Ask HN: Sales guy compensation - <AUTHOR>

I have a small SASS business.
My friend called me the other day and said that he found a client for me. It is a 30 people company, so I'm going to make about $300 / month, which is more than I have from all the other clients (I only got started, okay?)
The thing is that he wants a 20% cut from the profits. And I don't have to worry about a thing — he will negotiate and he will handle the documents and all that.
But still, I think that 20% is too much. I'm wondering though, how to determine what is the right amount? Is there any best practices on how you come up with such number?
I mean, he is a good guy and I think he could find some more clients like this, he's capable. Plus he's a friend, I want to keep the trust between us. <comment><USER2> Think about this in absolute terms. On this deal you are stressing and risking a potentially profitable relationship for what $30/mo. Not only should you pay him the 20% he wants you should probably offer him 50% of the 1st month on each deal he brings in as a bonus.</comment>


Ask HN: Resources for Learning OpenCL - <AUTHOR>

How to get started with openCL? Pls suggest good learning resources with practical examples. I do have some background of GPU architectures and OpenGLES. <comment><USER2> Taking the question to a site like Stackoverflow (<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/opencl>) might get you more answers.</comment>


Sony sells its VAIO PC business, makes TV arm its own subsidiary - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/02/06/sony-sells-vaio/ <comment><USER2> I feel sorry for Sony. They're lost. They're so lost that they don't even know they're lost. And nobody will tell them, or they just won't listen.

E.g. a few years ago they bet big on 3D TV. At the time I said "huh?". It was destined to fail. Not just because many people dislike the 3D effect, there were multiple standards, there was a need for special glasses, etc.

No, the real (missing) elephant in the room was _content_. After all, how many times can you re-watch Avatar? Have there even been 10 "good" 3D movies made to date?

So what does this article end with? It says that Sony is betting big on 4K screens. Once again, the key word is "content". Just how do you get 4K content to people at home? About 10 years ago we were all sold the HDTV story. But look at what's being delivered to homes today. Extreme bit starving; an HD TV channel often uses less than 1/2 of what was envisioned. Why? Because most people don't care and so it's more profitable to deliver two or three mediocre quality programs instead of one high quality program.

Those uncaring consumers will now start paying for 4K content? I don't think so! And even if they wanted it, there isn't enough available bandwidth on the cable systems. So now we need a successor to Blu-ray with even more resolution? Great, now each movie will be available in DVD, Blu-Ray and 4K Blu-Ray versions? Don't forget the collectors editions. Don't forget the inevitable re-releases (e.g. special editions), because the video quality of the first release was total crap.

And without 4K content, today's TVs are already more than good enough. My TV set is capable of far better quality than what comes out of my cable. And the quality of video on demand is no better than what's OTA. Usually worse.

Apparently nobody at Sony has managed to convey to top management the unexpurgated version of "this is a crock of shit, and it stinks".

<comment><USER3> > _Have there even been 10 "good" 3D movies made to date?_

Yup. But the question is, "have there even been 10 good _movies_ made to date?". Pretty much every good mainstream movie is made in 3D now, and people go to see it in 3D _by default_. I've recently been to a 2D movie in a cinema and then I realized how weird it looks; being accustomed to watching movies in 3D for last few years.

<comment><USER2> >Pretty much every good mainstream movie is made in 3D now

Okay, honest question, because I'm not up on the technology.

Are all these movies actually _made_ in 3D, or are they mostly converted to 3D after the fact? Shooting in 3D has to be a lot more expensive. I can see doing it for big action movies, but is it needed for a typical RomCom?

<comment><USER4> Really? Don't you just need 2 cameras for every 1. (Like how our eyes work).

<comment><USER5> 2 cameras, two sets of identical lenses, grip that can carry two cameras (usually a 3d rig), and the most expensive part - people that know how to work with 3d. That usually means a stereographer on set, more storage, dedicated 3d dailies preview (special equipment, monitors), DoP that knows what he's up to (3d requires slightly different lighting setup).

All combined isn't THAT more expensive on A budgets, but usually they shoot with parallel setups of two or more cameras (double for 3d). With special monitoring, extra step (stereographer) and slightly different lighting techniques you're looking at more time needed for each setup - which then halts everything and costs even more money.

And that's only for production. Postproduction has to work on everything twice, including rendering... so it adds up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The trouble is there is almost no profit at all in TV's these days (and for most of the last decade too). It is too prestigious and therefore competitive as there is still the impression that it is the key part of becoming a major consumer electronics player (I think it is probably wrong these days and mobile phone/tablets may be more important). Differentiation of TVs is hard because features appeal to niche's of the total market and basic picture quality is now good on most products and MOST people can't recognise a good picture if they see it.

Sony has also suffered badly along with Panasonic from the strength of the Yen. A great deal of the cost base is still in Japan even when manufacture is outsourced into local markets which destroys any real possibilities of profit.

I don't know what the effect of making the TV arm it's own subsidiary will be, (it may be mostly to allow profits to be shown in the rest of electronics), but I really don't know what the best thing to do with it would be. I'm not sure it makes commercial sense to make TV's in its own terms but it is doubtful whether Sony could sustain franchised retail chains without TVs so it may affect the total business if they withdrew completely. It would also be a shame as the products are good and there are many good people there but I just can't see a future of long term profitability.

Ex Sony TV Product Planner/Biz Dev (Europe)

<comment><USER2> The real problem is that an LCD TV isn't something that breaks very often. Nor does it really need adjustment, like the old CRTs frequently did.

Sony marketing made 3D a big thing in 2010: [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB126281921528818651](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB126281921528818651) Sony Pins Future on a 3-D Revival Jan. 7, 2010

But I had just bought a big screen Sony XBR6 the year before. That TV is still my primary TV, still working fine. I might replace it in another 5 years, "just because". But until then, there had better be a really compelling "breakthrough" for me to justify buying another TV. And, IMO, 3D wasn't it. And 4K isn't it, either, for reasons I already outlined.

Most households got rid of their CRTs a long time ago. So the long-time scenario of moving the old TV to the basement doesn't work anymore, because the basement already has an LCD, and that LCD still works great.

I agree with you, there's just no future of long term profitability in TVs anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It had been north of 5 years since I had last bought a laptop. It was a VAIO. I loved that computer as a man can love his bread-winner. Nowadays I work on an old trusty Acer (which feels close to a VAIO in finish, build quality and even style) and an old MacBook Pro (also top notch.)

Well, I just got a Samsung Ativ Book 9. What crap. I'm deep in buyer's remorse. For a computer supposedly with high finish, the keyboard is completely cheap and crappy and scratchy, the screen is meh, it's oversized (despite being super thin) and just overall feels cheap, cheap, crap. Don't buy it. I could only get Fedora 19 working (not latest Ubuntu, not latest Mint, all graphic driver issues) and it was laggy as hell, my keystrokes took a half-second to materialize. Presumably the graphics driver. Gonna try Fedora 20 right now, or I'll go after driver updates or something. Don't buy this sucker. I know I won't buy Samsung again over this. Wish I would have bought a VAIO. But then they sell out.

<comment><USER8> If it sucks so much, why not return it?

<comment><USER7> Unfortunately, not every place in the world allows no-questions-asked returns like in the US. Even at an intl' chain store like Walmart (where I bought it.)

<comment><USER8> We're kind of blessed here in the UK, consumer rights is one area where we haven't yet been thrown under the bus. Distance selling regulations for stuff bought online mean companies are obliged to take products back within 7 days of customer receipt no questions asked. This law exists solely to alleviate the "buyers remorse" problem. This doesn't apply to brick and mortar though.

Did you not play with it in shop?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As the PC market declines, I expect further selling of PC divisions and mergers in the PC market over the next few years.

</comment><comment><USER10> High end Sony Vaio are the best laptops the money can buy.

When I custom ordered one from them - they notified me about every step from the beginning of manufacturing to the movements between facilities to detailed cross ocean shipping.

It is Made in Japan.

Every time I use this Laptop (one of Z-models, gold colored) it's a joy.

I think instead of trying to compete for made-in-china junk buyer's attention - they should of elevate their Z-line to fashion statement for very high end, demanding users.

<comment><USER10> Oh, and when ordering - they also allows you to select (at no charge) the "fresh start" option.

Fresh start means - absolutely no preload with bloatware crap. Just bare OS with couple Sony utils.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hope the TV subsidiary can stand on it's own feet. Losing it would be a shame because they build damn fine TVs. The only problem they have is that others advertise their features more aggresivly and customers prefer to buy some 50" candy-colour "Smart TV" for 800€ instead of a feature rich awesome display 46" Bravia for 900€.

<comment><USER12> I thought that when I bought my Bravia EX but it's a pain in the ass. iPlayer is poorly maintained and it barely plays anything on a good day, the thing is impossibly slow for the first minute when you turn it on and it's the fussiest thing I've ever seen when it comes to media playback. The TV bit is pretty good but I didn't really buy it for that as there is literally nothing on TV in the UK. Oh and it randomly decides to inform the watchers that it's going to turns itself off even though every option in it is set to not automatically turn off.

It's no Triniton to make a comparison.

I've had zero experience with other smart TVs so this might be the best user experience out there -- please feel free to confirm this or not as I was thinking about getting rid of it.

<comment><USER11> To be honest, I can only compare it to Samsung because that's all my parents and my friends have. My GF's parents have a Sony.

I found Samsungs menus and control scheme to be unbearable and the owners often struggle with it too.

I usually play media directly from my PC via UPNP and that works. The built-in Youtube app is okay for the occasional video, too. Other than that I only play DVDs and Blurays and the media libraries of german TV channels (they are usually not available via built-in apps to the same extend) via a connected Rapsberry Pi.

A big plus is that my TV is able to put out DD 5.1 it receives via HDMI on it's optical output.

The picture qualities beats every other (LED) TV I have seen. It even came with halfway decent factory settings. Don't ask me how much time I spent trying to adjust the colours on my parents TV. But they grew to like the candy colours...

<comment><USER2> >I found Samsungs menus and control scheme to be unbearable and the owners often struggle with it too.

I have my doubts about Apple succeeding in the TV business. But maybe they will, just like in phones. Not necessarily because they're so good, but because everyone else is so bad.

I still remember the remote control of my last Sony VCR. It let you record up to 8 different programs, you put them into "slots". Horrible. Quite the opposite of how TiVo does it.

But the real absurdity of the Sony remote came when entering start/stop times for recording. The remote had a number pad (most remotes did, to allow changing channels). But the number pad couldn't be used to enter start/stop times. Instead you had to push up/down arrows, and IIRC separately for each "digit" of time. An utter fuster-cluck when it came to usability.

So maybe Apple is the future?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wish that Sony publish all the Vaio engineering diagrams before its death. I don't want this spirit disappear.

</comment><comment><USER14> I thought the Tap 11 showed a ton of potential. I hope somebody else can capitalise on that. The rest of the line I found fairly ho-hum.

</comment><comment><USER15> What does that leave Sony with? Game consoles, cameras, incompatible flash memory and some audio kit?

<comment><USER16> There's a hell of a lot more to Sony than electronics: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony#Business_units](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony#Business_units)

<comment><USER15> Interesting, had no idea they were in banking.

As for the electronics sector I was referring to, it seems I missed semiconductors, medical and the remnants of Ericsson.

<comment><USER17> Sony bought Ericsson's phone business. They make nice Androids, but are not very high profile in the U.S. Certainly nowhere near the market share Ericsson had in the 90's. Much of the R&D is actually in Sweden.

Ericssons network business is alive and well, actually no. 1 by market share. I worked there until recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> No one can make laptops as great as Apples. It isn't because of skill though, no one else can expect to sell as many of the same model. The current MacBook Air is magic and the Retina Pros are amazing performance wise. All while retaining a great look and build quality. Hard to do that when you sell dozens of skus the way sony, dell, hp, Lenovo, etc do.

<comment><USER19> Very true, mainly because nobody can expect to sell as many as the same model.

What always strikes me is that when you go to a PC laptop, the keyboard flexes in the middle. This is rubbish. The MacBook does not.

EDIT: Why downvotes? Does your laptop flex in the middle when you press the H or G key? PC manufacturers seem to not bother with much bracing there.

<comment><USER20> > Why downvotes?

Because the basis of your opinion is anecdotal and seemingly you haven't used business category PC laptops. They have disadvantages compared to Macbooks (heavier, clunkier, and usually more expensive than a Macbook Pro), but many advantages as well (much-much better cooling -- I hate my rMBP because of it's constant cooling issues; much-much better warranty -- if it breaks, you can get a replacement in a few hours).

<comment><USER19> Ah ok. I have used HPs in business when I was in charge of of the IT department and you did get a lot for your money but they flexed. I had some turn up bust or with duff batteries. Some also had poor fittings on the keyboards, particularly around the edges where they met the body casing. For ~£750 laptop this was poor. This was the ProBook line, in addition to other lines. And the screens were dreadful, with washed out colours. The Sonys we had in were better but I had some blow up. The Toshibas were alright but again, flexing.

<comment><USER20> ProBooks are low/mid category laptops. You want to compare Macbooks with EliteBooks.

<comment><USER21> Elitebooks are now Zbooks for some reason and the new Elitebooks are midrange hardware - why would they do that to a successful brand name...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PG&E Announces Closure of California's Last Nuclear Power Plant - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/last-nuclear-power-plant-california-will-shut-down-180959527/?no-ist <comment><USER2> Original thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11951096](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11951096)

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember in SimCity placing a handful of nuclear power plants per city. We never even made it close to that did we. Still missing a replacement for coal power.</comment>


Y Combinator has filed an official comment with the FCC - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/y-combinator-has-filed-an-official-comment-with-the-fcc <comment><USER3> I appreciate what Alexis is trying to do here but I hope he isn't assuming that the FCC just doesn't understand the problem. That's how this reads to me. Maybe the idea is to be diplomatic. I don't think the FCC cares. The FCC understands what is going on and it wants to do whatever is best for the FCC.

The best thing for tech companies to do is to start destroying some political careers. That's the only thing the machine understands and the only thing it's really going to respond to.

<comment><USER4> That's the essence of contemporary lobbying. Most legislators can be persuaded with campaign contributions (the carrot) but those that can't get threatened with the stick, which comes in the form of a previously unheard of but suddenly flush primary opponent.

Add gerrymandering to the mix, and this tactic becomes even harder to resist, since the effective sidelining of an opposing party means that no matter what else happens, the seat in question stays with the side that already holds it. This is what people mean by "safe" seats, by the way. They're safe for the _party_. Particular incumbents, not so much.

So yes. If you have a realistic hope of getting what you want it's because you're known to have the power to end careers. If legislators refuse to cooperate, their prospects dim. If an agency gets uncooperative, the legislators who oversee it turn the budget screws, causing pain and wrecking livelihoods until the backer with the biggest stick wins. These are the mechanics of regulatory capture, and they're in operation every day.

Obviously, all of this deeply depressing, and provides an excellent argument for getting private finance out of elections altogether, since that really is the mechanism upon which American-style corruption depends. And while we're at it, de-rigging the vote with non-partisan redistricting and establishing a nation-wide version of the (pre-gutted) Voting Rights Act would go a long way in fostering a government of, by, and for the people.

But in the meantime, when our systems is less like a democracy and more like an oligarchy, getting what you want means playing by the rules that exist. And that means lobbying with both carrot and stick. They hit you, you hit back. And not only do you hit back harder, you hit back so hard that they will never get up again. That's what the SOPA/PIPA backlash did: threatened a sweeping act of maximum violence to an unprecedented number of careers.

It was brutal and it was ugly, but it worked. And it did so when there's not much else that does.

<comment><USER5> I'm always curious as to why people think politicians are more motivated by reelection prospects that, say, their legacy or actually representing their personal views or convictions. I mean, I can understand why the ones that make it into office are the ones that fight hard to get elected in the first place, but once they are there, why wouldn't you expect a lot of them to take pride in actually representing their districts and really doing a good job in a representative democracy? I've always wondered why reelection is more important to these people supposedly then every other incentive! Can someone elaborate as to why this assumption is always made?

<comment><USER6> Some do. But consider some simple mechanics of it:

It _you_ care about your legacy, and your _opponent_ only cares about getting (re-)elected to benefit from the position, your opponent is at an advantage: Your opponent does not need to "waste" time, money and effort on things that does not improve their chances at (re-)election.

<comment><USER5> If doing the job IS wasting time, that means the incentives are all wrong. But still, who says that re-election is the goal? What about the places where they are limited to only 2 terms? How could re election explain ther second term actions? Or are people going to claim that at that point they're all captured by te industry using the revolving door?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "...so let's reclassify broadband as the public utility we know it to be."

Thank you _very_ much for writing that! (and the letter in general!)

<comment><USER8> are we talking only hard wired (cable/fiber) or wireless as well? I would not be surprised if costs rise as the provider, similar to who provides natural gas to my area, gets paid a wonderful fee regardless of how much gas i actually use. Then there are all these permitted charges for billing, special taxes, and the like, which raised my gas bill independent of my usage and gas prices.

We might not get what we want or expect. However do not think that I agree with services like Netflix paying more for priority when I am already paying for the bandwidth

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Y Combinator is Silicon Valley's premiere early stage investor.

Shouldn't it be 'premier'? I know, not a big deal, but a mistake on the first line doesn't scream 'Best in the Business' if you ask me.

<comment><USER10> Fixed. Thanks. I can't tell you how many times I and others read over that and somehow missed it. So it goes with typos.

<comment><USER11> Typos tend to materialize when you hit 'submit', 'publish' or other similarly labeled buttons. Very annoying. At least we've left the days of lead type behind so fixing is a bit quicker.

<comment><USER12> Sometimes I wonder if those buttons have some kind of 'scramble grammar' logic built into them...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I said this in a comment a couple of months back on the subject, companies for net neutrality need to start lobbying. I understand Reddit, Y! Combinator and pretty much every company with a conscious who cares about the Internet all have good intentions and have more reasons than most to see fair laws/legislation based around the Internet. But the sad reality is the FCC is a mere Government agency and words are not enough.

Look at those who are against net neutrality, those who stand to gain the most from opposing it: ISP's. I can't recall where I saw it, but it was an infographic/table showing which companies/organisations have been spending lobbyist cash on getting their archaic and unfair legislation through via the FCC. It seems as though spending has increased over the years in the form of donations and propaganda.

If the likes of Google, Reddit and Y! Combinator want to see a fair Internet, they need to combine some cash into a pool and use it to lobby the right parts of the system. Sadly we live in a world where money talks and words are ignored. I have seen a lot of companies speaking out, but maybe it is time to consider changing tactics when a public statement from Google on the subject is basically ignored. Pull out those wallets and start spending guys, it's the only way.

<comment><USER14> > Y! Combinator

This is the first time I've seen this misconception, and I have to admit it make me chuckle a bit.

"Y!" is a trademark of Yahoo, which has no connection to Y Combinator (which is spelled without any exclamation mark).

<comment><USER13> I had just finished drafting up an article on Yahoo when I wrote that, so in my head I had the letter Y followed by an exclamation mark. Surprised, it's not a mistake a lot of people frequently make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do such comments have any effect? It's hard to overlook that money seems to drive American politics moreso than public opinion (with the exception of the presidential elections).

I think that YC will become increasingly prominent in politics, because the tech sector has to in order to maintain control of its own fate. It'll be interesting to see what other moves YC will make.

<comment><USER16> Public comments are routine in setting administrative law. (The concept is called notice-and-comment.) Congress gives the administering agency authority to make an administrative rule, and that rule can only happen after a public notice period about the proposed rule, during which any member of the public can comment on the proposed rule. Rules are often modified during the public comment period, which will be reflected when the rule is finally published.

Your point is well taken that well organized (not always well moneyed) narrow interest groups can often get their way in the legislative or administrative rule-making process simply by being organized and cohesive. That is why public-choice theory[1] suggests that representative democracy cannot always achieve disinterested action in favor of the abstract public good. But what we deal with is a system that is imperfect, but better than other systems of government that have been tried, in the comparison that Churchill popularized.[2]

[1] [http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html](http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PublicChoice.html)

[2] [http://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of- government](http://richardlangworth.com/worst-form-of-government)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A lot of folks on the legal/policy side of this debate believe that a regulator can distinguish between network administration that is monopolistic rent seeking and that which is value added services.

I'm very suspicious of this as an engineer. I suspect it is very hard to tell the difference. In a competitive environment, we can more easily discover the difference. I strongly prefer imposing competition at the last mile rather than the EFF's suggestion of Title 2 + forebearance...

<comment><USER18> Right. We've had 'competition' in the last mile for the last twenty years, and it's led to terrible service and slower broadband than anywhere else in the developed world. Because that 'competition' leads to lots of local monopolies of the worst sort. We've already discovered the difference on this issue.

<comment><USER19> Isn't the issue really those square quotes? Maybe the U.S. nominally has such competition, but based on what I've read, it sounds like most people don't feel they have much actual choice.

Compare this to a place like Tokyo, where there's a vast number of _real_ competitors for both last-mile infrastructure (wires / low-level communication) and ISP services, and perhaps even more critically, those two components seem to be largely decoupled. That decoupling seems like it would go a long way in helping to avoid the sort of net-neutrality shenigans than seem to be occurring with U.S. ISPs these days, by dramatically decreasing barriers to entry for new ISPs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> One thing that seems to get me is most of this sort of action is defensive, they propose a new bill and the population has to respond on mass to have it rejected and put us back to square one.

They then go away, rephrase, and we're on the defensive again. Eventually, people who only defend will capitulate. You can't win if all you do is defend.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Let me be clear: we need a bright-line, per se rule against discrimination, access fees, and paid prioritization on both mobile and fixed."

It would be hard to be less clear than this. When you have a comma-separated list of things you want a rule against, you need to either repeat the word "against" or risk having people at the FCC, who may just be dumb enough to make the mistake, think that you mean you want a rule against only the first thing you mention.

A naive reading of this (again, this is the FCC) would be that you mean we DO need access fees and paid prioritization, which I guess is the opposite of what you mean.

<comment><USER22> I think it's pretty unlikely that the FCC is going to try to follow this letter exactly only to make a semantic slipup like the one you describe. I don't know why you think the people at the FCC are dumb. They do seem to be an organization with several conflicts of interest, but I think they're capable of figuring this sentence out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The same way capitalist concentration made building a small business very hard by the start of the 20th Century, the same process is taking place right now with the Internet. We usually don't notice or even like it (why, isn't it great to have every service in the same place?), but it is a tendency. Many arguments in favor of the small business and the virtues of free competition that were used back then are being used now by this post. The post even acknowledges that "the world isn't flat", but presumes the Internet needs to be, as if it was isolated from the rest of the system.

Even if net neutrality were approved, I don't think that unless there are other technological revolutions that open new sectors up like the PC or the Internet were, that subdivisions of large companies will be responsible for most new stuff, taking the most of the market for itself anyway and making competition harder, as we can see today in many ways. It'd just be a (very positive) way to preserve the current state of things a while longer, but not something capable of keeping the Internet "flat" in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER24>
      startups would struggle to compete against those who were
      able to afford paying for a fast lane--or an exclusive
      fast lane. Even the slightest discrimination or paid
      prioritization significantly affects startups, as
      microseconds matter with both webpage-loading and
      real-time content.

This suggests that startups struggle to compete against those who are able to pay to use CDNs to improve their webpage-loading times. However, this is clearly not the case, and undermines the argument.

If a "fast lane" cost as much as using a CDN, then presumably most startups wouldn't have a problem with it.

</comment><comment><USER25> That was well written, and provided a deep understanding of the topic. I really hope the FCC will listen to such reasoned responses, and not to big monied interests.

<comment><USER26> YC _is_ a big monied interest, it's just one which happens to dovetail with the views of most HN readers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's great to see more and more organizations taking a public stand - <USER2> it would be even better to see even a hint that a policy-based solution is coming.

</comment><comment><USER28> Apologies for the cynicism, as I do support this letter, however I do think that some people will read it as reasons to block net-neutrality as y-combinator is a shopping-list of companies that annoy entrenched interests.

" _It 's the economy, stupid_" has seemingly been replaced with " _It 's my economy, stupid_", as the mating call of the political class.

</comment><comment><USER29> Todays FCC commissioners have a unique opportunity; they can choose to shirk their responsibility to the public and kill the promise of the internet or they can go down in history as its saviors... the commission that preserved the internet as an economic engine of growth for generations to come.

<comment><USER30> Preserved it until next year anyway, when the next version of the "we like money and power" bill is introduced. The problem with fighting big corporations is that we only need to lose once, and they have a non-trivial amount of highly motivated people on payroll just to do the fighting.

<comment><USER29> A title II classification would be a huge deal. Not that people could rest on their laurels, but my sense is that it would be more difficult to undo than you are letting on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What exactly is meant by this? Is there a source behind it?

> The fate of reddit may have been very different if Comcast had discriminated > against our little two-person-startup in favor of the NBC.com news portal > and the sites of other news giants.

<comment><USER32> Comcast owns NBC. They want to have a large news audience to fit their business model. Reddit directly competes against that, as a news aggregator collects information from all sorts of places (including those hostile to Comcast).

Comcast could say, "Well, you're directly competing with our website, and you're putting hostile articles about us on the front page. We'll just throttle your access until your users get frustrated and leave." They're not the government; they can refuse service to whomever they please.

If the FCC doesn't create rules that enforce net neutrality, this is a reality. And what's more is that no one can stop them otherwise because many people have no alternative to Comcast. As the South Park episode goes, "Oh, you must be really bummed. I guess you could switch services... oh... wait, you can't. We're the only one."

(nipple rubbing intensifies)

Basically, if you have the resources, you can enforce dominance in the market with money. One of the cool things about Internet startups right now is that the barrier to entry is pretty low - anyone with a laptop, an Internet connection, and some pretty cheap web hosting service can create the next Facebook. The lack of net neutrality changes that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Why don't we just shut down the FCC? (Serious question)

[http://transition.fcc.gov/Plan-for-Orderly-Shutdown- Septembe...](http://transition.fcc.gov/Plan-for-Orderly-Shutdown- September-2013.pdf)

<comment><USER34> To answer your question:

Proponents of net neutrality are asking the FCC for new regulation on the internet in order to prevent ISPs from prioritizing certain traffic over others. If we were to shut down the FCC, ISPs would be unrestrained.

In other words - the problem with the FCC is not that it is actively doing bad things, the problem is that it is not doing the job we would like it to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I didn't know Alexis was a partner at YC. When did that happen?

<comment><USER36> He's officially been on the payroll since 2010;

[http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/reddit-cofounder-alexis- oha...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/01/reddit-cofounder-alexis-ohanian-to- join-y-combinator/)

But yeah, I don't see his name on the partner list;

[http://www.ycombinator.com/partners/](http://www.ycombinator.com/partners/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The EFF set up a nice site that allows you to easily contact the FCC yourself: [https://www.dearfcc.org/](https://www.dearfcc.org/)

</comment><comment><USER38> I've heard Alexis say it many times before but I still don't understand what a flat World Wide Web means.

Could someone explain?

<comment><USER39> As in "level playing field". Might be a reference to this book: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Er, did you misspell one of their surnames?!?

</comment><comment><USER41> yeah i have read about it on google

</comment><comment><USER42> I know I am in the minority here, but while I prefer net neutrality, I don't support it.

I'd like to have it, but I'd rather not see it enforced, because I believe private property rights are more important than anything else.

Should we really be able to force someone to use their property an a way that serves the public interest?

If so, where do we draw the line?

If ISPs start taking money to throttle bandwidth, alternatives will be established. Perhaps, widespread public wifi will become more prevalent--I don't know.

But, what I do know is that forcing companies--even if they are big corporations to use their property in a way we deem in our best interest is a slippery slope.

Want to call broadband an public utility? Good, then make it one. But, do it officially...

<comment><USER43> _> Should we really be able to force someone to use their property an a way that serves the public interest?_

Yes, that's the price of a government-granted monopoly.

 _> If so, where do we draw the line?_

If you don't have a government-granted monopoly, you don't have to be neutral. For example, that's how the Internet backbone works.

<comment><USER44> Instead of trying to get politicians and bureaucrats to thoroughly understand the technology and hoping that they'll steer these monopolies in a favorable direction, why don't we demand that said monopolies be dissolved? I.e., if the terms of the deal are going to be altered, why not declare that there may be two or even several players? Also, why can't this be resolved at the regional level? Why does Netflix have to be as uniformly slow as obscure-and-poorly- optimized-cat-pics.com across the entire country?

<comment><USER45> One of the problems is they're natural monopolies. You only need the one data link and so it's (arguably) more cost effective to have a single regulated monopoly on the last mile side. You can create hybrid systems (like the UK) where other businesses buy capacity wholesale from the monopoly provider and compete over the same infrastructure.

<comment><USER44> The same could be said of the grocery stores or car dealerships in my town. The problem is that as soon as you say it'd be more efficient to have all our eggs in one basket, the human nature of the carrier kicks in and says, "Hey I've got it made now. I can take it easy because no one's allowed to compete with me". Unfortunately, hiring some delegate who's multiple-times removed from the consumer/voter and is likewise unmotivated to improve the situation doesn't change that.

Yes doing the trenching and tunneling through various neighborhoods is disruptive and requires heavy machinery, etc. but that's just to create a hole in the ground. Once some conduit is laid (as a public good by the municipality?) it should be relatively easy for new carriers to come in and pull fiber or what-have-you. You just have to make the channel big enough for e.g., several cables and then you lease the space to the x highest bidders for five years at a time where x > 1.

There are probably better ways to finance things and minimize the disruption, etc. but overall it doesn't seem infeasible to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> What about other forms of "neutrality"?

The BBC is required to maintain "balance" over political issues.

Should Google return the same results to all queries (ie no search bubble allowed?)

Should Facebook (indeed any advertiser) be required to serve the same advert no matter what the profile of the incoming request? I mean Billboards are public broadcasts not private to me, why should online advertising be different? I know it _is_ but that's not the point.

I support net neutrality as it is commonly defined, but I think there are many other "neutrality" issues that we gloss over happily. I doubt very much Google will be happy removing the search bubble, and I would be interested in how much it affects the quality of results.

<comment><USER47> I think the problem is with choice. I can get either CenturyLink or Cox where I live, and if they both decide to throttle certain services, I just have to live with it.

If I don't like Google, I can use Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc. Same with Facebook.

Or I can start my own. Starting a search engine or social network is easy. Getting any market share is hard, since Google and FB are doing a good job, but they know how easily they could be overtaken if they screw up.

I can't start an ISP because I can't use the existing infrastructure and I can't afford to build my own. But Google Fiber shows that if I could start one that doesn't suck, I'd probably have a relatively easy time getting customers, because the competition is so bad.

I agree though, Google and FB make some choices we probably don't like, but it's impossible to regulate everything (and most people wouldn't want to), so we leave it for cases where the free market has proven not to work.</comment></comment>


Pizza Shop: We're Being Extorted For Bitcoin. What's a Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/pizza-shop-were-being-extorted-for-bitcoin-whats-a-bi-1598785564

<comment><USER2> May as well link to the original rather than the gizmodo spam:

[http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/06/2014-the-year- extortion-w...](http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/06/2014-the-year-extortion- went-mainstream/)</comment>


Time-series histograms with Rothko – metrics collection for large deployments - <AUTHOR> https://innovation.vivint.com/time-series-histograms-with-rothko-observability-for-iot-ce39a09c35fc <comment><USER2> Looks very cool, thanks for posting!

Can you give some examples of actionable insights you've gained from having these graphs? Are you using them in acute problem solving or in longer term prioritization of where to spend effort improving? What does your pipeline look like for trying to drill into more detail for a potentially concerning metric?</comment>


Ask HN: A 2nd Year SF Technologist's Philosophical Dilemma - <AUTHOR>

Hey folks,
I'm at a personal development milestone. Something's not working.
I've been in the Bay Area going on my second year now and I'm wondering how common it is to come out here and eventually get turned off by the whole scene, in general.
Back in the beginning, I grew up as a huge nerd in the Southeast - it was always my thing. I could hide away in my bedroom and hack, as the world around me held down mostly non-technical lifestyles. When I emerged, I had a product of my own creation, mostly untainted by the scene's societal norms, that everyone around me thought was really 'neat', since they had no idea how it worked or, for the few technical people I knew, were interested in learning about it and/or were happy to teach me more. In my off time, I could resume doing non-technical things and 'blend in' and, when I was ready to again, retire to my bedroom and begin being a hacker again.
My Bay Area experience has, overall, proven to be a mostly disenchanting departure from this.
Everyone here is into tech. There is no way 'hiding away and making an iPhone app' is your unique thing. The instant you show your work to anyone else, you almost certainly encounter one or more of:
-a pissing contest
-criticism of implementation details or features, language choice, etc
-comparison to someone/something else far more prolific and a subsequent lack of being impressed
-or, if you've found a non-technical person to demo to, a lack of interest simply because it's not a world-changing tech like Facebook or Twitter, which is down the street
Don't get me wrong. I'm not making crap, here, nor am I a new kid on the block. I've worked at Google, Apple, and Microsoft and am currently one of two engineers at a small company you may well have seen in TechCrunch a few times.
But is it normal to be so dejected by this area that you're turned off to lots of things, entirely? And is that necessarily a bad thing or an implicit professional/personal failure, of sorts?
I can appreciate the fact the Bay Area is fast-paced, meritocratic, high stress, all of that. Those are good things!
But, operating in the Bay Area is quickly draining the love of the game from me. In fact, I often find myself considering moving somewhere slightly-but-not-mostly technical, like Austin or Charlotte (hey, I have a thing for the South, too).
Anyone else experience this roadblock? Any tips or suggestions? I'm young and an open book and you'll have my eternal gratitude. <comment><USER2> Sounds like you don't like the fact that you don't stand out in the Bay Area like you used to stand out back home. Back home you were "the tech guy" and here you're "just another tech guy"- it seems to be a case of lost identity.

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone in his forties who was born here and has lived all of his life here, I have an answer for you, but of course, it's just the opinion of one person.

There is wonderful terminal an email client called 'mutt' with an interesting motto, "All email clients suck, but mutt sucks less." This, of course is an adaptation and adoption of a very old programming adage, "All software sucks, but some software sucks less." Some consider it a pessimistic saying, and others consider it a realistic saying. If you prefer a more positive restatement, "All software can be improved, but some software needs less improvement," might be a fair corollary.

Amongst technical people, specifically programmers, the above should show you the underlying reason for the criticism; their first thought is how to improve things. The look for the rough spots in implementation, presentation, and of course, usefulness. Sadly, many are willing to enter a debate of opinion rather than do a fair analysis with real data for supporting evidence.

In quick paced communication, remembering to also be positive when looking for ways to improve something is often forgotten. You can see it all the time on HN and other text based communication mediums, but it also happens verbally in person. One poorly phrased statement, and the discussion escalates.

If you prefer to look at this positively, consider the criticisms to be bug reports. Sure, bug reports are "bad news" but it is far better to know about a problem than to not know about it.

Your latter two points are identical; both are due to others not being impressed, or more succinctly, not being supportive or excited. When people are inundated with new tech every day as well as inundated with marketing and advertising about new tech, people learn to ignore it. You probably ignore banner advertisements, and probably ignore the text advertisements on the right side of your Google results. The more of it you see, the more you learn to ignore it. The people in the Bay Area have seen far more than most, and as a result, they can and do ignore more than most.

The more annoyed you become by needing to ignore stuff, the closer you get to wanting to block it completely. If you have the technical acumen to block it, you do block it, and hence the rise of AdBlockPlus, Readability, InstaPaper, ReadItLater, FlipBoard, and countless related bits of software and configuration. Even TiVo is just a different aspect of the same issue of fighting inundation. Spam filter? --Yep, same thing. The things to realize are the trends; more people being annoyed, more people learning to ignore, blocking tech becoming easier to use, more people embracing blocking tech, ...

You want my attention... --just like everybody else.

If you think about social networks like Facebook on a fundamental level, you can see them for what they really are; an attempt to grab attention. You create an inflated caricature of yourself with the hope of attracting "friends" of some sort; everyone there is trying to grab your attention. Twitter? --Yep, same thing. On top of the real people trying to grab your attention, there are also companies operating on these supposedly "social" platforms trying to grab your attention through paid placements and gamification.

Come on and face the facts; you've probably ignored an invitation when your cousin invited you to the birthday party of her three year old kid. You also probably ignored the shared images, wall posts, tweets or whatever else that resulted from said three year old's birthday party.

A response of not impressed and not interested is to be expected. You have been conditioned to ignore things, and so has everyone else to one degree or another. The people in the Bay Area are just a bit more conditioned than people in other places.

You might run away to Austin or Charlotte, but doing so is simply buying time. It's really just a matter of time until people there are conditioned by the same forces that have conditioned most of the people around here. The interesting question is whether or not impressing people in a non-technical populace is better? Since the bar for impressive is much higher here, you may benefit more by receiving feedback from more discerning and experienced (and critical) people.

Preventing annoyance and avoiding apathy may be difficult, but it is not impossible. The humongous secret to being fascinating is simply being fascinated. If you are fascinated, others will find you fascinating. Similarly, if you are excited by your work, others will also find it exciting, and if you are impressed by your work, others will also find it impressive.

The toughest truth to accept is, it's a decision. You've decided to be turned off, and hence, you turn off others. You've decided not to be impressed, and hence, others are not impressed. You've decided not to be fascinated, and hence, others don't consider you fascinating.

You can change your decisions.

I know it might sting a bit since it stung for me when I learned it and it took me some time to accept it. It's not easy, but it is good for you in the long run. I realize you're posting anon with a throw-away account, but my email address is in my profile if you want to contact me.</comment>


Game developer's guide to graphical projections - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/retronator-magazine/game-developers-guide-to-graphical-projections-with-video-game-examples-part-1-introduction-aa3d051c137d <comment> git-pull This was well thought out and exceptional work. Particularly how you drew up a diagram of the project types. I can tell you put time into these examples and you conveyed the meaning adequately.

The author of the article also made this: [https://pixelart.academy/](https://pixelart.academy/)

YouTube: [https://www.youtube.com/user/Retronator48k/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/Retronator48k/videos)

Just impressive. I anticipate good things happening in the author's future.

<comment><USER2> > [https://pixelart.academy/](https://pixelart.academy/)

There's definitely something cool going on there, but I couldn't really get anywhere without the UX going haywire. Either the text adventure part would lose keyboard focus and I'd be stuck, or I'd get to an article but zoomed-in too far to read it, etc.

It seems to be a front-end for a newsletter-type thing the author makes. Is there a way to get directly to the content hiding behind the UX?

<comment><USER3> pixelart.academy is currently a meta game / interactive advert for an upcoming game called Pixel Art Academy that teaches you how to draw pixel art.

It's not complete, but you can preorder it by finding your way to the store at [https://pixelart.academy/](https://pixelart.academy/). I was able to reach the preorder page in Chrome on Mac ([http://d.pr/i/YdcRmZ](http://d.pr/i/YdcRmZ)), but you might like to report bugs to the author if the game's not working for you: [https://www.retronator.com/ask](https://www.retronator.com/ask)

The author also maintains the Retronator pixel art technical blog at [https://medium.com/retronator-magazine/](https://medium.com/retronator- magazine/), a personal blog with the same name at [https://www.retronator.com/](https://www.retronator.com/), and a Patreon at [https://www.patreon.com/retro](https://www.patreon.com/retro).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very good material, but the page design is awful to the point of being distracting (and now I know why I kept telling myself "I'll read through this again, later, when I can concentrate more and do the excellent source material justice.")

The "Retronator Magazine" banner at the top and the nag banner at the bottom take up too much of the vertical space and combine with the width of the text column to make my viewport essentially square. Add to this the ultra-wide 1920+ pixel images that run past the edges of my screen (and are three times as wide as the text), and it should be obvious why I felt I was reading an excellent article through a toilet paper tube.

Firefox and Chromium at 1920x1080, and sorry I couldn't do this article justice.

<comment><USER5> You can always select top and bottom bars and add display:none and/or enter full screen mode. Anyway, don't give up, for me it was one of the most interesting reads this month. The author did a great job in exemplifying all projections with the retro games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _Drawing correctly is not an art. Drawing is a much more technical skill > than people give it credit._

Agreed, but also: Drawing is an art, but art is more a technical skill than people give it credit.

"What to draw, how a viewer should feel" is the job of a marketing department.

Artists work technically, putting world into medium, exactly as what this guide instructs one to do. By way of harboring the relationships, possibilities come to mind and creativity ensues. Never let them tell you otherwise.

I love everything about this post; I only think it owes more credit to itself.

<comment><USER7> Drawing something 'by eye', freehand, is an art. Creating the same picture using a stack of linear algebra is not.

(Coming up with the picture in the first place is also art, even if you're then rendering it using linear algebra.)

<comment><USER6> Some of the greatest artists to live have been using linear algebra to produce masterpieces for centuries. This just doesn't hold.

"Coming up with the picture in the first place" doesn't happen on a physical plane in the mind. One's imagination is connections and concepts which triangulate world with perspective with medium. Making that into some _thing_ that can last and be shared not only produces the thing but builds new connections and concepts to use in production of the next thing.

If you mean "linear algebra" as in code, or computers, these are merely mediums, and tools. And as for drawing 'by eye', maybe this helps: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X97bhjx4EaI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X97bhjx4EaI)

<comment><USER8> Pretty interesting and quite a realistic theory, I wonder if it has been refuted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Drawing is an art.</comment>


The Facebook experiment has failed. Let's go back. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/f7b8c66109ea

<comment><USER2> This article is kind of all over the place. I did find one idea in it to be pretty powerful, though:

 _> An ideal Facebook would have been a directory of people and their connections. People can message each other, post text updates and pictures._

It made me think of a world where instead of Facebook being a monolithic app, it were instead a sort of service bus connecting interactions people made through a panoply of social apps. Want to share links, there's a dozen apps that do that. Want to post notes, there's fifteen apps to choose from. But Facebook is the glue that connects them all together, that wires the users of one up to all the others.

I dunno how _realistic_ that idea would be, but it would certainly be more fun than a world where there's One Social App and the only features you get are the ones it chooses to give you. Oh well...

</comment><comment><USER3> The writer seems to be in a period of his life where he is neither young enough or old enough to find it truly useful, which would be college or as grandparents. -I vaguely skimmed the article...</comment>


Should I apply to YC? - <AUTHOR>

I work as an independent consultant (for 10 years now) and make a significant income without pushing the boundaries of my time. I have a wife and 4 kids to support so I am not interested in living on savings while I try to make some startup happen; at this point I am plodding along with some ideas hoping for lightning to strike.
I see something like YC and the ideas that get funded and along with my partners I scratch my head and often just say 'Really? Are you serious? That got funded!?!' knowing with great conviction that the idea I had on the toilet last week was a more viable business.
Should I apply to YC if I am older (31), have a family and have bottom line income needs? I hate to live on the investment of someone else because I feel like that puts me in a less than ideal negotiating position at the table but I also am torn by the idea that I have good ideas and the proven ability to execute. <comment><USER2> Good ideas are dime a dozen. I don't doubt your idea. What I doubt is your readiness to run a startup. You have to be ready to sacrifice pretty much everything, and at times, your family too. So the question you have to ask yourself is, are you willing to give up your comfortable life to work hard like you never have before just to have a chance. There will be many unknowns and you have to learn most things as you go along, make many mistakes, and experience many disappointments. If you make it through, it will be one of the most rewarding experience of your life. It's been said many times before, running a startup is just compressing all the hard work you'd have to endure in your career into a few years. When you're ready to leave the safety net it's when you're ready for a startup life. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> I work on my project using all my spare time (no games, no tv, etc.) while I was doing my Ph.D. and even now that I'm gainfully employed. I think if you want to keep your significant income while working on some ideas, time is something you have to allocate with lots of discipline and persistence to ensure project time is strictly adhered to. Considering the limited time you may have, it may be a good idea to consider a really obscure and good idea because the pace at which things are evolving can easily render your wonderful idea into a history within months.

<comment><AUTHOR> Appreciate the feedback...actually started in on it about 4 years ago but had to focus on the consulting practice to continue the cash flow. Every so often I reflect back and think that if I would have only stuck with it is would be a huge success now and tell myself that even with all the evidence telling me the idea was solid that it is now too late because of other market entries. Then I have that talk with myself all over again 6 months later thinking if I had even took action last time things would be different.

Ahh to be 20 again...</comment></comment>


What is a flame -- how would you describe it to an 11 year old? - <AUTHOR> http://flamechallenge.org/

<comment><USER2> I'd really like to hear Richard Feynman's answer. I'm sure if an 11 year old had asked the question, instead of a journalist, it would be the perfect answer. (I'm referring to an interview series with him: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1pIYI5JQLE>)

Makes me sad to think I will never meet this man, nor ever be as awesome.</comment>


Ask HN: Who Is Running a SaaS Business on Top of Open Source Product? - <AUTHOR> I see a bunch of open source software which can be offered as a SaaS solution. Did anyone find success doing it? What is your experience?<p>Edit: Replaced open source product with open source software <comment><USER2> Are you talking about OSS that solves some business need, but lacks a commercial entity / support? (Like as the core product?)

Netlify is one example.

You'll want to look into the particular projects license to make sure it is ok.

Our SaaS is built / runs on a phenomenal amount of OSS. The core is not OSS yet, we create some OSS for non differentiating code, contribute back to the web framework we use.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you mean a SaaS business utilizing open source software, or a SaaS business providing a PaaS/IaaS platform for others to build their business?

<comment><AUTHOR> A SaaS Business utilizing the open source softwares.

<comment><USER3> I would suggest that most SaaS businesses make heavy use of a myriad of open source software. All of the SaaS providers that I am aware of use just about everything open source when they can.

The exceptions arise when the business needs a particular service that they don't have the personnel or expertise to develop and support in-house, especially when that service is customer facing and is required to meet their service level agreements. Even then, that service may be comprised of open source and close sourced software, but commercially supported by a 3rd party.</comment></comment></comment>


God as a File Server - <AUTHOR> It would seem that in religion, certain people get access to different information, those who seek truth in the scriptures, those who devote their life to the church, those who practice the core value set, passed down through the generations.
Each group of users have access to different files. Permissions are set by the administrators of each branch. We share this large directory and also submit prayers to the server, hoping they get picked up by the holy spooler. Today I prayed that all files in the scope of my directory with the destructive attributes may also, even if temporarily, execute their commands through the compassion recursion terminal.
Merry Christmas 2019 <comment><USER2> Terry, is that you?</comment>