How the Man finally brought e-gold down - <AUTHOR> http://stakeventures.com/articles/2008/07/22/the-man-finally-brought-e-gold-down

<comment><USER2> eGold was a remarkable financial institution in that it focused so much on providing a service to their customers. They were a servant, not of the government, not of the regulatory powers that be, but of their customers. This is rare. Try to make a payment to an online poker site from your bank account if you want to see how your bank's commitment to their customers stacks up against eGold.

Sadly, eGold was shut down. It was too dangerous to the authority's power for it to be allowed to exist. Epiphyte corp. can only exist in a fictional universe outside of the watchful gaze of Uncle Sam.

<comment> tsetse-fly What's with all of the conspiracy theories?

I don't think people grasp how easy and widely e-gold was used to launder money. It was THE premier way to move money if you were involved with any sort of electronic fraud.

All you had to do was cash-out someone's bank account then wire the money to an e-gold affiliate, who deposits it into your online account. All transactions are irreversible. e-gold kept minimal records and after the money enters an offshore account, the government has little chance of recovery.

There were millions of dollars being moved through e-gold with fraud. They purposely made the process easy with as little verification as needed. Their market was criminals. I'm sure most of their profit came out of transaction fees related to fraud.

Where's the innovation? Their site looks like shit. They just managed to find a loophole to look legitimate and survive this long. I'm not surprised that the owners plead guilty to conspiracy to engage in money laundering.

</comment></comment><comment> patrickg-zill What is surprising to me, is how no law enforcement exists at any level for individuals who get scammed on the Net. I am talking about eBay scams, all those spam emails etc.

Yet create a company where the IRS might not get every penny due either to e-gold's actual gold appreciation or money transfers, and see how rapidly the Feds react.

</comment><comment><USER3> we at Tipjoy are painfully aware of this story

<comment><USER4> Why "painfully"?

<comment><USER5> I'd guess that any service that transfers funds between people would be susceptible to charges of money laundering. Tipjoy doesn't currently make it easy to transfer funds, but they would like to:

<http://tipjoy.com/faq/#q8>

<comment><USER3> The regulation here in question and our policies are a cause and effect. That's why it's painful. We'll solve this soon though. It's a top priority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Which is a better commodity to back a currency?

\- Gold, where quantity is dependant on the supply of a single good dug out of the ground.

\- Debt, where quantity is dependant on the supply of all goods (including labour).

<comment><AUTHOR> I used to think Gold, but fundamentally I've come to believe that debt is probably the better choice as it promotes growth.

Paraphrasing Neal Stephenson debt based currencies are backed by the ingenuity of the people, which is always growing and improving. Asset backed currency such as gold are backed by a finite amount of gold.

Where gold still has it's value is in it's transparency. No one controls gold, but with say the USD or EUR corruptable entities known as governments can either print more money or take more loans devaluing the currencies. The history is littered with cases of this happening. I'm personally pretty bullish on the dollar, but who knows.

Another problem is that they have government enforced monopolies, which kills competition on the local level.

Just look at the current attacks by the US DOJ on e-gold and on the [http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/legal/raidalert_11_27_2007.h...](http://www.libertydollar.org/ld/legal/raidalert_11_27_2007.htm) .

<comment><USER2> >Asset backed currency such as gold are backed by a finite amount of gold.

Currency units are somewhat arbitrary. If you don't believe that the market needs a central technician for it to run properly (I don't, but I'm in the minority), then I'm pretty sure a modern economy could be run on currency backed by almost any commodity.

What most people fear and distrust about fiat currency is putting one legal monopoly in charge of such an important part of the economy. It's too much power. A gold-backed currency takes that power out of the hands of any one man.

I advocate that we should use whatever currency the market chooses. I want the market to have the legal rights to make that choice. Historically this was the case until legal currency monopolies were created to fund wars.

<comment><USER7> I agree. Society would be much better (fairer, wealthier, more peaceful) if there was a separation of economy and state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Bit gold will provide a safer alternative:

<http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html>

<comment><USER9> Can't botnets generate a near-infinite supply of bit gold?

<comment><USER8> No, the bits are solutions to hard computational puzzles, and they are securely timestamped and published, so that you always know exactly what the money supply is. More on the markets and economics of bit gold here:

[http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold- markets.ht...](http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2008/04/bit-gold-markets.html)

<comment><USER9> I admit that my understanding of some of these concepts like futures contracts is negligible, but it still seems bad if, say, 90% of all bit gold is generated by criminals at no cost to them, while regular people have to expend their own resources to create (or buy) bit gold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's incredible how quickly HN has transformed into reddit.

<comment><USER11> Can you elaborate? I thought this was an interesting read.

<comment><USER12> There is a realm of things that are 'interesting' but 'very controversial', in the sense that most mainstream economists, right or left, view the gold standard as more or less nutty, and of course, the 'nuts' don't like being viewed as such. The ensuing discussion is never pretty, and is completely unrelated to hacker news. Some of us would prefer to just not see it here. You can talk about that kind of thing here:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Whether you believe in the gold standard or not, this article was not about that.

There are many things they did that are very applicable to current startups. In particular governance models and transparency are very much issues that current startups need to worry about.

The point about Know Your Customer is also an important one. In the 90's when e-gold started there was a lot of experimenting with this. Most people in the industry were weary about government involvement, but didn't think it was going to affect them.

At some point it isn't inconceivable that social networks, email service providers and others will be required to follow similar Know Your Customer procedures to banks. Several countries are already starting to institute this.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Prefer the Unary Plus (+) Operator over ParseInt() - <AUTHOR> https://www.bennadel.com/blog/3803-i-prefer-the-unary-plus-operator-over-parseint-and-parsefloat-when-coercing-strings-to-numbers-in-javascript.htm <comment><USER2> Please prefer the much more straightforward `Number()` native constructor.

Also, not sure if the title was edited after submission, but the article is titled "I prefer", not "Prefer".</comment>


Ask HN: Do solar panels work better at a higher altitude? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Some factors to consider.

1\. Reduced distance to the sun meaning the amount of solor collected increases.

2\. Less interference from atmosphere, clouds and smog

Cons.

1\. The distance reduction is minute. The highest you could go and still be considered on earth is the peak of everest at 8.8 km. The earth is 150,000,000 km from the sun. The trig fails me but this is close enough to zero as to make no difference.

2\. Reduction in things covering the panel should yield a better increase in voltage.

I'd say being in the middle of a desert, at sea level, would be much better than the top of Everest.

Also, beingcloser to the equator will yield better results than elevation due to angle of the sun's ray.</comment>


Twilight Imperium, a board game with meal breaks (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/08/twilight-imperium-a-board-game-with-meal-breaks/ <comment><USER2> _Twilight Imperium is now in its third edition, having grown mightily since its previous two iterations._

Fourth edition [0] is available for pre-order from Fantasy Flight Games and some people supposedly got copies at GenCon a week or so ago. There's a discussion of the differences between 3rd and 4th editions on BGG [1].

[0] [https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/233078/twilight- imperium...](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/233078/twilight-imperium- fourth-edition)

[1] [https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1828352/differences-3rd- edi...](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1828352/differences-3rd-edition)</comment>


Why you should take your 20's seriously - <AUTHOR> http://jasonevanish.com/2012/11/01/why-you-should-take-your-20s-seriously/ <comment><USER2> I "agree", but draw the exact opposite conclusions.

You should take your 20's seriously... because it's the only time in your life that you _aren't_ encumbered by building a career, having kids, etc.

So you should take your 20's to do the things that you won't be able to do later. Work as a bartender, play in a band, travel the world on the cheap, teach English abroad, date the kind of people you wouldn't marry. You don't have serious responsibilities, so take advantage of that while you can.

Don't waste your 20's "building a career". You've got your 30's and 40's and 50's to do that. Don't be in a rush to have kids too soon.

Obviously, don't throw your 20's away. But spend them doing life-experience- focused things, not career- or family-focused.

And this gets at the author's third point: "Your brain finishes forming in your 20′s". If that's even true (although I doubt it), then you'd better get in all those varied life experiences sooner rather than later. Learn a second language, learn to cook, learn to play music.

Don't waste your 20's on grinding away at traditionally career-oriented stuff. That part of your brain is probably already fine. Your 20's is the time to look for diversity in your life, not to focus narrowly on any particular part. You've got all the decades afterward to work on narrow refinement and career progression...

<comment><USER3> I'm a 29-year old male who spent his 20s building a career I love and now has a 6-month old daughter, so this quote:

> Don't waste your 20's "building a career". You've got your 30's and 40's and > 50's to do that. Don't be in a rush to have kids too soon.

Doesn't really make sense to me. If you don't build a career and finances in your 20s, you either can't afford to have a kid in your early 30s or you have one and can't provide the life and opportunities they should have. And it seems you skipped over the part about women having extreme difficulties having children later than their mid-30s, or the children they have are at a higher risk of birth defects and miscarriages. Typically, a guy by himself cannot create a child without a woman, so if you're going to party in your 20s and not think about finances and a career until your 30s, and kids later than that, you should know going in that your partner will be need to be much younger than you to accomplish this.

I don't mean to ask personal questions here, but it seems apropos considering your guidance: how old are you? do you have a spouse? a son or daughter? Does your guidance match up with how you've lived your life, and are you now successfully balancing a budding career and family in your older years after living your 20s in various countries like China, France, Brazil and others?

<comment><USER4> I more or less just came into my 30s and I spent my 20s pretty much exclusively on computers, studying and working and playing. Computer were pretty much 95% of my life. Last time I changed job, I more than doubled my after-tax salary and I have not once had to go through the process of really applying; whenever I showed up to HR things were pretty much decided already in advance, they just had to keep up appearances. I have always been the guy everyone goes to for help, I have more than once fundamentally changed the way people work, think and approach problems for the better. Where I have worked for the last 5 to 7 years, I am pretty much the last line "of defense", so to speak... because every time something stopped working and I could not figure it out, it would go on taking the support team of one of the biggest names in IT literally a year trying to pinpoint the issue only to not being able to come up with a solution in the end. This is not meant to boast, I am working towards a point:

So I would say my "career" is there... yet my personal life and emotional happiness is in complete ruins; while my age and point in career match at "30", emotionally and as a person, a human being, I feel like I am 12. I feel like I have completely wasted my 20s, I have never had a chance to actually grow up, I just worked on "career" which is what everyone told me to; the rest of the time I sedated myself with video games and food and otherwise spending the money I had made to numb down any and all bad feelings. I don't think I could ever get these 10 years back and grow into a strong minded, healthy human being now that the time is gone. Everyone at my age now is lightyears ahead of me both emotionally and in terms of experience and other skills.

That is why from my own experience, I cannot imagine having the opposite "20s" to be ANY worse because at least if you "wasted" your 20s, at least then you had fun and had good moments to think back on and you matured as a human being but you got something out of those 10 years and your 30s are early enough to be working on "career" with all the skills and the strength you gathered by the experiences you made in your 20s.

For me, now, I feel completely stuck and wasted, at a complete emotional and existential low point of no return. I have to try and use what little energy I have left to battle against all sorts of addictive behaviour and means of escape that I developed in those lonely, hard working 10 years. Whatever money I am making does not matter because I don't really get anything valuable and truly good from it. And even if I desperately tried to change now, I would have to invest all that energy while everyone else is free to use the same energy to lead a happy and fulfilled, enjoyable life. I just cannot win anymore.

If I could do it over again, I would do nothing but drink, party, meet people, be BOLD and strong, teach myself more about computers and do all that in a foreign country and develop a personality before anything else. Go play in your 20s, everyone else is pushing you towards "career" anyway so at least you yourself need to take very good care of yourself as a human being and develop that side and make sure you get enough "play".

<comment><USER5> Speaking from the other side here, I started programming at eight and abandoned that in my late teens for partying, sex and adventure through my twenties. Despite landing a scholarship at a respectable school, I walked out the door two months later to go chase a girl.

It's only been now in my thirties that I've taken programming and such seriously, because it's suddenly far more fun to me than social games. There's this vague sense of regret much like you're describing, except inverted -- I could have probably accomplished a LOT had I stayed on point. Despite that, I'm still successful by standards I set out for myself in my early twenties and I've got some rather ambitious plans for my forties, yet.

At the end of the day: I've been here since Usenet was a thing, dotcoms are still as hilarious as they were in the 90s and I honestly think it's just the media fixation on the notion of precocious children that perpetuates this culture obsessed with how we're all supposedly dead at thirty -- when really, that's when many creative individuals begin to hit their stride as many artists discover their talents later in life.

Really, people should stop worrying about any of this shit, as most of it is just talk from people trying to sandbag you.

+1 for being brave enough to talk so candidly.

<comment><USER6> >There's this vague sense of regret much like you're describing, except inverted...

Let me tell you a little joke, it is a running joke in our family. A young man goes to his father for advice: "Should I get married to my girlfriend Jenny or stay single?" Father replies "Son...My dear, dear son... whatever you do, you'll end up regretting it."

But when we are not joking, the advice we give each other is usually "well... whatever you do, things should turn out okay". And that is in fact how it has been.

So, IMHO:

>Really, people should stop worrying about any of this shit

is exactly right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Contra: you only live once. The risk with spending so much of your youth building for a future - in essence, living for the tomorrow you're trying to create - is that you won't want it when you get there.

When you're young, you're at the point at which you most likely have fewer worries of any kind than you will in the rest of your life. And you won't appreciate this until it's gone. A slightly more advanced career is a poor substitute.

I'm not arguing in favour of feckless youth. In fact, you should be serious about one thing - not wasting your time. But building a career that you abandon in your 30s or 40s may also be a waste of time.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. One thing I've noticed about my own life is how hard even 1 year out of your career track hurts you both professionally (skill set) and personally (income/wealth). I was doing financial services programming for a big bank as my first job right out of college before the housing bust. I ended up getting laid off and enjoying the "funemployment" people talk about: 6 month full severance, unemployment at the top rate after that, living at home with the parents, no debt, and doing whatever strikes my fancy.

I set an upper bound of 1 year maximum to be out of the field of programming. When I came back (should have kept programming while unemployed, stupid, I know) not only had my skill set deteriorated but so did my market rate. Out of college my salary was $98,000. By the time I had gotten back into the work force my salary was $65,000. It took about 1.5 years of hard work and a lot of overtime to get back to where I was. And during this time my peers that stayed employed have grown a lot both in terms skill set and market rate. So basically because I took 1 year off, I lost ~2.5-3 years of my career because I had to work back to where I was before.

I think if I were to get a do-over I would have not have taken a year off. But the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, as they say.

<comment><USER9> Did you go back to the same field and responsibilities? I'm taking almost 2.5 years off but I don't really think I'll suffer a set-back.

<comment><USER10> So much of it has to do with where the economy is.

Looking for a job in 2000 vs 2001 was a change in what you could demand as a salary. Same in 2008 vs 2009.

<comment><USER9> Well that makes sense. Also would make sense that this is possibly why he got laid off in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good luck trying to tell other people how they should live their lives.

I can tell you that there are probably a hundred things I could've done better with my time in my twenties. However there was no way that I would have known then what I would be like today and what makes me happy now. Back then I thought I would keep gigging in bands and I'd scrape together a record label and have a long career in music. That's what made me happy at the time and what I sought out to do. How could I have known that I would change? I have a wife now and a daughter on the way, I've become a mild-mannered programmer who enjoys mathematics and literature, and rather than getting pissed on a Friday night and making a lot of noise I like to hang out with my friends and play board games. But if I was wiser I might have went to university and worked on getting a PhD then I'd probably be better off now, today. Hindsight...

What I'm saying is that humans are terrible planners. We're good at adapting and adjusting but we can never seem to be able to accurately predict outcomes. I think that we glorify those people who seem to far surpass the status quo and bend their stories into myth. It's romantic to think that Einstein or Steve Jobs had set out to change the world when they were young but if we're honest about their history it's more likely that they drifted towards those things and all the right pieces were in place at the right time to make great things happen.

And it doesn't end when you hit thirty. I'm still as ambitious as ever and I see new currents that I'd like to follow that I would never have thought possible before. You don't just become a dumb, boring, cantankerous old person over night. Quite the contrary; I find that my tastes are far more refined, I can see dead-ends before going down the path, and I am more adverse to wasting my time. You start to see patterns in the ocean and can navigate the seas with ease.

So plan all you want but be prepared to fight the current and the winds!

<comment><USER12> Beautifully written, thanks for the insights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I disagree with a lot of the comments - and with the article point.

We should not think about taking any age seriously or not, but of the bigger picture instead, ie one's goals in life.

Unfortunately, they are not written down for you, and they can be quite hard to find.

There are various algorithm that may work, but all I see in the article and the comments are basically 2 opposite proposals :

\- plan A: explore in your twenties to make sure you properly identify your goals

\- plan B : commit to your career in your twenties to take advantage of compounding interest (in life as in money)

But we all know alternatives approaches - like iterating between exploration (finding a local maxima) and exploitation (taking advantage of this local maxima)

I guess it all depends if you have already found your fancy, and all longs it will take to get you bored out of it, but it seems to be a much better approach - especially if you do not ignore the money aspect of your fancies (ie starting a band might be fun, but odds of financial return are low)

Also, it seems to me a lot of the comments insist about family and children. These are individual decisions - not givens, something the author clearly stated ("if having a family is part of your life's goals").

Fortunately for men, there is no age limit (and if we keep our rate of technological progress in stem cells and differentiation into germinal lines, there is no reason why it couldn't be also possible for women)

Currently, at least for 50% of the readers, age should not be factored in - opening the door for more iteration of the explore/exploit loop, with the always present opportunity to have kids.

I guess I don't understand or I'm missing something, maybe like the preference of dating someone of a similar age (which might then impose its own preference on optimal child bearing age)

<comment><USER14> _Fortunately for men, there is no age limit_

Maybe. Some newer evidence shows older fathers are more likely to pass on genetic mutations.

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044481270457760...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444812704577605282821235136.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is rather straw-man-ish. He equates having a fun, care-free life as ... working at Starbucks.

I don't know anyone who's ever said, "Well, why don't you just work at Starbucks for a decade? It'll be fun and you can get a real job when you're 30!"

What's _actually_ said is more like, "Take a few months and a backpack and go travel somewhere" or "start a company with no idea if it'll pan out". Party. Start a band. Chase some girls [or guys]. Read a lot.

It doesn't mean "throw away a decade" -- it means "do the important things that it'll be harder for you to get away with if 10 years from now you have a family and mortgage."

I visited over 30 countries in my 20s. Even if that would have kept me from advancing my career (it didn't), I wouldn't trade that for being a year closer to a promotion in an IT job.

<comment><USER16> "What's actually said is more like, "Take a few months and a backpack and go travel somewhere" or "start a company with no idea if it'll pan out". Party. Start a band. Chase some girls [or guys]. Read a lot."

I am in my 30's and I hope to continue/start doing some of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ugh. I've been having this conversation a lot lately.

> Your 20′s lay the groundwork for success in the rest of your career.

Can also be said as: While in your 20's, you should start living like you're in your 30's, 40's and 50's, so you can do that and only that for your entire life.

I completely reject that way of thinking.

There are many things we all want to do in our 20's we will not want to do later in life, which is all the more reason to do them in your 20's, lest you never get to do them at all.

As anecdotal evidence, I spent 2 years of my life from 27-29 driving from Alaska to Argentina, because I wanted to. Will I want to sleep in a tent for >500 nights when I'm 50? doubtful. Am I extremely happy that I did? You bet, best experience of my life. Did it "harm" my career? No, I'm working right now as a Software Engineer.

<comment><USER18> Absolutely agree with you. I went on a wild adventure through my 20s, spending time in Alaska, working as a baker, managing an organic farm for several years - living for the most part from the seat of my pants just following what felt right.

I'm sure I sacrificed some aspects of a 'career' because of it but I had an incredible life experience. And when I turned 30 I met the love of my life, finally committed full time to developing software (after a number of fits and starts) and never looked back.

I never spend a day feeling like I 'missed out on something'. Rather, I'm really enjoying my life where it is at right now, cool career, wonderful wife and 2 1/2 year old son.

I do kind of look forward to when my son gets a little older though so I can get a van and take him on some wild adventures ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here's some insight which I had with a senior partner at a "big 4 consulting" firm and their attitude to age.

The buy up highly educated people in their 20's because they're cheap and eager to work. In fact, they're cheaper than most people when you do an hourly analysis (probably cheaper than cleaners).

BUT... the simple fact is, they also know they burn out by their 30's. Life takes over. The doubt. What am I doing with my life? Why don't I have a family? Maybe I missed out on other things my friends were doing?

By that stage, they no longer care about you because they've got a new batch of cheap 20's burning the midnight oil.

However, the good news is that they noticed that there's a reversal when people reach their 40's. They've got experience in life and business. They're no longer in doubt mode.

Ironically, these organizations have standard pitches to sell the career delusion. "People are our greatest assets" and similar rhetoric. The reality is ... THE DO NOT GIVE A CRAP ABOUT YOUR CAREER. Careers do NOT exist. It's like selling women the idea of being a "homemaker" in the 1950's.

I have noticed that people are more likely to be successful in their 30's and 40's (read some evidence that suggested that too but can't remember the reference). People getting rich in their 20's is an aberration.

Neuroplasticity (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_That_Changes_Itself>) also suggests that we never stop learning, so I have to disagree with point 3 "Your brain finishes forming in your 20′s." Dribble! That's like the rhetoric about careers. People just get lazy.

What people have going for them in their 20's is no commitment and all the time in the world. But no experience which can also be a disadvantage. If you can recreate "no commitment" in your 30's-40's (20's + real experience), then you should excel because your ideas are more mature and hopefully clearer!

You're more likely to be successful as an actor in your 30's for the same reasons!

</comment><comment><USER20> This is a delicate subject because one can view it as a call for those in their 20s to make the most of that time, which is a fine message, to something tantamount to ageism.

While it's true that those in their 30s or older can be closed to new idea, that's not because they're "old", it's because they're people and some people are closed-minded.

I find a lot of these complaints are more about the cultural and lifestyle gap between those in their 20s and those who are older.

I remember the 80s. I'm not particularly interested in going bar-hopping. I find most social media to be an annoying drivel from people who vary between exhibitionists to just liking the sound of their own voices (everybody is talking, nobody is listening). I don't have that same sense of enthusiasm because for me everything isn't new. Most things really are derivative. To paraphrase something Don Draper said, I've reached a point on my life where I think I've basically met every kind of person there is. That's not to say that people can't surprise you. They can. It's just that you realize they're not as different as they once seemed.

This is exacerbated in the startup world since so many are cut from the same cloth: valedictorians in high school, magna cum laude, graduates of Stanford/MIT/CMU/Columbia, interned at Facebook/Amazon/Microsoft/Google, now working for one of those or some hot startup. It's a whittled down group of the technocratic elite who often-times don't really know how privileged and lucky they are.

At Google there tends to be two kinds of people: those who have worked in the outside world, particularly in Corporate America, and know how lucky they are and how different this is. And those that haven't and think this is just how the world is.

I don't begrudge them their successes and accomplishments but it is a form of cultural isolation--even inbreeding.

All of this means there tends to be a smaller set of common social norms with the "20s set".

At the same time, I pick up new technologies, languages and frameworks as much as I ever did. Possibly more so. Just now I've been doing a lot of AngularJS. That certainly didn't exist in my 20s. While I may not have the same youthful exuberance, I have experience and can draw lessons and parallels from programming in every stage of the Web's development (from CGI scripts on).

I will say this to those planning to have children: do it while you're young and it has nothing do with fertility. Children simply take an enormous amount of energy and commitment and this is far easier to bounce back from the younger you are.

As for the rest of it? Take another comment on this thread:

> Once somebody is fully set in their ways it's almost impossible to change > their mind without divine intervention

That's fairly blatant ageism but, more than that, it's from someone who only knows people like him- or herself that wants to surround themselves with the same. Like I said: commonality and shared social norms are really what's in play there.

<comment><USER21> I completely agree with what cletus says. I'm 43 years old today. Some things just feel uninteresting because I started doing them too young. Interestingly programming is not one of them, I have been doing it for 30 years. On the other hand, I have been rock climbing for 7 years and I'm better than ever [in case you care: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olEgfe4cYuU> ]. It still feels pretty new to me. I know 25-year-olds who started climbing as kids, reached their potential and lost interest.

Everyone is different, every decade in a person's life is different. In my personal case, my work between 30 and 40 was far better than what I did between 20 and 30. I feel pretty inspired right now.

This type of post is the stuff that you want to say to yourself at every point in your life (you can only make the best of the present, after all). It doesn't really work as advice to others.

<comment><USER22> > On the other hand, I have been rock climbing for 7 years and I'm better than > ever

OT(as far as the OP is concerned) questions from someone who is considering taking up climbing.

1\. Isn't what you are doing in the video called bouldering?

2\. Do you usually climb in your jeans? I am wondering does it allow you required flexibility?

3\. Do you work on your core for climbing or climbing works your core?

4\. What would you say about artificial walls and bouldering arenas for a beginner?

<comment><USER23> Way OT but let's do this. Note: climb V5/6 currently.

1\. Yes that is bouldering, but bouldering is a subset of rock climbing, as is sport climbing.

2\. Bouldering is frequently about balance and power, for some problems flexibility isn't as crucial. I climb in jeans outdoors, sometimes it's the best option as rock can quickly cut through lighter materials. My jeans are skinny and stretchy.

3\. Climbing works your core, simply by climbing more and more.

4\. Don't play the grades game, don't buy a hangboard. Go into a gym and have fun on the boulder. Don't try too hard and hurt your tendons, they take years to grow accustom to the stress induced by hard bouldering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Most startup advice is also good advice for 20-somethings.

Get to an MVP quickly: Find a way to practice your target profession as soon as possible. (Don't spend hundreds of thousands getting a law degree just to discover you hate the actual work.) This is easy for programmers: just start building stuff before applying to the CS program.

After MVP, iterate quickly: So you know Ruby? Time to learn another language, or about compilers, or about web typography, or about finance. Don't stand still.

Be ready to pivot: If you discover you find your work unfulfilling, the time to change is now. Don't wait to switch careers until your 40s.

Don't prematurely optimize: Your 20s should be about gaining skills and experience, not about getting big paychecks. The best paying job a 20 year old can get might be in construction or the military, but this may limit your upside down the road.

<comment><USER25> _The best paying job a 20 year old can get might be in construction or the military, but this may limit your upside down the road._

From a purely financial perspective, money now is better than money later though. A 20 year old who secures a job that nets him enough to save $15,000 per year until retirement will ultimately have a lifetime net savings of about the same as someone who finally finds a job that pays enough to save $50,000 per year at the age of 40.

<comment><USER26> And as for the military, cashing out at twenty years of service with a $47,000 annual pension (starting immediately and inflation-adjusted over time) plus the G.I. Bill is not a bad deal at all.

The downside is that you have to be in the military for 20 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think this is sort of bullshit

first shouldn't you take every discrete chunk of your life seriously?

to the degree to which this is true, its true because we tell ourselves its true, most people don't reinvent themselves past their 20s because they choose not to, not because the obsticles standing in their way are insurmountable

</comment><comment><USER28> Interesting post. There is also other school of thought:

\- in 20s you party

\- in 30s you raise family

\- in 40s you build business

And, don't worry: if you are very creative in 20s you will be the same creative person with new ideas in 40s.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wholeheartedly disagree and I might add that this is bullshit. Do whatever the hell you want to do with your twenties. If your idea of a perfect life is a flawless career, then go for it. Go where your interests take you. As long as you get bread on the table and don't bury yourself in debt, there is no reason why you should feel you are wasting some grandiose opportunity. Life isn't only about work and money.

</comment><comment><USER30> The irony of life is that you don't truly understand what is important in your 20's (or any age) until you are much older. Not only do we fail to understand things until we get some outside perspective - but also our priorities change.

In my 40's I wish I had done certain career things differently. But I can imagine myself in my 80's wishing I had goofed off more, traveled the world and not taken anything too seriously. As the old joke goes, not too many people are on their death bed wishing they had worked harder.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've spent a considerable amount of time thinking about this, ever since the topic came up on reddit about why so few people in their 20's seem to "have their shit together."

I think it comes down to two reasons. The first one is huge, but its essentially luck. I think the reason I'm even _afforded_ the opportunity to take my 20's seriously is almost completely happenstantial.

Looking at my friends and (distant) family I sometimes feel guilty because _nothing bad has ever really happened to me in my life_ , whereas they've had to put up with all kinds of weird shit. For many people I know not being able to take their 20's seriously as powerhouse career years is sort-of excusable. They were spending them trying to survive, or raise a family all-too-soon.

But me? I'm young (24), well educated, I live in a huge Victorian-era house near main street nearly for free, programming job, walk to work every day, have a book deal (boring HTML5 book), brag, brag, etc, etc

But somehow I feel I'm just infinitely lucky. Lucky that my parents are two normal, well adjusted people. Lucky that I could be awkward and nerdy as all shit through middle school and high school and nobody was ever unpleasant to me. I was never bullied. No weird drama ever entered my life. I exited college with $0 but debt-free, thanks to Bank of Dad, who carefully engineered my experience to be basically broke but never in-the-hole so long as I worked (got an internship every summer and winter).

Lucky lucky lucky. Thanks everyone in my life so far. Really.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

 _On the flip side_ I think that such a lifestyle (very career focused 20's) is seen as unattractive to a lot of 20-somethings. At the least, I think most people in my age range would describe people like me as _boring_ (though I am never really bored). I spend most of my days reading, writing, sitting in cafes, programming, or doing art things. Right now and for several more months, its nearly 100% career activities. If I had to put together a dating website profile, it probably wouldn't look particularly attractive to other 20-somethings.

Put another way, most of my hobbies are either career related or solitary acts. Not that people can't appreciate them, just that none of them are exciting, and most of my 20-something friends (none of which IRL are programmers, I lead a lonely career here in NH) that proclaim me to be one of the few who has their shit together would also _not want to be me._

None of them want to work desk jobs and then go home and work some more. They want to work in food/bar services or have a whatever-job, drop it at 5pm and go do fun 20-something things. Career development it seems isn't fun to most 20-somethings, socializing at bars is, moving out to Montana to climb things and work for a harvest season is, saving up to hide away in Peru for a year is, writing music with friends while working retail is, but not career development. Not to disparage these things, it just a sampling of their goals.

<comment><USER32> Great post. I also consider myself very lucky, much the same way as you. I've had some setbacks, but nothing that couldn't be handled. I also feel this pull from these two lifestyles, the "boring" stable desk job, or traveling the planet, code whatever I want and live life like there's no tomorrow. My fiancée is two years older than me (27), so that puts some pressure on getting kids and settling down fast. I've managed to save up what I consider a lot of money, but I feel the need to use that towards buying an apartment or house.

<comment><USER33> Other than being single, I'm in the exact same position as you. I'm pulled between building a career and travelling the world.

I graduated last spring and spent the summer backpacking in Asia before starting a boring desk job. I live with my parents still so I'm saving almost all of my income.

Now I'm seriously considering quitting in six months and heading back to Asia until I figure out what I want to do. My job is terrible, especially since I was effectively lied to about what I'd be doing, but I'm more or less getting paid to do nothing. In six months I'll have enough money to spend a _year_ backpacking across SE Asia, Eastern Europe, South America, wherever.

Or I could just quit now and go find a job I like. I'm honestly not sure what to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Life is too short to do something you hate. Do whatever you need to to find out what you're passionate about. Building a career around that will be 100X more fulfilling.

As Steve Jobs said, "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "2) Statistically, women need to have all their children by 35.

According to the author, a woman's ability to get pregnant plummets starting in her mid-thirties. To make matters worse, the odds of a miscarriage for a woman over 35 is one in four."

Our family doctor gave the odds as 3 in 5.

In practical experience, I know of four friends who have miscarried at 35 (after being pregnant for over 3 months), out of about 11 who had kids at that age.

My wife and I have always suspected that the 3 out of 5 statistic also includes miscarriages in the first two months of pregnancy where you might not have been sure you were pregnant or late.

<comment><USER26> The one-in-four statistic is for miscarriages after the sixth week of pregnancy. In the general population, the percentage of miscarriages is 15%, or about one-in-six.

One thing to keep in mind is that a miscarriage is not the end of the world. Heartbreaking, yes, but it's not too late to try again.

<comment><USER34> I think that the word "miscarriage" carries extreme connotations with it, you instantly imagine giving birth to a dead baby.

In Germany, if a fetus or embryo does not continue development at an early-ish stage and is expelled by the womb, midwives (I used to date one for 2 years) usually use the word "Schwangerschaftsabbruch", which translates to "discontinuation of pregnancy".

I think that's a word which much better describes what's happening without the emotional baggage and which might prepare people better to what's going on - my girlfriend is 37 and we're trying to have kids but it's hard, and I know that we're going to run into a few "discontinuations" before anything is going to happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The issue I have with seeing life advice posts is that I've begun to see this dichotomy between "follow your heart" advice and "follow your head" advice. And I personally have a split between the two: my degree is in CS and my current job is in programming, but by "pie in the sky" dreams involve writing and performing music. I happen to have more knowledge in the former as a consequence of my degree, but I didn't really passionately pursue any major side projects. (This hindered my job hunt slightly, but I still managed to circumvent it via personal connections. It does pay to know people, in my experience.)

As I was closing in on the end of my college degree plan, I felt torn between these two seemingly divergent ends. As a result I crept into a disillusioned depression fueled by the realization that it was too late to switch degrees that wildly and by firsthand experience of the job hunt as a CS student from west Texas with little heart in the industry.

So I'm just taking solace in the fact that I'm working a job with a really short commute and a good environment where I can go home at 5:00 and pursue music as a hobby. I might even notice eventually that my life's passion doesn't land in either music or programming, and to be honest I'd be okay with that if it gave me a direction to point in. But at this point, having only graduated from college this year (turning 23 next week), it feels like I just need to to _something_. Unfortunately, I feel like I'm coasting now that I've "made it" out into the world relatively unscathed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you thought about trying to find the intersection of the two? Is there a company or something you can work on that takes advantage of both skillsets?

I think the real challenge in life is to get heart and head in alignment. It's not easy, but who said it would be?

<comment><USER35> I had put some thought in that direction, and thought about finding companies that made DAWs. However, this space turned up dead ends, at least when I was looking. The other thought I had was indie game dev, which I thought needed a bit more time investment than I had before it would pay off. (I was thinking in terms of when I was finishing college, after which I would have to escape the shadow of my parents, who can only be _so_ nurturing.)

And I like your point there about the challenge of life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I find your desire to "build a large company" interesting - I shared this until I realized that almost nobody gets out of bed in the morning because they say "I want to build and run a large company" - this is fundamentally unsustainable. Instead finding problems you care about or find interesting might be more motivating and put less pressure on your psychological well being. This helps you get rid of the time pressure you seem to be feeling and will bring a new sense of focus and purpose.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is especially true concerning the mind. The older we get the less open we are to new ideas. Once somebody is fully set in their ways it's almost impossible to change their mind without divine intervention. I just take this as a warning as somebody who is older to be open to change and be willing to embrace new ideas.

<comment><USER38> _> The older we get the less open we are to new ideas._

I agree with this point of view insofar as that's the behavior we usually observe in most people. I think it's also true that it is possible to stay open-minded your whole life and never get stuck in one way of doing things. It's not easy though, and of course we all develop habits over the course of our lives which can be very hard to shake off.

<comment><USER39> > I think it's also true that it is possible to stay open-minded your whole > life and never get stuck in one way of doing things.

What you do is be open-minded in your 20s. Then you get "set in the way" of being open-minded, never to change that.

<comment><USER40> Sounds pretty closed-minded, getting "set in the way" like that. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> On the contrary, I suggest 20s is the best time to explore who you actually are - so called "hippy" stuff. As later on it just becomes that much more difficult. Whether you end up building a great company or end up doing a regular job in your later years, it will not mean much if you did not find out who you actually are, what is your purpose in life (all those silly questions we all pondered sometimes but never actually pursued). Once explored thoroughly, and if the conclusion was that your purpose in life was to do a start-p(or startups) and establish a successful company, then it will be worth it. Otherwise, neither your startup will be successful, or if successful, your life will still be miserable. Better to figure all this out in 20s, instead of focusing primarily on your career.

</comment><comment><USER42> IMO 20-something is THE time to go for it. You'll only get more encumbered by personal expense overhead and non-monetary time commitments as you get older.

Yes, our bodies haven't kept pace with society and technology. If you ever want to have kids, ladies need to be finished having children by 35. Start before 30 but if you know you have potential fertility issues start as early as possible after getting an education. You'll only miss out on happy hour where people get fat and dissolve their their faces with alcohol anyway.

One downside is you may not feel as credible as someone older when trying to make a sale in-person. However, some older people will give you the sale because they like you because you're a younger version of them.

Another downside is establishing appropriate relationships with employees that are about your same age. Attila doesn't drink with the huns. You can't tell if they actually like you because you're paying them so you're probably not as funny as they make you feel. If you get rich they're going to hate you anyway; even if they get some of the loot too it won't be enough. That doesn't go for real partners - you need a small senior team of complementary people that live and die with the company - that's hard to find but critical.

Luck favors the prepared. You can be almost completely invisible to the world and still make enough money that it changes the course of the rest of your life. Time will pass regardless and you're probably going to be working anyway so why not place your big bets when they only affect you?

</comment><comment><USER43> I have a different take:

College Years, 18-23: This is the time to just be. You can treat college as a stressful strive-fest for meaningless grades, or you can treat it like a 4-5 year vacation. Optimize for gentleman's C's. You still get all the social and class benefits.

23-30: These are your prime productive years. This is the time to amass your fortune.

30 to death: Travel, play golf, foster community and friendships. Get married, have kids. All of these things will be much more enjoyable with some cash.

<comment> steve-howard It really just depends, doesn't it? We all regret some things, and we probably fail to appreciate some things we've done right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> An easier way to think about this is that life, like money, compounds.

Good decisions you make early in life compound and pay dividends for the rest of your life.

</comment><comment><USER45> >I need to develop as many of the skills I need to lead such a company now, because in a few years it may be difficult or almost impossible to grow in the ways necessary to handle the role.

This neurological development is completely misinterpreted. I already posted on this exact topic not that long ago, but I'll reiterate.

The poster is correct in noting neurological development does come with age in your 20s when one's frontal cortex (or lobes) of the brain fully develop.

This has nothing to do with "developing new skills", but rather its your ability to control higher-order functioning. This could range from long term planning, motivation, and inhibition towards behavior.

When you're young you're somewhat crazy and brash. This allows one to take chances, push the envelope, and reach breakthroughs. If anything this counters the poster's logic, and they should be creating a start-up in their teens instead.

With that said it works both ways. The youth lack the ability fully reason, plan, and in SOME cases think logically through a problem (in the sense of understanding the repercussions of their actions).

</comment><comment><USER46> What's the point? I'm 24 years old. Education was expensive, so I worked my way up as a programmer and web developer right out of high school. I've worked at some pretty big corporations and now I'm looking to buy a house while my friends are just getting out of University with junior developer positions while living at home. My co-workers are all around 10-20 years older than I am. I've made senior developer, but I won't be able to move into any type of management positions for another 5-10 years just because of my age. There's no additional advancement or benefits to a slightly early head start on a career. People who give advice like this probably don't remember what it was like to be this age.

My advice? If you have the chance to see the world, have a cool college experience, or the opportunity to do something unique with your life follow through with it.

Climbing the corporate ladder in any field at any age is difficult at best, but doing so at twenty? Probably one of the main drives behind talented 'kids' joining startups now days.

</comment><comment><USER47> Concepts like this seem very specific to obtain a certain desired lifestyle rather than advice on how to live.

1) Don't put off your career: While I agree it mainly correlates to two things. a. Spend as much time as you can doing what you have a drive to do. (e.g: setting yourself to be financially above or where you were when you grew up, trying to start a band, or trying to create the next major startup). c. Make sure to live below your means. (i.e: Ensure if you make 100 dollars after tax regardless of pay 25 of it is being saved. This gets harder and harder as there is a asymptote decided by the market (cost of living) and situation (whether or not your parents basement is available) you live in).

2) Children: There is a lot of qualifications here that were taken in place in the article. While the clock is ticking and I agree, people look at children as a chore taken to ensure a certain lifestyle later in life; or just want them and are willing to sacrifice whatever else to enjoy having children. Both are generally the case but I feel the set of things that people choose to give up is too large. You should ensure that your finances should be in place to support them but the amount in which you should support them should vary based off of your financial situation (by this I do not limit it to the children's wants (less toys) but rather also the child's needs (why pay for a private school if you can't afford it? because it's worth the difference in learning experiences? What about no private school and finding other means of educating the child?))

3) Brain Finishes Forming: Fight it if you think that this is going to be the case (and care; I know a very large set of people who enjoy being close minded. It means that their life is less complicated by relatively asinine decision making, when they would prefer the action portion of the work (I can't understand this but have debated it with individuals)).

<comment><USER47> Advice on how to live is simple: 1) Learn (travel, fail at something, shadow someone) 2) Prune (decide what is worth learning (e.g does learning another programming language add much value compared to learning about the behaviors of a market or larger ones like learning about a girl))

I'm definitely going to look into this book because it seems like it helps people work on pruning which I believe is the hardest part of life.

However I feel that you (Jason) may have taken away some wrong things from the book because: "This is how most successful people I know have built their careers, and it always starts small." While this may be one of the largest pipes that create your definition of success, it is not the only one. People may need the life experience of working as a barista before starting their career for several reasons; or they may want to work at a hostel while traveling for several years to learn more about the world. The rate in which careers develop vary greatly from person to person and at what point; why base it on the average successful individual?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I've had a saying recently. I'm making a lot of sacrifices in my 20's so that I'm established and ready to start a family in my 30's.

<comment><USER39> Hopefully not too many sacrifices though. Life should be about much more than creating new life. The 20s is the time to focus on yourself.

<comment><USER49> Unless you are female. There really is such thing as a biological clock.

edit: Before I get downvoted, insert "... and want children"

<comment><USER50> Having children when you're young is a good idea primarily because kids are exhausting, and take up a LOT of time. Have them as young as you're able and wanting to do so: nothing to do with your gender. Men have fertility issues as they age also.

<comment><USER13> If you can make a resource by yourself, outsource- in this case, adopt.

It will make some of the exhaustion go away, since it seems to be due to diverging circadian rythms between a newborn and an adult.

A say 4 years old kid would logically be less exhausting to raise.

Also, if the kid is adopted, it also removes fertility issues concerns.

Strike 2 birds with 1 stone!

<comment><USER50> I wish I could agree but a) 4 years old are just as exhausting (the first year is actually the easiest in terms of time you have available) and b) adoption is increasingly more difficult. I have friends who just adopted a baby after 5 years of tests and checks and more checks.

Foster care is another option, it's easier to 'sign up' and you can get school-age kids, who need just as much help as an adopted kid.

<comment><USER13> Interesting - when does the exhaustion function reaches a maximum ? I thought it was the hardest in the first 4 years.

(regarding the difficulties of adoption, they could be compared to the outsourcing cost :-/ foster care is a great idea, but may not work for people who want to have "their" kids)

<comment><USER50> To put it simply: exhaustion becomes superseded, or exchanged in kind, by fun as kids gain more ability to communicate and comprehend the world around them. It's up to you as the parent to decide what is fun and what's not: an engaged parent is going find almost anything fun when their kids are involved and equally engaged, tantrums aside!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> You should enjoy life, love, learn, teach, travel, and have fun from zero to death. The 20s are no different. I for one had an absolute blast in my 20s, did well financially, and didn't take myself "seriously." Different strokes for different folks. People should just plain think for themselves and NOT take themselves too seriously, IMHO :)

</comment><comment><USER52> Having read a bunch of the comments and the OP, I think everyone has shared something that makes good sense. The problem is, though, that as much as these "lessons" make sense to us when reading them, it makes absolutely no sense to try and apply these lessons to ANOTHER PERSON.

Each and every one of us have formed our own opinions about things, shaped by each and every one of our unique life experiences. To try and apply it to someone else is pointless, and futile.

Instead, be happy. Do whatever it takes to find happiness. Apply whatever lessons are necessary to find the motivation behind YOUR happiness, and go after it. Strong, focused motivation is the most scarce resource for a human's life, and the path to finding that motivation is different for every one of us.

We live for nothing else but the pursuit of happiness, and there's an infinite number of shapes it can be. Find yours.

</comment><comment><USER53> There are some good points here, but my advice is that you should take your teens seriously.

It seems like the prevailing advice today for anyone in their teens is to live their lives free of any commitments and as independent and undirected as possible. But lately I realized the importance of my teens to a degree I never had and it has changed how I plan to approach the last few years of my teens.

I'm not going to wait until my twenties to move into my parent's house and work on my startup. I already live in their house, so why wait?

Also, since everybody peaks in their twenties, why waste our best years making mistakes? By starting early, I'm getting lots of mistakes out of the way. By the time I hit my twenties, I'll be at peak performance and have tons of experience under my belt.

But sometimes I wish I'd started as a tween.

<comment><USER5> > Also, since everybody peaks in their twenties

Oh how you're going to laugh at that one later on.

<comment><USER53> My comment was meant as parody (I'm not actually in my teens), but I guess it missed the mark. I agree with the general sentiment of the article, but it would carry a lot more weight coming from someone who has actually lived a little.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't like the idea that "having fun" and "building a career" are mutually exclusive entities that don't touch on a Venn diagram. I built a career in my 20s based on things that excited me as a teenager, and I'm still excited by my career and consider my job a lot of fun. I didn't live in exotic countries or lounge around aimlessly because I'd rather be designing and building software: that's my fun. I suspect a lot of people on HN feel the same way, and just because one person's idea of "fun" is to travel around the world doesn't mean that they have a monopoly on what fun means.

</comment><comment><USER54> Re: "Your brain finishes forming in your 20′s" See: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity>

Specifically: "During most of the 20th century, the general consensus among neuroscientists was that brain structure is relatively immutable after a critical period during early childhood. This belief has been challenged by findings revealing that many aspects of the brain remain plastic even into adulthood."

</comment><comment><USER55> There's only one thing about your age that definitively affects your life: Your body. Past concerns of the flesh, stop trying to box your experiences into meaningless numbers and just do things you want to do as you feel like it, at any age.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm on my feet, step aside man

Get out my way, I got a mind of my own

Beat all my fears as a young man

Now that I'm grown, I don't fear the unknown

\-- Living Colour - Young Man - <http://youtu.be/T7e2kVEFPrE>

</comment><comment><USER57> Not sure if any other venture than Mc D was started in post-30s. I guess Mc D was started in 40s but otherwise most of the startups were founded by its owners in 20s itself.

</comment><comment><USER58> I don't know how I feel about a blog that drives you to click an Amazon affiliate link. Nevertheless, the points seem valid and thought-provoking. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER59> There's no one path.

It's good that our poets still keep things in perspective:

<http://www.panhala.net/Archive/The_Ball.html>

</comment><comment><USER60> Good content. Thanks for sharing it rather than cowering before the self- publishing police.

</comment><comment><USER61> You should take all of your life serious, but not so serious you do not enjoy it.

<comment><USER57> I agree with you. Probably the meaning of "serious" has to be understood better. "Serious" doesn't mean lack of fun. If that would be the case, there would be no lounges, beer bars, cafes in bay area for entrepreneurs.

And on the other hand, no point in getting HIV in 80s either :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Well, shit.

<comment><USER63> I know how you feel, but my response to this guy was to want to take him, put my arm around his shoulder, congratulate him on finding a way to motivate himself as he is right now, and warn him that he's got five, maybe six decades ahead of him, every one filled with possibilities that _aren't going to depend on what he does right NOW NOW NOW_. There's time. Everyone always has the wherewithal to change things, to start things, to build things, and to make things better, no matter how the past went.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Why you should take every moment seriously. Live life now!

</comment><comment><USER65> how about: 'spend your thirties fixing all the mistakes you made in your twenties'

there, now that sounds fun

</comment><comment><USER66> NO PRESSURE.

</comment><comment><USER67> Go fuck yourself. Seriously.</comment>


The Different Fate of Apple's Lisa and Macintosh - <AUTHOR> https://www.inexhibit.com/case-studies/different-fate-apples-lisa-macintosh-design-matters/ <comment><USER2> The Lisa cost too much in 1983. It competed with UNIX workstations such as the Sun II, and was almost as expensive. Sun and Apollo had nice desktop workstations with a megabyte of RAM, monitors in the 19 inch range, and hard disks. The Lisa had a dinky screen and an unreliable hard drive. Apple's one foray into the disk drive business was a dismal flop. Which is why the Macintosh was so late getting hard drives.

What Sun didn't have was a usable GUI. The BSD crowd never comprehended how to do a GUI. Sun went through about three in-house windowing systems, including Sun Windows, before ending up with MIT's X-Windows, which sucked less than anything Sun could write.

The original Macintosh was a huge failure. Really slow, 128K of RAM, and no hard disk. IBM was shipping the PC/AT at the time, which had 640K of RAM and a 20MB hard drive. The original Macintosh had one floppy drive. Most users got a second external floppy drive, but external hard drives were not supported. Sales were very low. Lots of press coverage, but it was "the world's greatest toy computer" and "a machine for the intensive study of wait icons" for the first two years.

It wasn't until 1986, when the first Macintosh models with hard drives and more RAM came out, that the product line started to sell. With enough engine to make it go, the Macintosh GUI started to perform usably.

But it was years too late; the IBM PC was the industry standard, and Apple's desktop market share dropped below 10%.

<comment><USER3> And now we can muse about why Mac never overtook IBM-style machines. I had a Mac Plus with Paradise system external scsi hard drive and it was great (1986 IIRC). 1 MB ram, etc.

A couple years later I was talking to a secretary in grad school, and asked her why she didn't prefer Macs. She said she typed 100 words a minute and always had to wait for the Mac to catch up- making it unusable.

Back then, secretaries really had control of office equipment. All typing was done by secretaries- from hand-written copy by the authors.

So, at least part of why Mac may have failed to overtake DOS machines was that they _only_ had a great GUI, at a time when processors were too slow to redraw the screen quickly, and they had no "character mode" which would have allowed the secretaries to use them. Thus, companies wanted DOS (except for graphics- Macs were used by graphic departments).

<comment><USER4> Accounting controlled the computers. What accounting software was there for the Mac?

<comment><USER5> Filemaker was around back then as well as something called Microsoft File [1]

[1] [http://lowendmac.com/software/f/filemaker.html](http://lowendmac.com/software/f/filemaker.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow what a horribly wrong article. I was there (at Xerox OSD) in 1984 when the Mac was released.

in 1984 you could hire a secretary for one year for $10,000 and give her a $600 IBM selectric typewriter. The star 8010 computer was 10 years too early, and way too expensive. Also Xerox had their head up their ass about bitmap draw programs and refused to release their internal "doodle" program. Apple made "MacPaint is fun!" the primary selling point of the Macintosh. it was used in every print advertisement where they showed a floyded picture of a New Balance shoe being edited (... Not!)

The Macintosh used a software virtual memory system and quickdraw picture language and file resource forks to cut the ram requirements by a factor of 4. This made it possible to sell the computer for $2500. At that price point the computer did something quite new (wyswyg word processing AND printing on memorywriter) and was priced like an IBM PC.

<comment><USER7> Don't forget that the Xerox hardware was slower than even Lisa, being built atop a microcoded implementation of the Data General Nova instruction set running at a very slow clock rate. An 8 MHz 68000 was about 1 MIPS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Lisa had a very bad start, but by the time it had become the Macintosh XL it was way more competitive. The fact that you needed one if you wanted to develop for the Macintosh initially made it sure it couldn't be a complete failure.

But whenever Jobs is involved, you have to take into account personal motives as well as business and technical ones. He was still angry about having been kicked out of the Lisa project due to his age (the board decided that it was the most important Apple project and needed someone more experienced to run it). When a company reorganization brought the Lisa (now Macintosh XL) under his control, he used old sales numbers to stop the purchase of new parts and then when they ran out "unexpectedly" due to rising sales he simply cancelled the product, which was now possible as native development on the Macintosh had arrived.

By the way, I have no idea how the story I just described fits in with a large number of Lisas being destroyed and buried. I think these were older models.

<comment><USER9> _By the way, I have no idea how the story I just described fits in with a large number of Lisas being destroyed and buried._

If you ever had to use a twiggy drive and those weird-ass floppy disks long- term, you'd want want your Lisa destroyed and buried, too.

There's pioneering, and there's WTF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> the article has an image captioned 'A screen shot of the Lisa Office System 3.1 (actual resolution)' but the image is from a Mac. The Lisa didn't have an apple menu and used a different font.

<comment><USER11> Pretty sure the Lisa didn't have a "Macintosh Finder", either.

I suppose it _could_ have been the version of MacWorks for the Lisa that booted a version of Macintosh System 5(?) to run MacWorks XL.

<comment><USER12> If you're talking about this image...

[https://www.inexhibit.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/04/Apple-L...](https://www.inexhibit.com/wp- content/uploads/2018/04/Apple-Lisa-OFfice-System-3.1-screen-shot.jpg)

...it's definitely in the Lisa aspect ratio and not the Mac (which was about 3:2). And there's also a window named "MacWorks System Disk", so yeah.

<comment><USER13> For the record, it credits Nathan Lineback's GUI gallery as the source. Here's the actual source page:

[http://toastytech.com/guis/lisa3.html](http://toastytech.com/guis/lisa3.html)

> Using the Macworks software, the Lisa can also run Macintosh software.

> This screen shot shows the Lisa emulator running the Macintosh operating > system using Macworks. Supposedly with a little bit of hardware tweaking a > real Apple Lisa can run up to MacOS 7.5.5.

> This lets the Lisa run the vast amount of software developed for the earlier > Macs. Which was a good thing as there was apparently very little software > developed to run natively on the Lisa OS.

<comment><USER14> Hi everyone,

I am the guy who wrote that article. Though you have pretty demolished my English ;), I want to thank you all. I apologize for my bad English; yet, your attention, suggestions, and remarks really will help me writing better articles, as well as to improve those I have written in the past.

About the grammar / spelling errors. Yes, English is not my first language; I am Italian and, though I'm always trying to make my best to avoid errors and typos, I am aware that something wrong will always come out in my texts. Sometimes it is just a typo (such as weather / whether) which is rather easy to amend.

Sometimes what's wrong there are short pieces of texts, phrases, or even entire paragraphs that I wrote thinking in Italian and writing in English, thus clearly revealing that English is not my first language. These are much harder for me to catch, since their grammar is often not totally wrong, strictly speaking; yet, they sound odd or even absurd to a native English speaker.

About technical / historical inaccuracies: I am not an IT engineer, I am an architect, and a professor of product design and computer aided design; I am more a tech enthusiast than an IT professional, though I am also an amateur programmer and someone who likes to build his own computers since the 1980s. Therefore, I focus my articles more on product design than on technology; even if I always try to collect as many technical details as I can from reliably sources, I can, and often do, make mistakes. Again, your remarks are highly valuable to me, because they help me correct those inaccurate / wrong information I am giving to my readers, though I made them bona fide.

As amyjess correctly pointed out, the screenshot of the Lisa is from the Nathan Lineback's GUI emulator website, I know it's not the best example to show; unfortunately, I haven't able to find a single screenshot of a real Lisa with an acceptable image quality so far. A friend of mine who has been Apple's product manager for both the Lisa and the Macintosh still has a functioning Lisa; I'll ask him to let me take a photo of the GUI on the real machine to replace the one I used.

I didn't included the iMac intentionally; by and large, the article is essentially a comparison between the Lisa and the Mac, and I deem the iMac design too different from theirs to be part of that comparison. Yet, I am currently writing an article exclusively focused on the iMac.

The circumstances in which Jobs left the Lisa team. Aside from my horrible grammar error :(, I agree with you, daotoad. That point needs to detailed a little more. Therefore, I rewrote the whole paragraph and added a reference.

I sincerely apologize for the mistakes I made in that article, hope it looks a bit better now. Again, guys, thank you so much for your help.

<comment><USER15> Spelling and grammar aside I really enjoyed the article and I appreciate the effort you put into writing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Who edited this?

Nobody.

"weather this name is an acronym or..." An image labeled "A screen show of the Lisa..." which has multiple items clearly labeled as coming from a Mac... "Furthermore, Jobs had leaved the Lisa team..." Odd unattributed quotes from ??? The article asserts that Macintosh product design was key to its success. Then shows an original Macintosh with a Mac Color Classic 2 (a machine that hardly had an impact) but completely ignores the original clear iMacs (the computer which was part of revitalization of Apple and whose design owed much to the original Mac).

<comment><USER17> It doesn't look like anyone who works at the site has English as a first language. [https://www.inexhibit.com/about- us-2/](https://www.inexhibit.com/about-us-2/)

<comment><USER18> The English proofing tools for MS Word, and likely competing platforms, should be able to catch most of those. Those are the green squiggly lines. Stylistic choices I am fine with, as long as they're readable. Grammar and spelling errors should not be so prevalent if you respect your writing and your audience.</comment></comment></comment>


How the weather mapped to the music – sonification of the weather in Austin, TX - <AUTHOR> http://weather.lownote.net/2018/06/08/how-the-weather-mapped-to-the-music/ <comment><AUTHOR> [via [https://www.metafilter.com/175442/Listen-to-the-rhythm-of- th...](https://www.metafilter.com/175442/Listen-to-the-rhythm-of-the-falling- rain)]</comment>


ConvertKit Launched - <AUTHOR> https://convertkit.com

<comment><USER2> Hey thanks for sharing. For anyone wondering, ConvertKit is an email marketing system designed to increase conversions. It came out of my work on The Web App Challenge (<http://nathanbarry.com/starting-web-app-challenge/>) my personal contest to build a new web app to $5k in recurring revenue in 6 months.

Thanks for taking a look!

<comment><USER3> Good luck with that! Really hope you reach your goal :)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I am currently at $1,513.67, which is 30% of the way complete. Only 2 months left!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> As a side discussion, I've been writing about every step of the process (finding a developer, wireframing, ideas, etc) but am running out of ideas. Any thoughts?

What aspects would you like me to cover in more detail?</comment>


Google's Trusted Store protection siphoning more data - <AUTHOR> http://burkemw3.herokuapp.com/technology/2014/11/17/google-trusted-stores-siphoning-more-data.html

<comment><USER2> > _" I am left wondering why Google wants this information directly from the > merchant"_

One possibility: it associates an online identity (@gmail) with an offline identity (credit card, physical address). Facebook has a deal with Axciom to cross-reference online & offline.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I felt weird self posting. My curiosity of others thoughts overwhelmed any shame or other things stopping me.</comment>


Show HN: Chart Mage – A text based UML diagram tool with smart autocompletion - <AUTHOR> http://chartmage.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi guys! I quit my job and spent 3 months learning HTML/CSS/JavaScript and finally I made my first app.

I created Chart Mage because I needed a tool for quick UML diagram on Mac. I ended up using one of the text based diagram generators, which is great, yet I found them not very friendly to non-English user(all that grammar thing). Besides, I would type a lot faster if it comes with smart autocompletion.

So here it is:

# No more fiddling the layout - Keep your hands on the keyboard and let Chart Mage takes care of the drawing.

# Smart autocompletion - Chart Mage makes reasonable guess about what you are going to type.

# Simple syntax - You can learn it in 10 seconds.

</comment><comment><USER2> Rally nice! Adding to diagramming toolbox. Thanks for posting here.

</comment><comment><USER3> A cool experience. Save me time to draw seq chart.</comment>


Association Between Recreational Cannabis Use and Cardiac Structure and Function - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1936878X19310095?via%3Dihub <comment><USER2> Geez. Unless there is there is some mechanism posited, it is hard not to roll ones eyes at studies like this. How would, hypothetically, the THC, and other cannabinoids in canibus cause this to happen given their effect on the endocrine system? The sample size looks large at over 3k until you see that the regular use group is 47 and the infrequent use group is just past 100. So we have 20x non-users to users based on self-reporting. Is this solid statistics at the least? It could be, but it is a bit misleading. Are the correlations stated after removing confounds? It reads like that is not necessarily the case. Either way, frankly, correlations with no posited mechanism are tremendously unconvincing unless there is way more evidence.

<comment><USER3> I'm also quite skeptical, but if this actually is accurate, I don't think the potential for a mechanism of action is necessarily that far-fetched. My heart rate absolutely increases to some degree for an extended period of time when I consume sativa cannabis, for example, and I don't think this is uncommon. Changes in heart rate could potentially alter aspects of the heart, over a sufficient length of time.

Even if that weren't the case, cannabis contains lots of psychoactive compounds which aren't fully understood, and even for the ones we do seem to understand, the brain and body are incredibly complex and chaotic systems and could possibly exhibit unexpected effects when exposed to them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> N=47 for current users and 97% of the study population was White. I'm baffled as to how this kind of stuff can inform population health.

<comment><USER5> They literally explain their rationale in the next sentence: "Current regular users were more likely to be younger, male, and current tobacco smokers and have greater levels of social deprivation compared with rare/never users and previous regular users. They were also less likely to be taking antihypertension medication."

Also, 82% of the UK's population is white, so 97% (especially given that these are older people) isn't really that surprising. I'm baffled how pro-drug proponents consistently ignore correlative evidence that points to regular cannabis use being problematic.

<comment><USER6> My thoughts precisely. I am a self-identifying proponent for marijuana legalization, which is why my initial reaction was to balk at the study. However, upon rereading the study, they make it abundantly clear that their study is not providing any definitive conclusions by any means.

"Discussions on the potential public health impact are hampered by gaps in evidence and variable quality of available data. Little or no mention of cannabis exists in CVD risk assessments or lifestyle advice guideline."

Furthermore, they explain that much more research is required to come to any sort of conclusion on its effects on the general population.</comment></comment></comment>


Syria war: Russia thwarts drone attack on Hmeimim airbase - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42595184 <comment><AUTHOR> "The UAVs featured an engine taped to a wooden frame, which carried two "home- made mines", it added."

According to Russia military there were 13 UAVs like this capable of 100km range:

[https://twitter.com/mod_russia/status/950389451884302336/pho...](https://twitter.com/mod_russia/status/950389451884302336/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rferl.org%2Fa%2Fsyria- russia-says-drones-used-attack-bases%2F28963399.html)</comment>


Trapped in a "golden cage" a.k.a. what you're paid for - <AUTHOR> https://no-kill-switch.ghost.io/trapped-in-a-golden-cage/ <comment><USER2> Real time feedback for the author: Good content but the excessive abbreviation use makes it impossible to easily read and digest.</comment>


How to Prepare a Talk - <AUTHOR> https://www.deconstructconf.com/blog/how-to-prepare-a-talk <comment><USER2> I gave my first ever talk last night for the Toronto Elixir meetup (Introduction to Actors in Elixir). It was a lot of fun! The author here is correct about the time, my talk was around ~20 minutes, but I probably spent close to 10 hours working on it.

I also like this part:

> The slides are in a sensible order because they arose from your natural > thought process

at the beginning of my preparation everything felt awkward because I was trying hit different points I had thought of ahead of time. I threw all of that away and started from scratch. The second time I thought more about the "story" I was trying to tell, and found that things flowed more naturally after that.

<comment><USER3> Congratulations! It's a scary thing for many people and you're right, a huge time suck</comment></comment>