Sorry, your "cool" webapp is probably not going to make money - <AUTHOR> http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/webapp-is-not-going-to-make-money.htm <comment><USER2> Beware the fatigue that sets in with these "boring" money makers. It can be very difficult to keep your motivation high when working on something like this, especially in the beginning where you're not making money and no one takes you seriously. With a funky web app, at least your friends and family might understand it and think it's cool.

Doing a startup already takes a lot of motivation. It's significantly harder if you're working on something that you're not passionate about.

(Note: I don't disagree at all with the author. I just want to point out that there are downsides to this approach as well.)

<comment><USER3> The single most important anecdote I've ever heard about software is this:

In the early days of VisiCalc, Dan Bricklin travelled with his Apple II, demonstrating his software to potential customers. The response from 'computer people' was generally fairly muted - they didn't see what spreadsheets did that they couldn't already do in BASIC. People with no experience of computers assumed that computers could do damned near anything, so they weren't impressed. The response from accountants was quite different.

There was one particular instance at a trade fair, when Dan noticed a smartly dressed older gentleman paying very close attention to his demonstration. At the end of the demo, he approached Dan with a cheque already in his hand. Dan noticed that the man's hands were shaking; Although at the time an Apple II was an expensive purchase, the gentleman looked like he could comfortably afford it.

Dan asked him if he was nervous. The gentleman responded with great excitement, explaining that what he had just seen would completely transform his job. He talked about his career as an accountant, how his work had been changed by the introduction of tabulation machines and electronic calculators; He explained how this new invention would free him from countless hours of tedious calculation, allowing him to effortlessly play with numbers.

To Bricklin, VisiCalc was a clever little piece of software that paid him a good wage. To the gentleman, it was a complete transformation of what he did all day, a liberating technology, even a new lease of life. VisiCalc restored his interest in his work and made him genuinely excited to get up in the morning.

If we see functional business apps as boring, it is only through our own lack of imagination. Few of us are likely to significantly change the computing industry, but each of us has the very real opportunity to transform another industry. As software developers, we are uniquely privileged in being able to turn some small part of someone's work into play. As Steve Blank so often points out, when we look beyond our own walls and see how we could help people do things, the possibilities are limitless.

<comment><USER4> I don't mean to detract from the message of this story, but source? I'm hoping you can point me in the direction of similar stories of software lore.

<comment><USER5> Dan Bricklin' story (and many others inccluding interviews of the founders of 37 signals, apple, adobe, yahoo, flickr etc) is featured in "Founders At Work". Great inspirational read, but there is no trace of an old trembling man with a cheque though :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is absolutely true.

The problem with a market driven approach is that it's hard to convince people to get in to 'glorified bookkeeping' or other stuff like that. Industry applications typically are not sexy but they're a fantastic way to make money because businesses don't have a problem to pay for things that will save them money, time or both.

If you're in it for the money go for b2b any time over b2c, b2c is sexy, everybody will write about you if you score but the fact is you most likely won't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, agree with your recommendation of B2B. Going B2B instantly simplifies a lot of issues that startups face because (as you say) businesses are usually inclined to pay money for services even if it is in $100-$1000/mo range. Consumers, on the other hand, will cringe at the sight of paying $5.

99 cents apps, thanks so much for setting expectations of consumers that everything on the web should be free or sub $1 range.

<comment><USER7> you know what 99c apps have done?

They've got people _paying_ for software. Normal people. People who have probably never paid for software in their life, save for Office (probably bundled with their PC), and a few XBox games

They've got used to paying 99c for apps, then they've slowly adjusted their price expectations up to the $5-10 range for iPad apps, and the advent of the Mac Store looks like helping ease prices people are willing to pay even higher. Pixelmator has sold more than a few copies at $30. Cheap for what it is, but people are buying it. _Apple have trained people to pay for software_

<comment><USER6> As opposed to all that open source stuff for free in the repositories, yes. But paying for _software_ is something that has meanwhile been superseded by people paying for _services_ , and that's where the real money is in the long run.

Someone paying $10 for your software is great but not as great as someone paying $4.95 monthly for the use of a service.

The difference is that if you intend to hold on to your userbase on a subscription basis that fart apps are not going to cut it (pun intended), you will have to deliver value for the money your subscribers pay you.

Apple has not conditioned people to pay for software any more than google has conditioned people to click on ads, both companies simply used their economies of scale to make it worthwhile to market to their particular audience, google through their adwords (not adsense!) program and apple through their app store.

Just wait for the 'facebook phone' and it's associated app store, it's only a matter of time.

It's not as though Steve Jobs invented 'software for sale' with the app store, software has been sold to individuals and businesses alike for decades now, the things that have changed the equation here are:

      - download sites for PC software

      - open source

      - massive piracy

<comment><USER8>
       software has been sold to individuals and
       businesses alike for decades now, the things
       that have changed the equation here are:

         - download sites for PC software

         - open source

         - massive piracy

How are those (except for open source) new? Piracy has always been massive, in the past even more than it is today. Do you know anyone who actually payed for any piece of c64/atari 8-bit software?

And for a long time the first place to get software from (particularly games) were BBSs.

In these times of Steam, App Store(s) & easy on-line purchases via the likes of Paypal I expect people actually buy software a lot more often than in the 80s or 90s.

<comment><USER6> The internet has changed the piracy game completely, copying a cassette tape or ROM was time consuming and required some skill.

Download.com and Tucows basically destroyed the shareware movement, barring a few exceptions.

The upside is that there are now _many_ more people that are using software so the markets are much larger in potential and the area where the app stores shine are convenience.

A few clicks to download and pay for a piece of software is a massive convenience when compared to the hassle that used to be involved in buying licensed software.

<comment><USER9> _The internet has changed the piracy game completely_

Eh, were you actually around then? Copying floppy disks was generally just as easy as anything else, and the skill level of the average computer user was much, much higher. Based on my experience I'd say piracy per capita was nearly 100% in the 80's. These days there are large swaths of computer users who simply don't install anything that isn't pushed at them, let alone browse through TPB. Before the Internet became popular in the mid 90's a large number of BBS's were dedicated to piracy.

Keep in mind ASP on software is a fraction of what it once was. In 1983, Lotus 1-2-3 sold for $495. Duplicating the functionality of the $150 Office Home and Student would have been over $1000.

<comment><USER6> I actually made pretty good money in the early 80's from programming games and later selling licensed software on the net.

Yes, large numbers of BBS's were dedicated to piracy but large numbers of meters of shelf space in retail stores were dedicated to 'boxed' software too.

<comment><USER10> I think trotsky is referring to sneakernet piracy, not the odd BBS. I was very young in the '80s, but I remember all the computer users I knew were extremely liberal in their sharing of programs, the same way that people were with music cassettes. "Oh, I bought this cool game. I think you'll like it. Here, let me make you a copy."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the web app-building crowd here is divided into two groups of hackers: Those who are in it to build businesses and those who just want to create apps that people use.

Everybody likes money, but there's a big group of people out there that only want people to use their apps and are not in it for the money.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. My post is meant for people who actually want to make money. Making apps for skill enhancement, fun and enjoyment is perfectly good. But expecting to make money from such apps and calling them startups is not OK.

<comment><USER12> What do you mean it's "not OK"? Trying to building something new that people use and love is a perfectly acceptable path to building a startup. pg had a great post on this topic: <http://paulgraham.com/organic.html>

So you have an approach to building products that works for you. Great. But scoffing at people who actually want to build the new amazing things that have a real impact on the world is what I call "not OK".

After someone trailblazes the idea and builds something that gets traction, then we can expect legions of "you guys" who just want to monkey their idea and take a piece of the pie.

<comment><USER6> I think you miss the point entirely and quoting Paul Graham without understanding what he writes is not going to help either.

What Paras is getting at here is that _if_ your goal is to make money _then_ you are probably better off building something that has that premise baked in to it from the first moment rather than to just go and make some consumer app that might get traction but that will be hard to monetise.

The 'people' from Pauls piece can be interpreted as both consumers _and_ businesses, and if you aim for 'people' that are willing and used to spending money for the kind of service that you provide then you stand a much better chance of making money than if you just 'build anything people love and use'.

Sure, youtube is a great counterargument, but barring being bought out by some big company such a success could easily be lethal. See 'imeem' and lots of other highly popular but ultimately losing propositions.

Making money should not be an afterthought, it should be a focal point if that is your motivation to do this sort of thing. If you do it for fun or because of a drive to change the world for the better, if you're already rich from past ventures and any one of a hundred other reasons why you are not currently in it for the money then sure, go ahead and do that thing that scratches your itch.

But if you plan on paying the bills focus on where the money is made first.

<comment><USER12> Nah. pg's post fits perfectly here. Specifically the part "Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy."

This is exactly what paras is doing. Dismissing apps he doesn't think can make money as toys. Why should the focus just be on making money?

Saying "if your goal is to make money" is sort of strange to me anyways. Probably because my goal is not to make money, but to build new and interesting things that have an impact. Focusing just on money to start seems like the path to building yet another 37signals basecamp knockoff.

<comment><USER13> > Saying "if your goal is to make money" is sort of strange to me anyways. > Probably because my goal is not to make money, but to build new and > interesting things that have an impact.

That's sort of the point Paras is making though. If your building a new and interesting things to have impact, but your expecting it to make money and calling it a startup, it's not OK.

> Why should the focus just be on making money?

He's not saying it should.

> Dismissing apps he doesn't think can make money as toys

He's not doing this either.

<comment><USER12> I am expecting to make money. And I am calling what I do a startup. And the my goal of the startup is to build new and interesting things.

I guess thats not OK

<comment><USER13> You're being obtuse on purpose. But I'll bite:

> I am expecting to make money.

Merely expecting to make money doesn't make money. You have to have a plan to make money. You can expect things all you want, but they won't happen.

> And I am calling what I do a startup.

You can call what you do a startup. Calling it a startup doesn't make it so. A rose by any other name and all that jazz.

> And the my goal of the startup is to build new and interesting things.

See, that's your problem. You don't even know what you are building. "New and interesting things"? What is that? You have to be specific.

So, literally, you are expecting to make money from a startup where you build new and interesting things. You don't know what those new and interesting things are, or how you can make money from it, or even if you can make money from it. You don't have a business plan. You don't even know what market you'll be in (the building new and interesting things market?).

<comment><USER12> You're right, I'm not really happy with my input in the thread. Obtuse is a good word for it.

I doubt we have that different of an outlook. My passionate disagreement with the original author however is the belief you have to put making money above all else. I've seen too many startups end in failure (many of them clients) because they tried to monetize too early, or put nickle and diming customers above user satisfaction.

<comment><USER10> I think you've got the article exactly backwards. As I read it, the point is not that you have to put making money above all else. The point is that your chances of making money improve dramatically if you consider first _what people are willing to pay money for_.

I find that the other approach is _more_ likely to invent the kind of annoying and harmful revenue strategies you're criticizing. A product that has a built- in market of customers waving money does not need to stoop to that level to turn a profit. You can focus on making a product that your customers like and making sure they know about it.

How you prioritize making money is up to you. The OP is a helpful tip on getting it if you want it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The article's market-first approach:

        * Find an industry (ideally, an old fashioned one) where people are making money
        * Find the single differentiator which will put your app apart in the already established industry (read or research what pain points are still not addressed by top 3 solutions)
        * Make a web app, market it, refine it based on feedback, monetize the app
        * Slowly incorporate all standard features expected out of a solution in that industry so you can shoot to be a market leader

I think this sounds great, but the key point is "read or research what pain points are still not addressed by top 3 solutions" which I think is very hard from outside the given industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well there has got to be at least one "hard" part in making money, otherwise wouldn't everyone be doing the same? There is no easy way to make money or successful but it isn't impossible either.

I will give you my example. When I was starting out with Wingify (Visual Website Optimizer), I had absolutely no idea or industry connections in online marketing industry. But I started reading blogs, used existing solutions, talked to people and then eventually figured out that sufficiently large number of people do A/B testing, pay for it and right now it is hard enough to justify a new solution that simplifies it. The idea of "Visual A/B testing" wasn't something I realized overnight. It was a result of more than a year of trying to understand pain points of a "large enough" industry.

If you spend enough time researching an industry, you will eventually find some great opportunities.

<comment><USER15> And since you personally advocate for that route have you achieved a financial success already (even in small)?

<comment><USER10> From the links at the bottom of the OP, it would appear so: [http://paraschopra.com/blog/personal/how-making-money- change...](http://paraschopra.com/blog/personal/how-making-money-changed-my- perspective-on-startup-ideas.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For some, building software is the answer to the question: 'How can I make money?'

For others, building software is the answer to the question: 'What would I do all day if I didn't have to worry about making money?'

<comment><USER17> I ask both questions and get the same answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Paraschopra has written one of the secrets to building a low risk/high returns web app which is re-echoed here by the founder of sharefile.com. [http://www.sharefile.com/blog/seeking-startup-advice-look- no...](http://www.sharefile.com/blog/seeking-startup-advice-look-no-further- than-your-pizza-box/)

In my opinion, those of us who want to build a business from our startup, shouldn't focus on the high risk / high return approach of building b2c apps dependent on advertising and large user base. According to Amy Hoy, we can all easily build a 30 x 500 wep app (<http://unicornfree.com/30x500/>). That is 500 customers paying $30 per month which gives us $15k monthly and $180,000 annually. With just 500 users and this finances in place, we can then swing for the fences in our second start-up, knowing that we don't have to eat ramen or beg anyone for funding in the beginning. This also ensures we have the power to take investments only from the right kind of investors and more importantly, it put us in a position to retain controlling shares in the new start-up. Two examples of people that took this approach are Dharmesh shah of hubspot and Joel spolsky with stackexchange. These were there second start-ups after selling the 1st in the case of Dharmesh and still making money from fogcreek in the case of Joel.

</comment><comment><USER19> As a startup founder in the internet space i can relate to this very well. For a founder with a technical background like me its hard to sometimes get the thinking off of the details of implementation. I like to think and work on architecture, under-the-hood features, scalability etc, but in the end it wont matter if noone uses the product. Users dont see and dont care for any of that, they want to you improve what they deal with everyday. So you have to find a good balance between that to make your product better but still work on the overall technical structure to keep things smoothly. Also marketing probably is much more important than the quality of your code or even app.

</comment><comment><USER20> "So, instead of an image-gallery app, why not make a survey software specifically targeted at, say, event attendees."

Shameless plug: check out our startup, <http://yorn.com>, which does exactly this.

<comment> e-dard Your site design completely rocks. It's fantastic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I would add, even better is to start with the delivery channel. If you've got ways to reach a market which spends money, you're yet another step ahead.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting. Can you elaborate what you mean by delivery channel?

<comment><USER21> Delivery channel = A way to reach the market.

For example, maybe you have ideas for products in half a dozen industries, but in one of those industries you happen to have a good friend who works in it (and thus has contacts there) and know the editor of one of the industry trade magazines. Those are both delivery channels into that industry. Compared to another niche where you have no contacts, it is much better to build a startup for that niche where you have some way to reach the market.

This may be already implied in your mind, but a lot of people wouldn't get it from reading your article. They'd start listing out industries and then picking one of them. I'm suggesting: list out your deliver channels first, and go from there (as a kind of step 0 in your process).

For example, Stack Overflow had two excellent delivery channels to reach programmer communities around the world (Joel and Jeff's blogs). It's fair to say that those two channels "made" stack-overflow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I think if you are considering multiple industries that make money you will automatically gravitate towards the most "practical" one where you have more familiarity. That said, in my opinion in any industry creating a delivery channel is not incredibly difficult but it does give you an unfair advantage while starting out.

<comment><USER21> This actually brings up a third alternative... start with the industries, as you suggest, but then, as part of your hypothesis-resolution (see [http://swombat.com/2011/1/7/how-to-evaluate-and-implement- st...](http://swombat.com/2011/1/7/how-to-evaluate-and-implement-startup- ideas-using-hypothesis-driven-development)), try to create delivery channels into those industries that you like.

Then follow the one where you best succeed into building delivery channels.

Best of both worlds?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Solid advice.

Young people have to learn this the hard way. Today, it seems everyone wants to write a FaceBook type app and be hugely popular with mainstream folks (a household name). However, there are tons of devs (mostly people you seldom ever hear about and who hardly anyone knows) making a great living writing libraries, device drivers and other non-killer, yet useful software.

</comment><comment><USER23> That explains what I'm working on right now to a T. It's an industry that is currently being run on fax and lots of manual data entry. A big key for us was having connections with people inside, which made it easier to learn exactly what they were looking for and then ultimately set up sales meetings.

</comment><comment><USER24> Ideally, you want a "cool" webapp that can provide an entry into a viable market. The "cool" part gets you noticed among early adopters, who talk you up until you get noticed in the marketplace. Because there is some cost in getting into those marketplaces - you have to set up booths at trade shows, or get PR in industry specific publications. "Coolness" can reduce those expenses or help you get partnerships or funding.

</comment><comment><USER15> Yes, but ... we are on YC site and at least twice a year we hear about cool companies appearing out of the blue with crazy idea and some of them get acquired or start bringing profits.

So, the 'cool' factor will continue to have its benefits and is a good method to actually get going initially.

<comment><USER21> I believe DHH coined the name for those: Lottery tickets.

<http://www.justin.tv/hackertv/b/259414909>

<comment><USER25> I've been calling them that for years now, and I suspect others have too, so the term is hardly novel, but that's exactly what they are.

Throw enough things at the wall, a few will stick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I prefer to look at it this way, I'm taking an area where I think the current solutions are lacking and creating a solution was gives value both in terms of time and money saved. Yes as a side effect I can charge decent money for a product which generates more money in savings and extra profit than it costs, but amount of money isn't the real motivation.

I'd much rather work on something that fits this criteria than the so called "cool" webapps.

</comment><comment><USER23> Something to keep in mind in the B2B market is you can charge _a lot_. Do your research and find out how much time your software will save the company and price your solution closer to that than what it costs you to produce and support. You'll never get a consumer to pay $1,000/m for your web app, but if you can save a company 25 hours a month they're getting a steal.

</comment><comment><USER27> The key word here is _probably_.

There is room enough for both blue-sky idealists and pragmatic business grinders. We need both and both are likely to fail more often than they succeed.

It might be easy to criticize somebody who follows their passion and then fails on business issues but there are many ways to measure "success" and not all of them line up with a VC's definition of "success".

</comment><comment><USER28> "Money or the ability to make it doesn't impress anybody around here. " -- Mark Zuckerberg (the social network)

</comment><comment><USER29> Making money may not be the primary goal of these apps. I for one have been working on a few things that probably will not make me money but are great experience, are teaching me a lot and hopefully will give me a little notoriety for the day I build my first money maker.

</comment><comment><USER30> > _If making money is the objective, I suggest going with the market-first > approach_

That's one way to do it, but not the only one. For example, it's not how Apple designs products -- their design criterion is whatever Jobs likes.

<comment><USER10> I think this is pretty naive. Apple's products, for the most part, are very successful. Either Steve Jobs is just extraordinarily average or they do quite a bit of market research. In fact, one of Apple's first hires was a guy who specialized in collecting data from user-testing and figuring out how to make applications better fit how they were used in the real world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> No disrespect at all to the author, but when I see advice on how to do something I always ask. "What have you done that proves that your advice works?"

If this came from Paul Graham, I would probably sit up and take notice but here, meh.

Still the blog is well written and the advice is worth a try if you are wired that way.

<comment><USER6> > If this came from Paul Graham, I would probably sit up and take notice but > here, meh.

Right, because all wisdom in the startup scene flows from those that have made millions during the .com boom.

Really, people like Paras are running start-ups _today_ and are making money _today_ , not 10 years ago, and even if Paul Graham is a very smart and capable person if it came to picking someones brain about running a start-up today I'm pretty sure that there is value to be found with both parties rather than just with those that succeeded in the past.

> Still the blog is well written and the advice is worth a try if you are > wired that way.

So, you disagree with yourself?

If you're running a start-up you should take your advice where ever you find it and weigh it according to the rules of applicability to your situation, no matter what the source. You can even learn a lot from failures, no point in limiting your input to just the success stories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> 1/10 isn't bad odds. After your fifth app, you should have pretty good odds.</comment>


Show HN: Building a better way to manage changelogs - <AUTHOR> http://donedid.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is an example listing from a user, which is better than our own: [http://donedid.io/organizations/newscron.com](http://donedid.io/organizations/newscron.com)

</comment><comment><USER2> Great tool for communicating what changes have been completed. I use this on a weekly basis to rollup and communicate with our customers.</comment>


Keep a Changelog - <AUTHOR> http://keepachangelog.com/ <comment><USER2> The author seems not overly familiar with the history and conventions of releasing software.

> _Is there a standard change log format?_

> _Sadly, no. But I want to change that._

There _is_ a standard change log format: [https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Style-of- Change...](https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Style-of-Change- Logs.html)

Most GNU tools (and many others) use this format.

The Debian changelog format which most people have seen is based on that format, and is compatible with it.

> _What's the point of a change log?_

> _To make it easier for users and contributors to see precisely what notable > changes have been made between each release (or version) of the project._

Oooh, they mean a _NEWS_ file. Standardized like so: [https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/NEWS- File.html](https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/NEWS-File.html)

> _What should the change log file be named?_

> _Well, if you can't tell from the example above, CHANGELOG.md is the best > convention so far._

> _Some projects also use HISTORY.txt, HISTORY.md, History.md, NEWS.txt, > NEWS.md, News.txt, RELEASES.txt, RELEASE.md, releases.md, etc._

> _It's a mess. All these names only makes it harder for people to find it._

Please use standard names. Details here: [http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software- Release-Practice-HOWTO/dis...](http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/Software-Release- Practice-HOWTO/distpractice.html#filenames)

<comment><USER3> The GNU standard is good and all, but I've found that it's horribly out of date.

\- The name "NEWS" is not what users expect. I used to have a NEWS file which documents major changes in a high-level way, per the GNU standards. But I kept getting requests from users to "keep a changelog", and I kept getting questions from users about where the changelog is. Apparently most users never bother to check the NEWS file; they don't even associate the filename "NEWS" with what they're looking for. 95% of the users associate that concept with the word "changelog". "Changelog" is the new "NEWS". After several years, I gave up the resistance and renamed by "NEWS" to "Changelog".

\- The actual Changelog format, per the GNU standards, is useless in my opinion now that version control systems have gotten so good. In my opinion, the git history is exactly what the GNU changelog tried to be, with the added benefit that the git history is much easier to browse, query and manipulate.

<comment><USER2> > _The name "NEWS" is not what users expect._

This, I suspect, depends on your user base. Apparently _your_ users expect the name "changelog". (Do they all use that exact term? Could this usage be traced to a single source, common among your users?)

> _The actual Changelog format, per the GNU standards, is useless in my > opinion now that version control systems have gotten so good._

Indeed, I believe even GNU Emacs has abandoned (or is about to abandon) it, now that they have switched to git.

<comment><USER3> Yes my users all use the term "changelog". And outside of traditional GNU projects, I've never seen _anybody_ talk about "the NEWS file". All I've seen is people mentioning "the changelog", by which they mean that which the GNU NEWS file is meant for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Projects that still insist on maintaining a changelog file in git end up constantly fighting git's conflict resolution, and they make rebase almost completely unusable.

For an actual log of individual changes, that's what "git log" is for; any project that pre-dates git should "git mv ChangeLog ChangeLog.pre-git". And if your "git log" output isn't highly readable, write better commit messages and group changes into more logical commits; once you stop breaking "git rebase -i", that gets a lot easier.

Some of this advice potentially makes sense, but for a NEWS file, not a changelog. A NEWS file has one top-level heading per release, containing the release notes for that release, summarizing the key user-visible changes. However, that file should _not_ attempt to track every change, should _not_ contain times or dates, and should get grouped in logical chunks rather than chronological order.

And while it can potentially make sense to update that file as part of the commit introducing a new user-visible change, that also reintroduces the same conflict and collaboration issues as a changelog, so personally I only update NEWS files right before a release. I run a script that generates a properly formatted NEWS entry based on the version and git commit messages (turning each one into a markdown bullet-list entry with indentation), then edit the result to add headings, group entries under those headings, and delete any non-user-visible changes that don't merit a release note.

<comment><USER5> I think neither a CHANGELOG or a NEWS file has a place in a git repo.

Every file in every commit should be meaningful for the given commit. These are obviously usually source files or even documentation of the current behavior of the software. The problem with CHANGELOG and NEWS files that they are not meaningful to every single commit only for commits that are tagged as releases.

I don't know what would be a good practice to manage change logs in a repo. I'm sure that it shouldn't be in a project's git repo though. Maybe having a separate git repo for managing releases would help, like have your original project as a submodule and keep release specific files in this separate repo. Obviously it looks more complicated but it's better than managing merge conflicts between CHANGELOG files when there is no meaning of the CHANGELOG for the merge commit anyway.

<comment><USER2> The ChangeLog file can certainly be cut, but the NEWS file? The NEWS file is only changed when a _new release_ is made. Otherwise, the file is unchanged. I see no reason it should not be in the repository.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why use so many levels of markdown headers? That prevents pasting parts of changelog as a section of another document (e.g. release notes), creates cacophony of fonts when converted to html, and is overall unnecessary because it adds no meaning nor reading convenience. It looks like this guy is overcomplicating quite a simple thing.

I've been maintaining changelogs for pretty much all my career, in simpler format:

        - at the top of file go unreleased changes, without a header

        1.6.1: 2005-01-22
        - fixed: one
        - fixed: another

        1.6: 2004-11-18
        - fixed: this
        - added: that
        - redesigned preferences dialog

There is zero markup noise here, and when interpreted as markdown it looks just as nice.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, your format looks exactly like what Perl's CHANGES spec stipulate: [https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/CPAN- Changes/lib/CPAN/...](https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/CPAN- Changes/lib/CPAN/Changes/Spec.pod)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In Perl a standard had evolved[1] that is a bit less structured, but designed to be machine read/writable while still being human centered.

And if you build your distributions with Dist::Zilla[2] you can use plugins to ensure that you have an entry for your release[3] and that the changelog follows the standard[4].

[1] [https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/CPAN- Changes/lib/CPAN/...](https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/CPAN- Changes/lib/CPAN/Changes/Spec.pod)

[2] [https://metacpan.org/pod/Dist::Zilla](https://metacpan.org/pod/Dist::Zilla)

[3] [https://metacpan.org/pod/Dist::Zilla::Plugin::CheckChangesHa...](https://metacpan.org/pod/Dist::Zilla::Plugin::CheckChangesHasContent)

[4] [https://metacpan.org/pod/Dist::Zilla::Plugin::Test::CPAN::Ch...](https://metacpan.org/pod/Dist::Zilla::Plugin::Test::CPAN::Changes)

</comment><comment><USER9> From the article:

 _Is there a standard change log format?

Sadly, no. But I want to change that._

... wait, what?

There are plenty of standardised change log formats. Take for example Debian's changelog format:

[https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch- source.html#s-dp...](https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch- source.html#s-dpkgchangelog)

Or are they talking about one standard to rule them all? In which case...

[http://xkcd.com/927/](http://xkcd.com/927/)

</comment><comment><USER10>
        > Is there a standard change log format?
        Sadly, no. But I want to change that.

What's missing from some formats which already exist and are pretty popular? [https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch- source.html](https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-source.html) describes debian changelog format which applies to all .deb packages for years now.

</comment><comment><USER11> "Because log diffs are full of noise. Can we really expect every single commit in an open source project to be meaningful and self-explanatory? That seems like a pipe dream."

I thought this was the point of squashing your commits together when making a pull request, so the `git log` of master reads like a changelog. You can also interactively rebase and change commit messages if the wording is confusing.

<comment><USER12> The definition of "meaningful" might be a bit soft here. When figuring out what changed in a release, I don't really care that you "converted tabs to spaces" or "refactored method name based on intent" or any such structural change. The git log is generally too noisy to be used for describing a release.

<comment><USER13> Exactly: There are two very different use-cases and audiences.

Your version-control system should be helping programmers understand the evolution of the codebase, or the reasons behind certain line-changes... _especially_ when those changes were made by someone else long ago.

The changelog, on the other hand, is for a less-technical (or at least less- involved) audience. It has to _summarize_ the net-change which occurs in a way which is meaningful to people asking different sets of questions. Such as: "What are the new features?" and "Did they change anything about X?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just started using rf-release[1] to manage both maintaining a changelog and releasing to npm.

It maintains a CHANGELOG.md file that includes all the changes that have happened between version numbers. It chooses which commits to include by filtering on [added], [changed], [deleted], or [fixed]. Thus, if you'd like a change to appear in your changelog, just include one of those tags in the relevant commit message.

Seems like a nice way to prevent maintaining an npm package from becoming a chore.

[1] [https://github.com/ryanflorence/rf- release](https://github.com/ryanflorence/rf-release)

</comment><comment><USER15> > Dumping a diff of commit logs. Just don't do that, you're helping nobody.

Depending on how you write your comments for commits, merges, or tags, it seems that you could dump those logs and have quite a reasonable changelog.

<comment><USER16> I think a good approach to this when using git, that I've tried to keep in my own projects of late, is to keep your master branch only merge commits and curate the merge commit messages explicitly to be human readable descriptions of the changes. I think it's entirely possible to generate good changelogs out of this and proper tagging, but there probably need to be a few less awkward tools for maintaining it than just directly using git commands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The best and most extensive changelog I ever saw is D's: [http://dlang.org/changelog.html](http://dlang.org/changelog.html)

It documents and explains (with examples!) everything normal D programmer needs to know.

</comment><comment><USER18> I like projects that put their changelogs into git tags with `git tag -s`. On GitHub these even get shown by default on the releases page. A nice side effect is that you sign the hash of the release too.

<comment><USER19> _> `git tag -s`_

Know of somewhere that explains how to do that well? I'm a big fan of keeping all of my workflows related to project in git as much as possible, especially if GitHub picks it up correctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's worth noting that they link to Vandamme, the library used by Gemnasium for parsing changelogs, but Vandamme recommends a slightly different format for the file:

[https://github.com/tech-angels/vandamme/#changelogs- conventi...](https://github.com/tech-angels/vandamme/#changelogs-convention)

I prefer Vandamme's recommended format, but I'd greatly appreciate this site's format as well.

</comment><comment><USER21> I follow this set though I hadn't read about it before. I do one additional tag that is not mentioned. "Updated", which is used for translations. So, each release has a line similar to this:

Updated: French, Portuguese Brazilian, Spanish International

It doesn't affect the app other than those specific translations and it makes it easy to pinpoint when a given translation was last updated.

</comment><comment><USER22> Before you run to educate me about GNU's change log style guide, please go read this: [https://github.com/olivierlacan/keep-a- changelog/commit/3039...](https://github.com/olivierlacan/keep-a- changelog/commit/30399830ce04b48049f881062984742990d5c260#diff-04c6e90faac2675aa89e2176d2eec7d8L74)

Thank you :-)

<comment><USER2> > […] _or the two-paragram GNU NEWS file "guideline". The GNU style guide is a > nice start but it is incredibly naive. There's nothing wrong with being > naive but when people need guidance, it's rarely very helpful. Especially > when there are many situations and edge cases to deal with._

Your project could easily transition to become a project to document, codify, and standardize existing NEWS file practices and conventions and also submit these as a patch to the GNU coding standards. This would be an effort I could support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good issue tracking tools can produce changelogs for you, which is preferable to maintaining a redundant, separate log manually. It also encourages good practices like tracking all user-visible changes and keeping issue summaries accurate and readable.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nicely formatted changelogs are amazing for third-party tools: at requires.io we try to gather as many changelogs as possible, but oftentimes there are simply none available.

</comment><comment><USER25> note 'unreleased' is not the right word to use for the section above the last version. this is because a version is not necessarily a release. it should be called 'latest'</comment>


Content Delivery Networks (CDN) - a comprehensive list of providers - <AUTHOR> http://www.mytestbox.com/miscellaneous/content-delivery-networks-cdn-list/

<comment><USER2> I wish that all these CDNs would list their prices on the sites so you can actually compare them.

<comment><USER3> I think its one of those "if you have to ask... you can't afford it" kind of situations.

<comment><USER4> <http://www.simplecdn.com/> (from the list) seems substantially cheaper than Amazon S3 if your bandwidth/storage ratio is high enough (actually typical for serving web content). They also have price comparisons with other CDNs, including Akamai and such whose pricing is not public:

<http://www.simplecdn.com/savings>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dan Rayburn has a great blog talking about CDN's.: <http://blog.streamingmedia.com>

</comment><comment><USER6> So hard to know who to pick.. there's just not much info out there. Personally I'm waiting for the Amazon CDN launch: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/html-forms- controller/aws-content-d...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/html-forms- controller/aws-content-delivery-service)

</comment><comment><USER7> if you want to try google app engine as CDN, visit www.digitalistic.com/2008/06/09/10-easy-steps-to-use-google-app-engine-as- your-own-cdn/ great trick</comment>


U.S. Army Awards Pocket-Sized Drones $20.6M Contract - <AUTHOR> https://interestingengineering.com/us-army-awards-pocket-sized-drones-206-million-contract <comment><USER2> Good for FLIR. A really revolutionary drone platform actually, super expensive though.</comment>


This Solar-Powered Toilet Torches Poop for Public Health - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/this-fiber-optic-toilet-burns-poop-with-the-power-of-the-sun <comment><USER2> Genius. Would be great for India.

<comment><USER3> I prefer the other one which converted human waste to clean drinkable water, electricity and ash.

They've gone quiet for too long</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Could stackoverflow.com work for other fields? - <AUTHOR>

I tried asking this question on the actual site, but it was closed as "non-programming-related" fairly quickly.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/674232/could-stackoverflow-work-for-other-fields-closed
Unfortunately, I'm still curious to hear what people think. Here is my original question:
"Pick the specialty: medicine, law, science, finance, cars, home improvement...any field that has specialized 'domain knowledge'.
Could someone build a successful forum, like SO, for other areas of expertise? Is there something different about programming that makes this site work exceptionally well?" <comment><USER3> Are you famous in your field? No? Then it won't work.

HN works because PG is here. Reddit worked because PG was there to help it start.

Digg works because Kevin Rose is there.

StackOverflow works because Joel and Jeff are there.

Unless you've got a large audience to toss at the project on day one, expect a long, hard slog.

<comment><USER4> Was Kevin Rose known (on a PG level) before Digg??

I would say no.

<comment><USER5> He sheepishly reviewed his company on the geek-dense Screensavers program on TechTv (now Attack of the Show, I think, on G4).

<comment><USER6> I miss Screensavers from the ZDTV era. Tech was ok, G4 is unwatchable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The amount of time spent in front of a computer with an internet connection in a working day would be the key to success of such a site.

It would probably have higher traction among, say, graphical designers than medical staff.

<comment><USER8> I could definitely see this paying off for the design community, help desk technicians or CS students (their numbers are one the rise).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> <http://www.sermo.com> does this for docs - docs talk to other docs, and pharma companies and hedge funds pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to eavesdrop and seed specific questions they want answered. (The sign-in page restricts randoms to MDs and DOs to register.) It's a brilliant business model.

</comment><comment><USER10> Something like SO could work in other fields. But, the devil is in the details of the moderation and incentive schemes. The features of the site matter, but not nearly as much as the community. So, it is more of an anthropology and sociology problem than a build-a-webapp one.

For law and medicine, for instance, you'd have to fight the mindset of "online is not reliable". In programming it is fairly easy to check if someone's answer is trustworthy because you can go and test it yourself relatively quickly and unambiguously. In other fields establishing the credibility of someone answering a question is a lot more tricky. That said, I think bar associations have (bad) sites to ask each other questions.

I agree with Jeff that you can't make a general site of this sort without an intense amount of moderation. (he said so in a recent SO podcast)

In short, it all comes down to the community. And it is probably hard to figure out what incentives and moderation to have for a given community if you are not a part of it yourself.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think it'll work for other fields but not as well as programming.

Programming gets you a much higher volume of traffic. The same programmer, might come to your site 100 times during the week to find solutions to the different problems. Its also a field where you have a lot of amateurs and students looking for solutions.

The other fields you mention under specialty, are all the "oh shit my car broke down what could it be?" type. Its a one time problem, after which the person won't come back for 2 years. So you'll never see the same growth as SO, because you don't have any repeat users.

</comment><comment><USER12> I had thought so. On closer inspection though, it's unlikely.

Why? Have a look at reference sites online. There were plenty of sites like experts-exchange before StackOverflow, and if you trawl Google Groups, you'll see a similar thing. Plenty of people asking technical questions, not so much anything else.

Certainly, you don't see medical students out there asking the best way to diagnose a rare disease.

There is one exception though -- Travel sites. Travel questions and forums are pretty big, and I think a Q&A site for that could be enormous.

Meanwhile Yahoo Answers, AskMeFi, etc continue to fill the gaps for other niches that might actually work.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think so.

In fact, I believe it so much, that's my startup: <http://www.chuwe.com> \- "Stackoverflow for startups and small businesses."

As brandnewlow pointed out, starting it is a massive uphill battle - <USER2> and egg problem as it were. The software's only small part. We're attacking it in what we hope is a novel way, but you would have to find an approach unique to the area you were targeting, I imagine.

If you're interested, I've been planning on open-sourcing chuwe in a bit after we make it a bit more robust. Contact me and we can work out something if you'd like to just take the software and modify it to your own niche!

</comment><comment><USER14> I think so. I have a concept I'm working on that's more a request forum than a Q&A board but I'm borrowing a few things StackOverflow has implemented well (nothing unique - mainly the simple wiki revisions).

Something else to consider are the 'game' factors. StackOverflow implemented badges and they work well initially (and teach the user how to use the site). At the end of the day the things that tie you into a site are the things that make you want to keep going at it. On most discussion boards it's reputation/karma but little things like badges and medals help too.

Obviously it depends on whether the field needs/can have a question and answer platform, but I can see this discussion model working for most technical areas of knowledge.

</comment><comment><USER15> as a site? sure.

as a business? hard to tell.

Yahoo Answers holds the potential to encompass every use case for StackOverflow and all your offshoots. However, I sincerely believe that the added context that a site like StackOverflow provides (being that it's curated specifically toward programmers) does provide real value. That sort of context injection could certainly be carried over to other verticals (provided the sites can attract seed contributors and curators).

<comment><USER13> I agree, but monetization's always difficult.

The trick is finding a niche that you're interested in, can serve well with the site's format, and _has money_.

If you find that niche and you approach it in a novel way, then you can (likely) serve it infinitely better than a general questions and answers site like mahalo/yahoo answers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> A large part of the problem and solution relies on the field we're talking about. There are law forums, but unfortunately, the law is incredibly specific and varies wildly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. There would have to be a LawOverflow for every county. Medicine is incredibly situational as well, and that doesn't include the doctor patient confidentiality clause, which means the doctor needs permissions even to ask general questions. Now, if you were talking about students, then the style still wouldn't work, because the answers are in the textbooks, not in other people. Cars and home improvements have the best chance, but as was mentioned, The people answering the questions have to be spending a lot of time at the computer, rather than spending their doing work on cars, or doing construction work on a house.

The reason StackOverflow works is that computers work based on their code, and so a certain compiler will interpret C# code in a certain predictable way, so the people answering the questions don't have to be anywhere near you. And they are able to answer in a relevant way. The same is not true for other fields.

</comment><comment><USER17> Perhaps. The advantage with programming is that there is a lot of general knowledge that goes beyond languages, etc and even at the language level you have sufficient number of people with general interest. Where you can replicate that it should work. In the sciences I am not so sure. You tend to get too specific and there isn't a general enough dialogue you can have in most communities.

</comment><comment><USER18> Get HN code & build your own doctorsnews, autonews etc. :) or may be add categories to HN system.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is computer-related but I read @codinghorror tweets about a SO for sysadmins.

I just imagined a SO for the medicine field, I'll read it everyday!, imagine a doctor asking for help to another doctor?, and not only that, a doctor asking for feedback on a research... wow

</comment><comment><USER20> Mathematics, perhaps?</comment>


Ask HN: Which revenue route should I go down? - <AUTHOR>

Bit of background... I'm currently in the early stages of creating a new property directory focusing on student houses with added information such as internet speeds, distance to uni bus stops, crime in the area etc. It aims to address the dispersed nature of many different estate agents offering properties on lists which all represent data differently, combined with the complete lack of neighbourhood knowledge students have when venturing to a new city. Furthermore, I am a student trying to address the problem I had.
Now, the APIs for the added will cost money when the service scales. I'm currently having a dilemma of which revenue avenue to go down and am seeking some advice.
1. Charge the estate agents to list their properties. Whilst this may be a good bet, it could lead to a lack of value for students if the list represents only, say, 50% of the total properties available.
2. Charge the students for a premium version. Offer the standard aggregated lists free and charge for the added neighbourhood information. But, what price? And charging students may be an unsafe bet. Additionally, even with 2% uptake, the revenues from one university would be small.
3. Charge completely for the product. No free version, but perhaps a trial. Take up of the product may be reduced in such a case, however it could be marketed as having the advantage over other students in house hunting, thus representing more value.
4. Charge estate agents per lead. Not sure how I'd track this and again, if one estate agent didn't sign up, the property list would lose value.
I have a meeting with the largest student estate agent for my university on Wednesday, and would love some advice. <comment><USER2> As the founder of a London-based property start-up, I'd advise reversing the question: what are you offering the agent that is worth paying for?

Once you identify that, you can calculate how much it is worth to them.

For example, our auction allows agents to automate 'negotiation', so they can focus on landlords and stop annoying tenants.

For a small agent, this is worth tens of thousands of pounds. For a medium sized chain, it's worth hundreds of thousands in savings a year. For a large landlord, the same.

So we charge a percentage of annual rent, as a transaction fee (rather than a listing fee - our hypothesis is the listings/lead generation model is dying and needs a bullet to the head).

Hope this helps. Feel free to get in touch; I'm on twitter @rayhanrafiq

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting suggestion. After putting it that way, I did a bit of rummaging of the estate agents website. Combining their rates for landlords (7% of total property revenue + VAT, the 'middle' option), with the data they have for properties, I managed to give a rough estimate that they earn about £320,000 p/a on student properties. This doesn't count properties listed before January or so, as I wasn't recording them and they're now gone.

Now, they have a 'No let, no fee' policy. Let's say they don't manage to let 10% of their properties, that's £32,000 of missed revenue. 20% and it's £64,000. Obviously, I'm not sure on what the rate is, but if my student union is anything to go by, supply > demand, so it's at least relevant. As such, my service at least on the outset, aims to reduce this figure by funnelling students into a central portal and quickly directing them to properties available (availabilities are updated daily). Furthermore, I realise they at least spend >£2000 p/m on advertising in the student newspaper. The service also aims to eradicate this by becoming 'the' place to go for student properties. By not having to advertise so aggressively, agents are left with more resources to acquire new landlords.

Moreover, the top of the funnel starts with students who don't know where to look for properties, are rushed, mislead and unfortunately hurried into contracts. By having one site that deals with the whole process it becomes simpler, more relaxed and students have the opportunity to browse all the properties available. They get to find exactly the property they need. Students are happier, properties are let quicker.

Given this information, what would you suggest? I don't wish to scare them away as ideally I want all real estate agents in the area to sign up in order to fully benefit students. I'd love to chat more if you're up for it, you can catch me at c.k.howell (at) warwick . ac . uk

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would suggest flat fee from the estate agents and obviously encourage apartment complex guys to post directly (you can offer discount to them) so that you can remove middle men as much as possible.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd recommend charging real estate agents (either per lead or listing). They have the money and are used to spending it.

<comment><USER5> I'd like to add to this point. Instead of charging a flat fee, take a commission from the apartment complex. You could even have all money pass from the student through you as a sort of man in the middle.

Also, I'd be interested in working on this. I go to the 2nd largest university in the US.</comment></comment>


Starfish Prime - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime <comment><USER2> This is an important and little-known event that relates to space travel (or the lack of it) today. It's possible that the government was trying to blow a hole through the Van Allen Belts, rings of deadly radiation that surround our planet. A hole would let rockets with men aboard travel through the belts without irradiating them to death.

Instead, Starfish Prime made the Van Allen Belts bigger and more radioactive. In hindsight, releasing a nuclear weapon in space seems like a terrible idea.

When NASA talks today about taking men to the moon or to Mars, they sometimes mention the problem of the Van Allen Belts. NASA has never explained how the Apollo astronauts were to have traveled through these regions without being fried to death.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps this will help you understand: [https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/SMIII_Problem...](https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/files/SMIII_Problem7.pdf)

<comment><USER2> I didn't need a math paper for children. NASA's own astronauts have discussed this problem, even recently. It remains a problem today. But thank you.</comment></comment></comment>


Chess boxing: you can win by K.O. or checkmate - <AUTHOR> http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1821639,00.html

<comment><USER2> Attention hackers: the idea of combining athletics and chess had Alan Turing's endorsement: he invented "run around the house chess," a speed chess game with a twist: after making your move, you dash out of the house, run completely around it, and your opponent has until you return to your seat to decide which move to make.

[http://220.127.116.11/search?q=cache:HCBY1qLAY7kJ:www.chessc...](http://184.108.40.206/search?q=cache:HCBY1qLAY7kJ:www.chesscafe.com/text/hans87.pdf)</comment>


World's 1st manned quadcopter flight - <AUTHOR> http://youtu.be/L75ESD9PBOw?t=1m43s

<comment><USER2> The plane containing all the propeller blades goes through the operator. It's cool, but I wouldn't go anywhere near it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I has 16 rotors, so it's quadquadcopter :)

Anyway, great result, but no rollcage and rotors on the same plane as pilot body kinda produce safety concerns.

</comment><comment><USER4> Also, it's worth noting that this isn't a quadcopter; it has many more than four rotors.</comment>


The Best Science Fiction Books (According to Reddit) - <AUTHOR> http://blamcast.net/articles/best-science-fiction-books <comment><USER2> On the one hand, there's only one Star Wars novel there. On the other hand, it beat out Gene Wolfe.</comment>


The Internet Attack That Wasn't - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/22/the-internet-attack-that-wasnt/ <comment><USER2> So... a story about a non-story?</comment>


Computer Science by Mail - <AUTHOR> https://neil.fraser.name/news/2015/04/13/ <comment><USER2> When I was a kid we used to try to guess the computer science teacher's password. (This was back when a mischievous computer science student would be made to do some manual labor around the school-- not sent to federal prison.)

After too many attempts it would lock us out and we'd have to wait to try again. One day when our teacher was trying to start class he found that he had been locked out. We all started laughing and he knew why.

The next day there was a sign on the door telling us that the class had been moved to a new room. When we arrived we found that the classroom had no computers. The work was the same. The lessons progressed. But we wrote all that Pascal on paper. We only had one chance to turn something in and I remember going home and trying to remember all the code to type into my home computer to see if my program would compile.

Anyway, I would suggest someone sending this guy a copy of The Little Schemer. Anyone can read that book and gain great confidence in a short amount of time while starting to think the way a programmer ought to think.

<comment><USER3> Our Chemistry teacher typed his password on a tablet and the image was projected on the screen. So I watched which keys appeared depressed and was able to login later, view GradeQuick, had ability to change grades, but didn't. Good thing I didn't get caught, I might be in federal prison. I did get caught for making a "virus", which was just a webpage that opened it self onload. I think I just got detention for that though.

<comment><USER4> I poisoned the squid cache at my school and made a fake sex offenders website with all of the teachers on it. Times have changed.

<comment><USER5> Heh, with some friends I took down the email service board wide for a day via auto-responder. Unlikely you could do that today - most schools are switching to Office365.

<comment><USER6> Nice. I short-circuited the school ethernet network, shutdown the access to internet school-wide forcing all office staff to work on paper for two days. Suspended 2 days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was kind of hoping this would be a service that sends you a postcard each week with some information and exercises that you're expected to do without a computer. Maybe the postcard could be scantron-able so the customer simply does the work in a notebook then fills in the bubbles on the card then gets a grade for the last week stamped on the card that comes the following week (or maybe that's going _too_ far with the no computer policy and there can be a website that shows what questions you got wrong).

I'd pay a few bucks a week for something like that.

<comment><USER8> What's the gain from the snail-mail medium as opposed to getting something like this in your email inbox?

<comment><USER7> Novelty, as said below. Also, it removes a possible level of distraction. It's harder to get distracted when you go right from the mailbox to the kitchen table with a pad and pen than it is when you have to open an email and avoid switching to your other tabs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had a few computer science theory classes where we never wrote any code. Algorithms can be worked out on pencil and paper. Imagine, for example, trying out different sorting algorithms by using twenty different strips of paper of all different lengths on a table.

Remember that a lot of the theory of computer science was invented before there were any computers as we known them today. George Boole, Ada Lovelace, Charles Babbage, and probably lots of others I am forgetting never saw a computer in their lifetimes.

<comment><USER10> Sometimes doing things in this way can demonstrate time complexity in a very real way.

On a computer a bubble sort of a large list might take a few milliseconds. Do it with strips of paper and you're immediately thinking there's obviously a better way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's awesome. I am looking forward to following this. He can certainly learn quite a lot of the supporting theory working with just pencil and paper...

...and submitting a program for "compilation by email" is very old school, like our punch card days, only a bit slower.

<comment><USER12> And it has the added benefit of forcing thinking before executing. Along with a potentially very forgiving "compiler". In college at GT prior to 2002 (2003?) the intro class was taught using a pascal based pseudocode. The TAs grading it were necessarily lenient on issues of syntax and the students could focus on the semantics of the program. Need a function that interacts with the outside world (reads a character, draws a figure to a screen, whatever)? Just say that's what it does and it does it.

This leaves the student with a solid understanding of algorithms and data structures, and in the follow-on courses they can worry about stricter syntax (language and APIs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One summer in France while I was a kid (from the states, visiting for 6 weeks), I wrote a spell checker in 6502 assembly in a notebook...as I had no access to a computer and my french was terrible, so I had more alone time than I should have had.

I then typed it into my Commodore 64, at home at the end of the summer.

It didn't compile at first (of course) but it was mind-expanding to have so much time to think about the algorithm.

I had totally forgotten this entire incident until this moment.

</comment><comment><USER14> From a review comment:

 _The highlight, and in my opinion success, of this book is the fact that no "real" programming language is used to notate any examples. Rather, Dr. Shackelford, along with other TA's of recent past, devised a pseudo-language which encapsulates many elements of previous educational languages (such as Pascal); naturally, this language is not vulnerable to obsolescence. Also, since this language can not be practically compiled, the reader is forced to trace through examples on his or her own, building his or her skills in mentally evaluating algorithms._

[http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Computing-Algorithms- Russ...](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Computing-Algorithms-Russel- Shackelford/dp/0201314517)

</comment><comment><USER15> As a teenager in the 80s I did learn mostly on paper at first -- no computer for the first year and more. The maybe nonobvious benefit, if you're lucky in your choice of books, is in coming to expect code to be as nice and pretty as the textbook examples. The working world was quite a comedown later on.

Maybe a crazy idea, but Dijkstra's _A Discipline of Programming_ was meant for coding on paper. Hehner's _A Practical Theory of Programming_ is kind of similar and more recent -- I haven't read it.

</comment><comment><USER16> The OP here is Neil Fraser, a google employee who's done some really awesome work, including the creation of Blockly[1]. The rest of his writings and software are worth checking out.

[1] [https://developers.google.com/blockly/](https://developers.google.com/blockly/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Some of the most interesting computing I did was as a child with nothing but paper, a pencil, a programming book[0] and my imagination. I coded my work on reams of paper with decimal numbers representing everything (the idea of assembly code didn't really occur to me). I got a _LOT_ of mileage from that method, and I still today refer to lessons and accomplishments learned that way. There is hope.

To be fair, I _did_ have a Commodore64 to put my work into -- but perhaps the subject of this story could get one too -- the Internet and illicit hacking/communication are probably the biggest worries for a "no computer" environment.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Language-Commodore-Other- Compu...](http://www.amazon.com/Machine-Language-Commodore-Other- Computers/dp/0893036641)

<comment><USER18> I did the same, but did NOT have a computer. I had picked up non-functional Commodore 64, its manuals, and some magazines.

Since the computer didn't work, I spent my summer of '94 writing BASIC code that I'd never run.

<comment><USER17> Nice! My work was 6510 machine language, hence all the "coding in decimal" \-- using mneumonics to _write_ my code (ie: "lda" for "load the accumulator") didn't occur to me, and neither had using hex. Using assembly (lda vs whatever the decimal equiv was) wouldn't have made sense anyway, since I didn't have an assembler -- I just POKEd all my code into memory. Then I'd (typically) hijack the keyboard interrupt (with the final call in MY code to the real kb handling code) and my code would run -- things like switching screen colours everytime you pressed a key. But I learned about looping, conditions, CPU program counters, registers, flags, boolean logic, memory addressing...

Good times.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Do you think Ray Reyes would be allowed a TI-83, the reference manual, and some spare batteries? In high school I taught myself quite a bit "offline".

<comment><USER20> Truth. I remember coding under my blankets at night with a flashlight on my TI-83. Made some mad BASIC apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thank you for believing in somebody who probably had nobody to believe on him. The fact he reached out for help in learning to program is awesome. I wonder if he'll figure out the puzzle.

Quick question would the solution be 10 factorial?

<comment><USER22> Hint: Each finger (digit) has two states (extended or curled up)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reminds me of this famous quote "Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."

</comment><comment><USER24> I was in a similar predicament (not prison) where I had zero access but wanted to continue to hone in on my skills.

My advice is to learn something like HTML/CSS.

It is really easy to read and understand. Send him a "before and after"

Sheet 1: some b, i, title, font, etc tags marked up in HTML with data

Sheet 2: the "after" sheet of what it looks like rendered

Each week the remote student will be tasked with writing out a basic website. He / she sends in his work to the teacher that inputs the data (bonus points for OCR.)

The teacher sends back the rendering along with the next lesson plan.

From there you can go into CSS. Javascript would be a little harder but think how advanced you can get at HTML/CSS in a few years?

Being that I already had knowledge, I took time to hone in on more theoretical skills such as UX and read a ton of books related to user experience, business, etc.

<comment><USER25> HTML is not computer science.

<comment><USER26> Why isn't it? I'd say as a markup language, it touches on a lot of computer science topics: data structures, semantics, abstraction, etc. Also, I think it's a great entry point that could lead to an interest more "serious" CS topics.

[http://blog.acthompson.net/2013/03/html-and-computer- science...](http://blog.acthompson.net/2013/03/html-and-computer-science.html)

[http://supercomputerscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/html-is- not...](http://supercomputerscience.blogspot.com/2012/07/html-is-not- programming-so-why-teach-it.html)

<comment><USER27> Completely agree - it's an incredibly easy first step in understanding the abstraction of code -> results.

I've actually had the privilege of walking a recently released inmate with 0 computer skills through the process of writing their first lines of html. The excitement he experienced seeing "hello world" transform just by changing it to "
hello world
" was incredible. I think it boils down to realizing the power of - to put this in the simplest terms possible: "typing some jargon and making things happen."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> In retrospect, my own education would probably have been much more rigorous if I'd been denied access to a computer while learning the fundamentals.

Very interested to see if anything comes of this.

</comment><comment><USER29> This brings back memories. When I started learning C++ in school (outside curriculum), I did have someone older teaching me, but I didn't have access to a compiler. I'd finished half of the introductory book before I ran my first program.

I was used to programming in BASIC and a few other languages by then, so it was far easier for me. But I still remember the first time I typed in my first C++ program in Turbo C++ and got it to compile.

</comment><comment><USER30> Math books would be better, 5 yrs to build up linear algebra, analysis, discrete math and study theory of computation. Learn to code with a MOOC when released. You can also do a lot of SICP by hand by printing out MIT 6.001 online tutorial answers and questions. [http://icampustutor.csail.mit.edu/6.001-public/](http://icampustutor.csail.mit.edu/6.001-public/)

</comment><comment><USER31> Can anyone recommend the two books the author recommends? I haven't read either and it would nice to have something interesting during the commute.

<comment><USER32> The CS Unplugged material is excellent - I've used it to teach kids from 6 - 14 years some Computer Science with out using any computers - the exercises are good and have a good pedagogical underpinning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think it could be really cool to make a physical representation of addressed memory, and then have a few op codes that can be used to solve basic problems. The op codes could be introduced as needed, and problems can grow in difficulty until actual compilation is necessary.

The program could be worked out by physically moving around paper strips with instructions written/erased/scratched-out/rewritten etc.

</comment><comment><USER34> "Code" by Charles Petzold is another book I'd recommend for this sort of thing. I usually keep a few copies on hand to give out to folks that show a genuine interest in learning more about code and how computers really work.

<comment><USER35> seconded

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is great, but the gang signs comment seemed really out of place and unnecessary.

</comment><comment><USER37> could he get access to a graphing calculator possibly? That would be a good environment to learn coding and wont allow him to connect to the net or make calls.

<comment><USER38> Great idea! That was my first programming environment, in fact. Hooked me good!</comment></comment>


Show HN: I built a simple, nice looking text editor for Mac (Yosemite only) - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cooledit/id967645488?mt=12

<comment><USER2> What made you decide to include social sharing options in a program whose mission is to be simple? Is social sharing the kind of functionality that's critical enough in your opinion to fall under the threshold of simple, or is it just so easy to implement social sharing in OS X Yosemite that there's no reason not to include it?

<comment><USER3> the latter. Actually, just wanted to differentiate it enough to get it in the Store. Now I will listen to my customers and tweak until perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Let me know if you want a free promo code. Send me an email at email@example.com. If you don't want me to have your email address, you can use an anonymous email service like mailinator.com</comment>


Stanford researchers reveal details about the feeding habits of whales - <AUTHOR> http://news.stanford.edu/2016/09/22/unique-feeding-habits-whales-come-light/ <comment><USER2> _" When these animals dive down to 300 meters, holding their breath for 12 minutes or more, they had better be sure it's worth the cost..."_

I wonder what a 300 meter dive "costs" in terms of energy for such a massive animal, and how amazing it is that they can manage 12 minutes on one breath.

<comment><USER3> You might be able to estimate the amount of energy by using the volume of their lungs to find the amount of oxygen they have, then use this to calculate how much 'sugar' can be reacted with it, thus giving you the total usable energy.You may even be able to compensate for the amount of residual oxygen left in the lungs. This would of course have some significant error, as they probably leave some reserve, and have less blood oxygen at the end of the dive than at the beginning.

<comment><USER4> For a blue whale I get around 5000kcal; I'm not sure if this is a little or a lot.

Of course, with the various inefficiencies involved the whale would need to eat a few times more than this to break even.

<comment><AUTHOR> I eat about 2600-3000 per _day_. So, for a human, 5000 in 12 minutes would be astounding.

<comment><USER4> You may have noticed that whales are big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any detail interesting enough to include in the title? :)</comment>


Next-gen games may cost $70. It's overdue, but also worrisome - blinding-streak https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/07/03/next-gen-games-may-cost-70-its-overdue-also-worrisome/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here's how much games of old would cost now, considering inflation:

Atari 2600 (1980, ~$25) - ~$77.79

NES (1986, $29.99-$49.99) - $70.16-$116.94

SNES (1991, $49.99-$59.99) - $94.11-$112.93

N64 (1996, $49.99) - $81.69

PS2 (2000, $49.99) - $74.43

Xbox 360 (2005, $59.99) - $78.76

So if anything, big-budget games have never been cheaper than they are now despite newer games requiring huge development budgets compared to classic titles. And there are way more "indie" games being released now in the $5-$30 range than ever before, many of astounding quality.

But even more importantly, the AAA game industry is moving away from charging a fixed price for big-budget games anyway. They would rather give you the game for free and get you into their ecosystem to buy season passes and cosmetic items. It's more profitable for them in the long term.

In a world of Humble Bundles and free-to-play games, no one has time to play even a tiny fraction of what is being released. There has never been more entertainment available for essentially no cost. The world has a lot of problems, but the high price of video games is not one of them.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I don't get it when people are saying games are too expensive. I remember buying $50 NES games in the early 90s, and they didn't get updates and bugfixes, and unless it was a game made by a well known studio, there were no reviews to make an informed decision. Compared to almost every hobby, video games are a bargain when you consider that you can regularly get hundreds of hours of entertainment in a AAA title.

<comment><USER3> They also shipped well tested back then compared to now.

<comment><USER4> They were also much simpler and smaller back then compared to now

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure if this is a minority opinion, but I'm happy to pay $70+ for AAA games. I'm currently playing through Last of Us II on PS4 and will have gotten 20+ hours entertainment from it, not to mention that it's just an incredible piece of art. Alongside that, during the last 3 months of Covid lockdown I've played countless hours of Call of Duty with my friends. $70 isn't that much of an investment for so much entertainment.

Of course the real question is whether or not you'll have to pay-to-play alongside your initial $70 investment. I'd rather pay more initially to have this trend disappear (which is unlikely).

I'd be interested to hear from people with more knowledge of the industry. As someone who only returned to video games "recently" (in the last 2 years) I've been astonished at the quality now on offer, but also shocked at the revenues of some of the companies are making, in particular revenue related to in-game purchasing (if I remember correctly, Activision are making ~1.8B revenue per quarter for example, the majority of which is from susbscriptions[1]).

[1] [https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news- release-d...](https://investor.activision.com/news-releases/news-release- details/activision-blizzard-announces-strong-first-quarter-2020)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'll pay $20 for a movie and be entertained for a couple hours. I've paid $90 for a collectors edition game and played 100's of hours (maybe a thousand or more).

They could charge $100 for a AAA game that doesn't have in-app purchases and I would pay it - if its something I think I'd enjoy a lot.

<comment><USER7> I remember in the 80's and early 90's there used to be a great shareware ecosystem with computer games. I'd really like to be able to play the game before deciding to spend $100 on it. As it is there are some games I buy that I just never get to play anyway due to time or lack of interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Game pricing needs an overhaul. It's very expensive to make big budget triple-A games, so a standard $60 doesn't necessarily make sense.

However as a cynical gamer, I see companies bumping the price up to $70 and changing nothing about their practices. So we'll now pay $70, and still get unsavory (and predatory) behavior such as lootboxes, day 1 DLC, etc.

This increase is just another argument to join the /r/PatientGamers and /r/GameDeals clubs and pick up games for a pittance years after release. I do this for most of my games aside from some multiplayer ones.

</comment><comment><USER9> IMHO the sticker price for video games isn't all that relevant anymore, unless you definitely want to play a game on launch day.

The only thing that's weird is that there is a standard price to begin with.

Just wait for the next sale, or until the game gets discounted after a few months, whatever comes first. Eventually the price will adjust itself to what the customers think the game is worth (of course that price will never be above the standard price, so from the seller perspective it makes sense to set a high initial price).

<comment><USER10> The most I've spent on a game in the past several years was US$40 pre-tax on Half-Life: Alyx (it was on sale just recently). In other words, I'm definitely not buying games at launch because I so rarely feel the need to play anything _now_.

But that might change later this year: I suspect I might be buying Cyberpunk 2077 at full price within a couple weeks of launch if it gets good reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A $10USD rise usually means a $15-20 rise here in Canada. Games here are already $79.99 which means with taxes a next gen console game is likely to be >$100 at launch - that's a psychological barrier I think that will be very problematic.

When games are discounted at least 25% within 3 months of release and 50% after 6 months isn't that uncommon, I wonder how launch day sales will be impacted by this change vs longer term sales.

Maybe they've done their sums and realized that the medium term sales would be boosted by this change more than launch day sales.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Retail prices for major release (or "AAA") games haven't moved since Activision released "Call of Duty 2" for $60 back in 2005"

Google tells me inflation since then has been around 35% - is this really news? I feel like price memory trips people up, it would be nice to report a stable figure that doesn't become obsolete in a decade

<comment><USER13> Since 2005 games have been more or less cutting content and nearly every AAA title now has some sort of monetization other than the retail price, season passes, micro-transactions, DLC....

Call of Duty 2 had a 9 hour campaign and everything out of the box was free, there were two map packs costing $5 each and as long as one person in the lobby had it the entire lobby could play on those maps.

The latest CoD, Call of Duty Modern Warfare has a campaign length of 6 hours a season pass and micro transactions.

<comment><USER14> My friends and I just got back into CoD with the new modern warfare for the first time since mw3. While I've been annoyed by Blizzard's launcher compared to Steam, I haven't been too bothered by their season passes and stuff. I bought the game for $40 I think, and haven't felt a need to put another dime into it. In fact despite owning the full game, we spend quite a bit of time just playing the free to play mode.

Don't get me wrong, I'd rather they did away with all of it, but I don't get a sense that content was cut from the game in this particular case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I will accept $70 under a few conditions:

1) You can't pack a full price game with hundreds of dollars of micro transactions and DLC.

2) Stop with the gambling box nonsense.

3) Stop hacking out uninspired, yearly squeals over and over by incrementing the number on the box by 1.

<comment><USER16> Agreed on all 3 points, but realistically - you know as well as I do that there's zero chance publishers will stop doing any of these things. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The only games where the sticker price matter are Nintendo games. Everything else gets discounted after release.

</comment><comment><USER18> The "AAA" gaming industry seems unsustainable. Big budget games are getting more uninspired by the year and are mostly the same old games with identical game-play and mechanics with shinier graphics on top. They have become passionless assembly lines following a formula.

You'd think at some point people would stop caring so much about graphics. It's also such a huge portion of the cost. Smaller studios and indie developers can make nearly identical games without bleeding edge graphics technology.

</comment><comment><USER19> One could argue that this is already the case. How many AAA games actually give you the full game for $60? Usually you need to buy a season pass to access the full content. Some of the most notable examples have included Mass Effect 3 which locked plot critical characters behind DLC. Total War: Rome 2 had $50 worth of DLC less than 1 year after launch, and their more recent Warhammer titles lock iconic factions like Chaos Warriors behind DLC.

</comment><comment><USER20> "Worrisome"? Critics are never happy. Free to play game with option to buy features? Horrible scam by evil corporations! Expensive games that give you a lot of content up-front to recoup development costs? Robbery by evil corporations!

There are so many games out there, you can be entertained for a lifetime without ever needing to buy a recently released AAA game. Things cost what they cost, no one puts a gun to your head.

<comment><USER21> Really they're right though.

There's really little reason a game can't be art assets slurped into a pipeline like devops employs.

Engine code itself needs to be performant, but from the perspective of "shipping a game", asset management and build pipelines look ALOT LIKE a devops pipeline but offline.

There's no artistic or technical reason open license content and, for example, Github actions, couldn't leveraged to build a game pipeline.

Iterate over that until the results look AAA.

Emotional capture of attention by social norms is the only thing in the way.

Here we are though, accepting inflation as a real thing. Not saying much explicitly about the pressure on our buying power, effectively deflation, that creates.

Why not deflate their profits a bit, I wonder?

Gig artists are out there. Rules for RTS, FPS, and generative algorithms are all well known and documented. There's literally no reason an open pipeline for compiling AAA games from crowd funded content couldn't be a thing except for how we are expected to apply attention to such things

<comment><USER22> If your theory is correct then you (and only you) figured out a massive arbitrage opportunity - while all those deeply profit-oriented business people over at those game studios got it all wrong.

More likely though, your theory is just wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm fine with paying over $60 as long as the game is well made and does not contain non-cosmetic micro-transactions. I think the recent influx of micro- transaction-heavy games and incomplete games is a sign that the current standard triple-A price tag is too low and the developers are having to ship early or use other monetization schemes to support themselves.

</comment><comment><USER24> As an avid gamer, the price increase I find a bit unsettling (especially since content is moving digitally - thus cutting several costs). Realistically, it's only a $10 increase, however, I feel the sticker price is approaching that point where I personally am at the "wait for sale" mindset. Not to mention that many games these days include a variety of gimmicks (loot boxes, micro transactions, cosmetics) to vacuum as much money out of the customers as possible. EA is notorious for this behavior so I am interested to see how this game in particular (NBA 2K21) is received.

Lately I've found myself purchasing more games on my PC as they frequently have sales and prices tend to be lower than the console equivalents. Of course my "gaming PC" was a bit more than a console, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore with some of these rumored prices coming out on the next gen systems.

<comment><USER25> > games these days include a variety of gimmicks (loot boxes, micro > transactions, cosmetics) to vacuum as much money out of the customers

Do other people avoid video games these days for this reason? Perhaps it's a function of being busy, and generally liking other hobbies (like programming), but I just don't want to participate in a gaming world which is defined by this sort of economics. I understand it's more profitable, but it turns me away.

<comment><USER24> I certainly avoid games that put these trends front and center (even if free). Some games that I've purchased over the years, Destiny 2 for example, have changed their model completely and I find it saddening. The core game is now free (which I paid full price for) and all expansions (DLC) are paid. They also include paid seasonal content (4 times per year, 10 weeks in length, $10 each) where they introduce some (typically poorly received) content to grind out and some new items in their in-game real money market (Eververse). Typical items in the "Eververse" are $10+.

I hope these trends fade away over time although I am not expecting that to be the case with the profits some of these publishers are reporting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Bullshit. Every game released now has DLC, season passes, etc. on PlayStation you even have to pay a subscription to play online. Games are more expensive than ever befote with AAA titles easily surpassing $100 for a game including season pass and that doesn't even include all the DLC for many games now.

I remember when DLC started we all knee where this was going to end, and all the publishers and Microsoft went on and on how they would never piecemeal games and nickel and dime us.

What did we get? Disc locked DLC and when you find out they slap you with an EULA making datamining illegal. _cough Destiny 1 with Activision /Bungee cough_, and fames with upwards of $10 for a single skin!

And the worst of it all- loot boxes.

In what world do publishers think they deserve more money? They all dream of the day they can charge us per minute of play. We will be there soon enough.

</comment><comment><USER27> There's also perceived value vs delivered value as well. I bought RDR2 for £30 as it seemed like a relative bargain for the gaming potential it'd deliver. I've put maybe 10 hours on it in 3 months.

Euro Truck Simulator was under a tenner, with the thought it might be a "play once, get bored" title, probably 40-50 hours into it.

As much as the numbers above are true, I'd _still_ be unlikely to consider paying £30 for ETS, whilst still likely to buy RDR3 (whenever, wherever) for £50+. Perceived quality and potential payoff will win out, actual reality of playing _that much game_ [0] be damned.

[0] I have neither the time nor patience to pour 100+ hours into a game any more.

</comment><comment><USER28> "I want shorter games with worse graphics made by people who are paid more to work less and I'm not kidding."

\-- [https://twitter.com/Jordan_Mallory/status/127748375624544256...](https://twitter.com/Jordan_Mallory/status/1277483756245442566)

(later immortalized in foone's death generator by [https://twitter.com/moshboy/status/1278202555995090947](https://twitter.com/moshboy/status/1278202555995090947))

<comment><USER22> I want infinitely long games with impeccable graphics made by people who live for nothing but their work. I'll also stop playing after the first ten minutes so I'll only buy the game at 90% discount.

I guess we'll have to meet somewhere in the middle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looking at Amazon's top PS4 games right now, the _vast_ majority are under $35.

I wonder what % of gamers actually pay full price anyway. The next 12-24 months look like an insanely busy release schedule, with that long a backlog for many gamers I doubt many but the most hardcore of gamers will be picking up more than 1-2 titles at full price and many (most?) will be picking up games at more like 50% off, many (like me :) ) wait until the price dips below $20...

"Never pay more than $20 for a computer game" \- Guybrush Threepwood.

</comment><comment><USER29> I rarely get a game on first release anymore and usually wait until it's on a huge discount sale. I don't do multi-player, so lack of community isn't an issue. $60 is just too much to gamble on whether or not I'll enjoy or not, given that we're just beta testers these days. If the price goes up even more, then that's just incentive to quit altogether.

</comment><comment><USER30> In the rare instance when I buy a AAA title, I wait a few months after release to save 25%. This saves me money and it also gives time for bugs fixes and balance patches to come out.

More often lately I have been buying $2.50-$20.00 PC classics from Steam or GOG that I never got play.

Also, every now and then Playstation Plus offers a good game for "free".

</comment><comment><USER31> I think video games are moving more towards subscription based models (i.e. PlayStation Plus, Google Stadia, etc). And from a consumer standpoint, I think it makes sense given most people only really play through a game once.

$10 per month is a far easier sell than $60-70 a pop for one individual game.

</comment><comment><USER32> I remember being horrified when Nintendo 64 games cost about £70 in the UK in the mid/late 90's. At the exchange rate back then that would have been just over $100.

But then I had been used to paying £9.99 for mainstream titles and £2-3 for budget titles for my ZX Spectrum!

<comment><USER33> Those were pretty darn expensive yeah, the cartridge format was a contributor.

</comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands I'm not a gamer by trade, but have played them in the past. Does the pricing differ if you're playing on Steam vs. buying the game outright?

<comment><USER34> Steam sells you the game outright as well so, no.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I remember certain N64 games costing $70 at launch, notably Ocarina of Time.

With inflation, this is cheaper than the 90s.

<comment><USER36> Yeah but back then they actually had to make expensive physical hardware.

CDs are cheaper, and it's incredibly absurd that the download product, which has no production or shipping costs, is the same as the physical.

<comment><USER8> Why does it have to be cheaper just because it's not physical? That's how the majority of people get games now.

Not only would getting a physical disk be a hassle compared to downloading, but I don't have a drive to put it in...

<comment><USER35> Downloads for consoles always felt like risky propositions.

They're DRMed. Once the console is no longer sold or supported, there's no store for you to connect to to validate or re-download your purchase. I don't feel comfortable with them living on an encrypted and unsupported hard disk partition.

Do you anticipate playing your games again in 15 years?

I like that I can play all of my old N64, Gamecube, and PS2 games on their original media.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Could be an early indicator that inflation is starting to really rise.</comment>