The Pirate Bay Reports Anti-Piracy Outfit to the Police - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/the-pirate-bay-reports-anti-piracy-outfit-to-the-police-130218/ <comment><USER2> At first I thought this must have been a joke. But then:

> _While The Pirate Bay recognizes the irony of the case, they feel that they > have to pursue this matter. ... "While The Pirate Bay may have a positive > view on copying, it will not stand by and watch copyright enforcing > organizations disrespect copyright," Pirate Bay's Winston says in a > comment._

So basically, their stance is copying is _good_ , unless it's done by a copyright organization? I mean, I guess I can see that, that they're anti- hypocrisy, not anti-copying, although it's a fine line.

What would their opinion be of a site copying their CSS or JS, which had nothing to do with anti-piracy -- I assume they would be fine with that then?

<comment><USER3> It says that if they win, they'll donate the winnings to that 9 year old girl who had her Winnie the Pooh laptop taken and if they lose, it will reinforce the right to make parody websites, which is apparently in question under Finnish law due to issues over the author's moral rights.

This, too, a case where their moral rights come into play, because their design is being used to promote something they are strongly opposed to.

<comment><USER4> Ignoring the finer detail of Finnish law - I think The Pirate Bay have fallen into a PR trap.

From the perspective of the average man, I like parodies. Parodies are used to highlight an alternate point of view - often with damaging affect. In general, when someone complains that a parody is offensive, it simply makes the person complaining look bad.

The only other legal/moral argument relates to copying code. Winning that argument will make The Pirate Bay look like hypocrites. And I suspect that is the trap The Pirate Bay will fall into.

So who is the bigger hypocrite? It doesn't matter. The other side does not care about their PR image.

I think the correct response would have been to copy the other groups site right down to the CSS, and making the copy a torrent site. Then let the enemy initiate a lawsuit, and follow up with a counter lawsuit.

<comment><USER5> > _I think the correct response would have been to copy the other groups site_ > //

Disagree. This presupposes that they will get equal treatment under the law, that doesn't seem likely and I can't really see any external pressure being put on Finland to find in favour of TPB (but very much the other way).

By pressing the current suit they either get money and a PR win or they get a relaxation, via precedent, of copyright laws. Looks to me they win either way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I sincerely hope the anti-piracy center goes down hard.

A 17-year old boy in Finland was ordered to pay 400 000 euros in payments for allowing 1600 users to download music and movies for free. They effectively ruined his life before he even reached adulthood. This was the anti-piracy fuckers' doing.

<comment><USER7> Finland, same country where the police raided a 9-year old's home at 8am to confiscate her Winnie the Pooh laptop.

One wonders if Finland even has anything like a prosecution service authority that decides whether the cost and public interest of justice in individual cases outweighs the benefits...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As mentioned in the article, "...even if Pirate Bay loses the case, it's a victory for their cause."

Too bad this news item doesn't get attention from a wider audience.

<comment><USER9> Isn't it out job to promote the story?

I've just emailed it to about 200 people (ironically two of them work for the business software alliance).

<comment><USER8> I agree. I did the same, but to less people.

It's just that I get this feeling that we're mostly preaching to the choir as most contacts (that would read it) already kind of know about these issues.

Still worth sharing, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Direct link if you prefer to avoid the tabloid: <https://thepiratebay.se/blog/227>

Also be aware that this is a misleading hoax (or worse). They had a "kopimi" sign on the page forever. "kopimi (copyme), symbol showing that you want to be copied."

Here is the last copy in archive.org [http://web.archive.org/web/20130128163826/http://thepirateba...](http://web.archive.org/web/20130128163826/http://thepiratebay.se/) . See the icon and its link at the very bottom.

Please do not give misleading hype like this any further coverage.

edit: I swear, the icon was not on the live page a minute ago.

<comment><USER11> I just had a quick glance, the Kopimi image only seems to be in the footer of the homepage.

<comment><USER10> Ah, that explains why I got so confused. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The global internet is about to become as segmented and jagged as a windshield hit by a baseball at 100Mph.

"We're sorry, the content you requested is not available to you, if you would like to tune-in to our awsome channel, please press the payment button". You didn't pay your linkedin and hacker news surcharge yet, it's gone up, but we think this is in the best interests for corporations who want to own information.

RIP Internet. (1970-2015), a formal funeral will not be held.</comment>


YouTube Introduces Tape Mode - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+youtube/posts/Bwcf5eqFW4c

<comment><USER2> This sounds cool, but has anyone managed to find a single video that it works on? I can't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Found this one in my feeds: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TV96zjowHhU>

Kind of seems like most of the videos uploaded today have it.

<comment><USER2> Even that one I just get "error starting tape mode".</comment></comment></comment>


How to find a business cofounder that doesn't suck - <AUTHOR> http://www.humbledmba.com/how-to-find-a-business-cofounder-that-doesnt <comment><USER2> I still can't understand how this gets missed in every one of these posts; a great business cofounder can be someone with an insane level of domain expertise either selling something like the thing you're making, or selling to the exact same people you want to sell to.

If you're making, say, web analytics software for online retailers, your best business cofounder would be a guy who had just spent a year convincing online retailers to buy his company's Magento extension (or whatever). This guy will make your product better, will know what to say to customers, and will probably even dial up all the people he already sold to so he can also sell your new product. A second best fit might be someone from an ad agency, for example, who had pitched and won the business of a few online retailers.

Don't buy this visionary, motivator, fundraising, connector bull. If you need a life coach, hire a life coach. There's only two critical functions to your startup: Make the thing, Sell the thing. You can fake the rest if you do the big two.

<comment><USER3> Off-topic but relevant: everyone should look at this guy's book: [http://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Work-Breaking-Stupid- Results/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Hacking-Work-Breaking-Stupid- Results/dp/159184357X)

<comment><USER2> Although I'm happy to be mistaken for that Josh Klein (he's great!), we are two different people. We met once and the universe didn't explode, so I'm fairly certain about this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _The great part about this type of cofounder is that they exhibit early proof everywhere they go. They keep impeccably awesome apartments. They have blogs that are exquisitely well-designed. They're own personal branding is clean, articulate, and meaningful._

I didn't know Steve Jobs had a well kept apartment and an exquisite blog. Is tripping on acid and living in India any better an indicator of your product design prowess?

I don't mean to be cynical, but this kind of writing to me is just "talking". The camp director, the hustler, the protege; they have these characteristics, come from this background, blah blah blah. No fact, all fiction, bullshit for the ear and mind.

</comment><comment><USER5> These lists always seem to miss what I consider to be one of the most important elements of a co-founder: You have worked with them before. If you're starting a company with someone else it is absolutely critical you have worked together and operated under stressful conditions before. This is the #1 reason most startups will see 1 or more co-founder leave.

If you are a technical person starting a company and you don't know any business co-founders whom you have worked with then don't bring them on as a co-founder. Find another technical co-founder and make your first hire the business person. This will give you time to build out the product and understand more of what you need.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've been dealing with the flip side: I'm a highly technical MBA, started as a coder and got my MBA because I knew I needed it. I'd love to find serious minded technical co-founders, or even moderately experienced non-technical co- founders. I had good technical co-founders originally, but not good enough in that they drifted off when the startup took longer then they they wanted. Today, I'd love to find a strong technical set of partners, but no one I'm meeting has the skills. People seem to be only interested with Ruby/Node/WebGL/Flavor-of-the-day projects.

In an effort to meet more like minded technical entrepreneurs, I've started a free co-working space in Downtown Los Angeles. It's called Droplabs, www.droplabs.net.

Anyone is welcome. The original founders, I'm 1 of 7, all work with the Drupal CMS, but also work in other systems. There's other independent creative consultants there too doing Ruby, Node.js, C/C++, various client projects and about 4-5 startups.

I'm still looking for the right people. I'm ambitious: <http://about.me/blakes> In a week or two I have a project for Show HN...

<comment><USER7> This is good stuff. I don't need an office but good energy is a must. I'm stopping by next week!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _Think really hard about whether you actually need that business cofounder. > Consider investing the time you'll spend looking for someone with improving > your own sales/marketing/product skills. Join a community like Y Combinator > and they'll help you learn all the mysterious business stuff that isn't > actually that hard. In the end, if you make something people want, > everything else will fall into place._

Honestly, the attitude toward "non-technical co-founders" needs to change in this community and the fact that anyone would say you don't really need one is just naive. Build it and they will come is a Silicon Valley pipe dream that happens to .1% of companies. Talking to customers, exploring competitive products, negotiating service contracts, firing up potential employment candidates, getting press, lining up distribution partners, selling clients, exploring new markets for potential leads, managing non-technical resources, fund raising, pitch writing, and more are just a handful of the things that a "non-technical co-founder" can be doing. Doing them yourself when you can find someone more experienced or focused on this is poor management of resources and speaks to an inability to delegate or manage limited company time and resources.

Having been through YC, I can tell you right now that not only will they not teach you "all the mysterious business stuff", but if you think "business stuff" isn't actually that hard, you work with shitty business people and aren't aggressive enough in your initiatives.

Everybody likes to downplay the importance of business people in startups. My first co-founder and I in Earbits were both non-technical. While we looked for a technical co-founder we lined up an advisory board from Google and EMI Music, raised friends and family money, recruited a designer for equity only to mock up our site and design our logo/brand, and had record labels sending us boxes of CDs for a radio platform that didn't even exist yet. During that time, three technical people flaked on our project, one of them after signing the paperwork to join. Do you see me talking about the lack of importance or reliability of technical people? No. Your bad experience or rumors about shitty business people are unfounded. Most successful companies have a solid business-oriented co-founder. For every crappy "idea guy" there is a flaky developer.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not a technical guy and I see a lot of other non technical guys out there trying to sell their ideas. I like the angle to look for a guy who is really good at something. I would go even further to say find a business guy who knows your market, industry and potential customers. This may not always be easy but time and time again in and out of tech startups are successful because the people running them understood the industry, market and people they were targeting

</comment><comment><USER10> One test for business co-founders is test if they can make cold contacts. There are so many MBAs who are nothing but marketing/strategy types, with no real sales ability, and so are of little use to a startup. When I hear a business person say, "I know this market/industry", I pretty much write them off. If a business person says, "I have worked in this industry, and I know dozens of people that shouldn't live without this product", then my interest is peaked.

<comment><USER11> *piqued

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This was a good read for me, as I am currently looking for a co-founder.

It made me realize that I am already a Camp Director and Hustler myself, and made me re-affirm that what I need is a design co-founder (aka the Steve Jobs protegé, as he calls it).

Here are some startup ideas of mine btw: <http://ideashower.posterous.com>

</comment><comment><USER12> Successful high tech CEO here.

I don't know where all of this bad advice came from, but you should never, _ever_ have an equal cofounder.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting posts but I think most miss the basic requirements for business or technical co-founders. Based on my prior 'bad' experiences, I look for following qualities, in order, in future partners.

1\. Passion (intrinsic motivation) 2\. Chemistry 3\. Commitment 4\. Capability 5\. Competency

</comment><comment><USER14> great topic, something that interested me for a while. but i was disappointed that it failed to deliver the answer, where to actually find them?

<comment><USER15> Venture capital firms. The younger professionals at the top firms are smart, know a lot about technology business models, and are very well connected relative to their age. Plus, most of them got into VC not to become investors, but because they have aspirations of starting a company.

<comment><USER16> These ones are going to be the types that will be able to provide value on the business development side since they have the industry connections. (Tough to call them hustlers since it's not very clear whether they are "scrappy.") If you're looking for someone who can deliver on the product side, VC firms aren't going to provide those kinds of individuals, especially the younger ones. For product folk, it's best to poach Product Managers from slightly larger companies who are dealing with the same domain. They may not be as competent on the fundraising side but they will have a good idea of product & marketing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> After seeing what happens when you partner with an "ideas guy", the only way I will have a non-technical co-founder is if they can offer me: connections in my industry or cash.

Otherwise, I don't need them and I can do the rest myself.

<comment><USER18> I don't think such a dismissive attitude is positive. Looking at individual people with an open and objective mind is appropriate when doing important business with anyone.

I'm sure there are lots of "ideas guys" who offer nothing but fuzzy and poorly reasoned concepts. There are also "ideas guys" who have expertise in concepts and customers who will think of things you've never thought of. A previous commentator mentioned that if you're looking to start an web analytics company, you might find someone with expertise in that area. Not only will they help you make customers, they'll give you a much better understanding of the market and what white spaces and other opportunities may exist in the market.

In the end, you simply need to understand the value of any founder you bring in. If a non-technical founder can provide better value than a technical co- founder, being afraid of hiring an "ideas guy" is not ideal. You simply need to find the right one.

There are lots of outstanding founders/CEO's who either come from no technical background, or a technical background that pales in comparison to a really great engineer.</comment></comment>


Ask: Why a web search 'apache pulsar on Ubuntu "20.04"' yields 50% malware links - <AUTHOR> As per the title. I was simply searching to find anything I should know about installing apache pulsar and the top of the first page is a very suspect web site. Then most of the rest of the first page are the same. <comment><USER2> Funny thing is, now the top search result Google gives me is this HN post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me too. Now the malware links got pushed off the top. Maybe that is a good thing. There is something odd going on.</comment></comment>


In Venting, a Computer Visionary Educates - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/11/business/11stream.html <comment><USER2> thanks for posting this. I read his double-book "Dream Machines / Computer Lib" when it came out: it changed my perspective on the future of computing from numbers and mathematics to narrative and media.

I heard him speak perhaps 15 years ago now at a Computer Literacy bookstore event and he was a little cranky but extremely insightful. I remember two key points he made that I still value:

1\. We need to shift our thinking from an "educational curriculum" to a reticulum (or network) that emphasizes the connectedness of topics and concepts and teach students to learn how to learn through exploration as much as rote and replay.

2\. Read Mark Twain's "Roughing It" for insights into Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.

EDIT: more info including a summary of "pre-history chapters" available at <http://geeks-bearing-gifts.com/>

<comment><USER3> Mark Twain's "Roughing It" is available here: <http://www.mtwain.com/Roughing_It/index.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ted Nelson was a part of the orthodoxy in proscribing rich tightly-bound hypertext. There were dozens of projects, but none of them were anything but sandboxes at best.

The web succeded only because it was nothing like Xanadu, and Ted still can't get over that.

Self-contained systems like wikis would be a great place for rich Xanadu-like features, but MediaWiki hopelessly squandered that possibility. There are a few systems that approach it (tiddlywiki does some cool shit), but for most people Wikipedia's decrepit software has grounded their conception of what wikis can be in mediocrity.

<comment><USER5> Ooh tiddlywiki, pretty cool.

I just checked out <http://www.tiddlywiki.com/> thanks for mentioning it.

<comment><USER6> You may also want to see a nice example of how Garrett Lisi used it: <http://deferentialgeometry.org/></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Manifold – Find, buy, and manage developer services - <AUTHOR> https://manifold.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! We've been working on this for the past few months and would love your feedback. :) You can use Manifold to buy and manage services like LogDNA, Mailgun, JawsDB, Bonsai, Scout, RedisGreen, and Memcachier. We're starting small and adding services slowly but eventually we'd like to add many more services and a more integrated developer experience (e.g. a CLI). We are in a very early stage, so we hope it can be of some use to you.

We'd love any questions, advice, or thoughts you have on the direction we're taking. One thing we're really passionate about is making the sum greater than the parts with our services, and we'd really be curious about whether adding specific types of services or building integrations feels more useful in accomplishing this. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Congratulations on the launch!! LogDNA is proud to be a part of the Manifold journey. Can't wait to see what's in store next!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow. I'm a bit surprised this isn't on the front page already.

This is such a cool service.

I've had the pleasure of knowing Peter (and a decent amount of his team) through their work @ Heroku over the years, and have always been a huge fan of their work. I had dinner with Peter and team a couple of weeks ago, and was 100% psyched to learn that manifold was going to be launching soon.

The problem they're trying to solve is that purchasing / managing subscription services for developers is tricky.

If you've ever used a platform like Heroku, it's extremely convenient to manage additional developer services because you can easily provision / upgrade / downgrade / remove them using a consistent interface (billing included). But the problem here is that you're bound to Heroku specifically.

I've often wanted to have a similar place to purchase all my services for apps (and companies) and have them bound to an independent identity: that way I can carry them with me wherever I might need them, and for whatever projects I might have.

The other important part of this here (which is where I hope Manifold will be particularly useful) is helping me (a developer) figure out what services to use.

The problem I have now is that when I work on applications, I'll need to provision Redis. So if I'm on Amazon I might use ElastiCache, or RedisGreen, or some other provider, but being able to sort through them, compare them, see reviews / rankings, etc., is all really important.

Anyhow: I'm really excited! Congrats on the launch!

</comment><comment><USER4> Pretty excited to see where this product goes :)

Makes a lot of sense to just have everything managed and billed under one umbrella. What aspects do you see as the main benefits of the service? Do you have any services you are particularly interested in bringing on board?

Also, design is on point - great job team!

<comment><AUTHOR> I think _today_ the primary benefits are having a single identity and source of payment, essentially to simplify cloud service management. (though the value there will grow as we add more services) In the longer term, I'd love to figure out ways to help our partners complement/sell each other. Being able to have datastores automatically connect to your logging/monitoring, or having a really great CLI experience to connect and deploy pieces and bits in complementary ways.

As far as services go, we're pretty mixed of opinion right now. I think we have a great story for Ruby developers and think it would be great if we could cater to Node next. James on our team would like Go or Rust, Matt on our team would like to go serverless or maybe even GraphQL-related services (but he's a bit of a futurist).

If you have suggestions/a wishlist, let us know!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congrats on the launch, what's in-store for the next 3-6 months?

Happy to be part of the journey.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's going to be a balance of figuring out the right mix of services (i.e. do we target really specific developer communities and add the services that they are interested in) and building out our developer experience (e.g., a CLI tool, integrations with particular clouds, etc).

I think it's easy for us to say we'll do both, but since we're a small team I think it'll be a mix of selectively bringing in really well-loved services and figuring out what our customers want (if anything) from an integration perspective.</comment></comment>


Dennis Danzik Reveals Commercial Magnetic Engine - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwevIifUQtU <comment><AUTHOR> Skip to 1:30 for the technical demonstration.</comment>


California Legislature Passes Money-Transmitter Reform Bill - <AUTHOR> http://www.americanbanker.com/issues/178_173/california-legislature-passes-money-transmitter-reform-bill-1061853-1.html

<comment><USER2> This post by Aaron Greenspan highlights some of the changes that we can expect to see: [http://thinkcomp.quora.com/In-Nine-Days-the-California- Money...](http://thinkcomp.quora.com/In-Nine-Days-the-California-Money- Transmission-Act-Could-Get-Even-Worse)

This is NOT good. Innovation stifling at it its finest.</comment>


FAA considered then dismissed grounding Southwest 737 Max fleet a year ago - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/boeings-enduring-puzzle-why-certain-safety-features-on-737-max-jets-were-turned-off-11556456400 <comment><USER2> This is based on the WSJ article, but is not pay walled like the WDJ article. [https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-737-max-safety- featur...](https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-737-max-safety-features- disable-southwest-grounding-discussions-2019-4)

</comment><comment><USER3> If true, and if the two jets that went down had sensor warning systems that were deactivated, then people at Boeing are criminally liable.</comment>


Response from my Senator regarding SOPA - <AUTHOR>

Yesterday on a whim, I randomly decided to write a letter to my Senator encouraging him to be against SOPA.  Here's the response I got.  I'm sure it's a cookie-cutter response, but I'm considering possibly responding to it anyway to see if an actual conversation might be started.  What do you all think?  Think there's any chance whatsoever that a real conversation could be started?  Worth doing anything else?  If so, how would you respond?
Without further ado, the email: Dear Joshua,
Thank you for contacting me regarding S. 968, the Protect IP Act.
Intellectual property industries employ more than 19 million people, making it an integral part of our economy.  Rogue websites dedicated to the sale and distribution of counterfeit goods and pirated content are a direct threat to these jobs and to entrepreneurs growing and building legitimate businesses online.
Businesses have lost $135 billion in revenue annually as a result of these rogue sites.  Customers have also been harmed by these sites; for example, online pharmacies that don't adhere to U.S. regulations have been reported to cause a rapid increase in prescription drug abuse.
I am a cosponsor of the Protect IP Act which would cut off foreign websites dedicated to counterfeiting and piracy that steal American jobs, hurt the economy, and harm customers.  It would allow the Justice Department to file a civil action against those who have registered or own a domain name linked to an infringing website.  The bill does not allow the Justice Department to target domain names registered by a U.S. entity.
Innovation is a cornerstone of our nation's economic growth.  Proper intellectual property protections and incentives ensure that inventors develop products that benefit consumers.  Without such incentives for innovators, we risk falling behind places like China and India.
Again, thank you for contacting me. I look forward to continuing our conversation on Facebook (www.facebook.com/SenatorBlunt) and Twitter (www.twitter.com/RoyBlunt) about the important issues facing Missouri and the country. I also encourage you to visit my website (blunt.senate.gov) to learn more about where I stand on the issues and sign-up for my e-newsletter.
Sincere regards,
Roy Blunt United States Senator <comment><USER2> This is the response I got from one of the reps I contacted. I also posted it to HN a while back: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3253611>

""" Thank you for writing to me regarding S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act of 2011. I understand your concerns. I am a cosponsor of this legislation because I believe that we must protect American intellectual property against foreign websites that infringe upon our rights. By empowering the Attorney General of the United States to go after foreign infringing websites, this legislation becomes a necessary tool to ensure that U.S. companies remain competitive in the world marketplace. I recognize that there are technical concerns with the enforcement of this bill that need to be addressed. I am committed to working with my colleagues in the United States Senate to ensure that this legislation protects the Constitutional rights of Americans and does not stifle lawful free speech or innovation on the internet.

Thank you again for writing to express your concerns, and I hope that you keep in touch with my office regarding future legislation. For more information on this and other important issues, please visit my website at <http://gillibrand.senate.gov> and sign up for my e-newsletter.

Sincerely, Kirsten E. Gillibrand United States Senator """

Total cookie cutter stuff. I don't think it's an issue of educating senators on the "issues." The ones who are pushing this bill forward simply want to turn the internet into cable tv.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey, this is a response from My Senator (NY). She is employed on the board of a big law firm that works with Hollywood. I didnt know this until i checked her out after she sent me this. It was copy-N-Pasted in 3 parts (had 3 different fonts) in to the following Email from her (Or her staffer)

Dear ________,

Thank you for writing to me regarding S. 968, the PROTECT IP Act of 2011. I understand your concerns.

I am a cosponsor of this legislation because I believe that we must protect American intellectual property against foreign websites that infringe upon our rights. By empowering the Attorney General of the United States to go after foreign infringing websites, this legislation becomes a necessary tool to ensure that U.S. companies remain competitive in the world marketplace. I recognize that there are technical concerns with the enforcement of this bill that need to be addressed. I am committed to working with my colleagues in the United States Senate to ensure that this legislation protects the Constitutional rights of Americans and does not stifle lawful free speech or innovation on the internet.

Thank you again for writing to express your concerns, and I hope that you keep in touch with my office regarding future legislation. For more information on this and other important issues, please visit my website at <http://gillibrand.senate.gov> and sign up for my e-newsletter.

Sincerely,

Kirsten E. Gillibrand United States Senator

</comment><comment><USER4> Well for one, that $135 billion number is totally bogus. Every pirated unit is _not_ a lost sale. Not even close. I know a while ago someone did the math on one of their reported numbers and it ended up like 200 DVD's per customer per year - on average - which obviously is completely ridiculous.

In the end what is happening is disruption. I think these senators need to be educated more about disruption and how it ended up "killing" many old jobs in the past, too, but also created other jobs in other places.

</comment><comment><USER5> most likely an intern there answering all his emails!

<comment><USER6> Yeah, most Senators have a number of people known as "Legislative Correspondents" or "LCs"--a paid (well, barely paid) position with the job of researching certain topics and answering constituent emails about them. Getting from an LC to a Senator is tough. Your best bet is a phone call.</comment></comment>


Paperless: Scan and index paper documents - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/danielquinn/paperless <comment><USER2> For me the problem is stability and future-proofness. Technology changes very quickly. If the maintainer loses interest, the software may rot away as the dependencies change, etc.

Important documents often need to be stored for 5-10-20 years. Why put everything in this shiny new software, when it may change in 1 or 2 years?

I think it's best to just put scanned pdfs in folders based on year and topic. Those can be easily and transparently backed up and searched.

But on a few months timescale this software could be useful.

<comment><USER3> That's why I archive my document scans as one bit per pixel PNGs. It ends up being 20KB-50KB per page at 150 PPI. I figure that there will always be a way to get the pixels out of a PNG. PDF is a more complex and dynamic standard.

<comment><USER2> That's true, but PNGs can't have a text layer for searchability.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure text files can reside in the same folder as PNG files.

<comment><USER2> Yes, but not all documents are trivial to convert to a text file because the layout can be quite complex. A PDF file can have little bits of text floating anywhere and when you search inside the file, you can see it highlighted at its actual position.

<comment><USER4> I've had to work with PDF files before, and they're absolutely horrible. Precisely because of what you state: "little bits of text floating anywhere". Or something like disjoint, not-grouped, lines for table drawing, instead of a generic table with formatting, width/height, etc.

Though, I generally agree with you, PDF/A is quite a good way of storing documents for long-term. But, that doesn't mean that PNG files along with text files, even with x:y coordinates next to the pieces of text, aren't a feasible alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have been doing something similar for a couple of years.

My printer can scan to a shared drive on my home LAN, saving files as PDFs. These are then uploaded Google Drive where everything else happens automatically (e.g. if you search for something, it will find it in scanned PDFs automatically).

Its super-useful especially since the mobile clients for drive is rock solid. I can be on the phone to someone and pull up basically any document I've had since the 90s in a couple of seconds, for free. Its kinda fun being on the phone to a call centre and being able to pull up data quicker than they can. Tax returns are an absolute doddle when everything is paperless.

The only thing that is missing for me from Google Drive is like a "Knowledge Graph" for my own documents - I can search by keyword or filename etc sure, but I'd like to get some "intelligence" next like we're used to with Google Now, but for my scanned docs, like "show me my bank statements with a payment to Amazon in the last 3 months" etc.

<comment><USER6> So now people are _trying_ to give Google more highly sensitive personal information?

/facepalm

<comment><USER7> Why is this a facepalm? Privacy advocacy is about giving people the option to decide what they share, not preventing them from sharing. I don't have a problem at all if someone voluntarily decides to share their private information with Google. Why does it matter to you what he does with his data?

<comment><USER6> It matters for the same reason I think US gun violence is a problem, even though I don't live there.

It matters for the same reason I think banning encryption in the UK is a problem, even though I don't live there.

It matters for the same reason I think the millions of people riding around on motor scooters here without _any_ protective equipment/clothing, often against traffic in the parking/emergency lane is a problem.

The more data people give to an organisation like Google, the more power it gets.

The more power it gets, the more data it gets.

The more data it gets, ....

<comment><USER8> Going to need you to finish that train of thought. Data aggregation (or power concentration) isn't any more inherently machiavellian than any of the non sequiturs you rattled off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you don't want to buy a document scanner, just use your mobile phone for this.

I personally use Scanbot for this, it automatically recognizes, crops and OCRs documents (on the device) and stores them as PDF with the extracted text in the location of your choosing. Works well enough.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've been using Evernote's Scannable for receipts and single pages. I had been using a scanner w/ ADF, but it was slow I never automated it.

Scannable works really fast and Evernote indexes PDFs.

If only Evernote's editor didn't make me want to switch away every time I use it...

</comment><comment><USER11> I use google docs for it. You can upload scanned documents to Google docs. Documents are automatically OCRed, you can search by keywords and you can still access the original image.

Disclaimer: I work at google, although not on the Google docs team.

</comment><comment><USER12> Last time I checked it's much cheaper to get document scanner with ADF built together with a laser printer than to buy one standalone. I was quite surprised.

<comment><USER13> I can't really back this up with empirical evidence but in my experience the ADF's on consumer all in one's tend to be a bit crap compared to getting a standalone one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice combination of technologies to solve a problem -- could be very useful for a business that needs to be able to archive and access paper records.

But for a household -- there are very few documents you need to keep long term. Better to just keep those in a fireproof file box, and shred and discard everything else rather than devote any resources or mental energy to keeping them around in either paper or digital form.

<comment><USER15> >few documents you need to keep long term

I disagree. While I'm a huge fan of purging, there are many, many cases where you need/want documents.

Theft/fire/casualty: old receipts prove ownership and value.

Maintenance: who worked on the furnace 4 yrs ago?

Warranty: our windows have a 20 year warranty (and we're using it!)

Basis for home improvements: when you sell your home, if you can document improvements, you can raise your basis and lower your capital gains.

Repair: where's the part number & diagram for the faucet that's leaking?

School records for your children.

Etc.

<comment><USER12> I would add university notes. I was really clumsy with mine but my gf has all her notes for all the classes from uni. It takes up two large shelves, it's freaking massive. We want to scan it but it's a huge task.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It would be nice if this joined forces with Camlistore to hurry up the Scanning Cabinet replacement :-)

<comment><USER17> Mathieu's got his code up for review!

[https://camlistore-review.googlesource.com/#/c/5416/](https://camlistore- review.googlesource.com/#/c/5416/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I bought a high-speed scanner with OCR a few years ago. MacOS automatically indexes PDFs, so I can easily search through my scanned documents in Finder.

A magic folder system, like Dropbox or Syncplicity, makes sure that the pdfs are safely backed up for me.

</comment><comment><USER19> You can use Docady's scanner that also does OCR and recognizes its content. It then stores your documents and encrypts them. At the moment it's available on iOS, but should be available soon in Android too.

Demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN_Zw6xoUaw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN_Zw6xoUaw)

App: [https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id921250909?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/id921250909?mt=8)

(Full Disclosure: I work at Docady and part of its team)

</comment><comment><USER20> I've found adobe acrobat x to be great for OCR and indexing of PDFs. Nothing else I've used comes close to what it can recognise.

<comment><USER21> There's lots I don't like about Acrobat X (and now DC), but ClearScan is an awesome format for scanning and retaining PDF documents. I wish (though don't expect) Adobe would open source it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems somewhat ironic to me that someone built this whole paper to ocr system, and then says "hey use it with a scanner like X", which has OCR capabilities (producing searchable PDFs) built in.

<comment><USER22> It's not built in to the scanner. It's done by the software that comes with the scanner for Windows and OS X.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> OP, great job. I have been trying to solve this very same problem for over an year now, and have a business plan based on the same. Is there a way I can pm you and get some clarifications. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER24> Any chance of a wiki to group-collaborate on getting different scanners to work with this?

I have a HP envy I'd like to glue to the cloud.

</comment><comment><USER25> No Dockerfile? I have a Dockerfile for handling Web cam images sent by FTP: [https://github.com/kaihendry/camftp2web/blob/master/Dockerfi...](https://github.com/kaihendry/camftp2web/blob/master/Dockerfile)

</comment><comment><USER26> What about just take a picture?

<comment><USER27> Take a picture with your stock camera, or use an app that willcrop, apply OCR and convert your image to a document format? The former lacks features without relying on another program. The latter is only good for people who infrequently need something scanned. Most people can probably get by using a phone app, but this is for people with lots of paper documents.

<comment><USER28> That said, even if you have a dedicated document scanner, you should spend the $5 or whatever to get Scanbot Pro for your phone. Makes it _so_ friggin easy to get a quick scan of a document if you ever need it. And it does on-phone OCR (far as I can tell the results are pretty good!) with the option to upload to dropbox or a similar service.

I mention Scanbot specifically because I bought and tried about 5 or 6 of the available document scanning apps on iOS before settling on it. It really does do literally everything I want in a document scanning app short of tagging the documents (which would, of course, be a file-system specific thing).</comment></comment></comment>


How I became an artist - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@noahbradley/how-i-became-an-artist-4390c6b6656c <comment><USER2> This is great and you're of great inspiration to young artists or simply anybody that wants to pursue their dreams.

I think that living a humble life doing simple things that don't necessarily lead to professional success, is still a very noble lifestyle. The pressure society has brought upon us to follow our dreams, simply because it's nice to follow your dreams, is a bit of a pipe dream.

What I'm trying to say is that success isn't objective, it cannot be measured with the amounts of projects you've built, or with the amounts of professional artworks you've produced. Success is being happy about the simple things in life, whether these are output of your work (art, code, music, etc.) or experiences you've had in life.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure this is true. You can be happy with work that anyone skilled in the art thinks is terrible, i.e. maybe you're really proud of your $REGISTER_GLOBALS dependent, SQLi-vulnerable, spaghetti PHP app. Maybe you're really happy with your scientific paper that the peer review community has ripped to shreds as false. Or you really, really like the novel you wrote, despite well-articulated and uniformly scathing takedowns from editors, English professors, literary critics, etc.

Or, conversely, you're a perfectionist and kicking yourself over the single calculation mistake in an otherwise field-defining paper, masterful performance, etc.

When you participate in a craft, there are measures and standards of quality orthogonal to your emotions, and they matter a great deal in determining whether a work is successful.

<comment><USER4> And on the other hand, there's Wordpress.

<comment><USER5> Humorous, but relevant. PHP and Wordpress are derided by many, perhaps rightfully so. Despite many well founded claims against them they remain ubiquitous.

Which metric do we use to define success here? Can shitty software be considered successful just because everyone uses it?

<comment><USER6> People don't buy a drill, they buy a hole in the wall.

People don't buy the best most perfect fancy publishing platform, they buy something that lets them publish their content and move on with their lives.

I think the success is pretty self-evident?

<comment><USER7> Where can you buy holes for your wall?! "People don't want a drill they want a hole in the wall."

Sorry for pedantry, but think it helps with the metaphor.

<comment><USER6> You're right - that was pedantry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The best thing about this piece is the rationality of his decision-making: didn't get a scholarship so take a year off to get better. School was getting too expensive so find a cheaper way to go. Need to pay off student loans so move back in with parents. These are excellent artistic decisions, because they allowed him to practice his craft and never take his eyes off his goal, yet didn't wed him to any particular path forward.

He treated high costs as damage and routed his career around them.

This lesson is as true in business as it is in art: always look for cheaper, more efficient, yet still effective alternatives. Productivity is output/input, and when the output (commercial success, in his case) is a very noisy function of many factors you don't control, figuring out how to minimize input costs while keeping P(success) as high as possible is the key to making good choices. He showed creativity and pragmatism as well as dedication.

Also: failure is always an option (I say this as someone who has failed more often than he has succeeded in his major life goals, although the successes have been more than worth the effort.) Hard work and talent are necessary but not sufficient conditions for success. Maybe there is no audience for the kind of art you love (I'm a formal poet, and have more-or-less made my peace with this.) So make sure you're doing it for love, not money. If the money is there, you've won the lottery, but regardless of that aspect of it, making the art you love, and putting in the hours and deliberate practice to get better at your craft, is worth it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much. I'd chock that up to a mix of luck, the influence of watching my dad run his own successful small business since I was born, and all of the business books I read on my own throughout college.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome post! Very useful to have the inside scoop. There was a recent posting on "Ask HN" about pressure to quickly succeed. The exact quote was " _I 'm 22 and I feel if I don't hit it big within the next 2 years I probably won't_". [1, 2] Success is a slow road, as this post so nicely illustrates, you need to constantly be putting in the hours! It's easy to browse HN/startup eco-system and only see the career highlight reels and think: "jeez, I will never be successful", or "Man, how did they get to this point person, must just be a natural", or "I can never be like that". But, this behind the scenes view shows you what success looks like on a day-to-day basis (hard work + passion + education + tons of practice + over many many years). What is funny, is that we often only see the end result, and just assume it was an overnight success.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837493](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9837493)

[2] sorry to use this as an example, but looks like new account / throwaway

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly this.

As an artist, I constantly have people stumble across my recent work and exclaim how much they like it. That's awesome! It makes me feel so good. But they see that without the context of the years that came before it. They don't understand the struggles that lead to that piece.

So this article was all about providing some of that context.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the perspective and this incredible article. It's quite motivating and I love how you use the light (being a photographer I think it's easier for me to see) and the details/texture.

Going through the article, I felt two transitions: a. Where you did portraiture with landscape background, b. where you did the imaginative landscapes

       would do imaginative sketches of landscapes

The place where the article really connected/resonated with me was:

      But then I started getting annoyed. I got annoyed with how students are taught
      and with how art schools take advantage of eager young art students.
      I saw too many of my peers taken advantage of. They charge tens or hundreds
      of thousands of dollars and give very little in return.

      So for one thing, I wrote that angry rant that a few of you might have read.

      In 2013, I started Art Camp.

What you are doing is incredible and it's nice to see your passion being cohesively molded into a purpose which helps you to give back.

Kudos!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm also on quest to become an artist, I created a site for keeping up consistent drawing streak (although I'm struggling at the moment).

The site is for anyone to use and we have quite a few artists using it already: [https://streak.club/s/8/daily- art-2015](https://streak.club/s/8/daily-art-2015)

Here's a post I wrote talking a little more about the site: [http://leafo.net/posts/introducing_streakclub.html](http://leafo.net/posts/introducing_streakclub.html)

<comment><USER12> Big fan of your work leafo. Moonscript/Lapis/streak/etc. An inspiration.. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This might be a dumb question, but I figure it wouldn't hurt to ask anyway! I'm really interested in learning how to create art, and skill-wise I'm currently right where you were at the start. If I were to follow your exact path, it would take me many years to get anywhere near your level, and while I'm up to the challenge, I don't have four solid years to devote to a new college run at the moment. However, looking back on my computer science education (which forms the basis of my professional career), I can definitely see how I could have acquired the skills to get me where I am today in far less time had I known exactly which areas to focus on ahead of time. Same with my music education; in my music courses, we covered what I had been studying (half-heartedly) for most of my childhood in about a semeseter. Art-wise, do you have any suggestions for specific areas to focus on that might substantially accelerate my education?

Anyway, thanks for the great article! This might just be the kick I need to start taking art seriously. :)

<comment><USER14> I was in a similar situation about 8 months ago—You just have to pick up a pencil and go for it.

I had just finished college and found a great job. With all the free time I didn't have in school, I decided to buckle down and start taking art seriously (instead of doodling cartoon figures). I knew I need to start out by building a solid foundation, which meant that I have to really familiarize myself with the basics and maintain a daily habit of learning+practicing (even if my brain no longer wants to operate after 7-9 hour of work). That's what I have been doing in the past 8 months.

It takes quite a bit of self-discipline and sometimes it's just hard to get yourself to commit to it, but it the end it's all worthwhile. I have made (small) decent progress... It's a wonderful feeling, to know that you are able to confidently produce something that you would've not been able to do so several months ago. Here are some of my recent practice sketches: [https://i.imgur.com/gtR8T2t.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/gtR8T2t.jpg)

Proko has several tutorial series that I strongly recommend for beginners that are looking for somewhere to start: [http://www.proko.com/](http://www.proko.com/)

<comment><USER15> Proko is brilliant. And his videos have gotten better over time. His breakdown of drawing faces from any angle was a kind of light bulb moment for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> REALLY good piece.

The bit that stood out to me in particular was his embrace of deliberate practice. It's been identified in studies as the most powerful tool for learning skills like this - good to see it born out in at least one practical example too.

</comment><comment><USER17> One of the takeaways I got from this was that instead of the usual "Follow your dreams no matter what" it should be "Follow your dreams, but be smart about". I think many who take the first advice tend to just hammer their heads at whatever obstacle is blocking whatever seems like the direct to their dreams - and as a result often get smacked over the head with such a dose of cold hard reality that they end up having to abandon their dreams instead. Some of Noah's decisions, e.g. waiting with RISD until he could get a scholarship so he wouldn't bankrupt his family, are great examples of how to do this the right way. Achieving your dreams takes tenacity, sure, but it also takes patience and pragmatism. Learning to fly takes more than just the guts to throw yourself off a cliff.

<comment><USER16> Definitely.

I've been a working artist for 20 years now (filmmaker). One of the biggest advantages I've had in sustaining that career is that I'm pretty damn good with a spreadsheet.

As others have said, it's a long game, and skills that will sustain you through that long game are critically important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> And this, dear friends, is how Noah Bradley actually became a writer!

What an excellent piece. I am reading this to my kids.

<comment><AUTHOR> I do my best. :)

Hope they're inspired! Give 'em plenty of art supplies!

<comment><USER18> I will, I will!

I want to read your story to my eldest, 16 years old, who says he is struggling to find what he really wants to do with his life (career choices etc). He is a good kid. The truth is, I am going to read that story again mostly for me too.

I didn't know at 16 what I wanted from my life either ... but I spent a good decade in my 20s "going with the flow", rudderless. I wish I had been more awake to my possibilities then. I don't regret those years completely, I became a father when I had him in those years. But ... it would have been nice to be told that your brain's plasticity is more forgiving earlier than later. :-)

You keep painting. And loving it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One of the things I'm pretty jealous of is that in my career path (as admittedly vague it is... I'm 25 and my education & experience is in marketing, but being a CMO certainly isn't my life's ambition) is that I couldn't really start young and produce a tangible good that's worth anything to jump start a career since Marketing is really all about numbers. Anything without results is just speculation. (Nice job cross posting across the internet, btw)

I'm not a programmer, so I can't build an app... I'm certainly not an artist and can't paint or sing... Although I like carpentry and ok at it, I don't want to be a carpenter... So for me, being successful and earning a decent wage is either from climbing the corporate ladder or building my own company. Both are possible, but talent is really not much of a factor.

Anyways, the point I'm getting at is that it's impressive and inspiring to see talented people (like yourself) with artistic skill-sets and ambitions put the hard work in to get their inherent skillsets noticed and make a career for themselves.

Talent doesn't get you everywhere - and neither will hard work - but together they can do great things.

<comment><USER20> I'm not so sure about that.

As a product manager I wish I had spent more time on either learning to program or preferably designing interfaces for product ideas that I had. I did some of this stuff but not as much as I now realise I could have.

As a CMO the best evidence of your skills is in marketing a product of any kind. It could be a blog or product that you've created yourself, or pro bono work for someone else.

None of this is to downplay the chops of this artist - it really is amazing.

<comment><USER19> I guess I could clarify that what I'm talking about is the time it takes for skills to become apparent and credible. I'm not saying Noah's first works were Old Master level[1] or that they even are now, but clearly you can look at them and say "Kids got talent and has made tangible improvements."

Sure, I can start a blog talking about social media marketing, but basically it's starting from absolute zero - whereas Noah even early at his earliest started from a place a bit higher. For me to start a blog and say unique things about marketing that haven't been said before and then get that noticed... I consider myself to be smart, but I don't know if I'm on that level.

And sure, like you and I both said, I can build a product (I'm trying as we speak like everyone else is on HN) to develop my marketing skills, but then lets face it... if it's actually worth doing, my job isn't going to be primarily about marketing; it will be about leading a team, building a great product, and yes a bit of marketing.

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

<comment><USER21> >For me to start a blog and say unique things about marketing that haven't been said before and then get that noticed... I consider myself to be smart, but I don't know if I'm on that level.

As you know, marketing is all about the packaging, and how you sell the sizzle, not the steak. So even if you think it's all been said before, it doesn't have to stop you from saying it in your own way, with your own unique insights, distribution methods, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm totally blown away by your art, Noah. It's wonderful.

I have a question for you, if you'd be willing to entertain it: As your own art has improved, would you say that your own imagination has improved as well?

For me, I'm interested in a few things that aren't [strictly] visual art -- creating video games and writing stories -- but I often find myself having trouble fully visualizing the ideas that bubble up from my imagination. For example, I might have a story that involves a futuristic space ship, but I can only retain a shadow of its image in my mind's eye. The general shapes might be there, and a few details, but it's a far cry from the rich detail that I can conjure up of, say, my home growing up.

One idea I've considered, as a means of sharpening my imagination, is getting into sketching or painting. Perhaps learning the techniques of putting imagination to paper will make my imagination all that much sharper, more vibrant, more real. Would you say that there's any merit to that line of thinking?

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely.

One of my greatest fears around the time I was beginning to take this seriously was that I simply wasn't creative enough. I didn't know what to paint. But I found that as both my technical abilities expanded, I was also expanding the person I was and the things I was exposed to. Forming the person you are also forms the way your mind can come up with ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> My goal is to simply to become a good designer so I can design more inspired apps. This Quora answer by Karen on how to become a designer without going to design school contains a lot of useful information, if that's also your goal.

[http://www.quora.com/How-do-you-get-a-job-as-a-designer- with...](http://www.quora.com/How-do-you-get-a-job-as-a-designer-without- going-to-design-school)

</comment><comment><USER24> I love this. I'm a hobby artist myself (though I've never wanted to make a career out of it). It's great to know that people can still succeed in a career that is common prefixed with "starving." I also love to see the artistic progression of a youth to a professional. It's a fascinating visual journey.

A great takeaway is how he offered free prints during his Illuxcon convention. I rarely see artists (even amateurs) doing this at conventions. I imagine this accelerated his success as his free prints were probably hanging on the wall in various art directors' offices.

<comment><USER25> If you haven't already seen this thread on conceptart, it follows an artist's progress over ten years from crude sketches to masterful portraits. Very inspiring! [http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/870-Journey-...](http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php/870-Journey- of-an-Absolute-Rookie-Paintings-and-Sketches)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> As an engineer recently rediscovering the pure, tactile, offline experience of creating art (not that I would go so far as to call what I have created so far 'art'), this piece couldn't have come at a better time. I really appreciated how Noah shared his journey, it definitely inspires me to keep going. I also recommend giving sketching/drawing a go for anyone looking to spend a bit less of their 'relaxing' time on a computer screen (though of course I am eyeing up digital art as a someday!).

<comment><AUTHOR> Congrats! Making the leap into art is always a good one, no matter your profession. It can give you an entirely new appreciation for the world around you. Quite literally a new way of looking at things.

And you can call it art--I'm not snooty about the word.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Great story. I particularly liked the move to the other side of the world part. If you guys want some time off from Australia come visit southwest China. Great community with lots of artists from around the world, recently described by one of the interviewees in the social documentary I am shooting as "like Paris in the 1920s".

</comment><comment><USER28> Love seeing the progression in skill.

On a different note, most artists I know are successful because they excel in making insightful commentary on contemporary culture. They look at human agency and make sens of it. They crate a playground of imagination for possible futures.

Skills in traditional art practice are often secondary to the latter.

</comment><comment><USER29> I really enjoyed this piece. I don't connect with the artsy side of my brain too often and didn't think I would enjoy your piece, but definitely the best and most interesting thing I've read all day! (currently now reading your "Don't Go to Art School" piece).

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm curious what the flaws in this piece are.

[https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1600/1*nLdIY0f1MIa...](https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/1600/1*nLdIY0f1MIaZ31ohGKkN7Q.jpeg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Shrubs are super flat and boring, rocks get mushy and formless, perspective is a bit off on the path, darks are too black, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What an incredible journey, and what a tremendous amount of hard work.

</comment><comment><USER32> I would love to know what percentage of your professional and current work is digital and how long it takes you to create one of these beautiful completely finished pieces.

<comment><AUTHOR> 95% is digital these days. My work takes anywhere from 10-30 hours to complete one of the finished pieces, depending on complexity and how efficient I am. That time is always broken up into many, many smaller pieces.

<comment><USER32> And when you started, did it still take 10-30 hours or longer? Do you use a Wacom still or a tablet? Any preferred stylus? Did any tutorials help you or was it all due to your formal education and practice?

<comment><AUTHOR> That first finished landscape piece took about 5 hours. And that felt like an eternity to me. I've actually pushed myself time and time again to be more patient with my work. And it's paid off in producing better pieces each time.

I travel a lot so I'm on my Surface Pro 3 most of the time. I've used most everything out there. They all have pros and cons.

There are a ton of great resources. Start with the stuff linked in my don't-go-to-art-school article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just curious, How are the pictures, from section III The professional, made? Are they made by with software or by actual painting?

</comment><comment><USER34> It's good. I'd try to avoid a bit more the emotional aesthetization. That would fit more in painting that lacks technique, but you paint too good for that. Make it more rough. Don't mean to know more than you of course but a good trick is to try to paint humans as if they were landscapes. no it's as if you don't leave anything outside of the painting, for the viewer to fill... Only my opinion do.

</comment><comment><USER35> Awesome work. Would love to see the path that follows. Cheers

<comment><AUTHOR> You and me both.

</comment></comment><comment> astro- Hugely inspiring! Thanks for sharing your story, Noah.

</comment><comment><USER36> That was super - really - thanks for writing this.

</comment><comment><USER37> Wow, these are amazing and beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER38> Incredible Journey, Well done. (y)

</comment><comment><USER39> Love this. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER40> what a waste of time. criminal

</comment><comment><USER41> OP please add an nsfw tag ..

<comment><USER42> your workplace isn't safe for art?

<comment><USER43> Fantasy landscapes are known to cause daydreaming, which irritates middle managers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Most comments seems positive here, nice. I'm a bit less enthusiastic. A twenty-so young boy has no lesson to teach. He can't be an artist because artists are either over fifty or dead, no matter how many times he'll repeat the mantra. One does not choose art among other professional activities: a very few men or women are chosen to become artists and they will be no matter what else they try to do.

Also being an artist is a curse. In just finished reading the trial by Kafka for the fourth time: it must have been extremely painful and hard to write such a deep novel. I wouldn't wish having this curse even on my worst enemy. Normal people far very much being an "artist" and they are right, as bring one means having the most miserable life, no sane relationships with other people, and if success is there you get paranoia.

Even worse is a young guy who knows nothing about that and says "me too! I want to be an Artist!". Just like those fools willing to become soldiers in 1914...

<comment> ryan-allen I don't know why this comment is being downvoted, do we downvote on differences of sentiment now on HN?

<comment><USER45> No True Scotsman fallacy. Pessimistic bitterness. Is insane enough to read Kafka _fucking four times._ Appeal to some ominous nameless oppressive judgmental force in order to discourage (perhaps this was informed by all that Kafka reading). Is obsessed with nihilism. Spreads negativity unnecessarily, which does not help anything. Senseless comparison to optimistic soldiers entering a warfront... Getting rejected by art directors until you're successful is not the same as killing "enemies" in cold blood, I'm sorry.

All of that and more in a mere 3 short paragraphs.

How did you NOT see why it was downvoted?

<comment><USER44> It's just that I'm old. I didn't read Kafka four time in a row mind you. I'm not nihilist at all, what made you think that? I have a high opinion on art, music, movies, literature, and prefer Kafka over Harry potter if you don't mind. When I see a twenty so claim himself an artist and a bunch of appraisers, I insert my view which is that artistic genius is a curse, happens very rarely, and certainly cannot be taught by a twenty so blogger who draws.

<comment><USER46> He said he was an artist, not an artistic genius; on the contrary, he's fairly humble and critical of his own work. You're putting words in his mouth, then talking down to him for things he didn't say.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Scientific Calculator (Voice-Enabled 34-Button Calculator) - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+square+root+of+30 <comment><USER2> The calculator adapts nicely to screen size. For example, if I rotate my smartphone into landscape mode, the calculator switches from a more basic view to one with more options.</comment>


I'm getting a Mac. Which Mac do you use? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER3> Apple just ordered 500 million 4GB flash chips from Samsung, this is on top of their long term contract with Samsung. This is far more than can be accounted for by the iphone or ipod demand (And are expected to be shipped by the end of this year.)

Intel announced Robson technology awhile ago, which ships in their "Santa Rosa" platform which is scheduled to ship in May - this month.

Apple has gone a bit longer than usual in releasing laptops... they are overdue for both MacBooks and MacBook pros.

On June 11th Steve Jobs will be giving the keynote at WWDC.

Last week Apple announced that they would be shipping laptops with LED based displays "later this year". Such a change will require a design change in the laptop- eg: a new formfactor. It might be like the aluminum books now, not really a new looking formfactor compared to the Titanium powerbook-- but thuroughly new internally.

Thus, I think the odds are very good that new laptops will be announced on June 11th and that the difference will be significant enough that its worth waiting a month before buying your mac.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't use a Mac as a primary machine (I test on them), but I do have a piece of advice - the Dell 24" is possibly the best value monitor ever. If you're on a budget but still want some decent real estate, they're perfect. I run 2 of them, 1920x1200 on the left for general stuff and 1200x1920 on the right for code (I'm considering adding a third for notes). I find it impossible to do any serious development on a laptop these days.

A 23" Cinema display is the other obvious choice - much sexier, but the specs are inferior and it costs significantly more.

<comment><USER5> The Dell 24" monitors have quality control issues that the Apple displays don't seem to have. They're enough less expensive though that it may be worth it to you to risk the occasional banding or backlight failures.

Or you may just want/need analog inputs that the Apple display can't give you.

<comment><USER6> Series A03 and above of the Dell 24 inch monitor, shipping since September, have no banding issues. The monitor is absolutely awesome. The best part is you can probably keep it around for 5 years or more, and it has all the TV inputs except HDMI that you may need (no tuner, but many devices have a tuner these days.) I got mine for about $540 after a 25% coupon as part of a new computer system. You can buy some 17 inch monitors for $200 but you will definitely get rid of them in two years. Why not buy something you can keep for a long time? When you're a huge billion-dollar company in a few years from now, and want to get a 30inch monitor (the only real alternative) instead, you can simply use this monitor as a TV screen on the wall behind the receptionist. :) Gotta plan ahead for that...

And, it even has a card reader and USB ports built-in to the side. It also supports VGA on one button, and DVI on another. You can easily swap what you're looking at by connecting to two different computers at the same time. Then, simply get a wireless keyboard and mouse, and plug the USB receiver into its stand for the main, DVI, computer, or unplug the receiver and plug it into the monitor, for the VGA connected computer, and click a button on the monitor to go to the VGA computer. No KVM switch needed. Just connect to the monitor's USB/card reader cord to the USB port of the VGA computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've got a 24inch iMac. IMO, insane value for what you get. I reviewed it a while ago: <http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/09/18/first-impressions-24-inch- imac/>

then I got a very nice VESA arm for it.. <http://paulstamatiou.com/2007/02/26/review-ilift-vesa-arm/>

sorry for the link spam, but i figured it was relevant.

</comment><comment><USER8> The white MacBook with 2G of RAM is great for programming unix applications. I run the webserver, the database, the search engine (Ferret) and all other desktop apps as well as Windows XP on parallels for IE debugging. I never have performance issues.

</comment><comment><USER9> I just wanted to say that if you ever plan on running Linux on your machine, don't get a Mac.

Ubuntu in particular works, but there's a lot of hacking to get it to do so and little issues abound (at least that's my experience).

<comment><USER3> Did you try running under parallels?

Anyway, 5 years ago, getting Linux running on a Powerbook was really easy... I would think it would be better now, not worse...

<comment><USER9> The issue is EFI. The new Intel-based Macs do not use BIOS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just got back from the Apple Store with a fresh 17" Macbook Pro. I'm in heaven right now.

</comment><comment><USER11> I got a 12 inch powerbook G4 ...old school, awesome machine hasn't failed on me yet

</comment><comment><USER12> I have a 12" PowerBook G4.

<comment><USER13> Same here. It is such a great device that, rather than go with a current model, I purchased a replacement on eBay when my original was stolen back in January. (Be very careful with hotel selection in Punteranas, Costa Rica--my machine was stolen out of my backpack in my hotel room while I was out for the day. Thankfully, the idiots left the external HD, iSight, power supply, etc.)

That said, I still am waiting for Apple to get their act together and release a 12" MacBook Pro. I'd like to be able to run a variety of operating systems via Parallels. Interfacing with the corporate/industrial world unfortunately necessitates the use of Windows-only software. Virtual PC just doesn't cut it. Rumours suggest that one may be in the works but, for now, they seem to be just wishful thinking from other like-minded individuals.

<comment><USER14> PowerBook 15" 1.25 512. I too am anticipating a 12/13" MacBook Pro. I've had it since 2003 and it still runs like a champ, but I am on the road so often that I need something more portable. Maybe the iPhone will offer a decent, albeit basic, workspace.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> My personal computers are a 12" Powerbook and a Mac mini G4, and I have a 15" MacBook Pro for work.

If I didn't have the MBP I'd probably have replaced the PB by now; it's a great computer, but even a great computer can take only so much physical abuse, and it's over four years old now. I looked hard at the MacBooks, but the glossy screen is a dealbreaker, and the keyboard isn't so hot either, so I'm holding out for a 12" MBP.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just make sure you buy it at a place where you can return it without problems if you are not satisfied.

I have returned two Macs to the Apple Online store, a MBP and a Mac Pro. Both were too noisy.

A friend of mine returned his iMac 24'' three times until Apple delivered one that was acceptable (even there I think it had flaws from manufacturing, but they settled for a price reduction).

</comment><comment><USER17> I use a 15" macbook pro - the entry level model (2.16GHz), but upgraded it to 2 gigs of ram. The 17" was too large for me.

I also have a Dell 2407FPW which I highly recommend - it's cheaper than the Apple equivalent, has a great picture and also has a built in flash memory reader. And unlike most Dell products, the industrial design is pretty nice.

</comment><comment><USER18> A PPC 17" iMac. My wife has a dual-G5 PowerMac. Of course, you can't buy these models any more, but they've both been reliable.

An important thing is that you should probably buy directly from Apple. Every experience I've had buying from third parties resulted in Macs arriving with hardware problems. Could have been a coincidence, I suppose.

</comment><comment><USER19> 15" MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo. 2.33GHz / 2GB RAM. Nice machine, although perhaps not the most durable (I handle it fairly carefully, but it's already pretty scratched up after ~6 months). Thinking about upgrading to 3GB RAM (the max), as I run 2 WinXP VMs under Parallels (for IE 6 and 7) and that slows me down pretty bad currently.

</comment><comment><USER20> 15in mpb 2.0Ghz / 2gb ram. a lot of the time w/ 20in monitor plugged in. I've been ecstatic with it. The 17in seems to big to move around with (though I did not have that option when I bought mine).

If I was buying it again today I would take a really hard look at the MacBooks; especially since they are now as fast as my mbp.

</comment><comment><USER21> MacBook (non-pro). I'm poor/cheap, plus I actually prefer a smaller form- factor for notebooks; I have full-sized external monitors at both home and work, so the smaller display is a non-issue where I spend most of my time, and a postive advantage when I'm mobile.

</comment><comment><USER22> I had a 12" PB for a couple years then sold it to a friend who still uses it daily and it a very mobile environment. Myself, I work fulltime and go to school fulltime and I'm never at home and the only laptop for me was a 15" Macbook Pro.

</comment><comment><USER23> MacBook Pro, entry level.

I've had a MacBook for a few weeks (while my MBP was in repair :() and I was so happy to get the MBP back.

I use it with a big CRT in our office and a Samsung 205BW (20" widescreen) in my home-office.

</comment><comment><USER24> I went from a 12" ibook g4 to a 15" macbook pro. (The student price knocked off a couple hundred dollars)

I really liked the 12", but the 15" widescreen real estate is very handy. I'll never get another PC for personal use.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm using a 24" iMac and it's great for development. A MacBook whould come in handy if you want mobility and it has a nice price also. I don't think you'll have performance issues with any laptop you might choose.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm on a WindowsXP desktop right now. I'm planning to get the 15" 2.33GHz MacBook Pro, w/ 160GB hard drive. I don't know why they don't offer the 7200rpm hard drives. Won't the 5400 be noticeable slow?

</comment><comment><USER27> I don't use a Mac any more (decided to go back to Linux), but my base-model 15" powerbook served me wonderfully for two years. Just pop in an extra gig of RAM.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have the 20in. iMac, maxed out on RAM and HD. It's absolutely killer - <USER2> best machine I've ever owned. Next purchase will be a MacBook Pro.

</comment><comment><USER29> Recently replaced my XP desktop with a 13" Macbook as my main machine. I'm eying the Mac Pro w/ a 30incher when the time is right...

</comment><comment><USER30> What a great forum. I'm deciding b/w a Mac or a the Z. Looks like everyone really loves their MAC.

My T40 is dying.

</comment><comment><USER31> Mac Mini, 1.67Ghz dual core. It's their lowest end model right now, but with 2G of RAM, performance is quite good.

</comment><comment><USER32> I have a 12" Powerbook and a Mac Mini with the core duo. I'll be getting a Macbook sometime in the future.

</comment><comment><USER33> MBP 15.4 2.16 2GB and the sexy Axio Hardsleeve (axio-usa.com) for lugging it around.

</comment><comment><USER34> A 13" MacBook. Without a doubt, it's the best computer I've ever owned.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've got a Quad Core 3Ghz MacPro... and yes it is REALLY fast!

</comment><comment><USER36> 17 inch PowerBook G4...No problems the past two years.

</comment><comment><USER37> 17" MacBook Pro. It is very, very, very nice.

<comment><USER38> Do you carry it everywhere with you?

<comment><USER18> I used to have a 17" PowerBook (first 17" model), and I carried it around a lot. There's a Halliburton case that fits it snugly on all sides; no rattling or anything.

People complain about the weight and size, but I never noticed a problem. Of course, I'm a pretty big guy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> i'm also in the market - any idea if apple is planning to do a 15" MacBook? Thats what I'm have been holding out for.

</comment><comment><USER40> GET a DELL. Just kidding. just kidding. Common we can use some laughter.

</comment><comment><USER41> 13" MacBook</comment>


CircuitLab + Electronics.StackExchange.com Integration - <AUTHOR> https://www.circuitlab.com/blog/2013/03/06/circuitlab-integration-on-electronics-stack-exchange/

<comment><USER2> Inspired by last year's Balsamiq + UX.StackExchange integration <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3639047> we were happy to put this together for the electronics community! Thanks to the StackExchange team and community for being so helpful in accomplishing this integration.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a really great idea, I wish I'd had something around like this when I was at school, as I've drifted away from electronics into pure software.

All the best and good luck guys!

</comment><comment><USER4> I've recently started tinkering with my Arduino again, and was going to start looking for a tool to build some basic schematics online. Good timing; CircuitLab looks awesome!

<comment><USER5> FYI: Upverter has a template that you can fork as a basis for new Arduino shields. [http://upverter.com/upverter/8840f66750a0b8b0/Arduino- Shield...](http://upverter.com/upverter/8840f66750a0b8b0/Arduino-Shield- Template/)

<comment><USER4> Welp, neat!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've followed CircuitLab for some time with interest. Fantastic product, really great idea for an integration. Makes me wonder where you've left the room for premium features?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The electronics world is enormous -- there's plenty of room :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel stupid for using upverter now :)

<comment><USER8> Why?

<comment><USER7> because it's not the one integrated with stack overflow and as a beginner, I have some questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> congratulations guys, this will be really useful.</comment>


Zimbabwe to make Chinese yuan legal currency after Beijing cancels debts - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/dec/22/zimbabwe-to-make-chinese-yuan-legal-currency-after-beijing-cancels-debts <comment><USER2> > Zimbabwe has announced that it will make the Chinese yuan legal tender after > Beijing confirmed it would cancel $40m in debts.

I'm surprised it only took cancelling $40m of debt to have Zimbabwe to make the Yuan a legal currency in their country. China seems to have been buying a lot of influence in the continent through loans and building out infrastructure. Not sure if that's a good thing or not, but considering that sanctions have failed to lead to much reform, I am leaning towards good.

<comment><USER3> It's only adding the yuan to a slew of other officially accepted currencies. The yuan is one of the most important world currencies anyway, and Zimbabwe does plenty of business with China already. Anything to help steer Zimbabwe's economy out of its current nightmare scenario is a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And China gets a new colony.

<comment><USER5> "US gets a new ally" , "China gets a new colony" ?

<comment><USER6> Probably an accurate statement. My understanding is the Chinese method of resource aquisition is to ship skilled Chinese workers over to extract them whereas the States tend to send over money and let it work itself out.

<comment><USER7> There are a number of articles on this where not only are Chinese doing the construction labor in African countries but encouraging citizens over to start businesses.</comment></comment></comment></comment>