Ask YC: What is your favourite paradox? - <AUTHOR>

Mine has to be Olber's Paradox which asks 'Why is it dark at night?' Possible answers to this question are profound: the universe is of finite size or has a finite age. <comment><USER2> Banach-Tarski paradox: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach–Tarski_paradox>

This has always blown my mind. From Wikipedia: "The Banach–Tarski paradox is a theorem in set theoretic geometry which states that a solid ball in 3-dimensional space can be split into several non-overlapping pieces, which can then be put back together in a different way to yield two identical copies of the original ball."

Trippy.

<comment><USER3> You can also deconstruct and rebuild that ball into another one of infinite size, I believe. I'm not sure if you can do _infinite_ off the top of my head, but I'm certain of at least _arbitrary_.

Pretty much everything that involves abusing the Axiom of Choice ends up trippy and fun.

<comment><USER4> My favorite quote about the Axiom of Choice[1]:

"The Axiom of Choice is obviously true, the Well-Ordering Principle is obviously false, and who can tell about Zorn's Lemma?"

Of course, AOC, WOP, and ZL are all logically equivalent.

[1] Possibly the nerdiest thought my brain has ever formed; this site makes me very happy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Zeno's paradox, which proves that motion is an illusion:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes>

Those ancient Greeks knew their shit.

<comment><USER6> In that same article you linked it explains why those paradoxes don't prove shit.

<comment><USER5> True. Perhaps I should have put quotes around proves. Still, I remember what a big impact Zeno had on me as a young philosophy student.

<comment><USER7> You should have studied math. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have a love/hate relationship with Condorcet's paradox (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet's_paradox>):

love: it illustrates a fundamental limitation of democratic processes

hate: it's the main reason the IMO best known voting method (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condorcet_method>) is difficult to explain/advocate for...

<comment><USER7> Yes, the Condorcet vote is nice. But for practical purposes I've settled with approval voting as a favorite since it is easy to understand and can not be gamed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find Hilbert's Paradox is handy when thinking about infinity.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_paradox_of_the_Grand_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert's_paradox_of_the_Grand_Hotel)

</comment><comment><USER10> I didn't have one, but thanks to this article I'll be wasting the next few days reading this: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paradoxes>

<comment><USER11> you didn't have to drag us in with you T_T thanks to you i'll be also reading that list along with all the ones that everyone posted here XD

<comment><USER7> Just to make you procrastinate even more:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's not really paradoxical [1], but I've always thought Gabriel's Horn was pretty cool. It's a (non-fractal) object with finite volume and infinite surface area.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel%27s_Horn>

<comment><USER12> Finite volume and infinite surface area, eh?

 _For example, volume grows as the cube of linear dimension, but surface area only as the square. So as animals get bigger they have trouble radiating heat._

<http://www.paulgraham.com/ycombinator.html>

Perhaps large animals should make themselves into the shape of Gabriel's Horn.

Of course then they'll radiate too much heat.

<comment><USER13> I read the wiki article and it turns out the horn uses precisely that dimensional difference in a very clever way. The radius varies as 1/x along the x-axis, so the volume grows as 1/x^2 while the surface area grows as 1/x. This means the growth rate of volume goes to zero much faster than that of the surface area. As a result the volume integral converges, while the surface area diverges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Mine: People cannot completely disagree: or, we will always agree about at least one fact.

Proof: Let's say we do not agree about anything. After thoroughly exploring our belief space and noticing this, we will have to agree that we do not agree on anything. So there you have it, a common belief.

BTW, I am looking for prior art on this one. Any philosophy students around? I think it is related to Russel's Paradox. Any help in elucidating this would be apreciated. Hey, we could co-author the publication :-P

<comment><USER7> I can always refuse to argue with you and punch you instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_and_hats_puzzle#Count...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_and_hats_puzzle#Countably_Infinite- Hat_Variant)

"In fact, even if we allow an uncountable number of different colors for the hats, the axiom of choice provides a solution that guarantees that only finitely many prisoners must die."

This is by far the craziest result coming out of AOC.

<comment><USER7> The Axiom of Choice saves lives!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Russell's paradox.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_paradox>

<comment><USER16> Mine too! It's also the inspiration for my favorite math joke: Consider the set of all sets that have never been considered...Wait, nevermind, they're gone!

<comment><USER17> Mine too too. It makes logic not look so logical anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The hangman paradox: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unexpected_hanging_paradox>

</comment><comment><USER19> Curry's paradox is cool:

"If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists."

<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/curry-paradox/>

<comment><USER13> This one is particularly cool, as on the face of it, the sentence just seems totally harmless. You think "well the sentence is not true and Santa Claus doesn't exist" and there's no hint of paradox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The Fermi paradox - "where are they?" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox>

After all, besides the importance to us, the earth is still a rather small dot in this universe and I really like to know what's happening out there. I have some hope that we can answer that paradox some day and maybe we will even get the first hints to that within my lifetime.

<comment><USER21> People often say the problem is the vast distances in space. I think they're wrong: a few thousand years is probably enough to colonize hundreds of worlds with generation ships. The main problem is the vast distance in time. An inhabitable planet may exist 20 light years from here, but odds are it is hundreds of millions of years behind or ahead of us in terms of evolution.

The eery thing about the Fermi paradox is that it may spell doom for our own longevity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Grandfather paradox: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_paradox>

</comment><comment><USER23> The one I like least.

<comment><USER13> Not to rain on your parade, but your statement is a lie and not a paradox.

<comment><USER23> That statement is false if you're using Merriam-Webster's definition of "lie" ("to make an untrue statement with intent to deceive"). I wrote that with intent to amuse and not with intent to deceive.

<comment><USER13> That's the definition of lie as a verb. I used lie as a noun. I hope you didn't think I was accusing you of lying. All I meant was that the statement was technically a lie, so the humor fell a little flat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Schrödinger's cat

<comment><USER24> It's not a paradox by itself, but the Heisenburg uncertainty principle leads to a lot of unintuitive things too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Existence.

</comment><comment><USER26> The 20 Eye: <http://www.zappos.com/images/725/7257495/5089-291353-d.jpg>

<comment><USER7> ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> girls

<comment><USER28> If they are a paradox to you, my hero who scored with a porn star, I don't know what to say :-)

<comment><USER29> If that is your hero definition, what is your superhero definition?

<comment><USER28> mixmax wearing underwear over his pants, duh

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Actually, Olber's Paradox can also be answered by assuming the Universe is fractally distributed.

</comment><comment><USER31> python ~ <http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html>

</comment><comment><USER32> Is "Don't listen to me." a paradox?

<comment><USER7> No. I read it and followed your instructions. It's not even a contradiction when written down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Do as I say and not as I do."

</comment><comment><USER34> Democracy or mob-intelligence

</comment><comment><USER35> This is a false sentence.

</comment><comment><USER36> 'fer me ?

</comment><comment><USER37> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradoxical_combinator></comment>


Wacky, But Serious: What would it take to set up a stock market? - <AUTHOR>

"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it" ~ Einstein
So, I was reading Matt's post about VC, which saw me following this link:
http://weblog.raganwald.com/2005/03/are-you-thinking-of-working-for-start.html
Raganwald States:
"A VC is having a good year when one in five investments hits a home run. If you honestly can do a better job of picking winners, drop your day job and go into venture capital. You'll make way more money investing in start ups than working for them!"
I tend to agree, but of course I don't have the "fuck you" money to try my hand at VCing. What I need is a market that allows me to invest little bits of money into new ventures... What I need is a stock exchange, version 2.0.
So, I googled "what would it take to set up an online stock market" (I know, worst query ever) and I found this:
http://www.globalchange.com/stock.htm
Some wishful thinking, but interesting. What does HN think? Could a bunch of Hackers legally set up an alternative to stock markets that would work?
I'm fully aware that this idea is out to lunch, but I'm interested on hearing other people's opinions. <comment><USER2> I was part of a project about a few years ago to do such a thing. The algorithms for writing a stock exchange are quite well known. I was just working on the interface, so I don't have a complete understanding of what was going on under the hood, but it was my understanding that we were using the same algorithm as the London Stock Exchange, which was developed using public funds and hence was made available to the public.

The most difficult thing to do in getting a stock exchange off the ground is not developing the software, but developing trust and liquidity. To do this, you need market makers - people who are obligated to provide buy and sell orders that keep the markets liquid. This is very very expensive.

We actually had an operating stock and commodities market, where you could trade the world's top currencies, gold, silver, platinum - for about 6 months, then 9/11 hit and it became very difficult to maintain the kinds of banking operations necessary to run an underground stock exchange.

<comment><USER3> Mind linking to some of the underlying stock exchange algorithms?

<comment><USER4> It's not really an algorithm. It's called a limit order book. At least that's the way many electronic markets work.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it's pretty trivial. Here's a quick implementation description in CS terms:

1.) Keep two heaps, a min-heap for sellers and a max-heap for buyers. The top of the seller heap is the "ask price". The top of the buyer is the "bid price". The difference between them is the "bid/ask spread".

2.a.) When a limit order comes in, put it in the appropriate heap. Then compare the tops of the heaps. If the prices overlap, send a fill message to the parties. Pay attention to quantities; you may have to send a partial fill to one party and a fill to another, and then repeat the process with the next order in the order book.

2.b.) When a market order comes in, immediately pop the top of the opposing heap and send out the appropriate fill or partial fill message.

That's basically it. Depending on language, you're looking at anywhere from a page to a few hundred lines of code. An actual stock exchange is a bit more complicated, since it has to handle things like order cancellations, cancel- pending messages, transaction logs, and fault-tolerance, and has to operate on thousands of trades a second with minimal latency. But conceptually, it's simple.

(And if Joshua corrects any of this, listen to him and not me. He was an actual quant; I just worked at a financial software startup.)

<comment><USER4> I guess it's more of a "data structure" than an algorithm. Anyway, you need more than a heap, because price, time, size all matter. That's pretty close, though.

Many exchanges are well documented, from internal workings to protocols. Check out XETRA, LSE, etc. NASDAQ too, but it's more complicated.

The problem here is going to be achieving regulatory compliance and then liquidity. Both of these are harder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You fall under their regulation if you're in the US. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Securities_and_Exchange_Co...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Securities_and_Exchange_Commission)

Good luck.

<comment><USER7> Are things like Intrade regulated?

<comment><USER8> Intrade doesn't sell stock. It sells betting contracts. It's an entirely different type of regulation, and is actually illegal here.

<comment><USER9> Intrade offers futures contracts on various events. It's not betting per se and they can be used as part of a legitimate investment portfolio.

It's still illegal here though, the US government will find a way to shut down any kind of innovative online market.

<comment><USER8> It's not equity, and unlike futures, there's no underlying asset so it's not analogous to stocks, options, futures, or anything the SEC regulates. It's just a different type of gambling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is not all that crazy.

To be perfectly honest, reading this was quite a shock, though. This is (loosely) the idea I have outlined for RailsRumble 08, coming up this weekend. Ours will not (at first) involve exchange of real money, but the concept will be the same: 'Normal' people will be able to choose startups they find promising and invest in them.

<comment><USER8> You really don't want to mess around with this without consulting a lawyer first. A misstep could mean committing multiple felonies and possible jail time.

Seriously, talk to a lawyer.

<comment><USER10> Right, hence my saying that it will be ficticious in its initial incarnation.

<comment><USER8> As long as you're not taking in real money or paying out real prizes, you're OK. It is actually illegal in some states to pay out real prizes even if the entry is free due to sweepstakes laws, and there you get into the 'consult your laywer' area. But even then, the odds of anyone ever prosecuting you for giving stuff away are virtually non-existent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think it's a crazy idea but, as rms pointed out, if you publicly announce part of your company for sale, you fall under SEC regulations.

What might be a better idea is to let people put small amounts of money into a fund. Then, let startups apply and the fund members could vote on winners ... sort of YC-style.

For all I know that could fall under SEC regs too.

<comment><USER12> Nope, you can do this. Brian Singerman and I did it. But it's a boatload of work. We did it once, and I'm pretty sure we won't do it again, at least not any time soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tried to do something like this once. If you were to try in the USA, here's what I might tell you:

The regulatory burden is immense. This is a project for lawyers. However, keeping ordinary investors away from your exchange would help a lot. Open it to accredited investors only. This would make the regulatory environment much simpler.

You would be competing against established competitors, like the Toronto Venture Exchange, on which are traded companies with a market cap of a few million dollars. An IPO for a company to be traded on the TVE is a lot like a series A in the USA.

Keep in mind that you are talking about three functions: 1) turning the stock of a company into something that can be bought and sold by the public 2) distributing that stock to its initial buyers 3) giving that stock a place to be bought and sold

The first two are done by investment banks, who normally do the work of preparing the stock of the company to be traded on NASDAQ as well. Only the last function is what an exchange does. #2 is what W.R. Hambrect has been trying to improve with his OpenIPO (see link below).

Generally in small market cap companies the job of a "market maker" is thought to be essential. I don't buy this. I think an exchange without much liquidity is better than nothing.

Start reading here:

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

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communication_Networ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communication_Network)

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

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-counter_>(finance)

I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. Get a lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER14> Well, if I accept money from my uncle with the understanding that I'll pay him back ten fold if I make it big, that's legal right? And let's say I get five friends and make the same deal with them; again, nothing illegal there right?

Where exactly is the line drawn here...

<comment><USER15> _Well, if I accept money from my uncle with the understanding that I'll pay him back ten fold if I make it big, that's legal right? And let's say I get five friends and make the same deal with them; again, nothing illegal there right?_

Unfortunately, induction only works in mathematics, not in the legal system. I'm sure there's an arbitrary line somewhere, and that that line has to do with "intent". (Getting 10 friends to invest, probably fine. Getting 10 people responding to a newspaper ad, probably not fine. Ah, the legal system...)

<comment><USER16> _Getting 10 people responding to a newspaper ad, probably not fine._

There's two reasons why this isn't fine, actually: You can't get strangers to invest unless they're accredited investors; but also the newspaper ad itself is illegal ("public offering of an unregistered security" or something along those lines).

<comment><USER15> My post is about induction. Let me explain in detail:

It's OK for one person to invest in my startup.

It's still OK if I get one more person to invest in my startup. Induct on the number of people.

It's OK to get an infinite number of people to invest in my startup.

Q.E.D.

The reason induction doesn't work is because the law defines that a certain number of people is "public offering of an unregistered security". In math, there is no such restriction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As everyone's pointing out, any exchange for trading securities falls under massive amounts of regulation. It's possible to navigate the legal morass, but will require a group of lawyers with vast experience in securities law and regulations, preferably at the international level as well.

New exchanges have been created by private companies in the past, although typically (AFAIK) with large infusions of cash from major banks. IntercontinentalExchange (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IntercontinentalExchange>, <http://www.theice.com>) is an example, although it focuses on commodities, rather than stocks.

<comment><USER18> It happens all the time. Usually a consortium of banks who trade a lot with each other decide it's going to be easier to set up a separate organization to handle all their interactions. I worked on one a few years ago, Centradia, which was a private exchange that 5 banks used to pool liquidity for foreign exchange dealing. Thera are quite a few, and no-one outside the industry will ever have heard of them. A mate of mine's at Equiduct now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think a good place to start looking for a model is donorschoose.org. Don't invest in companies: invest in projects. If you broke the company up into small, discrete, chunks you could probably get under the investor limits and not have to file a disclosure. You would basically be letting the market allocate funds within a firm.Then, the firm just breaks up profits and gives dividends. Of course, the term "firm" doesn't really fit here, things would be much looser than what fits into our present definition.

You would still need a crazy team of lawyers to avoid trouble, but it's certainly a loophole worth looking into and a very efficient system for allocating capital.

</comment><comment><USER20> There are venture markets for smaller companies. Such as those in Vancouver, Canada. But the stocks are so volatile it scares off most investors.

</comment><comment><USER21> I once saw this, it could be what you are talking about, kind of: <http://couchtycoon.net/>

</comment><comment><USER22> "What I need is a market that allows me to invest little bits of money into new ventures."...I would also like it.

So here is my shot at it.

1.- Set up a fund where you can buy shares.

2.- Invite start-ups to apply for our fund.

3.- The shareholders of the fund get to vote.

4.- The fund invests money in the chosen start-ups.

5.- The share holders (as individuals) try to help the start-ups (testing, word-of-mouth, ideas, etc.) It will be more like VC 2.0 ;-)

Edit: formatting.

</comment><comment><USER23> The FOREX (Foreign Exchange) market is pretty much the wild west of trading at the moment. No central exchange, little to no regulation, etc...

On average you'll need around 400K to buy a trading server (Meta Trader, ActForex, Manhattan Platform, etc), market the brokerage, and setup relationships with liquidity providers.

Not exactly a stock market, but its the closest to a tangible trading business for someone looking to get into that type of market.

</comment><comment><USER24> Your main problem will be liquidity - you'll have to find people who care enough to throw in some money.

Maybe you could start by setting up something like <http://intrade.com>. First you just let people bet on whether a company would succeed or not by some metric. If you get enough people interested and knowledgeable about the companies you're dealing with, maybe you could lead that into funding.

</comment><comment><USER25> Another approach might be to create a service that helps startups open their books to become financially transparent. With Amazon FPS, not only could you expose sales data in real time but you could split the revenues among individual stakeholders. So the idea is, raise capital by encouraging your visitors to purchase a share of your future sales - and make the algorithm so transparent that they're assured X even if Y happens.

</comment><comment><USER26> You might have to be an accredited investor in order to do these sort of investments.

There does, however, need to be a niche market between VC and IPO where early investors could get a much easier exit.

Edit: you also need a ton of capital coming in so it can be liquid.

</comment><comment><USER27> What's the point of owning your own stock market?

Folks won't buy on your market if prices are lower elsewhere. Folks won't sell on your market if prices are higher elsewhere. Yes, there will be momentary discrepancies, but DE Shaw will drive them to 0.

</comment><comment><USER28> I think it's a great idea ( I've had the same one :-)) The problem, of course, is the legality of it, though perhaps there could be ways around it ( an offshore market? structure it as a mutual fund? ). You'd need a great lawyer ...

</comment><comment><USER29> Ideas that are initially wacky often seem brilliant in retrospect. I like it a lot.

</comment><comment><USER30> Putting the investment into the hands of hackers who understand the technology better than anyone else...

Makes me wonder if we would even need VCs at that point anymore.

</comment><comment><USER31> Also remember that "normal" stock markets are secondary markets, buying a stock doesn't actually provide capital to the startup (unless it's the IPO).

<comment><USER15> Good point, but it could still be helpful. If you are a VC, it is probably nice to know you can inject some cash into a company and if the company starts going downhill, you can easily sell your shares to someone else.

At the same time, Joe Average might be able to pick up some "deals" on startups that VCs think will fail but he thinks will do fine.

The market is not a bad idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Think microfinance. I'd love to join that revolution.

<comment><USER33> Microfinance tends to be concerned with micro-loans, which would be more akin to bonds. The topic here is equity, which is partial ownership of companies and other enterprises.

<comment><USER32> "tends to be concerned with micro-loans"

Last year there was a very convincing video on Ted about Africa needing basic financial infrastructure like a futures market.

I've read other people about "Joe The Plumber" not having access to futures to protect large financial operations like purchasing real estate.

Also Nasdaq, NY, etc. are completely unaffordable for small ventures (perhaps why most people on dotcoms aim at multimillion sized IPOs.)

This has to change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The US also has strict rules against gambling, and stock markets are very borderline -- so watch out!

</comment><comment><USER35> Never quote Einstein. It generally has the opposite effect of what you intend.

What I'd like you to do is to think about the effect you intended to create by quoting Einstein. Then constrast this with the effect that would have been created had you quoted someone obscure.

</comment><comment><USER36> see <http://vencorps.com>

</comment><comment><USER37> Not including the oldest commercial corporation in North America, The Hudson Bay Company is a bit weak.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> wrong thread dude.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> So, like, a free market of free markets?

</comment><comment><USER39> It'd probably be an auction, too. You could easily use Ebay, except for regulation.

<comment><USER19> Bid/Ask is a much more efficient system than an auction. Stock markets were all English auctions until people realized there was a better way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> You might want to look at private trading markets. It is sort of a lower scale version of the public markets. Companies can be traded between entities as stock without the onerous accounting requirements but there are certain stringent requirements. There can be at most 400 share-holders and the deal killer -- stock holders have to be institutional investors with over $100 million in assets. If you have that much cash, you may as well become a VC.

I am not an expert on this so independent checking on this would be nice. To my knowledge, NYSE and GS have setup something like this.</comment>


Falling rates of computer programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=computer+programmers <comment><USER2> Interestingly, it appears as though the total salary of those same computer programmers follows a similar trend, up until around 2005, and then reverses. [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28computer+programmers...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28computer+programmers+number+employed%29+*+%28computer+programmers+median+wage%29)

</comment><comment><USER3> Could be because so many more people are now calling themselves 'software engineers' or other titles. The rates almost balance out perfectly.

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=computer+software+appli...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=computer+software+applications+engineers&lk=1&a=ClashPrefs_*Occupation.ComputerSoftwareEngineersApplications15%21-1031-)</comment>


Top Startups You Should Check Out - <AUTHOR> http://startupplays.com/blog/top-35-startups-in-tech-that-techcrunch-missed-out-on-may-2013/

<comment><USER2> 8\. Kock.me

Freudian slip?

</comment><comment><USER3> thanks for the recognition! REMEMBER YOUR DREAMS

</comment><comment><USER4> awesome startups in this batch!</comment>


The Invisible Hook: the Hidden Economics of Pirates - <AUTHOR> http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8850.html

<comment><USER2> IIUC pirates operated with a certain amount of tolerance from the government-- that is to say, from whichever government was unfriendly to the ships that were being pillaged. Legally there was a distinction between a privateer and a pirate, but in practice a lot of crews floated back and forth over the line, shall we say.

A book modelling pirates as democratic capitalists _avant la lettre_ ought to say something about the interactions between the internal government of the ship and these external powers, but from the ToC and the review, I can't tell if Leeson actually goes into this. Can any HN readers comment on the issue?

<comment><USER3> This is from the book:

"Chapter 5 applies the economics of reputation building to pirates' famous fondness for torture. Pirate victims were understandably reluctant to reveal booty to their attackers. Some victims even hid or destroyed their valuables. Such behavior threatened to reduce pirates' revenue. To prevent this, pirates invested in reputations of barbarity and insanity, creating a fearsome "brand name." Brutally torturing resistors was one important way they did this. But pirates used torture for other reasons too. One was to deter authorities from harassing them. The other was to bring justice to predatory merchant ship captains when government couldn't or wouldn't do so. In this last capacity, pirate torture may have contributed to the provision of an important public benefit for merchant sailors-the punishment of dishonest merchant captains, which stood to reduce merchant captain abuse.

Chapter 6 considers the economics of pirate conscription. According to popular depiction, pirates swelled their ranks by drafting innocent and unwilling sailors from the vessels they overtook. This chapter shows that in many cases the supposed "pirate press" was nothing more than a clever pirate ruse. In response to eighteenth-century legal changes that made pirating riskier, pirates pretended to conscript sailors to exploit a loophole in antipiracy law. Like all good businessmen, pirates developed solutions, such as this one, to advance their interests when rising costs threatened to cut against them."

<comment><USER2> Yeah, but that's about relations between the pirates and the states whose ships they _pillaged_. I'm wondering about the relations with the states whose ships _weren't pillaged_ (as much).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The author _appears_ to confuse a democratically-run government with a democratic form of anarchy. Maybe this is for marketing reasons, because he ought to know the difference between the two. In any case, the press reviews completely fail to notice this, as you'd expect. It's important for us to remember which of the two is being described here, because they are diametrically opposed in many ways.

<comment><USER4> He also appears to confuse a group of 15-20 men on a boat for a society.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some reviews of this book:

[http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/11/...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/11/everyone_in_favor_say_yargh/)

[http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2009/06/pir...](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2009/06/pirates_leftist.html)

The book's author, Peter Leeson, wrote a paper which provides an interesting overview of this topic:

 _"An-arrgh-chy: The Law and Economics of Pirate Organization"_

<http://www.peterleeson.com/An-arrgh-chy.pdf></comment>


Rainway takes a game running on one system and streams it to another device - <AUTHOR> https://blog.rainway.io/play-overwatch-and-anything-else-in-your-browser-with-rainway-86798744bddb <comment><USER2> This looks cool, however it's very similar to a service I've been using for the past month called Parsec[0].

I've successfully managed to play Fortnite (don't judge :)) on an AWS g2.2xlarge (via Parsec) with an acceptable level of latency. Apart from the occasional artefacting (most notably when starting), it's been an enjoyable experience and a real insight into the potential power that cloud gaming really could hold.

What's so great about Parsec is that they allow you (at a somewhat marked-up rate so far as I can tell) to rent an AWS server directly from the client and get started.

That being said, my Parsec credit is running a little low now so I might have a go with Rainway :)

I would like to know what the difference — if any — between Parsec and Rainway is? As far as I can tell, Parsec was first, so it'd be interesting to know if their tech is superior.

[0] - [https://parsecgaming.com](https://parsecgaming.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> So I can only speak to the pros of Rainway and why we have so many people adopting it as their go-to-solution.

We put your games first. We don' t believe in the traditional remote desktop approach and want to remove all the friction from game streaming. ([https://blog.rainway.io/our-core-mission-games- first-78671e4...](https://blog.rainway.io/our-core-mission-games- first-78671e496201))

We're clientless, this means you can open any web browser like Chrome and start playing on any number of devices -- both inside and outside your home.

We use common web traffic to prevent being blocked by most networks, this allows us to have a higher chance of connecting even on lock downed networks (schools, office).

We're really fast. You can play games like Destiny 2 on a Chromebook at 1080P 60 FPS.([https://twitter.com/Andrewmd5/status/1009758915305730051](https://twitter.com/Andrewmd5/status/1009758915305730051))

We are aiming to release on every major platform we can. Phones and game consoles alike.

We constantly give back, through open source releases or community fixes -- we really believe in the principle of supporting the community that supports us.

For the more technical questions, Rainway can run on Intel, AMD and NVIDIA systems and we're highly optimized for all three and test on all ranges of hardware from those providers. Our biggest weakness right now would be our lack of native mobile apps, but that isn't slowing us down. ([https://twitter.com/Andrewmd5/status/1009852188724625408](https://twitter.com/Andrewmd5/status/1009852188724625408))

I'm the CEO of Rainway, so of course, I like our product and I'd encourage you to join our discord ([https://rain.gg/discord](https://rain.gg/discord)) and ask users for their opinion.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for your feedback. I did find a verbatim copy of your response in a reddit thread[0] while I was waiting — but I guess it serves me wrong for not doing my research :)

As this is a canned response, it doesn't really do a great job, in my opinion, of comparing Parsec and Rainway directly. I can look into the tech myself and make a comparison that way.

For a more direct question: do you have any plans to sell customers cloud rack-space directly through Rainway?

[0] - [https://www.reddit.com/r/cloudygamer/comments/8tntdt/parsec_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cloudygamer/comments/8tntdt/parsec_vs_rainway/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, we have no short-term plans to offer cloud services -- we see more than enough people installing Rainway on existing providers, so we are focusing on building a solid consumer offering. There is no telling how that changes down the line.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the awesome software, I'll definitely be giving this a go. May I ask, what's the plan for monetisation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The obvious question: how is the latency? (both locally and via your servers)

\---

edit: should I be able to play from your server on play.rainway.io ? I only got a "connection failed [...] Failed to connect to h1x1mlxi2uunv.cya.gg"

A demo without registration would be great (could even be limited to 1-5min and some simple open source shooter).

\---

edit2: latency not looking good here [https://youtu.be/0g-ah0epNpY?t=93](https://youtu.be/0g-ah0epNpY?t=93)

<comment><AUTHOR> Rainway is not cloud gaming, you utilize your computer, and it is entirely P2P. We don't have servers that host games, you use your own.

<comment><USER5> > Rainway is not cloud gaming

Then right on your homepage:

"Play Your Favorite Games on Any Device Rainway makes game streaming so easy you'll be playing in just a few clicks. Download and join our beta today!"

I would make it way more obvious.

Also what's a good use case? I can play games on my powerful home PC from the crappy laptop at the office?

<comment><USER6> > Also what's a good use case? I can play games on my powerful home PC from > the crappy laptop at the office?

I'm interested because a 27" iMac is front and center on my desk, with a 24" second monitor to the right. My gaming PC is hooked up to the second input of the second monitor.

Playing a game either means turning my head to the right while the rest of my body faces forward (to have good keyboard and mouse position), or turning my whole body right, and then having to reach left for the keyboard and mouse. Can't do whole body right with keyboard and mouse inf front of body, because that would put the mouse in free space and the keyboard right side sticking off the desk. Neither of these is comfortable.

Moving the gaming PC to its own space with its own monitor would take major rearrangement of the living room.

Something that lets me use the Mac as a display for the games on my PC would make things much much nicer.

<comment><USER7> Steam in-home steaming sounds right up your alley…

<comment><USER8> Is it just a steaming service? Or do they perma-press too? ;)

<comment><USER7> I think making fun of other peopl's mistakes is the kind of dick move that is only funny to jerks

<comment><USER8> ...Can't tell if trying to make a joke (peopl's) or serious...

<comment><USER7> I'm sure you'll work out how to interact in polite society one day

<comment><USER8> Oh wow you were serious... Social cues dude. If you can't spot light-hearted humor idk how you make it through day-to-day life.

<comment><USER7> recognising toxic behaviour and calling it out is no joking matter dewd

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember thinking OnLive's pitch of letting you stream games to low-end hardware was a very good idea, but it never took off. I think nVidia SHIELD offers a similar pitch, but I don't know how popular it is.

So, this is essentially those services, but allowing you to use a web browser as a client, right? I would only find this valuable if there was any performance gain in doing so, or if those services didn't make a client for the device I wanted to game on, both of which seem unlikely.

Unless I drastically misunderstood what is happening, and the game is actually running on your hardware in the browser, in which case that is very impressive...but then I would have to question the performance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rainway is fast and clientless. Our vision is all about letting you use your existing hardware (home gaming PC, cloud provider) to enable the gameplay experience. So you installed our software and then the web app takes care of the rest.

We curate all of the games you have installed on your machine and enable a click and play experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ages ago I spun an aws instance w/ Grid, setup VPN and used Steam in-home streaming to accomplish a similar result. Using spot-instances resulted in something like $0.06/hr if memory serves (which it seldom does).

Biggest caveats at that time were setup time and latency; since I was too cheap to preserve the instance volume and too lazy to split the steam save folder to a smaller separate volume, and had yet to secure gigabit fiber.

It was more of a dalliance for me since I don't game often anymore, and if I'm honest with myself I enjoyed setting up the infrastructure more than I did playing Fallout 4. Please note this has more to do with how little fun I am in my old age than any problems with the game.

<comment><USER11> Pricing and capabilities have probably changed over the years. The cheapest GPU spot instance you can get on AWS today is a p2.xlarge, which will run you $0.45/hr. And also, p2-class instances run Tesla K80 GPUs, which are Kepler cores, an architecture running on 6 years old now (think GTX 600/700). Fine for 1080p60 most games, but I doubt many modern titles would hit the 60fps mark.

Google Cloud can allow you to get the cost lower (closer to ~$0.15/hr) by cost optimizing the instance CPU/Memory and attaching a GPU to it.

But you've got three problems with both of these setups:

\- Spot on AWS/Preemptible on GCP will kill your instance with about 2 minutes of warning. I'm not sure what AWS's policy is on how often this happens, but on GCP, its guaranteed to happen at least once every 24 hours. So that could be annoying if you're in the middle of an intense game of Overwatch.

\- Storage costs. You're paying per hour for your instance, so you don't want to have to download all your games every time you spin it up. But, then you shift the cost to the SSD, which is _expensive_ and must be maintained 24/7/365 for that quick startup time. You could alternatively store it in S3/GCS then hot-load it when the instance starts, which would be fast due to the fiber interconnect all these datacenters are wired with. So, plan for this bullet to add at least $10/mo/TB of storage.

\- Network costs. A 1080p60 stream is, conservatively, 10Mbps? Add on an extra ~$0.25 per hour you want to game, just in bandwidth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can you explain what this does on the technical level?

nvidia has this similar product but the game runs on their servers, you have to sign into your accounts on their machines. Playing Destiny you login into battlenet using some kind of teamviewer app and then launch the game.

steam link just (poorly) pushes video from your PC to your living room.

Where in this spectrum does Rainway stand? Please be technical for us here

<comment><AUTHOR> Rainway is software you can install on your local gaming rig or cloud provider of your choice. Once you've installed the Dashboard on your PC, we establish a P2P connection between it and the connecting client.

Then we utilize your existing computer hardware and games, and you can play them instantly inside of a browser via low latency, high fidelity stream.

<comment><USER13> "low latency, high fidelity stream."

So this doesn't use browser technology for networking?

<comment><AUTHOR> We make use of a custom version of WebRTC (default) ([https://github.com/RainwayApp/spitfire](https://github.com/RainwayApp/spitfire)) and WebSockets as a fallback with low latency implementations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Their site says:

Rainway will always be completely free to use with no hidden cost. You can stream all your games, whenever you want, wherever you are, for as long as you want.

/endquote

So where's their income coming from? The blog post from the OP mentions they're hiring.

<comment><USER15> My own silly analysis: monetisation can come at a later stage. Since the server is running on the customer's Window machine they won't have much infrastructure costs to support even if they get very popular. If the main product is free then revenue can be added through extensions like hosted service or parnership (eg: integration with Twich or another video game streaming service).

<comment><USER16> "Play games you already own using your own hardware for $0.00 for the next 1 year."

"We've noticed frame drops while you're playing Skyrim, click here to upgrade to a premium stream from a premium computer using your own cloud saves! (only $1.99/mo!)" ...or pay $1000 for a new video card.

"We've noticed you don't own Skyrim, click here to instantly start playing from our computers instead of your computer for $1.99/hour or $10/mo, or $100/mo for unlimited access to all games, etc, etc.!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use it, it's okay for casual singleplayer games but online it's unplayable! EDIT: Unplayable for a competitive player like myself.

<comment><USER17> I also use this with a little "hack" to watch movies from my desktop onto another machine :D

<comment><USER18> I use Plex for this; [https://www.plex.tv/](https://www.plex.tv/) It would probably encode the audio/video better since it's made for it.

<comment><USER17> You're right, will test, thanks for the URL

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [https://play.rainway.io](https://play.rainway.io) doesn't work. Console logs a bunch of CORS errors for seemingly unnecessary services, but the site still fails to load. Disabled PrivacyBadger/uBlock/HTTPS Everywhere but still no luck. On Firefox 61.1/Mac OS X High Sierra.

Loading failed for the <script> with source "[https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-13434394-1"](https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-13434394-1"). play.rainway.io:1

Cross-Origin Request Blocked: The Same Origin Policy disallows reading the remote resource at [https://cdn.ravenjs.com/3.21.0/raven.min.js](https://cdn.ravenjs.com/3.21.0/raven.min.js). (Reason: CORS request did not succeed).

<script> source URI is not allowed in this document: "[https://cdn.ravenjs.com/3.21.0/raven.min.js"](https://cdn.ravenjs.com/3.21.0/raven.min.js"). play.rainway.io:8 [Show/hide message details.] ReferenceError: Raven is not defined[Learn More] bundle.js:110:144069

Source map error: request failed with status 403 Resource URL: [https://play.rainway.io/bundle.js](https://play.rainway.io/bundle.js) Source Map URL: bundle.js.map[Learn More]

</comment><comment><USER20> Very cool! But, as others said, I'd want to look at the latency. Some animations in Dark Souls 3 are 8-10 frames long (ie, about 300ms). Reacting to such quick animations may completely fall apart depending on the latency introduced by network. Are there any videos of action games being played on this?

<comment><USER21> 10ms meaning human reaction time + 10ms? 10ms is far faster than any human can react to visual stimulus

<comment><USER20> Sorry, I meant to say 10 frames (for 30 fps). Fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Advertising Overwatch is an unfortunate choice and makes me think they haven't fully done their homework. Blizzard recently changed their terms of service to include a clause stating that they will ban any accounts that use cloud gaming services like GeForce Now.

<comment><USER23> Do you know why?

<comment><USER24> I think it's because botters have taken to cloud gaming to more easily scale up their bot networks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> An interesting alternative is Moonlight[0], an open source implementation of nVidia's GameStream protocol. While it does require an nVidia graphics card, it severely cuts down on latency as all the video encoding is done in hardware on the host PC. Essentially it gets you P2P low-latency video streaming with controller/keyboard+mouse input

[0] - [https://moonlight-stream.com/](https://moonlight-stream.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Rainway is P2P and works with all hardware (AMD, NVIDIA, Intel).

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just a heads up this guy has been known to do sketchy things in the past. A simple reddit search of his previous products will bring up some questionable practices

<comment><USER27> Do you mean the near-piracy of Aurous [1]? It looks like they didn't realise that re-hosting publicly-available music makes them liable under copyright law. Borderless gaming and Netflix Roulette don't seem sketchy. It's not clear what else you might mean. Do you have examples?

[1] [https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6723046/aurous-a...](https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6723046/aurous- andrew-sampson-developer-explains)

<comment><USER26> No it wasn't aurous. Check my other comment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow. This is really big. Really, really big. Like NVIDIA GeForce Now important. But...

Latency... Latency. Latency. Uh, latency. Numbers. Response time. Latency. Latency.

I see nothing here that talks about _latency_. What type of FPS on the thin- clients are we talking here? Bandwidth? Delays?

This is purely a numbers piece of software. When you talk about streaming _real-time_ things, things that require input sequences on the order of <16ms, these numbers are super important: they're literally make or break figures.

The experience could be almost great, but maybe just 5% of a perf hit might kill the experience... I hope that as they mature Rainway can speak more to these figures.

Very cool stuff here, and I _really_ like that a little of the tech is on GitHub!

<comment><USER29> >Wow. This is really big. Really, really big

Not really. It is just a streaming service, you pretty much have to setup your own server. If you want to access it from outside of your home you would need to have a public IP (most ISP's will only give you a dynamic IP unless you get a business account, which means your IP will randomly change on you), setup and configure appropriate firewall rules. You have to leave the "server" up all the time.

To me this seems like a pretty big hassle really.

<comment><USER30> Your IP address is unlikely to change that often. My personal experience with Verizon, Spectrum, and Comcast is that it never changes. They're free to do so, and if you completely disconnect for a few days, you'll probably lose your DHCP lease, but I've never seen it happen. Of course it can, but it's not that big a deal in reality. Use a dynamic DNS server and you'll never have to worry about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hitting this error:

Connection log Connecting over WebRTC first. Failed to connect with WebRTC {"Error":1} Attempting to connect by socket. Failed to connect with socket. Failed to connect to j3gv720k7hwez.cya.gg, please try restarting Rainway

</comment><comment><USER32> Is this still being planned for the Nintendo Switch?

</comment><comment><USER33> Gaikai [0] had this in 2010 for free. You'd log on to their website and play — in a browser — games on a remote server. They got bought in 2012 by Sony.

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

</comment><comment><USER34> This is not going to be appropriate for fast reflex twitch gaming until the internet has some fundamental technological shift that allows for super low latency. Unhits are one thing but having your viewport affected by it will just be awful.

</comment><comment><USER35> Interesting. Since someone from rainway is in the thread:

what kind of game can you capture? does it work with non-dx games (i.e. dwarf fortress)

how much is captured? what happens if someone on the pc alt+tabs into another window or kicks the game out of full-screen?

</comment><comment><USER36> Could this be used on a local network? I have a pretty beefy PC but I like the comfort of sitting outside with my chromebook. Is there any way to host this service myself, so it doesn't have to go through any servers first?

</comment><comment><USER37> Streaming games has been attempted several times (not sure if any of it survived), but most likely this might stay as alternative to PSP at home.

</comment><comment><USER38> Is the goal to be bought out by Google? Plenty of whispers that they're interested in providing this sort of service.

</comment><comment><USER39> Does rainway support multiple client connections to the same game? Would be an interesting way to collaborate

</comment><comment><USER40> Is it possible to run the host/server software on an EC2 instance with gobs of RAM and a GPU?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is. We test on Azure quite a lot and are working on getting an AMI created for easy distribution.

<comment><USER41> What is a recommended VM size on Azure to use?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I get a "Raven is not defined" on play.rainway.io and a blank page.

</comment><comment><USER43> While this looks cool isn't latency going to be a big problem?

<comment><USER44> I've used Steam and PS4 Remote Play fairly extensively in my home so I have some experience with the concept. I think it really it depends on the game.

Fallout 4: Works great.

Dark Souls 3: The latency is immediately obvious. You might as well be torturing yourself, the game is already hard enough.

God of War: somewhere in the middle. It's playable, but it feels crisper without the extra latency.

I don't see how this product will be any different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> andrewmd5, what made you go for C#? How do you see that playing out for hosting on MacOS (if that's even in the pipeline)? :)

<comment><USER45> I think most people who need to stream games are those who have a Windows box but run other operating systems for all of their other machines. I can't imagine a scenario where you'd want to host on a Mac or a Linux machine for games, only one where they are the client.

<comment><USER46> I don't own a personal Windows machine and have games on my Mac. I wouldn't be able to use this service to play games through my browser at work or when not at home

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> At the risk of detracting from the admittedly cool technology: Yay, yet another freaking terms of service that's 8 miles long and includes a mandatory, binding arbitration clause.

I'm getting so sick of these. It's to the point now where I actively seek out companies based in the European Union or Canada since those countries' laws don't permit such shenanigans.

(Also, at the risk of sounding bitter or hostile, if someone's about to reply to me and say "well, everybody's doing it" or "the lawyers make us," save it. If you're an executive in your company, you can make the choice to not have one of these and you didn't. I genuinely don't care if you personally don't like it.)</comment>


Ask HN: What is your best passive income 2019? - sa-mao Time to ask again :)<p>Any side projects, Games, OSS. <comment><AUTHOR> This might sound strange, but I don't like the term "passive income". It sounds like a scam. Probably some people actually _want_ a scam, but I think there is a better way of putting it. Profit is roughly "sales - costs". Normally costs are scaled by labour. The higher the volume, the more labour and therefore the higher the costs.

You can categorise the shapes of these curves. In a really dysfunctional company, the amount of labour your need per unit will increase as volume increases. A good example of this might be some bus companies where the cost per rider increases as the number of riders increase -- you get popular and you go out of business.

Consulting companies tend to have a linear relationship. The more you sell, the more you have to do. However, the per unit cost doesn't really change based on volume. Manufacturing companies tend to have a less than linear relationship. The per unit cost decreases with volume. You get the "efficiency of scale".

With computers we can create services with a very nearly constant relationship between volume and labour. In other words, I do the work once and then there is no other cost to increase sales. Of course, from a business perspective, this is ideal. You do the work and then you can scale the business without having to invest more money.

The thing I dislike about the term "passive income" is that it implies that you are getting free money. It's not true. For this kind of constant cost business, you've front loaded the costs. The first one costs as much as the first million. In fact, you may be in the red for a _very_ long time (or forever... "Any side projects, Games, OSS" ;-) ). For this reason, I'd much prefer (the infinitely less catchy) term "front loaded business". I guess it will never catch on, but I wish we could discuss this topic without having to always derail into get rich quick and "living the dream of money without work" schemes.

<comment><USER2> Passive describes the level of effort, not the investment. Usually passive income is rent-seeking.

Property management is a great example. I can buy a cheap house in a lousy neighborhood, make a modest capital investment, sign up with Section 8 and get pre-screened tenants with guaranteed cash flow. My marginal work output is very low - a few hours a month.

I used to lease a few acres of land to a farmer. The only work was meeting to have a cup of coffee and exchange the check and paying the taxes. :)

<comment><USER3> And your work per month could be contracted out, so you don't actually need to do any more effort than meeting with your account periodically to make sure you're making money.

<comment><USER2> I know of a guy who has 3 employees who coordinate aboit 800-100 properties.

He probably turns over something like $20M, and can use the portfolio to write off profits from other businesses.

<comment><USER4> Is that 80-100 or 800-1000? I have one single family rental and a new roof(hail damage), busted water pipe, and toilet wax seal cost me $5000 this year and that was with insurance covering 2/3 the roof) That was my profit for several years. Ie I don't see how this is profitable to anyone.

<comment><USER5> A big part of that game is capital costs vs inflation.

Someone who bought their home before a price boom can often turn a profit because the rents follow the price to purchase (roughly speaking).

So if you acquired a bunch of properties in 2008 after there was a crisis, its likely that they're very profitable (month to month) now

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cue the must-have semantic pedantic argument about "passive" not being passive and so on.

Yes we get it. Stop fussing about the terminology.

</comment><comment><USER7> I run a clothing store online.

All of the order processing and fulfillment is handled automatically.

I do no marketing or advertisement beyond social media.

It's pretty nice. Sometimes I sell meme shirts that generate $3k in a month if I'm feeling particularly clever.

I was able to bootstrap this business for like $12 for a domain name and a free trial of Shopify which gave me enough runway to scale.

Been doing this for over a year, I still basically do nothing.

[https://odomojuli.store/](https://odomojuli.store/)

<comment><USER8> Excellent America painting, really captures the passivity of the country and the spirit of this thread.

[https://odomojuli.store/products/america](https://odomojuli.store/products/america)

<comment><USER9> It's not loading for me.

<comment><USER10> Isn't that the joke.

<comment><USER9> :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It really depends what 'passive' is defined as, but I can share some:

\- Recharged - $2720 / month. I write a briefing once a morning about the technology industry, about 350 people pay to receive it + sponsor something without advertising or nonsense tech stories. Still growing! [https://char.gd/recharged](https://char.gd/recharged)

\- Write Together (new project, but hey) - $1,200 / month. I built a platform for learning to Write with others, based around building habits/streaks. [https://writetogether.space](https://writetogether.space)

Now the thing is, both of these require maintenance, but not like a full-time job: I push code, write on them, etc. But they're not fully passive, so it's quite a specific difference -- still wouldn't trade working on them for anything, however.

<comment><USER12> How do you get your customers?

<comment><USER13> It seems like he gets traction by posting quality content. I got hooked onto him via his excellent posts on switching from Mac to Windows and iPhone to Android.

Since, he's posted some good stuff on various Windows and Android gear. He seems fairly straight-up and calm with his opinions, which I appreciate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No side projects. The little time I have outside of work and family, I read or browse hacker news before falling asleep. I did take vacation recently and play The Witcher 3, which ruined gaming for me.

I have about $200k spread thoughout some index funds and individual stocks that all pay dividends in my post tax accounts. I reinvest all that income and the taxes are kind of annoying to deal with, but's it's better than nothing.

I also have a high yield savings account. A big chunk of my total cash is tied up here because I'd rather stay liquid. I think the rate is now 2% annual or just north of. It gets me $300 a month. I just save it and let it grow, aside from taxes on the interest.

<comment><USER15> Putting money in holdings like stocks, funds, and other investments seems like the closest thing to "passive income" based on how I would expect "passive" to be defined. It's getting paid to park money in something for some time. If it's simple investing like in mutual funds and ETFs, then almost anybody could handle the level of personal resources that goes into maintaining that source of income which is mostly just checking the performance and filing taxes once a year (pretty much this could be accomplished with price notifications and something like turbotax).

I don't know, maybe that kind of "passive income" is no longer cool or desirable.

Every form of passive income requires periodic blips of input, but the magnitude and frequency of those blips could vary a lot depending on the business. There's some forms of passive income that are really like part-time jobs or require a full-time job worth of effort to launch something. These don't seem very passive to me.

I see people preach on the internet how they found some golden opportunity that lead to raking in thousands of dollars on a monthly basis with minimal oversight. I'm sure instances of this exist, but frankly I think there's a lot that is still unsaid about what was required to pull it off. There's a group of people that are instead looking for the snake oil fountain that allows someone to live like their retired in their 30s but without doing any work. This is no longer "passive income", and is instead just another "what's the easiest way to become rich" search. The reality is that identifying and executing a high-ROI opportunity that recurring brings in money with low input is not as easy as following an A->B->C guide or else every market entrant would have like a 90% success rate and everyone would already be doing it.

If people genuinely want _passive_ income, then financial investments or monetizing hobbies (to the extent it's still enjoyable) seem like a good place to start for providing a good lifestyle/income balance.

<comment><USER16> "Investment income" is certainly a good example of "passive income." But it seems when investment income is touted as the only true form of passive income, it is forgotten that, in most cases, some outlay of effort was required to first generate the initial investment.

Likewise, many projects that require some initial effort upfront may eventually produce income with little to no continuing involvement. Passive income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I bought a site last summer that sells YouTube intro videos for $5/$10 a pop: [http://introcave.com](http://introcave.com)

I made about $13k off it, which sounds good but was really only about $20/hour.

Hoping to grow it quite a bit this year and then start offloading tasks. I don't know if I can ever get it truly passive, but that's the dream.

<comment><USER18> Where did you find the site to buy it?

<comment><USER17> There are brokers. I used FEInternational.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My wife's job.

<comment> xkcd-sucks Is that really passive though

<comment><USER20> Unless he takes it all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> the first rule of passive income is you don't talk about passive income... (cuz someone will copy it and end the gravy train)

<comment><USER22> I don't understand this logic.. are you saying you are secretly running a business operation?

It's virtually impossible for one to prevent competition

If your business idea is so fragile that can be blown away by competition, you might want to rethink your strategy.

<comment><USER23> "If your business idea is so fragile that can be blown away by competition, you might want to rethink your strategy."

It may not be that you "want to rethink your strategy," but if you stumbled into becoming a one man show for a super niche unrivaled business app, why talk about that on a forum of developers?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I inherited a house and condo from my parents. They are in California and purchased long ago, so the property taxes on them are ridiculously low (the condo, worth about 700K has a property tax valuation under 150K ... thank you California taxpayers).

I rent them both out I pay a management company to handle maintenance. I screen tenants myself, and so far I've been lucky getting tenants who stay for fairly long periods. I clear about 5K/month after maintenance fees, taxes and insurance. Its very little work.

</comment><comment><USER25> A blog I wrote about 5 years ago on obtaining your licensing as a professional engineer includes affiliate links to a site that sells packages that help with the application process. It's a very niche area but earned me about $5k in 2018 and is what I consider passive income at this point (haven't contributed to the blog in years). That amount was about double 2017, so I'm interested to see how much growth is left.

<comment><USER26> Sounds pretty cool and very passive. Do you mind sharing how long it took you build that audience, community and content to reach critical mass?

<comment><USER25> Wrote the blog about 5 years ago, to a non-existent audience. The blog writing was simply to motivate myself to complete the application, which is an arduous process and, for me, was optional career-wise. At first I did things like create a Twitter account, follow people, tweet it out, etc, but that didn't work at all. I basically had negligible traffic for the first year at least. Then Google organically started picking it up because I had written useful content in an underserved niche - one of the things that got me writing the blog was searching for free help in the first place and not finding anything. Even after a couple of years, I was earning maybe $15/month in AdSense. Then the affiliate site reached out to me out of the blue, we tried some tests, and they failed miserably (no one converted). Months later he came back to me with an actual affiliate program, we tried it and it slow started to work and has scaled up to what I described above.

So to summarize, by far most of my time was spent writing the blog posts and watching my non-existent analytics. Nothing I actively did to market the site (and I did very little) worked. It was a project that didn't intend to make money, that ended up making money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Passive income is like a winning at lottery, and those who won will not invite competition.

</comment><comment><USER28> I trade options. I used to post the plans for free for people to follow but it was really time consuming, so I would post every now and then. Someone asked to see all my plans, so I created a script to read it via my brokerage account and post it to Discord/e-Mail. Now, I just continue buying and selling options when my system tells me to and it messages the channel. The most time consuming part is advertising which I sometimes do. I plan to automatically post free plans to different social media platforms (randomly) in the future and that would make it completely passive most likely.

</comment><comment><USER29> For the past couple years I've been running a pet supply business focused on eco friendly and high quality toys, treats, collars, etc.

Originally started as a T-shirt company specializing in dog puns but expanded a couple years in. The T-shirts are all printed and fulfilled by a US company and I have the pet supply inventory at my house so it's quick to ship. Not entirely passive but only takes about 5-10 hours each week.

Been gaining momentum recently so it's been an increasingly better income source.

[https://www.casualfuriday.com](https://www.casualfuriday.com)

</comment><comment><USER30> The only TRUELY passive income I have is a YouTube video, unedited, published in 2012 that generates me $500-$1,500 a year. I do absolutely nothing to the video to promote it. YouTube seems to recommend it every fall and it has been a nice little Christmas bonus each year.

Other than that, a few games I've published generate ~$100 a year without input from me. Everything else requires at least a little bit of my time on a regular basis and I wouldn't count it as passive.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've co-founded (CTO) AlleAktien.de ([https://www.alleaktien.de](https://www.alleaktien.de)) 4 months ago, writing unseen high-quality and professional long-term stock analyses online. Capturing ~400 subscribers a EUR 20/month so far. The entire platform is in German, focussing on the Germany/Switzerland/Austria market :).

Disclaimer: it's a side-project, but not passive. Writing high-quality analyses is extremely time consuming (30-500 hours each) for ourselves, and our analysts - but it pays off in compound terms. I personally worked only on weekends for 4 months on this.

Before that, I was at MIT, UBS bank and McKinsey. Currently, I'm also looking for additional CTO co-founder opportunities globally (I'm co-located in SF and Switzerland) - please reach out to firstname.lastname@example.com if you want to launch an own online product or course in a matter of days, and reiterate at an insane speed (only if you have a solid pitch or massive online followership, OR: if you know sb. who has such, there's a HUGE finder's fee of several 10k USD).

</comment><comment><USER32> A self-managed portfolio consisting of various government bonds. Ever since I started working, I have been saving >30% of my annual income every year. Not accounting for the income from the portfolio or for raises since, this means that every year of savings, the portfolio can replace 1.2% of my annual income (assuming an effective yield of 4%). Been doing this for over 20 years now.

</comment><comment><USER33> Someone bought like 40 copies of a book I "wrote" back when I posted on HN about it in April. Otherwise bank interest has been the best.

<comment><USER20> Which country at what rate? Bank interest is like 0.01%.

<comment><USER34> I get 2% on my savings account in the USA. Check out Ally Bank

<comment><USER35> 2% barely compansates for inflation (2-3% in US).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I started a sort of joke lifestyle microblog website and a podcast. Not exactly passive, bit doesn't take up more than a few hours a week. Hoping it takes off this year to generate more income than other things I've tried.

Https://accidentallyfasting.com

</comment><comment><USER37> Ive started working on a themes site for static site generators and it's already done a few sales. I'm hoping it will be generating more revenue by the end of 2019!

</comment><comment><USER38> I sold a GitLab subscription last year. Today the customer renewed and their user base doubled. (I'm a reseller.)

</comment><comment><USER39> I designed a t-shirt I wanted to wear, now every few months someone buys one on Redbubble and I get a few bucks.

</comment><comment><USER40> Publishing is a nice income to have if you are lucky enough to win it

<comment><USER41> Do you have any success story to share?

<comment><USER40> I made an app called Phonics and Reading with McGuffey that made around 80k over the years (9) and had about 960k free version downloads. Its due for an update but so far I have not been able to repeat a success like it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> a SaaS product. something i'm starting up such as a job board.

</comment><comment><USER42> Sold some shares.

<comment><USER42> To clarify - this is the most passive income I have ever had. No customers, no promotion, no headaches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Legitimately passive income is not a thing.

<comment><USER44> Income from interest is as passive as it gets.

<comment><USER42> But the catch is devaluation of the principal.

<comment><USER45> Not if you account for inflation in your calculations..

<comment><USER46> Which you should...

<comment><USER42> Then you end up with very little (if any) income :-)

<comment><USER28> Not really. Look up lazy portfolios by Bogleheads. If you continue to invest it can grow for you. I mean not at insane levels but definitely a decent return for many.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Pledged Crackdown on Vaccine Misinformation. Then Not Much Happened - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-pledged-crackdown-on-vaccine-misinformation-then-not-much-happened-11559243847 <comment><USER2> Not much happened except, you know, a measles outbreak that's killed several people. But nbd, right, Zuck?</comment>


Repo.js - <AUTHOR> http://darcyclarke.me/dev/repojs/ <comment><USER2> When clicking on a file to preview it, you should append the name of the file to the bread crumbs, to show that you can go back to the listing by clicking back on the repo name. It took me a while to figure that out.

</comment><comment><USER3> This looks very handy, thanks!

I can see this being useful in tutorial articles to allow the user to see all the code involved at once.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice, although not very useful - i'd recommend at least having clone URL and view raw option (if possible)

</comment><comment><USER5> I was going to do something very similar to this, so thanks for saving me the effort! :)

I already built a couple Github jQuery widgets that people in this thread might also find relevant: <http://www.joepettersson.com/demo/pretty-gist/> <http://www.joepettersson.com/demo/jquery-github-widget/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there any way to return from file preview? Like for example if I click README.txt and I want to go back to see the rest of code.

<comment><USER7> You can click the Repo title again to return to the root, or the '..' if you're inside a folder.

<comment><USER6> Weird. Sometimes it works, other times it's just a blank page. It's still an elegant piece of code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe GitHub Api has got max request limits, how you are going to handle this?

<comment><USER9> It shouldn't be a problem as all requests are handled client side

<comment><USER8> On a corporate environment, all the outbound requests will be from one proxy, which could eat the request/ip rate very easily.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Awesome, I like it!

</comment><comment><USER11> Very nice. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure what I would use this for, but it is neat.

I would recommend allowing one to set a max height. It's rather impractical to have a 200px tall box turn into an enormous box with 500 lines of CSS.

<comment><USER13> I was looking for something like this for quite a while. From time to time, I want to write about code organization, but always struggle on how to present that. Being able to embed a Github repo in a post seems like a great way of doing that. Its not like I would embed the repo of an actual, big project.</comment></comment>


Spoonlyzer – the world's smartest spoon (by #Estonianmafia) - <AUTHOR> http://spoonlyzer.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://spoonlyzer.com/press/](http://spoonlyzer.com/press/)

</comment><comment><USER2> It was just a matter of time they made this happen

</comment><comment><USER3> Haha, good one. Hope they make fork as well :D</comment>


AI can predict if you'll die soon – but we've no idea how it works - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2222907-ai-can-predict-if-youll-die-soon-but-weve-no-idea-how-it-works/ <comment><USER2> Does this remind anyone else of that Robert Heinlein story, Life-Line [1]? In it a scientist builds a machine that can accurately predict the day someone will die, and the trouble that comes from that.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life- Line](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-Line)

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's my conjecture: If an AI system can accurately predict something, another AI system can figure out how it works.</comment>


In Defense of Teasing - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/magazine/07teasing-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all <comment><USER2> Interesting article. I particularly liked this comment towards the end:

 _We must remember, though, that teasing, like so many things, gets better with age. Starting at around 11 or 12, children become much more sophisticated in their ability to hold contradictory propositions about the world — they move from Manichaean either-or, black-or-white reasoning to a more ironic, complex understanding. As a result, as any chagrined parent will tell you, they add irony and sarcasm to their social repertory. And it is at this age that you begin to see a precipitous drop in the reported incidences of bullying. As children learn the subtleties of teasing, their teasing is less often experienced as damaging._

<comment><USER3> It was an interesting article indeed, but I disagree with him that it "gets better with aging". Think about work-place verbal abuses disguised as jest, or parental "funny" put-downs spoken to adult children, or when an adult jokes about his/her spouses' performance in intimate situations or lack of financial prowess, or that he/she's "still chasing that making it big dream". It could still hurt, even when the subject of teasing realizes that it is meant to be funny.

The only thing that changes with age is our ability to laugh at ourselves along with them, or to laugh back, or the ability to distance ourselves from the abuser. The author has taken the acquiring of fight/flight defense mechanisms which comes with age for granted.

My other comment on this thread: the luxury of being able to fight is what distinguishes good teasing from bad teasing. Those of us who have ever been teased will know what I mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I feel like throwing a red Voit dodgeball at the author's face, to see if he falls out of his ivory tower.

<comment><USER5> Two things:

1) I don't really know that this feels like an ivory tower tone. I mean, it was grounded in legit research or anecdotal evidence, not a lot of "this is how it ought to be" talk.

2) I'm pretty sure instances where someone is singled out to have dodgeballs thrown at one's face would be in the 'bullying' category, not 'teasing' which the author admits can be a difficult distinction.

Just saying.

<comment><USER4> Looks like you're next.

Unless I get some lunch money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was bullied as a kid and I still think this is a great article.

I want to be able to tease my friends affectionately without being labelled a bully, or poke fun at my partner without having people lecturing me on 'respect'.

In fact, I totally agree with what was said in the article about couples who tease - I DO have a happier relationship with my partner because we know each other well enough to feel comfortable taking the piss, and can laugh at each other and ourselves. (Most people don't seem to understand the dynamic of our relationship, but we've been together for 7 years so must be doing something right :) )

</comment><comment><USER7> Confusion is the result of giving two different things (being playful and being hurtful) the same name (teasing).

<comment><USER8> The confusion comes from the fact that "playful" and "hurtful" are, to a great extent, properties of the teasee rather than the teaser.

 _Fabienne [Pulp Fiction French Girl]: A pot. A pot belly. Pot bellies are sexy.

Butch [Bruce Willis]: Well you should be happy, 'cause you do [have a pot belly]._

The net result of that conversation is NSFW in a positive way (here is the script <http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/7606/pulpscri.htm>).

I've had a similar conversations, and it doesn't always go so well. In retrospect, I believe the reason is that Fabienne considered herself beautiful and knew Butch was merely trying to get a reaction from her. Previous ladyfajitas didn't all feel the same way about themselves.

<comment><USER9> It's worth remembering that Fabienne reacted the way she did because that's what Quentin Tarrintino wanted her to do.

<comment><USER8> I realize that. But I've also had positive reactions under similar circumstances. The movie quote just refers to a scene most of us can easily picture.

Another example; I'm a bit homophobic, and I get teased for it occasionally. A friend of mine from years ago also behaved homophobically, but reacted badly to the same teasing. He came out of the closet last year.

His bad reaction was due not to the input, but his own internal state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I miss the culture of acceptable teasing in Australia.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, judging by the lack of replies this seems like a sensitive issue with the nerds (geeks?).

<comment><USER3> totally. I read the title of the post and I winced. Not even because I was especially teased.

the gist of the article: "Where teasing provides an arena to safely explore conflict, it can join people in a common cause. Especially when they're allowed to tease back."

I would change that to say that teasing is an arena to safely explore conflict and bring about positive benefits ONLY when the teasing is two-directional. This is the difference between brothers punching each other and a bully punching you in the gut -- if you're not allowed or unable to punch back or throw back a punchline, it's bullying.

Unlike physical hurt, teasing can be used as a tool to tie a group closer together by highlighting its contrast with another group, or more hurtfully, specific things about a single individual. Greasers and preppies, nerds and jocks, boys and girls, Inners and Outers...etc. The punchlines are often something the group has in common, but which the excluded individual(s) lack. In other words, hurtful teasing aims to alienate; helpful teasing aims to bind together. Unfortunately, sometimes the two can happen simultaneously.

Again, the difference here is the ability to counter. The article brings in all these cases where people are on retaliate-able positions, even when inequality exists. The situation with the frat boys would've resembled the Stanford Prison Experiment if the Inners were allowed to tease the Outers but not vice versa.

<comment><USER12> When I read the title, I thought it was going to be an ironic post by the NYT about post-barriers ("teasers.")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article was too painful to read through, but the example given at the start seems like normal play, not teasing as I understand it.

<comment><USER9> Teasing is a part of the normal play. The author tries to distinguish between playful teasing and abusive teasing.

<comment><USER3> actually no, the author cited example after example of helpful, positive, team-building, playful teasing, but never actually said what separates that from abusive teasing. The closest he gets to doing so is to imply with "age" it doesn't hurt anymore because we are able to perceive the playfulness and not the hurt. Which we all know is not true.

<comment><USER9> Fifth paragraph:

 _The reason teasing is viewed as inherently damaging is that it is too often confused with bullying. But bullying is something different; it's aggression, pure and simple. Bullies steal, punch, kick, harass and humiliate. Sexual harassers grope, leer and make crude, often threatening passes. They're pretty ineffectual flirts. By contrast, teasing is a mode of play, no doubt with a sharp edge, in which we provoke to negotiate life's ambiguities and conflicts. And it is essential to making us fully human._

<comment><USER3> nononononono he defined bullying as we understood it, and then defined "teasing" in the narrow context of "a mode of play, ... with a sharp edge". Nowhere in the article does he explicate when teasing is done with intention to humiliate or embarrass, or teasing is done to someone whose social standing or physical attributes make it difficult for them to "play back", or when real harm is done despite best intentions. He seem to think that teasing is wholly a subjective game, where it's what you think it means that determines whether it is in seriousness or in jest, whether the joke is on your or with you. In other words he either intentionally ignored the defining line between good and bad teasing to make his "defense of teasing" point, or he actually believes that they are one and the same, that it's all in how you look at it, and how old you are. In the first case he is hiding evidence that counters his thesis intentionally, in the latter, he is disconnected with actual experiences of life.

<comment><USER9> He provides no examples of "this is bullying" and "this is teasing." But I'm able to figure out for myself which is which from the distinction he makes in the beginning.

The point of his article is to explore the good kinds of teasing, why it exists, and the benefits it has. I think you're faulting him for not doing something he never set out to do.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Netflix on Chrome OS is a Pepper Plugin (PPAPI), in dev channel - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/chromium-os/issues/detail?id=15327#c3

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm gonna see if I can get this working on my samsung chromebook when I get home, then try to do the same for linux to see how it goes.</comment>


Show HN: iPad game to help toddlers with Autism - <AUTHOR> http://www.interface3.com/findme

<comment><AUTHOR> It was designed by autism researchers based at the Univ of Edinburgh so its pretty pedagogically sound.

Direct link is: [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/findme- autism/id491925436?ls=...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/findme- autism/id491925436?ls=1&mt=8)

Also, the app is done in Cocos2D, but we might rebuild it in Unity and release it onto android if there's a demand for it ...

</comment><comment><USER2> Thank you for this initiative!

I wonder what process did you use to make this game? Did you have any help from experts on autism?

<comment><USER3> Yes, they do have experts on the team: _The app is part of the output for the Click East Project (www.clickeast.co.uk) which is investigating the possibilities of using Computer Games to teach Social Attention Skills to children with autism. The project is led by Sue Fletcher-Watson at the School of Education at Edinburgh University._

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My cousin's wife is a teacher who works with kids with autism, so this might be useful for her. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome. Please pass on any comments/feedback. We'd love to hear from her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder what the licence is. Would be good to have it ported to other platforms.</comment>