Beside a startup, what are the other ways to significant wealth for a dev? - <AUTHOR> I am currently working for a big company doing somewhat very technical work as a developer,and currently trying to formulate a strategy for building a reasonable amount of wealth that would allow me retire early ( and probably return to school yey:) ).
It seems that all the success story are related to start-ups;Looking at my situation, i am not sure that this would be my best options. First my area of interrest/expertise (compiler and dev tools) doesn't seems amendable for a start-up; and beside the somewhat rigid structure,low pay and boring meetings i still enjoy the "big company" setting : working with so many smart people with so much experience really turn every interaction into a teachable moment and has allowed me ( and continue to do so) to grow as dev at an incredible rate.
I am sure other dev/people are facing the same dilemma, so it would be nice to hear from other people :
1 - are start-up the only way to significant wealth for a dev(while still doing dev work)  ? 2 - i read on-line stories about dev making north of 1 million a years; is that really possible ? 3 - what are the other way to wealth for a dev (investing, consulting, part time startup etc...) ? <comment><USER4> I'll answer the questions you asked, then give you a better question:

AppAmaGooBookSoft are probably not what you're thinking of when you say "startups" and 5-10 years in any of them will make you quite wealthy indeed, by the standards of e.g. the American middle class.

Do some devs make north of $1 million a year? Yes, for a value of "some." (If you put a gun to my head, I'd say "Maybe 5% of the engineering workforce at AppAmaGooBookSoft. Possibly modestly higher than that in finance.") The shortest path to it is "significant contributions to a major revenue driver for a large company combined with aggressive negotiation."

Depending on where you draw the bar for "wealthy", there are a lot of dev- related businesses which can get you there. Consultancies with employees throw off a lot of money on a yearly basis and also build value which can be sold. Profits for a well-managed e.g. Rails consultancy are on the order of $2.5k~$10k _per employee_ per month (math here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7155387](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7155387)), so if you run a 10-person consultancy, you do pretty well for yourself via distributions while also drawing the market salary you're paying all the employees.

There exist many product businesses which are primarily or largely software in character. There exist hundreds of software companies which toil in relative obscurity whose founders are (generally very quietly) millionaires even when one doesn't count the value of the company itself. I built a consulting career off of working for SaaS companies with, in the main, $10 to $50 million a year in revenue. There exist lots of them. The rough economics are often 10% COGS 10% marketing 10% G&A 50% salaries 20% "whatever the owner feels like."

Many of these paths will not involve you being primarily working on compilers and dev tools. (Compilers are a tough sell -- dev tools perhaps less so. There exist plenty of great small dev tools companies.) Even if that is what your business actually makes money on, you will probably have to a) get into business and b) spend the majority of your cycles on building the business rather than building the thing the business makes, unless you take the well- compensated employee route.

There are your answers. Here is my question: what do you want out of life? What does "wealthy" mean to you? What motivates your desire to retire early?

I once wanted to retire early, but that was a symptom of the underlying affliction "I hated what I was doing for a living." If you see wealth as an opportunity to choose to spend most of your cycles on something other than what you presently do for a living, you probably can achieve that without being sold-a-startup-now-I'm-loaded wealthy. Some of the happiest people I know run quiet little cottage industry software businesses on the Internet in preference to the day job. Most don't have seven figures in the bank, but their day-to-day lifestyle might resemble that of a "gentleman of means."

If you want to have sufficient free cycles to study something, consider as an option "Create some enduring source of value which solves the sustenance-for- myself-and-family problem with the minimum number of hours required per week; spend my freed-up-time studying rather than filing TPS reports."

<comment><USER5> What exactly is AppAmaGooBookSoft?

<comment><USER6> I believe it means Apple/Amazon/Google/Facebook/Microsoft

I was also unsure and searching for it basically only gave HN things.

<comment><USER7> It's a patio11-ism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here are a few ideas:

\- Selling enterprise software (you can make 10%-20% of an 8 or 9 figure deal)

\- Selling securities in some form or another (you make ~5% of deals worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars)

\- high leverage consulting (solving very hard tech problems for lots of people. for example: I have a friend who helps a whole bunch of computer vision companies and makes a ton. Another friend is an SEO expert.)

\- Patenting core technologies and selling those patents (A buddy of mine sold his patent for $10M)

\- "platform based land grabs". Think of the people who bought tons of domains early in the Web's history. Or the first guy to make an emoji app on iOS. These are different than "starting a company" as you really only need a product and can pull it all off on your own. I suspect there will be more of these in the future.

All of these require creatively navigating business as well as being an awesome dev.

<comment><USER9> forgive my lack of imagination / education, what kind of enterprise software could a sole developer create that would land 8/9 figure contracts?

<comment><USER10> I took GP to mean as a technical sales person, sales engineers make a commission.

<comment><USER9> thanks, i must not have read that too carefully. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1\. Startups have happiness potential for developer not only because of the monetary wealth but also because of the _wealth of the challenges faced._ Developers live for tricky puzzles to solve and startups are one place that you can get them. Startups aren't the only place where you can find challenges (as you've noted).

The monetary wealth typically comes from _stock options._ Stock options are a promise that you can buy stocks at a certain price at some point in the future (when they become available, e.g. during an investment or IPO). Options are how you become an overnight millionaire. Startups aren't the only place where you can earn options.

You'll typically find that companies that aren't publicly traded have stock options (ask about them in your interview). It's not something that's exclusive to startups - I have options in a 10 year old company and have cashed in some of those options.

2\. Yes.

3\. Accrue wealth like anyone would. Developers earn relatively high salaries (whether they work for a startup or not) and hence have an easier time getting into the situation where money works for them.

However, even one of those developers who earns $1 000 000 can have no wealth if they waste it all. Someone who earns $75 000 can amass a fortune. It all comes down to how well you manage your money. If you do something to get rich quick chances are you are going to end up penniless. It takes time, discipline and a brain.

There is no quick road to material wealth.

Money does not make you happy, it merely multiplies what is already there. It's a catalyst. If you're already happy, money makes you happier. If you're already sad, money will make you miserable.

<comment><USER12> _" Developers live for tricky puzzles to solve and startups are one place that you can get them. Startups aren't the only place where you can find challenges (as you've noted)."_

Ehhh. I jumped from research to the startup world, so maybe I have a high bar, but most startups are doing pretty boring, predictable variations on bog- standard systems work. You see this in the way that these "exciting" companies keep re-inventing the same wheels in different languages. How many javascript frameworks are there, again? How many different ways have people found to "replace" relational databases?

If you're right out of school, _everything_ is challenging. Give it a few years. Eventually, it becomes downright boring to watch people needlessly re- solve problems that were solved in the late 1960s because they don't know history, and/or don't want to learn some boring old technology that their older brother used last week.

If you want interesting problems, go into research. If you want to do interesting problems _and_ get paid, go to companies that are large enough to have the resources to fund things that aren't directly on the critical path to profit. Startups are a really bad place to go if you want tricky puzzles.

<comment><USER13> Why did you jump from research to the startup world?

<comment><USER12> A desire not to die in abject poverty. (I kid...)

I realized a) that I was unlikely to get a tenure-track position, and b) that even if I were to get one, I didn't really enjoy the work of a tenure-track professor, which tends to be more about fundraising and having meetings, and less about doing research.

(More flippantly, I realized that the life of a modern, tenured academic looks a lot like the life of a small business owner. So why not just go into startups, where there's a chance of making real money for the lifetime of effort?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It really depends on skill and motivation. If your motivation is only money you are unlikely to succeed.

Personally I am a big corp dev and making >600k/year on track to retire at 40.

But you do not get there by trying for the salary. Try to be good, no exceptional, at what you do. Become valuable and you will be paid. But your motivation should be your craft and not money.

I believe the same applies for startup founders too. As a dev in startup land you are at a disadvantage though - the fail or rise of the company is much more about sales and biz than tech.

I think as a dev big corps are the way better bet. Not much to loose, but possibly high payout. Startups very rarely pay out for devs.

<comment><USER15> Is the $600k salary, bonuses, stock options or? Sounds quite incredible to me. I haven't heard from any dev making this kind of salary, not even in the big companies.

<comment><USER16> That's what I'm trying to figure out. $600k salary+bonuses is C-level executive territory. The idea of an engineer making that kind of money in straight compensation sounds ludicrous to me.

If it's in the form of options, you'll forgive me if I treat that as pretend money until it's transformed into real wealth.

<comment><USER14> 600k including bonuses. Vested RSU bonuses. So real cash in hand. And those usually keep replenishing over time so after an initial delay it's compensation.

<comment><USER16> Ah, so base salary plus vested options, aka handcuffs.

And you're getting, on average, what, 400-500k a year in RSUs vesting?

Am I wrong is that basically bonkers as far as compensation goes? That feels at least a few standard deviations outside the mean... Which is great for you, and congratulations!

But "win the lottery" doesn't make for very compelling early retirement advice. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A general rant, when someone asks about how to make reasonable wealth, significant wealth, or to get richer than you would be as a salaried worker I assume they are interested in getting into the 1% or higher bracket of earners.

Someone making 6 figures asking how to get more wealth probably doesn't care they are in the top 10%. They are looking up, not down. Saving half their salary isn't realistic for a single income family, and would even be tough for a dual income family.

They probably don't care to listen to the "money isn't everything" advice from the rich. Yes, everyone knows that money isn't everything, and everyone knows that money isn't everything when you've already got it. I have relatives making choices between feeding themselves or their pet for the day, money means a great deal up to a point, and then there is a big gap where it doesn't make much difference. Then after that gap is breached is starts to make a huge difference again.

Unfortunately, for the number of times this question is asked, the number of times I've asked it of myself, there are no silver bullets or proven paths. I have to stop ranting now it is late, I am tired. (^_^)b

<comment><USER17> _I have relatives making choices between feeding themselves or their pet for the day_

why would they have a pet if they can't afford to feed it?

<comment><USER18> Perhaps they had adopted the pet before a completely unexpected event turned their lives upside down and out of their control?

<comment><USER17> when it's a question if my family eats vs the pet eats, there are only 2 possible answers:

1\. sell/give the pet away

or

2\. eat the pet

<comment><USER19> Time to chow down on Scruffles kids!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 1\. No.

2\. Yes.

3\. Respect the people you want to help you. For instance, let's say you want a bunch of people to take the time to read and answer difficult, open-ended questions for free in a way that could lead to vast personal wealth for you. You could demonstrate your respect for them by showing them the courtesy of proof-reading your post. As the questions are so broad, you also could show respect by sharing what you've learned in the research you've done so far to help educate them and to narrow down what you're looking for. You could demonstrate even more respect by thanking the authors of particularly good contributions.

<comment><AUTHOR> This one is interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I worked with a test engineer at Microsoft who started in 1999, which was after the get-rich-on-stock-options days at the company. He spent 15 years living below his means, and recently retired from the tech world forever. He didn't need any tricks or secrets to pull it off, just living frugally and saving tons of money. I suspect I'm way behind him despite earning more and even having a wife who used to earn a software salary as well. Makes me wish I would have saved more aggressively to date.

<comment><USER22> You may be interested in earlyretirementextreme.com which details how to do exactly what your friend did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am surprised no one has suggested the traditional and still very popular way which is marry someone wealthy.

<comment><USER24> lol

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> As someone who has spent their 20's accruing "significant wealth" through a startup (I am by no means loaded, but have not worried about money at all in ~3 years), I'll tell you now - it's overrated.

Money _can_ buy you happiness, but it's an inefficient exchange mechanism - unless you roll two sixes, the amount of work and bullshit that goes hand in hand with growing your "worth" usually exceeds the reward - and that reward for most is tantalisingly close but always "a year or two" away.

Monetary wealth is a means - it is "gas in the tank" \- but it isn't the end. The end is your own happiness and wellbeing, and there are much easier ways to secure this than through wealth.

If I'd known what I know now, I would have moved to a hut up a mountain a decade ago rather than going into business. Now I am responsible for the livelihood of dozens directly, thousands indirectly, and while I may have made myself a very comfortable gilded cage, it is a cage, and the cost of my wealth has been my freedom.

<comment><USER16> Having grown up in a poor household with a single parent who worked multiple jobs to get ends to meet, you'll forgive me if I don't feel a whole heck of a lot of sympathy for you and your "gilded cage".

Money itself does not buy happiness.

A lack of money, though, makes it a heck of a lot harder to find it.

The goal should be to reach a point where you don't have to actively worry about money, and that includes some buffer to allow for luxury expenses... travel, eating out, entertainment, that sort of thing.

Beyond that, additional money will, at best, provide an increment in terms of overall life satisfaction.

Less than that, and money has a _major_ impact on happiness, and anyone who says otherwise has clearly never experienced the stress of living paycheck-to- paycheck. _That_ is a cage, and trust me, it ain't gilded.

<comment><USER26> Seconded. "Money can't buy happiness, but it can sure chase away the blues". (And the debt collectors and irate landlords, I would add).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Contracting! Many people, most of them non-contractors or people who have limited contracting experience will tell you contracting is risky. If you are good it's actually much more secure than getting a "real" job, once you get going. You can't really get fired and as long as you are able to juggle a few clients at a time you will always have plenty of work. If you can consistently deliver results faster than the average deskjocky you can earn a lot of money too.

<comment><USER28> I second contracting. You are responsible for your own skills, but you can start very young, and you usually get better skills than permanently employed people. Then only drawback is the lack of social ties with your employer, but nowadays employers don't really care for employees, and having more money than a permanent employee will give you more latitude.

<comment><USER29> I'm completely unfamiliar with this - does this mean working with a staffing agency, or working on your own (freelancing?)?

<comment><USER15> Contracting is essentially freelancing. Only minor differences, contractors maybe make bigger contracts and work maybe longer periods of time per one client. It is up to you if you want to call yourself contractor or freelancer :)

<comment><USER30> How exactly do you start contracting?

For instance I've made a couple of decently popular jailbreak iOS apps, which is nice passive income, and a good niche, but I don't really know where to find clients... through friends, on a website, or what?

<comment><USER28> I'm located in France where the market is a bit special because permanent jobs are overprotected and companies are begging to contact instead of hiring.

Basically as soon as you go over the edge of creating your company, you can start searching. The same "meat traders" who want to recruit you for a permanent job on a service company, they will be willing to hire you as a contractor. Rates go in Lyon from 270€ per day to 550€ for the same mission as a perm job, and upnorth of 600€ in Paris, for very basic Java skills, like the guy who doesn't know Maven.

The same recruiters. They just try not to tell you about contacting when they think they can hire you as a perm for half the price. It's ok to take a commitment on a few months for the first mission, so you get some credentials. Then you can follow patio11's advice ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Keep making products until one sticks, then keep making products until one shows potential, then keep making products until you've gotten a product that can support you, then keep making that product until it plateaus or you consider yourself successful. If that last product isn't enough, repeat the cycle.

Product could be SaaS, software, consulting, contracting.

</comment><comment> m-i-l 1\. No, startups aren't the only way to "significant wealth". In fact, in my experience, startups are something of a lottery, i.e. you only a very small chance of making a lot of money. For every success story you read there will be many more failures. But having said that, it can still be worth founding or working for a startup because you can often learn a much broader set of skills than you can at a big company.

2\. Yes, I have heard about a small number of exceptionally highly paid developers too. However, I suspect this is incredibly rare, perhaps with a similar or even lower probability than making your fortune at a startup. Unless you have some extraordinarily talent and are aware of this and in a position to able to exploit this (but I doubt you would be asking the question if this was the case).

3\. I would have thought your best chance of making enough money to reach financial independence is the usual unexciting advice: (i) work hard to get an above average salary, (ii) live frugally and save as much as you can, (iii) invest what you save carefully, (iv) continue this process for many years. If there was a sure-fire quick and easy way of getting rich, I'm sure more people would be doing it, or you wouldn't be reading about it here.

</comment><comment><USER31> It really depends on your definition of wealth. Most engineers I know clear 100K+ pretty easily after a few years of experience. If you're in a hot market or sector, you can easily earn $180k+ after 5-8 years. If you produce consistent value for a business, $225k is definitely achievable.

Understand that by making $100k+ you're basically in the top 10-15% of earners in the U.S. [1]. Make $180k/yr and you're in the top 4%.

And realize that plenty of people who make >$150k spend like crazy trying to keep up with the Jones. Plenty of people who make $80k/yr spend wisely end up having more "wealth" in the end.

[1] - [http://www.financialsamurai.com/how-much-money-do-the-top- in...](http://www.financialsamurai.com/how-much-money-do-the-top-income- earners-make-percent/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Save half of what you make, diversify your investments, and pay down your debt. Do this for 15 years and you will be rich with your skills.

<comment><USER33> That's the strategy suggested by this guy, who has made a name for himself dispensing that advice: [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/)

Mostly it seems pretty sensible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> There's something we all can do if we work together to get each of us paid north of 200k a year.

Form a software developer union.

<comment><USER35> The only unions that I am aware of that have achievements close to this are lawyer's guilds (through state bars) and doctor's guilds (the AMA, by limiting medical school admissions).

Lawyers, as of the last 15 years or so, are not doing so well - the median figure I found for 2013 is $114K. Doctors are doing better, at median $190K.

That's a far cry from "each of us" \- even with these two professions, 50-80% of the people earn less than $200k.

And, they both manage it through strict licensing, which effectively requires 6-8 year studies in an accredited institute - which carry hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt in most cases.

Which union and setting exactly did you have in mind when you wrote this?

<comment><USER34> You're not talking about unions. Those are cartels that restrict supply. Lawyers and Doctors are business owners operating as an oligopoly. I'm not talking about business owners. I'm talking about employees. I'm talking about people joining together to put themselves on equal negotiation grounds with their employers.

Just because no union has successfully produced wages of 200k plus doesn't mean it can't happen. Software Engineering is a highly skilled occupation that generates a great deal of wealth. If all software developers demanded 200k then companies would pay that price because our work generates well north of that. The reason we don't get a fair share of the pie, like all other laborers, is a lack of organized negotiation. In short, 200k+ union salary has never happened, but is well within the means of the industry to support such an endeavor. It CAN happen and it will make wages MORE fair.

Don't argue against unions. It's the stupidest thing to do, because even if you can't negotiate your salary up to 200k you got nothing to lose by making/joining one or even raising your salary by 10k. That is unless, you're an executive/major shareholder... then we'd be opponents from a negotiation standpoint.

<comment><USER36> I'm not sure I want anyone else negotiating my salary, or deciding what work I'm allowed to do, or creating some hoops of qualification or exams for me to jump through so I can get a "Programmer III" classification and get another 10K. No thanks. Too blue-collar for me.

Its not all about the money after all. We're not talking about poor sweatshop guys trying to feed a family or go on public assistance. We're talking about folks paid quite a bit for sitting on their butts and typing.

Sure we have value. Learn to negotiate, become a contractor or consultant if you like, switch jobs as needed to get what you think you're worth. But don't imagine you'll sign me up for a club where you decide what I'm worth, and make me pay for the privilege.

<comment><USER34> The "club" doesn't negotiate FOR you. It negotiates WITH you. You can still negotiate for higher if you think you can get it. All the union says is, no programmer gets paid less the 200k. You want to negotiate to 300k because you think you're that good? Be my guest.

A corporation is a group of organized individuals negotiating against you. A union puts you on equal ground. That's it. If a union doesn't work this way, then it needs to be changed.

<comment><USER36> Lets not pretend unions don't totally change the hiring landscape. Easy to say "be my guest" but we both know the corporation will not deal at all, after they've dealt with the union.

<comment><USER34> [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=659718](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=659718)

short answer: It depends on the union. It does happen in this country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "Significant wealth" can mean many different things. I've seen Derek Sivers speaking at multiple conferences. He has a very interesting question that I since ask myself and others: "What do you optimize your life for?". When you find the answer to that question, it gets easier to go from there.

Robert Kiyosaki and other wealthy people state that wealth is measured in time. Can you not work for x weeks, months, years and still make money or at least maintain status quo? If you can, you're probably already wealthy and doing better than the vast majority of people out there.

We all love to read success stories of startup founders where it escalated quickly and they got out with a huge amount of money. These people however are not a good representation of what's out there. Most wealthy people I've met over the course of my life do things that not a lot of people think about and take for granted. They're sometimes rather boring, not glamorous, not innovative things like selling sausages, web hosting, web development services, selling plain white shirts, toilet paper, pipe fittings, cleaning businesses, restaurants and so on. These people then invest their proceeds in other "boring" assets like real estate, other businesses, fonds etc. with a long term view.

A lot of these people moved from being a specialist (consultants, chefs, programmers, contractors) to business owners. Not working in but on the business. Hiring other specialists, people who do the grunt work, the sales, the programming and so on. They then invest their proceeds into assets that will continue to generate money at different percentages even after they completely stop working.

In your particular case that could mean that you could start with very specialized consulting work. Then slowly transition into providing tooling for a monthly fee. Then slowly removing yourself from the business as much as you can. The beauty of it is that monthly recurring revenue is compounding. Also have a look into SWaS (Software With a Service) [http://www.tropicalmba.com/swas/](http://www.tropicalmba.com/swas/).

Investing/saving $5K a month for 15 years with an expected rate of return of 7% and an expected inflation rate of 3% will bring you to a place where you end up with a balance of ~$1.5MM (or $1MM after inflation) to your name. Would that make you wealthy in your books?

<comment><USER38> > Investing/saving $5K a month for 15 years with an expected rate of return of > 7% and an expected inflation rate of 3% will bring you to a place where you > end up with a balance of ~$1.5MM (or $1MM after inflation) to your name. > Would that make you wealthy in your books?

So, 15 years and you'll have almost enough to buy a _starter home_ in Palo Alto...

<comment><USER37> While true, Palo Alto might not be the center of the universe for... like 99.99999999999999999999% of human beings on this planet. The world is a huge playground. I am slow traveling since many many years and have a pretty awesome life in my books. In the end, that's all that matters. But this is what I optimize my life for and doesn't need to apply to anyone else. I don't dream of a luxurious home in Palo Alto. In exchange I can do or not do whatever I please, whenever I please. Stay or walk away from things, jobs, places, people. Means: I found my answer to what I optimize my life for. I am wealthy in my books. Wealthy with a capital "W". Not rich.

<comment><USER39> I think you took a few too many 9s there. That implies its the centre of the universe for 0.0000000000006 of a person.

/snark

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The myth that growing the value of equity is the only way to make significant money is a lie, perpetuated to keep you working for somebody else until you have "the big idea".

What if you started a company as an LLP with some smart colleagues and you shared in the growth of each other's talents? What if you created a co- operative?

Come to think of it, what's your goal? To be rich, or to be able to go back to school without worrying about money? The two are not the same. I doubt that most of the open source developers you've heard of can rock around in a Ferrari but they are doing what they love and are happy: haven't they effectively got to the point you wanted to, but without the need to slog out to the point of having piles of money?

I'd also as an addendum suggest diving into the [/r/financialindependence]([http://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence](http://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence)) community - lots of ideas there.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think the best approach is to stop believing the hype that you went into a vocation that'll net you obscene wealth and instead thank your lucky stars at having entered a field that you (hopefully) enjoy and which also happens to pay a damn good salary. From that point: hard work and perseverance will let you save a pretty respectable retirement fund. And the work isn't even that hard.

I'm sorry to be the grumpy old man in this thread, but asking how to turn your developer job into $1MM/year is like a high school kid planning to play pro basketball.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's wrong with an high schooler wanted to play pro basketball ?

<comment><USER41> You mean besides it being the canonical example of an unrealistic plan for becoming rich? Nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I am with a small company focused on compilers and managed runtimes (JVM), and I can tell you that _good_ compiler consultants are in high demand. For instance, I had a discussion with a CEO of such specialized consultancy looking for GCC specialists last year, and he said that LLVM engineers are even harder to come by.

I also see processor startups popping up all the time that need compiler/tools engineers badly.

Overall, I'd repeat what others have said: "save a lot and invest your savings wisely."

<comment><USER43> Can you specify what do you mean with "_good_ compiler consultants"? It doesn't look like the guy who tunes the configuration of the runtimes right? Perhaps someone that writes and modifies the source of a compiler for a special set-up?

<comment><USER42> I mean someone who can build support for your shiny new language and/or instruction set into GCC or LLVM and get their pull request accepted by the maintainers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Since a lot of people are commenting that the original poster is not being specific in what he or she means by "significant wealth", let me propose a more concrete question:

"Besides a startup, what are some other reliable (close to risk-free) ways to retire at any age with $20 million net worth and $1 million a year in passive income--that a motivated and skilled software developer can achieve starting in his twenties?"

Practical step-by-step advice only, no general platitudes like "just love what you do!" and "don't be in it for the money!" My guess is it's impossible without rolling the dice on business ownership, but I'd love to be proven wrong.

</comment><comment><USER44> How much do you need in your nest egg to fully retire?

Now, how much would you need in your nest egg to feel comfortable about being picky about where you work and what you work on, trading in some of your income for mission/learning/location/people etc.?

Once you have these numbers (which depends on your life stage and costs of living), then you can start backtracking and figure out what kind of money you'd need to make and whether it makes sense for you. That will leave you with the universe of options available, which may be wider than what you're considering right now.

</comment><comment><USER45> There are ways to make a lot of money with affiliate marketing, but that can involve a lot of trial and error and can (usually does) involve bootstrapping with a lot of your own cash or a credit card. Although I know of at least one person who turned millionaire after bootstrapping by maxing out his credit cards, I would never suggest doing that. It's a deep hole to climb out of if you fail and for every success story, there's probably 100 failures not talked about. In short, the successes I've seen involve buying advertising to get people to a landing page that generates leads with commissions that (hopefully) pay you back more than you spend getting the traffic. It's a delicate operation that pays well only if you get the landing page and affiliate choices right.

I've also seen wealth generated with mailing lists. This is another affiliate marketing play that can be done without feeling too spammy and can still add value to the user.

Similar to a mailing list, a forum can be easy to set up and maintain. Also like a mailing list, if you create a large enough user base, advertising can pay off.

One of the better earners is a subscription model for just about anything. Software provided for free with a "premium" set of features for $x per month is a good way to generate a user base more easily.

A couple things to keep in mind: 1\. You will almost always have more success when you're passionate about the subject matter. 2\. It will take time. Most overnight successes are preceded by years of ramp-up.

</comment><comment><USER46> Like others have suggested in this thread: contracting.

Ideally find clients who are willing to work with remote contractors. Emigrate to a "poorer" country and save money. For example, people in Thailand earn on average around 500 EUR a month (from what I've read). If you can manage to work for western clients who perhaps pay you 10.000 EUR a month (40 hour work weeks), you will be able to retire extremely quickly.

<comment><USER47> My suggestion for newcomers is a budget of 2000-4000 EUR month for comfortable living in Bangkok (depending on your level of comfortableness). The daily live of a 500 EUR worker is not the same as that of an expat (e.g. membership at a co-work space alone will set you back ~200$/month). Gyms are as expensive as in the west.

<comment><USER48> Really? I live very comfortably in Stockholm (a very expensive place) with 1500 EUR. How on earth would you need 4000 EUR in Bangkok?

<comment><USER47> 4000 EUR is very comfortable living.

\- ~800 EUR for a nice 1-br condo in a central location \- ~100 EUR el./internet/tv/3g \- ~100 EUR for transport (these motorbike taxis and bts rides are adding up). \- ~150 EUR for co-work membership.

= 1150 EUR fix per month.

Now with the rest you can go eat and drink. 100 EUR = big nightout, 50 EUR dinner and drinks, 20 EUR low-key dinner with drinks, 4-10 EUR just dinner outside.

Add another few 100 EUR for a visa run every once in a while.

Also don't forget that you're likely still paying for some stuff back home, insurances, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> There's always the "get rich slowly" approach: put a large portion of your income in low-risk investments. This is slow but once you hit a critical mass in capital more interesting opportunities become available. Eg. you could eventually bootstrap your way to buying an apartment complex, parking lot etc.

I think a better question is how do non-computer people create wealth? Devs as a group are already predisposed to having higher income. For my family it has been to work really, really hard, live frugally and invest all disposable income. I'd venture to guess that most wealth creation happens this way - <USER2> it the long tail of wealth.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm not trying to be flippant, but have you considered finding something you like enough that you don't look forward to retiring?

I get paid (well) to do stuff I love so it is possible and possibly easier than becoming wealthy. I think loving your "work" will put a lot more happiness "under the curve" than waiting until you retire to be happy - <USER3> if you retire early.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A lot of good answers, and lot of good advices. But it seems there is a lot of assumptions on my motivations and personal view on moneys.While i think that those aren't strictly necessary to answer the question, i guess i am asking a personal question so it's only fair if people some assumptions. So in no particular order , i am sharing my perspective on some the recurring themes :

1 - Why do i want money (or why do i want a lot if it :)) : I am not interested in a luxurious or grandiose life style. For me money is to buy freedom and safety booth for me and the peole i care about. I want myself and them to be able to afford the best of the health care systems, to be able to focus on exactly what we do, etc...etc...

2 - How much is "significant wealth" 10M+

3 - Money shouldn't be the focus, the craft is: I think they both should be. I don't think getting wealthy should be though as a direct consequences of great work. Great work might be correlated or even necessary to building wealth but i don't the former always implies the latter. To get wealth i believe i will have to learn how, much in the same wayi had to learn to be a software dev.

4 - There is no quick fix. stop looking for it.

I am not looking for a quick fix. I am willing to put the hours (hell i am looking forward to it). But i also want to capture and leverage some of the value i will be creating (in a way that's is both legal and ecological)

So again a lot of great idea i didn't though of and i am already reading on all those venues. The idea i am particular interested is consulting : Is there a demand out there for consulting to startup say 30/week for 6 month for some equity in the company ?

Any body in the fanancial market want to share his experience ?

Again thanks for all the great answers

</comment><comment><USER51> Devs rarely make $1 million a year, startup or big company. Now if you are 10x better than the average Google/Facebook engineer and can prove it, I think you could negotiate that kind of compensation package as a principal engineer.

<comment><USER52> This is a special case, but its possible for developers who specialise in High Frequency Trading (HFT) algorithms to make that, in the case of getting into a bidding war between rival HFT investment banks.

[https://adtmag.com/articles/2011/07/29/why-hft- programmers-e...](https://adtmag.com/articles/2011/07/29/why-hft-programmers- earn-top-salaries.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Savings and prudent investment.

</comment><comment><USER54> Wealth != money. I feel like I am very wealthy and I make bugger all money.

</comment><comment><USER55> Save money and invest it wisely in stocks and/or bonds. It's not fast, it's not techy, but it is a tried and true way.

The trick is, you need to figure out what "wisely" is. IMO, if your strategy involves holding on to your stocks, it is probably speculation (=gambling) rather than investing wisely.

<comment><USER56> >> if your strategy involves holding on to your stocks, it is probably speculation (=gambling) rather than investing wisely.

Holding onto your stocks is the opposite of speculation, isn't it? Most sensible investment advice, e.g. Bogle, recommends index funds that are held basically forever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> If returning to school is something you really want to do then there is a third option: go get a job at the school you want to attend.

Just make sure to negotiate your benefits to include the ability to take classes (both the time during your days to attend, and reducing the costs -- preferably to zero -- of attending)

</comment><comment><USER58> The same way as everyone else: leveraged property speculation.

If you're really good at maths you could become a "quant". Most of the really high paying developer jobs are unsurprisingly in the financial services industry.

</comment><comment><USER59> 3 - Marry well.

</comment><comment><USER60> Apparently you can make millions being an art forger.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9642526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9642526)

</comment><comment><USER61> Spend less. Save more. Change companies every 3 years. You'll do fine.

Alternatively make friends with rich people and make them richer. You get a cut.

</comment><comment><USER62> Get out of dev, put on a suit and tie, and go suck up doing finance on Wall Street.

Your probability of success is _way_ higher.

</comment><comment><USER63> Get married to a rich girl. Girls like smart guys.

</comment><comment><USER64> Solve problems for rich clients.

Or steal bitcoin.

<comment><USER65> steal bitcoin for rich clients

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> what do you define as significant? 1M 10M or 100M plus

<comment><AUTHOR> 10M

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> email me email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER68> "I want to be rich, how do I do this?"

Is this yahoo answers?

</comment><comment><USER69> Make a viral app. Something like Flappy Bird.</comment>


James Hong: I think better when I'm not really thinking about it - <AUTHOR> http://james.hotornot.com/2007/04/i-think-better-when-im-not-really.html#links <comment><USER2> The subconscious is a terrible thing to waste; <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=11252>

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, not everybody can realize this. Most people are so connected to their physical environment in their conscious state that they just can't let go of their conscious connections. I guess all of us are caught up some way or the other.

<comment><USER4> There are many ways to train and access the subconscious. Musical performance training is one example. I have used alchohol to get some creative brainstorming done. Yoga and Bhuddism have centuries of tradition centered around exploring the subconscious.

People can learn to meditate. Brain scans of people who just learned "fixed point meditation" (where you stare at a dot and tune out your environment) showed up nearly identical to experienced practitioners. The only difference was that the inexperienced people couldn't hold the meditation for very long. But they appeared to be doing it right. [1]

[1] Restak, Richard. "The Naked Brain: How the Emerging Neurosociety is Changing How We Live, Work, and Love." <http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Brain- Emerging-Neurosociety-Changing/dp/1400098084>

<comment><USER2> I've never tried meditation, but I do notice myself sometimes just staring out the window for a few minutes (especially when those good looking women egress from cnet.com - oops digressed). In those moments, I'm not really seeing anything (exception noted above) but my mind is just cranking on something. After a few of these sessions (the quantity varies on how complex the problem is I'm currently working on) I get the Aha! moment.

So I guess the skill is to be able to reduce conscious focus to free up access to your subconscious at opportune times. In my college days, I used to do this at inopportune moments, such as driving home. On several occasions, I would drive right by my apartment and basically start getting lost before realizing I had been in "subconscious" mode and had no idea where I was going.

An excellent way to access your subconscious is hard-core exercise. I've had the experience when swimming many laps, biking up a mountain, or cross-country skiing where I hit "the zone", the moment when your body is taking you with very little mental effort. That is when the subconscious flys and you can really solve some of the hardest problems.

I think sleep-deprivation is also a way to reduce conscious focus. I've hatched many integrations when running on too little sleep. There is the "sleeper's high" period which is especially good for subconscious work. Beware, however, of the big low you can get afterward. Push it too far, and you can get downright depressed. My record to date is 72 hours of focused work with very few breaks. I would have made it even longer if I hadn't bent over to tie my shoes after a shower - I woke up several hours later. (The good old college days.) The key to surviving the sleep deprivation lows is to work on really exciting and inspirational problems.

<comment><USER4> You might try voluntary rapid deep breathing to simulate heavy excercise. It's a very strange sensation and I wouldn't recommend doing it too often (maybe even check with a doctor first). Generally, after about 5-10 minutes, I feel very similar to the way I feel when working out, except without the sweat, elevated heart rate, and muscle strain.

It's not exactly practical to swim 20 laps then sit down and do some design or development, even if you could bring your laptop to the pool.

But yeah, metacognition techniques are basically metaprogramming for your brain.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A tiny robot with moves inspired by caterpillars and jellyfish - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/science/tiny-robot-medical.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><USER2> Not a robot. However, definitely potential for a micro touchless manipulator .

"The scientists use external magnetic fields to exert torque on magnetic particles embedded inside the soft elastomer body of the robot to change the robot's body shape and steer it around."

[https://phys.org/news/2018-01-nature-inspired-soft- millirobo...](https://phys.org/news/2018-01-nature-inspired-soft-millirobot- enclosed-spaces.html)

<comment><USER3> If this is not a robot, then what is a robot?

<comment><USER4> Well, I think the argument is that you're looking at a tiny piece of a larger equipment, which contains the power source and needs to manipulate this smaller device using magnetic fields. So, probably the entire set of equipment would be the robot.

While still very cool, I think the way it's presented here implies that the little rubber part is autonomous in terms of power, muscles / actuation, sensing and local planning capability, which is just not the case.

<comment><USER5> I think you'd have a hard time convincing people that [https://www.istockphoto.com/gb/photo/industrial-robot-arm- is...](https://www.istockphoto.com/gb/photo/industrial-robot-arm-isolated-on- a-white-background-gm507266875-45772594?esource=SEO_GIS_CDN_Redirect) wasn't a robot, but the same argument applies.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Start your very own Uber like Taxi service - <AUTHOR> http://mowares.com/

<comment><USER2> Don't post your own links repeatedly. Also, I told you yesterday you need to work on your proofreading if you want people to trust your code:

 _With our Trunkey scripts for an on-demand service or sharing economy idea, you can start your most profitable, sutomated mobile based venture yet, in less than 48 hours(Our installation time)._

Trunkey? sutomated?</comment>


The making of Samurai Shodown - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2017/4/10/15223966/the-making-of-samurai-shodown <comment><USER2> Thanks for this, wouldn't have seen it otherwise. Loved this series, it had great atmosphere and style, with gorgeous graphics and tight gameplay. A classic Neo-Geo title.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a big fan of SF2, this was one of my favorite PvP 2D fighting games. Had advanced features like parries, missile deflection, crawling, and variable arena width (big playability issue, but the pixelization got pretty bad at wider angles).

Was amazed relatively noone knew about this gem at the time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think the first Samurai Shodown had parries. Pretty sure that was introduced in the sequel. But if you got unarmed, you could catch your opponent's weapon and throw them!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's good to know why Genan Shiranui disappeared after the first game. He was my favourite character. I felt so much nostalgia reading this interview.</comment>


Lucky with Crystal – Fewer Bugs, Better Performance, Incredible Productivity - <AUTHOR> https://crystal-lang.org/2018/02/06/lucky-with-crystal.html <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

I'm Paul Smith, the creator of Lucky.

I created Lucky because I wanted a framework that was fast, fun, productive, and caught lots of bugs that I would normally miss.

I'm happy to answer any question you have!</comment>


Show HN: $29 one-time fee, self-hosted CRM system - <AUTHOR> http://zhen81.com/zhen-crm/

<comment><USER2> Nice work! One question: you said introductory price of $29 - how long will this introductory price last?

<comment><AUTHOR> For a while. :) We'll update you when it goes higher, but right now, we're still testing the waters...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to know if a startup concept has already been done - <AUTHOR>

Starting with the assumption that whatever startup idea I can have it's already been done in some form somewhere. How would you go about digging out those attempts ? (I mean beside googling which more often than not will yield nothing relevant) <comment><USER2> This is one of those "Certainly _feels_ like work, but does not actually advance the business forward, so why bother doing it?" sort of tasks.

<comment><USER3> The most useful refactoring of this is, "have non-sales conversations with actual intended customers, learn about how they see this problem including how they're currently dealing with it, which may or may not include existing tools."

At which point, we're talking about basic customer development interviews, which are way more useful than "google up a list of possible alternatives."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If there is a company already solving the same problem and you can't find it within 1h of internet research then they're doing bad marketing and you have a good chance. The potential customers won't find them either.

<comment><USER5> In my case, Google did not find a competitor that ranks within 30k on Alexa, has the keywords on their homepage, and has $21m in funding. I found them after weeks of research. Don't remember the exact blog/comment/thread, but it wasn't within an hour of beginning my research. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Google wasn't the 1st search engine, Facebook wasn't the 1st social network, Youtube wasn't the 1st video site.

Execution trumps first mover advantage.

<comment><USER7> improve upon the existing ideas which are poorly executed.

<comment><USER8> Or which were well-executed, but occurred too-early for whatever market to form. (As you get older, you see this more and more.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perform market research

Entrepreneurship starts with creating a business plan. Part of that business plan is identifying your target market, your competition, and defining how you are unique. It's not so much that something has been done before but rather what sets you apart. If your concern is legal, then patents (google scholar) and trademarks are what you should be looking at. Copywrite is a bit more difficult but after performing your market research you should have an idea of what's out there. In other words, who is your target market and what are they using now that your startup is aiming to satisfy?

<comment><USER10> > Copywrite is a bit more difficult

Unless you're copying someone else's code, text or graphics, you're not infringing their copyright. Copyright would be the "easy one" since it's near impossible to accidentally infringe, unlike trademarks or patents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Assuming your startup idea is SaaS/web app...

Search on:

* /r/startups and /r/entrepreneur on reddit

* betalist.com

* startuplist.com

* techcrunch

* thenextweb

* venturebeat

I'm working on solving this problem. If you're interested, sign up to stay updated: rivalseek.com

</comment><comment><USER11> Dont. If it already is a company making money from you idea, there's more room, so it does not matter.</comment>


CSS Framework for Dummies - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yegor256/tacit

<comment><USER2> This has great potential to interfere with other css modules like nprogress or noUIslider to throw a few. The same reason why the <table> element requires a 'table' class for bootstrap as explained here: [http://getbootstrap.com/css/#tables](http://getbootstrap.com/css/#tables)

 _For basic styling—light padding and only horizontal dividers—add the base class .table to any <table>. It may seem super redundant, but given the widespread use of tables for other plugins like calendars and date pickers, we've opted to isolate our custom table styles._

<comment><USER3> Maybe you could work around this by adding a single class: "explicit". If that class is present it resets all the tacit css back to default.

<comment><USER4> Third party components (date pickers etc.) wouldn't know about the 'explicit' class so it would be up to the user to add this class to all non-semantic tables to 'undo' the Tacit CSS, but they won't know which components output such tables... This is supposed to be a drop-in 'make the page look nice' thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks great, I just forked it and will have a play around with it within the next week. The biggest gripe I have with CSS frameworks like Bootstrap and Foundation is the amount of effort you need to go to in regards to how you write your markup and what classes you use, they are far too opinionated until you reach the point you spend more time undoing default CSS styles than you do writing your own. Bootstrap is a great example of this, you define a container, then you define a row and then you add in your grid classes and if you want to nest a grid item within a grid, you have to introduce another row element to do so, it can get messy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I had exactly the same frustration with Bootstrap and others. You need to spend a lot of time to learn them and in the end you end up with a lot of changes to their styles anyway. So, what's the point in having them in the first place? :) Anyway, I'd love to see your contribution, if interested.

<comment><USER6> The point is to use them for prototypes and then throw away, alas it is never done. My personal opinion is that without CSS frameworks the web would be a better place. Not is is common just throw a bunch of frameworks (js and css) into the heap and call it a day.

<comment><USER7> As much as the one size fits all of bootstrap frustrates me, were you around before bootstrap?

Before-bootstrap is like before-jquery, you really can't understand the colossal contribution of either unless you were there. And just how much of a mess it was.

The dev world is unquestionably better for bootstrap.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks interesting especially for non-designers like me. I also recommend Skeleton[1] for a simple and clean look. It has some additional features and makes use of classes, but is still quite simple.

[1] [http://getskeleton.com/](http://getskeleton.com/)

<comment><USER9> I love skeleton and use it almost exclusively. Most of the classes are simple and you can easily overwrite stuff to make the design unique.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks nice! Led me to think about default styles--I suppose one of the strengths of HTML is that it describes the meaning of the content rather than the presentation--it's up to the client to present the various elements as they see fit. On the other hand, why couldn't the default look in a normal browser be something like this or like [http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com/) ? I'm not sure there's a reason an unstyled website should look like crap (well, I guess the reason is legacy baggage).

<comment><USER11> I don't believe there's such a thing as an "unstyled" website. At least if you're looking at it through a browser. Even if the page has no css at all, the browser is still using css defaults that it has hard coded. That hard coded css can differ from browser to browser. If one were to dig into it, you can often change much of these defaults to your preferences.

That's why there are css resets and projects like this or Normalize. They make base html look the same across browsers before you start creating design-based css.

<comment><USER10> Sure, what I meant was that the hardcoded CSS could perhaps be a bit more useful. Useful _and_ consistent across browsers--that's wishful thinking, of course :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The world needs something like this. No substitute for real design, but a great replacement for the default browser style.

One criticism: At that font weight, Helvetica Neue looks shitty on Windows machines. Take a look: [http://i.imgur.com/peDYi53.png](http://i.imgur.com/peDYi53.png)

I've had better luck with open sans at that weight.

<comment><USER13> With you on your sentiments.

With regard to your font weight problem, looks ok to me (Win7 x64 chrome/ff/IE latests):

[http://imgur.com/NPSDsWg](http://imgur.com/NPSDsWg)

<comment><USER12> hmm strange. I'm on win7, X64 with chrome, and it renders poorly to me. Maybe I have some font setting wrong.

Good luck with your project!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This looks cool! I see this helping a lot of people just get started and focus on what they do (until they include something else and it screws it all up :P)

The first thing that comes to my mind is making themes for this! Should fork and play around.

But how far can be push this ... What about grids ?

<comment><USER15> I am the farthest thing from a CSS expert, so if someone came up with a decent grid system that was class-less (like this "framework" currently is) I would be ecstatic. Till then, I will wait for `flexbox` to be fully supported in all the browsers I care about :)

<comment><USER16> My framework [http://natuive.net](http://natuive.net) has class-less grid, just put anything in a .row div.

<comment><USER17> How is a grid that requires a .row class exactly class-less?

<comment><USER18> It's probably because you don't need to explicitly flag a container as a grid with a class. I think that's what he's getting at.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The eruption of Iceland's Bardarbunga volcano formed a massive caldera - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/scientists-just-discovered-something-extraordinary-abou-1783674109 <comment><USER2> Reminds me yet again why I prefer to live west of Yellowstone :-)

<comment><USER3> Yes. Closer to the Ring of Fire[1]. :P

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Fire)</comment></comment>


Magnets and Marbles [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQ9gs-5lRKc <comment><USER2> First reaction: How the hell are people voting lame videos onto the HN front page? Ugh, this place it turning into Reddit.

Second reaction: OMG this is mesmerizing. Wait how much time did I just burn watching the entire thing?

<comment><USER3> I enjoyed it (and I read Reddit as well as HN).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From one of the comments, this needs to be a game / app. It has the feel of Magic Pen or Cut the Rope. My game dev skills are non-existent, but a game with these physics, blocks, magnets and marbles, etc, would be a fun playground. Create these kenetic sculptures and share, or modify them to pass a level.

<comment><USER5> There are games of this sort, the earliest I'm aware of is this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine_%28seri...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Machine_%28series%29)

<comment><USER6> TIM is indeed incredible, I remember spending many hours on the PC playing it.

The proposed The Incredible Magnet should be mobile, a dumbed down subset for casual puzzle solving. Move the magnetic sphere from X to Y using magnets, pulleys, and rubber bands!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To my mind, this qualifies as 'kinetic sculpture'.

</comment><comment><USER8> I find myself wanting to sing "pitagora suichi' at the end of every screen.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is insanely creative - very worth watching.

</comment><comment><USER10> Genius!

</comment><comment><USER11> We're /r/videos now?

<comment><USER12> Since we are not I guess the conservation can be it's obviously fake.

Or else why do they keep cutting it?

It's just a series of small rube machines (aka luck pot shots) faked together?

The wood grains look pretty similar to me between shots.

Not to say the art of a fake movies is valueless, the masses and what they believe are funny to watch, but not up to HN standards about truth and hacking and engineering.

<comment><USER13> What exactly is fake about it? It's clearly not intended to be portrayed as a continuous system... It's just a series of cool shit man</comment></comment></comment>


Apple In Ear headphones arrive - not compatible with iPhone. Why? - <AUTHOR> http://store.apple.com/us/product/MA850G/A?mco=MTIxODk3Mw

<comment><USER2> It doesn't say explicitly that it isn't compatible with the iPhone (though it doesn't list it as compatible either). Very strange. Why create a headphone with mic built in that wouldn't work with the phone in your product line? Why would you use a mic with a nano? Has the nano got recording capabilities now?</comment>


Lifesaving advice from a black woman held at gunpoint by police - <AUTHOR> https://theundefeated.com/features/lifesaving-advice-from-a-black-woman-held-at-gunpoint-by-police/ <comment><USER2> The most alarming thing about this story, apart from the suspected racism, is the sheer amount of confirmation bias on display from someone who is quite prepared to shoot you.

She offered corroborating evidence from the get go, and even the 911 dispatcher confirms her story, yet the officer is too busy waving his piece around to get off his power trip.

I'd be mad too. Some element of this volatile combo of deadly weapons and unprofessional police behavior has to change. Preferably both.

<comment><USER3> We need to have a set of cops who are clearly marked, wired with a body camera, and who _don 't carry weaponry_. Put them in blaze orange or something so criminals can see them coming and run away. You should have to go through this period for some number of years until you get to carry a gun.

Most cops go their whole lives without firing their gun--adding an extra gun rarely makes a situation better. While TV and movies like to portray heroic feats of gunplay, in reality, 90+% of the bullets go errant in situations where a gun was actually useful and required.

<comment><USER4> I don't think the gun is the issue here - _I_ carry a gun, regularly, and I've never felt the need to draw it and point it at someone who might be stealing something.

Police in the US are generally seen as adversarial, while police in the UK are generally seen as mostly helpful. In my estimation, the problem in the US is one of culture. Police here are looking for a reason to charge you with a crime, not trying to keep you out of trouble. It's "us versus them" on both sides.

<comment><USER5> The issue that the police in UK fire their guns a few orders of magnitude less might have something to do with it. It makes no sense to dive into statistics as to encounters and guilt and race and what not. Police in US is seen as adversial because they tend to shoot people and that's the core problem. [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-police- sho...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-police-shooting- statistics-discharge-firearms-figures-freddie-gray-baton-killings- homicide-a7160391.html)

<comment><USER6> Police in the US also get shot at magnitudes higher than the UK. Something something about everyone having guns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This was flagged away, but I vouched it back; I think it's interesting to hear a story which _almost_ ended in tragedy, just like it's useful to hear about software bugs which _almost_ resulted in data loss or security vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER8> In fact the almost case is more valuable because the survivor in this case was doing absolutely nothing wrong and lived to tell the tale.

<comment><USER9> "Absolutely nothing wrong" is a little bit overstating it.

She wasn't doing anything _illegal_ , sure, but it was a bit reckless to arrange the transfer so that the buyer was expected to go alone, onto someone's driveway, to replace the license plates and drive off with the car without talking to the resident or owner.

Imagine if you sold your Magic cards to someone and told them, "oh, they're in my bedroom at 123 Elm Street -- just jimmy open the window and fish 'em out. If anyone asks, just give them this handwritten note."

Or, "Cool, just pick up the keys from under my office desk. Walk past security, just ignore them if they stop you, and fish them out of the cabinet. Pick the lock if you have to."

No. Bad idea. You look like a thief doing that.

Could they have handled the situation better? Definitely. But it's a bit much to act outraged that anyone would misinterpret her actions.

<comment><USER10> _She wasn 't doing anything illegal, sure, but it was a bit reckless_

Only in a world where random folks from the neighbourhood might come out and point a gun at you instead of simply asking a few logical questions and looking at proffered supporting documentation.

 _But it 's a bit much to act outraged that anyone would misinterpret her actions._

Who's outraged at her actions being misinterpreted?

The outrage is at the fact that a panicky cop saw something they thought was suspicious and reacted by immediately pointing their gun at someone (something any good gun owner knows you never do unless you plan to shoot), creating a potentially life threatening situation, and the person on the other end of it was forced to defuse it.

<comment><USER9> >Who's outraged at her actions being misinterpreted?

Anyone characterizing her behavior as doing "absolutely nothing wrong".

You can both believe that the son-in-law and officer overreacted without believing the buyer somehow did everything exactly right. It's not either/or.

>The outrage is at the fact that a panicky cop saw something they thought was suspicious ...

Yes, people are outraged at that too, but they also blur that with the more dubious claim that "she did nothing wrong". I think that's pushing it. Again, not "either/or".

<comment><USER10> _Yes, people are outraged at that too, but they also blur that with the more dubious claim that "she did nothing wrong"._

Let's just admit it: if she were white, it wouldn't have turned out this way

She arranged the sale.

She had the seller's info.

She had the keys.

She had the paperwork.

Only problem is, she 1) is black, and 2) looked like a guy.

Could this situation have been handled differently? Sure. But I struggle to lay more than a small piece of the blame on her. I'd just as soon blame the mother-in-law for not telling her cowboy son that she'd sold the car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article makes a lot of claims about innocent black people being gunned down by police, but is there any actual evidence of this happening disproportionately to white people? Last year I trawled the 2015 Washington Post police shooting dataset and couldn't find any evidence, and a couple months later a black Harvard economist released a paper saying he couldn't find any evidence in the data he looked at. Between that and all of the bad reporting around the Michael Brown shooting, I'm beginning to believe that the only disparity is in media coverage... This story and its interest don't depend on this (in)accuracy, but it's such a common talking point and it doesn't seem to be substantiated.

In particular, I was expecting a lot more drama from a story of a black woman "surviving" an encounter with police. Here's a similar story about a white man in San Fran: [https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/good-samaritan- backfire-9...](https://medium.com/indian-thoughts/good-samaritan- backfire-9f53ef6a1c10). This sort of stuff makes me think that race is perhaps a red herring, and that the quality of police (or police training) simply vary a lot in our country.

<comment><USER12> You didn't research very hard.

From the Washington Post[0]:

> White people make up roughly 62 percent of the U.S. population but only > about 49 percent of those who are killed by police officers. African > Americans, however, account for 24 percent of those fatally shot and killed > by the police despite being just 13 percent of the U.S. population. As The > Post noted in a new analysis published last week, that means black Americans > are 2.5 times as likely as white Americans to be shot and killed by police > officers.

If you look at fatal police shootings so far this year[1], the numbers are the same.

You should provide a link to the Harvard study you mentioned.

Here[2] is one from Yale which someone once touted to me, which supports your claims. But they only used data from a limited number of police departments in Houston, TX. I'm not sure why anyone would look at that and not the national numbers. In the paper, of their own methods they say, "In essence, this is equivalent to analyzing labor market discrimination on a set of firms willing to supply a researcher with their Human Resources data!".

There are many places to find this information online. It is a fact: black people are shot and killed more often by police than white people.

[0] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post- nation/wp/2016/07/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post- nation/wp/2016/07/11/arent-more-white-people-than-black-people-killed-by- police-yes-but-no/)

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police- shoo...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police- shootings-2017/)

[2] [https://law.yale.edu/system/files/area/workshop/leo/leo16_fr...](https://law.yale.edu/system/files/area/workshop/leo/leo16_fryer.pdf)

<comment><USER13> I believe The Guardian also ran a project to count people murdered by law enforcement because there are no strict requirements to record this across the country:

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng- interactive/2015/jun/...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng- interactive/2015/jun/01/the-counted-police-killings-us-database)

<comment><USER11> I think that was the same impetus as the WashPo dataset. I do wish the United States made it mandatory for agencies to submit their data to the FBI. I also wish Eric Holder's Justice Dept didn't withhold offender race data from the NCVS. Interestingly, the FBI's Unified Crime Report seems to cover about 50% of police-involved shootings, making it a pretty good sample (and the UCR is generally consistent with the NCVS which is a survey of victims). Leaving data collection up to the media is sketchy, notably because the media are more likely to report officer race if the suspect is black and even more so if the officer is white.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's the test. Reverse the situation. Off-duty cop is buying a car and random good neighbor black person sees all the same "suspicious behaviors" and begins an armed confrontation with the person they believe to be stealing a car. Suddenly pointing a gun at a "suspicious person" is no longer "lawful and proper" behavior. At a minimum, the civilian goes to jail for being reckless.

<comment><USER15> Sorry, but that is not a good comparison. I would assume that off-duty cops (rightly) have more authority when it comes to these types of situations.

<comment><USER10> _I would assume that off-duty cops (rightly) have more authority when it comes to these types of situations._

And yet, when they make a mistake, they aren't held to a higher standard, despite we, as citizens, granting that authority to them.

<comment><USER11> No. Police are necessarily involved in more risky encounters than laypeople. They have manyfold the opportunities to make a mistake than laypeople. Training offsets some of that risk, but not all of it.

<comment><USER10> _No. Police are necessarily involved in more risky encounters than laypeople. They have manyfold the opportunities to make a mistake than laypeople._

That's illogical.

There are myriad professions where trust is delegated to the person in that profession, and consequences to go with it. A doctor doesn't get a free pass if they kill someone due to incompetence when performing a surgery just because they do it more often. Heck, engineers are held liable if their work results in injury or death.

Yet, with law enforcement, the opposite is often true, even when the facts clearly demonstrate fault on the part of the police. You couple that with the "thin blue line" culture that results in police circling the wagons whenever one of their own screws up, and it's no wonder that trust in the police has eroded. The perception is that there's simply no consequences to police misconduct. And in many cases, that perception unfortunately matches reality.

<comment><USER11> No, the error is yours, I think. We trust experts like police and surgeons to do certain dangerous tasks because their expertise offsets much of the risk; however, they're still more likely to make a mistake since they have to roll the dice more frequently. If the probability of a layperson wrongly killing someone is 20% per police-like-encounter, and the probability of a trained police officer killing someone is 1%, who has the greater odds of killing someone? The layperson who rolls the dice one time or the police officer who roles the dice a couple times a year (or a couple times a week in some places)?

> A doctor doesn't get a free pass if they kill someone due to incompetence > when performing a surgery just because they do it more often.

So you have data that police are being acquitted of shootings (when a jury finds that the shooting occurred due to incompetence) at a higher rate than surgeons? Or are you using different standards for "incompetence" (for surgeons, presumably the result of an investigation, but for police it's the opinion of the first pundit you heard?). Mind you, none of this has any bearing on comparing police shootings with civilian shootings, which was the topic of your original point...

<comment><USER10> _We trust experts like police and surgeons to do certain dangerous tasks because their expertise offsets much of the risk; however, they 're still more likely to make a mistake since they have to roll the dice more frequently._

And therefore the consequences should be significantly lessened for them relative to an untrained civilian?

The approach you advocate will result in the perverse incentive that a cop is better off always pulling a gun in any situation, as the lack of consequences means the incentive is to always minimize personal risk in an encounter in the short term, as there's no risk as a result of a mistake in the long term.

It's perverse.

In effect you place the power of life in death in the hands of a trusted individual, and then create a situation where they're incentivized to use it, especially in situations where even a whiff of short-term personal risk is perceived (like, say, in an encounter with a person in a minority where racial biases may come into play).

<comment><USER11> You're confusing a reasonable standard of proof with complete impunity.

<comment><USER10> And you're assuming a reasonable standard of proof is applied. I'm not willing to make that assumption. This case is yet another example of why.

<comment><USER11> I'm not assuming a reasonable standard of proof is applied, only that the standard for proof in police shootings should account for the fact that they're far more likely than civilians to be involved in escalated situations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How is property worth pointing a gun at someone over? It's a car. Cars can be replaced.

<comment><USER17> It may be just a car to you, but I have a valuable sports car, and if I caught someone attempting to steal it I wouldn't hesitate to point a gun. Not for a moment. Would the intent be to kill? Of course not. It'd be to deter.

Edit for the downvotes: it's not just a car to me, and it's not just about the monetary value. It has sentimental value and I wouldn't be able to replace it easily. I don't see what's so controversial about attempting to protect one's property. That said I did find this story disturbing and I'm not trying to imply that the woman did anything wrong. I was simply replying to the point above.

<comment><USER18> There's no such thing as pointing a firearm to "deter." One of the basic tenets of firearm training is that you never point it at anything you don't intend to shoot. And, when shooting, always go for a center mass shot. "Winging" someone is neither practical nor probable.

<comment><USER17> Of course there is, but yes, I accept the lethal outcome.

<comment><USER19> If you mean murder, don't say 'deter' and then wonder why you're getting downvoted.

<comment><USER17> Murder is unlawful and premeditated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Relevant comic: [http://christopherkeelty.com/surviving-a-police- encounter/](http://christopherkeelty.com/surviving-a-police-encounter/)

</comment><comment><USER21> This articles bothers me

Both the individual's story and her message here

I am glad it is here to bring further attention to these issues and even how this specific event happened to this woman

Both the encounter and how the police later handled the 'investigation' are both disgusting and why serious reform is anything but a top priority for officers and politicians is completely revolting to me

But I wish the author was more clear on what she meant in saying 'prevent the next philando castile'

Was she going to prevent it by filing the complaint and removing that officer from the street or was she insisting she would help prevent more philandos by educating others in saying:

> My behavior is how everyone should act in those situations: comply, survive > and complain later.

Because Castile did comply and was still murdered

This clip discusses how the definition of 'comply' changes with each high profile murder

[https://youtu.be/aufMdURbitU](https://youtu.be/aufMdURbitU)

Trevor Noah and the writers of the daily show have been discussing the issues in a way that I think has been highlighting some of the problems very clearly, and with great respect and composure

This clip calls out the silence from a leading voice defending law abiding citizens' rights to carry firearms, especially in regard to doing so without fear of being murdered by the police for carrying a firearm

[https://youtu.be/0IJSSBMLz6g?t=250s](https://youtu.be/0IJSSBMLz6g?t=250s)

And this video showcases the newly released dashcam footage of the philando murder

[https://youtu.be/wqgz7kRGVxg](https://youtu.be/wqgz7kRGVxg)

We need to talk about these issues but insinuating blame on the victim is the wrong way to do it

I hope the article was actually focused on the prevention method of filing complaints but I wish that was more clear

So please, until this is solved, comply like Castile did and if you live to tell your side of the encounter then please report these offenders

</comment><comment><USER22> Thank you, this was an interesting read.

On the tangent of arbitrary and unneeded flagging, there seems to be quite a great deal of it lately... it's not improving the site.

After I got off work, I tried to find a story that I'd noticed earlier and wanted to comment on, but it was completely gone from not just the front page but everywhere. A completely benign, tech-related story. Makes no sense:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14745430](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14745430)

<comment><USER23> Given that that same submitter submitted _at least six_ copies of essentially the same press release within _minutes_ of each other, I'm not surprised if several received many flags for duplication. Click "Past" on that link to see what I mean.

<comment><USER22> Okay... but I imagine dupes happen a lot when companies make an announcement. Doesn't mean we should bury _all_ instances of a story. The one I noticed had 19 votes at the time I read it, and this was the one I'd planned to comment on.

Isn't there a "merge" feature or something similar you can do to prevent squelching of a topic entirely? Let the site readers be the collective mechanism that votes or ignores something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I also had to vouch it back, there appears to be a concerted effort to flag this.

<comment><USER25> I too just vouched it back (after seeing this comment so we didn't click vouch simultaneously).

If you're flagging this story, perhaps you could leave a comment here about why?

Edit: And while posting this comment it got reflagged/revouched again...

<comment><USER26> This seems like a long-standing country-specific societal problem to me:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're > evidence of some interesting new phenomenon.

<comment><USER25> That's a fair argument.

I'd argue it's a new phenomenon in that this is the first time (I've seen anyways) people resigning themselves to simply giving advice on how to de- escelate the situation as a non-cop. But I can see how that seems like a stretch.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Curry's paradox: "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists." - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%27s_paradox <comment><USER2> The article has one point wrong. The statement "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists." is not equivalent to "If this sentence is false, then Santa Claus doesn't exist." It _is_ equivalent to "If Santa Claus doesn't exist, then this sentence is false".

To break it down into standard boolean algebra, the statement "if A then B" is logically equivalent to saying "not A or B". !A|B = B|!A = "If not B then not A".

Now back to the paradox, using boolean terms. The statement can be rephrased as !A|B: "This sentence is false or Santa Claus exists." Since we know that Santa doesn't exist, the sentence must be false: !(!A|B). That is equivalent to A&!B: "This sentence is true and Santa Claus doesn't exist." Here is where we have the paradox. We just said that the sentence must be false, but that then implies that the sentence is true.

The main mind-bender here is to realize that the negation of "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists." is "This sentence is true and Santa Claus doesn't exist." We are not able to get rid of the statement "this sentence is true" no matter which way we toggle it.

<comment><USER3> _The article has one point wrong._

See the [edit] link?

<comment><USER2> I can't now, since _my_ statement would then be false. :)

Seriously though, I thought about it, but then I realized that I would probably have to replace the entire paragraph, since it seems to be a key step in the original author's explanation.

Maybe I will replace it anyway, since it can't be a very good explanation if it relies on faulty logic.

-

Update: Did it. Now I'm contradicting myself. Gotta' love these logic games.

<comment><USER4> If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists.

Basically assume A is true then the non existence of Santa Clause is a contradiction so A is false.

If (A then B) says nothing if A is false so your done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another explanation: Penguins rule the universe (<http://xeny.net/PenguinsRuleTheUniverse>).

</comment><comment><USER5> Sorry I am a bit lost here. How is this a paradox?

Now we can conclude that if this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists, then necessarily,

if Santa Claus does not exist, this sentence is false, but

if this sentence is false, we cannot conclusively make any statement about the existence of Santa Claus.

Even if you modified the above statement to

iff this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists,

the above would still apply. If the sentence is false, then the iff condition is also false, so if the sentence is false, Santa Claus may or may not exist.

<comment><USER6> Sometimes the term paradox is used for situations that are merely surprising.

<comment><USER7> I take a more practical definition of "paradox": anything that throws a Prolog interpreter into an infinite loop ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Someone (perhaps the submitee) please tell us why, this is relevant, dealing with infinite loops? or something? -

<comment><AUTHOR> If you had to reduce it to a sentence, it would be: this is something that gratifies my intellectual curiosity.</comment></comment>


PHP framework Laravel selects Vue.js as default JavaScript framework - <AUTHOR> http://react-etc.net/entry/php-framework-laravel-selects-vue-js-as-default-javascript-framework <comment><USER2> One of the worst decisions Taylor could've made, IMO.

<comment><USER3> Vue is actually quite a good choice as Vue can be used for both SPAs & multi page apps and Vue is easier to learn.

Compare to:

\- angular 1: marked as deprecated

\- angular 2: Built for SPAs only.

\- aurelia: Built for SPAs only.

\- React: quite hard to get around your head as it uses completely different (although very powerful) paradigm.

IMO, his choices were limited to react and vue, and he chose vue because he found vue is better than react.</comment></comment>


Equifax hack exposed more information than we thought, documents show - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-equifax-hack-20180209-story.html <comment><USER2> \- Equifax did not mean to mislead consumers by only providing a portion of the information that was accessed by the hackers.

Why do companies think that when they are caught being less than forthright that their explanations will be seen as anything but disingenuous?</comment>


Blood uric acid level and IQ: a study in twin families (1984) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6540956 <comment><USER3> "The significant correlation between plasma uric acid level and IQ suggests a contribution of partly common gene loci to the two quantitative traits."

The most illuminating thing I've read about genetics research recently was the comment that we are increasingly finding that most traits are related to most genes. It's like doing a statistical analysis on any pair of complex software features and trying to figure out which transistors are used by both - <USER2> answer is going to be "most of them".

</comment><comment><USER4> FYI, that's from 1984

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess my gout comes with a little bit of good news.

<comment><USER6> LOL I was thinking the same

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does the study control for wealth of the family? If not, it's poorly designed.</comment>


USB Armory: Creating an open source secure flash-drive-sized computer [video] - <AUTHOR> http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2014/31c3_-_6541_-_en_-_saal_2_-_201412281730_-_forging_the_usb_armory_-_andrea_barisani.html

<comment><USER2> Crowd supply link here: [https://www.crowdsupply.com/inverse-path/usb- armory](https://www.crowdsupply.com/inverse-path/usb-armory)

I've been watching this project for a while now, and the possibilities are really endless.

One thing he mentioned that sounds really interesting is you could run a transparent proxy, and use it to replace "p@ssw0rd" on login pages with the actual password from a password manager on the device. Of course you'd have to set up SSL interception with a self-signed cert, but AFAIK most (all?) browsers will let you add a custom CA. You could also add ad blocking and malware scanning as well, assuming the device is fast enough and has enough ram.</comment>


If You Want to be Awesome at Email, Add Yesware - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/alextaub/2013/01/17/if-you-want-to-be-awesome-at-emails-add-yesware-to-your-gmail-today/?nowelcome

<comment><USER2> I used to work in the office next to these guys. Was an interesting company to say the least.</comment>


Henry Blodget: Why Newspapers Are Screwed - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2007/08/its-easy-to-say.html

<comment><USER2> I once suggested on some blog that the death of newspapers would be tragic because bloggers are almost all writing editorials (and often much better than editors do) but almost never peform reportage. Of course, I got _flamed_. Of course bloggers are reporters.

But "Reporting" isn't blogging. It isn't even "writing". It's going out, learning about a foreign subject in a day, driving/walking/tramping all over the place, interviewing multiple people, establishing government, police, underworld contacts, getting double and triple confirmation on key facts, adhering to rigorous journalistic ethical standards, etc. That's reporting and it isn't fun, and almost no bloggers do it--just like almost no open source writers write accounting software.

The first fatality will be local news. God knows why anybody subscribes to local papers, but they do serve the purpose of keeping an eye on local politicians, who have a tendency towards corruption. Once the local rags are gone, I dread what will happen to municipal governments...

Does the average blogger want to sit through the Lions' club chicken dinner every Sunday in order to hear the latest about councilman X. Didn't think so...

<comment><USER3> For once, myname, I'm actually going to agree with you. Blogging is, on the side of techcrunch, basically the equivalent of rewriting a press release (ok ok, sometimes he does some editorializing and "reporting" but not usually). On the side of talkingpointsmemo, it's an ongoing "I watch CSPAN and editorialize".

In the middle is what is being lost without news organizations. I'm not saying that it can't exist, it just doesn't exist yet. To fund this kind of reporting (which takes time and people) you need a revenue model that can support it and you need that journalistic ethic - the one that tells you that losing money on something is ok because it serves the public good. This ethical stance is the one basically only left amongst major newspaper organizations (the national TV news used to have it but they forgot it years ago).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> News moving from print to web is a fundamental shift in the nature of the market, which brings many opportunities for growth by embracing the realities of the net, and a high chance of failure by ignoring those realities. Some thoughts:

The focus of the business needs to adapt to what is demanded online: giving people want they want that other sites don't give them, and conversely not providing things done better elsewhere. There is plenty of room for innovation: treating news more like data [<http://www.holovaty.com/blog/archive/2006/09/06/0307>], exploiting archives, focus on analysis... In short, losing the mindset of transferring print to web, sticking to core competencies, extending and innovating where appropriate, and ditching the junk.

The organisation of the business may be able to move from the monolithic style to a more networked model, with more freelancing, syndication and aggregation, more 'citizen reporters' and a blurred line between bloggers and journalists.

The big newspapers have strong brands, and for the near future most people don't want news from some random blog, or to have to trawl the net. NYT and friends are well positioned to capture the new news business. But likely many of them will refuse to change, or try and fail. So, a period of turmoil and consolidation: many papers fold, reporters shift gears and go where the money is online, the fit adapt and survive, the weak stagnate and die. But I think all those reporters, all the net-folk wanting news, and a few savvy types to put it together, will work it out in the end one way or another.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are two aspects to what we think of as a "newspaper": the physical medium and the content - aggregation of mainstream print journalism.

The physical medium of paper is in many ways superior to our current generation of displays. It won't go away until we have daylight readable 20000:1 contrast-ratio flexible displays. That doesn't mean the print- newspaper business isn't doomed. Subscription numbers are in a nose dive, and still have a long way to fall.

Yet the aggregation of mainstream print journalism via a different medium still has a chance for success. The killer app for mainstream media is producing quality content. Bloggers can't support foreign offices, for example. Micheal Yon, Micheal Totten and other "embedded bloggers" are the exceptions that prove the rule. Distributed locality where you don't need a correspondent in, say, Beijing because Chinese Bloggers cover it, only partially solves this. There is something to be said for an expert outsider reporting news & trends.

So newspapers aren't necessarily screwed. If there were a way to directly support good content proportional to its value, good written journalism provided by online newspapers could survive and even thrive. The high hurdles of subscription and premium content and the indirect path of ad revenue aren't good enough. The article is right about the numbers.

I'm working on a startup that would allow a distributed set of people to directly support online content. In this way, newspapers could evolve to become aggregations of professional bloggers and journalists, providing high quality content for a profit.

<comment><USER5> These flexible video displays are amazing. [http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=21...](http://www.sciencentral.com/articles/view.php3?article_id=218392977)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is damning analysis, and, I think, too conservative - I think the real picture is worse for the NYT.

But, what should we, as a society, do about it? While blogs and other citizen journalism have actually helped journalism, there is still significant value in dedicated professional journalism. A significant amount of the raw material that is discussed in the political and news blogs comes from the professional sites.

Reporting is expensive and good reporting is hard - we'll be at a serious loss if someone doesn't figure out a good way to pay for it.

<comment><USER6> I suspect we're seeing a classic disruptive innovation at work here. A new technology (blogging) arrives that provides _lower_ quality than existing markets demand, but does so at dramatically reduced cost. Existing solutions have overshot the quality levels demanded by the marketplace - the average American can't tell the difference between FOX News and the New York Times. The existing market remains, but is dwarfed in size by the new market for low- quality, shoot-from-the-hit journalism. Meanwhile, incumbents find they can't meet the cost structures necessary to compete in the new market.

I suspect that the New York Times will go the way of the Betamax and the Lisp Machine. It becomes a quaint relic of a technically superior age, but nobody actually buys it anymore.

The good news is that once a disruptive innovation has taken over the market, it usually improves to eventually match the original incumbent. So after a few years of drek, we'll see the worst, most content-free blogs die off and be replaced by people who put more thought into it. I suspect this is what'll happen to the best reporters - after a few lean years, they'll start up blogs, people will realize that those blogs give much better information than the competition, and they'll end up making much more than they ever did while working for a newspaper. After all, they don't have to share all the ad revenue they generate with the print staff anymore.

Only the best reporters, though. It'll suck to be a mediocre reporter, just as it sucks to be a mediocre real estate agent now and it sucked to be a mediocre programmer in 2002. The field will probably shrink significantly, but that's the whole point of capitalism - freeing up labor to work in fields where they'll be more productive.

<comment><USER7> I'd like to think that is true but don't see evidence to support it. For instance, blogs don't seem to solve the problem of aggregation, which requires a special group of editors to evaluate content quality.

Consequently, I wouldn't expect the best reporters to be able to make more - I'd expect the worst reporters to make the most money. That is, those that are willing to dumb down/spice up the content so that it sells well. I call this the News Corp/Myspace effect and don't see any effective counter.

Do you?

<comment><USER8> The Economist has seen subscriptions rise recently, I think. People who want quality journalism are willing to pay for it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>