CPU and GPU trends over time - <AUTHOR> http://www.r-bloggers.com/cpu-and-gpu-trends-over-time/

<comment><USER2> There are many architectural differences between CPUs and GPUs that make it difficult to draw the kinds of conclusions suggested by these graphs.

Data parallel algorithms with high computation-to-communication ratios, good data locality and low local branch divergence will see these kinds of speedups when rewritten for GPUs. This is an important subset of algorithms, but don't expect GPUs to replace CPUs for more general-purpose computation any time soon.

<comment><USER3> Very true. It is for the same reason that the article shows GPU progress outpacing CPU's in regards to FLOPS. The limited scope of a GPU's functionality allows most of the processor's silicon to be arithmetic units. CPU's, on the other hand, have huge sections of their real estate dedicated to handling conditional logic (something most GPU's fail miserably at), legacy instruction handling, virtualization, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for posting this, its an excellent insight.

It was interesting when Intel fail to deliver on their roadmap. Here is a link from 2000 where Intel was alleged to be saying 10Ghz by 2011 [http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/intel-predicts-10ghz- chip...](http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/intel-predicts-10ghz-chips- by-2011-20000726/)

Which of course lead to the great Multi-core debate (AMD started it, Intel followed with two physical die on a package later to integrate into a single die).

Which lead to the great Memory channel bottleneck (Intel was in-order single channel, AMD was multi-channel) and resolution (everyone now is multi- channel).

GPUs on the other hand have always had memory bandwidth issues so they went wide, the GPU equivalent of multi-channel, from the start. They also benefit from a feature of graphics which was 'do this same algorithm on all of these texels' which is straight forward to parallelize.

And as nuclear weapons designers, and genomic researchers will tell you, GPUs are also useful in doing MIMD simulations.

Its less clear what the parallel architecture breakthrough is for OLAP type problems (or parallel file systems as an even easier example) These have lots of operations in parallel but they also have high connectivity of data synchronicity across those parallel threads which, at the moment, brings everything down to earth.

Fun times!

</comment><comment><USER5> I would have preferred a logarithmic scale for the last graph (<http://csgillespie.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/gpu3.png>).

<comment><USER6> Here's one I just made using his data: <http://imgur.com/TSFYB>

<comment><USER7> Thanks. Looks more similar now than on the linear scale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If someone figured out how to write regular apps on a GPU (which would amount to parallelizing the app), it could change everything.

1\. What would be a first step towards this? It seems the big problem is that most code is sequential... and the opportunity is those parts that don't need to be, but just happen to be written that way.

2\. Perhaps another opportunity is to try to remove the layers that make modern software so slow. Can they be distributed across all pipelines somehow?

3\. Finally, a radical approach is not to try to convert existing apps, but to think about the whole problem of an app from the very beginning (what inputs will you get, what outputs do you want), and try to write _that_ directly on a GPU. By making it concrete, you might see new tricks, perhaps by redefining the problem (the app's features).

<comment><USER9> This is what parallelizing Fortran compilers do. The space of programs that can be automatically parallelized is all computable programs (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church–Rosser_theorem>). The space of programs that can be _efficiently_ automatically parallelized is very small.

<comment><USER10> Many problems aren't parallelizable for reasonable definitions of the word (i.e. polylogarithmic depth and polynomial work: Nick's class) unless there are some major breakthroughs in complexity theory.

<comment><USER9> As a class of problems, probably (although it hasn't been proven either way), but in terms of programs it comes down to the vagaries of data structures and algorithms - if the dataflow in your reduction graph makes it look like a linked list, there's only one way to reduce it.

Guy Steele gave a really good talk about this at ICFP 2009: [http://labs.oracle.com/projects/plrg/Publications/ICFPAugust...](http://labs.oracle.com/projects/plrg/Publications/ICFPAugust2009Steele.pdf)

<comment><USER7> The good thing is that functional programmers will barely notice that they are using the new data structures. (It's still just filters and maps. Just your fold-functions will take slightly different arguments.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If this chart from nVidia is to be believed, the CPU speed increase will continue for many years to come. They're projecting almost a 100x increase in speed from Tegra 2, in 2014! [http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/SoC/NVIDIA/Kal- El/roadma...](http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/SoC/NVIDIA/Kal- El/roadmap_sm.jpg)

<comment><USER12> How are they going to get there? They could very easily pump up the shader count to get something that is "100x" performance, while not actually being 100x as powerful for general purpose operations. The graph looks shady to say the least.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Shit, I did not realize GPUs packed such a tremendous performance advantage over CPUs (FLOPs wise). They seem to be several orders of magnitude ahead-- that is positively mindblowing!

And yet, all GPUs and CPUs of the whole world can just barely match one human brain ([http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/02/adding-up-the- wo...](http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/02/adding-up-the-worlds- storage-and-computation-capacities.ars)). If that's not mindblowing, then what?

<comment><USER14> They compare instructions per second with nerve impulses per second. That's a pretty useless comparison. I'm sure that all GPUs and CPUs could simulate a human brain more quickly than a human brain could simulate all CPUs and GPUs.

<comment><USER10> I'd venture to say that depends strongly on the problem the brain is trying to solve and the problem the processors are trying to solve.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What does "computational power" mean in this context? There's a graph but no explanation...

<comment><USER11> Probably number of floating point operations per second.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This seems like an apples to oranges comparison with different scales and units...</comment>


Talk to Books - <AUTHOR> https://books.google.com/talktobooks/ <comment><USER2> This is cool! Not sure how practically useful it is (don't Google search results already include results from books?) but it seems like one of those things that could be super powerful once a good application is found for it.

To be honest, I'm just relieved Google seems to be doing something new with Google Books.

I've been fearing they'd take down Google Books (or severely hobble it) since it looks like it's been stagnant for years now (actually less than stagnant, since it seems like they took away Popular Passages? I really miss that!).

<comment><USER3> >I've been fearing they'd take down Google Books

Oh that would be terrible. Google Books is extremely useful for academic work: not every library has good text search and I often found myself using Google Books to get reference material I could then look up in the library for full access.

<comment><USER4> I'm just an armchair historical linguist but the 19th century books and dictionaries written by British missionaries dispatched to China, that are freely available in abundance on Google Books, are just as fascinating as the cutting-edge monographs of the past decade. They lacked proper training but their observations are fascinating. For example, the pronunciation guide in a dictionary of Shanghainese notes that older people would say Beiging (I'm going to avoid linguistics jargon and true Shanghainese pronunciation for the sake of understandability) and younger people would say Beijing. So we know exactly when this sound change (palatalization) spread to the Shanghai area. The author didn't call it as such and seemed to have the attitude of "kids these days don't talk properly" which makes it really amusing to read.

<comment><USER5> That sounds interesting. Could you provide a couple of links to those books?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, google, "what's fun about programming"

The first result says this

Similarly, programming a computer can prove fun because you might design a simple program that displays your boss's ugly face on the computer

LOL.

<comment><USER7> lol, didn't see that result. where was it from?

<comment><USER6> It's on the linked page at bottom

[https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=What%20is%20fun...](https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=What%20is%20fun%20about%20computer%20programming%3F)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A related blog post is [https://research.googleblog.com/2018/04/introducing- semantic...](https://research.googleblog.com/2018/04/introducing-semantic- experiences-with.html) (posted by walterbell and lainon but didn't get attention).

<comment><USER9> Glad to see Kurzweil's group has been up to something interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I tried tricking it a bit, and here's what I got:

Does P=NP: Something about rare earths, then a couple books that mention the problem. [https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=Does%20P%3DNP%3...](https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=Does%20P%3DNP%3F)

Who are you: Looks like Books is shy. [https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=Who%20are%20you...](https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=Who%20are%20you%3F)

Why are fire trucks red? Apparently, there are different answers, and none mention the Monty Python one. [https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=Why%20are%20fir...](https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=Why%20are%20firetrucks%20red%3F)

What is 1+1? 1, apparently. The same query without a question mark gives the right answer. [https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=What%20is%201%2...](https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=What%20is%201%2B1%3F)

Which company used to have the motto "don't be evil"? Not Google, it seems. [https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=Which%20company...](https://books.google.com/talktobooks/query?q=Which%20company%20used%20to%20have%20the%20motto%20%22don%27t%20be%20evil%22%3F)

<comment><USER11> I'm curious where this narrative that Google dropped "don't be evil" comes from.

At the time of the Alphabetization, there was some shuffling of the code of conduct document, but everything lives on.

The Google code of conduct[0] still begins with "Don't be evil."

The Alphabet code of conduct[1] opens with "Employees of Alphabet and its subsidiaries and controlled affiliates ("Alphabet") should do the right thing."

And yet I repeatedly read the claim that Google has secretly abandoned "don't be evil"—presumably on the down low so that they can now do all the evil they want.

[0]: [https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of- conduct.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html) [1]: [https://abc.xyz/investor/other/code-of- conduct.html](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/code-of-conduct.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My first question (and the response):

Q: What is the sound of one hand clapping?

A: The sound of one hand clapping is the sound of that silent wave, the sound of an absence, the absence of the noise ordinarily made by the collision of two hands.

       -from The Secret Parts of Fortune: Three Decades of Intense Investigations and Edgy …

by Ron Rosenbaum

</comment><comment><USER13> This still feels like search and not "talking" to anything. To me talking would require back-end-forth refinement.

I wonder why they are releasing this only against books? Does it not work against the internet at large, or is it a question of scale? Because they aren't even doing all books, it's only 100,000 of them.

I still think it's pretty cool. Some future natural language search will make keyword search seem primitive. As in how did we survive with only it for so long.

I'm glad Kurzweil ended up at Google and is able to work on cool projects like this. He's 70, I hope his vitamins work and he can't stay active in development a while longer.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is the coolest thing I've seen in a minute! Instantly exciting and it really works. I'm using this to explore old books I've read and forgotten parts of. Really fun to relive those special moments from fantasy and sci fi I've read over the years. Also this is an alternative to my experience at bookstores where I thumb through interesting books.

</comment><comment><USER15> > will the AI take over the world?

\- The number of dumb things the AI will be able to get away with has a direct relationship to what sort of intelligence the AI is supposed to represent.

\- The AI will not underestimate the opponent's military might.

</comment><comment><USER16> Well, first thing I expected it to use the microphone for actual listening to talking. Alas, the title was misleading, and it expects text input.

An interesting idea anyway, but they could title it better.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a cool tool. Though this tool reminds me of a dilemma I have with Google: what do you think about the fact that Google has effectively extracted value from the authors of these books without paying them, yet Google itself does not allow you to scrape them AFAIK (If I'm wrong I'd be curious to see where in their ToS they allow this)?

Though Google doesn't seem to be monetizing this directly, the fact that they're training their models on this data does likely have some nebulous value. Given that most books are for sale, surely there's a good way to reconcile the fact that the authors would like payment and organizations like Google would like to scrape their text.

<comment><USER18> Google scrape your website, then allow people to search your site and read snippets from it.

Google scans the book, then allows people to search the book and read snippets from it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is fun but I hope it doesn't replace the normal gook search since it doesn't seem to have any advanced search features like limiting by date.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interesting. I wonder what the dataset used to train the machine learning model looks like. Books and conversation style query pairs?

<comment><USER21> I wouldn't be surprised if they were actually using some techniques from NLP. In particular, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd run sentence parsers over their entire Books collection and then manipulate the parse trees to find sentences in books that look like good answers because their sentence structure is similar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wouldn't semantic searching be far more application as an extension of google scholar or google patents?

</comment><comment><USER23> There's also recoll, a document indexer and search tool, which I've heard is pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is Google still scanning orphan works?

</comment><comment><USER25> This is great. books answered my question

"which countries supported Iraq chemical attacks during Iran-Iraq war?"

"Saddam Hussein received chemical weapons from many countries, including the USA, West Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, France and China (Lafayette, 2002). In 1980 Iraq attacked Iran and employed mustard gas and tabun with 5% of all Iranian casualties directly attributable to the use of these agents"

from Handbook of Toxicology of Chemical Warfare Agents by Ramesh C. Gupta "Handbook of Toxicology of Chemical Warfare Agents" by Ramesh C. Gupta

<comment><USER26> That's funny cause I just put that question into TTB and copied and pasted that paragraph into google and found this page. Interesting indeed. I was more looking into what could be proof that the chemical weapons use on Halabja are the same ones tha Saddam had in his arsenal. Cross referencing the studies that was done on the attack site with the sources might help seal the deal.</comment></comment>


The Art of Code Comments - <AUTHOR> https://css-tricks.com/the-art-of-comments/ <comment><USER2> Comments are one of the secrets to maintainable code. Your code will inevitably fall short of the ideal of completely explaining itself, so not adding comments is basically racking up tech debt.

<comment><USER3> That's true for most languages. However, some languages are so well designed for maintainability that they barely need verbose comments. Ada is such a language. I have no problems to understand my own Ada code written 10 years ago. However, I had difficulties to understand my own Haskell code just one week later :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Three totally different points:

Sometimes I find it useful to add a comment of the form "this function is called by that function" to the called function.

An editor that let you mark comments as explaining how, explaining why, identifying further work that needs doing, etc. and then filter out the irrelevant ones would be nice.

It ought to be that we could attach a comment to a specific expression, rather than just sticking it nearby.

</comment><comment><USER5> One thing from Clean Code that fundamentally changed the way I write code was the bit about how "Comments Lie".

I hadn't really thought about it much before. But since then, I see lying comments absolutely everywhere. Many of which I have written myself. The author is right, comments are really hard to maintain.

Nowadays I try my absolute hardest to avoid writing comments. 9 out of 10 times, it can be solved with some refactoring.

<comment><USER6> Thinking code can be "self-documenting" is one of the biggest delusions of this field.

<comment><USER7> You're being downvoted but it's extremely true.

Code should strive to be as self-documenting _as possible_ but there will always need to be some level of documentation- and good comments are _part_ of that.

One other part of that effort should be good unit, integration, and acceptance, tests.</comment></comment></comment>


Hawaii missile alert standdown delayed by forgotten log-in - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42787419 <comment><USER2> > Forgotten Twitter log-in details have been blamed for delaying a public > correction to Hawaii's missile alert earlier this month.

Kind of floored that twitter is what the government has to use to put a notification out to it's public to provide critical information.

But then I continued to read and the article goes on to say that twitter and other social media was used by the Governor after the emergency text message was sent out, which means it obviously isn't a primary source of information.

So actually it's just clickbait journalism. Anyone panicking in the area would have almost certainly picked up a text before getting anything over twitter.

What is pretty terrible is that the governor of Hawaii most likely doesn't have 2FA on his twitter account and keeps the password on his phone, probably in a notes app of some kind, and is willing to publicly admit that.

<comment><USER3> In emergency situations, if social media platforms work better than "official channels" (and they do), I'd prefer the government to use them.

<comment><USER4> I don't. Having to agree to yet more 'privacy' policies and succumb to tracking and other rights violations by the big social media platforms just to be able to recieve important messages from our government is, well, extremely stupid. The government must have a reliable way to do this. They don't, so they are trying to take the 'easy way', and that's a failure on their part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's perfectly rational, efficient and good policy to use social media to reach people in an emergency.

Twitter has spent billions to deploy a worldwide network that people engage with to communicate short status updates. They also have the content, and scale to have a large percentage of the population actually familiar with how to use their tool.

To get an equivalent reach and scale and level of familiarity with a government run tool would be a $100 billion project doomed to fail.

Should Twitter be the _only_ way that government reaches the population to deliver critical updates? Of course not, but it absolutely must be one of the primary ways, and in many cases because the system design of Twitter is so much better, it will be the channel with the most accurate and up-to-date data.

I mean the best part of that is then Homeland can designate Twitter as "critical national infrastructure" and put their agents in the data centers! </s>

<comment><USER6> I'm so glad you put that </s> at the end. I definitely see them jumping to make those inroads. It's not hard to self operate this stuff now that distributed computing is cheaper (eg. $50 raspi 2018 = 10+ $2000 boxes 1998). How was Google built, lots of commodity hardware you say? Why can't a neighborhood watch-like group operate a p2p network of RasPis located in homes of volunteers, using enough replication and a signing policy with YubiKeys or something, and operating guides and maintenance kits? Self-promotion, I started working on something like this in Nov.

This morning I awoke to a map of my block covered in blue saying a warning had started 20 minutes ago, in a Facebook post from a foodie. I like to think those friendly warning sirens that blare at noon would tell me something, to begin with. Then those loud alerts that go to my phone no matter how many times I disable the setting. Then maybe text blast, granted I don't know all the ones I should be on. I just had a needless bpm added to my heart rate.

All notifications are disabled on my mobile except calls; much as people depend on them I won't let myself. Two days of disaster and everyone's battery is dead, along with ability to search the web for life skills and claim to have invented fire. Tangent, but for the doubters, I inspect routes before I drive and know my way around blind after just a few thousand miles in the city over 4 years (typical commuter is 10k/yr+). And literally nobody of consequence has complained about responding to things a few times per day in batches (around lunch, late afternoon/5).

People think I'm too intense, actually I think they're just addicts with no attention span. So one can see why I don't want to turn on Notifs for an advertising network in case there's something urgent. Oh hey, false alarm, buy some stuff and surrender some power... [just click here :D]

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure what the other duties of this team are, so this is more of a generic thought, not specific to the Hawaii alert bungle.

Maybe it's important not to let any career exist that exercises its capabilities so infrequently. For example, firefighters train for massive disasters that rarely occur, but they more regularly fight smaller fires, and even more regularly respond to other problems like traffic accidents. So they are deployed on a very regular basis. Contrast that with the Minuteman missile teams who, I hope, have never ever fulfilled their role in actuality. Does this make them less effective?

Also makes me think about military efficacy. You can either go to war a lot, or find other ways to practice your skills. Which is why disaster response seems like such a natural fit for military.

<comment><USER8> I read an article recently about how we know what we know about history. The big takeaway for me was that most of what we know about ancient times, we know because the information was _repeated_. Ancient texts were copied by scholars and monks over and over again. Even when the originals were destroyed or decayed, we retained some of the copies. This turns out to be a common pattern with almost anything in the sum of human knowledge. We only know what is newly discovered, or what is rediscovered (repeated).

In the digital sphere we have the same issue. There is a whole heap of data out there, but much of it is under threat of being lost, because it only exists on a hard drive we have lost the technology to read, unless we rebuild it (but we've also forgotten how to do that). If the platters decay without that data being copied, it's lost forever.

Just as the military knows, with its constant drilling, the same is true of human behaviours too. Repetition is the key to everything we know, and everything we do. Knowledge and behaviours that aren't repeated _will_ be lost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmm, i just assumed that all executives - even in government - have their public-facing accounts managed by their communications/public relations team. Maybe this is one of those rare times that it would have been good to have a team of people have access to the account? ;-)

</comment><comment><USER10> Damned if you do write the password on a post-it note, damned if you don't.

<comment><USER11> Not damned if you just remember the goddamn password OR use a password manager.

<comment><USER12> Use a password manager. I'd prefer that critical government social media accounts not use passwords that a human being can realistically remember.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's funny, I don't know my twitter password either. Nor do I know my facebook password, or most of my other passwords.

edit: I guess my point is that the word is not getting out about good password practices.

<comment><USER14> Maybe it's snooty holier-than-thou posts by users of password managers, lacking in substance or any real argument, that lets the majority of password users remain unconvinced.

<comment><USER15> Password managers make me nervous for two reasons: (1) if someone breaches the password manager, they have all your passwords, rather than one, and (2) you have to trust the source of the password manager that it doesn't have an intentional backdoor - even if it _was_ trustworthy, every update is the potential for a new problem.

Also, in my experience, you're not allowed to use one at work, so what do you think people do?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nothing wrong with using twitter to spread important news around faster. But this article is as click bait as it gets honestly.. Next article on this subject will be titled something: Hawaii social media person delayed by additional 3 minutes because had to use the restroom during crisis

</comment><comment><USER17> Wasn't it stuck to the monitor with a post-it note?

<comment><USER8> Presumably after they'd discovered it, they took this measure to prevent a repeat of the same situation.</comment></comment>


WhatsApp Cofounder Who Sold to FB for $19B Tells Students to Delete Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/whatsapp-brian-acton-delete-facebook-stanford-lecture <comment><USER3> Earlier discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19406656](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19406656)

<comment><USER4> Even that is a dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19385516](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19385516)

<comment><USER3> That one not so much; it only counts if it has significant upvoting/front page exposure/discussion.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20dupe%20significant%2...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20dupe%20significant%20attention&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For quite a while now I've used FB exclusively for the chat feature. I don't even remember the last time I checked the frontpage. That said I would be perfectly ok moving to another platform for that. Makes me long for the days of IRC.

</comment><comment><USER6> If he was told, when he sold the company that 'there would never be ads' \- and the Zuck flipped on him - then I guess I can understand his position, however ridiculously naive.

But in reality, there's no way someone can sell something for $20B which has nary a dime in revenue - to a company that makes money selling ads - <USER2> expect otherwise.

Moreover, I suggest FB would have had to be explicit or implied about eventual monetization.

Whatever column you pick, it doesn't make him look good. Possibly naive, but more likely, just hugely duplicitous: "I'll take $20B cash and then give them the finger".

Or maybe there's some data points that might come to light.

<comment><USER7> He feels that he did something bad, but he shouldn't: maybe RMS would be the only one in this world refusing that amount of money for his ideals.</comment></comment>


Uber CEO Reveals Mind-Boggling New Statistic That Skeptics Will Hate - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-revenue-san-francisco-2015-1

<comment><USER2> That's an awfully link-baity title, Business Insider...</comment>


Ask HN: Why is the most consequential ~hacker-news~ banned from HN? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> It isn't: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395)

<comment><USER3> and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20616055](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20616055) is currently #1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lots of articles have been posted about 8chan, including this one that was on the front page most of yesterday and is currently over 1000 points:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20610395)

Other articles too:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=8chan&sort=byDate&prefix&page=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=8chan&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm referring of course to Cloudfare/8chan/Bitmitigater

<comment><USER3> Please don't post submissions like this. It's explicitly against the site guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

You can answer most such questions, including this one, simply by using HN Search at the bottom of this page.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Large gov project ahead. Howto avoid the CMS Trap? - <AUTHOR>

Hey  HN, 😉
I've two large projects ahead and in one of them I am assigned to a project manager (big co. guy). However in the first conference, the word Joomla made it's first appearance and I fear that I'll have to develop software that is interwoven with many systems and uses Joomla for that. This project is still in negotiation and in the planning phase. The second project is a large freelance project I got, but both are very similar in their outcome.
I "attacked" the CMS argument, by saying that there are simple rules  for projects:

     1. Large Project: Minimal or no base, best to use a framework
     2. Regular Project: Small or Medium sized CMS
     3. Small Project: From scratch, or with the help of a library.
 But there is one problem with this. You have to know in advance how much stuff you will add to the initial project, which is almost never the case. And successful "regular projects" almost always get extended.
My experience is that people use the CMS Interface rarely or never and a CMS makes developing features harder. I know CMS with an API system that allows the Content to be edited/used from inside of other applications.
What should I do? I thought about using a minimal Markdown based Flat-File CMS and to extend that, but then there is the problem of support. Small projects like that are mostly short-lived. <comment><USER2> If you're into node.js development I would recommend [https://github.com/jedireza/drywall](https://github.com/jedireza/drywall) as a _minimal_ yet well organized CMS to extend yourself as you need.</comment>


Qui-binary arithmetic: how a 1960s IBM mainframe does math - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2015/10/qui-binary-arithmetic-how-1960s-ibm.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> I have fond memories of the 1401, although I never programmed one. In the mid 60s I worked for the Harvard Computer Center. We had a 1401 whose sole job was a tape to print server for the 7094. It had attached a 1403 printer, a screaming behemoth (literally) that could print 600 lines per minute. [http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/1403.html](http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/1403.html) compares the sound of a 1403 to a jet plane, an old jet, mind you, now one of those whisper quite modern ones. There are stories of people writing music to be played on a 1403, maybe even true. Another feature was the 1301 disk drive, the size of two refrigerators, with an astounding 28 megabytes of storage,whirling away at 1800 rpm. For a mere $2000 a month you could have your own.

Computers tha one person can carry are for wimps.

<comment><USER3> 1403 music - [http://wayback.archive.org/web/20070203125146/http://www.com...](http://wayback.archive.org/web/20070203125146/http://www.computerhistory.org/exhibits/highlights/)

<comment><USER4> I expected the link to be this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o_WF7N73Kw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o_WF7N73Kw)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shirriff has written several posts about the IBM 1401: his notes on SMS logic cards are particuarly interesting. Sort of like a services architecture, only instead of "real time database" as a component it's "three-way OR". [http://www.righto.com/2015/03/a-database-of-sms-cards- techno...](http://www.righto.com/2015/03/a-database-of-sms-cards- technology.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> See also, for example, "what makes the 1401 so interesting?" [http://www.zyvra.org/lafarr/ibm1401.htm](http://www.zyvra.org/lafarr/ibm1401.htm)

It's a shame there's no way to gather HN posts about the 1401 with a tag "ibm1401".

</comment><comment><USER7> Quite neat to be able to see, the logic on the board instead of being hidden inside mass blob of transistors.

</comment><comment><USER8> Shouldn't it rather be "bi-quinary" instead of "qui-binary"?

<comment><USER9> As the first footnote explains, bi-quinary numbers are what an abacus uses: one part is 0,1,2,3 or 4 and the other is 0 or 5. Qui-binary numbers are the opposite: one part is 0,2,4,6 or 8 and the other part is 0 or 1.</comment></comment>


Should the Government Be Allowed to Read Your E-Mails? - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=11825039

<comment><USER2> The short answer is no--not without a warrant.

In my opinion, the argument here is very similar to the NSA unwarranted wiretap scandal. Law enforcement and intelligence services should be able to listen in on calls deemed suspicious for reasons of national security-- _if_ they have a warrant. Overarching listening networks such as ECHELON seem unethical to me, but good luck telling that to the NSA.

The issue in question, however, is more along the lines of whether the government should be able to circumvent user encryption. Can the NSA throw your encrypted document in their massive server farm and crack it in a few days? Probably. Is there anything we can do to stop that? Not really, other than huge keys and secure algorithms.

What the government wants, however, is similar to what RIM provided Saudi Arabia (and what the USA wanted with its key escrow service years ago): a backdoor into an encryption scheme, or a copy of private keys.

Both from a computer security perspective and an interpreted Constitutional right to privacy, the government should need a warrant to get encrypted data. Just like they'd need a warrant to get your paper diary that you keep next to your laptop, they should (and currently do) require one to read your e-mail. And that's the way it should stay.

</comment><comment><USER3> Which part of "no" is difficult to comprehend? I'd express it in one letter, but I've not figured out how yet.

</comment><comment><USER4> No, period.

\-- but slightly "yes" only if you like to much the idea of George Orwell

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Run your own mail server and delete emails after reading them.</comment>


Is it often the case that one founder tends to dominate the decision making process (e.g., Steve Jobs vs Steve Wozniak)? - <AUTHOR> http://www.feedblog.org/2006/10/mistakes_startu.html <comment><USER2> Sure one founder often ends up dominating the decision-making if that is how one wants to look at it. I look at it as more like who has more experience to make a particular decision - I'll question my coding partner once about his choice of platform but not twice if he insists; similarly he trusts my business decisions even when he shares his views.

This post does little to prove one founder is better than two. If anything, his examples are evidence that most top names have co-founders.</comment>


Zenefits payroll was secretly built in 60 days at a nearby Marriott - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/zenefits-launches-a-free-payroll-service-2015-11 <comment><USER2> > He secretly rented a room at the Marriott across the street from the > corporate offices, took his best engineers to the room and told them, "Don't > come out until you have a payroll system. Our goal is to get it live in 60 > days," he said.

It's good clickbait, but why's that a good management strategy? What does it even mean? Who was it a secret from, the other employees? If the productivity gain of dropping some team members is not canceled by the losses of setting up a temporary office in a hotel room, maybe you were doing something wrong at your real office. Or you're exaggering about the cloistered nature of this "secret hotel room" for the press.

<comment><USER3> My company has a process where it puts every stakeholder on a particular topic off-site for a day. (often in an hotel room actually). This is to accelerate the decision process, with a clear deliverable.

Even if it works, I find that awkward : it acknowledges that you can not get the job done at work, because of the endless stream of meetings and interruptions.

It really begs the question if the way we traditionally work with everyone in the same office is really that efficient. But I am sure remote workers and distributed work environment have their own share of issues.

<comment><USER4> Who doesn't try to find places to hide from the endless stream of calls, meetings, and emails?

In fact, once I check off the next four hours of meetings and client calls, I think I will go hide in the awesome Stadtbibliothek (the library).

<comment><USER5> this reminds me of a couple of war stories by rachelbythebay: Opening umbrellas indoors on purpose [1], and Project Darkness [2]

[1] - [https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/06/18/umbrellagate/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/06/18/umbrellagate/)

[2] - [https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/08/24/projectdarkness/](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2011/08/24/projectdarkness/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is 60 days to build an _automated_ payroll system really a selling feature or success story?

Mistakes in payroll can cause a tremendous amount of effort for both the employer and employee, and I would want my payroll system to be well tested, battle hardened, and near bullet-proof as possible.

In other words, not one built in a hotel room in two months.</comment>


The Geopolitics of Internet Infrastructure - <AUTHOR> http://www.renesys.com/tech/presentations/pdf/GeopoliticsOfInternetInfrastructure.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Video of the talk available here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx13GO2kJU0#t=2m18s></comment>


Startups.com Becomes a Q&A Site For Business Questions - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/05/startups-com-becomes-a-qa-site-for-business-questions/

<comment><USER2> What a waste of a great domain name.

Dharmesh shouldn't be worried, community is everything</comment>


Chomsky: How the Magna Carta became a Minor Carta, part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/24/magna-carta-minor-carta-noam-chomsky

<comment><AUTHOR> Second part - [http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/25/magna- ca...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/25/magna-carta-minor- carta-noam-chomsky)</comment>


Rambling on the market for talent - <AUTHOR> http://codeanarchy.com/posts/losing-focus.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't originally intend to submit this here, but some of the replies at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4620276> changed my mind.

I apologize for the political leanings at the beginning and end, but I'm hoping the rest will spark an interesting conversation about the future of the market for programming talent.</comment>


Life After Moore's Law - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2010/04/29/moores-law-computing-processing-opinions-contributors-bill-dally_print.html

<comment><USER2> blah blah blah. there's a troll blog spouting the same content-less bullshit.

<http://www.rebelscience.org/Cosas/Reliability.htm> <http://rebelscience.blogspot.com/>

there you go.

unless there's some substance behind this, it's basically FUD.

he can lament the state of affairs all he wants. making software parallel is still not trivial, and i didn't see how he addressed that.

he's merely pushing his business. i get that. he's trying to sell energy efficiency, because that's what computing centers look for. the monthly power bill often is the limiting factor.

so he's peddling his stuff, hoping that nobody would ask him how to use it properly!

</comment><comment><USER3> Not to dismiss his points out of hand, but he is a chief at Nvidia, so I'd going to take his "multi-core won't work" statement with a grain of salt. SIMD and vector processors are great for some jobs, but certainly not for everything

<comment><USER4> They're great for a lot of things, I thought. I dunno, I do loads (haha, I just realized that's a pun) of work with stuff that uses SSE.

<comment><USER3> Oh yeah, SIMD/MIMD is indispensable, all I'm saying is that in the long term that's not going to suddenly solve every problem every time. There are a lot of intrinsically sequential processes and only so much parallelism can be extracted from any given problem.

Personally, my guess is that eventually we will end up with a small number (maybe 128-256) of coordinator processors that are like current multi-core CPUs, and then a vast number of vector processors that it delegates work to.</comment></comment></comment>


Updated Debian 8: 8.6 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.debian.org/News/2016/20160917 <comment><USER2> so is it just sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y or do I need to do more?

<comment><AUTHOR> Possibly a dist-upgrade instead of an upgrade, but generally: Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there any reason to use debian instead of ubuntu LTS?

EDIT: for server use.

<comment><USER4> You're less vulnerable to Canonical power plays. They have a long history now of taking and making alternatives to common tools and systems and pushing them hard, with a view to using their large install base to gain control over the direction of "Linux" (as in, the complete package rather than the kernel, GNU/Linux, etc).

I'm not really sure how to word this without it sounding inflammatory, so please take it in good faith. Red Hat have been accused of the same.

Mir, bzr, Upstart, snap are all examples of this, I think.

<comment><USER5> That's not really fair.

upstart was created way before systemd, and in many respects was an improvement over the init.d scripts -- furthermore, they made no effort to make it into a squid with tentacles in everything (which some people consider RedHat with systemd do).

Ubuntu started using "baz", which was a fork of "arch/tla"; I think both predate git, and IIRC Linus said that tla even informed some decisions in git (by setting a negative example of the wrong way to do things). "bzr" was adopted because "baz" was at a dead end, "bzr" already existed (and showed some promise), and it wasn't clear which among bzr/mercurial/git/monotone is going to be the best option.

Mir and Snap are going their own way, yes - but they do that in a civil way, as far as exerting their influence goes.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, saying Canonical push stuff hard seems to ignore that RH push just as hard. They just do it via Gnome and Freedesktop rather than from their own PO box.

If you check the mailing lists you will again and again find a redhat.com address setting the agenda.

And consciously or not that agenda will align with RH interests.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Telegraph Academy is tapping communities of color for engineering talent - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraphacademy.com

<comment><USER2> I can't express how awesome this really is. Bringing diversity to the tech world is a tough and touchy topic these days. Being a black engineer at a leading company in the Bay, see this issue first hand. This aligns well with the tech initiative the Obama just proposed. Also, seeing how Telegraph academy is partnered with Hack Reactor, the leading coding school around, I know the outcomes will be good! I should know, I was an instructor at Hack Reactor. This is going to be awesome!

</comment><comment><USER3> It's great seeing programs like this which encourage communities of color to partake in the growing amount of tech opportunities in the bay area and other tech hubs. As someone who identifies and feels very passionately about this issue, I'd love to learn more about how I can contribute and help!

</comment><comment><USER4> It's about time someone did something like this =)</comment>


VC per capita, Europe: $7, U.S.: $72, Israel: $144. - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/06/14/technology-is-cheap-as-chips-but-venture-capitalists-fail-to-cash-in/

<comment><USER2> What the article misses is that London with roughly 1% of Europe's population get's 30-40% of the VC financing in Europe.

So based on those figures London's VC per capita is in the region of $200-$300 (London has a similar population size to Israel).

<comment><USER3> What does that look like if we just do the valley?

<comment><USER4> The flipside of this is that Europe should probably not be compared to single countries like the US or Israel.

The comparable entities are North America, the Middle East and Europe. Then things would change.

Individual countries in Europe, particularly the Scandanavians, have loads of small IT companies funded from VC capital and as others have said government grants. The Dutch, the UK and Germany would probably also do reasonalbly well.

<comment><USER5> _The comparable entities are North America, the Middle East and Europe. Then things would change._ <\-- No, here is why, if you're in Israel you have access to all that it has to offer, same for the US, and same for Europe (EU). The point is 'how much money is there to go around / potential recipient.'

<comment><USER2> Europe is far less a single economic block than the US or Israel. An American VC is far more likely to invest in a London based startup than one in say Germany, purely because of cultural and language barriers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't quite capture the picture because Europe often have public subsidies as well. For instance the publicly owned "Innovation Norway" in Norway has a budget of NOK 1,5 billion, which translates to about US$60 per capita. Most of this is spent on subsidising entrepreneurial ventures.

<comment><USER7> I definitely see this in indie games. Things like the Nordic Game Fund are _really_ nice compared to what's available in the U.S., although Canada is also pretty generous with funding small videogame startups (especially Quebec, which has additional province-level funding). In the U.S., you can only really make it if you: 1) bootstrap; or 2) target social games or "gamification", which are the only things VCs care about. Companies more in the Playdead (Denmark) vein rarely get funding, although the U.S. does have quite a few bootstrapped success stories--- just looking at Santa Cruz, CA, alone, both Gaijin Games and Team Meat, makers of bit.trip and Super Meat Boy, respectively, are recently bootstrapped and successful.

For early-stage seed funding, there are also all sorts of target-agnostic entrepreneurship programs in Europe, which will kick $20k or something your way if you have anything approximating a reasonable business plan; makes it much easier to just strike out on your own without having to do consulting work to fund it. On the other hand, the fact that the U.S. has more than its share of successful bootstrapped indie-game companies suggests that either the culture or ecosystem is doing something positive there even with VCs being absent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how much of Israel's VC money is domestic and how much pours in from the US.

<comment><USER9> There's some info here but the relevant part seems garbled.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital_in_Israel#Chara...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital_in_Israel#Characterization)

 _Israel's venture capital industry has about 70 active venture capital funds, of which 14 international VCs with Israeli offices. Additionally, there are some 220 international funds, including Polaris Venture Partners, Accel Partners and Greylock Partners, that do not have branches in Israel, but actively invest in Israel through an in-house specialist.

In 2009, the Life Sciences Sector led the market with $272 million or 24% of total capital raised, followed by the Software Sector with $258 million or 23%, the Communications sector with $219 million or 20%, and the Internet sector with 13% of capital raised in 2009. [6]

roughly 78%-88% of investments that reached Israeli high-tech companies in 2001-2008 were done either by Israeli VC firms (the 38%-49% above) or by foreign or other entities in syndication with Israeli VC firms: 37%-50%._

<comment><USER10> > Greylock Partners, that do not have branches in Israel

I'm not sure when that was last updated, but Greylock has had an active Israeli office for more than two years now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Annual US Aid to Israel is $382.97 per Israeli and going up.

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure where you're getting your numbers from. At $30 billion over the next 10 years, per year, US aid to Israel is $412 per Israeli [1]. And of course, that will go down with population increases.

And another thing to note is that that money is in the form of military contracts with American companies. It is not used to pay for Israeli infrastructure or social services AFAIK beyond a separate chunk of money ~$40 million to help pay for Israel's immigration problem [2].

1\. [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+billion%24+%2F+popula...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+billion%24+%2F+population+of+israel)

2\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_aid_to_Israel.gif> (note that economic aid to Israel was stopped in 2007)

<comment><USER13> "And another thing to note is that that money is in the form of military contracts with American companies"

This.

People are usually oblivious that it's another way of transferring money from the government to the military industrial complex, not just supporting the single democracy in the middle east.

<comment><USER11> Very true.

Most people don't know but the most controversial weapons that Israel has used in recent years, such as the cluster bombs dropped in Southern Lebanon [1] and the white phosphorous used in the Gaza Strip [2][3] were both made by the US and given to Israel through the US Military Aid program.

[1] <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5299938.stm>

[2] [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/arti...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article5575070.ece)

<comment><USER12> > and the white phosphorous used in the Gaza Strip [2] were both made by the > US and given to Israel through the US Military Aid program.

Also very true. And it should be noted that WP usage is legal under international law provided that it is used as a smokescreen and not a weapon [1]. And the reason it is provided by America is because it is used by NATO.

1\. <http://www.gonzagajil.org/content/view/194/26/>

<comment><USER11> The problem with WP was the way it was used in Gaza:

[http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/israeli- army...](http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/news/israeli-armys-use- white-phosphorus-gaza-clear-undeniable-20090119)

<comment><USER12> Yes forgive me if don't trust Amnesty international on Israel (or any Western country for that matter) [1]. Also, WP is legal when used in a civilian area if that's where the battlefield is (Israel did not choose to fight in an urban area, Hamas did). See my same link above.

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amnesty_Internatio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Amnesty_International)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I want to see this number for just Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER15> Well, the SF bay area 2.5% of the country's population (7.5M/300M) and ~50% of the VC, so 25x$72 ~= $1800/person.

<comment><USER14> Thanks, an order of magnitude larger per capita than Israel, as expected. I wasn't aware of the 50% number and too lazy to Google it!

<comment><USER16> I don't think that's surprising is it? Silicon Valley is known to be the best place for VC in the world. I'm sure if you draw arbitrary lines around the hottest investment communities in Israel the numbers would also be much more even.

That Israel as a country beats us in per capita investment is an interesting figure which we should all consider.

<comment><USER17> On the other hand the population of the bay area is quite comparable to that of Israel.

Smaller countries tend to have more specialized and targeted economies. If Israel were to attempt to play in all the industries that the US does, they would do very poorly at almost all of them.

Much of the US economy is in large established technology and manufacturing companies, where VC no longer has a role.

I would expect that for every possible region of Israel, it is possible to find a region of similar population in the bay area that has a higher per capita VC investment.

<comment><USER18> But Silicon Valley is still far more specialized than Israel.

Most Israelis are not in hi-tech industries, so it is unfair to compare SV to Israel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have no doubt that VC money is the lowest in Europe of those three. I wonder though how significant this metric really is, especially if the large developping countries of eastern Europe are included. Wouldn't a VC money per startup/founder be more interesting?

<comment><USER11> Depending on definition Europe can have more than 700 million people and it often includes Turkey and Russia:

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

But I would think that they are referring to European Union nations???

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe,_EU,_candidates,.pn...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Europe,_EU,_candidates,.png)

Also does the VC numbers for Israel include the population of the Israeli occupied territories or just those who have full Israeli citizenship?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is MS's European chairman genuinely concerned about the European economy and education system? In that case, he might have more success at these goals, by becoming a politician instead.

Or... are these economic observations somehow self serving? Perhaps the lower levels of VC investment in Europe (per capita) are inconvenient for him: Implying European investors should greatly increase their investment levels. Would he be happy if VC levels did increase 10x to US levels... But funds were largely directed at companies that MS did not have involvement with?

<comment><USER21> Microsoft BizSpark is definitely genuinely concerned about the European startup ecology and education system, and Microsoft itself is large enough that the only way for it to grow/sustain sales is by growing the market as a whole, so yes, the European chairman definitely cares about the European economy and education system. Any big-company executive does.

The whole point of capitalism is that it's both self-serving and public good.</comment></comment>


You Don't Need - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/you-dont-need <comment> yoz-y Heh, the "you don't need GUI" one is extremely underwhelming. Anybody who knows what terminal is already knows about all those commands and none of them is easier than a GUI. It could make more impact if it actually explained tasks that are harder to do in GUI than in the command line, such as massive renaming of the files, filtering files depending on content and so on.

<comment><USER2> I use both CLI and GUI, but here's an area where I think the CLI just rocks: Instructions for installing and configuring software. Typical instructions for Linux:

        sudo apt-get install foo
        sudo apt-get install bar
        cd ~/somewhere
        sudo nano something, change these lines

The same instructions for Windows involves screen after screen of text interspersed with annotated pictures of dialogs, which become obsolete when the OS is revised.

In fact, I've seen an increasing number of Windows installation tips being given in CLI terms:

        windows+R cmd
        enter this command

It would be interesting to see some sort of tool, online or within the system, where you enter a command string and it explains what the command does.

<comment><USER3> I'd argue that has more to do with a unified package manager and installation process than GUI vs. CLI.

<comment><USER4> And I argue it has more to with the fact that *nix applications are traditionally configured via static configuration files as opposed to interactive process.

<comment><USER5> The real benefit is that they are configured with _text_ files, not a monolithic inscrutable system "registry."

<comment><USER6> This is about how the user interacts with the configuration process, not where the configuration variables are stored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have enjoyed spending hours removing libraries full of bootstrap and angular and replacing them with a simple CSS page and a JavaScript one-liner in my current work project.

<comment><USER8> You've enjoyed it, but those hours cost your business, and is that really worth it?

Some beliefs which are frequently displayed in these parts:

> Money on chairs / desks / PCs are no object because developers cost money, > not those things

> Ship quickly and iterate

> Make it, make it work, make it fast

> Write code your successor can maintain

And then HN goes ahead and upvotes a boast about spending their (expensive) time unpicking libraries from code.

The point of "you might not need X" is to encourage package maintainers to keep their sub-package footprint small, not that end-users shouldn't use X.

I'm sure you'll be back to suggest that you've delivered "500% speed-up" or some other nonsense metric and I look forward to that.

Ultimately, custom business owned code which attempts to deliver the value of angular is just a future maintenance nightmare, and I say that as someone who really doesn't like angular.

If you really replaced angular with a "javascript one-liner" I'd like to see that line!

<comment><USER9> I'm going to take a guess and say he won big in maintainability and performance on low-end devices.

<comment><USER7> If it will operate with no js at all, then it is also more compatible with some security requirements I have. Don't get me wrong, I've always been a big fan of JavaScript, warts and all. However, in this particular instance, what should have been a simple server rendered login page was written with a full SPA application development mindset.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel a strong need for You-Dont-Need-Windows

<comment><USER11> Try verifying authenticode signatures in exes correctly without Windows.

<comment><USER10> > Try verifying authenticode signatures in exes correctly without Windows.

When You-Dont-Need-Windows, You don't need this either. Do you?

<comment><USER12> If you want to compile to windows, you absolutely do.

<comment><USER13> I think the argument/joke he's trying to make is that he'd be happier without anyone using Windows (which would conveniently solve the problem of having to compile to Windows)

<comment><USER11> I get the joke and I've been aggressively trying to avoid it. But you can't, unless you only deal with phones or server backend.

Coming from a Linux user, for most people, Windows is the only usable non- Apple-hardware OS, unfortunately.

<comment><USER10> I was able to convince several people to move from windows to GNU/Linux. In some cases, it didn't took more than 2 minutes!

Case 1: Religious/moral people: If you are using unauthorized (pirated?) copies of windows, isn't it like stealing? Think of the amount you are stealing just by installing M$-something, Adobe something, etc.

How can you wish that your money/wealth shouldn't be stealed when you steals somebody else's money?

Case 2: Business people: Have you ever contacted M$ for support? Then why would you pay them, just for something that runs viruses smoothly, and occasionally having blue screen of death?

Case 3: Personal: I came to know that I was like a frog in a well when I was introduced to GNU/Linux. Thanks to Microsoft for wasting my 10 years of time. Now I know about windows, may be more than some windows admin would do, just because I don't use windows anymore!

Serious GNU/Linux users may not have a solution known for an immediate problem. But they know how to find a solution or where to look for it.

<comment><USER13> I generally tend to shy away from trying to convince people that they should change their operating system. I find it quite annoying in the (thankfully rare) occasions that some overzealous Mac user tries to tell me that my choice of machine/operating system is inferior, so I find it hard to believe that other people wouldn't feel the same way if I tried to someone else that their choice is incorrect (even if I feel strongly that it is).

Of course, if someone is interested in learning more about Linux, I'll happily teach them as much as they want to know and give them my opinions of the advantages of using Linux. But unless the person is already open to hearing my opinions on the topic, it tends to be a waste of both of our time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can we have "You Don't Need Electron" too?

<comment><USER15> Can we expand that to node and the entire ecosystem?

<comment> xkcd-sucks Electron.js: Run Electron apps in any browser.

~~No external dependencies~~ Builds a statically linked Chrome, so just `npm install` and you're good to go

<comment><USER16> _eye twitch_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Some of these things are actually pretty cool IMO, like [http://keithclark.co.uk/articles/pure-css-parallax- websites/...](http://keithclark.co.uk/articles/pure-css-parallax- websites/demo3/) from [https://github.com/you-dont-need/You-Dont-Need- Javascript#Pa...](https://github.com/you-dont-need/You-Dont-Need- Javascript#Parallax)

<comment><USER18> In theory css parallax is brilliant and should replace all bloated js versions. In practice, it's unusable. We spent 40 hours as two experienced frontend engineers trying to get the example to work on a relatively simple example but it requires such a specific markup that it became too convoluted. Eventually I gave in and looked for a js solution but those were much larger and slower than we wanted. Ultimately, ended up writing a short 100-line open source vanilla js lib, and a bunch of folks seemed to be having our same issues: [https://github.com/dixonandmoe/rellax](https://github.com/dixonandmoe/rellax). That said I still love to explore the extents of css' capabilities but this is one time where it fell short.

<comment><USER19> Exact same problem, actually tried making this example mentioned here to work on other browsers besides Chrome and failed to do so. Your rellax library looks really useful i just hope i won't have to build parallax websites anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am looking forward to "you don't need Git" :D

</comment><comment><USER21> It would be nice if the examples would have a browser compatibility table.

Without it is is just a waste of time.

The first one I tried (CSS only accordion) takes you to a site where the author himself says that this is an experiment and was not meant for use in production (no IE support).

</comment><comment><USER22> This is great but as the author points out - outside of primitives you might as well use lodash.

Also, compatibility for these noon lodash methods are chrome and Firefox.

</comment><comment><USER23> Some of these CSS ones have to be a joke. Using CSS based font creation? Seriously?

</comment><comment><USER24> Someone should create one for jQuery and Bootstrap

<comment><USER9> There's this: [http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/](http://youmightnotneedjquery.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> In the case of lodash, those functions exist mostly to interoperate with other lodash functions, like chain.

</comment><comment><USER26> _.get() is the killer feature of lodash.

</comment><comment><USER27> You don't need web apps would be nice as well :)

</comment><comment><USER28> You don't need javascript is really cool~</comment>


An honest account of what it's like to drop out - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/simple-thoughts/an-honest-year-as-a-dropout-73ce63f78240

<comment><USER2> Few are as lucky as he claims to have been and aren't nearly as insecure about it.</comment>


How to Buy Things Anonymously Using A Credit Card - <AUTHOR> http://greycoder.com/?p=274 The article describes how to use anonymous credit cards. <comment><USER2> Fails to mention obfuscating IP address when activating.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I will add this to the article.</comment></comment>


What should I do about Windows XP computers that we need to keep? - <AUTHOR>

In our lab we have a collection of equipment where each piece has a dedicated windows XP computer (a Wyko interferometer for example). What is the best way to deal with the end of support for these machines?
The hardware is very expensive to upgrade, and upgrading would basically mean throwing it out and starting over with new equipment.
There is also no path to upgrade to Windows 7. <comment><USER2> A possible solution:

\- Block all machines from accessing the web, let them access only the intranet;

\- Install a lightweight VM with a browser on every machine and use this to access the Internet (for e.g. you could use a VM with a small Linux distro only for browsing the net).

The second solution is probably a good compromise. This will let you browse the Internet if necessary without compromising the physical machine security.

It should be possible that on the same physical machine to allow external network access for a VM and block the other apps from accessing the Internet. You can probably do it from the firewall or use a separate IP for the VM and block all IPs from your router except the IPs of the VMs.

The VM should be used only for browsing the internet.

</comment><comment><USER3> You could attempt to move to a VM, this'll likely fail. I know a KVM environment _should_ work theoretically but it may not.

If that fails you'll likely need to go with an air gap. Transfer all data in and out via flash drive and run nightly virus scans on host computer and the XP one. If you can't air gap the XP computer. Nightly virus/mal scans, allocate more time for IT preemptively, and maybe prayer?

Weekly/Monthly hard drive images are likely a good idea also.

:.:.:

Also stock pile old hardware for it. Trying keeping a few functional ATA hard drives on hand, spare PCI cards if you need them. In all honesty have 1 or 2 computers that can serve as drop in replacements on failure is likely a good idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't have extra parts, but the service team does and the machines themselves are getting hard to come by. I tried shopping for a computer with more than one PCI slot recently, and spent days just trying to figure out what is in computers from Lenovo, HP and DELL. That is not an important spec to list anymore.

I will do the math with my boss; a duplicate machine might be a good idea while they are still around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would recommend an air gap, disabling autorun, removing the CD hardware, and any hardware used to connect to the internet. You could also remove any other hardware and uninstall the drivers you don't need such as a webcam.

Here is a good article on the Malwarebytes Anti-malware blog for some recommendations: [http://blog.malwarebytes.org/security- threat/2014/04/windows...](http://blog.malwarebytes.org/security- threat/2014/04/windows-xp-you-have-served-us-well/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I would stockpile parts for the machines and take them off the network. If you have enough spares and your computers aren't exposed to outside attacks, I don't see why they couldn't hum along for another decade or two.

If you keep it up long enough, you might even get an article: [http://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/if_it_aint_broke_dont_...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/249951/if_it_aint_broke_dont_fix_it_ancient_computers_in_use_today.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I will start with just pulling it off the network. People like to be able to easily move the data, but it is probably worth making them use thumb drives now.

<comment><USER6> And while you're at it- definitely disable every possible autorun option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> keep them non networked, if you are really afraid of xp without support</comment>


How to Retire in Your 30s with $1M in the Bank - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/01/style/fire-financial-independence-retire-early.html <comment><USER4> "They saved a sizable portion of their income over the next five years and drastically reduced expenses, until their net worth was around $1.2 million. "

Every millennial retires early story always has a unique anecdote like this. How exactly do you save $1.2 million over five years on 110K a year? Did he already have 800K in the bank before learning about early retirement? Is his wife a highly paid executive or doctor?

"Because his wife currently works, they have yet to draw on those accounts."

Some important information is missing here.

Also, while I don't think FIRE is impossible or unattainable, lean FIRE practitioners are gonna get walloped in the gut when we hit a nasty bear market after a decade of markets pushed higher by crazy monetary policy.

<comment><USER5> This reminds me of that article about an early thirty something who paid-off a quarter million in student debt in X years[1].

Her parents bought her a condo, she got a job at her mother's non-profit and she lived with a second-income earning partner.

The message was that if she could do it, anyone could do it.

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.com/how-ebony-horton-paid- off-22...](https://www.businessinsider.com/how-ebony-horton-paid- off-220000-worth-of-student-loans-in-3-years-2017-3)

<comment><USER6> Anyone[1]!

[1] Who comes from wealth, marries wealth, and benefits from nepotism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In first world countries it's not difficult at all given two conditions.

1\. You have a good job (probably - but not necessarily - a professional job)

2\. You are willing to spend less money than other people.

And in fact, point 2 is way more important than point 1.

The secret to having more money is not to earn more, it's to spend less.

I'm 36 and I have quit and done what I wanted twice in my life now - once for 2 years I drove AK-Argentina, now I'm well over 2 years driving around Africa. Before both jaunts I earned a mere fraction of what Bay area salaries appear to be. Before Argentina my salary was $48k CAD.

The trick is simply to spend less. Don't upgrade your phone (or don't even have one), don't eat out. Walk or ride to work, no TV, no Netflix, etc. etc. Pretty soon you'll find you have way more money than you actually need, and you can choose to work either part time, or not work at all for a while.

If you were willing to put in 10-15 years of this frugal life, you'd have enough money to never work again, easily.

EDIT: Because everyone always asks how I do it, I wrote a book about how I do this with my life: [http://theroadchoseme.com/work-less-to-live-your- dreams](http://theroadchoseme.com/work-less-to-live-your-dreams)

<comment><USER8> > The secret to having more money is not to earn more, it's to spend less.

I honestly thought it was the complete opposite? The whole "being poor is expensive" thing? That buying expensive shoes is economically better longer term vs buying cheap shoes?

<comment><USER9> It is

If you were making $50,000/year you might be able to save $10,000-$20,000 a year by cutting spending. However you'd be able to save infinity more by increasing earnings. If you were making $50,000 and got a raise and were now making $100,000/year a year that would let you save $50,000/year. You aren't going to save $50,000/year by cutting expenses.

There's no theoretical limit to your earnings, however, you can only save at most 100% of your salary.

It's also a LOT (and I mean a lot) easier to cut spending when you earn more.

I think what the GP meant to say was if you increase spending when you increase earnings you'll never save any money.

<comment><USER7> > _If you were making $50,000 and got a raise and were now making $100,000 > /year a year that would let you save $50,000/year._

These are the kind of simplifications that get thrown around all the time that are simply wrong.

You're forgetting all the extra tax you'll have to pay to earn that extra $50,000, so right from the start you are not getting anywhere near $50k extra into your account. You're forgetting it will cost you more to earn that extra (better work clothes, longer hours means buying more food, require better phone, on call, etc. etc.) and you're forgetting that when you earn more you'll spend more.

Certainly if you get a pay rise from $50k to $100k you have the _potential_ to save more, but I still stand by the statement that it's not the best way to go about it, if in fact your goal is to work less (reduced hours or retirement). That's a very important point to keep in mind - the goal here isn't to save as much money as humanly possible, the goal here is to work less.

<comment><USER10> > longer hours means buying more food

this is where you're failing to understand the frugal mindset. People with a frugal mindset rarely if ever buy more food (if you mean, not make their own meals), no matter their work hours.

<comment><USER7> I'm not failing to understand it, I live it.

You wind up spending more on food because you're utterly exhausted from working longer hours. It's not that you want to, it's that you get backed into a corner and don't have a choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Every person successfully doing this seems to also be selling something. From the article: "Mr. Jensen also practices an activity that for many FIRE achievers seems to be the new golf: writing a financial advice blog." That blog seems to be mostly affiliate marketing. There's even a comment here already ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17894385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17894385)) where the author talks about living without a job then posts a link to a book they're selling.

The real story here isn't about retiring early, it's about how to change your career to writing books about retiring early. Writing is still a job.

<comment><USER12> Of course you won't hear about those that are not writing about it, as they're not writing about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was a feel-good article but rather devoid of substance, and I say that as someone who pursues personal frugality. There's not much in here that hasn't been established in pretty much every other discussion on the topic (lower costs, maximize investable savings) without even the token discussion on diversification and tax structure that usually give something concrete.

I'm bashing on the article a bit, perhaps unfairly, I just found it to exemplify a trend I often see in these FIRE newslets, wherein the samples given are wonderful encapsulations of "how to retire at 30 with 1m in the bank? Make >100k a year and save most of it"

<comment><USER14> Saving 60% of your salary above a standard of living cost for 8-10 years appears to be the key.

Whether you increase income, cut spending, or both, software devs are well positioned to do this, especially dual income.

There's lots more to read on this topic than a single article and it shouldn't be used to bash down the relevancy of learning financial literacy.

<comment><USER13> Let me be precise: I would do nothing but encourage ANYONE to be financially literate.

However, I did not feel this article did that. If anything, it portrayed the FIRE group as "those weird nerds who find that number stuff cool." (which, while not necessarily incorrect for some of us, seems to bury the lede that ANYONE can take learnings from this)

What I felt was _lacking_ were the breadcrumbs (outside of the token reddit reference) towards financial literacy. I've seen far better introductions in that respect than this article. (In that vein I'd namedrop bogleheads as well, if anyone reading this is looking for other avenues)

I would also note that saving 60% of your salary for 10 years will only set it up if you're making well over the median US household income, which was a component of my original point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Without reading the article, $1M isn't nearly enough to retire on at 30, unless you have some disease that will kill you before you're 45.

<comment><USER16> If you can manage 1 million in cash/stocks and own a home somewhere (reasonable if you've saved up that much). 4%/year is $40k, and will hopefully be below your earnings on the money. That's a reasonable amount to live on if you don't insist on New York or San Francisco or something.

That's still 25 years of living if you get no interest or earnings.

<comment><USER17> Assuming 0% inflation or a real return on the $1M well above 4%, no health issues, no change in expenses, no massive drawdown in the market in year one, etc.

Build a spreadsheet that has "expected return" (e.g., 1.06) and inflation (e.g., 1.03), annual expenses, taxes, starting principal, and then project out the annual rate of return net of expenses + taxes for 30-60 years from age 30. You will be surprised at how soon $1 million seems like nothing. Keep in mind that both expenses and returns can see shocks (not to mention taxes) that put you in a situation where "be below your earnings" assumption goes underwater and the compounding effects work against you rather than for you.

All I'm saying is this: be prepared that 5-20 years into your super-early retirement that you're kicked back into the job market--so have skills and a reasonable path for where you're going to come back into the market. It's not really a coincidence that many of these early retirement lifestyle gurus are supplementing their decisions via the job of competing for eyeballs as bloggers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> To me, FIRE is more about financial freedom, than early retirement. Having the ability to quit your job at any time is the ultimate leverage, and gives you the ability to choose work that fulfills you intellectually, without worrying about the financial consequences.

</comment><comment><USER19> So this is one issue I, like a lot of engineer types no doubt, have been contemplating for some time. Goals differ depending on who you talk to. This article talks about in one's 30s with $1m in the bank.

By the 4% rule that will generate you $40,000 a year. There are a lot of places in the US you can live on that. It gets more difficult with kids but not impossible. It's not what I'd call a retirement lifestyle I'd want however.

Indeed the article mentions working at Starbucks and I imagine for these folks there's a lot of this. I wouldn't call this retirement as such, I'd call it _semi-retirement_ (which is fine).

Speaking of Starbucks, it mentions the real big problem with retiring early in the US: health insurance. I really don't see a good way around this. It's also why many countries are popular for US retirees (notably Costa Rica, Mexico and more recently Ecuador).

Now I'm Australian so I could go back and retire in Australia (I live in the US) but honestly I find that idea unappealing. Whereas there were parts of Australia that had a relatively low standard of living, those days are long over. Housing is ultra-expensive (particularly in the East Coast cities). Other expenses like utilities are expensive. Hell, electricity prices were a factor in recently toppling a sitting Prime Minister (fun fact: the last Australian PM to serve a whole term as PM was John Howard ending in 2007; there have been 4 coups since, 2 per major party).

Europe is an option. Not everyone has that option of course. And it varies a lot by country. Germany is a pretty nice compromise between being good for expats, being relatively low cost (compared to Switzerland, the UK or France at any rate). Some countries are relatively cheap now and have good climates like Portugal, Italy and Greece but are financially precarious.

Personally I'd like somewhere that's relatively inexpensive, safe/stable and with a good climate. The last one eliminates a lot of otherwise good options (eg Canada).

The US has a lot of affordable cities still (eg Atlanta). The health insurance problem is a huge risk/cost though.

</comment><comment><USER20> IMHO i think we need a another acronym for "RE" in "FIRE" because it is a lil bit of a misnomer. Most people who come across the concept of FIRE will inadvertently ask the following questions:

• What will I do after i am "retired early"?

• Wouldn't I be bored when I'm "retired early"?

• What happens when I need more money than I expected later for <insert reason here> after I'm "retired early"?

• If an emergency crops up, how do I deal with the unexpected expenses after I'm "retired early"?

People seem to equate the "RE" part as you show the finger to your boss, stop working completely, and you are at home now doing nothing. While that might be true to a very very very small percentage of people that FIRE, in my personal experience, most people (including myself) continue to work or at the very least, do something part time (sell things on the side, cut their working hours down to 3 or 4 days, part-time "menial" jobs, etc). I will hazard a guess that most people that FIRE-ed are actually still "working" ergo still have some form of income to supplement their living expenses (on top of their FIRE stash) thus I will describe the RE part more of a mental freedom thing than an actual thing one does.

My personal anecdote - I am technically FIRE in a lot of measures but I am pursuing a fat FIRE (mentioned in the article) so I'm not exactly there yet from my perspective. However I do have the choice to FIRE if I want to but yet, I continue on working. Why? CAUSE I LOVE MY JOB! but let's say tomorrow if I stopped liking my job for whatever reason, I will still continue finding another job that I like even though I have the freedom to sit at home and be "retired early". I will even boldly say that 9/10 people I know that are on the way to FIRE or have FIRE-ed all are either still working or continuing on doing something they love that most people will define as a "job".

Sorry for my verbose explanation but the "RE" is a lil bit of a pet peeve of mine of all concepts of FIRE. Definitely need a better acronym - <USER2> something closer to FU money.

</comment><comment><USER21> Where this is all going to fall apart is when the stock market goes down or inflation takes off. You really don't want to be retired, out of the workforce for 10 years, and only have a million dollars in assets if either of these happens.

<comment><USER22> Depends what your assets are in. You really want to have ownership of monopoly assets that are low down on Maslow's hierarchy of needs if this happens. That could be apartment blocks in metro areas where demand exceeds supply, or it could be Google/Facebook/Amazon stock, or it could be defense stocks (war is usually the inevitable result of hyperinflation), or it could be a successful local medical practice.

The people who get fucked by inflation, in order of screwedness, are a.) people who depend on cash savings or fixed-denomination bonds for survival b.) wage workers in non-differentiated industries c.) commodity small business owners (eg. restaurant or gas station owners) d.) salaried workers in differentiated professions and e.) monopoly business owners and executives. There's also a separate debtor => creditor axis where inflation benefits debtors much more than creditors.

<comment><USER17> Not necessarily disputing your second paragraph's financial/economic points, but if you're owning apartments (and managing them) or have a medical practice, you're not retired. That does say to me that a lot of this early "retirement" mythos is merely a euphemism for "non-traditional career downsizing." Nothing wrong with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How is this story not about the increasing prevalence of horrendous work environments and expectations? Of course these people wanted to retire - <USER3> relationships with their jobs were wildly unhealthy.

Which seems, unfortunately, increasingly common.

</comment><comment><USER24> Step 1: make about $110,000 a year, apparently. Then, save a lot of it up. _Amazing._

Also, his wife is still working?

<comment><USER25> > Also, his wife is still working?

Technically, this alone is enough for early retirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The guy on the article retired in his 40's.

"On Tuesday, March 10, 2017, Mr. Jensen called his boss and gave notice after 15 years at the company. He wasn't quitting, exactly. He had retired. He was 43."

<comment><USER27> And wife still works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So obviously this isn't really a guide about how to retire at age 30. But the key message to take from the article is to live within your means with a strict budget. And if you can't live within your means, be prepared to move to another part of your country with more affordable housing and lower expenses.

</comment><comment><USER29> In one sense, it's switching from working one's professional job to being a homemaker, a penny pincher, and an amateur investor.

It could work and one may enjoy it better than a certain job. But isn't it a better use of one's time to switch to a related job, perhaps a part-time one, where one can deploy existing skills/education productively, and not worry too much about everyday's expenses?

Also, what would happen to one's mental state when a bear market hits and the nest egg one depends on takes a big hit at the same time that the job market freezes up?

Using the privilege of time to find out what one really _loves_ to do and embark on a journey to master that and perhaps make a living out of it in future would be both more fulfilling and less risky in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm retired early, but mainly because I got lucky in bitcoin. I'd suggest retiring to Asia. You can live a lot cheaper here.

My thinking is as technology progresses, the gap between the life styles of the poor and the rich will continue to decrease. If all we do is spend our day staring at screens and phones, and one day wearing VR goggles, what does it matter what car you drive, how big your place is, or whether you live in a big city or out in the countryside (or in another country, in my case)?

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm 28, from Europe, have worked for a well known large tech company in Silicon Valley for over 4 years (and a few startups before that). I currently have a bit under $500k "in the bank" (mix of cash, stock, bonds, index funds). I intend to leave tech in 2 years when - according to my current savings rate - I'll be a bit under $750k.

I intend to travel and do my own thing for a year or three, and then go into teaching (primary school). I've worked with kids in various settings since I was 17, so I know it's something I love doing. The goal is for my saved income to be an additional safety net/reservoir of money for buying a home in addition to my potential teaching salary.

Outside of Silicon Valley, I can live under $30k a year, which will be roughly 4% of my total savings. Not super aggressive, but not super conservative either.

The way I see it, tech will have (ideally) provided a very healthy jumping point to my subsequent non tech career. I think that's the way to do it, because I honestly can't see myself starting a family with my current workload/obligations/etc. Working remote is a distant option, but not super appealing for some reason.

I've been writing software since I was 12, I don't intend to stop - just that after a bit under a decade in the tech industry, I realize it doesn't match my ideals in the ways that teaching does.

Plus, I figure I can keep contributing to open source etc with the summers off and what not.

Who knows, maybe this is very idealistic, and I will fail miserably and in 5 years I will be begging for my job back - but at least I tried, and I think with my experience and resume I won't have too much of a hard time getting employed in tech again.

Some of my friends in SF are surprised at how much I've saved in that time. I've certainly made sacrifices - not going to Tahoe every other weekend in the winter, cooking at home more often than going out for overpriced SF restaurants, etc.- but I don't feel like I've had to particularly deprived myself. I do have the luxury of having gone to school in Europe and paid as a TA/RA in the US, so I have no school debt - certainly a privilege.

Just another anecdata point in case it is useful to anyone. Happy to answer any questions - i feel like money talk is still kind of taboo and should be discussed more openly.

<comment><USER32> Were you raised in the East side of Europe, by any chance? I noticed, that those, who grew up in post-communist countries, generally deal with money much more carefully. They primarily see it as a tool to free themselves from external dependencies, not the other way around.

<comment><USER31> Nope, France. My grandparents grew up during the nazi occupation though (and one of them fought in the resistance) and raised my parents as such, so perhaps that had an impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> FIRE is awesome. The retirees live their dream, then they vacate their high- paying job for the next applicant.

Everybody wins.

</comment><comment><USER34> Step 1: earn a million dollars.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, that's the key point with a lot of these articles. They assume you're able to get a job making $100,000+ a year. Not sure about anyone else, but that seems like it's both unrealistic for people in many fields (aka ones that aren't tech/finance/law/medicine/high level business related ones) and unrealistic for many locations. I mean, over here in London that's a steep ask, with only about 17% of roles I've seen offering anywhere near enough for this sort of plan.

So yeah, step 1 is earning a million dollars, arguably by being in the top 10-20% of your industry salary wise.

<comment><USER36> That's a big ask in most places. Median personal income in the US is right around $45k.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> How does one do this and put kids through college? Do you just set aside a certain amount of money and hope it covers the cost of college, which is notable for accelerating faster than the rate of inflation?

How do you explain to your kids that they have to go to a public university if the savings aren't enough? I'm sure some kids would be self-aware enough to appreciate all the extra time they had with you, but others might just wish you'd worked like a "regular person" and tha they could afford to go to a private university.

<comment><USER9> You'd put some money in a college fund. That fund would be invested so it would be collecting interest and capital gains as well as whatever you're putting in weekly or monthly.

>others might just wish you'd worked like a "regular person" and tha they could afford to go to a private university.

Then you've raised bratty kids. Parents don't have any sort of obligation to put their kids through college - mine sure didn't put me through college, lmao. I took out loans and went to a private university; then I paid my loans off myself. If my parents helped me out that would certainly have been appreciated, but I certainly wouldn't expect it.

<comment><USER37> > _Then you 've raised bratty kids. Parents don't have any sort of obligation > to put their kids through college_

If you retire in your 30s and tell your kids "I don't have an obligation to put you through college", I think that non-bratty kids might well be not thrilled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bogleheads [1] has an interesting thread on the same topic. Mostly the same talking points, but a lot of anger towards millennials for "not paying their fair share".

A bit disappointing. Bogleheads is an excellent investing forum, but a lot of the advice is from boomers with the world's most generous and poorly planned pensions.

[1] - [https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=257992...](https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=257992&newpost=4099570)

</comment><comment><USER38> How can you retire with $1M at 30? Even frugal living seems as though it would burn through this. And what about travel and entertainment? This seems like an unreasonably low amount of money to have.

</comment><comment><USER39> He who wants nothing has everything.

</comment><comment><USER40> It's a neat idea if you can keep a high wage job, and move to a low wage area. Otherwise I fear its impossible for most.

</comment><comment><USER41> If you want to live cheaply and see the world (or staying in one place does not appeal), consider becoming a perpetual cycle tourist and live in a tent. There are tonnes of countries where it is easy and spectacular to travel this way and these days a light bluetooth keyboard and a phone with HDMI out are all you need to make money.

</comment><comment><USER42> I've seen this before with someone who inherited a sizable amount of money from a deceased relative right after the financial crisis. Given where the market is today I'm not sure what advice I'd give to them if the same were to happen today.

Do you still just go with the long-term play and put it into index funds when they're at all time highs?

<comment><USER43> Will you short the S&P 500 right now? If the answer is no, just hop on the index fund train. It might be near an all time high, but it can go higher while your money is sitting idle. Maybe it will drop and wipe out most of or more than those gains, but you will be there for the recovery. Studies have shown this to be an incredibly effective strategy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Does anybody here own rental property? If so how did you start out and what kind of property did you start out with?

<comment><USER45> A quick search on reddit will answer your questions better and give you days worth of reading. /r/financialindependence

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> What's the $1M equivalent for the Bay Area?

<comment><USER47> You don't do it in the Bay Area, you come here for the salary, live with roommates in the cheapest place you can find, and if you keep things tight you walk away with $1M ten years later.

<comment><USER48> Detroit, Buffalo, Youngstown, Ohio and Houston, Texas in 20 years when electric cars own 50% own the road. You would do very nicely.

<comment><USER49> Detroit ? lead-in-the-water, streetside shakedowns, multiple burglaries.. living with .. whom?

<comment><USER48> I don't like any of the towns I mentioned, I used them as an example as to what sort of environment you would have to live in which would allow you to live on the interest of 1-million dollars for 50-years-plus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Sounds miserable -- maybe just get a job you enjoy instead of eating lentils every day so that you can squirrel away an extra $3 into a retirement account?

Either way, enjoy watching your plan to get rich doing nothing crash and burn when this bubble pops in 2 years lol

<comment><USER51> You joke in an earlier post about how people should "get out of here with reddit puns", yet you make wild conjecture about stock market moves, the plight of people who have invested, and and it with "lol" as if this were some Twitter banter.

$3 a day is more than $1000 a year, and for poorer people that would make a lot of difference. For modest earners, even, that is an emergency fund or a local family holiday. But enough with rebutting your specifics: I agree with the other poster. Given an option of "live within your means" or "Don't have a savings account and carry a credit debt", there is a pretty obvious choice. And before you try to call me out on false dichotomies, re-read your post.

<comment><USER50> Never read my posts again lol</comment></comment></comment>