Redoing all my home networking - <AUTHOR> https://blog.jessfraz.com/post/home-lab-is-the-dopest-lab/ <comment><USER2> I've found that the home lab is a great place for cast-off corporate equipment either bought from ebay or scrounged from data center upgrades. Mine, assembled at little to no cost, consists of:

42u IBM-branded cabinet

Cisco ASA 5510 firewall

Dell R610 running ESXi

Old Dell 2950 full of 2TB drives running FreeNAS

Cisco 'Small Business' 50 port managed switch

A couple of 4U server cases containing the guts of obsolete gaming systems, repurposed as assorted servers

If you've got the space and can deal with the noise, I can't say too many good things about the R610s - available dirt cheap, and though they're about four generations old at this point, still perform decently since Intel/AMD have, until recently, pretty much stagnated on CPU performance.

Luckily I have a basement.

<comment><USER3> Someone shared this website with me a while back to find used servers on ebay [https://www.labgopher.com/](https://www.labgopher.com/)

What do you think of that?

I am trying to put together a render farm where I need a lot of parallel CPUs to run Unreal Engine Swarm [0] but I just don't have the time or experience to execute on it. My goal is 16 Xeon chips across maybe 8 'boxes' to get to around 64/128 cores.

Anyone know where I could look to find someone I could contract to put something like this together?

[0] - [https://docs.unrealengine.com/udk/Three/Swarm.html](https://docs.unrealengine.com/udk/Three/Swarm.html)

<comment><USER4> Have you looked into one of these guys [1]? They go for ~800USD for 16/32 cores/threads. You can get a good high-end build for ~1500USD. It behaves like a modern system with good power profiles and single threaded and multithreaded performance.

Or dual epyc for a single box 64/128 system?

[https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681911...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819113447)

<comment><USER3> I had done some very basic research on it and found that the performance for the 'Lightmass' program used in Unreal Engine called Swarm was not ideal [https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/off- topic/1388243-...](https://forums.unrealengine.com/community/off- topic/1388243-ue4-dev-rig-threadripper-1950x-or-i7-8700k)

From that thread: "Definitely not the threadripper - there were some benchmarks scattered around in other topics and it's actually slower at compiling and lighting builds than my 7820X, while costing more to build a system with."

But not sure if I should trust those opinions from the dev community as the benchmarks aren't too sophisticated.

I'll continue doing more research on those thank you! I think dual epyc could be interesting for the cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of my favorite pieces of equipment in my home lab has to be an APU2 running OpenBSD as a router. It's cheap, feels solid, and pf lets me configure complex network routing rules with quite a nice interface. Hasn't choked yet. IPsec built into the OS!

[https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm](https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm)

<comment><USER6> Can that APU2 do filtering at full wire speed on those 1Gb NICs? In my experience, many of the smaller SBPC routers can't keep up. I'm running a Netgate 4860 at home and it keeps up with my gigabit fiber connection but several of my previous attempts would not (Soekris, etc.).

<comment><USER7> I also have gigabit, and in my research it seems that the APU2 tops out around 600mbit. Newer hardware like the Celeron 3855U should handle gigabit fine though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of the best possible things you can do for your home network, if you have the knowledge to do it properly, is to separate the functions of modem, router and WAP into three separate devices. The cablemodems provided by Comcast, Charter and other that have built in NAT and wifi are atrocious and bug-ridden security nightmares.

Example of a basic separated setup:

DOCSIS 3.0 cablemodem that is a dumb layer 2 bridge: [https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Download-Certified- Spectrum-T...](https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-Download-Certified-Spectrum- TC-7610/dp/B010Q29YF8/ref=dp_ob_title_ce)

router good for up to a 150-200 Mbps class cablemodem connection, $50: [https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-ER-X- Router/dp/B014...](https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Networks-ER-X- Router/dp/B0144R449W)

if you want to mess around with stuff from the CLI, a ubiquiti edgerouter is actually a very tiny debian system. their edgerouter OS is a fork of vyatta and is developed by a team of people they hired away from vyatta when brocade acquired them.

802.11ac 2x2 MIMO dual band WAP: [https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Unifi-Ap-AC- Lite-UAPACLITEUS...](https://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti-Unifi-Ap-AC-Lite- UAPACLITEUS/dp/B015PR20GY)

or go for the more expensive 3x3 MIMO and 802.11ac wave2 WAPs if you really feel the need for it.

set up the unifi controller in a virtualbox VM that runs on your laptop and use it to do the initial setup/provisioning. bring up the VM whenever you need to make changes.

<comment><USER9> What's the benefit of separating router and WAP vs. running OpenWRT on a wireless router?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really like Mikrotik hardware ([https://mikrotik.com/products](https://mikrotik.com/products)) for home routers and wireless access points. Their products are not very expensive, the hardware is great, and the OS is highly configurable.

<comment><USER11> How is Mikrotik's software? I find UBNT's to be excellent for someone who doesn't want to do _everything_ via CLI.

<comment><USER12> Some things are better via the gui (web or a windows exe that's wineable), but I prefer ssh access.

I like the fact everything is included, ospf, bgp, pim, mpls/vpls, you name it it's there (aside from decent user management). I used to run bgp at home but moved to ospf recently

<comment><USER10> Yeah it's pretty impressive to have all of those protocols included in such "low cost" routers (less than a hundred dollars).

Why do you need bgp/ospf for your home network? Are you just experimenting?

I used to manage the network of my school campus, we connected about 1000 persons, and ospf was working great! We didn't use mikrotik though, we used extremenetworks routers

<comment><USER12> Multiple subnets to keep the wireless domain, wired domain, protected domains and dmz apart. I used to run the backbone over wireless when I rented (couldn't run cat5 through the walls), so didn't vlan everything back to a single router.

OSPF makes it far easier to manage those, but I did used to run BGP as it made more sense to me when I learned about routing protocols and was more forgiving of wireless issues (which could have been me using the wrong OSPF mode to be honest)

In addition to the normal fixed infrastructure, I have a cluster of 5 cheap mikrotiks that I use for a little experimentation with things like failover time, but that's mainly for work purposes.

<comment><USER13> Mikrotik does in fact support VLAN bridging over WiFi (only between Mikrotik devices), unless you're running in CAPsMAN mode.

When I switched to CAPsMAN, I ended up using VPLS for my wireless backbone, thus giving me proper layer 2 isolation, without fragmentation (MPLS not being limited by the L3 MTU).

<comment><USER12> One goal was to keep layer 2 multicast network off wireless where possible. Mikrotik's don't do IGMP snooping (until very recently). The wireless backbone had to support multi-networked traffic of course, but local traffic (between a couple of devices in one room) could be kept off the link

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looking at the Unifi controller setup, I'm a bit perplexed as to why they would choose to use MongoDB, although I'll admit I lack experience with everything related to networking. I'd think that using SQLite would allow for a simpler setup while providing better performance. Am I missing or misunderstanding something?

Does anyone have suggestions for beginner friendly guides to home networking? My home setup is pretty hacky, and I'd love to setup something more secure as well as improving my understanding. Right now I have an ASUS RT-AC66U router with asuswrt-merlin, and it runs an OpenVPN server, so I can remotely access my home network.

How do people setup their home network domain name and device hostnames? I have the router set to update a public DDNS entry each time it connects to the internet, and a LAN DHCP Server with manually assigned IP and hostname for each known MAC address. This works alright for home devices, but it gets awkward for mobile devices and laptops. How do you restrict sharing functionality to VPN connections? Should your hostname remain the same regardless of what network you're connected to, or should it vary?

Do you use IPv6? My ISP supports IPv6, and I had enabled it on my router for a few months, but eventually ended up turning it off since I felt uncertain that everything was configured securely. Am I just being paranoid?

Is it ever worth setting up a RADIUS Server for WPA2-Enterprise wireless security? I kinda like the idea of having a centralized location for handling authN/authZ, but the relationship between the different technologies (Kerberos, LDAP, ActiveDirectory, etc) is pretty confusing, and nobody seems to do a good job at explaining how it all ties together. Right now I just generate an SSH key per device, and I import it to each device which should allow connections. But that increases the friction of deploying home services, which gets a bit demotivating.

What monitoring tools do people setup for their home network? Do you handle updates manually or do you have that process automated? Every time I consider setting up a network monitoring tool, I kinda end up going down the rabbit hole and getting overwhelmed by the huge number of options. Many of these tools kinda assume that the user is already familiarized with best practices and that they know exactly what they want, which couldn't be further from the truth in my case.

<comment><USER15> Just letting you know that the reason you are probably not receiving any responses is because nearly every question you ask is either easily Google- able, or you are asking for opinions versus facts.

Want to know if IPv6 is secure? Do research to find out. Then you will know for sure.

<comment><USER16> This comment gives very little to the discussion. The original poster had plenty of valid questions that are very hard to find the answers to as its mainly enterprise/business systems.

I would say you will have a hard time figuring anything out for yourself when your infrastructure uses business-class solutions and is cross vendor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pulling your SSH keys from Github to your authorized_keys file is a terrible idea, even with 2FA enabled on the GitHub side. You're trusting Github to manage access to your home network and all of its SSH-able machines!

<comment><USER17> True, but it would be pretty nifty if there were a thing that would download an authorized_keys file, check the PGP signature against a key I had specified, and copy the file to the SSH dir if the signature was okay.

<comment><USER18> Uh, why couldn't you just sign your authorized_keys file and post it somewhere public? Then you just literally download, verify signature, and 'import' it (overwrite or append to existing file).

<comment><USER17> Yes, that's exactly what I said "would be nifty" above. I meant a client-side bash script or similar.

<comment><USER18> Here's a start: [https://bpaste.net/show/049673c13cbf](https://bpaste.net/show/049673c13cbf)

You can clear sign an authorized_keys file with "gpg --clearsign <authorized_keys>", then just pass the resulting *.asc file to this script. It will verify the signature and 'import' it by copying it to ~/.ssh.

<comment><USER17> Looks good, thanks! Good way to update all my machines' SSH keys.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ignorant dev here: why would I want to buy custom hardware when whatever off- the-shelf 2013ish netgear/linksys router I have can do port forwarding and max out my connection?

<comment><USER20> My Netgear WND4000 was updated to a build that makes it trivial to permanently lock yourself out of your router. In fact, it will nearly guaranteedly happen if you install their most recent firwmare update from a wireless client.

My Mikrotik and Netgear both regularly shut down when I max out my Internet connection. I've had days where I've had to manually restart them numerous times trying to push large docker images to AWS.

They both have spotty upnp implementations, which I need to work because there are game consoles in this apartment and upnp is necessary to get them online reliably. The Mikrotik's AP is pretty terrible. Doesn't even span a small 1BR in Seattle.

Netgear's models are notorious for being vulnerable to stupid exploits even after numerous hacky patchy series.

The most handwavey one: I find consumer routers just sorta need to be replaced every few years.

I spent less doing the whole Unifi thing recently than I've spent on routers and such in the last 6 years. I don't think I'll be needing to replace this gear any time soon, and Unifi isn't really custom hardware at all. They non- rack mount stuff is relatively affordable if you're willing to make a moderate investment.

<comment><USER13> > The Mikrotik's AP is pretty terrible. Doesn't even span a small 1BR in > Seattle.

Which AP do you have? They sell many, which vary greatly in transmit power. Some (like the RB951G-2HnD) support up to the legal maximum of 30 dBm, but most (like the cAP lite) run at 20 dBm. The notorious RB951-2n (my first) ran at only 15 dBm, which _is_ underpowered.

The 20 dBm models are designed to be used in a multiple-AP scenario, e.g. one AP per room. They definitely _won 't_ span multiple rooms, by design. (This is for several reasons, both to properly segregate client devices onto separate APs, and to ensure TX power parity between the AP and devices, which often operate in the 17 dBm range.)

I've run exclusively MT for years and never had one lock up under load. What model do you have and what sort of bandwidth are you talking about? I regularly run 200+ Mbps transfers to/from my NAS (across a wAP ac) and never have trouble. (I did once own a hAP ac that would – after an electrical event that destroyed some other equipment of mine – reboot occasionally.)

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure which one I have and I'm not at home sadly. When I was having problems most was at my first apartment where I had symmetric gigabit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Unifi gear is great until you need something that the UI can't do and figure out you've got to load a custom JSON config file from the controller. Their support is also atrociously bad.

The Unifi product is getting better, but I sometimes wish I had gone with their EdgeRouter line instead of Unifi for routing and switching.

I would say it's certainly good enough for home, but I'd hesitate to use it in a lab environment where configs might get a little more unique.

<comment><USER22> Doing stuff from terminal is easy. Finding anything on their forum is easy. And they answer all the questions. I got all things UNIFI, same as the guy that made the post, and I am not network engineer. Setting up the networking was easy and fun.

<comment><USER21> With the Unifi line it doesn't matter how easy the terminal is since the config gets overwritten by the controller on each re-provision. So not only do you get to figure out what config works via terminal, you also get to insert it into the config via JSON and find the right way to provision it.

It's certainly not rocket science, but I don't know too many junior sysadmins who could do it without hours of research and pain. Whereas making a change on an EdgeRouter is more legacy - find, apply, save. Done.

<comment><USER22> If I can do it easily with 20mins of research and I am just a software engineer without networking background than any sysadmin should be able to do it to. Btw I have unifi ap, switch and router, also rocking backup 4g link on wan2 and some NAS storage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The best thing about the home lab is that I can buy whatever I want and I don't have to sit there arguing with a sysadmin at work about whether this is going to be a problem on the network.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have:

o Zotac dual nic with pfsense o netgear 24 port switch with vlans (no PoE, too expensive) o i5 NUC o quadcore atom ZFS storage box o 2x unifi AC APs o Many raspberry pis for environmental sensors/control and the like

There are a number of VLANs some for public things like cheapy chinese CCTV (don't want that seeing the internal network) media and the spouse(s)

Everything was controlled with puppet, now migrated to ansible. I was tempted to replace most of it with an old HP z600, but that would blow the power budget (all the compute when on consumes < 45watts) a z600 with dual CPU pulls about 100-130.

There is an hosted Atom box that provide website, VPN and backup coordination.

</comment><comment><USER25> Both Ubiquiti and Mikrotik gear are great for home use, especially for us techies, and the Ubiquiti stuff especially can often be hacked on a bit. Just remember to protect your management interfaces and keep everything up-to-date.

</comment><comment><USER26> I often ask people I interview what their home network looks like and what their visions are. This often open doors to both inner motivation and thoughts you don't find elsewhere in an ordinary tech interview.

<comment><USER27> Asking about home labs/home networking runs the risk of being a very discriminatory question if you take the negative as a mark against the question. I highly recommend not asking about it.

Particularly, it is discriminatory in that it penalizes people based on their home situation, both from a time and financial perspective. People with children, especially single parents, are often not in positions to actively maintain a home lab or complex home network, due to time constraints.

Others just might not have the inclination, and it doesn't say anything at all about their ability to perform the job.

Even if you're not going to take the lack of a home lab as a negative, it can throw a candidate off - candidates are very conditioned to feel that a hard no to an interview questions is going to be taken as a mark against them, and this is going to effect their ability to answer other questions as effectively.

A much better question is to ask how someone approaches learning new technologies or keeping up with the changes in technology in general. For some people that will be work related, for some it will be home labs, and is an important skill regardless of how much time you have available. People with home labs will almost universally talk about it, and you can get the same discussion with them, without risking discriminating against people that have to keep their skills sharp through other methods. It's also more likely to be directly relevant to the skills related to the job, rather than random projects that might be tech related but not relevant to the position being interviewed for.

<comment><USER28> This statement is so generic, you could replace "home labs/home networking" with literally anything.

<comment><USER27> Not literally anything - but things outside of work. In which case, yes, it still all applies.

You should focus on the things required for the job. Not what people do in their free time.

<comment><USER29> The reality is that spending your free time on job-related stuff is likely correlated with improved job-related skills, though. It's not a correlation of 1 obviously, but it's probably not 0 either, so it is relevant.

<comment><USER27> Except that studies show reduced capacity to work after a certain number of hours. Does doing the equivalent activity to "work" at home count against those hours? I don't know the answer there.

We do know that diversity increases the effectiveness and problem solving ability of a team - at worst, getting a bunch of people that have home labs is actively detrimental to this, and at best does nothing to improve it.

There's limited time available in interviews, and you're probably better suited asking relevant questions.

(And from a personal perspective, asking about home lab details would benefit me. I've got ten gig fiber throughout the house and close to a terabyte of RAM consumed by my VMs... But none of that is realistically making me a better employee)

<comment><USER29> Interesting, I'm not sure if it counts against one's ability to work, but it seems like it might, since it's a similar activity. And you're right that other activities can also yield helpful skills.

I agree that competency testing, especially project based, is better. The only reason I'd ask about their off time is to get a sense of what they like and better getting to know what kinds of projects they might gravitate to, given the choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> > I always have some random side project I am working on, whether it is making > the world's most over engineered desktop OS all running in containers

Identified the author immediately by the opening sentence. The "overengineered" CoreOS deskop was great, I wish it became an actual project.

</comment><comment><USER31> im actually very puzzled why more people dont use Mikrotik/RouterOS switches ? they seem super powerful at a fraction of the cost of "enterprise switches". It almost feels that Cisco is aspirational..

<comment><USER7> Over the summer I upgraded to gigabit symmetric fibre and wanted something a bit more 'enterprise' at home that wouldn't have any issues keeping up (compared to consumer wifi router running OpenWRT I'd used before). I bought a Mikrotik RB750Gr3 "hEX" and Unifi UAP-AC-Lite - it was around €180, so the same as buying a good consumer router.

I admit I haven't had any performance issues with the router (although I'm not running any complicated routing rules), and out of the box it was setup to run as a NAT router, so it was just plug and play. However once I started digging into it I started reaching the limitations. As others have said the documentation is pretty bad, and the only way to tell if something is supported by your hardware is usually to try it and see what happens (or read a 40 page thread in the forums). Here are a few things I had issues with:

\- Using a USB LTE dongle as a backup WAN connection. At first the device wasn't recognised, I then connected it through a powered USB hub and it worked, but then after rebooting it wasn't recognised again, but if I physically reconnected it then it worked - but for a 'backup' that kind of sucked (this was later fixed in a software update).

\- VLANs. I wanted some ports to be tagged on a certain vlan, no matter what the device was sending (I want to have a 'media' VLAN), after I while I found out the hardware doesn't support that though, so I gave up on that idea. I setup the AP to have a guest network running on a separate vlan, and wanted that to have no access to my network, after trying for a few hours (and usually locking myself and having to factory reset the router each time) I gave up. This was only a stop-gap anyway, as I'd planned to get a managed PoE switch.

\- VPNs. I wanted to setup an outgoing OpenVPN client, and route some traffic through it based on IP (Netflix). I also wanted to setup an incoming OpenVPN server, so I could access my network from the outside. RouterOS has built in support for OpenVPN, but the features are somewhat limited, for example as a client it doesn't support certificate authentication (but as a server it does).

The Unifi was a breeze in comparison, like the Apple of networking gear, but in the same way the options are somewhat limited (and having to install an application to configure networking gear feels weird). To be honest I liked OpenWRT better than both of these... the documentation, ease of use, and being a developer I feel right at home editing configuration files. I assume PFSense would be a good choice too.

<comment><USER13> > I setup the AP to have a guest network running on a separate vlan, and > wanted that to have no access to my network, after trying for a few hours > (and usually locking myself and having to factory reset the router each > time) I gave up.

It probably took me _weeks_ to get a working guest network setup on my MT. That is one thing I wish they'd automate. I don't regret it, as I'm partly into MT so I can learn more about networking, but it makes it hard to recommend to others who want a basic home router.

(CAPsMAN helps a little, in that you can direct it to isolate all clients on a given SSID from each other, even across APs, but that still leaves you with configuring routing. It also has a packet fragmentation problem in that mode…)

I had my own VLAN fun when I tried to configure VLANs through the switch menu. Turns out that doing so overrides port master/slave configuration with no warning. I ended up bridging my WAN and LAN ports for a few days… (Now MT is thankfully starting to move away from direct configuration of the switch chip and instead using it to transparently accelerate bridges.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I love playing with this sort of stuff, but my home network works really well with one AP and really cheap gear. If I had a few more people using it maybe then I could justify that sort of investment.

</comment><comment><USER33> TIL that you can run an SSH agent using an OpenPGP smartcard on a non-rooted Chromebook now.

EDIT: Tried following the linked instructions but nassh just hung while trying to connect, with no prompt from Smart Card Connector :( Oh well, at least it's possible in principle.

[https://chromium.googlesource.com/apps/libapps/+/master/nass...](https://chromium.googlesource.com/apps/libapps/+/master/nassh/doc/hardware- keys.md)

</comment><comment><USER34> For all the people asking "why?" It's the same reason people pour money into home theater, cars, or any other hobby. People do this because they enjoy it.

<comment><USER35> I like to have the "perfect" setup. Of course, that definition is relative and ever-changing. In reality, I end up spending an insane amount of time adjusting, switching to different software, or trying to get the last 1% of a feature working. It's not always enjoyable :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Worth it for the link to Carolyn's my little pony k8s cluster, mastered by Twilight Sparkle. Obvs.

[http://carolynvanslyck.com/blog/2017/10/my-little- cluster/](http://carolynvanslyck.com/blog/2017/10/my-little-cluster/)

<comment><USER37> It's weird the things that people do when discovering personal computing. No sense in transcoding one's DVDs (and even buying more machines to do it faster?!) when they can be torrented quicker and with higher quality even! But we've all got to start somewhere, I suppose.

The simple approach is to make a list of your physical media collection, stow it away for backup purposes, and download the collection over time. Then eventually you can even move towards torrenting the rest of your media and drop that netflix subscription that's supporting the destruction of net neutrality!

<comment><USER38> "we've all got to start somewhere" is pretty condescending.

If the author is in the united states, torrenting the videos would violate copyright (when you torrent (if you don't have uploading disabled somehow), you redistribute without authorization). Transcoding DVDs you've already bought is not distribution.

<comment><USER39> In the United States, ripping the DVD's to a drive violates the DMCA. You are illegal either way, just by transcoding you are violating a grossly unjust law instead of a disproportionate but justifiable one. And no one will catch you for ripping discs, except possibly if you brag about it on the internet.

<comment><USER38> .... IANAL but yeah I think you're right. walp

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I currently have an Apple AirPort Time Capsule (latest 2 TB version with AC support), but I've been looking at Google Wifi. Honest question, why spend all the extra cash for Unifi gear? Google Wifi is mesh, and should all just work.

<comment><USER41> I had a few simple reasons:

1) PoE wired backhaul.

2) _Way_ more management and configuration control.

3) Separability of routing, switching, and wireless.

4) Simple L2TP VPN endpoint support.

I'm very happy with my choice, and I just installed AP's only at my folks' place over Thanksgiving. Simple remote management may be Overkill, but I'm willing to wager that the lifecycle in this gear will be much better than the once-every-18-months dance that they've been doing with extenders, routers, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wanted to find out more about the author, because the post looked interesting. Should not have started with Twitter. Why do people feel the need to wear their political agenda on their sleeve so much in this industry.

 _" I love writing opinionated blog posts that make dudes go all ape shit and territorial if I didn't do it the same way as them. Think for yourselves :) there can be more than one way ya doofuses it's all about what your personal tradeoffs are."_

Is this the kind of response you want to have to people sharing their opinions on a public forum; having a productive discussion that you started.

</comment><comment><USER43> I've been experimenting with pfSense running via KVM on my Linux workstation. Was considering buying a Ubiquiti ER-4, but I don't think I can go back.

I'm considering buying a CompuLab fitlet 2 to give pfSense a permanent home but may end up leaving it on my workstation. The increase in power consumption over leaving my workstation on 24/7 is probably neglible. But the fitlet2 seems simpler.

</comment><comment><USER44> Had great experience with sub-$50 TP-Links + LEDE. I can hardly justify $149 and can't imagine buying one for $549.

</comment><comment><USER45> The home lab is dead. With EC2 spot instances you can get machines for far cheaper than it costs to power them at home, unless you live in a place with super cheap power like less than $0.08/Kwh.

</comment><comment><USER46> I don't think I'd spend the money for UAC-AC-SHD ($600?) vs. UAC-AC-PRO ($100). Maybe UAC-AC-HD ($250) if I had a lot of 4-stream devices, but enh.

</comment><comment><USER47> I have an irrational fetish for rack-mount gear in my home lab. Are there any good rack-mount NUCs, or similar?

<comment><USER48> Some older workstations (e.g. Dell T7500) are rack mountable. If you use Windows 10 they can suspend and wake up on LAN to save you power and they should cost you less than the NUC on eBay. It's what I use - Hyper-V on domain joined W10 Pro which can be remote managed so no monitor necessary - it's suspended most of the time - WOL and my VMs are ready to go!

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> So how much does it cost to set up UniFi for the home and what are the benefits?

<comment><USER50> I'm a huge fan of using UniFi products in the home. I run a UniFi Switch 8 and UniFi UAP-AC-Pro, covering around 2300sqft. The setup cost around $250.

<comment><USER18> How quickly do they patch vulnerabilities, and what guarrantees do they provide to continue doing so for the life of the product? As "sexy" as these products look, they look to me like yet another walled garden.

<comment><USER51> Ubiquiti had patches for the KRACK vulnerability before public disclosure.

[https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en- us/articles/115013737328-Ubiquit...](https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en- us/articles/115013737328-Ubiquiti-Devices-KRACK-Vulnerability)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> You're interested in advanced home networking, a dual nic nuc running pfsense is going to give you a ton more options while at the same time teaching you real networking.

<comment><USER53> Are there dual NIC Intel NUCs now? Last time I looked I couldn't find one.

<comment><USER54> You can hook up an extra nic on the miniPCI-e slot. But that is a bit hacky.

You can also use one NIC and VLANs.

<comment><USER55> Are there any disadvantages to using a single NIC with VLANs rather than two NICs for a router?

<comment><USER56> It's also easier for misconfigurations to lead to security issues since your switch resetting to default means your network is now connected directly to the internet. I had this happen after the power went out last time, luckily I'm on a PPPoE connection so it wasn't _really_ connected to the net. Replaced my NUC + managed switch setup after that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bubblesort isn't useless! (binpacking) - <AUTHOR> http://mybiasedcoin.blogspot.com/2008/05/bubblesearch-semi-success-story.html

<comment><USER2> Bubble sort is also useful when there is temporal coherence or when exact sorting is not necessary. For example, in graphics programming you typically need to sort transparent objects back-to-front. If things are out of order, there may be anywhere from no to huge artifacts. If things are mostly sorted and your objects are reasonably small, you can expect closer to no artifacts. You could run a few passes of bubble sort each frame, save the effort of doing a full sort, and then even if you get major artifacts they won't last more than a 1/30th of a second or so.</comment>


Apple Releases Second iOS 11 Public Beta to Beta Testing Group - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2017/07/12/apple-releases-ios-11-public-beta-2/ <comment><USER2> I've been an Apple dev for a little while and, every time they release a new version of these betas, I get more and more impressed by what the workflow must be for releases at Apple. Nearly all my concerns about the first beta have been resolved and it's noticeably faster on all 3 of my dev devices including my iPhone 7 (which is my daily phone). The iOS 10 betas were good, but iOS 11 is really impressive and the refinement I'm seeing of the core OS is really great.</comment>


Ask HN: Where I can pay someone to pair with me as I configure spacemacs? - <AUTHOR> I am a disloyal neovim user who is learning and configuring spacemacs, primarily for org-mode. I'd like to pair with someone more experienced.
I own a copy of SICP and worked through a solid amount of it in scheme when I was a student 10 years ago. I am no longer a student. I would like to trade money for the time of someone who already has expertise in quickly debugging elisp. My goal: a more time-efficient way solve problems like:
- How can I paste (yank?) an image from the OSX main clipboard "into" an org-mode file so the image is displayed?
- How can I set up a ruby on rails dev environment most effectively within emacs?
- How can I use emacs to present a filtered view slack messages?
I realise that there are various blog posts with various solutions to these. Those require debugging skill that takes time to gain. I would like to pay someone to help me both learn and implement. I am bad at shopping. What are some names I can google or email addresses I can reach out to in order to trade time for screen-share pairing so I can more time-efficiently configure spacemacs? <comment><USER2> I hear you, I went through the same thing when I was learning various AWS services. I knew servers but "the cloud" was just so foreign to me so I hired someone to basically shadow me on teamviewer while on a phone call at a consulting rate a few hours per week.

The good news is you are probably in the right place, there are enough hardcore emacs users in here that you will probably get a DM or a solild lead on where to go.

</comment><comment><USER3> Your approach strikes me as a singularly inefficient and needlessly spendthrift.</comment>


Surviving the Hits (2008) - <AUTHOR> https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com//2008/06/18/surviving-the-hits/ <comment><USER2> Tomte keeps pushing this article, but nobody cares (except mods?)

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=surviving+the+hits](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=surviving+the+hits)

<comment><USER3> I've been there. Some article or art really lands with me, falls completely flat with friends or when I post it.

I've also experienced the opposite--a focus of this very article actually-- creating something that catches on much more than I expected.

It's surreal being able to create something that people love and not being able to exactly know why that one bubbled up in particular.

Feeling a profound connection to some work and not having others see what you see is the brother of that confusion.

If you want a surprisingly deep meditation on popularity in art, Chris Rock's Top Five has some interesting dialogues on it. And Chuck Klosterman's "But What if We're Wrong?" is a good book basically about how unfathomable popularity is.</comment></comment>


FuckI'mDoingIt,PostingSomethingIWrote:A Convergence of Culture and Communication - <AUTHOR> I can't post the whole thing here due to character limit.
...A new bbs..
...something almost exactly like a .torrent file...
...a peer-to-peer protocol, a means to collectively yet independently, in great synchronicity, network our information...
...information within this system is either a location or syntax or content...
...all entries start with the location of the entry itself...
...location is generated by combining all relevant IDs and the sequence number...
...this allows for a predicable means to sequence entries...
...syntax contains content, content can contain syntax...
...design an expansive syntax for causes and effects, must include syntax for tables, text, vectors, and functions...
...syntax must be substantial enough a platform to describe theories, readable by humans and computers...
...convert descriptions of theories and models into this syntax...
...content: everything else. Content type declared in the containing syntax, the rules of the content's interpretation either declared from within the container or referenced from elsewhere. Content to frequently be code, raw information, executables...
...content can reference and use the syntax of any other entry...
...within content, referenced syntax can contain content referencing syntax from another entry...
...content can hold computation within objects...
...an easy means to conduct p2p computation...
...objects can have any combination of inputs and outputs, objects can be of any size...
...computation within objects is propelled by a computation scheme, computed by the individual computers hosting the content...
...thus [de|a]scends the nesting nature of this structure...
This is part of the thing! I guess I'm just testing the water with this. Also, when I originally wrote this, the scope encompassed political activity which I am also passionate about.
I'm trying to get a team together to work on this with me, basically. Volunteers only :). <comment><AUTHOR> The Problem [I'm trying to solve]

Current research dissemination platforms repeat these problems with every publication:

The research is presented in a publication layout (ever try converting a research paper PDF into an ePub or simply linear text?)

Data are not stored in a data array (tables are static, values and functions used are not clear or represented in a searchable format)

Graphs and other aids are stored as images rather than vector functions

Functions per axis or table range are not reduced to a standardized, searchable, syntax

Linkage of ideas, categories, subjects, functions, and what-have-yous across research is cumbersome

Descriptions within the research are not clearly separated as nested descriptions. That is: the boundaries between descriptions are not clear. Or, when fuzziness is inherent in the subject, then the degree of fuzziness is unclear.

A means to coherently discuss the research

The process of peer review is nearly invisible; the discourse during the process of peer review is mostly unavailable; "reviewers" are basically anonymous and there is no simple way to reference their contributions to other peer reviews

There is no seamless way to reconcile information within research to other research: it can be needlessly difficult to conduct redundancy checks between studies. This process is a component of the present peer review process, but current research is not set up for continuous peer review. The processes is invisible and gives no room for research to just evolve and branch out on its own.

Matching data between hosts: Maybe this is silly but there is no good process to determine if my physical copy of a journal has no errors.

These issues by their necessity to the current platform create resistance to the expansion of our scientific knowledgebase. The dissemination of knowledge must be completely open and standardized. The issues here expressed inform the remedy's structure, syntax, means of access, a means for discourse, and a means to represent people.

Starting now, it is important that this principle be upheld: An entity can never obtain more than one ID.

</comment><comment><USER2> It would be nice to have this presented visually. It is a bit hard to grasp. Not being negative. Just asking for a better explanation of what seems like a really interesting system. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks... yeah, I'm trying to figure out the best way to present it on here. It might all actually be a bit hard to describe without them. For instance, the special binary I had to develop to overcome some technical issues.

[http://i.imgur.com/p4pr8b9.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/p4pr8b9.jpg)

<comment><USER2> That's interesting. Mind explaining it using the picture?

<comment><AUTHOR> When I was envisioning this, I was imaging it being an expansive collective of binary, as though the connected computers create a "sheet" of information.

There was an issue with binary not creating a repetitive pattern when plotted. Sorry, it's one of those things where I remember going in with the problem and coming out with the solution and revisiting my process is on my to-do list. But basically, to solve the problem the digits from the decimal point needed to be taken into account. Makes this some kind of mixed radix system.

Ultimately, a part of this whole creation requires a non-resistant symmetry (meaning that redundancy checks naturally occur) between computers. I figured this out by basically giving all binary a numerical value. The dots to the right of the axis of that picture would be inverted numbers and colors. This is the automatic checksum between computers, entries should add to zero.

<comment><USER2> So a generic binary format that multiple machines can write / read as if it was a simple file? Or am I wrong?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like you get it! Honestly, what I really want to see is long strings of binary projected as 2d or 3d abstractions from the raw binary, by a variety of means. I really wanted to account for leading up to this, these were also considerations for the binary format. The idea is to test a variety of ways that 1d binary can be replotted in 2d or 3d in a virtual space, then examine the 2d or 3d space to see what sort of weird computations it does! It might be possible to isolate groups of binary that interact and do specific things. The idea is to emulate a computational space that does not decay! I'm inspired by the idea that computers don't have to work by exactly the same principles we have always used.

Basically, I want to see every computer become a complex transistor.

I'm a fan of the book Permutation City :).

<comment><USER2> I can't promise anything but let's chat over email. It would be nice to simply bounce ideas off each other. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do whatever makes you happy is a lie - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/what-i-learned-building/eff9c8ca5285

<comment><USER3> Arnold Schwarzeneggar said it pretty damn well on Reddit:

"We can't always do what we are passionate about, but everything we do can move us closer to our passion. I was never passionate about construction. But I laid bricks and worked so I could support my passion when I was starting out in bodybuilding.

The most important thing is, you need to find your passion. And once you do, put everything into it. Everything."

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/19sjfo/this_inspire...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Fitness/comments/19sjfo/this_inspired_me_and_i_bet_it_will_inspire_you/c8qzryg?context=1)

<comment><USER4> "I was never passionate about construction."

Its interesting that HR would never permit him to be hired now a days.

<comment><USER5> What? As a brickie's labourer? I think strength, and willingness to work hard are quite sufficient qualifications for that job.

<comment><USER4> We're on hacker news... I think the analogy with pretty much any entry level (or non-entry level) tech job is pretty obvious.

<comment><USER6> Except that your comment is completely nonsensical... You can't apply one industries hiring metrics to anothers as if they translate in some way(when they clearly don't).

Not being passionate about laying bricks doesn't mean you won't be hired for menial labor, not being passionate about a position in this industry might very well stop your from being hired for a programming job...

<comment><USER7> but why must you be passionate about software development? What if you aren't really passionate but you are still a good programmer? What's so bad about that?

I'm curious because I've never really been "passionate" about any job. In fact I've dislike or downright hated every job I've ever had. I still think I perform well because I have to. Jobs are a means to an end.

<comment><USER6> Yep, I agree, I wasn't trying to say that the process of determining whether someone is "passionate" is the correct way of doing things.... For an intelligent person the system is easy to identify and cheat anyway...

I was just pointing out that a bricklayer won't be vetted for "passion" whereas a programmer very well could be.... Whether a programmer should be(especially given that "passion" is basically an impossible to measure metric) is an entirely different discussion.

My apologies for presenting my point in such a confusing manner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've been traveling around the world working 20-40 hours a week on my side projects (startups) for extremely little money. I actually haven't spent a dime in the last 1.5 months.

How do I do it? I spend an additional 10-15 hours working wherever I'm living in exchange for a room and all of my food. It's called WWOOFing, you've probably heard of it. The nice thing is, I get to focus on whatever it is I want without worrying about bills. Sure, it's not for everyone, but I couldn't be happier with how I get to spend my time.

I'm in the middle of brewing up a blog post about this, so feel free to get in touch if you're interested in more about this.

PS: Here is where I currently am (Norway): [http://www.flickr.com/photos/reustle/9465059825/lightbox/](http://www.flickr.com/photos/reustle/9465059825/lightbox/)

<comment><USER9> WWOOFing sounds like a lot of fun! Wish I had done that instead of go to graduate school and accrue debt. Now I'm stuck paying that off, and when that's done my wife and I want to start a family. Maybe our children can WWOOF if that's still a thing when they're of age...

<comment><USER4> "Maybe our children can WWOOF if that's still a thing when they're of age"

WWOOF is a marketing term / organization for what amounts to being an intern on an organic / permaculture farm.

I've done some fun genealogy and per census records going back centuries young people have done this kind of thing, so as long as organic / permaculture farms still exist, our kids will be able to intern if mutually acceptable.

Beyond peasant labor there's an implied educational aspect where most WWOOFers want to run their own farm some day and are touring around learning how. If you're not learning anything new anymore, its time to move to the next farm. Unless you got a masters in Ag Sci its probably not a fair comparison.

In the ancient apprenticeship structure, its basically being a journeyman in the field of organic farming.

I've read a lot about it from having a goal of redesigning my backyard according to permaculture guidelines, although not having the time/weather/money combination optimized to really accomplish anything. One of my neighbors has an excellent permaculture designed backyard, which is both appealing to the eye and interesting to think about.

<comment><USER8> I would just like to note that not all WWOOFing spots are organic farms. Where I'm currently living, we have a sawmill, some fields that get cut and bailed by someone else, and some sheep that are starting to find their way back from the mountains for the winter.

<comment><USER4> Ah thats interesting, I thought they were all O.farms or similar. The original argument still stands that even if WWOOF went PPOOF and disappeared, they'd still be interns at the sawmill... although it would probably be harder / less efficient to match up the interns with the opportunities.

There's probably a startup idea involving WWOOF as a template for other fields of endeavor. Probably not hyperregulated field like becoming a surgeon, but maybe something a little less regulated like a tree-surgeon or something in tech. A formalized online group to help "guide" the internship process in tech or maybe media?

<comment><USER8> [http://helpx.net](http://helpx.net) fills that gap

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10>
        Telling investors that the startup makes no revenue is a joke to them

Maybe this is just poor word choice on the part of the author, but a startup with no revenue _is_ a joke unless you haven't launched yet. If you have, you still haven't taken in any money, you might want to think about whether the product or service you're offering is worth someone paying for.

On the other hand, if the author meant "profit" instead of "revenue", then this sentence makes far more sense, there are plenty of promising startups and companies whose expenditures currently exceed their revenues, and shouldn't be outright dismissed by potential investors.

<comment><USER11> "We have a million and a half users in 3 months" is a pretty good substitute for "We're making a million dollars in revenue a year"

<comment> qu4z-2 By that heuristic "free-beer.com" is a great startup! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Author's problem seems to be "what I thought would make me happy doesn't"—so the issue isn't that "do whatever makes you happy" is a lie, it's that it's a learning process, not something who h involves one choice and never thinking again.

<comment><USER13> He also underestimated another crucial fact: What he _thought_ would make him happy didn't turn out to make him enough money to be happy. So in the end, it didn't make him happy for _two_ reasons.

Really doesn't warrant the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the advice is sound, but it's phrased in a way that can be easily misinterpreted (as the author discovered). Better would be:

"Arrange things so that you can do whatever makes you happy".

As an example, Rock Climbing, Surfing, and Travelling (to do those other things) make me happy. So I program computers.

Notice that Programming Computers doesn't necessarily make me happy directly (though lucky for me I do find it plenty of fun). It does, however, allow one to quickly sock away a bunch of money by working a contract, and has lots of easy and socially acceptable ways to quit (contract ends/startup burns a hole in the ground). The end result is that I get to spend a lot of time Travelling, Climbing, and Surfing.

Now, had I misinterpreted "do whatever makes you happy" as "find a job doing whatever makes you happy", I'd be guiding people up easy routes and hosting children's birthday parties at the crag for $60/day. That would not, in actual fact, make me happy. Even though technically I'd be climbing rocks all day every day.

So yeah, turns out it is actually quite simple. Better still, by virtue of being here to read this story, most of us here are in a really good position to do exactly the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER15> It sounds like the author has mistaken the original advice of "Do what you love" as "Do what you think you love". How can this person know he "loves" being an entrepreneur when he never was one?

I guess he thought that being an entrepreneur meant more "If you build it, they will come", which is wrong. The reality of it is that creating a startup takes a lot of different skill sets, including knowing how to build a business and managing cash flow, etc. And just because you love the idea of being something doesn't mean you are actually good at doing it.

</comment><comment><USER16> There's a sad reality, which is most fun things don't pay the bills for the median performer. Otherwise more people would be doing it, driving the wages down. The exceptional guitar player makes a killing doing what they love. Not the person at the 95th percentile, let alone the 50th.

<comment><USER17> So the advice reduces to "do the most fun thing you can do that pays the bills for the median performer". Sounds about right. Stronger versions, like "follow your passion no matter what" coming from Schwarzenegger, are wrong because of survivor bias.

I suspect that in many competitive fields persistence actually hurts people in aggregate, and everyone would benefit if everyone agreed to be less persistent. For example, in a sports competition with a large prize for #1, making people more persistent won't grow the size of the prize. After a certain point, the sum of resources spent by all participants will be greater than the prize, but by the deadly logic of game theory, everyone will just keep spending more and more. The same thing seems to be happening in music/art/writing/acting (because popularity is a zero-sum contest), and parts of the startup scene (for the same reason).

<comment><USER16> Or "do the most thing you can do that pays the bills based on a _realistic_ assessment of your competence."

<comment><USER17> Unfortunately there are many biases that stop people from realistically assessing themselves.

One good trick is using the "outside view", deliberately tricking your brain into ignoring all the special details of your situation and looking at the typical case instead. For example, "how long do you think your classmates will take to finish their theses?" vs "how long do you think it'll take you to finish your thesis?" Studies show that asking the first question yields a much more accurate answer to the second question than asking the second question directly :-)

<comment><USER16> This works when asking someone else, but how about asking oneself?

I try to come up with some objective metric. "I think I'm fast, how does my 50 yard dash compare?" "I think I'm smart, how were my grades? And standardized test scores?" Even still, the smartest amongst us have the best ability to lie to ourselves. Everyone thinks they're in the top half, and most in the top quartile.

<comment><USER17> If the question is whether to drop everything and follow your passion, e.g. game development, you can ask yourself what will happen to the typical person who decides to follow that passion. The answer is obvious, they run out of money.

Then you can try to adjust the starting conditions, and ask what happens to the typical person who decides to do gamedev while having a day job. The answer is again obvious, they stay afloat financially but fail to complete the game.

And so on, you keep adjusting the starting conditions until you find a scenario that works for the typical person. This is similar to the startup advice saying "make a product that people would buy even if it wasn't very good".

<comment><USER16> Isn't the unfortunate ending that very little greatness is achieved by the mean or median person?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Even if it would get investment, most investors would typically push me to > make money as soon as possible.

Hell no they don't. They push you to get users/hyper growth. The whole point of investment is to let you grow faster than you can bootstrapping, which this article then goes on to say is the way to go with sustainability being paramount.

If you go for bootstrapping and sustainability and a competitor is being VC funded and burning down their runway of cash every year, they are going to blow you away in growth and your company will be irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER19> "So Good They Can't Ignore You" does a good job of covering this - [http://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore- You/dp/145550912...](http://www.amazon.com/Good-They-Cant-Ignore- You/dp/1455509124)

</comment><comment><USER20> Recently, I went on vacation to the beach with some friends, and before I left I snagged some books from my father's bookshelf, one of which was "Big Bucks" by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Bowles. It's short and simple and I was able to read it through quickly.

The message is pretty intuitive, and not especially innovative, but over the course of the book, the story lays out 3 rules of success:

1.) Do what makes you happy -- this way, "work" becomes "play" and you actually get excited enough to put the necessary hours and effort into it.

2.) Monetize what you're doing -- prioritize money and success over "play" \-- you can do what you love all day, but unless you actually make it bring in cash, it's still just playing!

3.) Focus on increasing your income moreso than cutting costs -- not really relevant for this article, I guess.

I think what happened here was that the author didn't make it to step 2. He was enjoying what he was doing, but he wasn't striving to monetize it -- at least, not to the extent that turns it from a hobby into a successful means of income or cashflow.

(btw I recommend the book, even though it probably just tells more of the same stuff you read in many other success books)

</comment><comment><USER21> If _making money_ is the goal and not the means, of course you're going to stop liking it when the prospects stop looking good.

</comment><comment><USER22> Do the highest-paying job that you hate the least.

<comment><USER23> I get what you're saying but taken literally, this would imply that there are multiple, equally high-paying jobs, when in reality there's probably only ever one, which has a constant value of hate.

What we need is a normalized value that is proportional to pay but inversely proportional to hate. This is probably what you meant.

<comment><USER12> > What we need is a normalized value that is proportional to pay but inversely > proportional to hate.

Well, except that _positive utility from pay_ (what you'd really want to weigh against disutility, or "hate") probably isn't directly proportional to pay (several studies have shown decreasing marginal utility from increasing income and even a point beyond which the marginal impact of additional income on realized happiness becomes undetectable.)

And you probably want to maximize _net_ utility (utility - disutility), not (utility/disutility).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's bizarre how much shelter, food, clothing, health care, internet access, etc. cost given how productive our economy is.

Guaranteed basic income + a modicum of required public service would allow people to literally do whatever makes them happy and drastically reduce suffering.

</comment><comment><USER24> I agree with this 100%.

Happiness is an arbitrary condition based more on psychological factors than actual actions performed.

And as such should never be the full determining factor of your career.

For example, what makes you happy changes as you grow. Also, environmental conditions instill certain standards of happiness in people and as those conditions change so will a persons perception of what makes them happy.

Somtimes a simple change in your perception and internal state can do more for your happiness than changing some external materialistic aspect of you life like a new job or new car.

Existentialists would say: "love what you do".

</comment><comment><USER25> A lot of people in the HN nouveau riche tend to forget: you can't just skip to the self-actualization bit; there's a whole hierarchy of needs you have to fill first. Starting with food on the table.

</comment><comment><USER26> Outside of hubs, and even in hubs, it's ridiculously hard to raise money for a startup that isn't making money. I had so many conversations with investors for thecityswig.com who literally did not even want to have a conversation about user and customer traction if it didn't involve them writing me a check or paying me for something - no matter HOW good the news was. Did not even want to hear it. And maybe that's ok, maybe that's even good, but it's certainly true.

</comment><comment><USER27> Happiness is not an "end", its about to enjoy everything you do.

If you enjoyed the process, does not matter if your startup failed or not, thats a total different thing.

</comment><comment><USER28> Let me fix that title for you...

Do whatever makes you happy (without taking reality into account) is a lie (well, not a lie, just a wee bit stupid and naive).

Like people who go to university with NO IDEA what they want to do when they get out and then whine about not having a job and a huge student loan when they graduate.

Think. Decide. Do. And take responsibility instead of looking for someone to blame for why you are where you are in life.

</comment><comment><USER29> "Do what you love" comes with caveats BUT ... you didn't do what you love.

You said what you love is building a product. However, what you chose to do is be an entrepreneur. These are different things.

You took on a combination of building a product and building a business.

If you had just built a product, without the necessity of having to make it a business, then I guess you would be much happier.

</comment><comment><USER30> I agree with others that OP has likely just misidentified what it is makes him happy, but I don't think that what it really was is necessarily money. Sounds like the author was actually most happy when he was designing his startup. So maybe he needs to focus more on the bit he actually likes - i.e. the creative process of designing web platforms. This may mean getting a salaried job with another company.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I pretty much enjoyed the whole journey up until now when it got unsustainable. Creative initial designs are really fun, but I have lots of fun also perfecting the system and seeing users coming in. It really "makes me happy".

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Unfortunately, he is very much correct.

My associate, left finance to do something that he thought it was valuable to the world, that was make Android (because for iOS it was already a popular business, but Android noone was doing yet) games for children, with quality, and ethics, no ads, no in app purchase, no abusive tactics, no information tracking...

He came to me with that dream, and I jumped on it.

Now 1 year a a couple months forward, we have lots of free downloads, almost none paid downloads, also although other stores invited us, OEM contracts were offered to us, and whatnot, Apple and Google ignore us (I cannot decide what is worse, Apple, that we cannot find how to contact them at all, or Google, where a Developer Advocate review all our newly launched apps, and all of them so far he approved and sent to the editorial team, that... did nothing with them).

Then we look at our competitors, and what we see is: those having profits, are those that throw away ethics, like making games that allow kids to buy 1500 USD in smurfberries, or that not only put ads, but put them in a ambiguous manner so that kids activate them by accident. Those that follow the same path as us, are all extremely unprofitable, no matter the quality of their apps, the exception is those owned by huge conglomerates (ie: TocaBoca for example, owned by Bonnier) or those that profit from something else (for example making unprofitable kid games, and selling outsourcing services to other companies).

The reason we don't jumped ship yet, is mostly because there IS some wildly profitable companies out there (as I said, for now mostly conglomerate-owned ones), and the market is still new and growing, and we are trying to be one of the early ones on it. But it is painfully obvious and tempting the power of unethical behaviour.

<comment><USER32> Great job trying to do something to help the situation, but unfortunately simply wanting to help is not a substitute for market research: very basic research would have shown you that many ethical pay-for games for children exist on iOS and Android, however you don't hear about them and they're hard to find because nobody buys them. It looks like you researched the (few) successes, but not the (many, many) failures.

The reason most consumers will know about the games that let children buy IAPs is because these games make a lot of money, which gives them large advertising budgets which lets them quickly climb the sales charts. You also see the big conglomerate ones because of advertising. As anybody involved in the Apple or Play store will tell you, most of the money goes to the top apps, and being a top app for any decent length of time requires heavy advertising: either paid or viral. You won't get viral advertising for an ethical children's game.

I honestly don't believe it's even possible to succeed with a quality children's game and make livable money off app store purchases from an unknown developer. Your best bet is to fund it from outside of the app store using something like Kickstarter which will hopefully drum up some support in addition to cash flow. Another option may be to sell it somehow in brick and mortar children's stores at the same kind of prices physical children's games are sold, possibly by including your game on some cheap hardware as a complete package. Either way, good luck, and keep looking for novel business ideas to keep it going!

<comment><USER31> Oh, like I said, the idea came from not finding quality games on Android at all, while some existed on iOS (like I mentioned, TocaBoca is a powerhouse there).

My associate has a kid, and some of his friends has kids too, and they bought Android tablets, and quickly ran out of games to install.

Only this year TocaBoca started porting their games to Android for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Anecdote" is not the singular form of "data".

This guy has had one bad experience, and from it immediately derives a general rule that applies to everyone. How narcissistic!

<comment><USER7> Isn't that kind of where "do what you love" came from?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Serial killers "love" killing...

</comment><comment><USER34> Do whatever makes you happy is an ideal, and pragmatic in so far as you'll have an advantage in that area as compared to someone who doesn't have any passion for what they're doing.

Of course someone with passion and some other edge like a superior education, or fewer ethics (in some areas,) or who just started earlier than you - <USER2> still going to beat you if you're in a particularly competitive area.</comment>


Amazon Web Services is now just aws - <AUTHOR> Amazon Web Services is now just aws <comment><AUTHOR> [https://aws.amazon.com](https://aws.amazon.com)

<comment><USER2> Have they just changed the logo? Still says Amazon Web Services everywhere else (page title, footer etc.)

<comment><AUTHOR> lol</comment></comment></comment>


Announcing the new Roslyn-powered .NET Framework Reference Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.hanselman.com/blog/AnnouncingTheNewRoslynpoweredNETFrameworkReferenceSource.aspx

<comment><USER2> I know this is getting a lot of fanfare but let us apply four major costly problems I'm having with the CLR/Framework at the moment:

1\. Microsoft.Build.Tasks (the bit that has been screwing with me all day) contains static sealed classes with nothing in them. I thought this was a reference source rather than a source of empty interfaces and empty implementations? Still having to resort to reflector to find out what is going on. Problem not solved.

2\. So, ReaderWriterLockSlim has a bug in it with respect to low CPU allocation in virtual machines where 20 concurrent threads accessing a locked object at the point of write cause the spin lock in the implementation to thrash and up blows a race condition taking out the process. I can actually see where the bug is now. Where do I submit this bug, bear in mind I can actually recreate it? I phoned up our MSDN rep - they said raise it on Connect. There isn't a place for it on Connect. Phone up generic paid support, three levels of technical staff bounce me around for a week. as a PAID UP GOLD PARTNER, this sucks. If you open your source, track bugs openly too. Problem not solved.

3\. This is only the core framework. We really need the entire lot including all dependencies and external tools. There aren't any symbols on symbol server or this for VSTO or Sharepoint for example? What we do get is another black box somewhere in the system that we can't inspect or poke inside even though it's a wrapper for a COM API or a product API. Problem not solved.

4\. Does Rosyln/next MSBuild support parallel compilation? Being tied to a single compilation core on a VS2013 build means we have 8 core Xeons sitting there doing nothing. Our only hope of speeding this up is cranking up to high end i7 to get one core with crazy integer performance. 20 minute sit down compiles are too much these days. [http://xkcd.com/303/](http://xkcd.com/303/)

I understand this is progress and Roslyn is cool and all that, but what does it deliver for every day users of the CLR/Framework? It doesn't really make our day much easier. In fact stuff that really improves developers' lives has stopped appearing completely and instead we get tedious reengineering projects and new features designed only to lock us further into the system (VS online+sign in anyone?)

Also how does this compare to say LLVM/Clang?

I imagine this semantic compilation stuff will make some static analysis stuff easier and stamp on the toes of Coverity etc but that's about it.

Edit: sorry if this is purely a content-free rant and unpopular but after 12 years of this crap from Microsoft, I want to see new wheels, not the same ones reinvented and remarketed. Developers are lapping up this crap constantly as if it's as good as it gets. We need some REAL CHANGE towards openness and consistency and to ask the community and users what they want rather than telling us what we need.

<comment><USER3> So you have found some esoteric issues that are likely encountered by less than .01% of developers and this is somehow 12 years of crap from Microsoft?

I find it funny (not really) that somehow this floats up as the top comment when most developers have no clue what he is talking about but since this is HN and someone is saying how bad Microsoft is then lets upvote. Microsoft killed my pappy and all (ht to shanselman) so I must do everything I can to make sure no one else dares like them.

<comment><USER4> So, instead of addressing his points, you instead chose to make fun of it, criticize HN and invoke a marketing piece to somehow prove your stance on the matter. Nice going.

Note that I find Roslyn an interesting project and it's always a WTF for me whenever I touch .NET that I'm not able to easily view/step through the source code of everything I use, including the standard library, so for those suffering, this article is actually good news - and I'm fed up with negative and uninformed opinions on anything interesting, especially on my current platform of choice that's very trendy to bash lately, which I won't name because it would defeat the purpose - because it's much easier to provide uninformed, non-constructive criticism then it is to build stuff, plus we tend to treat our favorites as sports teams with us behaving like cheerleaders, am I right or what?

But for the uninformed reader, such as myself, comments such as yours just add to the noise, I mean WTF?

<comment><USER3> NEWSFLASH: Stepping through the framework sources has been available for several years. Roslyn, which is a re-architecting of the compiler itself is not somehow going to change this or make it better.

<comment><USER4> Oh, so can I open the project in the IDE, click on any identifier and have the source-code of the library in question automatically downloaded, after which the IDE would navigate to the right file and line? I also expect it to work while debugging, no matter the library I'm using, including the standard library, so does it work?

Because that's what I expect from a "modern" developer's environment in year 2014.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Roslyn changes are starting to kick in - 2014/15 should be pretty exciting!

"This means that folks like the Mono team could look at this Reference Source and not have to gouge their eyes out afterwards. "

Very reassuring as well.

<comment><USER6> The reference source license doesn't allow any use but reference. Does that help Mono? Wouldn't the possible pollution still mean someone that's seen the source can't contribute to Mono? (I had the private shared source access in 2004; AFAIK Mono would still ban me from contributing.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It looks like there are still big censored parts: [http://referencesource- beta.microsoft.com/#PresentationFrame...](http://referencesource- beta.microsoft.com/#PresentationFramework/src/Framework/System/Windows/Window.cs#461)

One of the first things I had to do for my last job was subclass Window to support custom borders (Zune Player/VS2012/Office 2013 style.) I took a peek at the reference source, and I couldn't help but think the missing bits were the juicy bits, workarounds for window manager bugs or insights into how it does things.

<comment><USER8> No, we're NOT intentionally censoring anything. This looks like a bug in the source processing. We'll take a look.

If you see a munged file, report it with the feedback link. Sometimes regex's go bad and we can fix them.

<comment><USER7> That's good to hear! I only guessed the missing parts were censored because a lot of them came after comments that implied the following code was security critical, like here: [http://referencesource- beta.microsoft.com/#PresentationFrame...](http://referencesource- beta.microsoft.com/#PresentationFramework/src/Framework/System/Windows/Window.cs#2313)

I apologise if this isn't the case, and I'll definitely use the feedback link if this issue comes up again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can anyone explain the benefits of a "compiler as a service"?

<comment><USER10> Here's very cool example of what compiler as service can do: let's say you want extend SQL so that you can write C# expressions in SELECT like this:

      SELECT MyClass1.Method1(ColumnA, Math.Round(ColumnB))
      FROM Table1

Another example is you can extend your scripting language so that user can use full power of Linq.

So in otherwords, you can extend any of your little languages so that you can mix C# in it. Considering C# supports tons of functional features, Linq, anonymous types, dynamic types etc this can really beef up host language.

<comment><USER11> I thought that Roslyn expressly did not support extending the language.

<comment><USER12> My understanding is that you use Roslyn to use C# anywhere. It can parse expressions and compile and execute them.

E.g. If you're writing a BASIC interpreter:

        10 PRINT "Hello World"
        20 CSHARP "Console.WriteLine(42);"
        30 GOTO 10

You call Roslyn on line 2 with the expression to parse and execute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Roslyn sounds pretty cool. For the record, did Microsoft originate the 'compiler as service' idea or did it originate somewhere else?

<comment><USER3> Mono has had compiler as a service for quite some time now

<comment><USER14> They had the implementation, yes. But the idea predates Mono's implementation. I can't find any references offhand but I do believe Roslyn inspired the Mono team. Roslyn has been in development for a very long time.

<comment><USER15> Roslyn was announced several months after Mono has created their compiler as a service implementation. Having said that, clang/llvm was out there for some time already. So yes, the idea predates Mono for quite some time:-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder why they don't just publish the source repository on the web.

<comment><USER17> My hunch is that they use some internal server and don't want to expose it to the world. They could copy it somewhere, but if you're not going to take contributions then why bother?

Also, their code explorer is far and away better than trying to spelunk through a Git repository looking for that one file you want to read. So I think it's actually an improvement for when you just want to look at a few files rather than download everything.

<comment><USER16> >My hunch is that they use some internal server and don't want to expose it to the world. They could copy it somewhere, but if you're not going to take contributions then why bother?

Ah. They should want to expose it to the world and take contributions.</comment></comment></comment>


Why should we oppose UBB? (Canada) - <AUTHOR> http://www.antiubb.com/why-should-we-oppose-ubb/

<comment><USER2> By alienating their own customers, Bell will just drive small ISPs to colocate their own routing hardware like Primus already does, so they can continue to offer unlimited plans at competitive rates.

[http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech- news/sma...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/tech-news/small- isps-lament-crtc-fee-change-look-to-invest-in-own- infrastructure/article1868429/)</comment>


Why HN Should Use Randomized Algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://danluu.com/randomize-hn/ <comment><USER2> At reddit we had two tactics for the frontpage problem.

The first thing we added was the "rising" page, which used to be reddit's default "new" page. The rising page was a weighted new page. It was a little hacky, but worked for a while. I see they've changed this, which I think may have been a mistake, but I haven't thought about it in forever.

The second thing we did, which worked really well, was to have an up-and- coming link placed at the top of the list on the frontpage. This helped those borderline posts get more visibility. I had a reddit simulator I used to use to test things like this. That space appears to be a subreddit search box for me, so it seems they've moved onto another solution.

Randomness is an interesting idea, though it might be a bit difficult to fit into the way we cached things.

<comment><USER3> _The first thing we added was the "rising" page_

I think the problem that the randomized algorithm solve is not missing good content. It is to give the same chance for equally good content - or at least to minimize the error due to page limit.

 _to have an up-and-coming link placed at the top of the list on the frontpage_

Two things: 1) either the up-and-coming are a few borderline posts taken in order and then here you'd just extended the front page with a few more posts (ie. it changes nothing) 2) either you'd carefully choosen a heuristic for those posts which is pretty much what is suggested here.

Anyway, thank you for sharing your experience with this problem, it's very interesting.

An other idea would be to fix the content quality and make variable the number of posts in the front page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd consider the title renaming posse quite random already. Some days I get to be excited about the same article multiple times. Neat.

<comment><USER5> I think the submitted site (or article's) own title should be treated as canonical, and a text field provided for a byline description by a submitter (or maybe include some metadata with the domain in the header) could balance the need to accurately reflect the content and... whatever it is that determines changing the titles around here. I understand the reasoning against it though, among other things the competitive nature of submissions to HN would mean gaming the system with your own metadata would be unavoidable.

<comment><USER6> I've hypothesized a few times that: when many people submit the same url, x>1 of them are very likely to submit the actual title of the article while people who editorialize will tend to do so uniquely. Because of this HN can rely on an algo to update the title.

I realize there there are moderators for HN and they are confirmed in some cases to have changed titles but I don't think this necessarily means they are responsible for all the title updates.

<comment><USER7> Well there is some evidence that people vote on the title only without reading the article, sometimes even commenting just on the title. So if you were really interested in maximizing karma you would put an outrageous title on it, get some rage-comments to force it to the front page and then the mods switch it to the real title. Not saying this has ever happened of course but it did strike me that blogs use link baitey titles, why not karma-baitey titles?

<comment><USER8> I have no concrete proof that this is happening, but it sure feels like it from time to time. It's not uncommon to see articles chart to the front page with provocative headlines that, upon clicking through, bear little resemblance to the headlines or body of the linked content.

Gut-level guesstimate, but the following titling strategies seem to work disproportionately well:

1) Pointed, rhetorical questions (as much as we all claim to hate them)

2) "How I..." titles (usually some legitimate merit to these posts, but if one were so inclined to game the system...)

3) Contrarian declaratives, usually about popular topics. (Hypothetical example: "Facebook is not a social network." This will generate a lot of blind upvotes, plus at least a few knee-jerk comments in opposition).

In fairness to HN, the content actually matters here. I can't say the same for a lot of the subreddits I browse, where blind upvoting based on title alone is a lot more rampant. It's pretty hard to crack the front page with lousy but well-clickbait-titled content here, though we've all seen it done before (and it seems to happen at least once a week).

<comment><USER9> I wouldn't say it's too much harder than reddit. The key is long form content.

Legitimate commentary will take longer to flow in, and allow for knee jerk / blind influence to last longer from original submission time.

IMO the beet would be a clickbait title for a long article that starts contrarion, but ends on a neutral note.

Rational/logical people will take less offense b/c they're more likely to read the neutral perspectives and others will blind vote/comment based on title and first couple of sentences of the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The 'new' page depresses the hell out of me. I read all of these articles about the best time to post to get maximum exposure, but you know it makes very little difference if you're going to end up with 1 vote anyway.

I looked at the 'new' page this morning while thinking about the "optimal" time (it was around 9am EST, which is supposedly one of the best times according to several articles). Almost every post had a single point. Since your post starts with one point, that means most posts have received absolutely no support whatsoever. I suppose this is inevitable. Only a small percentage of submitted content can get on the front, but nonetheless it's still frustrating to put effort into something and then... crickets.

<comment><USER11> ...but you voted up the good content, right?

<comment><USER10> I usually do when I visit the new page, yea, but it's not a place I go to that often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a valid approach. This is actually exactly what dithering [1] is in signal processing. You spend a little additive noise, but gain a much more regular distribution. The pagination is adding a quantization error of sorts in the amount of exposure each article is getting.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither)

</comment><comment> rkuykendall-com Could this be used to get rid of "new" altogether?

Instead of blocking them from the homepage, just give them a very very small chance of appearing. Might make the "Knights of New" which are considered self-sacrificing users a thing of the past.

<comment><USER13> It's always going to be obvious which ones are new, because they've got 1 vote and are on the front page.

I read HN all the time, but confess I never visit "new".

I'd definitely be a fan of including 1 random article from "new" for each pageview of the front page -- but make it explicit. Keep it at the top, or in the middle. It seems like that should produce a much "fairer" result.

I'd be curious if there are reasons why this wouldn't work -- why HN, reddit, etc. keep "new" on its own page...

<comment><USER14> I always visit /new and it's quite astonishing how many great posts never make it to the front page and instead, quietly drop off. This really has a lot to do with what time of day they post as well.

E.G. I've posted around 3AM - 6AM EST (which is usually when I have more free time) and it never makes it. But if I post a bit later, say around 9AM, then it has a much higher chance of coming to the front page.

There are a great many good stories that are several pages into /new and I think (with the exception of a handful that are already on the front page) those are barely seen by the vast majority of HN visitors.

<comment><USER15> I've found a very strange case of getting better results from posting at off- peak hours. My theory is that my post stays on the first page of "new" long enough for enough people to vote for it. If I post at peak hours, then my post gets pushed off the front page within an hour, meaning too few people have seen it to get it to the front page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> How ironic would it have been if this never made the first page :D

</comment><comment><USER17> You have some parenthesis issues in "if rand(2^x == 0) x++" that my tired, C-laden mind had problems parsing just now.

</comment><comment><USER18> The bottom line is that posting your content to a social news website is usually the wrong way to gain exposure.

With sites like Facebook and Reddit, you're simply shouting from a mountain top and hoping someone listens.

To be fair, your odds of gaining exposure for a tech-type story are greater on sites like HN and subreddits devoted to technology. In these places, you can count on listeners sharing some of your interests.

Tweaking the ranking algorithms may improve the situation, but the fact is, many of us have become complacent; we resort to throwing our content into social news forums and expecting a lot of exposure instead of doing our homework to determine who the appropriate point people are.

For example, if you're trying to pitch a new web app, maybe you should forget about Hacker News and try strategically emailing / calling a few friends / colleagues. When it comes to early exposure, quality can trump quantity.

<comment><USER9> When the difference between shouting off a mountaintop and not doing so is 30 seconds AND the upside can be so great (thousands of page views), why NOT submit your content?

> quality can trump quantity

Maybe in general, but submitting a link online is so damn easy that why wouldn't you spend 30 seconds doing it?

<comment><USER19> And lottery tickets are a dollar each, and the upside can be so great (thousands of dollars), why not buy one?

But online submissions are worse than lottery tickets, because you buy a lottery ticket, and then check it from time to time. No, they're seductive because there seems to be some pattern behind it, because they're so easy to test, and before you know it, those 30 seconds have turned into 30 hours of testing and reading into the material for a parsley 600 views.

Technically, working at Costco's and spending your earnings on AdWords would have brought you more exposure with the added upside that those are more qualified leads (for business sites), or on Facebook, where that money could buy you thousands of impressions (I found some numbers putting average CPM for a sponsored check in story at 6$ with a CTR of 3.2%, so spending your 192$ from Costco will get you ~960 clicks @ 30k impressions, if you're doing a mediocre job).

So yeah, if it were 30 seconds it'd be a great deal. But unless you have the self control of a buddhist monk, it's not going to be 30 seconds. Never.

<comment><USER9> I'm not saying you should, ;-) but if you did a simple automation of 'submit URL and title on creation'

This way you do it once, and since you don't have to revisit it every time it posts, you can remove the element of self control.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great suggestion. A system like this would also work well to:

1) increase the variability of information consumed by the community

2) combat group think (which is all too prevalent these days on HN)

3) provide a more level playing field for people who don't make an effort to abuse the voting system and exceed the front page threshold

</comment><comment><USER21> It's amazing how much we have done, yet how horrible even the best commenting systems are.

<comment><USER22> Mostly because we keep hitting the reset button.

People continue to complain that easy one-liner jokes consistently dominate the top ranks in Reddit threads, but Slashdot already came up with contextual upvotes (Funny, Insightful, etc) years ago.

Of course every time someone comes and tries to build a community we end up reinventing online comments from square one...

<comment><USER23> I remember when YouTube tried contextual upvotes for their comments.

Somehow, that made things ten times worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The suggestion appears to be to randomly adjust the scores of articles, but ISTM it would be more democratic to randomly adjust the scores of articles separately for each user. There's no reason we all have to see the _same_ random posts.

</comment><comment><USER11> There are some ideas here for getting different content to the front page.

Perhaps someone, after they've made a submission, could "pay to promote" \- paying with a lockout of their account for 48 hours, or loss of downvoting, or somesuch, to give their post a smidgen of front page attention.

That means that the people just churning submissions at the rate of 6 a day have to carry on with their scattergun approach, and other people who really think they have an interesting article could give it more attention but with some pain to themselves.

</comment><comment><USER25> I tend to use browser tabs as a 'to-do list'; and as a result don't often get back to the listing to upvote it. A different setup might get better ranking data... at least from me.

</comment><comment><USER26> or, even better, make a "second page" of HN that's more prominent (like a link in the nav), so that it's not as if there is a front page, and then several other pages, but a front page AND a second page and then the rest...therefore, articles that are in this limbo can get some extra attention, and I would assume that, having differentiated a "second page" from the following pages, people would be at least as likely (if not more) to checkout what's not on the front page.

</comment><comment><USER27> Why not just try interlacing the top posts and new posts randomized?

i.e.

        1) Top #1 post
        2) Random New Post
        3) Top #2 post
        4) Random New Post
        5) Top #3 post
        6) etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> Vary the number of items on the first page between 20 and 30 depending on screen size and a random +/\- 1.

</comment><comment><USER28> (pseudo)randomized

<comment><USER15> poindexter

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Great idea. I think 5 random submissions should get a front page chance. It increases variety and as the other person said, it also combats group-think. Five out of thirty, even in the worst case scenario (not even one of them is interesting to a person) is not enough to degrade HN.

Also something has to be done about the fact that many news stories that are bad PR for certain companies or good about their competitors are quickly dispatched to page 2 and 3.</comment>


Ask HN: How did your sales do in 2013? - <AUTHOR>

How were your 2013 sales and did you start your company in 2013? <comment><USER2> How about you start by sharing yours and your reason for asking? I like to _participate_ on HN, not just be a one-way talker.</comment>


MoviePile now has a Chrome Extension to Download Embedded Videos - <AUTHOR> http://moviepileapp.com/moviepile_downloader_chrome_extension

<comment><USER2> I just used it to download a clip from Youtube, it works like a charm! (Tested on OS X 10.8.2. Google Chrome 24.0.1312.57)

However, the process could be made clearer on the website and in the app. It would also be nice to have a (contextual) menu item or button in the app to show a file in the Finder. Now I had to search for the media folder.

Also, the installer placed the folders 'MoviePileMovies' and 'moviepile_assets' in the base level of the user directory. I think it'd be more logical for 'MoviePileMovies' to go in the 'userdir/Movies' directory. And can't the 'moviepile_assets' folder be placed in the app package, or in the 'userdir/Library/Application_Support' folder?

EDIT: I took a look at the Kickstarter page, where I found this:

 _"MoviePile is a Java application, which means that it's cross-platform. You can use it on Macs or Windows or Linux. The sky's the limit! That said, a significant amount of effort will be put into making it seem like a native app. Do you use a Mac? It will feel like a Mac app!"_

Sorry, but right now it looks and behaves nothing like a Cocoa app. It doesn't utilize the Mac menu bar. Buttons and menu aren't where a user expects them to be and they're styled very differently – the dark flat UI isn't conform the Apple HIG. For me, that's not a big deal, I'll continue using the Finder and VLC to manage and view the files. However, since you're aiming at average consumers, I feel I have to tell you that you're going to run into problems if you keep this a Java app: many OS X users don't have a Java runtime environment installed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Samuel,

Thanks for the feedback. All of your stuff is definitely on my TODO list but it's about making pragmatic choices early on (it's just a preview right now).

By "feel like a mac app" I basically meant that you'd have a signed .app binary (inside a .dmg that can be dragged to Applications) on a Mac, etc. Normal consumers don't know what Cocca is. I want the app to look the same across platforms...but execute the app like they would expect.

FYI you CAN embed JREs in .app mac bundles, see: <http://www.intransitione.com/blog/take-java-to-app-store/> and is what I would eventually do. It works but right now there's a bug in Java 1.7 (related to changes in the Canvas class no longer being heavyweight) that would break the app, and Java 1.7 (first Oracle, not Apple issued Java for mac) is the first version to support this. I actually had to end up backporting the appbundler code to Java 1.6 and then write some objc to launch the (hopefully present) Apple-issued JRE.

I don't mean for this comment to come off as anything other than thankful for your time...but I wanted to answer some of your points so if anyone read this they would understand that I am serious about this project.

Thanks again and if you continue to use the app and have any more feedback please let me know email@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to get feedback on this extension or the actual app itself. I haven't been able to get any comments on HN on MoviePile yet. Thanks!</comment>


Ask HN: Software Engineer to Business Analyst? - <AUTHOR>

I've been a software engineer for 10 years and am ready for a more business-like role.  I have a BA in economics and an MBA, but many potential employers seem to see me as a techie based upon prior work experience.  How can I transition to a business analyst role (my current employer does not have this role)? <comment><USER2> I'm seeing software engineering dying to have engineers that are more and more business analyst oriented... My perspective would be to take the lead and help fill in business goals and direction more and more for your team. Basically do the job now and if there's not a hole of this type that needs filling find a job elsewhere where you can.

Don't strive to do a good job at the jobs you don't want. If you do you'll keep getting pegged as an engineer.</comment>