or exciting weekends for my friends. Make sure the trip has a baseline that everyone can afford and then maybe cover a tab or two while you're out. Ideas don't have to be grandiose they are just excuses to hang out and enjoy life together. I thought of a few things I enjoy and listed them below. Have fun planning these events on your own. Research destinations fully and be prepared to promote your trips so others will join you! Its time consuming (and fun) to figure out the 'best' places to go. Does the outing require that you buy any gear? Research the equipment and then buy it!

Go Camping

Hiking

Deep Sea fishing

Host a wine party / plan a trip to a winery

Trip to another City for the Weekend

Trip to another Country

Get a boat

Attend a music festival (Jazz Fest for example)

Take up a sport like Biking (Road or Mountain)

Hopefully this helps you out somewhat. If you wish to be as happy as me, I'll require $5 to share 'the secret'.

Enjoy :)

</comment><comment><USER7> You make software?

If yes, build/help to make open source (and free) software better and more "commercial" looking so open source+free software can be used widely.

Basically be a disruptor.

Make the next Perforce (either support git or make a new one).

Make the next IDE (a complete one like Visual Studio) for Python so that Python can become the main language for enterprise.

One example of disruptor in this area that is starting to rise is Ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER8> <http://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Invest some and put the rest to good use to make sure you contribute to making the world a better place: research to find cures, charity to help those in need, or whatever good cause you believe in.

<comment><USER10> I'm a little bit shocked that after 53 comments only one person mentioned philanthropy (and he was shot down in the first reply). Just because picking the right charities and projects is not "easy" does not mean it's not worth doing. Jeez people.

<comment><USER11> I for one don't like the idea that the only way to "give something back" is to do philanthropy. Any gain in happiness and productivity is a good thing. If you have had success, continuing to be successful probably means giving people both. Keep working.

An example of comparative advantage: it doesn't make sense for a $500/hr lawyer to do pro-bono work for the poor. It would make more sense to work for that hour and use the income to fund 10 $50/hr lawyers. The benefit would be much higher for those in need.

So my point is that charity isn't necessarily the best way to give back to society.

<comment><USER10> So you're essentially suggesting deferred philanthropy. I totally agree with that philosophy. This is why I'm also doing a startup and not joining the peace corp. But, once you've "made it" and have more money than you know what to do with (the question at hand), I think it's reasonable to consider Philantropy and not just "fun" stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What can you do with freedom?

<comment><USER13> I agree with this sentiment. In my opinion, the best thing money can buy is freedom. As such, the first and foremost thing you want to do is protect this freedom. That is, make sure your money level isn't going to go below certain thresholds that impact your freedom. Of course, this involves investing, diversification, insurance, not spending too much, etc.

After that, it really is not what can you do with freedom, but what do you want to do with your freedom? For me, at least at the moment, I like to work on Internet startup ideas and help people (as best I can) who are doing the same. For you, maybe it is something different, perhaps along the lines of some of the other comments.

Finally, I think your situation just lets you slow down a bit. That is not to say you have to have less motivation, but just that you don't have to run at a million miles an hour all the time and hit potential burn out periods. You now have the opportunity to take things at a comfortable pace. And that can be a good thing for innovation because you can read more disparate things, try different projects, and even work on may projects at the same time.

<comment><USER14> You know what I would do if I had a million dollars? I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds and then take the other half over to my friend Asadulah who works in securities...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Figure out what you want to have, do and be. The have part is easy, most people can work that out on their own. What do you want to do? Do you want to learn something new (foreign language, to tango, a new programming language, etc)? Do you want to do something physical (run a marathon, achieve weight lifting goals, swim the English channel,etc). Do you want to be a philanthropist? Do you want to run a non-profit organization? Figure out 3-5 things you want to do.

Be is harder IMO. Do you want to be a husband? father? grand father (you need help on this one obvious)? Do you want to a champion whatever? These are the questions I would ask myself. With the answers, you can start taking concrete steps.

</comment><comment><USER16> Purchase an your own personal airplane and realize just how freaking cool it is that a trip from wherever you are to 3 states away is just 3 hours away, no airport hassles & wait times included. It makes the world feel a lot more closer. All of a sudden, a trip to LA from Seattle is just like a trip from LA to Fresno. Except your flying, in an airplane , inside a 180 degree view angle canopy.

Purchase time with your money in hiring other people to do the chores in your work & life.

(This may not apply for you) Purchasing real estate close to your work, reducing commute times to 10 minutes from maybe the hour or two you have already.

</comment><comment><USER17> Have fun!! Invest in yourself. Go back to school and major in something that you were slightly curious about but never got around to learning -- I'm sure there'll be a startup idea buried there somewhere...

<comment><AUTHOR> I dont have the time. I run a company.

And besides that... school??? Sitting on my ass, listening to someone sounds not like a lot of fun to me.

<comment><USER18> For a couple of the suggestions you've responded that you don't have the time. Add a constraint to your question--how much time do you have

<comment><AUTHOR> Time where im not in the office?

Most evenings and weekends.

Now for example :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> With enough money, you could stage a coup and take over Equatorial Guinea. It's ripe for the takeover, just take care not to fuck it up like Margaret Thatcher's son did.

</comment><comment><USER20> Go somewhere tropical. And hire someone to do your laundry.

</comment><comment><USER21> If you are asking for things to do,then it is clear that you are now unchallenged by your company. By some land near the city and staret building a house. I personaly like prefabs that you can put together.Then stuff that bad boy with books from the earliest centuries to the latest "the world is flat". Read about topics other than "javascript". Subscribe to newspapers. I like FT,NYT,WSJ,USAtoday and some magazines like DWELL.

</comment><comment><USER11> A very comfortable yearly income is $100K-$200K. Immediately put the necessary base in an interest bearing account (~5%) to earn your comfy yearly income off the interest. $200K/0.05 = $4M.

Then you'd really never need to work again, and you can focus on making interesting things.

There is plenty of life automation that you can do. Laundry, grocery delivery, maid services, restaurants, financial planner.

You can easily spend $1M on travel for months, building a dream house, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> You have done those things?

<comment><USER11> HA!

I don't have $4M to put in the bank. But I do have a comfortable income. My goal would be to work on interesting problems without needing a paycheck.

Things like financial planners, grocery delivery, and cleaning services are all excellent value for the amount of time they save.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Money is overrated. If you aren't happy without it, you won't be happy with it. Just imo.

<comment><USER2> There is something to that, but for most people the curve of happiness to money is not simply flat. For most there are sharp steps at have-enough-to-eat and don't-have-to-work-anymore, among others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Invest in foreign assets, you don't want all of your wealth to be in US dollars.

<comment><USER23> Makes perfect sense now.With dollar constantly losing against Euro and Indian Rupees , its best to invest in politically inert geographical locations .(I would love to invest in South India, but the government regulations are too much )

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are you talking about using your money to grow your business, grow your money, or grow your happiness?

<comment><AUTHOR> Grow my Happiness.

That does not exclude the other 2 points. In fact, currently most of my fun comes from my business.

<comment><USER24> <http://www.virgingalactic.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> It says "To view the flash version of this website you must have Macromedia Flash Player 8.0 installed." And thats all there is on the screen.

I translate that to "We dont know what Javascript is, probably something that has to do with HTML which probably is some weird programming language or something."

I dont think I will let these guys take my ass to the moon :-)

<comment><USER24> If they can achieve 100 suborbital flights without an accident, would you go then?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, because having done something 100 times without failure is not a proof of a low failure-rate.

Say your failure rate is 1%. Then the chance that you get away without failure in 100 tries is 37%. (0.99^100).

<comment><USER24> If your failure rate is 5%, then the chance that you get away without failure in 100 tries is 5.9%.

<comment><AUTHOR> 0.59%

<comment><USER24> So what sort of failure rate are you looking for? Everyone wants to go into space, no?

<comment><USER25> Well, some of us want to emigrate to space, but taking a several hour ride and coming right back isn't nearly so interesting. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Secure your future. And do whatever you want. If you want nothing, spend some time thinking. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, I spent time thinking.

I want plenty of Girls.

<comment><USER27> Converting Money into Girls, if your not willing to engage professionals, is not as easy as you'd imagine. Or rather, it is about as hard as you'd imagine. Money doesn't make that big a difference.

<comment><USER28> Investing in some salsa/merengue lessons is a pretty good way to go. It worked well for me in that it's a very non-geeky thing that lots of girls like. It's also a fun environment - in the right places, you can dance with lots of people without it being a Big Deal asking someone to dance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Buy a Ferrari F430! Actually I'd probably invest in another business first if I had the money. Donating to charities is also a good call, or perhaps helping out your local (young) entrepreneurs who are in need of some financial support.

Don't forget the Ferrari though. ;)

</comment><comment><USER30> Depending on how much you have, why not invest in start ups? (No, I don't mean me.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I dont have the time to analyze other startups, because I have to care for my own company. Of course if there would be some very cool project out there, I might take the time to help them. But finding that cool project would need time that I dont have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Usually the problem is the other way around. You have an interesting scenario :). My suggestions:

Start another.

or

Spend a year in Argentina reading and building a boat. This is my plan upon retiring (2.5 years to go!)

</comment><comment><USER32> I think you should secure your future and that of your future family. So invest the money. You can use some of it to pursue or fund projects that you like.

</comment><comment><USER33> Mentor other startups. I have been actively seeking a personal mentor and guidance developing my startup.

</comment><comment><USER28> Apparently you're not married?:-)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, thank God !!!

<comment><USER11> HA! Long term, children make people more happy than almost anything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Give me that problem. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> What would you do then?

<comment><USER34> Sorry, I was just being silly. For me money means mainly time. In your situation, where most of your time goes to your business anyway, I think I'd only 'outsource' time consuming tasks that I don't enjoy doing (e.g., cleaning, laundry) so I can do more of what I enjoy (e.g., reading).</comment></comment></comment>


Sleeping too much–or too little–boosts heart attack risk - <AUTHOR> https://www.colorado.edu/today/2019/09/02/sleeping-too-much-or-too-little-boosts-heart-attack-risk <comment><USER2> Well I'm screwed then :)</comment>


The Future Called: It Wants to Work from Home - <AUTHOR> https://evolutionarymanager.com/the-future-called-it-wants-to-work-from-home/ <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, many companies still don't take remote work as a progressive opportunity, but rather a necessity in the given situation. The problem of trust is still prevalent and if anything, many companies have only increased surveillance over employees. It will still take a long time before employers become smart enough to appreciate the importance of flexibility and creating value in work rather than simply putting in the hours in meaningless vanity activities.</comment>