Predictive market for startups - <AUTHOR>

Would you enter your startup in a predictive market if your startup could win $10k?<p>Would you trade stock(not real money) in a predicitve market on startups if you could win $1k? <comment><USER2> Interesting idea. To set prices, etc. there'd have to be "buyers" and "sellers" of some sort, and some way of attracting outside parties (or perhaps other startups) to do the buying and selling even if it's not for real money.

The main thing to keep me from participating would be the distraction factor- rather than going through the unsexy fundamentals (making a good product and keeping it good) I'd be tempted to drive a different set of metrics. $10k is a powerful motivator, but not as powerful as making a living or hitting a grand slam.

The key to making this work is making it require very little additional effort on the startups themselves beyond what they'd ordinarily be doing.

</comment><comment><USER2> So is this like an intrade for startup success or failure? Kinda like a deadpool?

I'd think there'd be too much potential for gaming such a system if I understand it right. I can bet on who will win an election and that works out because a candidate won't throw the election in order to bet and win on his opponent.

That's not necessarily the case with startup X #119, particularly when I can set up startup X #120 with the same IP and concept and game things again.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any start up that registers would have a stock price as they progress through creating a working product, adding a feature, filing a patent, publicity etc their stock price would go up or down based on who's trading on it. Only 1 unique stock trader per domain. or a valid telephone number maybe using automated verification. Something that has an external cost to entering but not an outright entry fee(legal reasons). The contests would only run like 3 months similar to Ycombinator.

<comment><AUTHOR> the value to the startup isn't the prize but the feedback from the stock price and helping to build a community around the product.</comment></comment></comment>


How the Elderly Lose Their Rights - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose-their-rights <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr: The 'market' for guardianship is largely unmonitored by governing bodies and prone to abuses as told through personal anecdotes of individuals who have been taken advantage of.

Not to editorialize but this is scary for someone who lives abroad and has older parents and frankly makes me furious that we can let this happen</comment>


Double Entry Accounting for Developers - <AUTHOR> https://django-hordak.readthedocs.io/en/latest/accounting-for-developers.html <comment><USER5> Please take a look at document [1] by author of beancount regarding how to do double entry accounting, including introduction to single entry bookkeeping. So far I find this is the best resource for developers to learn about accounting along with illustrations. Debit and Credits are introduced later once the basics are explained in details grounded in accounting principles in play for thousands of years.

[1] [https://beancount.github.io/docs/the_double_entry_counting_m...](https://beancount.github.io/docs/the_double_entry_counting_method.html)

<comment><USER6> Not only is Martin Blais' explanation very helpful, his software, Beancount, is also very suitable for any personal finance projects, especially if you have a background as Developer.

Personally, I combine beancount with fava and find it much better than e.g. GnuCash.

<comment><USER7> Is beancount the kind of tool that's mostly useful if you put a lot of time into it, like Emacs? Or is it immediately useful with even small investments of time?

<comment><USER8> I found ledger-cli (upon which beancount is based) immediately useful. However, since you mentioned Emacs, I should say that I use ledger-mode in Emacs to add entries. But I do most of my reporting directly on the command line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Accountancy is(was?) widely taught in South African high schools. It was certainly quite common in the 1990s.

I found it quite amusing when I realised that double-entry isn't widely understood around the world, a realisation I came to after I first encountered one of many confusing "accounting for developers" posts on HN.

It was quite easy for us 13 year olds to grasp:

Assets=owners equity +liabilities (accounting equation) A=O+L

Rules: Left side of equation: Increase in an asset: debit. Decrease in an asset: credit.

Right side of equation: Increase in liabilities: credit Decrease in liabilities: debit

Increase in owners equity: credit Decrease in owners equity:debit

Expenses decrease equity, income increases equity. Capital increases equity. Drawings decrease equity.

For every debit, there must be a credit. Every transaction fits into this framework, and every transaction must balance the accounting equation.

Your bank statement appears to be reversed, because it's written from the perspective of the bank: for them, a deposit by you increases their liability to you (a credit). Similarly when you owe them money, it's an debit, since from the bank's perspective, your debt is an asset to them. (Bank reconciliation is another thing we did in school.)

This really isn't rocket science.

<comment><USER10> The stumbling block for me learning it was understanding how to record the simplest and most common transactions like buying a banana. Surprisingly many explanations only use examples like paying your home mortgage where the credit and debit side of things are clear. But then they never tell me about where on earth does my banana go as a credit since I'm not stockpiling bananas to later sell. Even though that use case is almost all of my transactions!

<comment><USER9> If your banana is for consumption and you pay cash: Then debit Food Expenses (decrease equity) and credit Cash (decrease assets). Accounting equation is balanced.

If your banana is for resale and you pay cash: Credit Cash (decrease assets) and Debit Trading Stock (increase assets). Accounting equation is balanced.

If your banana is for consumption and you buy it on credit from your supplier: Credit Loan account (increase liabilities). Debit Food Expenses (decrease equity). Accounting equation is balanced.

If your banana is for resale and you buy it on credit: Debit Trading Stock (increase assets). Credit Loan account (increase liabilities). Accounting equation is balanced.

If your banana is for resale and it spoils before you sell it: Credit Trading Stock (decrease assets) and Debit Spoilage Expenses (decrease equity). Accounting equation is balanced.

If your banana is for resale and you sell it [this one I'm a bit rustier on, it's been 25 years, but I'm _pretty sure_ it's correct]: Debit cash (increase assets). Credit Sales income (increase equity). ALSO Debit Cost of Sales (an expense, so decrease equity). Credit trading stock (decrease assets). Accounting equation is balanced. (Your Gross Profit is reflected in Sales minus Cost of Sales).

Granted, these are unsophisticated examples, and based solely on decades-old high school-level accountancy, but I think your banana example should be covered here.

<comment><USER11> It doesn't quite. You'll also need to consider allocations and accounting for tax (sales and income), depreciation, transaction fees, warehousing, shipping revenue and expenses, revenue and expense recognition, discounts, returns, overpayments, prepayments, futures, chargebacks, refunds, credit notes, invoicing, subscriptions, subsidies, tariffs, reconciliation, adjustments in the current financial year, adjustments for already reported periods, gains & losses on foreign exchange, and subledger roll-up for your parent fruit company's GL.

You'll need to maintain consistency and coherence in multiple combinations of the above, and when the auditors show up, be able to show unequivocally that you understood every edge case when recording and reporting transactions, especially the ones that crossed a financial year boundary.

Accounting software mechanises all this. It is _not simple_.

<comment><USER9> I specifically stated it was an unsophisticated example. GP wanted to know what happens with the "simplest transaction" when he buys a banana.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, exactly. The first or second example in any explanation should be buying a banana that you immediately eat. That way the reader sees that an "account" doesn't have to be a bank account nor even a collection of physical goods that exist, it's just a virtual bucket made to keep track of certain transactions. Until I figured that out, double-entry made no sense at all. This is all exacerbated by the common "Assets = Liabilities + Equity" equation which hides expenses entirely. All of this is, of course, a problem about pedagogy in the quick guides found all over the internet. (Including the one linked to here, though the second example is at least an expense but not in the way that would enlighten a beginner.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the site:

"I found the core explanation of double entry accounting to be confusing. After some time I distilled it down to the following:

"Debits decrease the value of an account. Always. [1] Credits increase the value of an account. Always. [1]

"[1] (1, 2) This is absolutely not what accountancy teaches. You'll quickly see that there is a lot of wrangling over what account types get increased/decreased with a debit/credit. I've simplified this on the backend as I strongly feel this is a presentational issue, and not a business logic issue."

I mean, this is just....wrong. Maybe I'm not smart enough to see why this isn't completely incorrect? I mean I feel mathematically this will work but goes against so many core accounting principles it won't have much use except in the simplest of cases.

<comment><USER13> The operation performed by debit/credit depends on the classification of the accounts. Accounts are listed traditionally with Assets on the left, and Liabilities and Equity on the right. A debit to a Liability account is a minus, and a credit is a plus, but it's the other way around on the asset side, where a debit is a plus, and a credit is a minus. (This kind of thing happens when English mugs other languages - Italian in this case - for its vocabulary).

The easy way to remember this is just to think that the right hand side is what you think it should be, and the left hand side isn't.

Double entry book keeping is under appreciated - it's one of the earliest examples of error correction and detection coding kicking around.

<comment><USER14> I've found the best way is to remember the phrase, "Debits come in and credits go out."

Let's say you have a bank account. Your view of that account is opposite from the bank's view.

You have $100 cash. That's an asset from your POV, and it carries a debit balance on your books - when you received it, the cash "came in".

You walk into the bank and deposit it. The cash goes out of your books, but an asset (the increase in your bank account) comes onto your books. You credit cash and debit asset.

From the bank's POV, cash came in - they debit their cash account. And they credit your account in their books. That account is a liability from their POV - they owe you the money.

Notice how the debit and credit to cash even balanced across entities. If you talk about pluses and minuses, you'll get confused quickly.

One of the worst things that ever happened was banks issuing "debit cards". When you take cash from an ATM, it's a debit from the bank's POV. The bank carries your account as a liability, which carries a credit balance. (You are the bank's creditor!)

So the bank debits your account (credit came in again) and credits their cash (cash went out).

You credit the bank account on your books (asset went out) and debit your cash (cash came in)

Just remember that a "debit card" reflects the banks POV and don't let that confuse you about the meaning of "debit". Debiting an asset is generally a good thing!

When making accounting transactions, debits always balance credits - <USER2> they total to zero in the code itself. It's conventional to make assets positive (hey, having lots of assets is good, right?).

OP gains nothing but confusion by turning everything upside down.

<comment><USER15> > Debits come in and credits go out.

That is the complete opposite of common usage. When I get a credit on my credit card statement, it means money is coming in to me. When I get a debit on my debit card, it means money is going out from me. It's not rocket science, or at least it shouldn't be. And yet somehow accountants have managed to turn it into something even more confusing.

<comment><USER16> Common usage has turned the terms into something confusing. It's not the accountants fault.

Your credit card is linked to an account in someone else's books. They opened that credit account for you.

<comment><USER14> If you want to track the bank account on your own books, what they call a debit, you call a credit. Ït's a mirror image.

Debits come in to an entity, credits go out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> One of the best developer-oriented explanations of accounting I've read is "Accounting for Computer Scientists" by Martin Kleppmann.[0] He explains double-entry accounting visually in terms of graph theory. Even though I'm not very good at graph theory, I found the diagrams and explanations extremely intuitive.

[0] [https://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for- compu...](https://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for-computer- scientists.html)

<comment><USER18> Oooohhhhhhhh.

It just clicked for me what to "open an account" acually means. Literally adding a node to the DAG, or in the old school accounting world, creating a new page in the entry book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The debit and credit statement is incorrect. It depends on if it's an Asset, Liability, Equity Revenue or Expense.

Balance Sheet (Assets = Liabilities + Equity)

Assets (debits increase, credits decrease) Liabilities (debits decrease, credits increase) Equity Accounts (debits decrease, credits increase)

Income Statement (Revenue - Expenses = Income)

Revenue Accounts (debits decrease, credits increase) Expenses (debits increase, credits decrease)

A few rules:

 _Balance Sheet Accounts carry over every year. Things like cash, accounts receivables and payables, loans and equity in the company carry over year after year.

_ Income Statement Accounts close out at the end of the year and close in to the equity and cash parts of the balance sheet (depending if a dividend was declared). The Income statement accounts are zero at the beginning of every fiscal year. The balance sheet accounts carried over from the previous year.

One example of the above to illustrate the mechanics of double entry accounting:

Lets say you bought a car for your business in cash. you would credit cash (to decrease your cash account) and debit an asset account (a balance sheet account) for the car. when you depreciate the car over time you would credit the car account at some interval for the depreciation amount thus reducing its value and debit the expense in the current period thus increasing expenses in the current period.

The reason I know this is because completed an undergrad at ASU in finance/accounting and then CS after that. It was waste of time.

<comment><USER20> Presumably that means the Finance/Accounting was a waste of time. That's too bad. From an opportunity perspective the combination of accounting and CS has never been stronger. The tech in debt and banking is going through total wholesale rebuilding over the next 10 years. Asset tokenization changing the definition of ownership. On and on. Hope you get to leverage that special expertise. Good luck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Note to people looking for job security: there is a _HUGE_ need for developers who understand finance. The fundamental problem is that most finance people can't speak the language of software development (the biggest problem I've seen is that finance people tend to be very poor at writing out a spec of what the software should do - they're much better at looking at a set of examples and then telling you if the calculations are right or wrong). Similarly, most software developers don't know enough about the intricacies of the finance world when building financial software.

I had a colleague who (over years of experience) got to be so good at teasing out requirements from the finance people that I called him "The Finance Whisperer". His skill at crossing the finance-software worlds was unparalleled, and he could command a large premium for this knowledge.

<comment> et-al Aside from the obvious PayPal, SQ, and Stripe, would you (and other folks) please share some companies one should look into?

<comment><USER22> I would look at finance companies and banks directly.

<comment><USER23> There's a lot of very antiquated technology still kicking around in the finance sector, _especially_ banks. You will likely end up working on mainframe code. It's something to bear in mind when considering making it a career path.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> One thing I really appreciate about YNAB is that they ditched the obscure words with murky Latin roots and rules to memorize about flipping signs and whatnot, and just used the words "inflow" and "outflow". They don't mean anything different in this context than "debit" and "credit." But still, somehow, when you use the traditional words, the topic seems to be as difficult to explain as monads, while with the YNAB terms it ends up being obvious and intuitive.

<comment><USER25> ...but sometimes things aren't inflows or outflows. Depreciation is neither, yet it's (almost) fundamental to accounting.

<comment><USER24> Depreciation is also neither a credit nor a debit.

Doesn't one normally handle depreciation by creating an expense account called "depreciation", and recording the depreciation as a debit in the asset account and a credit in the depreciation account?

And couldn't one just as easily word that as, "We track the depreciation by creating an account for it, and recording a flow of money into it from the asset's account?"

<comment><USER26> Yes, but the other way around: you debit the "Depreciation" expense account (since it is the sink, it increases) and credit the asset account (it is the source, it decreases).

<comment><USER24> I rest my case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I used ledger [1] to track all of my expenses for roughly four years. It's a command line based double entry accounting tool. It was super interesting in terms of figuring out where money went and general double entry accounting techniques.

That said, it was a ton of work to keep up to date given that I was trying to track money when I spent it vs when it cleared my bank account, and those two often varied by several days. Add on top of that three kids and various purchases my wife would make, and it just became too much of a hassle. But it also helped me understand where my money was going each month much better.

The whole double entry idea is basically that every time there is a flow of money, it is going from one place and to another.

So each transaction has two entries:

1\. Where the money is going

2\. Where the money came from.

That's really what it boils down to.

[1] [https://www.ledger-cli.org/](https://www.ledger-cli.org/)

<comment><USER28> Ledger is almost great software, except that it uses signed numbers. Why?!

<comment><USER29> Depends what you mean - signs for input or signs for output?

If the reactions to TFA are any indication, compared to the amount of effort you have to go through to explain the credit/debit notation, account signs are fairly straightforward. Just start from the rule that _assets are positive_ and you can derive the rest with some fairly basic examples.

For output? I guess you could apply some sign normalization so that Income or Accounts Payable would be positive, but if you understand where the signs come from I don't see the benefit in dropping them. The other thing to know is that Ledger itself isn't aware of what constitutes a debit vs. credit (or a "naturally positive" vs "naturally negative") account, so you'd have to tell it up-front which ones should be sign-normalized for display.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I learned double entry accounting. "Debits decrease and credits increase" is just one way to represent the numbers; I have also seen the other way around (where debits are positive). But more commonly, the presentation is such that debits increase the accounts on the left, and credits increase the accounts on the right. (Nevertheless, the explanation there does work.)

Some time ago (while I was bored in the accounting class), I invented "matrix accounting" (I was trying to invent something else, specifically, using complex numbers in accounting, which I concluded was impossible, but matrix math works). In this matrix accounting, "debits" and "credits" don't really exist and the presentations mentioned above are really just different eigenvectors. The accounting equation has this form:

      <BAL|FSV> = 0

(Note that all of the components here are real, and not complex; also note that financial vector space is a kind of projective space.)

<comment><USER28> Compare to [https://arxiv.org/abs/1407.1898](https://arxiv.org/abs/1407.1898)

<comment><USER30> I have not seen that; thank you for this information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I couldn't understand double entry accounting until I found out about ledger- cli / hledger.

These awful arbitrary "left-side / right-side" and "debit / credit" just doesn't make any sense.

As opposed to that, no-magic approach from ledger-cli where every entry must balance is intuitive to learn and mathematically correct. And it allows to go a bit beyond the whole "assets / liabilities / expenses / income" if needed.

<comment><USER32> Ledger CLI is wonderful. I've been using it for over a year for budgeting (via envelope-style virtual accounts) and keeping track of my family expenses.

The biggest advantage is that it's just a plain text. I can read it, I can store it in git, I can backup it. If I make an error, it's easy to fix with text editor I'm familiar with. In the beginning I changed my accounts naming scheme several times and it was super quick and easy with simple sed. Previously I used GNU Cash, which is another double-entry accounting program, and doing any bulk edits was a serious pain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Can't tell whether it's intentional as part of this slightly modified approach, but under classic accounting the contribution in the first example would be equity not income.

I'm glad more accounting software is out there but tbh as accountant I can't see myself using this. The whole debit always decreases thing kills a core part of the mental framework I use to reason through more complicated scenarios. I guess that doesn't particularly matter though for the target audience coming at it with no prior knowledge.

>accountants don't like negative numbers.

That's the first I hear of that

<comment><USER34> > >accountants don't like negative numbers.

> That's the first I hear of that

It might be more accurate to say that Western accounting evolved before the concept of negative numbers became widely accepted in the Western world. Negative numbers were invented (or "discovered", depending on your preferences in the philosophy of mathematics) in China, and from there spread to India, and from India to the Islamic world by the Middle Ages. But when Western mathematicians learnt about them from Arab/Islamic mathematics, there was a lot of philosophical pushback – at first, Westerners didn't think the idea was valid. The idea was rather alien to the Western philosophical tradition originating in Plato and Aristotle. It was only really in the 19th century that Western mathematicians overcame all their philosophical objections and embraced them wholeheartedly. And then it took even longer for the concept to spread from academic mathematics into other disciplines and general education. By then, a lot of the Western tradition of accounting and bookkeeping had already formed without any reliance on the concept of negative numbers. (The concept of "credit" and "debit" serves a somewhat similar function, but is not quite the same concept.)

And accountants do use negative numbers. But, maybe if modern Western accounting had developed in a culture that looked on negative numbers more positively (excuse the pun), they might use them much more than they do?

<comment><USER35> > And accountants do use negative numbers. But, maybe if modern Western > accounting had developed in a culture that looked on negative numbers more > positively (excuse the pun), they might use them much more than they do?

The division of accounts into credit- and debit-normal with a strong anti- negative-entry bias (to the point of contra sub-accounts for recurrent activities that go in the opposite direction of the parent account's normal) seems to me like it provides an important QC feature, especially when books are kept or reviewed manually. It's a lot easier to see "this is not the kind of thing that belongs in this account" than "that is not the right sign for that activity". And the resulting categorizations are useful in their own right, and it's important to remember that accounting is not just about adding numbers, but about categorizing the associated activities.

<comment><USER36> Gee, you're the first in the whole thread to have actual arguments instead of "B-B-But, you're wrong, I can tell because school told me !", thank you for that (and making me reconsider my position) !

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'd recommend you avoid this article. It is more confusing than necessary, and the accounting entries (at least in the first example) are wrong/unconventional.

The articles mentioned by dragonsh (Beancount documentation) and mtlynch (Martin Kleppmann's site) are great. But I feel unsatisfied by the way they discourage understanding of debits and credits, by just giving you something to memorize, e.g.

"Now, by convention, accountants flip the sign on all of the blue and pink nodes' balances, which means that the two sums end up being equal. And that's why it's called a balance sheet."

You don't need to memorize which accounts are negative and which are positive. Just relate them to the English words 'debtor' (someone who owes money) and 'creditor' (some who is owed money), and you can work out the right entries for any transaction.

You credit (CR) an account when you're recording:

\- an increase in the amount your company owes, or \- (equivalent) a decrease in the amount some other entity owes your company

The other entity could be a supplier, a customer, or one of your own shareholders.

Examples of credits that can be identified by the above rule:

\- A customer pays you some money they owed you: CR 'Assets - <USER3> Receivable'

\- A supplier sends you an invoice: CR 'Assets - Accounts Payable'

\- You send an invoice to a customer: CR 'Revenue'

The last example might be confusing at first. Why is revenue like something you 'owe' someone? Because any profit the company you make does not really belong to the company, but to the shareholders.

If you can work out whether one side of a transaction is a debit or a credit, you know the other side is the opposite. So, for the above transactions:

CR 'Assets - Accounts Receivable' / DR 'Cash'

CR 'Assets - Accounts Payable' / DR 'Expenses'

CR 'Revenue' / DR 'Assets - Accounts Receivable'

</comment><comment><USER38> Here's one for computer scientists: "Accounting for Computer Scientists" by Martin Kleppmann [1]. It was discussed on HN [2]. There have been several reposts of it since then, including one 8 months ago, but only the original got any discussion.

[1] [https://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for- compu...](https://martin.kleppmann.com/2011/03/07/accounting-for-computer- scientists.html)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2298471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2298471)

<comment><USER39> Yeah, Klepperman's is the best explanation I've read of accounting. (And I had a college course on the subject). The clarity of it reminds me of the classic "Calculus Made Easy" text.

In contrast, the article in this post is terrible. Tons of footnotes referring to exceptions. I feel like the author is trying to summarize a subject he doesn't understand himself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Below are some really great free video courses to learn accounting fundamentals from Johnson County Community College.

intro to financial accounting

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkZ6Q67Q15E&list=PL259DBFA47...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZkZ6Q67Q15E&list=PL259DBFA47F3B4761)

intro to managerial accounting

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cC9SZ3RC8Y&list=PLHhe-2tIHR...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cC9SZ3RC8Y&list=PLHhe-2tIHRqEw5JRX6trtsLLlwwbpdXJX)

</comment><comment><USER41> That's the silly, confusing view of accounting.

Here is the smart view:

1\. The sum of all accounts is zero: that's the fundamental equation. Nothing about assets, liabilities or equity.

2\. A transaction updates at least two accounts, by applying deltas to them. The sum of the deltas is a transaction zero. Because of that (1) continues to hold.

3\. Accounts which represent outside interests in the business run negative: these include loans and owner's equity. For instance, if the business somehow makes $1000 out of thin air, its cash account goes up by $1000. At the same time, because the owner has interest in the business, the equity goes down by $1000. Equity is like a loan that the business owes to the owner. Or, if the business gets a loan for $1000, the cash goes up; but the loan account goes down by $1000. Other accounts are what the business has, and run positive, like expenses, cash and assets. E.g. if a routine $50 expense is covered, cash goes down by $50, expenses goes up by $50.

4\. Expensese are periodically reconciled (e.g. end of year): they cancel out equity. If there is -$1500 equity, and $500 expenses: poof: expenses are blasted to zero, and equity goes to $-1000. (Of course, expenses are also, separately of this, used for claiming tax deductions and whatnot.)

That's it; no confusing debit/credit nonsense, with an increase in such and such account being a debit, but an increase in another kind being a credit. That system is deliberately twisted so that people of typical intelligence need to rely on expensive accountants.

<comment><USER42> #1 and 2 are generally correct. Personally, I would remove the quote "nothing about assets, liabilities or equity". Accounting is "all about" those accounts.

#3 couple edits: Change "the equity goes down by $1000" to "either equity or liabilities will increase by $1000". Equity will either remain the same or increase when a business obtains $1000 out of thin air.

Change "the loan account goes down by $1000" to "the loan account goes UP by $1000". Obtaining a loan will increase cash/increase liability accounts.

#4 is correct.

<comment><USER41> Though in accounting you have to be clear about what you have versus what you owe, and transactions must target the correct accounts in order to make sense, there is no need to befuddle the fundamental equation with those details. It is much clearer mathematically to have the fundamental equation be "all accounts always add to zero". That's it; no mention of their "type". Likewise, the increments/decrements in a transaction just have to add to zero.

This is the same as conservation laws in physics; e.g. integral over a closed path over a conservative field. Or the Kirchhoff voltage law (sum of voltages around an electric circuit is zero).

Debit/credit accounting is like designing a circuit in which for some silly reason we decided to mix conventional current and electron current! Oh, this is a liability resistor, so we use electron current, but this is an asset capacitor, so we use conventional current. The circuit law then doesn't add to zero, unless you remember which elements need to have their sign flipped, and you end up with strange rules like equity volages equal asset voltages minus liability voltages.

Can you imagine doing such a thing when designing a device with hundreds of parts? Yet, big ledgers can likewise have hundreds of accounts. Then a corporation needs a small army of accountants to keep a simple thing straight.

It's not just the adding to zero that is crystal clear, but the polarities of the accounts. When I see a negative balance account in the ledger, I have a good idea that it's an equity/liability account just from the balance alone. Minus means owing, plus means having: very clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I kind of expected to see a good, pragmatic explanation of why double-entry accounting is useful, the kinds of mistakes it catches, etc... kind of weird to see almost no emphasis on the double-entry nature at all.

<comment><USER44> I agree: it catches entry errors, which is really handy in a system where you're hand-writing them twice.

But if you're writing a computer system that's simply duplicating one entry from a human in two places in data store, is that "double entry"? is it useful?

But the idea that you would want to reconcile one view with another independently reported one is super useful. (Almost every financial-oriented company builds a system like that, I would bet.)

<comment><USER45> I once used Mint, which is single entry. One day I logged into my account and noticed my net worth is a bit off. Looking at my monthly expense and income, I didn't see anything out of ordinary, so I just shrugged it off.

A couple of months later I finally realized I opened new savings account to take advantage of a promotion and forgot about it. The opening deposit was deducted from my checking account. Since it's classified as a "Transfer" it doesn't show up in expenses. I linked the account, and now I am a few thousand dollars richer than I previously thought.

This kind of mistake will never happen in a double entry accounting system.

It was then I began migrating my personal accounting to a double entry system I developed myself. Hopefully I can make it available to the public soon :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Way back when I first tried switching to using Open Source alternatives to my previous apps, I wanted a Quicken alternative and tried GnuCash. Opening the help for the first time, I found it hilarious and ever so "open source software" of them that the help document opened with a whole chapter on how double book accounting worked, because of course you'd need to know that if you wanted to use GnuCash well.

Anyway, while it wasn't the best user experience, it was a pretty good introduction to double entry accounting: [https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/basics- accou...](https://www.gnucash.org/docs/v4/C/gnucash-guide/basics- accounting1.html)

<comment><USER47> "GnuCash" was the first thing I looked for when I opened this thread. This application is an absolute godsend and I'm not sure why it's not more popular with developers. It takes some getting used to / setting up, but once you understand how it works it will revolutionize the control you have over your finances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Others has mentioned text based double entry accounting tools like ledger and hledger. There are other tools e.g. my favorite beancount.

[https://plaintextaccounting.org/](https://plaintextaccounting.org/) is a site listing all of these text based accounting tools out there.

</comment><comment><USER49> Modeling the problem for devs is actually not the hard part, the math is somewhat simple for the accounting part (time value of money gets more fun, but I digress). The hard part for me still is undoing years of language baggage associated with words like Debit and Credit, which Increase and Decrease things that are treated as negative or positive depending on pov. In almost every case, I interpret the meaning wrong, and have to reparse.

Look at this sentence from another comment: "If your banana is for consumption and you pay cash: Then debit Food Expenses (decrease equity) and credit Cash (decrease assets)."

It flies in the face of our habitual, naive, and common use: "I'm crediting cash? But I spent it! Shouldn't I debit cash, debit is lowering? No? But if I have credit, I have more! No? Is that Comparative Literature class still available to switch into? No?"

The categorization are not always based on logic that is commonplace, and has legacy trappings. The terminology is different from what a naive reader might expect.

To be fair, many sciences have evolved this way. But like the French phrase "false friends", words that sound like one thing in another language but have a total different meaning in their own tongue, I think the struggle is to adjust mindset to the new meanings of words we use frequently, more so than the concepts of balance and systems of equations.

</comment><comment><USER50> There is a great podcast about how double entry accounting was a foundational invention of our modern society.[0]

If you agree with that assessment, it's interesting to think of blockchain as "triple entry accounting".

[0] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv3gq](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csv3gq)

</comment><comment><USER51> Lately a lot of "Hello World"s has been replaced with "To Do List" examples.

Maybe we should start using "Debit/Credit Journal" instead.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow, I posted this earlier and assumed it hadn't been picked up. From people's comments here it sounds like I may have missed the mark on some of this. Pull requests always gratefully received.

None the less, the result has been some software which seems to have worked well for those that have used it. I certainly haven't received any angry issues.

I'll link to this thread from that page.

<comment><USER12> Hey! Hope any criticism didn't come off too harsh. I appreciate the effort that went into this!

I checked out the GitHub repo. I'm a CPA who's getting into web development and has some Django experience. Would definitely be interested in contributing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Only just see this comment, no worries at all. I can take it all in my stride :-)

I think Hordak could really do with a version 2 anyway. There are a number of issues open which I think would make for a big improvement, but would also result in breaking changes. I'm not precious about the codebase either, it hasn't been a priority for me for a while and it would be great to see it given some love (especially from someone with a better knowledge of accounting than I!)

Definitely get in touch if you are interested in being involved. I'd be happy to add you as a maintainer after a pull request or two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I think I understand the mechanics of double entry bookkeeping, but what I find confusing about it is that it is the redundancy. People emphasize the error detection, but these errors can only exist in the first place because of the requirement to record each transaction twice. Also you get a lot of "fictious" or virtual accounts that don't correspond to concrete piles of cash or bank accounts.

It seems much easier to me to just record the transactions ($100 from _bank account_ to _shop_ on _date_ ). Then you can generate balanced account sheets from this automatically.

But you can go further and look at the actual cash flow. This is something you can't easily do with double entry: how much money did I have on day X? How much money will I have approximately on day Y? Will any asset fall below a certain value? And make nice graphs out of everything.

<comment><USER16> > People emphasize the error detection, but these errors can only exist in the > first place because of the requirement to record each transaction twice.

That's like saying that check digits in credit card numbers detect errors that only exist in the first place because we entered more digits. Or that checking the md5sum after downloading a binary file detects errors that only exist in the first place because we downloaded two files instead of one.

<comment><USER52> Not really. In double entry bookkeping you have to always add every entry "twice" (I'm not sure how prevalent it is to have split entries, $20 in one and $10+$10 in another - I've learned in school that you don't do that).

I'm just suggesting a different entry format where you enter the number once and the computer creates both bookkeeping entries. Yeah you have the chance to make a _typo_ , but I guess preventing that kind of error is not what this is about, is it?

It's actually not like a checksum, but more like the DRY (don't repeat yourself) principle. Where one framework requires you to define a constant, say a SQL table name, in multiple places, and another lets you type it only once. Like handrolled SQL vs- an ORM. In this case, I think _less_ typing is less error prone.

<comment><USER16> > Yeah you have the chance to make a typo, but I guess preventing that kind of > error is not what this is about, is it?

That's the kind of error it catches, where you entered one of the entries (say, the cash outflow) and not the other (say, the invoice you were paying) or they were not consistent.

Note it's not always as easy as "this number goes into two places". One entry in one account may correspond to multiple entries elsewhere (say, price plus tax). At least that's what I think, nobody told me not to do that or I don't remember...

And it's literaly a checksum.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_balance)

"The purpose of a trial balance is to prove that the value of all the debit value balances equals the total of all the credit value balances. If the total of the debit column does not equal the total value of the credit column then this would show that there is an error in the nominal ledger accounts."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> If anyone's interested, here's my (ledger-cli inspired) double entry accounting CLI application in C#: [http://github.com/soheilpro/Ledger](http://github.com/soheilpro/Ledger)

It has two interesting features:

1\. Supports multiple currencies

2\. Has a query language that lets you easily get various reports

</comment><comment><USER54> I think simplest rule for remembering what debit and credit mean is that "debit" means "deposit/indebted" and "credit" means "to give someone credit".

Thus for an account debits means increases in the amount held by the account and credits mean decreases. Because it is Double Entry an increase somewhere is always a decrease somewhere else. When we deposit an amount to an account we must also credit another account which tracks where that amount came from.

I prefer to think of it as if every account had a person who is in charge of that account. If money comes out of the account we give "credit" to the person in charge of that account. And when we deposit to an account we debit it, in other words the person in charge of the account becomes "INDEBTED" by that amount.

</comment><comment><USER55> If we're talking "accounting for developers", I'd like to plug the FOSS accounting system we wrote which uses event orientation to model the entities that a business owner actually things of (invoices, wages, etc). Side effects like taxes and legally required artifacts can be generated by rules.

We've used it successfully for the last years to do our companies bookkeeping.

[https://github.com/200ok-ch/easy](https://github.com/200ok-ch/easy)

<comment><USER56> Huh, you used `clojure.spec` but then used YAML. I get it for the UX reasons, but I would have guessed you'd be generating edn under the hood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I suspect that some of the language of credit and debit is so old that it was created before postive and negative integers were widely accepted

</comment><comment><USER58> I think the most important equation to understand about accounting is assets = liabilities + equity

ROA, ROE, etc come from the above formula.

<comment><USER59> I always felt that equation was confusing. Because then the sign has to be taught separately, or numbers have to have two columns (credit and debit) and you need to understand where each one is.

assets + liabilities + equity = 0

Seemed much more general. Double entry just became: everything (transactions, whole companies) sum to zero. Then just one other little thing (where money comes from in a transaction is positive, where you put it is negative) and you have the math.

IMH(and not accountancy)O

<comment><USER43> > assets + liabilities + equity = 0

So how does this actually work? Say I worked for 8 hours at $25/hr. I get a $200 deposit in my checking account; that increases my assets. How is the sum still zero?

<comment><USER59> Transaction:

Income > Work: $200 (or $200CR)

Assets > Bank Account: -$200 (or $200DB)

This is exactly how it would be stored in any software system behind-the- scenes, and how it would be submitted in statutory accounts. The only thing that makes this look weird is that you are used to seeing your bank account statement with 'credit'. But that's only because the bank account statement is from their accounting perspective.

Money comes from somewhere (Positive, Credit); it goes somewhere (Negative, Debit).

The entire confusion about signs and what to add and remove, and what categories 'increase' with debit or credit, it all disappears when you allow negative numbers. I guarantee your accounting software _will_ simply store them as positive or negative. It is frustrating that it appears so complex simply because of avoiding negative numbers.

<comment><USER43> I don't understand where the negative comes from. I just gained $200. Why would my bank balance go _down_ by $200?!

If you're talking about the bank's perspective, why is that relevant to me? I'm just asking about how to do my own accounting.

<comment><USER59> Debit is where you put money. Credit is where it came from.

I am not inventing this. Money in your bank is debit in _your_ accounting.

You are very welcome to treat it as positive and add. As long as you keep track of where every positive number is a credit or a debit, and you learn all the rules about which accounts to add and which ones need taking away.

Or you can just treat credits as positive numbers and debits as negative.

Literally the only 'weirdness' is that money you have put somewhere for future use (like a bank) is negative.

Your initial reaction might be "that's just nonsense and ridiculous!" But I guarantee that is how your accountant and accountancy software is storing it. Your bank balance is debit from your accounts. Legally and intuitively. The only reason it is weird is because you receive statements from the bank from their perspective (a credit because they received the money from you).

If you have made it to junior high school you are quite capable of the math. Treat debits as negative and credits as positive. No accountancy ed / special rules needed.

If you want to get it more intuitive you can think of it as: Negative numbers are money that you put somewhere and is now owed to you. If you have $1000 in 'your' account, legally that means you are $1000 down because you are owed that money by the bank. It is your debit. You have given them credit.

It may not feel like a loan because it feels like you can get the money any time you want. But loans you have given and bank accounts are both assets in your accounting. They are both debit. They are both money you have put somewhere.

<comment><USER43> I think you're confused on what I'm confused about. The positive or negative sign isn't the issue. You could flip all the signs and I'd still have the same problem.

> Literally the only 'weirdness' is that money you have put somewhere for > future use (like a bank) is negative.

But that is literally what I'm talking about. Whether the sign is positive or negative isn't the issue. It just makes no sense for this to be a zero-sum game, is all I'm saying. You're telling me if I get $200 out of the blue I suddenly owe someone that $200 instantly? How does that work?

<comment><USER59> I see, sorry. Thanks for clarifying your question.

Transactions always balance. Money always comes from somewhere, and it always goes to somewhere. Total debit always equals total credit.

In a double entry accounting system you have to say where that $200 came from.

Did it come from a sale (you sold your work, an item), a loan you took, someone you loaned money yourself, or an investment in your company.

In double accounting it always balances.

Here I am talking debit and credit because this is nothing to do with my point about positivity or negativity. This is how double entry bookkeeping works.

If you make all the numbers positive, then the total credit has to equate ('balance') with the total debit.

So treating debit as negative and credit as positive, means 'balancing' is just summing to 0.

Before double entry bookkeeping was invented in the Renaissance, single entry accounting just kept separate lists for all things. This works for basic tracking of money. For individuals particularly. But has massive weaknesses for tracking where money is coming from how it moves around, and making sure there aren't errors. Money doesn't come out of the blue. Which is why it is the business standard. And the legal requirement in most of the world. One of the most amazing and significant human innovations, IMO.

The credit and debit/what to add/what to subtract rules are only because double entry accounting was invented before use of negative numbers (they were only a weird mathematical curiosity at the time).

So I am not reinventing anything.

<comment><USER43> I still don't get it, sorry. So I worked and earned $200 for my work. It (obviously) came from somewhere—that "somewhere" being the pocket of the dude that paid me. But why is that relevant here? Am I not doing accounting properly until I start tracking what's in others' pockets'? I need to make an "account" for that dude and write down a debit of $200 for him just because he gave me $200 and the sum just _has_ to be $0, or else some catastrophe happens? Isn't that nonsensical?

<comment><USER59> I suspect the misconception might be that you think individual accounts must balance (Or think that what I'm saying). Transactions always balance, companies always balance.

In double entry accounting you track where money came from to you. You are right in not having to worry where they get their money from. But you do have to track how/why it came to you.

You will have an account in your accounting of 'income' (it's usually called 'Revenue'). If you have even the slightest complexity in your business, you will have many income accounts. Some businesses will definitely track at the level of detail where they have accounts for each customer, so they can see who purchased how much.

Each transaction balances.

Each line in a transaction is associated with an account.

So if you have done 50 weekly transactions of:

Revenue>Consulting $1,000CR

Assets>Bank $1,000DB

Each one balances.

But in total you will have $50,000CR in Revenue>Consulting and $50,000DB in Assets>Bank, but your company will still balance.

If you pay yourself $45,000 in salary from that, let's say in one go at the end of the year (to save me typing) you would have a transaction:

Assets>Bank $45,000CR (it came from your bank account)

Expenses>Salary $45,000DB (it went to your salary)

So at the end, your accounts are:

Assets>Bank $5,000DB

Revenue>Consulting $50,000CR

Expenses>Salary $45,000DB

This still balances. Double accounting always balances companies and transactions.

Historically it balances credits and debits. All I'm saying is it makes more sense to think of debits as negative and credits as positive, and all the math becomes much much simpler. Which is how accounting software is written.

<comment><USER43> Ah okay thanks a ton! I think that clears it up. So basically:

\- The idea is that every source/destination ("node") of funds keeps their _own_ account for every node they deal with. And every transaction ("directed edge") necessarily needs to be tracked by both accounts in an equal and opposite manner.

\- This is mainly only useful for businesses, as they generally have multiple sources of income (and/or multiple creditors) and need to be able to explain/track them. (At least as far I can see, I don't really see much of a point in doing this for the average person.)

<comment><USER59> Yes on both fronts. Thanks for continuing until we've got on the same page.

The only slight curve ball in your part one is that transactions are not always between two accounts. The joke is that 'double entry' sometimes has more than two.

The classic example is sales tax. E.g. a transaction:

Revenue>Product $100CR

Liability>Sales tax $5CR

Asset>Bank $105DB

(Although the specific form/standard categories will massively depend on how sales tax works in your jurisdiction.)

There are plenty of other examples (in my consulting: the customer paid some their bill in advance, or I pay a bill in a different currency and have to pay a fee).

So I like the idea of making it a topology question, but it would be nice if it were only two.

<comment><USER43> Yeah I almost mentioned multiparty transactions too, but thought I'd keep it simple since I got the crux of it :) thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Accountant here. This article is just wrong. You could memorize debit/credit rules but when dealing with non-finance persons, I avoid mentioning debit/credit as it gets confusing and generally its not needed anyway. Here's how I would explain basic accounting (income statement is ignored for simplicity).

Every transaction has two legs: what it is and whose it is. That is the basis of the accounting equation: assets (what) = equity (mine) + liabilities (someone else's). An increase in assets must be balanced with an increase in either equity or liabilities, and vice versa.

</comment><comment><USER61> Not an accountant or a mathematician, pt 4 reminded me of an issue I had dealing with numbers in a table. The annoying thing that happens with SUBTRACTION (i.e. the process that generates negative numbers) is 2 milion - <USER4> million and 2 - 2 both give the same result. What is lost, is whether a big change has happened or a small change.

And sometimes when change happened I didn't want to loose that info so I used addition instead and put it in a "special" column.</comment>


Amazon won't spin off AWS. That's hurting AWS - <AUTHOR> https://forrestbrazeal.com/2019/07/24/cloud-irregular-amazon-wont-spin-off-aws-and-thats-too-bad-for-aws/ <comment><USER2> The folks talking about the JEDI/WaPo issues are missing the bigger concern, which is other retailers pushing down to their SaaS partners a hard message to get off of AWS. I've heard of multiple contracts that came with a clause of "If you're on AWS, we will only renew this if you're off in 2 years". That's a real problem for AWS, especially when Google and Azure are starting to really push into the space more, and AWS's legacy code/patterns/UX are starting to show their age a bit more.

<comment><USER3> I get the concern, but Amazon is very aware that they can't do anything non- competitive with AWS to help its other business. Netflix (who undoubtedly has a long-term contract) still hosts there.

The home field advantages companies have been getting away with lately tend to be tighter integrations (think Chromecast, Android, and Chrome). The only company that would pull something as bad as what's being feared is Oracle.

<comment><USER4> Amazon has made it their business to clone 10,000s of items and software's just as easy to copy, they have already cloned multiple open source products and even commercial stuff they saw hosted on AWS.

The only thing stopping them from routinely cloning stuff they see on AWS is nothing. They are accused of using vendor sales data to decide which products to clone, well that front-row seat watching you scale infers revenue too. Whenever Bezos wants Amazon will assign thousands of developers to cherry- picking SaaS and software to clone.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/08/amazon_copies_partn...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/08/amazon_copies_partner_products/)

<comment><USER5> Do you think they were able to clone it because it was hosted on AWS?

<comment><USER4> They were able to clone it because copying is easier than having the idea and building something for the first time and verifying that anyone wants it. Hosting is analogous to the sales data, it helps prioritize who you should clone first.

Cloning is just practice for many developers.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=show%20hn%20clone&sort=byPopularity&type=story)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The argument sounds confused. People are not "confused" to protest about amazon in AWS conference, they are one. Companies trust AWS exactly because it's backed by the world's richest and apparently capable and trustworthy CEO. Them losing business because of that is just ... normal market functioning? There's no god-given right to AWS to dominate the market. Let the best ones overall, win.

<comment><USER2> I think the argument is that AWS would be a better player in the market if it wasn't directly owned by Amazon. They still get the benefit of having been built by all the money of Amazon, and they could still be owned by Bezos as a separate company, but they wouldn't be paying money into the co-mingled account/balance sheet with Amazon.

<comment><USER6> > and they could still be owned by Bezos as a separate company

But that's their whole 'competitive disadvantage'. WaPo and amazon are already separate. The fact that AWS would be separate on paper has very little gravity also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even if AWS was spunoff, surely it would still be owned by Bezos just as much? I assume in spin off proportional ownership by shareholders remains the same. I also don't see why their policies vis a vis government would be any different if they were a separate company. So, the argument comes down to people not being smart enough to realize AWS isn't any different as a separate company.

</comment><comment><USER8> > So with few exceptions, they are hedging their bets. They build on > containers in a misplaced belief that will make quick migrations easier, > they architect dubious "multi-cloud" workloads … the point is, they're not > using AWS the way it's designed to be used, as a holistic, deeply integrated > platform, and the looming shadow of Amazon is the reason why.

And why is this bad, exactly?

The fewer orgs use and depend exclusively on AWS, the better we'll all be as an industry.

The whole idea that we'd take years of FLOSS work and stuck it into the black- box cloud which we can't control, is pretty absurd if you think about it.

Here's a good article on the issues:

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server- really-s...](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really- serve.en.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Not sure I get the logic here. A spun-off AWS and Amazon's interests would naturally diverge over time. What's to stop a situation where AWS become another Oracle that Amazon seek to replace with their own self-built alternative? Couldn't (and why wouldn't) Amazon just start rebuilding AWS afresh?

</comment><comment><USER10> Aren't the activists happy about JEDI? They don't want AWS to serve American defense forces, so it looks like a win-win

</comment><comment><USER11> Oh please... more of this JEDI/WaPo stuff? It ignores that the NSA (and by extension, the DOD) have a long relationship with Microsoft just as the CIA have a long relationship with Amazon and have "AWS-lite" installed at Langley. Microsoft has been very accommodating to the DOD, agreeing to continue maintenance on Windows XP for as long as the Navy continues to request (and pay for) it. Yes, Trump has his gripes with WaPo and might have suggested to Mattis to screw AWS, but it's very likely that the Five Sided Puzzle Palace wanted to go with Azure Stack all along but had to do the open competition thing to avoid being sued by companies not named Microsoft.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, its pretty crazy how the narrative has become "Trump is insane, AWS was going to win it until he stepped in." AWS fought very well, but Microsoft was destined to win no matter what they did, as long as they could check every box (or make promises that they will check them soon).

You're hiring a new software engineer. You've got one candidate who's a bonafide genius, but young and can't communicate very well. You've got another candidate who seems to be within 80% of the skill level of the former, but came recommended by a trusted third party and can clearly communicate with the team. Which do you pick?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This isn't convincing.

Donald Trump doesn't like the Washington Post so it lost a contract and protestors interrupted a talk about AWS facial recognition.

How will this be solved by spinning it off? The first is that he thinks a different CEO would be better and the second isn't going to change because AWS is a huge cloud company and people aren't stupid that they won't realise the name has changed.

And it's known as Amazon Web services even if they rebranded to just AWS.

It would be a stupid move to change such a strong brand name to something else.

<comment><USER14> I actually think the OP is right, but not for the example they listed and not in a way that I directly care about or that impacts me (but would be better for Amazon).

The fact that Amazon is also a retail shopping site / now owns whole foods causes a lot of high end/large retail giants to NOT use AWS and actively have in their contracts that they will not do business with a company if AWS is their cloud provider.

There are exceptions, like if you stand up infrastructure specifically for the retail client that's against using AWS in another cloud instance (And I'm sure there are other exceptions out there).

But this is something that negatively impacts Amazon / AWS. I think ultimately though that's a business decision that they are welcome to make for themselves and I don't think really impacts the end AWS user.

<comment><USER15> And yet Netflix is AWS's largest customer even though Amazon has Prime Video.

On another note, look how Apple both competes with Samsung and use Samsung parts for iPhones.

The industry is all about co- optition

<comment><USER2> But is Netflix an example of a company that's happy to be paying Amazon whatever they're paying them? I don't know the exact chronology, but I think Netflix pre-dates Amazon being in the Media business much, if at all?

Netflix also don't really have an option, outside of building their own cloud, since Microsoft and Google also have video streaming. It's a little different if you're a Sears or Walmart, and you're not directly competing with the other providers.

Same with Apple and Samsung. Sometimes you're stuck buying from competition because they're the only people making the thing you need. It doesn't mean you're happy about it or wouldn't jump ship if possible.

<comment><USER15> Netflix _did_ build their own data center. They decided to get out of that business because that wasn't their core competency.

[https://www.se-radio.net/2014/12/episode-216-adrian- cockcrof...](https://www.se-radio.net/2014/12/episode-216-adrian-cockcroft-on- the-modern-cloud-based-platform/)

<comment><USER2> Sure, but that doesn't really change the point. If you decide that cloud is where you have to go, Netflix doesn't have an option that's not competing with them, really. Doesn't mean they love bankrolling Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wish they didn't lead with the Donald Trump argument. I feel like a lot of people are going to write off the article there.

The rest of the points are much more solid if you can make it past that first flawed one.

<comment><USER2> I think the buried and more convincing point in there is that Bezos and Amazon's continued expansion into new markets mean there's more and more industries that feel threatened by Amazon, and thus more worried about funneling them money through AWS.

If you're building out a new company right now and get to pick your cloud provider, how confident are you that in 5 years, Amazon won't be selling a competing product to yours? And if you're starting from nothing, why not just use GCP or Azure and avoid that risk?

<comment><USER17> Google and Microsoft also expand into new markets. To me, this is a good argument to use one of the smaller but growing players, like DigitalOcean.

<comment><USER18> Google and esp MS are more limited in the imitation copy strategy risks. If you've got something compelling that they want, most likely they'll buy you out. Amazon occasionally buys companies out too, but are also more likely to encroach on your turf. MS and Google tend to build (cooperative) "ecosystems", Amazon less so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Apparently the whole bid process is now on hold, not because of anything AWS > did wrong, but because, well, Jeff Bezos also owns the Washington Post, > which Donald Trump does not appreciate, and so it's all a mess.

This isn't even Amazon's problem, I'm not sure what anyone is meant to do about the President of the USA being a petulant child, other than just take their lumps.

Whole article is a bit odd tbh, doesn't seem like AWS is really struggling.

<comment><USER20> Yes, if AWS is losing out because a politician doesn't like the founder that's a failure of your country's democratic process and defies everything the US purports to stand for. Sure, spinning AWS might be the prudent thing to do from shareholder's point of view in the short term. But doing so, makes things extraordinarily hard for the very same shareholders in the medium to long term.</comment></comment>


Serious Sam's DRM Is A Giant Pink Scorpion - <AUTHOR> http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/12/07/serious-sams-drm-is-a-giant-pink-scorpion/

<comment><USER2> I am not the biggest fan of some DRM schema, but I am a big fan of this style of DRM integration.

Ultima 7 did something similar; in order to leave the starting town and continue, the Avatar has to answer 3 questions asked by the Mayor about Ultima lore, like the latitude of another town. The game came with a little map and a book that contained the answers. This was in 1993 so I am assuming it worked ok.</comment>


Ask HN: Antivirus is blocking my site - <AUTHOR> I run a SPA game website that has a lot of Javascript required to run it. Recently, reports began to trickle from a few players that they couldn't reach the site. I tracked down the problem to an antivirus program. When I installed the program (Trend Micro), I was able to reproduce the issue.
There's no virus on my site! I've written most of the code, and the rest of it is 3rd party code which is open source, and is pretty clearly safe.
There's no way to contact Trend Micro that I can see. I did use their "site safety" checker - https://global.sitesafety.trendmicro.com/ - to see if they had miscategorized the site, but my URLs are coming up listed as safe.
Have you had a problem like this? Any idea what to do? I've tweeted to them about this, but there was no response. <comment><AUTHOR> I did contact their tech support people. After going through a few different contacts, they've told me to upload one of the site files so they can examine it. I'm still waiting for a response on it. I guess I'm a little confused about why I need to upload a file... It surprises me that they can't just hit the site and diagnose what is happening on their end.

</comment><comment><USER2> Did anyone previously own the URL and do anything shady with it?

<comment><AUTHOR> The URL has been owned by me for about 3 years. Prior to that it was owned by a friend. To my knowledge, it never had anything shady associated with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This happened to me a while back:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3511392](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3511392)

Writing an email got the issue fixed in a couple days.

<comment><AUTHOR> Jason, thank you for this suggestion. I will try this. I guess I was skeptical that anything would be done if I contacted them (who cares about a small site owner?). I've been asking my users to send support requests, but maybe they will listen to me, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any bad ssl certs on your domain or on domains your site calls?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Interesting question... The site itself runs http, so I wouldn't think that to be the issue. I've got 1 Adsense ad, which loads okay. There are also calls out to Twitter, Facebook and Google+ for their "like" widgets, those all use https. I don't see any error messages that indicate a bad SSL cert in the Javascript console, although I'm not actually sure if that would show up.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has any U.S. mobile provider fixed SIM swap hacking? - <AUTHOR> From personal experience, it's clear T-Mobile hasn't fixed this problem.
Has anyone gotten hacked on AT&T or Verizon? Do you know what they have done, if anything, to address this?
Is Google Fi susceptible to this?
Is there a solution to this? I'm starting to think maybe I should not have a phone number anymore. <comment><USER2> From what I understand it is more of a social engineering attack, deployed after the attacker has gained the personal information required to gain access to an account (which used to be sufficient, but in the Information Age we live in, a postal code / maiden name/date of birth are commonplace on someone's Facebook profile and friends list).

So the issue is likely a combination of insufficient training for staff and dated methods for verification (for example, allowing people to verify via a PIN number over the phone, but not limiting the number of attempts before being locked out of the account, allowing brute force to be a viable (and successful) attack method.

Some attackers have taken advantage of the fact that some providers don't have 24/7 support (don't have the reference just remember reading about it being used to hack prominent crypto figures in social media, T mobile specifically if I can recall correctly) so they start the attack just before support hours end, giving them access to the account and then the down time to execute the attack (usually non-business hours) without the victim being able to do anything about it since they can't get a hold of anyone once they notice they've been compromised (as the physical stores are closed and phone support unavailable until next morning). That is if they even notice as they could be asleep.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a security code on the account, not that it's worth much. The customer representative said records show no calls were received.

It was 2am Eastern, 11pm Pacific, no stores open. 8pm Hawaii. Probably no stores open there either.

That leaves online hacking of some part of T-Mobile's systems or rogue employees on the inside.</comment></comment>


Building a Bw-Tree Takes More Than Just Buzz Words [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://db.cs.cmu.edu/papers/2018/mod342-wangA.pdf <comment><USER2> Interesting how well good old B-tree still does.</comment>


Building the Best LinkedIn Profile: Tips and Examples - <AUTHOR> https://www.getboost.io/posts/building-the-best-linkedin-profile-tips-and-examples <comment><USER2> Looks good, saving for later!</comment>


Using Signals in Your Django App - <AUTHOR> http://paltman.com/2012/01/01/using-signals-your-django-app/

<comment><USER2> I wonder if Rails has something like this. A message bus or atleast the concept of one is going to become more and more prevalent in Internet applications I think.</comment>


Mac enthusiasts starting younger and younger all the time (pic) - <AUTHOR> http://flickr.com/photos/jkottke/2271786566/

<comment><USER2> Can't wait to see how someone will argue that even if the submission is not great, it can spawn an insightful discussion on this one.</comment>


Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/01/not-a-very-pc-thing-to-say.html

<comment><USER2> As Chris Hedges says, "They love helping the unfortunate, they just hate the smell."

Just think of all of the up votes and netcred you'll gather with your widely broadcasted semi-reasonable moral indignation vs. silently helping the unfortunate. It's not political correctness and it never has been (the Left of all people have never cared about being considerate of the political identification of those who disagree with them), it's moral masterbation for mass consumable self-identification.

For example, this post will get 15 downvotes. Ask me how I knew.

</comment><comment><USER3> This has been going on for decades.

Perhaps the difference now, is that networked gangs of self-described 'progressives' have been organizing attack mobs on social media, with the targets not just 'evil right wingers', but liberals like Chait who do not pay sufficient homage to the tenets of political correctness.

And who defines what the tenets are? Let's just say that if you have to ask, it probably isn't you.

<comment><USER2> Indeed. This mass behavior has the interface of Mao's Culture Revolution ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution)) while serving the purpose of a Stalinist purge. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge)) But why? Why now? Well, #hilary2016 is obvious, but more insidiously, after unlimited funding for super PACs became the de facto unit of all political engagement, everyone is organizing a massive push to counter people like Adelson and the Kochs. And when you form the kinds of mass coordinations that only billions of dollars can afford, (George Soros put in $33 million this year so far) you cannot have dissent in the slightest or your ROI gets impacted.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Please review my web app, Docley - <AUTHOR> I have been working on Docley for about 6 months.
As the product sits today it has the following functionality: - User and Group Management - Creation of Folders and Uploading of Files - Versioning - History - Document and Folder content searching
You have to create an account at: http://docley.com/admin/create_customer (I thought about it, but I can't really get away from account creation.)
If you don't want to create an account:
url: http://docley.com/demo
username: demo
pass: demo3 <comment><USER2> The space is too filled up. You don't stand a chance. Let me give you a positioning that may work for you:

It's a "Document Management System". Back up your companies documents, and query and cross-reference them online. Share with your co-workers. See and reference past versions. Access your documents with our open API, mix and match.

The space is too crowded for you to try to welcome everyone. Focus strongly on business - if you can focus on more specific businesses that would even be better. Offer a compelling reason why they should use you. For my business, what I would like are:

\- Desktop synchronisation \- "Signing off" on documents (cannot be changed) \- A way to store paper documents that somehow OCRs it (must not be perfect, just for search), and that allows me tag them with keywords \- A clear way I can map the online documents to the locations where they are physically (shelf3, room 15) \- Some type of category system that paid attention to the documents - for example, personal contracts of employees should not be mixed with working design drafts.

Pick a small niche that works with paper a lot and is not online too much (maybe Law?). Show them how your system improves their life. The start with that niche, perfect it for them and go capture the next. Having to go out, walk into a lawyers office and try to sell this to him will be the greatest feedback you could ever get.

</comment><comment><USER3> The site design looks kind of depressing, and the logo looks weird. It definitely need some way of differentiating yourself from the competitions. I currently use dropbox for most of my file sharing/backup needs, and dropbox is a difficult player to beat.

</comment><comment><USER4> It seems that you are entering a crowded space with what is currently a weak offering.

How do you plan to beat

<http://basecamphq.com/>

or Google Docs?

Do you have any paying clients yet?

How do you plan to differentiate yourself?

Why would I use your system rather than a shared folder with controlled FTP access?

You need to address these questions on your front page.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think there are small/medium companies out there (similar to the one I've been working with recently with around 40 employees) that require a really simple self-hosted document management system. You might say that these companies should have a full blown CMS implemented, but often times all they want is document versioning, and CMS solutions like Sharepoint are expensive and can be confusing. There might be a market there but it would be hard to identify the individual customers amid a generally well-served market. The company that I was working with literally used a network share with documents organised in folders and renamed for each version. _shudder_. They were looking at Alfresco when I left, but I doubt they'll get the project off the ground - it's too big. If this was a really really simple SELF-HOSTED package, I'm sure they would go for it. Note: Self-hosted, not cloud based. It would need good backup features and the ability for clients to add their own ssl certificates.

Just an idea, based on observations without research.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable Link: <http://docley.com/admin/create_customer>

</comment><comment><USER6> David, glad to see you launched, that's more than most people ever do. As a few of the other folks have said, this is a tough field and you definitely have your work cut out for you. And I bet a lot of naysayers would have said the same thing about Google doing search in 1999.

Your background and drive will go a long way. Keep moving forward and good luck.

</comment><comment><USER7> "I have been working on Docley for about 6 months."

<withsalt> Given the technical complexity of a site like this, and the fact that you aren't yet open to the public, that seems like forever.

Have you talked to your future customers yet ? Do you know who they are ? If I was in your shoes, I'd implement the absolute minimum number of features to show the basic concept, and ship that prototype. Then I'd pitch it to just about everyone I could think of, and see what they say. Chances are, I'd change the feature set and my target audience in the process, so the faster I could ship the less time I will have wasted. </withsalt>

</comment><comment><USER8> 1) Improve design in all aspects (change logo, colors, ajaxify (esp. simple things like renaming a file))

2) Differentiate. Don't assume I don't know about dropbox and the like.

</comment><comment><USER9> the screenshot could use some work. its too small to read or even convey any info about the app at all, it has an evil twin lurking behind it, the perspective is way too tilted, and about 75% of the image is an ugly brown gradient.

also, regarding the general color scheme, i'd start by using the sign-up button blue instead of the turquoise. brown can be done, but its tough. check out the nettuts design for a nice example.

</comment><comment><USER10> No comments for now, but I'd suggest SSL (https) encryption which should be fairly simple to implement.

</comment><comment><USER11> Hi David.

Congrats on the launch.

As others have said, this is certainly a competitive space, but I imagine there's still room for innovation.

This is a nice technical foundation. If I were you my next step would be to get it in front of real users and begin to understand the unique problem you should be solving. I'd do three things in particular:

1) I'd pursue something like the "customer discovery" process to understand how your product concept maps to real customer needs. (MaxKlein had a lot of good advice on that "below" at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=956354>)

2) I'd look into usability testing (via paper prototyping or even something as simple as userfly.com) to get a better feel for how users interact with this interface. I imagine there are areas that users might find confusing and ways in which you could streamline the workflow.

3) I'd research the words or language you should be using on the website. For instance, in various places on the site you refer to both "Documents" and "Files". Are they the same thing? You also use terms like "Groups", "Users", "Permissions", etc. Are these terms that resonate with your users? (I don't know that they aren't, I'd just make sure you have the terminology correct.)

I'm sure there are dozens of ways to skin this cat and advantages and disadvantages to each, but one thing that struck me when going through your site is that much of the functionality could be provided pretty much out of the box by other tools. For example, Drupal's free Database File Manager module (<http://drupal.org/project/dbfm>, demo at <http://dbfm.org/>, screenshots at <http://drupal.org/node/236711#comment-785302>) offers most of the same functionality and in places with a little more polish. I've no idea what your framework is (well, from your blog, I'm guessing Ruby), but you might be able to find something that does a lot of the grunt work of storing, serving and moving files for you so that you can focus on the value-add that Docley provides.

For what is is worth, here's a few specific bits of feedback for you:

1) Until you have it ready, I'd drop the "Coming Soon" video image from the homepage. Neither you nor users are getting value from the placeholder and having it there just calls attention to the missing demo.

2) In your grid of benefits ("Save time", "Share safely", "Search documents", etc.), the images are links that don't go anywhere (they just link to "#"), at least they are for me. Also, if these really are meant to be links, I'd make the whole box clickable, not just the images.

3) I'd trim the "Feedback" button out of the screenshots used in your help section (e.g., <http://www.docley.com/help/createfolder.html>). Personally I think they are distracting and make it harder to follow the breaks between screenshots.

4) I find the tiny document icons a little confusing or misleading. I'd test it with more users than just me, but you might consider adding some text or tweaking the icons a bit. In particular:

a) The icon you're using for "rename this file" suggests "edit" to me. You might want something more like these [http://images.google.com/images?q=rename&imgsz=i](http://images.google.com/images?q=rename&imgsz=i).

b) The icon you're using for "preview" suggests "search" to me. Maybe just adding a document icon to it might help (e.g., [http://images.google.com/images?q=preview&imgsz=i](http://images.google.com/images?q=preview&imgsz=i)) but personally I still see that as search.

c) I'm not sure what the "Usages" icon is supposed to display. From the icon (a little bar graph) I had expected statistics on the number of times the document has been viewed or something like that (for instance, what bit.ly displays for information on a URL). I guess that is what it is displaying, but it is in a log format that seems inappropriate, especially given the icon you're using. (And I had to look at this a couple of times to realize that you had a download history there, it looks like a commit history to me, something like what I'd expect behind the "Versions" icon.) I'm not sure "usages" is a real word, maybe just "usage" or "use" (although that's easily confused with the verb) or "statistics" would be better?

5) A little bug I noticed: From your help pages (e.g. <http://www.docley.com/help/docleyhelp.html>) and presumably anywhere you have a subdirectory in the URL your logo link is broken. You probably want to change  in your header template to . On a related note, you might tweak your 404 page to be a little more helpful. It's not currently branded, there's no search or browse suggestions, and there's not even a link back to the homepage. Non technical users might be confused: The only viable option is to click the back button and it seems entirely possible that users may be following a link to your site from an external one so that back takes them off your site entirely.

Good luck and keep iterating!

</comment><comment><USER12> Can't see how this would ever replace dropbox + google docs for me.

</comment><comment><USER13> What does it do that a shared drive does not?

<comment><AUTHOR> Quick Full content searching. You can share with people outside of your network.

Also you don't need a sysadmin to install and manage a shared drive.

<comment><USER13> Sharing is a plus. If you can do search better than Google Desktop I would be very surprised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A link would have been clever.

</comment><comment><USER14> Remove 'Username', make username == email.

Remove 'Confirm password'. Instead email the password they entered when confirming via email.

Remove 'timezone'. Figure it out based on their IP.

Make this into 3 columns.

<comment><USER15> Please don't ever e-mail someone their password. It breaks my heart.

<comment><USER14> Why not? It's a document storage site. No company with any real important information is going to store it here, nor personal information.

<comment><USER16> Because it's good practice, and some users use the same password for more than one site. If you blame that on the user, you're never going to win, since the human mind has limited capacity for remembering such trifles as passwords.

Besides, how do you know what information is going to be stored here? Some people might want to use it for Top Sekrit Files.

<comment><USER17> just use openid</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk's First Tesla Solar Roof Is Here, and It Looks Amazing - <AUTHOR> https://www.inverse.com/article/35022-elon-musk-tesla-solar-roof-photos-amazing <comment><USER2> They do look very nice. Can't wait to see the other two styles installed.</comment>


Why Do Colleges Need A Law For Free Digital Textbooks When We Have The Internet? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/01/why-do-colleges-need-a-law-for-free-digital-textbooks-when-we-have-the-internet/

<comment><USER2> > Why Do Colleges Need A Law For Free Digital Textbooks When We Have The > Internet?

That's easy to answer -- the Internet is a spectacularly unreliable research resource. By contrast, a textbook, digital or otherwise, costly or free, is the responsibility of its author, not a random, anonymous collection of posters with as many motivations as identities.

If the textbook turns out to be wrong, the author can be held to account. If the Internet turns out to be wrong, who do we blame? Answer: the fool who trusted it.</comment>


The 2018 XPS 13 Developer's Edition - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/12/dells-2018-xps-13-de-the-best-out-of-the-box-linux-laptop-gets-the-best-os/ <comment><USER2> I think the X1 Carbon is a better machine. Lighter, larger, non-reflective screen. Much better keyboard. The trade off is max 2k resolution, but I prefer it over the Dell's screen which is too reflective.

</comment><comment><USER3> 16GB RAM max? USB-C only? Doesn't really seem like a 'developer' machine...

<comment><USER3> Why downvotes? Both of these issues are mentioned in the article itself...</comment></comment>


Why 2020 is the year of privacy - <AUTHOR> https://decrypt.co/17846/why-2020-is-the-year-of-privacy <comment><USER2> That mind app is pretty cool. Have already requested about 15 services delete my data</comment>


Resist that calling. It's probably not your purpose in life - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@FredSwaniker/resist-that-calling-it-s-probably-not-your-purpose-in-life-1dd33a297185#.2r5qnarwc <comment><USER2> > _Am I uniquely positioned, more than almost anyone else in the world, to > make this happen?_

How many people can legitimately answer "yes" to this question about anything?

Maybe believing that it is true, regardless of reality, is the important part.

</comment><comment><USER3> The way you figure out the answer to those 3 questions is, very often, by pursuing the other 99% of callings. What else are you going to do with your time? Work in a cube? Sit around twiddling your thumbs?</comment>


Patch Adams: A smile is not enough for saving the world - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO1C1TnMsOo

<comment><USER2> I would be very interested in seeing how this video fares in HN. Not a very common video for entrpreneurs, where getting money is the main focus.

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like it didn't go anywhere. Oh well.

<comment><USER2> Yep it looks like that. It is sad, it is a good interview.</comment></comment></comment>


Hacker Takes Millions of SC Citizens' Personal Info - <AUTHOR> http://www.wltx.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=206768 <comment><USER2> Hackers create, crackers destroy. Get it right next time.</comment>