Ask HN: Could you help me meet successful female entrepreneurs? - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to do more interviews on Mixergy.com with women. Could you help introduce me?
Here's what I'm looking for:
- Entrepreneur or investor in entrepreneurs
- Built a tech company (eg web, ads, iPhone, software, hardware, etc)
- With a big business success or big failure
http://mixergy.com/contact <comment><USER2> Perhaps not quite as "famous" as other suggestions, but one person I know locally is Lucinda Duncalfe Holt (<http://www.linkedin.com/in/lucindaduncalfeholt>). Lucinda has been CEO of a few different tech companies: Destiny Software built an early "web application server" and exploded to nearly 200 employees before imploding in 2002; TurnTide was founded, grew explosively, then was sold for a few tens-of- millions, and ClickEquations, where she is currently CEO, is on its way up.

I have worked for her and I can say that Lucinda is an extraordinary leader with an unusual but effective leadership style. I would be happy to provide an introduction if you like, although it is probably not necessary: Lucinda is also smart enough to take advantage of free publicity! You may, however, have to schedule around an extended trip to Korea (I think that's where she's going) because she recently won an Eisenhower Fellowship to study and do business development abroad.

\-- Michael Chermside

<comment><AUTHOR> PERFECT!

That's the kind of entrepreneur I'm trying to interview.

I'm emailing you now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Offtopic, but why big success or failure? The drama makes for more interesting interviews?

Seems kind of sad that the most common outcome (middling success, never quite finding product/market fit, running out of cash with an orderly exit) isn't represented. Considering women are already rare in our industry, it's not surprising you are having difficulty here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interviews about failed companies are very important to me.

After you listen to a few of of my interviews about failed companies, you'll start to find commonalities. (Doing what everybody says is a common mistake, for example.) And, it'll stop you from repeating mistakes others have made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It might be worth browsing the list of "women I'd like to hear speak at a conference" assembled by Balsamiq:

[http://tweepml.org/Women-I-d-like-to-hear-speak-at-a- confere...](http://tweepml.org/Women-I-d-like-to-hear-speak-at-a-conference/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good resource. I've asked a few people on the list.

(I wish more the people on the list had clearer Twitter bios. Reminds me to clean mine up.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Claudia Ng. You probably never heard of her because she's in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

My friends founded a little wireless access point startup back in 2001. This is back before it was even called Wi-fi, you just tried to sell people on something called "eight-oh-two-eleven-bee". They brought Claudia in to manage. She was our former manager at another startup and was very well-liked. Pretty soon she'd turned it into a dominant hotspot network in the entire province (by some measures, all of Canada), and sold it to an ISP. That business went from my friend's apartment to a signature address in downtown Vancouver in just four years.

She's won just about every business award they give out in that city. She's also an awesome person with a great sense of humor. Proof that you don't have to be evil to get ahead.

Since then she's done a number of things and is now working on flat-panel advertisements. I can introduce you if you like.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know if it's a good example and I also don't know squat about her, but you should check Rashmi Sinha, she's the CEO of Slideshare.

<comment><AUTHOR> She'll be on this. Good one.

<comment><USER5> Nice! Will wait to see the interview.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> VanesaK <http://linkedin.com/in/vanesak> is one of the founders of Palermo Valley, organizer of TEDx Buenos Aires, and well known in Argentina's entrepreneurship community. I'm not sure what she's working on right now, though.

<comment><USER7> I've already put them both in contact. When I did Andrew was living in Buenos Aires (where she resides too). If I am right, I think she also used to be a VC with Mark Ventures. I think she is a perfect candidate for an interview.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that.

Yes. We met back in Feb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's not yet a big success or a big failure (it's still seed- or angel-stage, I think), but my friend Seema is the cofounder and CEO of <http://interbots.com/>

My contact info is in my profile if you want an introduction.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Still too soon for Mixergy.

I like to do interviews after there's a big success or failure. I'm not so much trying to uncover the next big hit and talk to people who had previous hits about how they did it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You could try Reshma Sohoni, get the CEO of Seedcamp and has a VC background. I don''t know her directly, but she seems pretty approachable. Plus she'll probably do it to get publicity for Seedcamp.

<http://www.crunchbase.com/person/reshma-sohoni>

Also check out The Next Women (it's a female tech startup site), they have a database of female entrepreneurs:

[http://thenextwomen.com/female-internet-heroes-female- entrep...](http://thenextwomen.com/female-internet-heroes-female- entrepreneurs-women-in-business/database-of-female-entrepreneurs-investors- cxos/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent suggestion. I emailed her office a request for an interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You should get in touch with Aubree Nichols from urbansignals. Her twitter is @aubree11.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, but her company seems too young right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have you talked to Victoria Ransom at <http://www.wildfireapp.com/> yet?

If you need an intro, my email is my user name at gmail.

<comment><USER12> Yep, Mixergy has interviewed Victora: <http://mixergy.com/victoria-ransom- wildfire-interview/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks guys. She was incredibly popular on the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What about Diane Greene .. I know Vmware isn't a recent story, but I would love to see a interview of her. (I have no contact info though)

<comment><USER14> Contact her through her husband, Mendel Rosenblum, he's a professor at Stanford.

email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This might be a long shot or a bit crazy, but what about Whitman or Fiorina?

They were both in big tech companies and now are running for major offices that could drastically impact startups. Maybe they would like the exposure and you could talk to them about policies that relate to entrepreneurs.

Maybe PG (or someone here) knows someone who knows someone ...

<http://www.megwhitman.com/contact.php> <http://carlyforca.com/eventrequest/>

<comment><USER16> Neither Fiorina nor Whitman is an entrepreneur, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Kathy Sierra

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Just emailed her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> My boss, Ooshma Garg, is an outstanding female entrepreneur. She is the CEO of the diversity recruiting website www.Anapata.com, which she started her junior year at Stanford. She was also recently featured in an article in the Palo Alto Weekly: <http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/toc.php?i=370>. I would be happy to introduce you; trust me when I say she is headed for big things!

</comment><comment><USER19> There is absolutely no better place to meet women entrepreneurs and investors than at the Global Information Network "Online Community" page. Unfortunately you have to be a member to contact them. To sign-up, visit <https://www.globalinformationnetwork.com/Apply/Referrer/> and use my Affiliate code: 1501473

Might I add there are a lot of single women there as well.

</comment><comment><USER17> Caterina Fake

<comment><AUTHOR> Good suggestion.

We've been having a hard time scheduling, but she'll be on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'll talk to you...we are on the path of being a big business success :-)

Cynthia Typaldos Founder, Kachingle www.kachingle.com cynthia AT kachingle DOT come

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm emailing you now to find out more about the company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Check this source, though I can't vouch for it. (my friend is on it).

<http://www.85broads.com/>

</comment><comment><USER22> Cyan Bannister from Zivity

<comment><AUTHOR> Done. I emailed her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Susan Koger, Modcloth

Also - an awesome interview would be Anu Shukla (ex-Offerpal, among other companies)

<comment><USER24> "[Let me respond to what Mike just said:] Shit, Doubleshit, and Bullshit." - Anu Shukla

<comment><AUTHOR> ;-)

She was on and she was good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> the other half of tipjoy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I just emailed Abby and asked her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'd REALLY love to watch an interview with Rashmi Sinha, the CEO and co- founder of Slideshare.

<http://rashmisinha.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

She's scheduled to come on tomorrow @ 10am Pacific Time, but I'm still waiting for her Skype name so I can do the interview.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> You should interview Jen Bekman from 20x200. She is @jenbee on Twitter. I saw her speak on a panel in New York City a few weeks ago, and she was great!

</comment><comment><USER28> Jacqueline Novogratz - I believe Seth Godin has worked with the Acumen Fund so he might be able to provide an introduction.

</comment><comment><USER29> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anshe_Chung> maybe

</comment><comment><USER30> Try the founders of midwestix.com.

</comment><comment><USER31> Gina Trapani

<comment><AUTHOR> She's one of the few people to turn me down outright. I'd love to have her on when she's ready.

<comment><USER32> Wow. Slightly disappointing. Mind sharing why she turned you down?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> My list is sadly short (I'll gladly provide contact information off-line)

\- Lisa Rutherford (TwoFish) \- Sarah Novotony (Bluegecko) \- Rashmi Sinha (Slideshare) \- Dana Kanze (Moonit) \- Alyssa Royse (JustCauseIt)

</comment><comment><USER34> Susan Wu</comment>


Sheryl Sandberg earns $100M, but won't pay interns - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.com.au/money/money-matters/sheryl-sandberg-earns-100m-but-won8217t-pay-interns/story-e6frfmd9-1226697612115 <comment><USER2> During my first internship at a newspaper, an editor asked me, "Would you walk into a butcher shop and ask the butcher for free meat?"

"No, I don't think so," I replied, confused by his question.

"So who in their right mind would think it's okay to ask a writer for free words?"

Although the paper had a small budget, he gave me a modest stipend for each article. It wasn't about the money; it was about what the money represented: respect for a person's time and energy.

I took his career advice to heart and never worked for a company that didn't value its employees enough to pay them.

<comment><USER3> Interns aren't employees.

<comment><USER4> If an intern does _any_ usable work, they are, by federal law, required to be paid.

True unpaid interns aren't employees, as they should be purely learning. hawkharris said he was writing articles; that's not just learning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From the US Department of Labor, an unpaid internship is legal only if all of these criteria are met (and I quote):

1\. The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to training which would be given in an educational environment;

2\. The internship experience is for the benefit of the intern;

3\. The intern does not displace regular employees, but works under close supervision of existing staff;

4\. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the activities of the intern; and on occasion its operations may actually be impeded;

5\. The intern is not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the internship; and

6\. The employer and the intern understand that the intern is not entitled to wages for the time spent in the internship.

([http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm](http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm))

Labor laws in the United States were hard won, and we should not forget this. Along with minimum wage laws, they benefit all of us who must work to maintain our lives. So expecting someone to provide you free labor with no compensation for their efforts is not only immoral, it's illegal. If you work, you deserve to get paid. If you expect someone to work for you, you should be honored to be able to pay them reasonably for their time and effort.

Why is this so difficult to understand?

<comment><USER6> Interesting none of these would apply to Congressional interns who are also unpaid, as well as those in the White House.

I wonder when the government will get around to investigating themselves?

<comment><USER5> I don't know for sure, but these rules may be different for non-profit and governmental entities because those organizations are in a bit of a different class.

<comment><USER7> Yes, and the internship referred to in the article above is for a non-profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My problem isn't necessarily with unpaid interns, but how the industry treats paid interns. Specifically how it seems like the current industry trend is to hire younger engineers as "interns", even though they've graduated university, in order to treat them as trial/probation employees. I'm not sure what can be done about it, but it's frustrating seeing friends be excited that they got a "real programming job" but are hourly, low-benefits, low-job-security that do the same work as their salaried coworkers but happen to be junior enough to be taken advantage of this way.

<comment><USER9> That does seem rather odd. So what if folks offered a salary but also made it strictly probationary up front. Sort of "You are going to be evaluated after 6 months/a year on the job and if you don't meet our expectations you are out." ?

This was essentially what Google to engineers when I worked there. They worked for generally just under a year, got reviewed, and then if they didn't measure up to the "level" that they had hired in at, they let them go. They were somewhat up front about it if you pressed them. But I didn't meet anyone there who particularly appreciated it when others would hire them and not do the whole 'check in a year' thing.

<comment><USER10> Most states in the US have at-will employment [0]. They don't even need to state a "probationary" period, they can simply fire anyone if they aren't performing.

[0]:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At- will_employment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/At-will_employment)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is fluff. Unpaid internships are so mainstream there's really no reason to call out Sheryl Sandberg personally for being associated with the practice (as opposed to every big bank in America which have 100x more money and also have unpaid interns). Furthermore, the amount of money the company/CEO has is completely irrelevant to what constitutes a market wage for a position. Sheryl Sandberg can afford to pay interns $100,000/year also, but the job isn't worth that much so no one is outraged that she's not doing it.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but the only difference is that Sandberg portraits herself as an advocate for work fairness and equality. Therefore I think it is fair game to call her out personally.

<comment><USER13> I've noticed a pattern with people who are very public figures/very wealthy calling themselves an advocate of fairness/equality/whatever....

<comment><USER14> If I ever become a very wealthy public figure, I promise you I will not advocate for any of that.

<comment><USER15> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Give me a break. How many big corporations have unpaid internships? Yes, it sucks that not everyone is in a position to accept unpaid internships. But pointing fingers at Sheryl Sandberg because her company is doing the same as an untold number of others is disingenuous.

<comment><USER17> But those other big companies with unpaid internships didn't publish a book about how they believe in empowering individuals (albeit women individuals in this case). Some finger pointing seems warranted in that her company's actions do not match her words...

<comment><USER11> Empowering women and unpaid internships are not mutually exclusive. In fact, you could say that unpaid internships are extremely empowering, because it gives the prospective employee on the job training that they wouldn't get if they were unemployed.

<comment><USER17> Well, if Sandberg takes that position in her book then she shouldn't deserve finger pointing I suppose. But since she talks about leveling the playing field in the workforce and fixing the salary gender gap is part of that I'd say she believes that cash money is a key source of empowerment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To people that didn't read the article:

The internship is for Lean In, a non-profit she started, and not for Facebook.

Minimum wage laws apply far less to non-profits, since you can legally volunteer at a non-profit.

</comment><comment><USER18> Interns aren't employees and aren't allowed to do things that generate income.

<comment><USER19> But why would she seek an intern at all? Why not _hire_ someone?

<comment><USER20> Many companies do this, when they're about the bottom dollar. IE. her company is caustic and grimy, the status quo (sorry to say.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Why pay when you can get high quality labor for free?

<comment><USER22> Because you aren't a shitty person?

I mean, to me, it's that simple. You can abuse the desperation of people needing work, or you can pay a good wage for the work that they do. I consider it a moral good to employ at a sane wage _despite_ the ability to burn others without fallout; for similar reasons, I don't shop at Wal-Mart but will shop at Costco.

<comment><USER23> Funny, I'll shop at the local Wal-Mart because they pay better than the local grocery store and use much less scummy political tactics. We have some real winners for local business people.

<comment><USER22> Yikes - that's pretty grim. I live in Massachusetts and we tend to have pretty good local businesses, so I tend to prioritize those, but bulk buying is pretty much the province of Costco (or Sam's, but that's part of Wal-Mart and aren't really any better towards their workers anyway).

<comment><USER24> I am not sure but I've heard Costco is much better at treating their employees compared to Wal-Mart and other stores. The salaries are higher than the minimum wage.

<comment><USER23> The local Wal-Mart pay better than minimum wage. No Costco in the area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I might have a problem if it wasn't a high-profile non-profit. And the headline's a bit mis-leading considering how little Sandberg has to do with the hiring.

</comment><comment><USER26> If an intern knew they wouldn't be getting paid before they started and no one forced them to take the job, I don't see any reason to complain.

<comment><USER27> It's actually unfair to those who have the required skills but can't afford to work without pay.

<comment><USER28> and the flipside is it's unfair to those who want to earn skills even if it means they don't get paid.

<comment><USER29> Fairness is an issue for the have-nots, not the haves. It isn't unfair that a person who can afford food doesn't receive food stamps, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I object to unpaid internships chiefly because they tend to reinforce privilege. The kid whose family is just getting by doesn't take unpaid internships--he's out working for pay, maybe coding, maybe waiting tables. The kid taking the unpaid internship is generally not getting a bad deal, for his or her family is willing to cover any loss of wages for kid's chance to shuffle papers of Sheryl Sandberg.

(Let me add that this is an objection on principle, not one of resentment; I never heard of such arrangements when I was of an age to be an intern.)

</comment><comment><USER31> My career was kickstarted by a paid internship. It wasn't much, but it was enough for someone fresh out of high school to get by the the summer -- and build a career out of it.

[http://peat.org/2013/08/15/take-a-chance-on-an- intern/](http://peat.org/2013/08/15/take-a-chance-on-an-intern/)

The "getting paid" part was key. I could really focus on the work I was trying to do. Better for me, better for my employer -- better for everyone.

It doesn't have to be much. It just has to be something.

</comment><comment><USER32> This seems like BS to me. I can't imagine myself ever accepting an unpaid internship (or any kind of unpaid work. That doesn't mean I wouldn't do charity work, but I'm not accepting a job for nothing). If there are idiots out there who like to work for free, let them.

Also, this is a non-profit, so "volunteering" is just fine. Granted the posting sounds a lot more like a job than charity work, but hey, if they can find people going for it then more power to them.

</comment><comment><USER33> people generally pay the sminimum they must. rarely is there an exception. I respect those who are responsible for the exceptions, especially those who do it with conviction.

</comment><comment><USER34> Lol. This is funny. To break into Wall Street, you almost have to have an unpaid internship. If you do well, they offer you a job there. If you don't, they don't. People just WANT to hate Sandberg. An internship is a chance to learn; you aren't entitled to learn at a company. Paid interns are the exception; they are odd. You're used too Google too quickly and clearly don't understand how most industries operate. If you think apprenticing would be more beneficial, call it that. Interning is an opportunity to learn, not to pay rent.

<comment><USER35> That tells us less about what is normal practice by most businesses and more about how screwed our financial system has become. If I am running an organisation, I want the best people, not just the best people from the group who's parents are wealthy enough to let them not need to work in the first place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Where does this end? Are companies going to start posting for interns to pay _them_ for the privilege of an internship?

</comment><comment><USER37> For a lot universities and colleges, if you're doing an internship for academic credit, you cannot be paid.

</comment><comment><USER38> She should capitalize on the media attention by turning it into one of the highest paid internships.

</comment><comment><USER39> It doesn't even seem like Sheryl knew about this internship/volunteer position.

</comment><comment><USER40> If only having loads of money was coupled with an obligation to be fair...

<comment><USER41> This is why we should have more progressive taxation. The lower rungs of the economic shouldn't have to depend on the largesse of the wealthy few.</comment></comment>


What Goldman Is Telling Big Money Clients About Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-09/here-s-what-goldman-is-telling-big-money-clients-about-bitcoin <comment><USER3> Bear in mind that Goldman Sachs is now about making Goldman Sachs money. For well over a century, they were about making rich people richer and taking a cut. That's no longer the case, and their advice to their clients is no longer particularly good. It's now just usual sell-side broker "analysis". Read "Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs."[1]

A friend who was a Goldman Sachs client noticed this when, around 2011, they started suggesting dumb deals. He pulled all his money out of there.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am- leaving-g...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving- goldman-sachs.html)

<comment><USER4> I was a very small Goldman client for a while (they typically don't take people with less than $10M and I was way less than that). A buddy of mine got them to let me in as a client.

He had $110M with them and he thought that would be enough that they'd treat him well. Not the case, they tried to sell him crap. He thought, at the time, that you had to be worth $1B before you were "in the club". He was pretty disgusted and moved elsewhere.

I'm not really sure why anyone would want to be a Goldman client.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why do people say it 'Cant be tracked'? Its a fully public ledger. I would think that it could be tracked much easier than dollars that remain liquid or laundered.

<comment><USER6> I've heard that bitcoin mixers can take care of completely/somewhat obfuscating coin ownership.

> According to Wikipedia: _User can send his bitcoins on this service, pay > small commission, and then receive the same sum of utterly different > bitcoins._

If they're paid out to one address it still wouldn't provide the desired level of anonymity, if however they are paid out to multiple addresses belonging to the same user, I would imagine the anonymity level would increase but not totally since one could still add up payments made to different addresses whose total should amount to a given range.

<comment><USER7> Yes possible but impractical when you split the new payments to multiple new addresses, in unequal amounts and at random times....

<comment><USER8> This has been what I've read as well. Unless a massive and coordinated entity like Five Eyes has decided to focus a significant amount of its resources on you, bitcoin mixers seem to provide 'adequate' levels of obfuscation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how much of BTC's $71bn market cap is eternally lost coins.

<comment><USER10> Count my 10 as lost! To be fair they were worth a few bucks at most when I lost them.

I personally saw someone accidentally wipe 150 or so when they were around $10.

<comment><USER11> It was fairly big news in the UK when somebody announced he had thrown away a hard-drive containing 10,000 coins. He considered searching through the dump but didn't bother in the end.

<comment><USER12> That's about $40,000,000.- I would do more repulsive things than diving into a dumpster for that kind of money.

<comment><USER13> It wasn't just a trash can, it was an actual garbage dump site he'd have to search through. Chances of finding something there are slim I'd say. IIRC there was a photo with the article of the guy standing at a dump site - <USER2> sure if he didn't actually go look for it a bit and gave up when the reality of the situation hit him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Unfortunately, this is a pretty standard fluff piece with not much information. Would love to know what Goldman actually thinks about the prospects of cryptocurrency and distributed ledgers, but"real dollars are at work here and warrant watching" is the only shred of information this article give.

<comment><USER15> What use case is there for a distributed ledger that is superior to a centralized ledger?

As soon as a critical mass is formed around a particular use case, consortiums, i.e. governments will form to regulate and enforce trust and the system will move to far more efficient centralized ledgers.

<comment><USER16> The main use cases for decentralization are: absolute control of your money, and censorship resistance.

Think deeply about what this means. Most people have no idea. Just a few examples (typing on the phone): no company or system can accidentally/intentionally deny your transactions, no merchants can charge you against your will, harder for oppressive government to seize wallets of targeted citizens/organizations, etc.

<comment><USER15> I see the appeal in those things for some people.

But I think most people are happy to forego those things and not have to worry about losing significant chunks of cash to fat-finger mistakes or hacks.

When most people barely know what a browser is, illuminating them to the intricacies of bitcoin seems a tall task. And if they can just use some system like Coinbase and "not even know they're using bitcoin," then they're essentially just using Paypal.

It's hard to see how it ever goes beyond a very niche market, and as long as that niche market is in a speculative frenzy it's hard to see how it becomes of much use to that market beyond a vehicle for speculation.

And should some group trade amongst themselves while avoiding censorship from some other group, the persecuted group as it grows in number becomes likely to use it's numerical sway to influence the govt doing the censorship in a new direction, or form a new govt that facilitates more efficient trade between the group.

And efficiency here refers not just to a couple ledgers instead of thousands, but also the massively reduced overhead of every member not having to do extensive security themselves, but rather offloading the security to central authorities.

Trust is beneficial to society, the more trust in a society the better a society scores on a host of other metrics.

<comment><USER17> Bitcoin and other blockchains enable more or less trusted associations to form using side channels. A typical example is using off-chain collaboration to exchange signed transactions of deposited funds. It seems reasonable to consider trustless cryptocurrency as a base layer for "international settlement." Coinbase is significantly different from PayPal because of this final public settlement layer that is open and well-defined, unlike the proprietary bank systems.

<comment><USER15> That was my point. I don't see how using "side-channels" or "off chain" systems are materially different from using the Visa or the Kroner system, and then when you want a public settlement layer that is open and well-defined converting some funds from those systems to a crypto system. What's the difference?

Can't off chain systems be seen as simply analogous to transacting in deposited funds with paypal where your paypal password is the signature?

Maybe these systems send something out to a public blockchain, but you're still trusting them to honor withdrawals of your deposited funds in the same way you would with paypal, correct?

What is the actual use in practice of side channels and off chain systems these days?

<comment><USER17> Blockchain payment channels can have security properties that go way beyond just trusting a third party with deposits.

Here's a little example of setting up a reasonably secure payment channel with the help of an Ethereum smart contract: [https://medium.com/@matthewdif/ethereum-payment-channel- in-5...](https://medium.com/@matthewdif/ethereum-payment-channel-in-50-lines- of-code-a94fad2704bc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> How to do an ICO totally legally?

Is it even possible to register these securities without "going public"?

<comment><USER19> You create a new type of coin, sell it to investors for dollars and put it on the blockchain. What rights the owners of these coins get is up to you to decide, there is no regulation at play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems Ethereum, Bitcoin and Litecoin are correlated but how will they do with a stock market downturn?

<comment><USER21> My guess is they will tank since their value is driven by speculation right now.

<comment><USER22> Hard to say, more and more BTC in particular is being used as a shelter from the woes of fiat currencies. It's not the first time that a downturn in a fiat market leads to btc price increases as some players exchange their assets for btc.

<comment><USER23> How can you identify what growth is a 'shelter from fiat' vs mere speculation on technology ect when it's growing super fast all the time? There's no correlation with fiat currency value (except maybe in Venezuela) as far as I can tell

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What do people in the Bitcoin community think of this being perceived strictly as an investment vehicle?

<comment><USER25> That's a totally valid use case. Bitcoin can be many things simultaneously.

<comment><USER15> _strictly_ as an investment vehicle

If by strictly, he means solely, then something that is strictly an investment vehicle makes no sense. The piper must be paid at some point.

I can invest in shares of a company, but the shares aren't strictly an investment vehicle, they serve as a way for the company to acquire capital to put toward it's mission.

<comment><USER23> Gold is strictly an investment vehicle for all intents and purposes. The vast majority of its price is due to recognition as a store of value vs inherent utility.

It doesn't require a 'mission' to have value- the fact enough of society (still a small minority which actually invests or knows the price) recognizes that others recognize it has value allows it to fulfill exactly this function

<comment><USER15> Doesn't gold's role as a store of value ultimately rest on it's underlying potential utility and it's material scarcity. Crypto currency is anything but scarce these days, certain brands of crypto may be more or less scarce, but gold is not separated from other elements by a brand name over-top of substantially similar functioning and composition.

<comment><USER23> Gold's value is ostensibly about it's utility but the price is completely disconnected from said utility. A massive amount of the supply is devoted to speculation and jewelry, which itself is a reflection of the arbitrary value and price vs any actual physical properties of it. In many ways its value is still a function of properties it had hundreds of years ago that made it eminently suitable for coinage and the belief networks have persisted.

If we weren't using gold in this way the price would indisputably be a fraction of what it is vs if the industrial applications stopped it would definitely still retail value.

Bitcoin is limited to 21M coins and we are at 19M of them. It is functionally more scarce than gold in that once we hit 21M that's it- we can't develop some new technology that unlocks more gold like asteroid mining.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> ctrl+f, "finite": 0 of 0 ctrl+f, "supply": 0 of 0

Very disappointed by the quality of the discussion in this thread.

<comment><USER27> You seem to complain but not contribute. Can you explain maybe why the discussion around the funniest supply important?

<comment><USER26> "If you don't believe me or don't get it, I don't have time to try to convince you, sorry."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> As a long term owner of Bitcoin, I can say this is the absolute worst time to start investing in it. It's development has been taken over by a group of mentally unstable developers with weird personal agendas and beliefs. The official Bitcoin website and subreddit are heavily censored and are no longer a reliable source of information. It's widely reported elsewhere that their moderator stole millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin from users.

There are other cryptocurrencies that deserve attention but I won't mention them here so I don't look like a shill. Be wary of the 4chan crowd who seem to be everywhere hyping obscure currencies to get rich off of pump-and-dump schemes.

If you're going to invest in a cryptocurrency, thoroughly research it before buying. Trust nothing on an official website or forum. Verify everything you read on public forums.

And never leave your money at exchanges. The #1 rule of cryptocurrency is this: Coins are not in your possession until you are the only one with the private keys.

<comment><USER29> >There are other cryptocurrencies that deserve attention but I won't mention them here so I don't look like a shill.

Shit, I'd appreciate it if you named some. I'm actually planning on putting my entire next paycheck towards crypto. Currently eyeing Neo even though I apparently missed the boat by not buying it when it was called ant.

<comment><USER30> Litecoin is extremely undervalued. Ethereum has an incredibly bright future, Monero is an incredible tool for privacy.

Check out bitfinex.com and start trading pairs there. They have a description under every currency that should help.

<comment><USER31> It wasn't long ago that crypto prices on Bitfinex were quite a lot higher than other exchanges because you couldn't withdraw national currencies [0].

Are their banking issues all resolved now?

Also, if you're domiciled in the US, Bitfinex won't even do business with you [1].

For US customers who what to be legal, Gemini seems pretty solid and verifies new accounts quickly, though they only support Bitcoin and Ethereum [2].

[0] [https://www.coindesk.com/spreads-widen-bitcoin-exchanges- ami...](https://www.coindesk.com/spreads-widen-bitcoin-exchanges-amid- bitfinex-banking-issues/)

[1] [https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/216](https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/216)

[2] [https://gemini.com/](https://gemini.com/)

<comment><USER30> I know this, but you can still use Bitfinex by depositing crypto and using a VPN. Not really "illegal".

Gemini is great, but they are slow to verify and as you stated very limited on your trading pairs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> btc seems like a great way to spy on everyone using it.

<comment><USER33> Unless state is replace by message handling

[https://github.com/EOSIO/Documentation/blob/master/Technical...](https://github.com/EOSIO/Documentation/blob/master/TechnicalWhitePaper.md)

<comment><USER34> I've been reading through the paper. It looks fundamentally like Ethereum, but with a runtime environment with specific functionality baked in, and some kind of ongoing voting system for governance of the chain. It doesn't seem to have anything novel in way of privacy: the references to a user's "private database" seems to be using "private" in the sense that only the user can update their own database, not that their database is out of view of other users. This seems to support that:

>All state communication among accounts must be passed via messages included in the blockchain.

As far as I know, blockchain-based cryptocurrencies so far only seem to be able to achieve privacy through ring signatures or zk-snarks, and that link doesn't feature either. Additionally, it's prominently built around enabling arbitrary computation like Ethereum, and arbitrary communications that have to be executed by every node have to use something like fully-homomorphic encryption to be private from the nodes computing them, which is presently impractically-inefficient for this use-case and not featured in the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I like that he calls Bitcoin an "anti-currency" since, all too often, it seems people view Bitcoin as just-another-currency, when it's fundamentally different from the national currencies we're used to using every day.

National currencies are backed by government bonds, while Bitcoin is commodity-like, in that it's not backed by anything — it's a monetary unit in its own right. This avoids the recursive relationship between national currency and the government bond, which exists because government bonds are denominated in the very currency whose backing is that bond. So currency is valuable because it's backed by bonds, which are valuable because they're denominated in that currency, which is valuable because it's backed by bonds... etc.

The problem with a currency backed by bonds is that the value of a bond depends on the rate of interest which, in turn, means that the value of the currency depends on the rate of interest. Traditionally, bonds were denominated in gold, which avoids the recursive definition of the value of money, because it ensures that the value of the monetary unit does not depend on the prevailing (bond) interest rate.

<comment><USER36> Currencies aren't backed by bonds.

<comment><USER35> Bonds comprise the vast majority of assets on the balance sheet of the central bank, so why not?

When gold was the primary asset on the balance sheet of central banks, we said that their currency was backed by gold. So why isn't it backed by bonds now, when they have replaced gold in this regard?

<comment><USER36> When the dollar was backed by gold, it was possible to go to the central bank and redeem a fixed number of dollars for a certain amount of gold. While central banks do hold bonds on their balance sheets, it is not true that an investor can convert a predetermined dollar amount into a bond at the central bank: bond prices are determined by the market.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Social playlist for YouTube - <AUTHOR> https://www.youparty.in <comment><USER2> Youtube should official support this feature</comment>


Security flaws let anyone snoop on Guardzilla smart camera video recordings - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/27/guardzilla-security-camera-flaws/ <comment><USER2> I took a look at Crunchbase and they barely have a listing: [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/guardzilla](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/guardzilla)

The earliest Wayback entry I can find already has a slick site and an upcoming deal with BestBuy [https://web.archive.org/web/20141217054015/https://www.guard...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141217054015/https://www.guardzilla.com/)

The company has a very small number of employees on LinkedIn:

[https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?facetCurrent...](https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?facetCurrentCompany=%5B%2218929661%22%5D)

Their CTO's previous job was apparently selling phone systems:

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreytruskowski/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoffreytruskowski/)

And here's their former president, "founder, creator and driving force", whose background is all sales.

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/tedsiebenman/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tedsiebenman/)

So at first blush this looks like a Potemkin company, a pure marketing front.

As an aside, it's my firm opinion that salespeople generally make terrible CEOs. I've heard so many horror stories. Their big skill, painting a beautiful picture for potential customers, can easily turn toxic when that is unconstrained by the parts of the organization responsible for practical realities. Was this secure? Definitely not. Did it have enough buzzwords it could be sold as secure? Sure! So ship the boxes, cash the checks, and move on. 3+ years is a great run for a scam.

</comment><comment><USER3> The report [0] might be one of the most damning I've seen for a little while.

DES-encrypted AWS S3 creds with unlimited access baked in. Hashcat makes short work (hours) of DES these days.

OpenSSl 1.0.1g, a rather outdated and rather vulnerable. Integer overflow, easily DOS-able, and double-free, amongst others.

And all of this with proof it works, whilst the company blusters.

> Siwak was adamant that the "accusations are false," but did not say why.

... As far as I can tell without breaching my local laws by running the exploits... S3 hasn't revoked those keys yet, or required a more limited policy.

[0] [https://www.0dayallday.org/guardzilla-video-camera-hard- code...](https://www.0dayallday.org/guardzilla-video-camera-hard-coded-aws- credentials/)

</comment><comment><USER4> > Fixing the vulnerability not only requires the keys to be changed on the > server, but also a software patch to be rolled out on each affected device.

Is this correct?

Couldnt they just change the existing keys in AWS to be "write only" \- and therefore allow a one way stream of data "in"?

That way, even with the keys, you cant actually get any existing videos, and only place new ones there?

I do this for my web application backups - my AWS keys on the server are "write only" (with no overwrite) to S3. Then, if my server was every compromised, my backups are NOT and are protected because the attackers cant get to them (to either overwrite or read the existing backup).

<comment><USER5> How did you do "no overwrite" bit? By enabling versioning?

<comment><USER4> I use `s3:PutObject` with versioning - yes.

Although I've not tested if only having `s3:PutObject` even allows overwriting in the first place? You might not need versioning.

Also - they dont have `list` or `read` access, so they cant even see what files are there to overwrite in the first place. They might be able to guess depending on your code, but adding some random numbers and you'd be pretty safe.

Any AWS IWS experts able to confirm if `s3:PutObject` allows overwrite?

<comment><USER5> It does; unfortunately they don't have a nice way to just disallow overwrites (that's why I was curious how you implemented that)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Someone should just start uploading terabytes of data to S3 using their key. They'll get the message eventually.

<comment><USER7> Probably. How do you monetize this though? You can't easily do it the black- hat way (not every vuln is worth something and you gotta have channels for distribution).

On the other hand we got bug bounties which are never paid using bullshit excuses and so you can't monetize it using white-hat ways too.

The correct solution seems to be to research distribution channels for black hat ways? Doesn't sound constructive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The guy who runs the Twitter account "internet of shit" seems more prescient every day.</comment>


Ask HN: Distribute visualizations of code to increase sales? - <AUTHOR>

Would it make sense to distribute various visualizations of the code in commercial software to give people some impression of how much work went into it?
You could even use interactive sorts of visualizations to make it more fun for people to browse through.
Of course, you would use visualizations that don't give away any of the source.
Even if you don't think this would work long term, what about the publicity that you would get from having say the first iPhone app that does this? <comment><USER2> It might make an interesting blog post, but don't expect it to have much impact on sales, unless your app audience is other coders.

<comment><AUTHOR> When people who know little about how cars work look at an engine, aren't they impressed anyway? Don't they feel like they are getting their money's worth when they see a complicated looking engine?

Currently, people look at things like graphics and sound in software. But what about also being impressed by the complexity of the implementation? You don't need to be a geek to appreciate an impressive looking software visualization -- especially an interactive and/or animated one.</comment></comment>


An Explainer on Unix's Most Notorious Code Comment - <AUTHOR> http://thenewstack.io/not-expected-understand-explainer/ <comment><USER2> I don't see an explanation of this comment at all. I don't think it's the context switching in general that we're not expected to understand, since it's pretty much the same in v7 but the comment is gone. Dmr actually explained the problem on his website ([https://www.bell- labs.com/usr/dmr/www/odd.html](https://www.bell- labs.com/usr/dmr/www/odd.html)). savu is used to save the current call stack, retu is used to switch to a saved call stack. The problem is that the function which did the savu was not necessarily the same as the function that does the retu, so after retu the function could have the call stack of a different function. As dmr explained, this worked with the PDP-11 compiler but not with the interdata compiler. In V7 the stack switching was moved into separate functions, save and resume. save retured 0 and resume returned 1 so that an if statement could be used to check if the return from save was actually that of resume after the stack switch (the same trick as that of fork). This way the code that was to be executed after a stack switch was in the same function and stack frame as the one that did the save (as opposed to swtch).

(EDIT: I was wrong about v7 save/resume at first)

Note that Lions doesn't explain this either, he assumed that the difficulty was with with u_rsav and u_ssav, but those are still in v7 with the comment gone (he probably wasn't that wrong though, it really is confusing, but it's just not what the comment refers to)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's worth noting that I find "unconventional" control flow like this tends to only puzzle those who started programming at the "structured" level where function calls always nest neatly, and so they have never entertained the possibility of it being any different from that.

However, the machine itself doesn't have any real notion of "call" and "return", and although dedicated instructions may be provided for convenience, all a call amounts to is "remember where in the code you were, and go somewhere else" and return is "use the saved information to go back".

It then follows that, if this saved information be not precisely that of the immediately preceding call, the processor can be caused to "return" somewhere else; and that is the basis of coroutines and process switching. Call and return are simply a convenient abstraction atop the sequential instruction stream the processor executes.

<comment> crooked-v This kind of thing is why every programmer should at least once try to build something fancy using only variables and GOTO statements.

The classic make-your-own-game engines ZZT and MegaZeux had a lot of this; the scripts for in-game objects had no function calls or well-managed events, just GOTOs and per-object vars, and could get interrupted at any time by GOTOs triggered by other in-game objects.

<comment><USER4> > This kind of thing is why every programmer should at least once try to build > something fancy using only variables and GOTO statements.

So, basically, assembler without a lot of fancy macros? :)

<comment><USER5> Or a line-numbered BASIC without GOSUB - sit them down in front of a IIe emulator and a pile of PDF manuals, and tell them to go to it.

<comment> crooked-v This was my line of thought, yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I ported V6 back in the day, I continually would come back to this comment from different code path, always mystified, one day I came to it and it was obvious ....

Essentially this was the days before save/restore were in the C library - savu/aretu are an equivalent that works differently (you savu() somewhere and aretu() somewhere else, it was sad because aretu() played stack games so unlike save() savu() didn't just return a different value on return)

Essentially v6 was a swapping system, fork() (or newproc() in the kernel) worked by allocating memory and making a copy of an app in memory, if there wasn't enough memory it would pretend to swap out the existing process, then mark it as the new process and set a flag (SSWAP), this is the case when it's returning - a process is being swapped in, part way through it realises it's really this special case and this code returns into newproc() as the new process

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions'_Commentary_on_UNIX_6th_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions'_Commentary_on_UNIX_6th_Edition,_with_Source_Code#.22You_are_not_expected_to_understand_this.22)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for this, I was surprised the article didn't include the actual comment itself!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is the actual talk available somewhere? Much as I like reading a blog post, I'd much rather first watch the actual presentation by Arun Thomas, which was _clearly_ worth watching by far more than just the audience of Systems We Love.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an embedded video in the article; but here's the direct links. This talk specifically is [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPe6UXMDMGM&start=26703](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPe6UXMDMGM&start=26703) or [http://systemswe.love/videos/you-are-not-expected-to- underst...](http://systemswe.love/videos/you-are-not-expected-to-understand- this)

For further edification, the entire 9h Systems We Love live stream is up on youtube at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPe6UXMDMGM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPe6UXMDMGM) or split into videos and via Vimeo at [http://systemswe.love/videos](http://systemswe.love/videos)

<comment><USER9> ah, probably noScript and uBlock completely hiding that embed... thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Link to the comment in V6 at Diomidis Spinellis' unix-history-repo:

[https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history- repo/blob/Researc...](https://github.com/dspinellis/unix-history- repo/blob/Research-V6-Snapshot-Development/usr/sys/ken/slp.c#L325)

</comment><comment><USER11> > Unix v6 was released in 1975. "It was roughly 9,000 lines of code,"

has anyone perused it? 9k is tiny.. is there any value, either direct or extrapolated, in lending it the mindshare?

<comment><USER12> As abecedarius says, there's a good commentary on it in the Lions book ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions'_Commentary_on_UNIX_6th_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions'_Commentary_on_UNIX_6th_Edition,_with_Source_Code)). That was reprinted in the late 90s when I was at university and I read through it then. I think it is worthwhile still, with caveats. The C dialect is ancient (pre-K&R), some of the algorithms are rather naive, and the whole thing is "oriented towards a machine that is little more than a memory", to quote the reprint's introduction. That said, the commentary is excellent (giving enough hints to enlighten but often requiring you to work through the detail yourself as a teaching mechanism), and the whole thing is real production code that gives you a feel for how a complete Unix-ish kernel is structured (which still applies to modern kernels, much as a housecat and an elephant have clear skeletal similarities despite massive differences in scale and features).

xv6 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xv6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xv6)) is a modern (x86/ANSI C) but similarly sized kernel designed for teaching purposes and to avoid the awkward obsolete-architecture-and-compiler aspects of the original 6th Ed code. If you can live with the PDP-11 assembly and ancient C (and not being able to run the code) I'd recommend the original, though.

<comment><USER2> Who says you can't run the code? Sure, few people have a real PDP-11/{40,45,70} these days but if you only care about the software using an emulator is perfectly acceptable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If I recall correctly, _Lion 's Commentary_ covered this pretty well. Just search for _swtch_ but roughly sections 6.9, 8.9, 8.15 and 15.9. Lions refers to understanding it as joining the _2238 club_.

[http://www.c-c-g.de/attachments/article/211/lions_book_comme...](http://www.c-c-g.de/attachments/article/211/lions_book_commentary.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER14> I thought this was going to be about "Unwarranted chumminess with the compiler" \- in the original C implementation of regular expressions and subsequently copied into every language port thereafter.

<comment><USER15> For those who don't know, that comment accompanied the use of an "unsized" char[] at the end of a heap-allocated struct. See [http://c-faq.com/struct/structhack.html](http://c-faq.com/struct/structhack.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Related, a talk on the famous mv error, "Values of β may give rise to dom!" from !!Con 2016: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyLnF9U18rY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyLnF9U18rY)

<comment><USER3> A very close match for this phrase can be found in

[https://books.google.com/books?id=n3vVBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA429&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=n3vVBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA429&lpg=PA429&dq=%22values+of%22+%22give+rise+to+domain%22&source=bl&ots=vToXJ1U9RE&sig=4Jyi9e2OgBt0TN61d88EDWGhnas&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y)

which gives credence to the original story that it was part of an interrupted prinout.</comment></comment>


Why Bury Broadband Fiber When You Can Just Glue It to the Road? - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ne5v7m/why-bury-broadband-fiber-when-you-can-just-glue-it-to-the-road <comment><USER2> This has been pretty extensively discussed in a few internal ISP-specific forums... Basically, because its longevity will be limited. Snowplows and other things will mess it up. Maybe it's useful if you want to go across the back edge of a parking lot between two buildings where it will never see real vehicle traffic. Microtrenching is a valid alternative.

Aerial fiber is pretty much always preferred as it can be 1/20th the build cost of underground.</comment>


Better Volunteering for Web Geeks - <AUTHOR> http://atroche.org/post/10311421235/better-volunteering-for-web-geeks

<comment><USER2> I help run an organization, radicaldesigns.org. We work exclusively with groups (mostly nonprofits) that have a mission we believe in. We've been around for 8 years now. Some advice, from my experience:

1\. Long term support is what organizations need.

It's a rare software project that doesn't need some kind of support. If there's no one to call when it breaks, or needs to scale, or when a new staffer shows up and the previous one didn't train them (happens all the time), then they will stop using it. It's possible for a well meaning developer to hang an albatross around the neck of an organization by building something they depend on, but not have any support plan worked out.

This can be mitigated by hosting the applications for the clients, in exchange for a hosting fee. If you don't host it yourself, then you have to deal with sysadmining unfamiliar boxes in a crisis situation, where the problem could be a change anywhere on the system. No fun!

Along with hosting, offer a help desk at an hourly rate. Nonprofits really benefit from this because they have a lot of turnover, and you end up becoming the institutional memory for the organization's tech. Even if you have turn over too, chances are there's a better understanding at your tech shop of what is going on.

2\. Cheap is better than free.

Pro Bono sounds noble, but I've found it leads to... bad things. There's something that changes in people's mindset when something is free. Client expectations can become extremely unreasonable, and it's hard to polish something when you're not getting paid. Where "done" is becomes extremely vague, and you would be surprised at how doing someone a favor can end up making everyone unhappy. So charge money. Be cheaper than industry standard, much cheaper if you can, but make it a real project with a real budget. This helps everyone to prioritize.

3\. Nonprofit might not be the best business model.

The main disadvantage on being a nonprofit (at least in the US) is that you cannot work on political campaigns. We're a workers co-op instead. It's been working out pretty well for us. However, we've never tried to be donation driven, so I'm not sure how that would factor in. I think you should look at a balance of donations and charging for labor, and find the business model that supports both. Or have two organizations, a nonprofit and a co-op, to handle the two different revenue flows. It think getting direct donations and grants will be hard. At any rate, that money will come with a mandate of some kind. So I would encourage you to cast a wide net, have a look at co-ops and other business types as well, and make sure you pick a model that can support all the revenue streams you want.

Cheers,

Ted

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insights, Ted. It makes me so glad to see that someone else has struggled through some of these problems and done as well you as you guys clearly have.

Do you really provide support for most of the clients featured in your portfolio? There are so many! How much less do you charge than a typical IT company? Do you include the cost of support in the initial fee?

I totally agree with you that surviving on donations and grants alone would be too hard. For the first projects that Radical Designs did, were you able to charge? How did you convince organisations to go with you? And how long was it before you established your current business model?

Sorry for asking so many questions!

<comment><USER2> Don't mind the questions at all. So, to be clear we don't offer general IT services, we only do individual projects for clients (usually websites and custom applications). Most clients don't need too much support, just an occasional training. We offer a standard support package as part of the host fee ($50/month, free 1/2 hour of support via the help desk). Usually the support contract is separate from the initial project. For projects, we used to do a flat rate bid, but that sucked because it was hard to define "done" or account for changing requirements once the project was under way. So we now give an estimate with a number of line items, and bill by the hour. This works out well because you let the client decide when to stop.

We are cheaper because we don't pay ourselves industry standard wages (shitty, but that's the main cost), and we don't bilk the client for non-productive hours. In contracting, that's where the real money is: you charge by the week or month, not by the hour. We charge by the hour and are transparent about costs. Small nonprofits have very tight budgets so this is attractive to them.

RD got started really as an extension of the activism people were doing at the time. David Taylor, who started it, was working on a number of campaigns and eventually needed help, so he brought some friends in. Projects got big enough that they needed real support, so money got involved. David didn't charge much at first, and the projects were small, but as we were around longer things started to gel up and eventually we started working with larger clients. It took us a while to sort out our business model, there were a lot of bumps along the way. Also, we never did any advertising, it's all been referrals so far. I don't recommend that! If you want to jump start the process, the best thing to do is talk at nonprofit tech conferences and get out in front of potential clients. You can also find potential clients who look like they may need your services, and email them. If you get in enough rolodexes, have a reassuring web presence, and do good work, you will start getting a steady stream of calls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I had seen a few projects like GiveCamp that try to do this for nonprofits. They would get together on a weekend and hack on database/web projects, and then turn it over to the organizations.

It seems like a great improvement on this would be an organizational structure like the author suggests. Such a group can do more planning/design and provide ongoing support for the client non-profit. I also agree with the idea of doing this at some minor fee, nothing to break the bank for the client. But there is certainly some sort of price you can charge that can help keep expectations realistic so no client takes unfair advantage of the group's generosity.

I was hesitant to participate at my local GiveCamp event though because of the lack of future support for the organization. At the end of the event the maintenance responsibility is handed off to the nonprofit. That's completely fair to the developer that there be no expectation to do any more work on it.

But that non-profit didn't have the ability to get that software developed, so how could they maintain it either? It's great that they get donated a free copy of Visual Studio and some books from the GiveCamp sponsors, but if they could use that to maintain software, they could've written it themselves in the first place. What if some bug emerges a week after delivery and they can't even use that app at all? All that effort's been wasted and the charity could be stuck with broken software.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, you're definitely right. The only solutions I can think of are:

1) Training someone at the organisation to maintain the software (which could conceivably take a LONG time, and is fragile because that staff member could leave at any time)

and

2) Charging for long term support. The problem here is that maintaining legacy code is boring and frustrating, and it's going to be hard to get volunteers to do this willingly. So, we'd have to charge closer to the going corporate rate for it. Plus, it'd bloat the company with support staff, leading to increased bureaucracy, etc. (which is exactly what we'd be trying to avoid with the whole 'startup feel'.)

<comment><USER4> This is a good point. My thoughts have been that if the product uses cutting edge technologies people might be more open to doing the work or helping out for a lesser charge. Hence why i use django as well as redis and mongodb and android.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi,

We started a not-for-profit web development organisation 7 years ago in the UK (Aptivate.org) to serve NGOs, IOs and charities particularly in the international development sector.

We've worked with organisations like the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UK Department for International Development, Open Society Foundations as well as smaller organisations.

Our proposition is to provide high-quality "commercial grade" services with an understanding of the international development sector, at reasonable prices.

We do all our software development with an open source license wherever possible.

We have a mixed model of skilled staff and volunteers.

...and we're hiring. So if you're a damn fine Django developer and want to work in this sector, feel free to apply: <http://www.aptivate.org/job-web- developer>

We're always looking for skilled volunteers too.

We're based in Cambridge (UK) and Brighton (well, Hove, actually).

Cheers,

Alan

</comment><comment><USER6> I've done volunteer web work via The Taproot Foundation (<https://www.taprootfoundation.org/>). It feels a bit more "consultant-ish" than "startup-ish", but there are a lot of great opportunities. Check it out if you're in the LA, San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, or DC areas and interested in volunteering your time and skills.

</comment><comment><USER4> Im a web programmer and social entrepreneur currently developing django driven web sites for a few non profits. Im also hoping to develop an incubator next year to help get more technology driven non profits off the road. Im always looking to connect with others interested in similiar.

<comment><USER7> I'am a django dev too (+IOS if needed). I'm definitely interested by this kind of work. Where are you based ? I'm in Brussels, Belgium.

<comment><USER4> Is there a way for me to contact you? Im in the us. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm the CTO at TUMIS.com, we are one of 2-3 boutique dev shops in the Bay Area, CA, US that work 99% with social justice organization, social enterprises, green businesses, campaigns across the country. We are not a non- profit- more like a B corp with worker shareholders. Have been in business for 10 years. There are similar shops that meet regularly via NTEN and TechSoup conferences. Taproot Foundation just received a very large gift - they do most of what you described, they have some paid staff to wrangle the volunteers.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm about to graduate college and have been considering doing something like this, but have zero business experience. There are plenty of non-profits that are doing great work, but relatively unknown and without much of a web presence, if any.

I'd love to be involved with this. I'm in Chicago/Iowa, and have some decent web app experience. Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, UI/UX and that newfangled HTML5 stuff.

firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER4> Can i contact you to discuss some projects im involved with?

<comment><USER9> Yeah, go for it. I have a fairly busy semester, but I'm trying to find time to work on something like this anyway.

I forgot to add Objective-C/iOS above, but I've never deployed a full app.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Funny you should post about this... we actually started something similar in Singapore. Just a FB events page and posterous site for now. First project happening this weekend in fact: <http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=277529252262119>; <http://sdcrux.posterous.com/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Count me in for backend work (Perl, mostly) and anything database-related. My location varies, so I'll have to be remote, but I'm good at remote. Email in the profile.

Oh - I will, at least, probably be in Europe for a year or two starting this fall. So that's better than the US, anyway, in terms of remoteness.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm up for something like this. The idea is actually quite nice and those charities do need web visibility. I'm quite decent at writing PHP code and I know my way around HTML and CSS, but i'm not a web designer and javascript is something I have not used often. Email me at email@example.com if my help is needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, Toni, I'll keep you in the loop. Where are you based? Obviously we can work with people remotely, but one of the best things about this would be hanging out (in person) with like-minded people.

<comment><USER12> I'm from Finland. I agree it would be nice to hang out in person, but people live where people live.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hi, I'm Carl. I am more of a non-technical guy (even though I am currently learning ROR), and would love to help with anything that has to do with logistics, marketing (including SEM and SEO), along with project management. Feel free to reach me at my profile's email.

</comment><comment><USER8> Also, look at GroundWire.org. They work with mostly environmental organizations. They have a non-profit (Grants + Private Funders + lower cost Services revenue model. As a US Non-profit, they file an IRS Form 990 and publish a detailed annual report.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd like to be involved. I write JavaScript (including canvas, but not WebGL and other 3D stuff) and HTML for the most part, and I can write PHP, but don't have much experience in it. Based in India, by the way.

</comment><comment><USER15> You might want to check out The Superfluid <http://thesuperfluid.com/> . It does exactly this: share you skills among projects without involving money.

</comment><comment><USER16> I had a similar idea. I even offered to help like two non-profits I knew personally. They did not take me up on my offer. I guess building a website was the last thing on they wanted to worry about.

</comment><comment><USER17> Great idea! I'm likely to be in London in 6 months (i have a degree to complete first) but would love to be kept in the loop on this project. email@example.com if there's a list I can be put on?

</comment><comment><USER18> You'll probably get enough developers involved. So I'm offering my availability to provide help with inbound marketing (blogging, social media, SEO, A/B testing, etc).

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm very interestedin this too, I'd like to volounteer if it's possible.

</comment><comment><USER20> HCI, Web development, brainstorming

<comment><USER20> kongchinhua at gmail

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would defo be up for this. Am a developer ASP, PHP, HTML, etc...

I don't live in London but only up the road in Liverpool.

I work for myself now doing photography (15 years in the IT industry), so am free almost every weekday.

Dave (firstname.lastname@example.com)</comment>


Redis social graph implementation in Ruby (GEM) - <AUTHOR> http://devandpencil.herokuapp.com/blog/2014/07/27/me-and-redis-are-now-friends/

<comment><USER2> Very nicely done - now I just need to pick up Ruby and find a good use for this gem :)</comment>


Google Purchases 111 Eighth Avenue, NYC - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/investing-in-new-york.html <comment><USER2> Neat building. It used to be used as an "inland dock" - It has elevators that can hold an entire 18-wheeler, which can be unloaded inside the building.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does this real estate acquisition mark the beginning of Google's decline, per the late C. Northcote Parkinson's laws?

<http://www.02articles.com/read/parkinsons-law-chapter-6>

</comment><comment><USER4> What ever happened to the idea that a company should avoid purchasing and managing real estate and instead focus on its core competency?

<comment><USER5> The building is a massive colocation site the size of a city block. It seems right up Google's alley.

<comment><USER6> I know of a large holding company of luxury jewelry goods that has space in the building. For them, its not just cubicles. It would be a very poor publicity stunt to kick everyone out of the building in order to install racks and servers in every room.

Other companies have enough leverage in non-internet related fields to cause a big shitstorm if it was to happen. If this is a long term approach I could see them not renew or assign new leases when current tenants vacate, but you will not see press releases. I also have no association with this story, so I can only speculate as well.

<comment><USER7> It already has entire floors of co-location space. That's what people are referring to.

Google might have some interest in co-locating some gear there, but they would never turn it into a DC proper (it's nowhere near large enough).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 111 Eighth Avenue (also known as 76 Ninth Avenue)

Come again???

Even if the building has faces on both 8th and 9th ave, 111 and 76 would be on two different blocks no?

<comment><USER9> Nope, odd numbers on one street will mean even numbers on the other.

      Odd numbers
      </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
      9th ave
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
      Even numbers

      **Google Building**

      Odd numbers
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
      8th ave
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
      Even numbers</comment>


Monetizing Failure - <AUTHOR> http://www.donnfelker.com/monetizing-failure/

<comment><USER2> Perhaps I'm missing something, but wouldn't you be paying $20 to enter the competition? It seems like the fee isn't directly tied to getting your score posted on a website and the article is using that as a distraction. Isn't this how races and competitions have worked for a long time?

It _is_ an interesting thought that most people will be "failing" and yet they're willing to pay money. On the other hand, there's a lot more to competing than winning. I've run the "Krispy Kreme Challenge" a few times and while I wouldn't mind winning it, I know my registration fee is really going towards a fun race, a spectacle involving thousands of people (many in costume), and edible and wearable souvenirs.

<comment><AUTHOR> I completely agree. There is more to a competition. Competing in itself is fun. But as I said in the note at the top of the post, this is my opinion. I see no reason is paying $20 to a company just to post my score on line. YOu can still do the competition without paying the $20. Thats all I'm saying. The only difference is that you wont have your name on a website. The $20 simply "registers" you online. You can still compete. Only difference is that if you were GOOD enough to make it to Regionals or the Games you'd have to have had competed in the Open. Again, these are the exceptional athletes. Not the normal folks. I'm not saying DONT compete, but I'm asking the question of why pay $20 to compete if you can do it for free?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> People pay hundreds of dollars every year to enter running events (marathons, 5Ks, etc). I don't understand this either. I can run for free whenever I want. I don't see the psychology around CrossFit as being significantly different. Am I missing something?

<comment><USER4> Paying $150 to run the chicago marathon gives me

a) 30k other people to run the same race with at the same time

b) About 15 places where people hand me water if I want it

c) An officially sanctioned time that could let me qualify for Boston or another big race if I do well enough

d) The energy of thousands of people cheering me on

e) Streets closed and stoplights turned off that I normally would not be able to run down

That seems like something of value. Sure I run for free all the time too. But races have cool parts to them. The $20 here seems a lot less cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Insurance companies, lotteries, Las Vegas -- all use similar monetization schemes to what is described here. There have to be a whole lot of "losers" to pay for a few big winners, keep the doors open, etc. I doubt any of them are going away any time soon and I can think of a whole lot of reasons people pay for those things. For example, for fun, for hope during hard financial times, for peace of mind. (Insurance usually claims to be selling peace of mind more than anything else.)

Also, donn, an FYI: rebutting every single comment posted here is a) bad form and b) a great way to make sure no one fucking wants to discuss your piece.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. I'm fairly certain cursing isn't necessary. I'm not attempting to rebut every comment, simply making statements. Its all in opinion. I agree with your statement as well. These monetization schemes will never go anywhere. They're very successful.

<comment><USER5> Let me put that another way: Do yourself a favor and shut up and let other people talk about what you wrote.

I'm done here. I doubt you can be clued.

<comment><USER6> He replied... twice? How is that something that requires you to attack him? This is HN, and someone like yourself is well aware that sort of comment you tacked on the end of a _good_ comment isn't welcome here, and the ad hominem above isn't either.

I'm just trying to work out what I'm missing here, seemed rather out of the blue :/

<comment><USER5> What you are missing is that he replied fairly promptly to the first three replies here, including mine in spite of me commenting in advance that there would be more discussion if he did not do that. This is likely part of why it was not generating discussion. (Please note that people are now spending more time talking to me about my presumed "attack" than talking about his article. So I stand by my observation.)

I was trying to be helpful, which is likely a mistake, for a lot of reasons.

<comment><USER6> I'm not missing that, that is exactly what I said. There was two replies, and a reply to you unless those replies and the parents were deleted without a trace...

I fully understand being helpful, but foul language and dismissiveness isn't really okay here normally; you've been here far longer than I have, and I respect your comments normally, just seemed a bit odd is all. _shrugs_</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Whistleblowers Say NSA Still Spies on American Phones in Hidden Program - <AUTHOR> https://www.mintpressnews.com/whistleblowers-say-nsa-still-spies-american-phones-hidden-program/256208/ <comment><USER2> > According to Tice, illegal NSA surveillance was targeted across the federal > government in order to secure political leverage. He describes this use of > surveillance as a counter-democratic tool allowing the agency to pressure > elected leaders across the House and Senate.

> Between 2002 and 2005, he said, he discovered that the NSA had been > targeting all communications of Congress, FISA, the Supreme Court, senior > Pentagon officials, the media, and even future presidential prospects.

> The NSA was essentially "collecting fodder for their lists of dirt for > blackmailing all levels of top government officials", said Tice. The idea > was "to ensure they had leverage with those that could conduct oversight."

There's a lot to process here. Seems like this would be bigger news. Any other outlets covering it?

<comment><USER3> Probably not:

"That is the whole idea of the intelligence community, they are trying to control the narrative that goes across the mainstream media, and how people get their information and what information they get." [1]

1\. [https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/08/15/nsa_whist...](https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/08/15/nsa_whistleblower_bill_binney_intel_agencies_are_lying_to_the_public_and_the_president.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Darpa>Lifelog program terminated February 4, 2004.

Facebook founding date February 4, 2004.</comment>


How the IRS uses Social Media Sites - <AUTHOR> http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/03/eff-posts-documents-detailing-law-enforcement <comment><USER2> Direct link to the actual IRS training course:

[http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/social_network/training_co...](http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/social_network/training_course.pdf)

Not as nefarious and darth-vader like as I'd hoped.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the problem with freely giving out all of your personal information on sites like Facebook.</comment>


Meritocracy and Doublethink - <AUTHOR> https://rationalconspiracy.com/2018/07/11/meritocracy-and-doublethink/ <comment><USER2> > If colleges charged $10,000,000 and offered no aid, then getting in would > mean absolutely nothing, except that your parents were rich.

Isn't that the point? You can acquire the knowledge for free, but not the network, and not the "I'm like you" stamp that will open doors. Germans call it Stallgeruch, literally stable smell. People take a whiff to see whether you smell as if you are from the same stable they are from. If you are like them, the probability is high that you will share their worldview, ambitions, general moral concepts and so on, so being from the same social class, having been educated at the same type of school etc is just a shortcut for similarity.</comment>


The Long View on Macintosh Common Lisp (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://basalgangster.macgui.com/RetroMacComputing/The_Long_View/Entries/2013/2/17_Macintosh_Common_Lisp.html <comment><USER2> There are no class browsers for Lisp because deep class hierarchies are very rare.

One example: In many OO APIs it is idiomatic (if not mandatory) to subclass a base-class in the API in order to customize its behavior. This is extremely rare in lisp. Behavior is more commonly customized by just defining functions and either assigning them to slots, or defining new methods on generic functions for classes that are not typically descendants of classes in the API.

I've been developing in lisp for years, and I can count on one finger the number of times I've subclassed a class written by someone else, and I've never said "This would be so much easier to understand if only I had a class browser"

<comment><USER3> > There are no class browsers for Lisp because deep class hierarchies are very > rare.

That's actually false. Deep class hierarchies are quite common in object- oriented Lisp. Also there are class browsers for Lisp.

> ... to subclass a base-class ... This is extremely rare in lisp.

It is isn't. For example, an application's condition classes will always be a subclass of something. Only relatively primitive applications will not introduce new condition classes.

> I can count on one finger the number of times I've subclassed

Then you have never used CLOS or any CLOS-based libraries.

<comment><USER2> > Then you have never used CLOS or any CLOS-based libraries.

Does using DEFGENERIC/DEFMETHOD make it CLOS based? If so, then I have used CLOS and CLOS based libraries; they just weren't particularly object-oriented. I know that there is more strongly object-oriented lisp code out there, but I personally haven't run into it.

I'll agree that "Deep class hierarchies are quite common in object-oriented Lisp." since that is very nearly tautological. I'm not certain, however, how common object-oriented lisp is. Even within common-lisp there really isn't a single idiomatic style that is used.

Care to share some examples of more heavily object-oriented lisp projects?

<comment><USER3> LispWorks has a class browser. Its class library has several deep hierarchies with lots of classes. For example the class for a UI button is called CAPI:BUTTON. It has 11 CAPI superclasses and its depth for CAPI classes is six. It also has five subclasses adding more depth.

The minute you write a GUI application in LispWorks, you'll use a macro called DEFINE-INTERFACE. What does it do? It creates a CLOS class for your application, which inherits from CAPI:INTERFACE.

You want a new window pane type? Define a subclass of CAPI:OUTPUT-PANE.

For another example: check the class hierarchy of stream classes in Clozure Common Lisp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really liked Coral Common Lisp. After I ported the ISI Grapher package to Coral, I gave my Xerox 1108 Lisp Machine to a colleague.

Clozure Common Lisp is very nice, but for some reason I usually use SBCL (and rarely Franz or clisp). I used SBCL (with QuickLisp) for the last edition of my Common Lisp book, BTW.

If there had been very good free versions of Common Lisp 20+ years ago, then I think the language would be more popular today. I think the same is true of Smalltalk. Today Pharo Smalltalk really is a wonderful programming environment and it is free. In the 1980s and 1990s it was very expensive to get a Smalltalk programming environment.

<comment><USER3> I tend to use Clozure CL most of the time. Clozure CL's compiler is a bit more primitive, but the compiled code is smaller, the compiler is faster, the runtime is much better (better GC) and it has a basic non-GNU-Emacs IDE on the Mac.

> f there had been very good free versions of Common Lisp 20+ years ago, then > I think the language would be more popular today.

This fails to understand a few things. Good versions of Common Lisp did exist 20+ years ago, even free ones. But Common Lisp implementations tend to be complex systems and thus its not easy to to get this financed over a long time.

Common Lisp was unpopular between 90s and 2000. A new generation of developers had to rediscover it to revive some of it: SBCL, ECL, ...

> Today Pharo Smalltalk really is a wonderful programming environment and it > is free. In the 1980s and 1990s it was very expensive to get a Smalltalk > programming environment.

Common Lisp has many free and good implementations today.

If you look at Pharo Smalltalk, it's nice, but it has the same limitations like Squeak and other implementations: it looks and feels non-native. That's because the UI is non-native.

<comment><USER5> To be fair, the compiler is more than a _bit_ more primitive. Clozure doesn't come close to SBCL where numeric code is concerned. But the garbage collector really is _much_ better, especially under heavy concurrency.

<comment><USER3> > Clozure doesn't come close to SBCL where numeric code is concerned.

Well, you have to declare everything then you get similar performance.

<comment><USER5> I haven't found that to be the case. I don't mean that Clozure's performance is bad, but optimizing numeric code is SBCL's reason for being. When I switched from SBCL to Clozure, I had to move things like password hashing out of Lisp, because I couldn't get acceptable performance out of Ironclad.

<comment><USER3> In my experience you can get excellent numeric performance out of CCL (and earlier MCL). But there are several issues and it may be a lot of work.

But I definitely agree that the SBCL compiler is a lot better doing these things and it is much easier there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there a reason why a site that looks like it is from 1998 _requires_ Javascript? Sigh.

Nevermind. I'm tilting at windmills.</comment>


Show HN: Detect student emotions for online schools - <AUTHOR> http://www.studentemotions.com <comment><AUTHOR> My name is Ilya, CEO of Student Emotions. Feel free to ask me any question. I made this app to help online schools make their classes better and more engaging. The interviews indicated that their content is already good, now motivation is a challenge. I believe when online school understands student emotions they can make more what is interesting and engaging, and less what is boring or not interesting.

</comment><comment><USER2> Very cool! Good luck with it

</comment><comment><USER3> Love it

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool idea, saw you on PH yesterday.

<comment><AUTHOR> Julee, thank you for your support.</comment></comment>


Not the end of The World: the return of Dubai's ultimate folly - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/feb/13/not-end-the-world-return-dubai-ultimate-folly <comment><USER2> If the property market is still so hot after the worst global recession in decades and the previous ultimate folly sold so well and they're still able to get funding for the new one, in what sense is it a folly rather than a successful investment catering to the global elite?

<comment><USER3> One problem is that the islands are eroding [1], so any property built on them is doomed. You can delay the inevitable for a little while by pumping more sand in, but sand is running out [2].

More abstractly, The World really reminds me of the semi-serious "skyscraper index": the idea that big skyscrapers break ground right before a recession starts. The last time anyone cared about something as silly as The World was the eve of the Great Recession, and with renewed interest just as the warning signs are flashing that the bull run of the last 7 years is ending, this looks like irrational exuberance rather than sound investment.

But hey, maybe this time will be different.

[1] [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/dubai/...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/dubai/8271643/The- World-is-sinking-Dubai-islands-falling-into-the-sea.html)

[2] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/29/the-world- is-r...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/29/the-world-is-running- out-of-sand)

<comment><USER2> All property is 'doomed', though. All beachshore property will inevitably become either (a) water or (b) not beachshore. (And probably more the former than the latter.) Doesn't make them a bad idea. Even if it's not near a beach, the house will wear out and either need to be replaced piece by piece or in its entirety. And sand may get more expensive, but it's never going to 'run out'. The World may have high maintenance costs, but most mansions, yachts, and private jets do too. If you're rich, you can afford it.

<comment><USER4> All property is doomed, but some properties are more doomed than others. 2 metres of sealevel rise won't be kind to The World, plus a projected wet bulb temp over 35 C by 2100 in that part of the world. [https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2833](https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2833)

Even the very rich might prefer to not live on a sinking pile of sand, where an air conditioning failure results in death within hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem with The World is that it was designed during Dubai's 'throw money and solve the problem' phase. They knew the islands were/would erode and had a very expensive rebuilding process in the works. Also iirc utilities were very expensive, which pushed it out of the budget of rich people. You had to be ultra-rich/a big corporation to be able to afford a place there.

The Dubai of now is still an ostentatious place, but at least it's embracing its resort town/holiday destination image with the multiple theme parks, water parks and shopping malls. More in line with, say, Florida but more luxurious.

</comment><comment><USER6> The UAE is an independent country and can do whatever it wants.

A few weeks ago the guardian was complaining about the "folly" of Musk sending a Roadstar to space.

It seems to me that anything that is not about feeding poor people is africa is a waste of time if you are a guardian writer.

I am glad that Dubai is pushing the envelop of engineering - yes its kinda stupid - but so was electricity at one point. Maybe these projects will someday lead to them gaining the expertise to turn the middle east into some sort of futurist garden of Eden ?

Compared to the looming war in the Congo, and the humanitarian crisis in Burma, alongside North Korea's nuke - doing a large civil engineering project seems downright nobel.

And the migrant workers getting paid slave wages ..

Are we supposed to pay them 3000 pounds / month like Journalists ? /s

They are getting paid better than what they would get paid back in the countries they are from - sometimes multiple times. I do not see Guardian writers shedding tears for all the folks in 3rd world countries that would consider themselves lucky to go work for tax evading Europeans so that they can feed their family.

<comment><USER7> These people are beyond hope. They are basically Communists. They can't grasp the benefits of the modern economy and so they just complain.

Sure it would be nice if workers were paid more. It would also be nice if a homeless person could sleep in a bed tonight, or at least on a couch. Perhaps a Guardian writer could spare their couch? That wouldn't be too much to ask.

<comment><USER8> There's a difference between communism and monarchy.

It's not all black and white, but I don't think you can call Dubai a communist city/state.

<comment><USER6> He is not calling Dubai a communist state, he is calling people who are criticizing how a sovereign country spends its income communist - which is true by definition.

<comment><USER9> I'm confused by "calling people who are criticizing how a sovereign country spends its income communist - which is true by definition". So if I criticize how a monarchy or a "communist" country (like Dubai or China), or even a "capitalist" country like the US or EU spends their money then... I'm a communist? No.

If you recommend that the workers own the means of production then you might be a communist, but it's silly to all criticism communist. You might as well call everyone who criticizes a Nazi (i.e. socialists==communists, am I right?).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nobody Lives in Manhattan - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/08/22/nobody_lives_in_manhattan.html <comment><USER2> If only it were true!</comment>