Jumia is not an African startup - <AUTHOR> https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1117092692423512064.html <comment><USER2> An "African company" does not necessarily mean a company registered in Africa or owned by Africans.

When us Africans refer to something as African, it can mean several things. Allow me to call it a FUBU approach. That means "For Us, By Us". It can also mean "For Us or By Us"

This means the entity does not necessarily have to be of African origin, it can just be a result of its focus on Africa. Jumia operates exclusively in Africa, and by virtue of that and our Ubuntu mentality, it is for all intents and purposes, one of us. Though not officially.

When Africans supported the French soccer team last year at the World Cup as "our African team", do you really think Africans are not aware that France is not in Africa and was not representing Africa either. It's just a social construct that gives us something to cheer about, historically we haven't had much.

The same FUBU mentality is also why a lot of Africans considered non-Africans "African heroes". Where I come from, Fidel Castro is an African hero for educating our doctors for free and sending doctors of their own. It's not because he is African. It is simply because of FUBU and Ubuntu.

<comment><USER3> I am afraid you're making quite a statement there on behalf of all Africans...This African completely disagrees :)

<comment><USER2> And that is totally fine. I am sure my opinion does not represent 100% of Africans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Let's also be honest here. Jumia didn't succeed because it was "African". Jumia owes part of its success to a marketplace that doesn't believe in domestic brands. It's heavy lifting to build a successful local brand, because you're viewed suspiciously."

I live in Ghana, and I don't shop on Jumia[1] because i don't believe in domestic brands. It's a ridiculous claim. This[2] is a local brand that has made 10,000+ successful sales via Jumia. The major challenge of doing E-commerce in Africa is that excluding some affluent parts, many towns and cities don't have functioning address grids. It's a complete mess and one requires the use of landmarks and long descriptions to locate places.

Jumia representatives always call to ask for directions to your location. If they get lost, you could have them give the phone to anyone nearby who is familiar with the neighborhood. You can then have the stranger direct them(Jumia delivery reps) to your location. It may be unconventional, but works.

I and millions of people who shop on Jumia do so cause it's convenient and provides a needed service. Until a few days ago, I had no idea it's a German company and its founders are french. Calling it an African company when it's not may be deceptive, but please don't say it's successful because Africans don't love local brands.

[1] - [https://www.jumia.com.gh/](https://www.jumia.com.gh/) [2] - [https://www.jumia.com.gh/white-label-woven-kente- fabric-6-ya...](https://www.jumia.com.gh/white-label-woven-kente- fabric-6-yards-multicolour-67916.html)

<comment><USER5> You shop on Jumia because it's convenient. It's also convenient for foreign interest to setup an Amazon like business to skim millions off the top of an economy that can scarcely afford it. The point is, Jumia is not good for Ghana, a domestic company would create more jobs and keep hundreds of millions of dollars of wealth from leaving the country. Its not about whether or not you get your 1st world products delivered on time, its about pulling yourself out of the 3rd world and Jumia is not helping you with that.

Many people forget that when Japan first started producing cars they were so bad at it some models didn't even operate in the rain. Or that American steel, originally, was supremely subpar to British steel. Its about doing whats best for the country - and having some foreign entity control a good portion of the commerce in the country (especially when it is so easy to build your own) is not a good idea for an emerging economy.

Remember, also, that Jumia will have the same control over market that Amazon does which is immense power and why the United States is considering limiting Amazon's power over the market. Basically, if Jumia begins to not only control the market but participate in the market as well it will be bad for these small nations.

<comment><USER6> I know this is not your intent, but your tone comes across as fairly patronizing in this comment. There may be a point to be made in what you wrote, but I suspect that as-is it will do more to put people on the defensive than to convince them of views they don't already have.

<comment><USER5> Sound advice but when you read a comment the tone is generally dictated by whether you agree with the comment or not, since voice inflection is absent. I do agree, you have to word thing more carefully in the absence of voice inflection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The title says 'a digital colonization thread' \- so foreign ownership or control of companies is colonization? Does that apply to, for example, US- owned companies in Europe? Or Chinese-owned companies in the US?

<comment> rising-sky If you read past the title, I think the author's point is that, this is from a legal and business perspective a patently German company that is presenting itself as African solely because it currently does its business there exclusively. US-owned or registered companies in Europe don't typically masquerade as European because they operate there

<comment><USER7> > US-owned or registered companies in Europe don't typically masquerade as > European because they operate there

Yet when GM bought Opel, the branding didn't change. An uninformed consumer could easily think they're buying from a German-owned firm. And it's getting increasingly hard to keep track of the complex webs of ownership of corporations.

But yes, the author has a point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems "Africa's largest e-commerce company" is not African at all. It always pains me to see this when I visit small countries. Jobs are one thing, but if small countries find that massive resources are leaving the country in the name of those jobs then what's the point - it can be considered some form of trade at best and in the worst case colonization.

<comment><USER8> It's hard to say that this is problematic. Canada's largest chain of coffee shops (Tim Hortons) is owned by a Brazilian company -- is that colonization? Saks Fifth Avenue, on the other hand, is Canadian -- is that? The Mandarin Oriental is owned by Jardine Maethson, headquartered in Hong Kong, but incorporated in Bermuda, with a long history trading opium in the South China Sea area -- is that exploitation today?

That's just three random examples. Foreign investment allows companies to grow and succeed. I think there's sensitivity in this area due to past history though I don't think it's fair in this case. Owning a foreign company isn't 'exploitative.'

<comment><AUTHOR> They do not claim to be a Canadian company for PR and media attention. Thats the difference. Secondly, Jumia really exploits Africans to make a quick buck, they sell purely Chinese grade C goods all this is not benefiting Africans. This is modern day cannibalization. (and they still aren't profitable).

<comment><USER9> Are you saying that Tim Horton's doesn't claim to be Canadian for PR and media attention? Because that is basically the core of their marketing, to be synonymous with Canadian culture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Jumia was set up by Rocket Internet.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rocket-internet-jumia- ipo...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rocket-internet-jumia-ipo- idUSKCN1M01PG)

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

</comment><comment><USER11> Actually Jumia was founded by 2 West Africans but it seems it's history is being rewritten [0][1]. Unless there are two Jumias.

This article [2] in particular, written in 2013, is no longer available and doesn't appear to be available in the wayback machine.

edit:

Seems there's a more in depth article from 2014 [3]

      [0] https://vc4a.com/blog/2013/09/03/online-retail-becomes-a-reality-in-africas-biggest-market-behind-the-scenes-with-nigerian-internet-startup-jumia/

      [1] https://techcabal.com/2014/01/30/jumia-confirms-exit-tunde-kehinde-raphael-afaedor-announces-new-ceos/

      [2] https://vc4a.com/blog/2013/08/09/jumia-nigeria-how-a-local-e-commerce-startup-became-a-multimillion-dollar-company-in-less-than-a-year/

      [3] https://ynaija.com/how-tunde-and-raphael-got-here-a-profile-of-jumias-million-dollar-ex-ceos/

</comment><comment><USER12> > They each hold just over 2% of the company's shares.

Wow, 4% foreign ownership of stock by founders who operate a business entirely in Africa /s. Is this really the substance of this expose?

Especially considering founder stock isn't how the vast majority of how value is returned to society in day-to-day business operations. But rather through the value delivery of the businesses to consumers and paying peoples employees.

Even the founders living and operating in Africa would mean a massive chunk of their dividends/salary would be going back into the African economy.

There are a million ways companies can generate value to a region/continent. The idea that a company is entirely extracting capital/value from other countries, because the (4% minority ownership) founders are foreign-born and the corporation was registered in Europe is not how that works.

Just like how saying a couple guys from Boston, with a company registered in Delware, but their entire operations and business-model is based in California ...is not primarily generating value for California but Boston/Delware.

At most this could only potentially reduce the narrative about individual success potential of African business owners. But that doesn't make it any less an African business and a model that businesses _can_ work locally. Which is all investors care about. Even in SV 90% of investors won't look at you until you've somewhat proven your business-model OR you have had past success + network. Rarely do they invest blind unless it's a trendy highly-well timed startup they are looking to gamble on in a first-to-market type investment... but even that is rare.

The authors claim this is merely dismissible by the founders 'melanin' levels doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. [https://twitter.com/tmsruge/status/1117106622357299200](https://twitter.com/tmsruge/status/1117106622357299200)

<comment><USER13> They hold 4% how much of the remaining 96% is foreign owned?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> All companies are entirely their shareholder's so unless a national government has a controlling stake in a company no company is any country's company much less a continent's one. You might say Jumia is an African brand, brands are fictions created by companies specifically for the purpose of being associated with something potentially valued by consumers in a given market.

</comment><comment> duncan-donuts Interesting read. I've never heard of Jumia before today. The wiki page says their headquarters is in Lagos, but I didn't see that mentioned here. Does all that mean they have an office/headquarters in Lagos but everything else is outside of Africa?

</comment><comment><USER15> > Let's also be honest here. Jumia didn't succeed because it was "African". > Jumia owes part of its success to a marketplace that doesn't believe in > domestic brands. It's heavy lifting to build a successful local brand, > because you're viewed suspiciously.

In Tunisia, the Jumia brand is synonymous with shittiness. I used them for food delivery a few times. It was bad. Then one time, they didn't deliver. I called the customer service and after giving her my order number, she just hang up.

They "succeeded" here because they are the first to "invest" and already have a platform for e-commerce. I don't think they'll be around much longer.

</comment><comment><USER16> This article seems to be pretty racist to me. I'm white and live in Africa and am a citizen of Tanzania. But by his standards I guess I'm not African and never will be? Sounds like a double standard.

</comment><comment><USER17> I understand the spirit of the tweet storm - but please let me lulz myself a bit => Tencent is an African majority owned company ;)

</comment><comment><USER18> Jumia operates exclusively (or close to) in Africa. It draws investments to Africa, it puts Africa on the tech map, and it helps its African customers.

That's seems very positive for Africa.

</comment><comment><USER19> > when a European company casually runs roughshod over that identity [of being > an African company] and trades in it, it's a slap in the face. It > effectively lays a beachhead for digital colonizers in the space. "With > enough millions you too can claim to be an emerging "African" growth co

I applaud the directness of this article. It's an important issue, there are big market opportunities in Africa and entrepreneurs who are African nationals deserve better access to them.

However, it's important to note there are very successful 'tech' companies part owned by African nationals and incorporated in Africa (as far as I can make out). E.g. SportsPesa [0] which has a mix of Kenyan/European/US founders [1] and looks like one of the most profitable East African companies right now [2] (it blows Jumia out of the water). It's a company doing well enough to sponsor a premier League football club shirt.

I wonder whether the more serious barriers to young African entrepreneurs are their governments & regulatory environments. Incorporating a company, setting up bank accounts and so on in many African countries feels like a challenge in itself. And many African founders may look for US/European founders simply to incorporate entities elsewhere which will likely increase their chances of investment and security. This is where the "beachhead for digital colonizers" metaphor becomes multifaceted. I think the beachhead goes both ways, because there is value to an African national registering an entity, e.g in the UK [3]. This isn't really to do with identity, it's to do with practicality and trust. It's hard to trust institutions in a lot of African countries, and that's a disservice to the people and young entrepreneurs that live there. The smart ones probably won't wait around, they'll figure out the safest foundation for delivering tech products and services to people in Africa.

I'd be interested to hear from any African entrepreneurs working in Africa here on what the practical barriers/solutions have been to setting up companies and getting them working.

[0] [https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.a...](https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapid=531230464) [1] [https://samrack.com/who-owns-sportpesa-here-is-a-list-of- the...](https://samrack.com/who-owns-sportpesa-here-is-a-list-of-the-owners- photos/) [2] [https://businesstoday.co.ke/sportpesa-float-ipo-nse-next- yea...](https://businesstoday.co.ke/sportpesa-float-ipo-nse-next-year/) [3] [https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10682750/officers](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10682750/officers)

</comment><comment><USER20> Can someone explain to me why Amazon can't be the Amazon of Africa?

</comment><comment><USER21> Is Naspers an African company or does that not count either because of its roots

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naspers)

Naspers was founded in South Africa so yes its African. Its services and activities benefiti Africans so yes, it its African. Jumia on the other hand, unless you are from around here and have used Jumia, you will understand my point. Read my other comments for reference.

<comment><USER21> South African 'Afrikaans' isn't African if you're following the same logic as Jumia

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What's bad about it? This is one big field startups have to disrupt yet: colonization. Africa probably can't work on its own, we just have to really figure out colonization. Yes people largely gave up on it in 1960s because it didn't make money, but they just didn't have that Google moment there, web search also didn't make money in 1990s. Many places in the world would benefit from proper adult oversight.

Politicians can't say it because they need votes. But why businessmen should lie to themselves?</comment>


Ask HN: What mistakes did you make when using AWS for the first time? - <AUTHOR> Hello Everyone,
I'm documenting the common mistakes beginners make when using AWS for the first time.
Here are some of the most common mistake I have noticed so far:- - Forgetting to delete resources that are no longer needed - Accidentally deleting wrong resources - Misconfiguring S3 buckets - Enabling public access to RDS
What's yours? <comment><USER2> We did't use all the free credits that are available all over the place. Like this one from Segment [https://segment.com/industry/startups/](https://segment.com/industry/startups/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not me yet but I have seen it twice, pushing a AWS secret key to a public git repository.

</comment><comment><USER4> You need to use Serverless. This will make everything easier for you. You code the Script to standup the AWS resources.

This will avoid manually adding/removing resources.

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

<comment><USER5> How does it compare to cdk?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> CloudFormation instead of Terraform.

<comment><USER7> Can you elaborate some?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Forgetting to turn off ec2 instances and then I realized when a got a bill I quickly deleted it

</comment><comment><USER9> Not treating resources as cattle. I ended up having to maintain a fragile pet for too long that cost me much more than replacing it would have.</comment>


Wakeup.io Wakes You With a Free Wake Up Call, Anywhere in the World - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/does-this-have-a-practical-joke-application-perhaps-1441073860

<comment><USER2> Another similar site is [http://wakerupper.com/](http://wakerupper.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah. Although I happen to be in Russia, and WakerUpper only works with US and Canada.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake…"</comment>


Neural Networks with Few Multiplications - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.03009 <comment><USER2> I've seen lots of alternate approaches to constructing neural nets with varying operations and one of the common themes is that it doesn't really matter that much w.r.t. accuracy, so you may as well optimize for performance. This seems to indicate to me that neural nets are some variation on a yet unidentified more elegant mathematical structure that might enable better theoretical understanding about training phenomena. The spin-glass equivalencies I think further suggest more elegant underlying structures.

Once we understand that underlying structure we might be able to do really cool things, i.e. identify the nature and size of training data set required for solving a given problem, or train much, much faster.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some decades ago, on one of the first IBM PCs 12Mhz, I created a neural network using static point multiplication (binary shifts) that learned to play tic tac toe over about a weekend, in C. I probably have some code for it still lying around.

<comment><USER4> I would be extremely interested in looking at that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would highly recommend this video [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DleXA5ADG78](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DleXA5ADG78) from Geoffrey Hinton in 2012 that I think is related to this research.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow. This opens a way for deep learning on _much_ cheaper and less power- hungry hardware.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does this not represent some "generalizable mechanism" for distributive elimination of floating point cycles or is this so specific to it's job that there is no generalization worth considering. My instinct says this may be somewhat generalizable making it significant in algorithms if it's actually working.

<comment><USER8> Yoshua Bengio is in this, you bet it's real!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting, but the paper doesn't mention speed gains

It is definitely promising. Even though fp operations today are "cheap", integer ones are still faster</comment>


Linux 4.17-rc1: "We removed more lines than we added" - <AUTHOR> http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1804.1/06654.html <comment><USER2> Do you know what is the other thing that 4.17 also does? Optimizing idle loops so your laptop can run cooler for longer.

Phoronix's initial testing seems to suggest a 10-20% less power usage while idle which is a fantastic news for those who own a Linux laptop.

Since 4.0 or so Linux has become rock solid for me so I no longer anticipate new kernel releases but this is one of those times I run the cutting edge kernel because it is so cool. If you run a relatively recent version of Ubuntu, you can also test by googling Kernel PPA. It's just three clicks away at most.

Ref: [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-41...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux-417-power&num=1)

<comment><USER3> > 10-20%

That's insane. Does this apply to _all_ laptops running Linux?

<comment><USER4> > while idle

Which never happens on laptops because of the web browser /s

<comment><USER5> I wonder if the time has come to add user-configurable resource consumption throttles to browsers, eg. settings for max CPU, max FPS (foreground and background) for developer-triggered redraws, etc. On my laptops I'd have it ratcheted all the way down, because not needing to plug in and my lap not being cooked is more important than whatever frills the websites I visit have. And if some site can't run properly while throttled, well, there's probably a more lightweight alternative I should be using instead.

<comment><USER4> You can do that with ulimit. But it affects the whole browser, so it is not very granular. Tab-specific and/or domain-specific resource management would be more useful.

<comment><USER6> If using Firefox, I'm very happy using "Auto Tab Discard". It does what you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > we actually removed more lines than we added

My best year, I removed 10,000 lines of code more than I added without removing any functionality from the project (and in fact adding some new features). It isn't always a good thing to do this- but when it is, you know it as soon as you start reading the code.

I often wish I could be paid _just_ to refactor and rewrite existing code bases to make them more maintainable.

<comment><USER8> > I often wish I could be paid just to refactor and rewrite existing code > bases to make them more maintainable.

Yeah, me too--I'm very good at it and it's quite satisfying. Unfortunately it's very hard to communicate the business value of it (although the business value is huge in some cases).

<comment><USER9> Give me a ring if you all ever find a place that lets us use our powers to their fullest. I feel like realizing removing more code that you put back is usually a good thing is a tipping point in a coder's career.

<comment><USER10> Ironically, programmers should strive to write the least amount of code as possible, while reading as much code as possible.

If we can solve a problem without writing _any_ code at all, then that's the most maintainable and bug free solution.

See "The Best Code is No Code At All": [https://blog.codinghorror.com/the- best-code-is-no-code-at-al...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-best-code-is- no-code-at-all/) .

<comment><USER11> See also smr.c from [http://www.ioccc.org/years.html#1994](http://www.ioccc.org/years.html#1994) (the world's shortest quine!).

<comment><USER12> That may be one of the best things I've seen all week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As someone that has a full copy of the license in each of his source files, I found this the most interesting:

> we also got rid of some copyright language boiler-plate in favor of just the > spdx lines

So I looked up spdx.

[https://spdx.org/using-spdx](https://spdx.org/using-spdx)

I'm going to start using this too.

<comment><USER14> I understood that SPDX can easily be used in new projects, for example.

But when an earlier project has a license that explicitly states something like "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.", can you replace it by a single SPDX link?

I think that technology allows you to easily link something on the internet instead of providing a offline text file, but is it lawful? And justifiable, since having _n_ text files saying one thing is easily compressable ?

Got me thinking about it, does removing lines-of-not-code does really make it smaller or just a little

<comment><USER13> For my own code I will use spdx references in the source code files but still have a LICENSE file in the repo root like I already do with the full text of the license.

IANAL so I can't say what you legally can and cannot do with other people's code but I would _think_ that placing a copy of each of the licenses used by others in your repo and name them as LICENSE_THIRDPARTY_MIT, LICENSE_THIRDPARTY_GPL, etc and mention in your README that these correspond to the spdx references found in source files would mean that you were still in compliance.

As for the question "does removing lines of not-code make the file smaller or just a little"; it does not reduce the SLOC count of course. Personally I just find the idea of spdx appealing because it means that when I open files to edit them I don't have to scroll past a lot of license text first. Additionally scanning source files for what license is being used will be simplified.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The architectures that are gone are blackfin, cris, frv, m32r, metag,mn10300, score, and tile. And the new architecture is the nds32 (Andes Technology 32-0bit RISC architecture)."

here is the list of survivors: [https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/lin...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/arch?h=v4.17-rc1)

after 4.17.rc-1 linux still supports 23 archs.

</comment><comment><USER16> So I understand the whole "SLOC doesn't always need to be positive to have made useful contributions to a codebase" thing, I do it fairly frequently. However, is the argument for removing support ("known working good code"), aka functionality, a good thing? Do people now need to draw a line in the sand and say: If I want to put linux on my m32r sound mixer, I can't use a kernel newer than 4.16?

I'm not really sure I'm arguing for or against the dropping of support, more just curious about others thoughts.

<comment><USER17> The problem is that often enough it is _not_ "known working good code", because nobody has been compiling and/or running and/or stress testing this code for a long time. Given that constant churn in the kernel, refactoring of APIs etc., it's quite likely that subtle (or not so subtle) breakages creep into that code over time. (Even if people who perform this refactoring try to update these archs, too; or perhaps I should say: "especially if", because usually you can't test them, after all).

Leaving it in gives the wrong impression that this is "known working good code", which is one reason to remove it. Another is that removing them makes it easier to be agile and refactor things, because you don't have to worry about these archs anymore.

<comment><AUTHOR> > because usually you can't test them

We _should_ be able to test that code. We could if, in order for an architecture/piece of hardware to be considered for inclusion, there were a software-based emulation tool that could be used to run a full-set of tests against a kernel build.

It's a lot of work to produce that and to write such a test suite, but it can grow incrementally. We have very good (and reasonably precise) emulators for a lot of the PC and mobile space and having those running would give us a lot of confidence in what we are doing.

<comment><USER18> So you want to write a new emulator each time Intel releases a new chip? I think you're vastly underestimating the scale of this task.

Video game emulators are possible because there is only one (or a very small number of) hardware configuration(s) for each console. Emulators for mobile development are possible because they simulate only the APIs, not the actual physical hardware, down to the level of interrupts and registers.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think x86 would be a particularly attractive target for emulation in this case - x86 hardware is readily available and testing is much easier than, say, SuperH or H8.

Intel probably has internal tools that (somewhat) precisely emulate their chips and it'd probably be very hard to persuade them to share, but they seem committed to make sure Linux runs well on their gear, so it's probably not a huge problem.

I think of this as a way to keep the supported architectures as supported as possible even when actual hardware is not readily/easily (or yet) available for testing. One day, when x86 is not as easy to come by as today, it could prove useful.

It's good to keep the software running on more than one platform, as it exposes some bugs that can easily elude us. Also, emulators offer the best possible observability for debugging. If they are cycle-accurate then, it's a dream come true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> sure, Linus announces more lines of code were removed than added and the crowd goes wild, but when I do it people are all "who broke the build" and "how is the repository totally empty again."

</comment><comment><USER20> I am mildly surprised that Blackfin support has been dropped. A few years ago, many digital cameras had a Blackfin for both GUI and DSP. I remember working with SHARC (harvard-architecture CPU from Analog Devices) and seeing the main advantage of Blackfin being that it could run Linux and, supposedly, being better equipped to run a complete GUI with several applications. I expected AD to take advantage of this and support Linux for some time, but instead, it rotted. Good thing I did not went through this route.

Also, I guess the architectures pruning was one reason he decided not to go with the 5.0 version. It would give even more meaning to the version number.

<comment><USER21> [http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.1/04345.html](http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1801.1/04345.html) has more detail on the dropping of Blackfin support in particular.

<comment><USER20> Interesting. I'm a bit removed from DSPs for some time, I wonder which multi- core processors AD are talking about. Are these just common ARM and the like or do they have some new architecture in the pipeline I haven't heard about?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wish it said that kind of thing in the changelogs more often (in general). I would be much more eager to download updates if I knew the app was getting slimmer, and not fatter.

On a side note, I'm annoyed Skype now forcibly updates itself on app launch. I have no idea how big that app is getting but I just assume it's slowly getting bigger and bigger.

<comment><USER23> To be fair to Linux, it does support an ever-growing list of hardware. It's not exactly lean, but continually increasing in size is hard to avoid in its case...

<comment><USER24> That could have been avoided if they hadn't been so insistent on all drivers being part of the kernel.

Then again, for as much trouble as that policy causes it is difficult to argue with its success, since Linux supports more hardware than any other open source OS and most proprietary ones too (or all, depending on how you count ancient hardware).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Deletion is the only perfect code change.

<comment><USER26> To quote de Saint Exupéry "...perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away..."</comment></comment>


[SHOW HN] New ethereum dapp Blocklord just launched, thoughts? - <AUTHOR> https://www.blocklord.co <comment><AUTHOR> From the reddit launch post:

Blocklord is Ethereum's 1st Decentralized Planet Earth where every corner of the planet has been tokenised on the Ethereum Blockchain, and can be customised and traded.

ABOUT BLOCKLORD Blocklord subdivides and tokenises every corner of planet Earth. You can own, customise and trade blocks of land on the blockchain.

Each token, or block, can be personalised with image, text, a link to your personal or commercial website an so on.

You could own Times Square, the Tour Eiffel, your office or the place where you met your significant other, and customise each block to your liking, leaving your mark forever on the blockchain.

Blocks can be re-sold or rented out to tenants who might want to temporarily advertise on your blocks, generating real world income.

You can earn value in 4 different ways. 1) You can decide to resell a block for a price of your choice (e.g. you buy for 0.1 ETH and can sell it for 0.12ETH for 20% profit) 2) Other players can decide to buy you out without your consent, they would need to pay at least double what you paid for, this is to retain liquidity in case somebody bought, say the White House, and then decided not to play the game anymore. 3) You can rent your block, for a daily fee another player can decide to put their data on the block. Imagine a coffee chain would want to advertise a campaign on the blocks where their premises are.

What do you guys think? How would you use it? Any feedback would be great!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure, I'm the creator :P</comment>


State Department preparing for clash of civilizations with China - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/state-department-preparing-for-clash-of-civilizations-with-china <comment><USER2> they are flat out admitting to an on-going information (fake news?) war? And that while they could always fight with russia they have no clue how to impact china?</comment>


Silicon Valley is evolving and focusing on employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2019/02/silicon-valley-evolving-focusing-employees/ <comment><USER2> I am, by accident, a small part of a "culture transformation" at a large, well established corporation.

The group doing this has the same intention (to improve the employee's experience), but I have observed this is consistently at odds with the leadership's desire to keep employees at arm's length, and maintain the strategic control over employees.

For example, you can't be nice to employees and then lay them off at the same time- such an act instantly violates trust, therefore leaders say they want things to be better for employees but are often not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to follow through.

So then you get stuck in a conundrum, and the leaders look and often act like hypocrites. Employees do that too.

It's been an interesting time in this role, like I said, for me it was somewhat accidental and I can clearly see the arguments from both sides. Still working on it but, I'm not sure how you resolve some of these issues without the right attitude - that maybe we are not "leaders and employees", but that we are all "professional colleagues" \- and then following through with the proper organizational supports and programs to help such an organization survive and operate, and still be able to compete.

<comment><USER3> "you can't be nice to employees and then lay them off at the same time"

You absolutely can and you must. Being professional and being nice are not exclusive. Quite the opposite.

A professional manager understands that being nice doesn't mean protecting someone from reality just because reality sucks. It means showing them respect during the process.

<comment><USER4> The word 'professional' itself is a way to distance yourself from your actions and consequences and works to dehumanize the people you work with. What does 'professional' mean'?

Is it 'unprofessional' to deceive your employees and customers or users? Is abusing the privacy of your users professional? Is it unprofessional to layoff workers for short term gains? Its definition itself is contextual to power and what it defines at that time. Individual bad behavior is not unprofessional, its just bad behavior.

<comment><USER5> There is some well tread ground here, albeit not in the software world. The National Society of Professional Engineers, for example, has a (in my opinion) clear and detailed Code of Ethics [1]. The "Fundamental Canons" section is as good a description as I can think of for what it means to act professional as an engineer:

        Hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.
        Perform services only in areas of their competence.
        Issue public statements only in an objective and truthful manner.
        Act for each employer or client as faithful agents or trustees.
        Avoid deceptive acts.
        Conduct themselves honorably, responsibly, ethically, and lawfully so as to enhance the honor, reputation, and usefulness of the profession.

[1] [https://www.nspe.org/resources/ethics/code- ethics](https://www.nspe.org/resources/ethics/code-ethics)

<comment><USER6> I thought we were talking about managers here. And that laying people off as a manager was somehow the "professional" thing to do. But let's interpret this in the context of the Professional Engineer ethics. Let's say there's a bad quarter. Is laying off people to make the results look a little better for the next quarter promoting the health, safety and welfare of the public? Is it honorable? Was the company clear about this policy in advance? If not is it a deceptive act? When companies issue statements about layoffs are those typically objective and truthful?

Maybe we need a code of ethics for managers.

<comment><USER7> That is a simple view of how a company works. It's much more complex than "make the results look a little better for the next quarter".

Entire forecast change when numbers are missed. People are also hired based off those numbers. Should we also not hire more employees when the out look is better?

Companies need to be healthy to continue to be able to employ at all. So yes. It is the duty to cut cost and maintain healthy balances based off future expectations.

It would be far more dishonest to simply let the entire company fold effectively laying off everybody to prolong a subet of employees jobs for a little longer.

But beyond that it's rare that layoffs happen for a single quarter miss. And unless you are pure EBITA driven laying off probably won't make anybody looking for revenue groth happy either.

Companies are complex living organizations. The notion that laying people off is always bad is a bad notion.

<comment><USER6> My experience from an S&P 500 tech company is that people can be laid off one quarter only for new people to be hired the next. The people making those decisions are completely disconnected from the hugely negative impact this has on the company's ability to execute. There was no real need to layoff anyone, there's plenty of cash, it's purely for engineering the business results and ultimately trying to engineer the share price. The people laid off could have been contributing immensely and the new hires contribute nothing if not negative for a while.

Economic cycles are not a surprise, they happen, a company with enough resources can easily absorb them, use the down turn to double down on developing new products, and come out stronger on the other end.

Laying people off isn't always bad, but at least 80% of the time it's the wrong long term decision. You've spent years on these people learning your products and technology, and now all that knowledge is gone. The impact is continuously felt years down the road. The movement of people this and a variety of other reasons is a net drag on companies. This treatment of people as some sort of "resource" that can be scaled up and down on demand is a joke.

All that is not to say that if you have a problem with specific employees you can't fire them, that's a completely different question.

EDIT: Lemme give you another example I witnessed personally from a multi- billion dollar company. Production of a certain (highly complex) product in was moved to Mexico for a projected cost saving of about 5%. The factory was closed, hundreds of people were laid off. Years later the production cost in Mexico was higher than the cost in the original factory and production was moved back. It was absolutely clear the original decision was iffy but it was done for the optics of making it look like the company is working on cutting costs. It impacted not only those people who got laid off but local supply chains etc. Overall a negative decision for the company, the economy, and the people involved, driven purely by bean counters with no clue. If the company did "focus on employees" and really considered the loss of know-how, the cost of recruiting and training people, the loss of trust, the impact on morale etc. maybe we would have had a different outcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> >Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin invent Google in their dorm rooms.

This is such a ridiculous version of "Stanford PhD candidates Larry Page and Sergey Brin invent Google as part of their doctoral research."

<comment><USER9> Almost as ridiculous as "Silicon Valley is evolving and focusing on employees" I'd say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My advice for anyone starting the world of work is become debt-free as quick as possible, invest, and save. Smile and say yes to any company that tries to tickle your feels.

No matter who you are, you are expendable. Don't ever forget it.

<comment><USER11> This is why we have so many tech companies doing unethical things.

<comment><USER12> I disagree. If your employees are desperate to work for you, exhausted, and utterly dependent that's when unethical products are built. Employees with more mobility and freedom are less likely to get their hands dirty unless their sick perversions align with their manager's.

<comment><USER13> If you are living in Silicon Valley and not independently wealthy you are desperate to work. The cost of living there demands it.

<comment><USER14> If you are the holder of in-demands skills like coding or UX design, you do need to work; just not at any particular company. Hop on to the one that doesn't offend the conscience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Silicon Valley has empathy" propaganda. The only empathy SV has is how to masquerade empathy for dollars.

<comment><USER16> That's not unique to Silicon Valley, the entire economy works like that. Which is why so many working class people are falling further and further behind. At it's root, this economy is basically the capital class doing the minimum they have to do to protect capital investments. It's just that the minimum the capital class has to do in Silicon Valley is more than the minimum they have to do _outside_ Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER17> My experience of $bigcorp2 is much better than $bigcorp1, and I completely believe it has to do with the second not being a tech company — but instead a traditional company that moved into tech.

So, I think tech companies have a kind of pathological treatment of their workers we don't see broadly.

(You're also greatly simplifying why working class people are falling behind, to the point of misrepresenting it.)

<comment><USER18> My company takes care of their employees much better than pretty much any other tech company I've ever heard of, and while it _is_ a tech company, I can only conclude that it's for the following reasons:

\- It was founded and is still headquartered in the suburbs of Dallas and has nothing to do with SF/SV. We _technically_ have a sales office in SF, but that's just a place for our account managers on the West Coast to meet with clients (we also have similar sales offices in NYC, London, and Amsterdam... though I think the London office has been expanded into a real office with a handful of non-sales people regularly present).

\- We're an enterprise B2B telecom, not some web/social/mobile-driven B2C company. B2B has a number of different cultural mores from B2C, and that's reflected in our internal values. And telecom in general is a whole 'nother ballgame entirely. It's a much more conservative industry than the rest of tech. When I tell random people what kind of company I work at, I usually say "we're kind of an enterprise ISP", which is about as far from SV-typical tech companies as you can imagine (though I stress the _kind of_ , because we're more than _just_ an ISP).

Working here doesn't feel like working at a tech company at all. It feels like working for a traditional enterprise, and I _like_ it that way.

And that's not just me talking: we regularly win awards on Glassdoor because lots of other people think that way. We also have a TV screen in the office that shows our latest Glassdoor reviews. One day, I noticed a particular line scroll by, and it was interesting enough that I hopped on Glassdoor to ctrl-F for it so I could look at it in its entirety. Here's the Pros section from this person's review:

> Good work/life balance. Management has Texas values rather than imposing a > Silicon Valley-style groupthink. Growing and profitable.

It looks like I'm not the only one who's realized that the reason this company is so good to their employees is because they're not from Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER19> [https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Masergy- RV...](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Masergy- RVW21604548.htm)

link for the lazy

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm guessing SpaceX isn't part of this given they share the front page with a story about laying people off.

<comment><USER21> SpaceX also isn't headquartered in SV

<comment><USER22> Who cares what's actually in the valley, it's just a shorthand for the tech industry.

<comment><USER23> There is still something special about the Silicon Valley location vibe that you only see while living there. Everyone in tech around you making a LOT of money but pretending it is not their goal. That they want to make the world a "better place". Then going to SF and seeing so many homeless and poor people being down looked by tech hipsters.

<comment><USER24> Do you think the majority of tech SV workers look down on the homeless and poor at a greater rate than say traditional blue collar workers do?

<comment><USER23> Probably on the same levels as traditional blue collars. What I find shocking is the dystopia with that morale high ground of "making the world a better place". It all feels very fake and hypocritical.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


(Virtually) No one should own an Echo or any other "voice assistant" product - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2017/12/06/can-you-hear-me-now.html <comment><USER2> Dupe - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15852773](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15852773)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand why this is such a big deal to people. Unless Amazon gets a supeana they are not going to offer up anything to the feds. If you do something that would warrant a supeana maybe you should keep Alexa out of your home, and stop using your phone.

<comment><USER4> Subpoena?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It baffles me that people think their conversations about soup, traffic and The Bachelor are worthy of protection.

<comment><USER6> It baffles me that people think they shouldn't be protected by default.

<comment><USER3> In the US they are. The 4th amendment protects citizens from information like this from being disclosed without a court order. It is in Amazon's best interest to protect their users information, unless a court order tells them to disclose it.

<comment><USER7> Secret courts? Gag orders? I really want to believe</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Vegas Hotspot That Broke All the Rules - <AUTHOR> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/The-Vegas-Hotspot-That-Broke-All-the-Rules-183849101.html?c=y&story=fullstory&device=ipad

<comment><USER2> When I lived in Vegas (the 70's) pretty much everyone figured that the other Casinos had told the owners of the Moulin Rouge that one way or another they were going out of business. And after doing so, the owners took the money and ran. As with any community the 'movers and shakers' all knew each other and things they wanted to happen, happened.

That said, I have only seen steady progress since that time to the present in making the town more color blind. Yes there are still episodes of racism (my sister and parents still live there over 40 years!) not always from the folks you would expect, but moving down the scale from this portrayal in the 50's to, from an institutional standpoint, gone today. From a citizenry standpoint it still needs work. But that too gets better.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Cole learned his lesson the night a Strip doorman turned him away. "But that's Nat King Cole," his white companion said._

 _"I don't care if he's Jesus Christ," said the doorman. "He's a n-----, and he stays out."_

Fifty years may seem like a long time. It will be 2063 in fifty years time.

Musk's Hyperloop could be everywhere or not depending on what kind of snags it hits along the way.[1]

Cancer could be cured, too, again depending on who you ask.[2]

However, what is always far more elusive to predict is the social realm of problems.

Unlike technological advancements, societal whims and mores are trickier and are beset by a very different set of challenges.

Will we have reached a veritable post-racial society by then?

We could only wish.

[1] [http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4874.html](http://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P4874.html)

[2] [http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/personalized-medicine- vs...](http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/personalized-medicine-vs- evolution/)</comment>


Ask HN: Alternative to Skype? - <AUTHOR> Related to the other Skype thread (not supporting Firefox).<p>If Microsoft is cutting down on Skype and possibly going to kill it, I need to replace it. I still find it useful to chat with family overseas, share my screen or call international landline numbers. Is there anything else that does that on the market and works well on Mac/iOS? <comment><USER2> If you change the userAgent to Chrome it will work.

Add-ons such as Lider's Custom useragent ( [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/custom-user-a...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/custom-user-agent-revived/) ) solves the problem

</comment><comment><USER3> Tox works pretty well, but it isn't too popular

<comment><USER2> Yes, tox is great and you can have multiple clients, from regular software, like qTox, to web versions.

Jami is also very nice!

Both have an amazing plus side: they are distributed systems.

It's a shame they are not that used by "our friends"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My personal favorite is Zoom</comment>


The Nazi Tweets of 'Trump God Emperor' - ely-s http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/29/opinion/sunday/the-nazi-tweets-of-trump-god-emperor.html <comment><AUTHOR> How can any intelligent person be so oblivious about being trolled by his own kind?

Had the author been alive during the American Revolution, he would have blamed the Boston Tea Party on Native Americans, too.</comment>


Microsoft enables Android and iOS users to experience Windows Phone 7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/29/microsoft-enables-android-and-ios-users-to-experience-windows-ph/

<comment><USER2> I'm a WP7 user, and I just played with this in my desktop browser to see what it was like.

My first reaction when I saw this announcement is that it was a brilliant and creative way to get people to try the new OS, but after playing with it, it isn't nearly as nice as using the real thing, and I wonder if the plan my backfire.

<comment><USER3> As an iOS user, I found the demo nice even though you say it isn't as nice as the real thing.</comment></comment>


Putting pigs in the shade: the radical farming system banking on trees - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/13/pigs-radical-farming-system-trees-climate-crisis <comment><USER2> For an similar perspective from an American farmer, check out Joel Salatin:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Salatin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Salatin)</comment>


Ask HN: Where to donate two Dell servers? - java-man

Hi there,
I have two Dell PowerEdge 1950 servers I bought for a project which now runs in a cloud.
I would rather donate them to a worthy cause.
Any suggestions or takers?
Thanks! <comment><AUTHOR> You might check in with OpenBSD, they're always trying to do a lot with very little, but I don't see any items on their want page that match your servers ([http://www.openbsd.org/want.html](http://www.openbsd.org/want.html)).

<comment> java-man Thanks for the pointer! It looks like my hardware is not on the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Hi java-man,

I'm Max Bernstein, a student at Tufts University. I am starting a GNU/Linux User Group, the first of its kind at my school. We're currently looking for hardware because we want to offer web and general server space to our members.

We could definitely use these servers. If you're open to it, I would appreciate the donation!

EDIT: Incidentally, I am in California for the next week on Spring Break if that makes pick-up easier!

Best, Max

<comment> java-man Will you be able to pick them up in Palo Alto? Also notice their weight and dimensions (somewhere in the comments).

<comment><USER2> Yes — I live in the area. I would just have to pick them up before Saturday.

<comment> java-man great! reverse md5 hash in my profile to find me.

<comment><USER2> Can you contact me (email on [http://bernsteinbear.com](http://bernsteinbear.com)) or is this MD5 rainbow tabling necessary?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Make your own life easy and give them away to the people that are logistically nearest to you.

A public school, a public hospital or some other institution whose prime purpose is to benefit humankind will be your ideal bet.

Or you could also donate your time + the servers by teaching kids at a public school about system administration, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have 12 of these to get rid of in the UK and it looks like I will have to pay to have them disposed of. The problem with servers of this age is that power consumption is 3 to 5 times that of a modern server. The extra cost of the power would more than pay for a new server over its lifetime.

<comment> java-man Exactly what I was thinking. Still, perhaps somebody can use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey, we are a french tiny start up making softwares to help doctors healing cancer (Currently in developpement but experimented in public hospitals).

If you don't know what to do with them : they can help us fighting that damn cancer. Tell me if you are interested i'll give you a way to contact me :).

<comment> java-man I would love to, but the cost of international shipping will be prohibitive: these things are large and quite heavy. I would imagine the cost of shipping would exceed their price on ebay. Unless you can pick them up in Palo Alto.

<comment><USER5> Hmmm, can you give me the weight of one of them please? And no, I don't have friends in California :(. Nearest one from California are in Montreal :p.

<comment> java-man Here is the spec from dell web site:

Chassis

        1U Rack-mountable chassis

        30.4" (77.2cm) D x 16.7" (42.6cm) W x 1.67" (4.26cm) H with bezel attached

        Rack Weight 35.8 lbs (16.3 Kg)

<comment> java-man That's right, sorry. You might take a look at the local ebay listings.

Or, perhaps, construct a cluster out of Raspberri Pi's - save on electricity as well. :-)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the advice :). We bought an Intel Xeon Phi to try it but it's not giving the expected results :(... Even with redesigning a majority of the software architecture to optimize it for Phi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oddly enough, I have two Dell PowerEdge 1850 servers for anyone interested in the Fort Collins, Colorado area. They have been sitting on a bread rack for a while now and could use a good home.

</comment><comment><USER7> Kramden would be my suggestion if you are in North Carolina, USA: [http://kramden.org/donate-a-computer/](http://kramden.org/donate-a-computer/)

<comment> java-man I'm in California. Used computers are used to prop up open doors ;-)

<comment><USER8> Since you're in California, you may have good luck contacting Green Citizen: [http://www.greencitizen.com/locations/](http://www.greencitizen.com/locations/)

Depending on how one is to interpret the "donate" verb; whether it should be to a charity that will use them, a charity that can sell them or just to not put them in the landfill.

<comment> java-man Yes, thank you. Recycling is the default place they will go if nobody takes them. A pity - they are very well built and have decent specs. I was hoping they might still work for somebody.

<comment><USER8> I think there are a couple of moving parts to that request: shipping is a real thing (at least the servers that I've touched are not something I'd want to put in UPS), a facility would need racks and a place to keep the noise away, plus staff that are used to dealing with rackmounts, and finally the eternal problem of connecting with the audience who haven't read this post.

In some ways, giving(?) them to an e-cycler that puts them on eBay is addressing that last problem, it just robs you of the tax write-off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> java-man Should probably say this:

Dell PowerEdge 1950 Servers

Intel Xeon 2.66Ghz dual core 16 GB RAM 2 x 250GB HDD redundant power supplies</comment>


The Single Founder Handbook - <AUTHOR> http://www.singlefounderhandbook.com/ <comment><USER2> If this was on Amazon at a sensible price I'd use look-inside and probably buy it.

Instead the sales pitch with bundles and special offers at $200 is very off- putting. It makes me feel like I'm trapped in an airport convention centre being given a hard sell by an American self-help guru with a head mike telling me "you too can be a success if you just sign up to my ...".

I've read "Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup" on the same topic which Taber edited. I'd be concerned about repetitious content.

</comment><comment><USER3> I bought the e-book on the sheer strength of the title. Everything I've read so far is largely concerned with people who want to control huge amounts of money, hire employees, own a market segment, rather than work slowly, cautiously, incrementally, and happily towards a better future. I'm sixteen pages in, and it has yet to disappoint.

I read _Anything You Want_ by Derek Sivers, it's my current favorite business book in this space. I hope this book manages to supplant it with an actual followable and iterable plan for action.

<comment><USER4> I'm a bit confused by your comment - do you mean everything you've read so far in _this book_ is about Eating The World, etc? Or everything you've read _prior_ to this book?

<comment><USER3> Prior, books like _The Founder 's Dilemma_ and _The Lean Startup_ are geared towards people who want to build the stereotypical startup. I have no desire to take on those kinds of risk, even for the possibility of the outsized rewards promised. I just want control of my time, where I spend it, what I do with it. This book, more than any other book I've read since _The Four-Hour Workweek_ promises to deliver on that wish.

The problem with _The Four-Hour Workweek_ is that Tim Ferriss is a productivity monster and his muse method only really works for people like him. Four hours a week after months / years of 80 hour weeks.

<comment><USER5> When I read the Four Hour Workweek, I quickly shifted to a literal Four Hour Workweek. And it most definitely was NOT because of being a productivity monster. I've never, ever, ever worked 80 hours in a week. I've rarely ever worked more than 40 hours in a week.

If you want to have a "muse", it's all about building a system that amplifies the work you do -- and ideally makes you you an unnecessary component in the business.

It is most definitely NOT about working tons of hours.

<comment><USER3> I'd be interested in a treatment of the specifics concerning radically restricting the hours you're working to four actual hours. I do about four real hours of work a week here, but I'm still chained to my desk for 35 or so of them. I could push for a more WFH arrangement, but honestly that's not the needle I really want to move here.

A muse is a very specific type of lifestyle business. It works with certain kinds of products and a certain kind of mindset. If what you want to bring to the world doesn't fit that kind of product and that mindset, then a muse isn't really going to be all that much different than any other business you build that's not a good fit for you. Because you'll end up having to learn all kinds of things you don't really want to learn and work the way you don't really want to work. Of course in the end you'll be able to take yourself out of the equation, but what if you don't want to? It's not really workable for someone not interested in going through life the way Tim has.

Certainly some of the ideas Tim brought to the table re: Internet businesses are really good, but he has yet to really tie it all together. I actually went to the back of Tim's book and read all four of the books he recommended. They were all really good reads, but mostly orthogonal to what I wanted to do.

<comment><USER6> I built a business following the 4HWW. I happily spend more than four hours on it.

But the book gave me something very important: a systemization mindset and a wariness of administrative overhead.

Most of the stuff I've built runs pretty automatically. I spend my time building new stuff to add to it. Once that's built, it runs automatically too.

So I _could_ take two months off if I wanted to and still earn most of my money. And I have done similar things. That's the freedom I really want.

So I've taken myself out of parts of it, but I'm still in it. Working on your business, not in your business, as the e myth revisited puts it.

Send me an email and link to this thread if you'd like more details. Emails in profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On one hand, I really like that developers and other smart people can put out work like this to supplant their income. Also it's a way for us to get boots on the ground knowledge, without the filter of a publisher.

On the other hand, I agree with most of the sentiment here, these are starting to feel like ads and pitches, and I have a feeling the single founder that will benefit the most here is the author.

<comment><USER8> Is there anything wrong with him benefiting from it? Mike is a real guy, with a real bootstrapped company, who gives out tons of advice at his podcast (link in another comment here).

I bought his MicroConf/Podcast partner Rob's book a while back, and it was well worth the money I spent on it, and I continue to advocate it for people interested in doing bootstrapped startups. I haven't read Mike's book yet, but from looking at the ToC, it looks to be of similar high quality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mike Taber was a contractor at my old job for a few weeks before I became a programmer professionally. He coded us a reliable solution within very difficult time constraints and dealing with management who could not make up their minds. I've been following him ever since on social media. He really knows his craft, and I have no doubt this is a solid product.

With that said I really don't support advertisements on HN. I don't think this belongs here. If there were some free content and an upsell I could get behind it, but alas there is not.

When there is a physical copy offering I will most likely purchase.

<comment><USER10> Isn't the physical copy already available?

"You'll receive the book in both digital and audio formats, as well as a paperback book that will be shipped to you free, anywhere in the world."

<comment><USER11> It's available for the second and third tiers but not the bottom one. I mentioned this in another comment, but the shipping costs were brutal for international fulfillment during the private launch so I had to make some changes for the public launch.

<comment><USER12> Love the Startups for the Rest of us Podcast, which is why I just bought the book. Look forward to getting some good stuff out of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here's a podcast interview with Mike Taber about his new book: [http://techzinglive.com/page/1541/280-tz-interview-mike- tabe...](http://techzinglive.com/page/1541/280-tz-interview-mike-taber-the- single-founder-handbook)

</comment><comment><USER14> Multiple time single founder who bought the book anyway.

Excellent book. Not so much for the content, much of which I've seen elsewhere, but for the curation and the voice, which spoke directly to me. I got a lot of value out of things you wouldn't expect, but are real issues for solo workers, especially planning and time management.

A ton of work must have gone into this. Even at a dollar per good idea, it's a great deal for people like me.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is the most interesting thing I have ever agreed to in order to download something:

 _As an added bonus, I 'll also send you a few follow up emails to help you along on your entrepreneurial journey and you can ask any questions you like about the book. I hate spammers, so feel free to opt out at any time._

I've always argued that entrepreneurs should be clear and give readers the ability to opt out in advance. But, I'd assume that this kind of statement has been a/b tested. Interesting...

</comment><comment><USER16> while I think the topic looks interesting - i'm certainly among the target audience - its a bit too heavy in sales pitch.

First, i'm not giving you my email address just so I can get the table of contents and a free chapter. I know that "converts" better but I think given the target audience, its tasteless.

Second, there's really no "content" in this page that gives me any kind of inclination that this book is going to be good. They vouch for the author and the sources, but not for what the book contains. Maybe their advice is run of the mill and can be found anywhere? or maybe its so unique and interesting they're afraid to give any of it away? I couldn't say which.

Ultimately, this feels more like a get rich scheme than someone having something legitimate to offer. Maybe this could all change with a revision to the website. I'd be more compelled to take a look at this if this was simply up on amazon with tons of great reviews.

</comment><comment><USER17> I didn't understand what he meant by you get 9 hours of interviews transcribed. Does it mean you're interviewing with the person via Skype and then you get a copy of what was said or you're watching a video of someone else's interview with what they said?

<comment><USER18> You get access to pre-recorded videos, and text transcriptions of them (because reading is fast).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nothing against the quality of the book. But I would have considered this at a $9 price point, not above, for ebook. That's how much I paid for "Running Lean" and I doubt to gain more value, personally, from this than that book.

</comment><comment><USER20> I just want to buy the physical book, not e-book. There is no option like that:(

<comment><USER11> I tried to offer a physical book with every order during the pre-launch several weeks ago, but international shipping was brutal. It was nearly $900 for shipping alone, plus the cost of the books themselves. The book is 327 pages long and since it's print on demand, it's a bit more expensive than the run of the mill printed book.

I'd like to find a solution to this long term, but in the short term I don't have one yet.

<comment><USER20> Great that you are trying! I understand that the international shipping is pain. Just wanted to take it to my vacation next week, but I will wait!

Thanks for the response. I hope you will get good reviews and feedback!

<comment><USER11> I appreciate the understanding. The book is 1 lb, 4oz and a bit over 3/4" thick. USPS has a tiered pricing structure that puts the book into another tier. Shipping costs jumped from under $5 to nearly $20 to virtually all international locations. I thought shipping was going to be straightforward but it really wasn't at all.

<comment><USER21> Looks like there is a need for a "print on demand + shipping" geographically distributed network.

<comment><USER22> Amazon does exactly that. (I'm guessing selling on Amazon doesn't fit into the author's sales model)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> i wish they spent more money on designing a better cover. i do judge books (and products in general) by their cover.

</comment><comment><USER24> Worst dating book ever.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why so many upvotes for Spam?!

</comment><comment><USER26> The title seems odd to me -- the Single Founder? Maybe I'm missing content somewhere, but I was looking for something related to you, as an individual entrepreneur, going it alone.

This would do just as well for me as "The Entrepreneur's Handbook."

<comment><USER11> Very meta here, but I don't understand your confusion. That's exactly what it is. It's "Single Founder" as in solo entrepreneur/solopreneur. Does that clarify it?

I do include a discussion of taking on a cofounder in the book. Personally, I don't think that having a cofounder is bad per se, but having a bad cofounder is significantly worse than having no cofounder at all. The downside to taking on a cofounder is that your ambitions for what to build need to increase proportionately because now it has to support 2 people, not just one. It's no longer just a matter of getting 2x the work done. Basically everything doubles.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for the reply, Mike. I was referring to the bullet-point list of "How will this help you?" on the webpage. I haven't read the book, so my feedback is entirely based on the website content.

I've been both the single entrepreneur as well as a co-founder. I found that list to be entirely applicable to both scenarios. (Good list, BTW!)

Anyway, just offering some feedback that I thought there would be a greater emphasis on the unique challenges for a solo founder vs. a team.

Indeed, I'm not sure there's a more concrete example of "judging a book by it's cover." :-)

<comment><USER11> You're absolutely right about the fact that the list applies to both. Then again, it was easy to come up with since it came mostly from the table of contents and that was based on what people emailed me about during the development of the book.

If you look around at that "traditional" startups covered by news or accepted by YC, they don't talk about single founder startups. In my circles (MicroConf, Micropreneur Academy, etc) it's virtually nothing except single founder companies. So there's a misconception that single founder startups aren't possible or don't work.

For VC's and huge scale startups, that may be true. But I know of hundreds of small scale software companies that are doing just fine that would beg to differ. It's a matter of what your goals are and what you want out of life.

The title is meant more to draw attention to the fact that if you're a single founder, this book is for you. That doesn't change the fact that it's useful to small teams or to any software startup. But when you have two people working on something, the discussions tend to be different than the ones you have in your head.

I wrote the book in such a way so as to be that other voice saying the things you would have needed to hear from a cofounder. It's not necessarily about the message itself in many cases, so much as the subtle nuances of how that message is communicated that will make them more understandable and resonate better with a single founder.

In some ways, the title is a marketing strategy too.

<comment><USER26> Very good points, and thank you for adding that context. By all accounts, sounds like a wise book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd prefer not to have content-free ads on the HN front page, regardless of who is involved in the product. I'd feel differently if there was at least some useful content on the site.

<comment><USER4> I totally understand why you have that preference, but I have the opposite view. I'm unlikely to discover stuff like this _except_ through the curation of this community, and I really appreciate it when it happens. At least at present it seems like the signal-to-noise is pretty good.

Maybe it's better if it's all grouped under the "Show HN" titles so folks who don't like it can mentally filter it quicker. But I'd be sorry if these posts disappeared.

That said, I think the author should take your point about providing useful content to heart - I think it'd be better for the visitors, but also better marketing.

<comment><USER28> Yes, this should have been prefixed with Show HN, it's a total product advertisement that has been pushed up the rankings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> UGH, these kinds of bundles annoy me. I don't want the physical or audio book, I just want the e-book and the supplemental materials - I will never want/need the audio or physical book, and yet it increases the markup a ton. Actually, I don't even care for the interviews, but I'd like to know what this "supplemental" material is before I'd ever consider that complete package.</comment>


Apple OS X 10.10 vs. Ubuntu 14.10 Performance Test - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=osx10_ubuntu1410

<comment><USER2> GPU drivers have always been a nightmare on OS X, but I didn't know just how bad they really are. Keep in mind that we're comparing against Mesa drivers here. Try to imagine what the benchmarks will look like when Valve's Steam Machines have shipped.

The same is true for HFS+. No real surprises here, even though I didn't know it was that slow. Most people are probably more interested in ZFS vs. Btrfs benchmarks.

I would have loved to see some kernel oriented benchmarks like network stack performance, etc., but then again, performance benchmarks don't really matter anyway. I'd like OS vendors to focus a bit more on perceived performance. Just the other day I plugged an external USB HDD into my MacBook Pro and a YouTube video stopped playing in Chrome (because of some blocking IO call, I presume). The same happens quite frequently with network IO and freezing UIs.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have to admit I had not given the performance differences between Linux and OSX much thought, but I am quite surprised. One might think that Apple, building both the hardware and the operating system should be able to make the two work together rather well.

(There are of course issues the benchmarks do not measure, specifically battery life, it would be interesting to see some numbers on that.)

I switched from a 2009 Asus EeeBox running Ubuntu 12.04 to a MacMini with an i7 about a year ago, and I had planned to install Debian or Ubuntu on it, but so far I have postponed that. Maybe I should reconsider. There are many things I have come to like about OSX, but some things I do miss about Linux, especially the poor integration of XQuartz into the desktop is disappointing. Cygwin's X Server on Windows integrates into the system a lot more smoothly than XQuartz does on OSX.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a bit surprised at the "computational benchmarks" [1] though. Can anyone confirm these are indeed CPU-bound, and not somehow GPU-assisted? If so, how can the underlying kernel possibly make such a difference? Scheduling? (if so, what kind of load was the machine running?) Clearly there must be something more to it.

[1] [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=osx10_ubu...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=osx10_ubuntu1410&num=4)

<comment><USER5> Perhaps power management is somewhat to blame here? I would be curious to see how power consumption compared while running the benchmarks. It's well known that OSX gets much better battery life than Linux on Apple hardware. I wonder if the CPU was being throttled to conserve power or thermal output.

<comment><USER2> > It's well known that OS X gets much better battery life than Linux on Apple > hardware.

I couldn't find any information to back that up. Do you have a link to a benchmark?

I don't think kernels throttle CPUs — CPUs do that themselves already. I could imagine Apple doing something like OpenBSD in that they favour security over performance for some operations, but that seems unlikely. IOKit might be to blame as well, given that it's written in embedded C++ instead of C.

All things considered, I think it's highly likely that, while OS X is quite shiny on the outside, the underlying OS isn't as modern as some of the others. Windows and OpenBSD have better security features and now Linux apparently has better performance.

<comment><USER4> Well, but I guess theoretically it could be doing stuff like setting lower thermal thresholds for throttling. So perhaps not exactly a function of scheduling, but getting the CPU to make itself slower.

Still, this to me is the most interesting result from that set, and I'd really love it for someone to dig into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm curious to what would be the Windows 8.1 scores to in this test.</comment>


Ask HN: Help me start a different sort of startup: an airline - <AUTHOR> Hey guys
I know this is a lot different than the usual concepts/ideas thrown around here, but I thought it'd still get a lot of interest.
I'd like to start an airline. Not a low-cost one either, but a full international airline, focusing on ultra-long range travel (trans Pacific to start [Melbourne, Sydney, Auckland -> LA, SFO, Vancouverish]). I'd like to work on improving the airport process (as all airlines say they do, but I'd like to digitise almost everything from tickets, to boarding passes and baggage tags).
I feel that long distance travel requires an entirely different approach than just buying a bigger jet and providing the same services as ~2 hour flights.  There are a few airlines doing well but I still feel there's room for improvement. A few hurdles though:
1. I don't know what to do now. There isn't too much information available (especially here). I'm leaning towards talking to a lawyer (maybe? don't have any money though) and have been reading the Airbus/Boeing "Jump start" [1][2] areas. Informative and helpful, but mostly if you already have the money.
2. I live in Australia (Perth) and there isn't the greatest amount of money here I'd imagine. At least compared to American sources. I'm aiming to find the money to afford the consulting fees of Airbus/Boeing and going from there to see the viability. I'd likely move to Sydney or Melbourne and try to take it further once I have a more concrete plan.
3. Right now most of what I have is a load of notes, a huge willingness to get it done (reached a point in life where I'm just saying fuck it and going with something), and a vision of how travel should be for those who can't regularly afford business/first class.
4. I understand the industry (well, from what I can glean). It's a tough, cutthroat business with very little profit in general. I'm ok with this. I'd still like to raise the bar with air travel from where it is now.
Most of you are probably extremely skeptical or doubtful and I understand, but I'd love any advice, help or even just a short mail.
[1]: http://www.airbus.com/en/services/start-me-up/airline-v-plan/
[2]: http://www.boeing.com/commercial/startup/index.html <comment><USER2> I think you are confusing a few things.

1) Airlines are becoming more and more digital, but for the most part, that I don't think that really has an affect on the experience, and I think that is what you need to be focusing on.

2) You say 'not a low-cost one', but then you say 'for those who can't regularly afford business/first class'. In a low-profit enterprise, is it realistic to go for a 'boutique' experience and not focus on the highest ticket price?

I say this because I once was thinking of going into the airline biz as well. My angle was a first-class only airline. Refactor the entire check-in and boarding process. No more standing in lines to check your bags and then stand in line to get through security.

Drive up to the airport and your bags are unloaded and a valet takes your car, you're brought into the check-in lounge, and sit comfortably while you wait for a check-in agent to come by and check you in. Manage our own security process so again, no line-ups, we'll let you know when we're ready for you, just relax, enjoy a beverage, etc. etc.

Then, a plane which is full first-class has much fewer checked bags (carrying less people), so more room for cargo to improve margins. Plus with each ticket being a high-dollar, you've got good revenue rolling in (in theory anyway).

When I was thinking about this, I found an all first-class airline which was basing itself out of Las Vegas, but I can't remember what they where called, and they may not have made it off the ground.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) I'll be focusing on both, however I think there is still more digital(ising?) to be done including packaging everything into a smartcard. I can buy a ticket online but still have to get a boarding pass at the airport. There's some mobile apps but they aren't really an option for me (no phone at the moment). Also getting 3-4 boarding passes for a multi leg journey seems a waste. 2) I don't mean "high cost" as such, but including amenities like food (except excess snacks and drinks), pillows etc, tvs/ports, free checked bags.

I also considered a first-class/all business airline ;D but decided against it as even I wouldn't be using it. I think it would work (I was also only going to have one class/plane type ala Southwest) but not right for me at the moment.

Thanks for the response

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _I understand the industry (well, from what I can glean)_

I don't think that's going to cut it. I think that if you are going to be taken seriously by investors of the scale necessary to get something like this going, you're going to need a management team made up of airline industry professionals with proven track records. So, if I were in your shoes, I'd begin by talking to as many high-level people in the airline industry as I could, and seeing how many you can convince to jump on board your project.

<comment><AUTHOR> No I know, I did plan to do something similar. I think talking to some people would be a good first step, just need to find some. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Look into so called Virtual Airlines. Basically airlines without an Air Operator's Certificate that handles all the sales and logistics of running an airline, but pays a third party to actually own, maintain and fly the airplanes. The big advantage being is you don't need as much up front capital and don't have to deal with the problems of actually owning or leasing hardware.

This is not too uncommon among some smaller local airlines, but I don't think anyone has tried it for long range passenger flights.

<comment><AUTHOR> Considered it too, and it may be a better starting point but I'd want to move away from it ASAP. I figured it may be better to just go for it in the first place.

Also I would have started with a smaller airline, but being in Perth, there isn't exactly that many places to fly to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you haven't yet, I would spend a couple years working for a reasonably good airline (US: Southwest, Virgin America, JetBlue, etc.) and see how it's done. Not sure which function would be the best to focus on, but operations seems like the trickiest part in managing costs, schedules, fares, passengers, employees, airport personnel, federal agencies, you name it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It'd probably have to be Qantas (or Virgin Blue) since I wouldn't be able to work in the US but it is a good idea. I'm trying to make sure I don't get complacent as well :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> See: <http://www.virginamerica.com> and <http://www.virgin-atlantic.com>

<comment><USER2> I don't see how just linking to two very well known airlines is really answering the question.

There was a group who was trying to build first-class only airline servicing major cities in the US. I wish I could remember there name, but I can't.</comment></comment>


After discovering he has at least 17 kids, man sues fertility clinic - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/10/father-of-at-least-17-kids-sues-fertility-clinic-says-he-agreed-to-only-5/ <comment><USER2> I was conceived in this manner and I only found out thanks to Ancestry DNA. There's at least 20 of us out there who are in contact with each other. It's really cool to have so many siblings, and I am very happy to be alive.

It is said to think that my biological father is probably dead. He was apparently a Vietnam vet who needed some extra money. I'm glad he did what he did.

<comment><USER3> High numbers though. Do you know why they used ur biological father's sperm repeatedly? Not enough sperm donors or ... strong sperm (resulting in more viable IVFs?)

<comment><USER2> I was told that the mothers were able to choose from a catalog which donor they wanted to use-- they listed things like race, ethnicity, occupation, height weight etc. So I suppose that some donors were used more than others.

A lot of us siblings live in the same area so while its conceivable that inbreeding is an issue, it's probably like a 1 in a few million chance that you meet a sibling randomly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it interesting that people can even find this information out. It seems he found out from putting his DNA in but I hear other states allow that information to be accessed almost freely. It does make sense from a public health perspective (if everyone started using this service a lot in small communities). If this guy didn't put his agreement in writing then I don't know if there's anything he can really get out of it. Wouldn't it just be he- said/she-said? I didn't see any mention of a written contract.

Somewhat related: I was conceived in Germany in 1989. It's really unlikely that I'll ever find out any information about my biological father. Clinics there (until recently) only had to hold some info for 10 years. I don't think my parents even knew anything about the person - as when I came out... I looked nothing like my parents and I don't think they intended that. Brown eyes to their blue. Every facial feature completely different. Olive skin to their paleness. And this extended to the entire family - I always looked out of place. They didn't tell me until I was about 24. I wasn't shocked - clearly.

I've never done any DNA testing mostly because no one can place my race and I like the mystery! Sadly - I'm the perfect mix where most white people treat me like I'm brown and most brown people treat me like I'm white. Never got to fit in - lol. I still have a genuine curiosity but not knowing is all the more interesting. Your experience of race is mostly what people think you are anyway.

<comment><USER5> > no one can place my race and I like the mystery!

I had a friend in Germany who had dark hair, dark eyes, and a complexion that always made it appear as if he had a real nice tan. His family and the people of the small community he originally came from were all similar as far back as anyone could trace.

Likely some inter-mixing or resettling of tribes a thousand or more years ago. They're as Bavarian / European as just about anyone, and probably you are, too.

<comment><USER4> Do you have any idea where these people are or names associated with them? I am very intrigued!

<comment><USER5> It would be awkward for me to reach out after many years to ask for more details about his genealogy on behalf of an Internet stranger.

I just happened to live there for a while and thought it worth pointing out that the people of Germany are more genetically diverse than the stereotypes. In retrospect, it was kinda shitty to do when you said you enjoyed the mystery. Please accept my sincerest apologies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article says he found all these kids through Ancestry.com. Surely there must be many, many more whose DNA isn't in that database, no?

<comment><USER7> It also highlights (once more) how scary Ancestry.com is.

<comment><USER8> Isn't this a non-scary consequence of _Ancestry.com_ -like registries?

It's delivering a value people want – relative discovery – and uncovering malfeasance, and further may be helping to prevent undesirable incest.

That _offsets_ these registries' other scary potential uses, like the risk of them being used to disadvantage certain genetic subgroups, or find wrongly- persecuted individuals.

I would agree that this highlights how scary _gamete donation_ is, when handlers/recipients may not be trustworthy.

<comment><USER9> > Isn't this a non-scary consequence of Ancestry.com-like registries?

It's gonna be non-scary to some, scary to others.

Plenty of people donated sperm thinking they'd stay anonymous forever, back before the Human Genome Project was a $1B undertaking.

<comment><USER10> If you want to stay anonymous, perhaps they should not send their DNA to an Ancestry service?

<comment><USER11> Sure, but if a sibling or another direct parent does, your DNA can be inferred, or close enough to pinpoint you.

<comment><USER12> Not really.

If a sibling or parent sends DNA sample X, they do not know what your DNA is.

If someone also provides DNA sample Y, they can know that it is the DNA of a relative of X.

But...is that really worse than normal life? That's approximate not admissible in court. And DNA or not you can already figure out someone's associates a hundred different ways.

<comment><USER9> > But...is that really worse than normal life?

For an anonymous sperm donor, potentially from the other side of the country decades ago? Absolutely.

<comment><USER12> At the point you are donating...IDK all bets are off no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So far all we have his word that he was assured it would be a limit of 5 people and out of state.

There's no signed contract that he's produced, and doesn't remember how many times he donated. It was decades ago, he could easily be misremembering someone saying the "average" donor is used 5 times. It wouldn't make sense for a standard contract to include those limits either.

I'm interested where this goes. I'm guessing he's trying public pressure to force a settlement, knowing he'd lose in trial.

Also, if it wasn't a cash grab, I think he'd have already committed to giving any settlement to those children.

<comment><USER14> Do you keep your contracts from 30 years ago?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What if you go on a date with someone who turns out to have the same biological father?

<comment><USER16> You get the House of Windsor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's the situation with anonymity?

If I left a donation, I wouldn't want a knock on the door 18 years later, let alone 15 knocks.

</comment><comment><USER18> The connection I'm having trouble making is why having 12 extra kids means he should get $5m. Does he owe child support or something?

<comment><USER19> Perhaps to punish the clinic for not fulfilling their contract to the donor? It's a pretty egregious failure on their part. I doubt 5m is going to sink the clinic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I dont understand why he cares? Also how could a clinic guarantee a specific number? Don't they normally implant (wrong word?) more embryos since they don't all take and that's how people sometimes end up with twins or triplets?

<comment><USER21> Why should he care? Because there is clearly a lack of regulation over the sperm-donor industry. It is _extremely_ dangerous for men to make these deposits.

A friend of mine made a deposit in a sperm donor bank prior to getting a vasectomy. Two years later, he met a woman, who he dated for a few weeks before breaking it off.

9 months later, he was presented with child support demands from the state. She had stalked him, determined he had made a deposit in the sperm bank, then specifically chosen his profile to get pregnant.

He is now liable for child support, whether he likes it or not, for the rest of his life (California, in case its of importance). They didn't have sex - she stalked him, got artificially inseminated, and then went to the state to extract money from him. He now has a kid he never wanted, and is resigned to being a father to the child, even though he never planned it and it was forced upon him by a criminal stalker.

This highlights just how dangerous it is for men to use these services. Clearly, more regulation and oversight is required - especially if sperm banks are making their own decisions about how their resources are applied.

<comment><USER22> Either your friend was lying or he should get a better lawyer.

The relevant law in California states that sperm donors are not legal parents: "The donor of semen provided to a licensed physician and surgeon or to a licensed sperm bank for use in assisted reproduction of a woman other than the donor's spouse is treated in law as if he were not the natural parent of a child thereby conceived, unless otherwise agreed to in a writing signed by the donor and the woman prior to the conception of the child," states California Family Code 7613.

<comment><USER21> My friend didn't lie. The reason he is liable is because he dated her, a fact she kept evidence of, in order to present at the alimony hearing. The judge assumed this was enough to prove his responsibility for the child she then conceived (without him). That's the crux.

<comment><USER22> This is why you have the right of discovery in court cases. He could simply show that she was lying by demonstrating that she got sperm from the sperm bank. (Alternatively, he could have proven that he had a vasectomy before they dated). Both of those two things leave hard medical records.

Like I said before, either your friend lied or he needs a better lawyer. Given the story that you stated, the law is definitely on his side.

<comment><USER21> He did all that. The judge decided he needed to pay child support anyway. The rights of the child were greater than that of my friend.

Anyway, he fought back and is now a very dedicated father. He has visitation rights, and soon enough the childs decision to move in with her Dad, because her Mom is a criminal, will be ratified in court ..</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>