Ask HN: Equity for a first employee - <AUTHOR> What's a reasonable range of equity (options) for a first employee (engineer; two nontechnical founders) with a 500k convertible-debt seed round? <comment><USER2> 1-2%. A lot of people say 5%. 5% is what you'll give to an executive down the road. First employees are very important, but probably not as important as your second CEO. 6% is what you give to YC. First employees are very important, but a first employee who is worth almost as much as YC should probably be your cofounder, not an employee.

This is also for your first employee. You may live or die based on the work this person does, and more importantly they may be accepting extraordinary risk (if your runway is less than 6 months, say). The same rules do not apply to employee #3.

Finally, if you don't _pay_ the person, or if you pay them bare subsistence wages (say, $20-30k) and they're senior talent, you've introduced an additional level of risk, and you should pay a premium for that. However, there may be better ways to compensate that risk; for instance, you can defer salary at a premium rate.

A really important thing to remember about employee options is that employees don't know how to value them. You need to be really engaged with the strategic course of the business (not just the product: the business and its future cash flows) to really grok what options mean in rational terms. This is a good reason not to grant huge amounts to early employees; it costs you dearly and doesn't make them much happier.

<comment><USER3> I treat a first employee as a co-founder just with fewer shares. Its says "we're in this together" more than words can say. I have given them rights to review our financials (noone ever did, but perhaps my openness with our revenues made them comfortable), voting rights, same dilution rules as a co- founder, etc. The percent of shares varies, but being careful to not create different classes of people in such a small working group seems valuable.

<comment><USER2> You're not in this together. When you miss payroll, she gets paid first.

I've been in companies where my shares had dramatic legal rights, and where I had access to financials. I guess I liked that at the time, but to be honest, I didn't care. However, I have friends who have quit companies because they saw financials and got a warped idea of how much their time was worth, so doing that has downsides too.

<comment><USER3> There is no one-size fits all formula for this. Its what I did in the past and it had consequences I didn't dream of when I issued the shares. Here's a story of that company which shows how you can be wrong about the payroll comes first attitude:

Around '98, my company was me plus 8 employees. I was pushing hard to turn our model from a "consulting with a product model" to a full on product and platform business. This required taking some risks with our client base to enable us to invest in product R&D to make it ready for general consumption. We ended up with one client that year. They were a big-mother of a client and gave us access to a product strategy and acquisition if we pulled the job off. I became pushy with my client as we weren't getting to where I wanted to be quick enough. I finally lost my cool one day and the client told me he was through, get lost. This was going to cost him easily 20x what he had already paid to cut ties as his core product depended on us. But he was pissed off and I was pissed off and he could afford the big loss.

That same day, I went into the office after the client meeting and sat everyone down and told them our bleak outlook: we had enough payroll for 3 more months. The next day, each employee came to me individually and offered to work for free. Each one had a different story as to how long they could go without pay; 2 told me to quit paying them immediately.

They all acted like founders and I think its because I treated them like it.

This model probably doesn't scale well. But its an experience I'll never forget.

<comment><USER4> i know this is just one anecdote, but i respect that people often get what they pay for. you sound like a compassionate, collaborative, we _are_ all in it together person. i bet you build teams. you weed out the non-committers from the beginning, and other savvy practical stuff. that's cool.

your parent post could also be sound. it depends on the philosophies of those hiring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The people saying 5% are probably wishful thinkers. It's a fact of life that in all but very very few cases it is only the VC's and (sometimes) the founders that get rich.

There are exceptions, I got a tiny part of google because I was there (briefly) very early and that paid off nicely. And there are other examples of non-founders doing well, where "well" means life changing amounts of money (measured in millions).

But people need to keep in mind that those are exceptions, not the rule. Most non-founders end up with what amounts to a nice bonus, a year or two's salary.

Unless I'm mistaken this question was sort of "what's normal for this situation?".

What's normal varies but not by much. 5% is high. I agree with tptacek, 5% is what you give the 2nd CEO (which is a different topic, that's usually 5% wasted because that CEO will probably drive your company out of business. Anyone remember the Pepsi guy running Apple?). .5-1.5% sounds about right for the first engineering hire.

Remember, you can always give out more stock but it is close to impossible to take it back.

</comment><comment><USER6> If software is the product, I suggest the first engineer should be taken on as a co-founder and/or get the same equity as the non-technical founders. Anything less will undervalue the incredible and unique contribution of that engineer.

Otherwise, I've seen two methods of valuing startup equity offers:

1\. Options are worth nothing, until they are worth something.

2\. Options are worth their face value times the probability you will meet that face value. Example: 2% equity of a startup targeting a $100M exit, with a 1% probability of hitting that exit = (2% * 100M) * 1% = $20,000.

I agree with other commenters that a chance at "life-changing money" is usually required for higher-risk situations like being a first employee. So that's the real test, not a fixed percentage.

</comment><comment><USER7> I hate to get too Paul Graham-y on you, but it depends if this person is genuinely interested in your problem. 1-2% equity isn't going to solely motivate a talented engineer because that's unlikely to convert into life- changing money.

<comment><USER8> Agree. If we're talking about investing a huge chunk of my life on someone else's startup, a chance at life-changing money is just about the only thing that will do. %1 diluted in 2 follow-on rounds sounds good if we're talking about a chance at a very large exit, but otherwise you've got to be kidding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I joined a startup in a very similar position. I ended up taking 4-5% equity, and about 50% market salary. This was perhaps a bit low, as it was barely enough to get me and keep me on board at the early stages. But the salary went up as we grew, so now I'm quite happy.

Also remember this is an early round, and that 4-5% will get diluted a lot as you take more venture. So it's not really comparable to what a future CEO might get.

<comment><USER10> Are the founders non-technical? I think that makes a huge difference.

<comment><USER9> One was technical, one was not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've said a few times recently on this site: if you're the first engineer in a start-up, you're either a (co-)founder or a chump.

Ask for founder level equity and founder level control (both over the business idea and the technical implementation: non-technical "managers" have a nasty tendency to make horrible _technical_ decisions for "business reasons" -- think being forced to use "enterprise" software vs. open source alternatives, e.g. ASP.NET + SQL Server or Oracle + EJB).

If they say no, move on. There are thousands of early stage start-ups. Being a the most technical person in company of "business guys" _sucks_ for an employee and brings no benefits associated with being in technology start-up (a greater freedom to choose technologies to work with, a chance to pursue fascinating problems rather than build CRUD screens for sales people).

On the other hand, if you're working for a large software/Internet company (or high growth, late stage tech start-up) you can at least be sure that your manager is technical and _on your side_. What rational reason is there, then, to choose to be the first engineer in an already established company (given your equity will likely end up being worthless)? There could be exceptions: if the company broke into an entirely new market (product has to be "good enough" vs. high quality), or if the founders gave you _absolute_ freedom to choose the technology (e.g. letting you use Haskell and Erlang if you so wish), but generally the scenario is "I'm a business guy with a super-duper idea and I want an engineer to build it for me in two weeks, in PHP".

To the "business guys": any technical guy who accepts this situation isn't a "gold mine". He either doesn't know his own worth (and thus can't know your products' worth), is inexperienced (won't be able to build a product that would be a fit _most_ market) or has nowhere else to go (can't build a good product for you). If he is competent, experienced and confident, he may simply be looking to take/explore your idea and then build a _much better version of it_ himself (e.g. what Zuckerberg did with Winkelvoss brothers)

</comment><comment><USER3> With similar funding, I've given 5% reverse vested shares to a tech employee. It created vast incentive, and if he stays with the company for 3 to 4 years, he certainly earn the 5%. I also gave 7% to a key tech employee before...no regrets.

<comment><USER2> How much did that 7% end up being worth, and how long did the company last? Those two factors probably play a large role in how much you regret issuing them. If the company came to nothing, or if you gave up 7% and the company exited before it needed new management or a large number of employees, sure, maybe you don't care. Pick a number out of a hat!

<comment><USER3> That company ran for 8 years. We had great revenues and shared the wealth relative to ownership, but there ended up not being an acquisition. During the high times and opportunities of acquisition, I never thought "I wish I had given up only 2% instead of 5%". I always knew that if we needed to dilute the holdings to take on a new CxO we could do so and all would be ok. I was careful to explain to people that if we grew by leaps and bounds dilution would occur, so get comfortable that your X% will get reduced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Depends on the pay. If you're paying market, < 1 %. If you're not paying market, match the difference to a max of 3%. Either way, make sure it is vested 1/36 every month for a period of 36 months. But if you get bought out, or go IPO before that time frame, make sure all of that is vested. And also, if you get funding that pays out the founders in some way, find a way to pay something out to the employees too.

<comment><USER2> You can't promise that all your employee shares will vest on change of control, because many big companies won't buy you on those terms. Also, even if everyone does vest on change of control, valuation and terms can be structured so that options aren't worth much, and employees are handcuffed by retention grants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My rule of thumb (early stage at least):

Start at 2% and increase by 1% for every $10k under market your paying in salary.

I'm happy to give 5% in equity to a top-notch engineer who is taking a 30% pay cut.

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting question.

Assuming this engineer is fairly valuable to your startup due to the non- technical co-founders, you might have to give up more than normal (0.5-1.5% equity). I don't have a number in mind, but I'd be interested in hearing other people's thoughts on this.

Guys, thoughts?

<comment><USER15> Mint's CEO gave a talk that covers this:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGhedOHLTOI>

His first engineer got ~$50K + 2% IIRC.

<comment><USER16> That looked like a very good video but I could barely view it, horrible quality - this looks like the same video but the quality seems to be much better: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRfV0YfvDP4>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It seems like there's vague consensus on first engineer equity. Are there any common rule-of-thumbs for Nth engineer (or Nth employee) equity?

</comment><comment><USER18> 1% could be too high and 5% too low. I have always operated under the assumption that to pay someone fair value is important. So if someone is coming on board and taking risk, that risk needs to be compensated. Usually we have brought people in at below market wages and made up the difference in the form of options which get them "whole" on total comp. (However, we do make sure there is a vesting schedule which is appropriate to the circumstances). Valuing each of the pieces can be easy if you already have a round out there and can model the options. Any skilled financial profesional can help on this, if internal resources are insufficient to do so.

I should note, we are never addicted to outside money. We try to bootstap as much as possible and plan always to make it without taking in funds which may prove costly or hard to get. In other words, we always try to manage our cash carefully and not take VC or angel fund unless absolutely necessary.

</comment><comment><USER19> You do not describe the nature of the company. If its a technical company and you do plan to stick around, you should negotiate founder stakes, which degrade to employee options if you quit within say 4-5 years. Since none of the co-founders is technical this is reasonable.

</comment><comment><USER20> 2-2.5% and a lowball salary is right. I would argue that folks are only getting more when the founders are weak in some area. If you are weak and the 1st emp is a sick engineer give whatever it takes to lock up the talent. Otherwise 2% and 50k is right.

</comment><comment><USER21> how do you guys feel about .. how much equity first employee should receive with little to no pay, as sort of like a side project ?

<comment><USER10> if there's no pay, that's not an employee- that's a founder.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Doesn't that hugely depend on his salary?

</comment><comment><USER10> Are you the prospective employee or the employer?</comment>


Micro v1.0 – a terminal-based text editor written in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/releases/tag/v1.0 <comment><USER2> First reaction: Congrats, looks great!

Second reaction: Yet another, completely different syntax highlighting implementation/definition list... [https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/tree/master/runtime/syntax](https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/tree/master/runtime/syntax)

Couldn't pick any of the hundreds that already exist? :(

<comment><USER3> Looks like these are just nanorc files. so reusing nano's definitions? The project name also checks out.

<comment><USER2> They look similar, but definitely not the same:

[https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/blob/master/runtime/syntax...](https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/blob/master/runtime/syntax/csharp.micro)

[https://github.com/nanorc/nanorc/blob/master/csharp.nanorc](https://github.com/nanorc/nanorc/blob/master/csharp.nanorc)

Looks like they were s&r'd. Which kind of makes the case: why not just make it compatible with nanorc? (Or anything else really, just, something that doesn't create yet-another uncountable set of syntax highlighting files that has to be maintained to support just one more editor)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 8.5Mb is a little too much for editor named micro. Whole DD-WRT/OpenWRT Linux Image is twice smaller.

<comment><USER3> I think the name is a play on the other popular editor 'nano'.

<comment><USER5> Allowing it a comfortable 1000-fold growth factor! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Common keybindings (ctrl-s, ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-z...)

How do those not get blocked by terminal emulators?

<comment><USER7> Presumably they respect that the running program has put the terminal into "raw mode"

e.g. with [https://github.com/golang/crypto/blob/master/ssh/terminal/ut...](https://github.com/golang/crypto/blob/master/ssh/terminal/util.go#L40)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This looks amazing. Finally an editor that will work for an ssh session, yet doesn't demand you learn a bunch of unnatural incantations that are completely contrary to all of your everyday muscle memory. And cross platform too. Win, win, win.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've compared the performance of Micro with some other editors, see:

[https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/editor-p...](https://github.com/jhallen/joes- sandbox/tree/master/editor-perf)

</comment><comment><USER10> just curious -- what motivated you to write a new text editor?

<comment><USER11> I know people for whom Vim was overwhelming to learn and they gave up or didn't use it properly. I'm trying to make an terminal-based editor which gives them as much as possible of the power of Vim or Emacs, while making it dead simple to learn and use.

<comment><USER12> It's AWESOME.

I have used emacs, vim, micro-emacs, sublime, notepad++, wscite, etc etc. This might not be so feature rich, but in my first try, this felt just right!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any way to bind the mac command key (⌘)?

<comment><USER11> Unfortunately it is impossible to bind the mac command key because the terminal does not forward those key events to the applications (for example pressing Cmd-Q closes the terminal, not the app running in the terminal). See this issue: [https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/issues/19](https://github.com/zyedidia/micro/issues/19).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why does it seem like Go programmers need to include "in Go" on the tail end of product announcements?

<comment><USER15> There's also already a reasonably-popular Go project called "Micro," though honestly both projects could have picked better names.

[https://github.com/micro](https://github.com/micro)

<comment><USER11> Yes it's unfortunate that there is already a popular Go project called "micro." The name here is a play on "nano" editor and I had already started the project by the time I saw [https://github.com/micro](https://github.com/micro). Oh well, I still like the name.</comment></comment></comment>


Solving Inequalities and Other Math Stuff Students Struggle With - <AUTHOR> https://stories.humbot.io/solving-inequalities-and-other-math-stuff-students-struggle-with-8aa1618b6f2b <comment><AUTHOR> I am a founder of this company and wrote the article. We got started with tutoring high schoolers over Messenger two months ago (we're doing something related but different before) and have already tutored hundreds. It's amazing to see how a tool like Messenger can be used to help and teach students.

The most frequent subject we get is math and I thought it might be interesting to go through our data and compile a list of the most common things students struggle with.

I was genuinely surprised that there is this pattern (already with a few hundred students) and am convinced that the biggest reason why students fall behind in math are bad teachers.

What are your experiences with this kind of pitfalls? Do you have ideas how to best help students in these situations?</comment>


Saudi's tech investments pay off in coronavirus battle (CIO) - <AUTHOR> https://www.cio.com/article/3535801/saudi-arabias-technology-investments-pay-off-in-coronavirus-battle.html <comment><USER2> Good to read how a countries embracement of digital services have proven to be more essential than ever in today's times. Which is nice as I'm sure some will read that title and expect to read about financial investments profiteering from a disaster as we usual read and one of those titles that if people had to guess the associated article - may well lean another way.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Title is true but my mind read it differently, most likely my unconscious bias shining through.

It does seem odd that only 75% of Saudi residents have accessed the Internet in 2018.

I wonder if is this a result of an aged population or restricted access from an authoritative/religious regime. I thought that Saudi Arabia was one of the wealthiest countries in the world and as such having 25% of the population not accessing the Internet seems wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That site has so many ads. Anyway drones takes people's temperature and implementing measures sounds pretty nebulous. ambiguous tech talking points.</comment>


Visualizing JavaScript as a Solar System - <AUTHOR> https://shaunlebron.github.io/solar-system-of-js/#0 <comment><USER2> I don't understand how this solar system metaphor is supposed to work. I thought the different versions of ECMAScript were going to be orbits, but then it sort of drops the entire idea on the floor for a bit to draw some pie charts, before finally picking the metaphor back up again, but it's actually the transpiling languages that are the planets orbiting a multi-shelled sun.

It looks nice, but I don't get how the metaphor is supposed to enhance our understanding. If anything, I think a newbie seeing this would just get confused.

</comment><comment><USER3> A javascript universe without Node.JS would be like god without Jesus.

NodeJS completely change the way you write JavaScript. What's so fantastic about node is that you can not import, use or include. You can only use modules. This combined with full object oriented programming support and asynchronous code execution makes NodeJS truly revolutionary!

</comment><comment><USER4> Next up: Haskell as a Sandwich, and Python as an Atom.</comment>


Inside HP's New Air-Cooled UK Data Center (Photo Tour) - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/inside-hps-green-north-sea-data-center/

<comment><USER2> _the key ingredient on HP's innovative new data center in Wynyard, England: cool fresh air from the North Sea_

Although I find it likely that heat exchangers are involved, my first, snarky thought was, "that's _just_ the kind of 'freshness' my servers don't have enough of: moist and salty from The Sea."

<comment><USER3> They're filtering out the salt: [http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/inside- hps-green-north-se...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/inside-hps-green- north-sea-data-center/hp-wynyard-filtering-and-airflow/)

<comment><USER2> Those do, indeed, look like filters and not heat exchangers.

Is the salt in sea air particulate, or is it dissolved in the water vapor?</comment></comment></comment>


The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce. - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanford.edu/class/e140/e140a/content/noyce.html

<comment><USER2> Only five points? Lame.</comment>


Why Are Investors Fleeing Equities? Hint: It's Not the Computers - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/08/06/why-are-investors-fleeing-equities-hint-its-not-the-computers/?nl=business&emc=edit_dlbkam_20120807

<comment><USER2> _Consider this: Of 878 students at 18 high schools across 11 different states surveyed by the Financial Literacy Group, three-quarters of them said they agreed with this statement: "The stock market is rigged mostly to benefit greedy Wall Street bankers."_

I'm not sure how the impressions of high schoolers create an atmosphere of uncertainty and unconfidence in the stock market.</comment>


Indian Android Developers can publish Paid Apps on PlayStore - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=150324

<comment><AUTHOR> A great news! wait is over :)

I tried to configure Merchant account but its not working as of now, but India was on Country list. Hopefully in few days it should start working.</comment>


The reason why banks are suddenly repaying their bailout funds - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2238993/?from=rss <comment><USER2> Isn't there a kind of catch 22 going on in the media with regards to banks these days?

If they pay back (with interest), they're bad guys because they just want to get the government off their backs (what would you do if you were them?).

If they don't pay back, they're bad guys because they took money from the government and that hasn't somehow turned them into "nice" banks that lend to whoever you'd want them to lend to.

Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of shady characters involved in this story. But it still seems like a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't.

<comment><USER3> The point is that many of them including Goldman Sachs would have collapsed outright without the bailout money. Now that the funds gave them enough liquidity to survive the crisis, they were given money to increase the cash flow in a depressed markets: the crucial role that banks play in society.

Instead of doing this, they decided to use the money to pay their employees gigantic bonuses, or by using it to acquire smaller banks that didn't get TARP money. The banks even pumped several hundred million dollars into lobbying.

This is a clear abuse of the system and the only reason more people aren't angry about what's happening is because they don't know something like this is happening.

<comment><USER4> GS had already arranged to be "bailed out" by Warren Buffett. They took the TARP money because the government made it mandatory to do so (so banks that needed it wouldn't be seen as weak in the marketplace). They simply sat on it, then repaid it with interest (20% APR, how likely is the government to get that from the bond market?!).

There is a paradox here: banks were simultaneously supposed to a) increase their lending and b) increase their capital reserves. Those two are mutually contradictory, and the banks chose b.

I'm not saying that TARP wasn't abused at all, but I will say that it presented an enormous moral hazard. Also here in the UK, the government _knew_ that the state of Lloyds was far worse that it was, and didn't tell anyone 'til the risk had been transfered to the market... If a bank did that, people would be going to jail for insider trading.

<comment><USER3> _GS had already arranged to be "bailed out" by Warren Buffett. They took the TARP money because the government made it mandatory to do so (so banks that needed it wouldn't be seen as weak in the marketplace). They simply sat on it, then repaid it with interest_

Warren Buffet only invested $5 billion into GS. Look at their cash flow here: [http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:GS&fstype=ii](http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:GS&fstype=ii)

$5 billion is peanuts compared to the amount of money being lost during that period, but of course it is impossible for outsiders to tell for sure if GS needed the TARP money, there were strong signs that say yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem is that the only thing TARP is good at motivating banks to do is get the hell out of TARP so they can get back to taking outrageous risks, now even safer in the knowledge that if it all goes south the US taxpayer will bail them out rather than destroy the economy.

The banks should not be allowed to leave TARP. As long as these banks continue to enjoy an implicit government guarantee, the government should maintain its stake, and its say, in the running of those banks. If they want to stop being under the control of the government, they need to split themselves into entities that are Small Enough To Fail.

<comment><USER6> Banks should be Small Enough To Fail. They should also have compliance divisions the size of entire corporations. They should charge reasonable rates of interest. They should also offer money to good customers for free. They need to stop charging so many late and overdraft fees. They should offer free checking. They should revise any policy which has a disparate impact on minorities. They should stop giving out risky mortgages to people who are going to default on them. They should stop relying so much on impersonal credit scoring and have more humans in the loop. They should return credit decisions in under a minute at 3 AM in the morning. They should have customer service employees who speak proper English and can actually help with issues. They should be glad to get a phone call from a $100 a year account at 3 AM in the morning. They should do more to protect customers from fraud. They should stop freezing the accounts of perfectly innocent people.

I am so glad I am not a bank.

<comment><USER7> It took a while, but I finally detected the sarcasm above.

I am not making this up: Just yesterday I went to reorder checks on-line, and got told "FAIL" and to contact my bank. So I called the main branch in this state and a human being answered. I told her my tale and she said she could help me right then, which she did. Are banks again serving (as opposed to "servicing") their customers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Bankers, especially investment bankers, aren't interested particularly in long-term shareholder returns or even in providing capital to businesses. They're interested making money and getting paid. If you want to do God's work, you don't work at a bank.."

vs.

"Bank of America ... raised $20 billion from the public" and "Citi raised $20.5 billion of capital..."

How do they raise so much capital if the investors know that it's just to change their TARP structure to enable the execs to get high bonuses?

<comment><USER9> Probably because investors aren't that rational after all and don't really care _why_ the offering came out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So who is buying all these banks' assets? (Assets = money owed to these banks, like loans, credit card balances, etc.) Wells Fargo's news release didn't say.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't like it when they say "$90 billion in repayments to the taxpayers in a week"

That makes it seem like us taxpayers will actually see some of that money as a return, but we never will.

<comment><USER12> With an 11 trillion dollar debt it was never ours to begin with.

<comment><USER13> It _was_ ours to begin with, but with an 11 trillion dollar debt, we'll just never get it back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I was hoping for better reporting when I saw this post. The article didn't show a causal link between regulating bonuses and the payback, it showed correlation:

"The investment banks that were capable of paying back did so in June, the month when lawyer Kenneth Feinberg was appointed as TARP's special master for executive compensation. Coincidence?

In October, Feinberg issued compensation guidelines for the companies receiving special assistance, including Citi and Bank of America. That, and the approach of the bonus season, lit a fire under executives at the largest remaining TARP recipients."

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting to note too that at the same time all this is going on, Citibank is jacking up credit card interest rates to 29.9% for many of its customers:

[http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2370258/citibank_ra...](http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2370258/citibank_raises_interest_rates_to_299.html)

Laughing all the way to the bank indeed...

<comment><USER4> Simplifying slightly, the way consumer credit works is, if you expect 10% of your customers to default then you need to change 10% interest to even break even, let alone cover your administrative costs, and let alone to make a profit. If you are in a market segment that has somewhere near 30% chance of defaulting then your options are a) a 30% credit card b) no credit at all.

<comment><USER16> Well, your other option is to be a little more discriminating on who you issue credit to in the first place.

I use credit cards, but only as a convenience. I never carry a balance. Why should I subsidize deadbeats?

<comment><USER4> Yeah that's what I mean. The alternative to high interest isn't low interest, it's no credit at all.

FWIW I use a charge card, which _has_ to be paid off in full every month.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Current state of statically typed web framework - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I'd like to know if any of you had a good experience with a statically typed web framework.
I'm currently starting a new project, and I haven't been able to find a statically web framework that match my need.
I've been using Flask with Python for several years, and dynamic typing shows its limit when your project reaches a significant size, as you basically need a 100% code coverage to avoid any runtime error that could have been detected at compile time in another language.
I used Yesod (Haskell) and Play (Scala) too. While I enjoy the type safety, I find them quite bloated compared to Flask.
I saw some new frameworks coming from the Rust and TypeScript community, but I'd like to know any feedback from people that actually used them. <comment><USER2> FWIW, I've found the Go standard library `net/http` to be reasonably productive. It's pretty well-designed and intuitive for me, but YMMV. I've observed that ramping up in it from a Python/flask background is relatively painless.

If you're willing to dive into the Go landscape, there are a few quality web frameworks available, ranging from the small highly-performant [https://github.com/buaazp/fasthttprouter](https://github.com/buaazp/fasthttprouter), to the more opinionated and feature-creepy [https://github.com/gobuffalo/buffalo](https://github.com/gobuffalo/buffalo). I'd skim the selection, see what trade-offs they make, and pick the one that suits you best.

</comment><comment><USER3> ASP.net core is pretty well documented, has a nice CLI, the tooling is fantastic and the community is growing.

At the end you just have a single executable that you can deploy on a server. NancyFx is nice too.

</comment><comment> mr-dotter I've recently came across oatpp c++ web framework [https://oatpp.io/](https://oatpp.io/). It has nice code-gen features for endpoint parameters mapping, and http client. As well as swagger-ui integration. Tried to play with example projects looks nifty.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you haven't already it may be worth checking out Rocket [0]. From the guide:

"... you can think of Rocket as being a more flexible, friendly medley of Rails, Flask, Bottle, and Yesod."

[0] [https://rocket.rs/](https://rocket.rs/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Yesod[1] is pretty cool.

[1] [https://www.yesodweb.com/](https://www.yesodweb.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Http4s is pretty nice, less magic then play

</comment><comment><USER7> You can go to /r/rust and search/question for answers

</comment><comment><USER8> Is a good idea</comment>


The very rich are less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44084236/ns/health-behavior/#.TkRDG7-P3Wx

<comment><AUTHOR> "Last year, research at Duke and Harvard universities showed that regardless of political affiliation or income, Americans tended to think wealth distribution ought to be more equal. The problem? Rich people wrongly believed it already was."

</comment><comment><USER2> Aha! I knew I was doing something wrong.</comment>


ReactOS signs its first development contract - <AUTHOR> http://www.reactos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11401 <comment><USER2> ReactOS is one of the slowest moving open-source projects I've ever seen. It's amazing to me that it is still going.

It's interesting to look at the release dates of the different versions: 0.0.10 came out in 1998, 0.1.0 in 2003, 0.2.0 in 2004, and 0.3.0 in 2006.

So, it's been 6 years since the 0.3.0 release and we're now on 0.3.14.

Does anyone know how many people are still actively involved?

<http://www.reactos.org/wiki/Roadmap>

<comment><USER3> Are you sure that measuring progress in version numbers is a good idea?

<comment><USER2> Maybe not, but the project is still considered 'alpha' after 14+ years, and generally not recommended for use unless you're curious or involved in development, or as they put it: "not recommended for everyday use".

Looking at the major releases was just a quick (albeit crude) way to try to understand how it's progressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> With the recent talk of Gabe and Valve being disheartened by Windows 8 and looking to move to a new platform, I found myself wondering why they don't just buy ReactOS and hire the developers to work on it full time. That way the games wouldn't need to be ported to a new system, possibly just altered slightly.

It certainly would draw attention to the OS and provide a good legal challenge to the team when Microsoft decides enough is enough.

<comment><USER5> This may be an even harder thing to achieve, but how about making Steam a virtual environment that runs on bare metal or under windows/mac/linux? That way all games are written to run as a virtual environment in the same virtual host.

<comment><USER6> Because games are performance sensitive. The tools to create cross platform games exist but the issue is that many companies have sunk a lot into DirectX based tooling & experience and DirectX only works (properly) on MS systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does ReactOS have OpenGL/D3D hw acceleration of some form?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.reactos.org/wiki/OpenGL></comment></comment>


How to Get Wyoming Wind to California, and Cut 80% of U.S. Carbon Emissions - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609766/how-to-get-wyoming-wind-to-california-and-cut-80-of-us-carbon-emissions/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2018-02-23&utm_campaign=Technology+Review <comment><USER2> Wyoming is an amazing place. I was just reading about how windy it is there. Blows vehicles over cliffs. Turns over 26 wheeled tractor trailers.

Geologists have rough estimates for how much sediment, from the once 10,000 - 15,000 foot higher Rocky Mountains, has been deposited in the plains and in the Mississippi river delta. It's a lot! So much that the delta has 25 thousand feet of sediment, sinking and pressing down into the Earth's mantle, causing one heck of a thermal reaction.

But maybe 30% of the former Rocky Mountains is unaccountable as sediment or as nicely sloped Kansas/Nebraska plains. One day, scientists in South Carolina noticed a lot of dust in the air. They checked the weather and found out the dust had been carried from the Rockies. They estimated that over 1,000,000 tons of dust was deposited in the Atlantic Ocean that day.

Apparently, many places in Wyoming don't have any soil smaller than pebbles. It's all been blown away.

Wyoming has a history of producing energy for the West Coast. The Jim Bridger Power Plant is turing 250 tons of WY coal per hour into 2,000 MW of electricity for the Pacific Coast. But, it's keeping all the pollution for Wyoming.

You can learn a hundred more interesting facts, in poetic story form, by reading: Annals of the Former World by John McPhee.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005H0O8KQ/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005H0O8KQ/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

<comment><USER3> "The Jim Bridger Power Plant is turing 250 tons of WY coal per hour into 2,000 MW of electricity for the Pacific Coast. But, it's keeping all the pollution for Wyoming."

How, with all that wind, is the pollution staying in WY?

<comment><USER2> Good point. Jim Bridger is in SW WY, so prevailing winds do take it east across the state, but it must go past the state as well. It just doesn't go to where the electricity is used, which is west.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For anyone else in my position, who thought that AC won because it was inherently more efficient for transmission, the Wikipedia page [1] has a nice overview of HVDC. There's also this PDF from Siemens[2] with some data. Interesting points: the voltage being discussed is in the hundreds of thousands of volts (800,000 for the line in the PDF), and the transmission losses are apparently 30-50% lower for HVDC.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- voltage_direct_current](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- voltage_direct_current)

2\. [https://www.siemens.com/press/pool/de/events/2012/energy/201...](https://www.siemens.com/press/pool/de/events/2012/energy/2012-07-wismar/factsheet- hvdc-e.pdf)

<comment><USER5> The "DC can't be transmitted long distances" myth seems to date back to a time when solid-state (read: efficient) DC-DC converters didn't exist. In Edison's time, the entire DC grid had to operate at the same voltage, whereas an AC grid could utilize transformers to step the voltage up for transmission. But if a DC "transformer" had existed at the time, DC grids would not have had that limitation. The physics (capacitance, inductance, skin effect) dictate that for a given voltage and distance, DC is always more efficient than AC transmission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As currently proposed, the TransWest Express HVDC line start in Rawlins, WY, and first run towards Delta, UT, where without connections [1] it will begin to run alongside the Intermountain Power Plant HVDC Line [2], for the majority of its remaining journey, before ending in the complicated clustering of substations near Boulder City, Nevada.

The Intermountain Power Plant HDVC line begins at the Intermountain Power Plant, a coal-fired plant in Delta owned in large part by Southern California cities, and runs to Adelando, CA, on the outskirts of Victorville. It can already rapidly dump power between west-central Utah and southern California. With coal prices remaining high relative to natgas and California pushing for more renewables, the future of the Intermountain Power Plant is in question. It seems shortsighted then, to not plan an interconnection at Delta from the start.

Redundancy and resiliency is another issue. Most of the transmission lines between the Las Vegas Valley and Mesquite, NV closely parallel each other, the Union Pacific railroad, and I-15. One major disruption to a small area could easily cripple a significant portion of southern California's power capacity (including power lines [3] to Glen Canyon Dam, Navajo Power Station, and the coal plans around Farmington, NM), and cut off a critical transportation route with the interior. The patchwork of public land, protected land, and military reservations in southern Nevada complicates the placement of infrastructure, and confines it to narrow corridors, but piling further projects immediately adjacent is a risk.

[1] [http://www.transwestexpress.net/about/docs/TransWest- Express...](http://www.transwestexpress.net/about/docs/TransWest-Express- Route-Overview-0117.pdf) [2] [https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3392214#map=7/37.130/...](https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/3392214#map=7/37.130/-112.95) [3] [https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14282204](https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/14282204)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's really strange that it doesn't mention the two big HVDC lines that are already built and operational from the Pacific Northwest to LA and LA to Salt Lake City. I think something like half of LA's power comes over that first line...

If your goal is just to connect the grid you'd only need to connect Wyoming to Salt Lake and maybe upgrade Path 27.

</comment><comment><USER8> Super exciting that you could solve the issue of intermittency of renewables and increase the stability of the US grid all while getting a 250% return. What's not to like?

</comment><comment><USER9> What saddens me about wind is that it destroys the landscape. You used to be able to drive across Kansas on I-70 and just look at the emptiness of the Plains, now the drive is dotted with wind turbines nearly the entire way.

[Ironically, the EPA was harassing gas companies in Kansas about drilling rigs disrupting the breeding habits of the greater prairie chicken. Not sure if the same happened to the wind companies]

I'm happy to see renewables, but they are coming at a cost.

<comment><USER10> I can't speak to Kansas, but driving across Spain I found the wind turbines a pleasant part of the landscape. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

<comment><USER11> I can speak to Kansas. The land owners appreciate the rents paid, and the counties appreciate the property tax base and jobs that come with the turbines.

<comment><USER12> Yeah here in Europe lots of farmers are happy with wind turbines on their land. It helps them earn a stable income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I appreciate this idea. My only concern would be putting ourselves in a situation where the west coast could lose power by sabotaging a single transmission line

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> And probably give Wyoming the best public school and healthcare system in the country.

</comment><comment><USER14> Is it public knowledge who is supplying the conductors for these HVDC lines? I presume this is going to be an application of relatively new HTS wire...

<comment><USER15> HVDC uses ordinary resistive conductors at high voltage. There's no superconducting wire involved.

EDIT: I see that you might have been wondering about this sentence from the article:

"In addition, researchers are exploring different types of semiconductors to improve the cost and performance of circuit breakers and voltage converters, Sivaram says, and working on superconducting cables that could boost power capacity and cut energy losses to nearly zero."

Wide-bandgap semiconductors like silicon carbide and gallium nitride are already working their way into high power applications. Superconducting energy transmission is much further from industrialization.

<comment><USER14> It's been on my radar that HTS wire is now commercially available and has already made an impact in the planned development of dramatically smaller fusion reactors. I also read reports of their use in massive electric motors used by navy vessels. Basically all these massive electromagnets can be made smaller, more powerful, and more efficient thanks to HTS wire.

They're already being used in the Tres Amigas project [1], though I haven't investigated what the scope of the application is there. I assumed it would be the power transmission since it seems likely to have the greatest losses due to the distance. It's clearly stated that American Superconductor is supplying the HTS wire for the project.

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

<comment><USER15> The plan at Tres Amigas was to use superconducting equipment and short-range superconducting cables on the interconnection site. It's not replacing any long-range transmission with superconducting wire. You can see a diagram in the lower left of this article:

[http://www.tresamigasllc.com/docs/HTS-Cable-TA-Energy- Indust...](http://www.tresamigasllc.com/docs/HTS-Cable-TA-Energy-Industry- Times-Nov-2010.pdf)

I say Tres Amigas "was" going to do this because the project seems dead. It lost a major partner in 2015, scaled back a lot, and the project site hasn't posted any updates since 2016.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for the link to the pdf, I hadn't read that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


US Will Screen Air Passengers for Signs of Ebola. Will It Work? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/10/ebola-screen-air/ <comment><USER2> For anyone thinking of glibly and irrelevantly pointing out the ineffective nature of TSA checkpoints, this is rather a more limited and intelligent program:

"At the five US airports that receive most passengers from the three countries where Ebola is circulating, passengers will be singled out on the basis of their travel records; interviewed by means of a questionnaire; and have their temperature taken, to see if they have a fever."

<comment><USER3> It's just as much security theater as TSA checkpoints. IR thermometers are pretty inaccurate[0] and not good at catching Ebola.[1] You can also just pop and Ibuprofen an lie your way through.[2]

[0][http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2008/06/25/why- fever-s...](http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2008/06/25/why-fever- screening-at-airport/)

[1][https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/08/theres- really-...](https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/08/theres-really-no- way-screen-ebola-airports/90413/)

[2][http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/03/ebola-airport- scree...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/03/ebola-airport- screening_n_5925948.html)

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "You can also just pop and Ibuprofen and lie your way through"

Why would anyone do that?

<comment><USER4> To indulge in a bit of perhaps undeserved paranoia: What were/are the messages coming from the treatment and outcome of the patient in Texas?

On the one hand, a highly fatal disease and typical, systemic mishandling. On the other, an indication that travelling to the U.S. won't save you.

I have no evidence that the latter message was deliberately manufactured (implying all sorts of terrible things). But I'm certain there were and are people in positions of authority thinking about this.

<comment><USER5> A citizen of one of the countries where there is an outbreak would need a US visa to even get on the plane.

I was thinking about that the other day; taking the need for a visa into account, it's unlikely the deceased patient in Texas traveled to the U.S. in response to exposure.

<comment><USER4> From the reporting I've read and heard, it's fairly conclusively known that he did not.

He helped a neighbor thought to be suffering complications from pregnancy -- she was in her 7th month -- getting a cab and perhaps also accompanying her to the hospital or care center; I don't recall the details on the latter part.

The general population will not be making a rush over, on airplanes. But a subset who is eligible and capable might.

Personally, from the reporting, it seems to me that the man in Texas was a good samaritan and deserving of whatever help the U.S. might be able to provide. I further consider the threatened prosecution (by Liberia, and now I read perhaps also by others) not only unkind but counter-productive -- in general, I gather, such actions force further underground and prompt people to hide potentially threatening symptoms and conditions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Screening for temperatures is a good first step but since a person might not be symptomatic at the time the temperature is being taken, temperature taking won't be enough.

I think the Government should go further and embark on enlightenment campaigns. These campaigns would involve listing the symptoms of Ebola, advising people who exhibit such symptoms to visit the nearest hospital, explaining in very clear terms how people can contact Ebola (there is a shocking amount of misinformation about how Ebola is contracted out there) and also listing some of the basic ways people can help prevent the spread of the disease (like washing of hands with sanitizers).

Basically, borrow a leaf from what the Nigerian Government did which brought Ebola to a halt after a Liberian brought Ebola to Lagos, a city whose population is more than the entire population of Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone combined (those are the 3 countries hardest hit by Ebola).

<comment><USER7> Honestly that sounds like a very constructive suggestion. However it might be a little bit too early for it given the few cases outside of Africa.

There's a thin line between sewing panic and providing the public with constructive information. If they released that kind of stuff right now, people would become super paranoid and expect an outbreak any day.

You'd see people going to the hospital with every single flu, cold, or similar that they have.

<comment><USER8> It is very likely that thousands of people are going to die this year alone, because the elected officers that are supposed to protect them are more concerned with "preventing panics" than with implementing actual measures to contain and stop the epidemic.

We already have forced the moronic security theater of airport security to "protect" against a bunch of yahoos using box cutters as weapons. How worse could it get, anyways?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It will work in the same way the TSA works: It will make people FEEL like the government is taking action. Which is really what it aims to do and nothing more...

Aside from that it will likely pick up more false positives than it will actual Ebola cases (e.g. common flu, someone getting too hot after running from the aircraft with a heavy bag to beat the queues, etc), Ebola can go asymptomatic for over a week within which time it will be undetectable.

Keep in mind that several African states are already checking people as they leave. So for this US measure to work someone would have to go from asymptomatic to symptomatic within the time it takes from flying out of an Ebola infected area and arriving at their destination (e.g. 12 hr period).

I already feel bad for all of the people who will be incorrectly quarantined under this scheme just because they have regular flue. They will be caught up in a state overreaction similar to "shoe inspections" and "no liquids above 150mm" nonsense of the past ten years.

</comment><comment><USER9> So basically, the only reason to do this—acknowledged by researchers after _more_ ambitious programs of this kind—is to reassure the public. It's theater, meant to calm irrational, emotional concerns. Unlike the TSA, people aren't even pretending otherwise!

To me, this is a great illustration of why we need strong, consistent rights and limitations on government action: it's not just a check on government abuse, or abuse by certain minority movements or even malicious abuse by the majority—it's also a check against popular emotional responses like this. It's a way of forcing _ourselves_ to stop, reconsider and perhaps avoid acting poorly in a knee-jerk reaction.

(Also, thinking about it, it's a solid committment strategy: if these rights and restrictions are clear and unambiguous, we can use that when negotiating both with other countries and _within_ our own government.)

<comment><USER10> In the United States, a public hysteria would likely do more damage than the virus itself so this is a good idea even if it is just security theatre. I've heard that phrase uttered several times in this thread already. Do you guys all read the same libertarian blog or something?

It's about to be flu season. They don't want hospitals to be overcrowded with paranoid patients because that means if somebody actually does have the virus they're less likely to get the proper attention. Etc. Not to mention all the people suffering from other problems. Such a strain on our healthcare system must be avoided at all costs.

This is a good thing, even if it is just a jumping off point.

<comment><USER9> No need for a blog, I can think for myself, thanks.

The fact that this policy is intrusive, expensive and yet demonstrably irrational (at least on the part of the public) is pretty self-evident. The idea that we need some method, whether legal or social or both, to control irrational responses like this is a pretty a pretty natural conclusion after that.

Perhaps the idea that the government should not react due to irrational popular pressure is somehow libertarian, but really, it seems pretty non- ideological. Not wanting intrusions and restrictions on individuals just because a bunch of people are overly panicky is very reasonable.

<comment><USER10> Intrusive: Depends on how sensitive you are about stuff like this. They're only going to be screening flights from the worst hit West African countries. It's a temperature check before you get on the flight, and another one after. We've had way more intrusive security measures in place for EVERY person flying in the past (and present).

Expensive: More expensive than not doing it, sure. There's only about ~150 people entering the U.S. daily from the Liberia+Sierra Leone+Guinea. The screens will be performed using digital thermometers. The cost should be relatively low.

Demonstrably Irrational: It's not really irrational to take the potential for public hysteria surrounding this issue very seriously. If people believe that we're just letting at-risk people travel freely between W. Africa and the United States then things are going to get very nasty the moment Patient 1 shows up (P0 died a few days ago). CDC (Frieden) admits that the checks might make people feel safer but the real focus needs to be on containment in Africa. Everything else is going to be a half measure by comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So what's the long term policy / law that will come out of Ebola testing via the TSA? Since these activities never go away they just become unquestionable policy.

Long term maybe it's finger print scanning, blood, saliva.

<comment><USER5> This is CBP and CDC, not TSA.

<comment><USER11> Yeah but what's three more letters?

<comment><USER5> Those agencies both have wider mandates, so they won't want to continue to expend resources on pointless screening. Much of the criticism of the TSA is rooted in the fact that it exists to expend resources on screening (maybe with some arguing about whether 'pointless' belongs in the statement).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It could be a good measurement, at least airport management (and government, sure) is doing something to avoid it. Whether people take responsibility or not is a completely different ball game.

</comment><comment><USER13> Of course it won't work. It wouldn't have prevented the incident it is a reaction to. Why would anyone think it would prevent any future incident similar to the first one?

</comment><comment><USER14> Yes it will work. Partial success has benefits. So if you miss 3% or even 50%, you're making less work for those who have to contain those who get through.

</comment><comment><USER15> Am I the only one who wants a Betteridge's-law-filter on HN? Simply ban all submissions which are not "Ask HN" with a question mark at the end.

I am getting sick of these submissions merely intended to scrape votes which have no value whatsoever.

<comment><USER16> That would make sense most of the time. Do you want them to filter words like "maybe" and "perhaps" too? I think there is enough censoring on HN already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Of course it will -- there is no terrorism any more, after all.

Real answer: this is nothing more than security theater. The effective way to fight disease would be health care, and that's the one measure the United States will never take to fight any disease.

<comment><USER18> >The effective way to fight disease would be health care, and that's the one measure the United States will never take to fight any disease.

What are you trying to say? That the US doesn't do health research? That the US doesn't have the best medical care in the world? That we haven't yet invented the magical cure to Ebola and shipped it to West Africa? Or are you trying to politicize a virus discussion into something about insurance?

<comment><USER19> In what way does the US have the best medical care in the world?

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2014/06/16/u-s- healthca...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2014/06/16/u-s-healthcare- ranked-dead-last-compared-to-10-other-countries/)

<comment><USER20> In this way, among others....

[http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba596](http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba596)

<comment><USER21> I wonder if the study includes those who died of cancer but were never diagnosed?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Party in a Lunatic Asylum: On the Mundane Mysticism of Alan Moore - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/culture/persons-of-interest/a-party-in-a-lunatic-asylum <comment><USER2> I really want to read that book now.

For all the hearsay about Alan Moore's nastiness, I have to say I 100% appreciate where he is coming from. Comic book super heroes have been transformed by Hollywood into something so unimaginably bland that I would be a tad surly as well if I found my fame growing exponentially as a result of such drivel. Maybe it's not a graceful response, but I have to respect someone who wants to do interesting work in spite of the capitalist machine that crushingly smooths all the corners off of culture.</comment>


Apple's Failed Attempt At Designing a Video Game Console in 1995 - <AUTHOR> http://immaturebusiness.com/1747/apple-designed-a-video-game-console/

<comment><USER2> How to immediately dismiss an Apple article as linkbait:

When the author cites blind consumer love for Steve Jobs, then talks about a failed product that was conceptualized and launched when Steve Jobs didn't work at Apple.</comment>


"Ecological grief" grips scientists witnessing Great Barrier Reef's decline - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02656-8 <comment><USER2> I experienced something like this earlier this year, when I read about the massive loss of flying insect life. It was deep enough that I am pretty sure that I went through an identity crisis, and through the books by Yuval Noah Harari (adding a layer of abstraction to human organization, and a new way to look at identity for me), classes like "Learning How to Learn" (which took away the sense that I was static, or just too stupid to become a researcher and be able to help in the near future), and "Enlightenment Now" by Steven Pinker (teaching me to understand that advocacy works, amongst other things), I'm pretty sure I came out a healthier individual on the other side. In fact, I'm not exactly sure about the old version of me at all, it's been quite the journey this year.

I would recommend, even though these awful events are occurring, to read books that encourage positive action (Enlightenment Now) and books that encourage understanding of other people and their viewpoints, even if you find them to be unacceptably obtuse at times: there are many layers of abstraction that people live on, and sometimes you are just at a different one.

Advocate against pollution, and the causes that give rise to it. It will help to bring change, it isn't hopeless.

</comment><comment><USER3> _" For Pandolfi, the consequences he worries about are those that his children — now 17 and 20 — will face as a result of climate change. "I don't care that the world can go on without people, but I do care that I'm incurring debt on my children that I can never repay," he laments."_

If you didn't read it, that's the toughest part.

<comment><USER4> Well, someone has to fix the mess we created, since it will persist long after we parents are gone.

<comment><USER3> I'm completely in favor of fixing it, for that reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a good documentary called Chasing Coral on this topic. It's on Netflix.

The global climate strike is this Friday (20th): [https://globalclimatestrike.net/](https://globalclimatestrike.net/)

You can even join digitally too: [https://digital.globalclimatestrike.net/](https://digital.globalclimatestrike.net/)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's not just climate scientists. I've been having a tough time with it myself. I know I'm not alone.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm listening to the audiobook "The Uninhabitable Earth" by David Wallace- Wells and it's really depressing stuff. The urgency is stunning.

<comment><USER8> I still feel like his New York magazine piece that was condemned by many as too scary marks a turning point in the public discourse around climate change.

<comment><USER9> Can you share a link please?

<comment><USER8> [http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change- earth-...](http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too- hot-for-humans.html)

<comment><USER10> He has a nice piece this week on Greta Thunberg.

[http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/greta-thunberg- climat...](http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/09/greta-thunberg-climate- change-movement.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> basically anyone that takes too close a look at climate change sees the horror and cannot help but go through natural loss/despair/depression reactions and cycles. you can almost perfectly map the most common responses to the kubler- ross grief model:

      denial: people think this ones about denying its existence but we're really so far past that.  most of the denial right now is over the timeline and the budget.  the "science" says FUCKING YESTERDAY and WHATEVER IT COSTS but most people don't want to swallow that yet
      anger: the takes that focus on "these top 10 companies" or "these top 100 oil execs" or boomers or suburbs or cheeseburgers, or capitalism
      bargaining: you can tell these takes from phrases like "what if we just" and "I don't understand why we don't". they're mostly nonsense from people with zero understanding of engineering or the grid, or nonsense from people with just enough understanding of the grid to be dangerous and get tunnel-vision fixated on nuclear.  self driving thorium drones, etc.
      depression: nothing we can do, its too late, no point in trying, hating anyone who does try, a thousand excuses and zero action
      acceptance: i won't say what I think goes here since if you haven't gotten through all the above steps you won't agree

<comment><USER12> > the kubler-ross grief model

That model is really outdated, and was never meant to be the linear model it is so often presented as. I imagine you were speaking lightly, but it's important to call this out.

My wife is a grief counselor, and that is the clearest thing I've learned from her, and it's the single most important thing to share when people are dealing with grief. The prolonged use of this model in society and popular culture leads people to believe that we're supposed to progress through grief, and at some point "get over it". But grief is cyclical, and it's different for everyone.

Environmental grief is real, and it's a pretty crazy time to be a parent. How do you help your kid understand that the world you brought them into is quickly collapsing?

<comment><USER13> "How do you help your kid understand that the world you brought them into is quickly collapsing?"

I'd say as a parent it would be pretty irresponsible to say anything that would make the kid feel any sudden anxiety.

We don't really talk about it. If our kids express their worry the we will say the truth - biomes are not doing too good. But we don't really consider it as some major doomsday looming over.

Personally I was really anxious as a kid. I was really scared when I learned that one day sun will turn to red giant and destroy earth. Ditto about asteroids. The Amazon (30 years ago as kid I refused to eat at McDonalds for a while). And there were also actual bad things happening to people close to me - but you get the point. Easily distressed.

As an adult, I see no way this existential anxiety would have done any good to me.

So, as a parent I play it cool. And besides, we don't know _what_ is going to happen. It's not going to be rainbows and sunshine ... but really. If you were with a kid on a train to Auschwitz, would you tell them me and him would soon be gassed to death, or lie to them it's all going to be fine. I'd lie.

<comment><USER14> To use your closing example, that sort of fatalistic passivity is _how you end up on the train in the first place._ It's better to fight for your freedom than to meekly accept it and everything else being taken away from you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Action is a great curative for despair. If people aren't listening to polite explanations and exhortations then maybe it's time to try other approaches instead of just feeling helpless and passively documenting it.

<comment><USER15> I think the problem is that people just aren't willing to make sacrifices. Just look at how these threads go, someone will suggest that maybe we should stop flying around the globe for fun, stop demanding access to fresh fruit year round, eat less meat, not upgrade our iPhone every 6 months, etc. and what do people do? They say, "oh, but I'm just a drop in the bucket". Everyone is very much for _someone else_ making sacrifices, as long as it isn't them. And that's why we're doomed. Hopefully, the next go at global civilization can learn from our mistakes.

<comment><USER16> People calling for government action are willing to make _collective_ sacrifices. Making _individual_ sacrifices will not change the trends that need changing. That's realism, not hypocrisy.

You can't push adulterated foods out of the marketplace by telling individual consumers to make wise choices. You need something like the Pure Food and Drug Act.

You can't push water-polluting laundry detergents out of the marketplace by telling individual consumers to make wise choices. You need something like the Clean Water Act.

Telling Los Angelenos agitating for clean air, circa 1967, that they should buy their own cleaner cars (or find ways to avoid driving altogether) before supporting the government California Air Resources Board would likewise have been futile. They needed regulation, not more personal virtue.

Positive collective action is required to solve collective action problems. I already went vegetarian and drive less than most Americans. I've never mentioned my personal behavior in climate discussions here before because it's beside the point. I keep upvoting posts that propose carbon taxes and tariffs (or equivalent statutory phase-out requirements) because those are the things that will make a difference.

<comment><USER15> > People calling for government action are willing to make collective > sacrifices. Making individual sacrifices will not change the trends that > need changing. That's realism, not hypocrisy

Yeah, no rain drop believes it is responsible for the flood.

<comment><USER17> That's because it isn't. If you want to stop a flood, don't target individual raindrops, target the whole storm.

<comment><USER15> The drops are the storm. Ok, we're stretching the analogy now, but if people are unwilling to make sacrifices for themselves, why would they be willing to vote for policies that negatively impact them? And you know what? From the election results what people base their political decision making on it seems that they won't.

If you actually, truly give a damn instead of just using it a some kind of virtue signaling then you should be willing to make sacrifices. Demonstrate that you care instead of just talking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I went on a coral sea diving trip a couple summers ago. It was amazing, and I'm glad I got to see some of the beauty there before it's almost inevitably gone forever. Unfortunately it's hard to translate this type of loss into a language that most people can understand. Sometimes I wish that the effects of climate change were happening more starkly in terrestrial areas first, like mountains. If the ski resorts were all closing down because there was no snow I think it would shake people from their lassitude a lot quicker.

<comment><USER19> What I read: "I'm glad I got to contribute to CO2 production and the decimation of the environment by taking a vacation to examine the coral reefs before we collectively destroyed them."

If there's ever a collective lawsuit for the excess carbon footprints produced, there will be hell to pay, and the people getting rich off of pushing externalities to their communities today will be the same ones serving life sentences tomorrow.

<comment><USER20> We don't have any indication that the OP took any form of flight to get to the coral. There is not enough detail within that post to shame them for their carbon footprint, and such ire would be better directed at the ~100 companies that are responsible for 70% of emissions.

<comment><USER21> Agree with the first part of the above comment, but I wonder about the statistic in the second half.

I have seen it before and I always wonder when it comes up: If you take a flight with Emirates, is it considered pollution by Emirates or by you? What about the CO2 used to build the plane? Should you divide those emissions among everyone that flew in the plane, or should that CO2 be added to the company?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "They found that people could mourn the disappearance or degradation of a species or landscape and the future losses of an ecosystem."

I assume this happens in a first world country.

My 2nd rate country still throws it's trash in the forest. Literally.

</comment><comment><USER23> I wrote this five years ago on reddit on the same topic and it's too long to embed:

[http://txti.es/ocean-acidification](http://txti.es/ocean-acidification)

TL;DR: [T]his isn't a train that stops for anyone, regardless of all the radical idealism, all of the futurist woo, the green colored packaging or compact fluorescent light bulbs, or all of the liberal sentimentality and conservative denialism.

This is not a movie. There is not a plot line. There is no salvation at the end of the hour. You are not a survivor in the zombie apocalypse. This is real. There are no adults secretly or overtly in control waiting to step in. Superman isn't coming to save us from ourselves. You are in the middle of an extinction event that just so happens to include you.

<comment><USER24> the current warming trend is not an extinction threat to humans even according to very pessimistic projections. try not to over panic it doesnt help. plenty of things to be concerned about and pilibg on with unsubstantiated hysteria only turns people off who might have listened</comment></comment>


The pattern technology of christopher alexander - <AUTHOR> http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/20111007/the-pattern-technology-of-christopher-alexander

<comment><USER2> The works of Christopher Alexander are worth reading for many fields including computer systems. Along with them, you might find Richard Gabriel's _Patterns of Software: Tales from Software Community_ , now out of print, of interest. There is a Kindle electronic edition: [http://www.amazon.com/Patterns- Software-Tales-Community-eboo...](http://www.amazon.com/Patterns-Software- Tales-Community-ebook/dp/B003TJ9FGE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1318179653&sr=8-3)</comment>


The great Rose Bowl hoax of 1961 - <AUTHOR> http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Great_Rose_Bowl_Hoax/

<comment><USER2> I first read about this is The Hacker's Dictionary. It contained an article about the amorphous definition of "hack" that includes this story and other classics: <http://www.ccil.org/jargon/jargon_44.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> I love the imitation version at Hilliard, that's pretty close to where I grew up.

</comment><comment><USER4> Should be: "The Great Rose Bowl Hack of 1961"

Three cheers for hackers!

<comment><USER5> To be semantic, isn't this a crack? After all, the key to the whole scheme was breaking into the hotel rooms of the Washington U Cheerleading team. Without burgling their rooms, none of it would have happened.

<comment><USER6> The term "hack" is slang, and therefore has several different meanings based on context. Here, "hack" just means a really difficult prank.

If it were computer "hacking", it would definitely be black-hat, since it was illegal, hurtful, and only benefited the hackers.

<comment><USER7> I wouldn't call it 'black-hat'. While there is the aforementioned illegality (breaking in), it's a bit of a stretch to call it 'hurtful' as the only reaction was a bit of hurt pride. The stadium burst out laughing, so I wouldn't call it something that only benefitted the hackers either.

In all it wasn't a malicious act nor done for profit, so I believe that associating it with the type of hackers who do behave that way is incorrect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I love the blatant link buying at the top of the article. The ticket industry is the king of this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some more famous Caltech pranks at: <http://www.globalprovince.com/caltech.htm>

<comment><USER9> Cal-Tech's been trying to imitate MIT hacks for years: <http://hacks.mit.edu/>

<comment><AUTHOR> With all due respect, I don't think MIT invented "hacks". MIT invented the name, though.

MIT is older than Caltech. But Cambridge University is older than MIT. At Cambridge, they've been pulling hacks for centuries.

<comment><USER9> I didn't say we invented hacks; I just said that Cal-Tech's been imitating ours for years. :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you please care to provide some examples?

I am neither a Caltech nor a MIT alumnus. Although I have never visited MIT, I have spent some time at Caltech as a visitor. When I was at Caltech, some people told me that the difference between these two schools is the mentality and maturity of the undergrad students:

MIT -> high school

Caltech -> junior high

I didn't invent the joke. I am just the messenger ;-)

<comment><USER9> Very funny ... I resembled that remark! :)

About the imitation, I was more or less poking some good-natured fun at Cal- Tech, not actually calling them out. However, the Rose Bowl stuff in particular is derivative of the tradition of MIT hacks at the Harvard-Yale games that has been going on since at least 1948.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I have heard of the Harvard-Yale game hacks. I have also heard of the tradition of putting stuff on top of the great dome. I like this Star Wars hack:

<http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1999/r2d2.html>

Nonetheless, the coolest hack MIT has ever pulled off was to steal the Fleming Cannon from Caltech in 2006, imho.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The abundant fossil fuel you've never heard of - <AUTHOR> http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/12/03/the-abundant-fossil-fuel-you%E2%80%99ve-never-heard-of/ <comment><USER3> Oh yes, I've heard of this. Fears among climatologists are that if temperatures increase even moderately above minimum predictions these methane hydrates will start melting and releasing methane directly into the atmosphere. If this happens, they exacerbate the warming problem. Methane is a better greenhouse gas than co2, meaning it's more dangerous. Many scientists are afraid that if the ices start melting, it will create a feedback warming loop that will release even more methane. The scenario they fear leads to a mean average temperature above that of just co2 warming. Some have even speculated it's possible to trigger a runaway loop that leads to a Venus situation. While those are still speculations, overall it shows that releasing captured methane is a very bad idea. It is utterly irresponsible to consider mining these materials and putting more greenhouse gases into the air.

<comment><USER4> Funny. Up until your second to last sentence, I really thought you were giving reasons in _support_ of harvesting.

If you're worried about the frost thawing and releasing the methane into the atmosphere (especially with a positive feedback), it seems prudent to burn it into water and CO2 (which already has to be dealt with) while it's still concentrated.

<comment><USER3> Whoa, how does that make sense though? The idea is to keep the methane hydrates nice and frozen at the bottom of the ocean. _Not_ to release them into the atmosphere. Sure, 10 tons of pure methane is worse than 10 tons of CO2. But we don't want 10 tons of _either_ extra gas in the atmosphere. Its kind of like being stranded on an island with 3 sandwiches. If you ration, you'll have food for longer. But to take your argument, you should eat them all right away because you'll be hungry eventually anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We require more vespene gas!

<comment><USER6> At first I thought this was a garbage comment but it's actually a fairly clever reference. The article is about harvesting methane gas hydrates (which can be thought of as methane gas trapped in ice).

But I question the use of methane gas hydrates. There is no denying methane gas is one of the worse gas responsible for the green house effect. The article makes it seem like methane gas hydrates is a solution but in the end it's not a renewable source of energy. It would still be harvested and drilled for like oil and even though there's the trillions of cubic feet of gas to be had, one day it could run out.

<comment><USER7> The emissions of burning methane have less of a green house effect than methane gas itself.

Why does it matter that it will run out?

<comment><USER8> "The emissions of burning methane have less of a green house effect than methane gas itself."

True only if the methane is present in the atmosphere. In this case it is trapped in ice or under water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really? I thought knowledge of undersea gas hydrates was fairly common - <USER2> that retrieving them was cost-prohibitive.

That being said, is this really the solution to the fuel crisis? Acknowledging that we are running out of a fossil fuel should change behavior, not encourage more of the same.

</comment><comment><USER10> There's some interesting but half-baked speculation that hydrates are responsible for some of the strange happenings reported in the Bermuda Triangle.

The idea is that the deposits will spontaneously burp up an enormous quantity of methane from time to time. This causes the ocean to turn into a foam that's much less dense than water: ships sink like rocks in the stuff.

Apparently it also causes some kind of ionization or static charge in the air that can cause navigation instruments to go haywire.

Again, interesting and very much half-baked.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh yes, I've heard of this. Fears among climatologists are that if temperatures increase even moderately above minimum predictions these methane hydrates will start melting and releasing methane directly into the atmosphere. If this happens, they exacerbate the warming problem. Methane is a better greenhouse gas than co2, meaning it's more dangerous. Many scientists are afraid that if the ices start melting, it will create a feedback warming loop that will release even more methane. The scenario they fear leads to a mean average temperature above that of just co2 warming. Some have even speculated it's possible to trigger a runaway loop that leads to a Venus situation. While those are still speculations, overall it shows that releasing captured methane is a very bad idea. It is utterly irresponsible to consider mining these materials and putting more greenhouse gases into the air.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh yes, I've heard of this. Fears among climatologists are that if temperatures increase even moderately above minimum predictions these methane hydrates will start melting and releasing methane directly into the atmosphere. If this happens, they exacerbate the warming problem. Methane is a better greenhouse gas than co2, meaning it's more dangerous. Many scientists are afraid that if the ices start melting, it will create a feedback warming loop that will release even more methane. The scenario they fear leads to a mean average temperature above that of just co2 warming. Some have even speculated it's possible to trigger a runaway loop that leads to a Venus situation. While those are still speculations, overall it shows that releasing captured methane is a very bad idea. It is utterly irresponsible to consider mining these materials and putting more greenhouse gases into the air.

</comment><comment><USER11> Just more proof that humanity is not destined for a malthusian end and that doomsday predictions based on lack of resources are misguided. People who claim that human needs grow exponentially and thus must eventually go unsatisfied fail to account for human ingenuity.</comment>


Barbarians at the digital gate - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323701904578275920521747756.html?mod=hp_opinion

<comment><USER2> It's a funny paradox that China, the "regime that feels threatened by the open exchange of information," can only continue surviving by actively gathering more information than any other government. It seems like they get caught more often than any other spy agency, but I feel safer over-estimating them and contributing this frequency to the volume of hacking campaigns they run. They get caught more because they do more. The gov. has probably the best candidates working for them from their enormous population.

<comment><USER3> It's less of a paradox -- or at least, less of an occurrence -- than you might think. For example, in the U.S. we have everyone blatting their "social network" and correspondence all over media not only public but subject to massive government data mining (Facebook, Twitter, et al.).

At the same time, increasingly we cannot even learn what laws and legal interpretations are being used to "govern" (or, "rule") us. Particularly with regard to that same data mining, but far from exclusively that.

Our "regime" is fearful of exposure to public knowledge, but is busy scarfing up as much public and private data as possible.

P.S. Substitute "government" with "commercial", in the above, and you have the other half of the picture, here. Corporations building data towers and relationships that remain largely opaque to those they study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Comments on that article are impressively xenophobic (above and beyond expected criticism of a rival state I mean.)

<comment><USER5> You're right, and that feels very blatant starting with the paragraph containing «"Grandpa" Wen Jiabao».

Some quotes commented:

 _"hacking—both for purposes of monitoring and to steal commercial intellectual property or government secrets—has become the Chinese way"_

The free nature of Internet allows by default also such "condemnable acts" like monitoring. Everyone can do it and I mean starting from an individual looking who's talking what about him/her up to organizations social/economical/political/etc. in nature, including governments. Why is it suddenly "the Chinese way"? About the "stealing", well - you may redefine the term say, to fit your view/interests in judge court (to imprison folks like Aaron Shwartz), or to bend the game's rules if you are a corporation looking to criple the competition, but the abuse of power can only go so far as a given higher authority is able to go. You therefore may name things as you like inside your courtyard, but don't forget about couryard's limits and do not fall into clownish play.

 _"alerting incidents" [...] the report noted, though it left the specifics of those incidents to a classified annex._

 _We hope their denials are better grounded [...] when confronted with evidence of hacking._

Interesting read, isn't it? Double-standards at its best!

 _"It is much more efficient for the Chinese to steal innovations and intellectual property," they wrote, "than to incur the cost and time of creating their own."_

A strong and amusing claim for ownership of information/innovation/intellectual property, popped out of the ilusion that it belonged/belonges to someone in the first place.

 _That's right as far as it goes, though nobody should get the idea that Beijing's cyberraids are part of some Robin Hood-like quest to spread the technological wealth around._

Smells like brainwashing. This is how _ONE_SHOULD_ think, huh?

 _It's also a plain-old crime, undertaken by a government that fancies itself the world's next superpower but acts like a giant thievery corporation._

An interesting (and very twisted) view - the assumption and assessment of moral conduit at the level of governments regarding the hacking activities...

<comment><AUTHOR> _that feels very blatant starting with the paragraph containing «"Grandpa" Wen Jiabao»._

I don't disagree, but would just note in passing that "Grandpa" is is a common Chinese nickname for ex-premier Wen, and one with quite positive connotations in Chinese culture.</comment></comment></comment>


Google censoring search autocomplete results for "crooked hillary" - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4m7x18/looks_like_someone_had_a_chat_with_google_recently/ <comment><USER2> Please don't. This sub has ruined my Reddit experience, I can't even begin to imagine seeing it all over HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks real to me, we don't have to censor them too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Or maybe their autosuggest algorithms aren't picking it up because of low search volume, low conversion, or whatever factors they use for model training? That's not much proof of a censorship conspiracy.</comment>


The Aha Moments That Made Y Combinator Possible - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/design-startups/3a2bcf496032 <comment><USER2> This article states that YC is now valued at $13.7 billion. Actually, the cited source credits pg recently saying that is the current valuation of all of the YC startups, not of YC itself.

[edited for clarity]

<comment><USER3> Yipes, nothing like that. That's the total value of all the companies we've funded. We assume we end up with 3% on average after dilution.

<comment><USER4> That would value YC at around $400m, but isn't the mean dilution insufficient, since YC would be diluted the most for the highest valued startups?

A _very_ interesting question: once it's all said and done (let's say in 30 years), do you think YC will have a greater valuation than any single YC startup?

<comment><USER3> Unlikely given the power law distribution of startup outcomes. But if you set a _threshold_ defining a big hit and we funded 33 of them we'd end up being one ourselves. It's conceivable we could fund 33 big hits in 30 years. Depends how much we grow.

(3% is our estimate for the biggest successes.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Was Viaweb First?_

[http://www.paulgraham.com/first.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/first.html)

[http://ycombinator.com/viaweb](http://ycombinator.com/viaweb)

<comment><USER6> It was first according to PG's knowledge, which is incomplete. Amazon.com was incorporated in 1994, and sold its first book online in July 1995 [1], a month before Viaweb. EBay launched in Sept 1995 [2], a month after Viaweb, and so was probably independently under development. Geocities was active and allowing user-contributed content by July 1995 [3], a month before. WebCrawler was the first general-purpose Internet search engine, and launched in April 1994 [4].

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

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay#History)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeoCities#History)

[4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebCrawler](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebCrawler)

<comment><USER7> Viaweb was the internet's first web application. Its customers used Viaweb to create and manage their own e-commerce sites. Like Shopify (or rather, Shopify is like Viaweb).

Viaweb was not an e-commerce site like Amazon or Ebay. Its customers were merchants rather than consumers.

<comment><USER6> I'd define "web application" as "something that lets you perform a task via the web". All of the companies I linked count under that definition; Amazon let you buy books; EBay let you buy & sell odds & ends; GeoCities let you build a website; WebCrawler let you search for things.

If you define it more narrowly as "something that lets you create a site", Geocities still counts.

I think you'd have to narrow the category to "first online store builder" to make it accurate, which is still quite an accomplishment, but certainly isn't the "first web app".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure exactly how to say it, but the article didn't _really_ take us through the thought process of pg as he "made yc possible".

Two things I'm interested in hearing more about:

1) What was the thinking behind viaweb? yc? How did pg arrive at the decision? Was it as simple as the insights that were mentioned? Were alternatives considered? (Before I started [http://www.collegeanswerz.com/](http://www.collegeanswerz.com/), I had a list of hundreds of ideas that I went through before deciding on a website with better college reviews.) If so, what made viaweb/yc better than the alternatives? What aspects of viaweb/yc were forseen, and which just happened because of luck?

2) What was pg thinking he'd do with his life before viaweb? yc? Before viaweb, it says that he was basically flip flopping between consulting and art. What did he think he'd do with his life at this point? Any plans? What was he feeling? Excited? Anxious? Bored? What about the 7 years between viaweb and yc? Thoughts and plans about what he'd do with his life?

I know this stuff isn't directly related to viaweb and yc, but it's useful to know thought processes, rather than just touching on the main insights. You can't really learn from insights. You _can_ learn from thought processes.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Unix, the open-source operating system." \- Really? This mistake speaks very seriously about the author of the article.

<comment><USER10> I'd originally thought so to, but you can get the Unix source, so it is open source for some definition of the term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _" Then, with enough money saved, [pg] would quit the job and devote his > time to his real love—art and painting—until the money ran out, and then he > would scramble for another job."_

PG, is that what you do between YC batches? When will we get to see some of your paintings? :)

<comment><USER3> No, what I do between batches is work on YC. In the very beginning we considered time between batches as time off, but YC is so big now that there's always something that needs to be done.

<comment><USER12> Do you paint or draw anymore? Just curious.

<comment><USER3> Only for my kids.

<comment><USER13> Hi. Recently most of your published writings are about startups. I sometime hope you will write about a wider set of topics. Just saying...

<comment><USER3> Me too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Did pg really invent backend web development?

<comment><USER15> It's impossible to know for sure, but Viaweb is considered to be the first web app.

<comment><USER16> ??? Maybe the first online store builder, but not the first web app...

<comment><USER15> [http://www.paulgraham.com/first.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/first.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I am disappointed by this article. It made such a big deal about PG hating to work with Windows, and reduced the innovation of web applications to a way to not work in Windows.

Really?

Clearly the whole point was to get away from developing desktop applications, and realizing the single-source, rapid development nature of web apps.

Please don't tell me that developing client apps on Windows was so much worse then doing it on Linux. Its bullshit. Overfocusing on this aspect of the story feels like platform fanboyism, misses the real point, and just overall kind of cheapens PG's stellar image.

<comment><USER3> Actually it was no exaggeration.

<comment><USER18> I'm curious, does anyone use Unix for day to day use anymore? Or have Linux, OS X, and other Unix-like systems taken over the hacker preference?

<comment><USER19> Actually, OS X 10.9 was certified as UNIX by the OpenGroup (as were earlier versions such as OS X 10.6):

      http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3602.htm

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> _Over the years, evolving in its own way, Y Combinator has continued to grow at an astounding rate. It is valued now at $13.7 billion, with the clear potential for further growth._

Ignoring the mistake of valuing YC at $13.7B instead of its companies, here's a crazy idea: I wonder when we'll see YC go for an IPO?

<comment><USER21> For me, it wouldn't make sense taking YC itself public. I can't see much of an upside to the partners for taking the company public. Please, correct me if you see otherwise.

What would be fantastic though, is for YC to incorporate their holding of each individual year (older than, say, 3 years) into a fund, and then take those public (and continue to do so). An annual YC ETF.

PG, has an annual YC ETF crossed your mind?

<comment><USER22> WeFunder has something like that. You can invest one lump sum in a group of YC companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> From the comments, it often seems that there are a lot of HN readers who really like Windows as an OS.

Is it true that "distaste for Windows" was a motivating factor behind Viaweb?

For me, Windows was an enormous itch. I scratched it with UNIX. Thank you, Redmond, for the motivation.</comment>


Show HN: Seasons – Track changes to your website - <AUTHOR> https://getseasons.com/ <comment><USER2> It would be nice to have a demo site set up to show how this works, rather than having to modify an existing website to see how it works.</comment>