Ask HN: How do you best learn multiple tech skills in a short timeframe? - <AUTHOR>

How do you personally optimize learning when you have five technical skills you need to build within 90 days? Assuming they're relatively decoupled from one another, do you learn them in sequence one by one, or do you learn them simultaneously? How have you managed the process for yourself? <comment><USER2> This might be a problematic question, but how do you know there are 5 skills specifically and how do they relate to the 90 day deadline?

I hate to sound like a programmer here, but having a project really helps out. If you can throw yourself in the deep end, then you learn by necessity, and each problem that comes up as you're going will hopefully tell you which part to focus on next, because that's your immediate issue. You'll also learn the parts you need, because the parts you need are the ones that come up with most frequency in your real world problem.

If its an artificial constraint or situation (and 5 skills in 90 days all decoupled from one another sounds like one, by which i mean a test or an interview), then perhaps its time to think about some strategy. If you can pick up the skills in several days each, they can't be that hard. If you know you're not going to be able to do it, perhaps its time to prioritize. Weight them relative to importance and focus on them each in proportion. Sometimes when you've got 5 tasks, you can get by passing on 3 or 4 and accepting absolute failure on the last one by skimming or ignoring it completely. This depends on your situation.

Personally, I find i can't learn anything unless I focus on a topic for a long period of time, then coming back and repeating it in shorter increments. Sort of informally imitating spaced repetition: See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition)

Personally though, it sounds like you're screwed. 5 topics with no cognitive overlap is a nightmare. Your task is likely going to be to come up with a strategy to make you proportionally less screwed rather than succeed at all 5.

But you are screwed :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I don't know for sure, but they're the five things that seem most important to me when it comes to landing a quality gig. Please correct me if I'm wrong :)

They are TDD, OO-design, increase Rails mastery, refresh myself on algorithm basics (sorts, processing data efficiently, etc), and learn the basics of a JS MVC framework (leaning toward Angular). I'm not starting from zero in any of them.

Also, I did a poor job of providing context/perspective, so I'll quickly add some: My dev skills are at a point where I could get a junior Rails gig _some_ where. I want to get them to the point where I can get a junior/mid Rails gig (almost) _any_ where.

The 90 days was just an arbitrary time constraint that I felt was short enough to give me some urgency, but long enough to make significant progress.

Totally agreed on the "having a project" points you make, and on learning by necessity. Both are a part of my plan. I love learning about programming in general, but yesterday I found myself reading a Ruby book that was talking about making external DSLs and I had to stop myself: "This is really cool, but WTF does this matter to me right now?? Go read about TDD instead."

EDIT/ADD: Thanks for the reminder about spaced repetition btw.

<comment><USER2> I'd love to be able to give you some more specific pointers, but alas I'm more on the scientific/numeric/stats/data side of computing. I wouldn't know where to begin with the web stuff :(

You should probably look to others for specifics in your case.

But what little advice i can give is try to turn it all into a project. Do a quick read up on all the topics, then combine them into something tangible and of worth to you.

Since I'm not a web guy, i'm probably talking half out of my arse here, so feel free to dismiss. Think up a rails project, and try implementing the whole thing via a TDD pattern. Test, produce a really basic first shot, re-factor, repeat, etc. And what better place to learn about or implement some algorithm basics than while profiling/refactoring code to make the whole thing as fast as possible?! I learnt almost nothing from algorithm books or lectures, what really made it all sink in was when I had problems that ran slowly, and I had to make them better. Then suddenly the topic was relevant and I understood. And of course, once you optimize everything, you tend to quickly run into the hard lessons of good design, because nothing makes things fall apart and get complex quickly more than optimizing everything, except maybe trying to optimize everything with bad design.

Will you screw up? Sure! You'll be bitter and twisted, but the scars will be of experience. That's what makes you learn. The screw ups are what you remember, and when you hit a problem of your own making, suddenly you respect the solutions presented in the text-book a lot more, even if you don't agree with them or feel they're complex or constraining.

/editorial.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ahhh, man, awesome stuff. I totally relate to what you said about not learning from books, but learning from when you actually experienced some of the problems that were outlined in the books.

I went through similar learnings with running my own business. I had read a bunch of stuff about entrepreneurship, etc., but it wasn't until I screwed up for myself that the lessons really crystallized (and really internalized for me).

Web programmer or not, your advice was very helpful, so thanks again :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would say you're screwed.

Here's some advice, focus on the 30% of each of the 5 area's you need the most to do something with. The rest is just noise right now.

Usually my personal process is to spend 70% of my time on one area in particular, picking up the others as I need to learn new information for what I'm working on at the time. But that doesn't seem to be an option for you so well, good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I appreciate the frankness (seriously). Great tips, thank you!

Btw, I'm not trying to become an expert in five things in 90 days. I just want to get comfortable enough in each that I can confidently tell prospective employers/partners "I'm not an expert in X, but I can productively use/do it."

Your 70% approach is the sort of thing I'd like to adopt as a long term learning process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >"In order of importance: 1. TDD 2. OO-design 3. Increase Rails mastery 4. Algorithm basics (refresher on different sorts, etc.) 5. Learn the basics of one JS MVC framework (leaning toward Angular)."

1-4 are all related. You can learn them all by building something (as someone has mentioned). The problem with saying "learn by building" is how? Nobody ever explains how.

This is how: Learn from whatever resource you learn best (like a cookbook- style tutorial, or a textbook or a video) and then take that knowledge and apply it to the bigger project. If you have your own "how", then go with that.

As for 5, avoid the JS-frameworks for now. Dabble with them, but be flexible enough to try more than 1 out. They're all pretty much in their "hipster" lifespan, so wait until the hipsters move on and then consider picking up one of those frameworks (unless you are a hipster yourself).

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, no framework hipster here. I feel like people force the use of JS frameworks on projects that don't really need them.

So along the lines of what you said, dabble with a few, and when you recognize a project that could benefit from one, dig in.

Thanks for the "how"!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Personally I'd say that your timeframe is very doable at least to a journeyman level of skill, given the 5 things are related.

As for how to do it? I'd recommend starting a SaaS business. Pick something - something where you can generate leads reasonably easily, so you don't end up learning marketing, and where you aren't going to need to spend loads of money, so you don't end up learning finance - and set a launch date 50 days from now. Then start designing.

Your project probably won't be tremendously successful - although you might make some passive income, and there's always the chance of an accidental massive success - but you'll learn a hell of a lot, you'll have real-world problems to solve and real-world users to pacify, and IMO "I've built a business on these technologies" plays better on a CV than "I've made some webapps for my own use".

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, after the feedback on this thread and a few conversations with other developers this week, I started thinking this exactly. Great timing, thank you!

I'm not sure what's kept me from going down this path already though, as this isn't the first time the idea has popped into my mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Honestly, the answer is people. Spend time talking to people who have these skills. IRCs are a decent option, but if you can actually work with people it's way better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point! I just recently started programming with a senior dev for a few days per week, and it's been really helpful so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What are the 5 technical skills?

<comment><AUTHOR> In order of importance: 1\. TDD 2\. OO-design 3\. Increase Rails mastery 4\. Algorithm basics (refresher on different sorts, etc.) 5\. Learn the basics of one JS MVC framework (leaning toward Angular).

(I'm not starting from zero in these things - I've had exposure to all of them)

<comment><USER7> One thing you could try would be to set aside a day of each week to focus on learning as much as you can about one of the topics each day. Then set aside any other free-time to create a couple simple project ideas and then by the 3rd week start creating the projects / apps / demos. If you think you could do one of them better by going a different direction then take the time to start- over.

There are plenty of guides and tutorials for each of the subjects you listed, just start with searching each and making a master document of everything you learn that you can review. Use bulleted lists, they're helpful.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great tips, thanks! I'm going to try that approach for the next 30 days: Set aside a day per topic, mixed with a couple of simple project ideas.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Other Cities Overcame Duke's Objections to Light Rail - <AUTHOR> https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/12/other-cities-overcame-dukes-objections-to-light-rail/ <comment><USER2>
      Both of these projects, it should be noted, have been major successes.

What is the farebox return compared to variable costs, let alone variable costs plus debt service on infrastructure?</comment>


Very simple productivity trick (mac os) - <AUTHOR>

Auto-hide dock and set the position onto the right side of your screen.<p>Makes you think twice before switching context. I guess the effect should wear out after a week or so, but that's still something :) <comment><USER2> I've been doing that for a long time, combined with ShiftIt and Spaces at 1920*1200, with 2 open applications on each space, each taking 960x1200px. (usually: browser+textmate, logs+doc, im+itunes).

I'd like to get a 2048px wide screen, but can't afford it right now.

This approach gives you some of the convenience of a tiling WM with the easeness of use you expect from OSX (cmd+num for tabs in applications, cmd+alt+cursor keys to tile, ctrl+cursor to move between spaces, not forgetting cmd+tab and exposé).

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get it. I switch context using Cmd-Tab or Ctrl-Cursors (Spaces). My dock is always hidden. What exactly is this supposed to do?</comment>


Glint: Employee Engagement Platform - <AUTHOR> http://www.glintinc.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Just ran across this and found it compelling, namely because of how it seems to respect employees. Does anyone else know of others operating in this space?</comment>


An approachable book on algorithms - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~vazirani/algorithms.html

<comment><USER2> This is not very approachable.

I highly, highly recommend Skiena: <http://www.algorist.com/>

Skiena has much, much more content on the motivation behind algorithms and algorithm selection than other algorithm books. It also dives headfirst into graph traversal, which "Algorithms-in-C"-type books tend to leave for the end of the book.

Other decent algorithms books are CLR (<http://j.mp/91SqgE>), which looks pretty on my shelf but I never use, and Knuth, which I find works better as literature than as a reference, but highly recommend anyways. Avoid Sedgewick.</comment>


Cast: web-based platform for recording, editing, and publishing podcasts - <AUTHOR> https://tryca.st/ <comment><USER2> I like what I see, I think this could greatly simplify my workflow as a podcaster. However, after signing up I don't see any way of importing my already existing RSS feed or even already existing episodes.

Also, the massive number of help popups, with no way of opting out, almost made me close the site before I even determined the above. I really wish web app creators always added a "leave me alone" button. If you do your UI right I shouldn't need 20 informational bits when I go to a new page. This seems like quite a blemish on something that otherwise looks very nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does the audio editor work? Is it just select and delet/move like in audacity? I found that workflow to be a bit tedeous, because I have to play and replay in order to find the spot I need to cut. So instead, I've started recording one sentence at a time using a FOSS tool I wrote for the job [http://thobbs.cz/push-to-talk/index.html](http://thobbs.cz/push-to- talk/index.html)

I wonder if it would be possible to use some kind of primitive speach recognition to automatically detect sentence/word bountaries so that you could select words using the arrow keys like in text.

One problem that I have with my solution is that the different sentences, recorded at different times, sound different, and there is an audible clicking noise when moving between them. It would be awsome if someone were to come up with an algorithm to "normalize" or smooth over the audio so that it would sound like I had recorded it all in one peice.

</comment><comment><USER4> Haven't tried this tool but looks very nice, going to give it a try.

I've been thinking for a time to create a podcast but I was stopped because I'm aware that I need to record, edit and publish. Takes time to find the right tool. Glad this service solves that.

</comment><comment><USER5> Are there any services specifically supporting a podcast that you charge money for? I've poked around a bit and come up empty so far.

<comment><USER6> Compared to other podcast-hosting sites, they seem to offer quite a bit for the money (analytics, in-browser recording and editing, 10hrs worth of storage). By comparison, Blubrry charges $12/mo for their base plan, which only gives you hosting and storage. Gotta pay extra for analytics.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. The other similar service I had noticed recently was Spreaker. [https://www.spreaker.com/plans](https://www.spreaker.com/plans)

My main problem is that everyone expects monetization to happen either by selling listener's ears to advertisers or completely orthogonal volunteer support (Patreon). I am looking for a system that bills listeners for content, specifically built for podcasters.

<comment><USER6> Ah, I misinterpreted the word "supporting"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is set similar to an idea I had been working on recently nice

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice! This is a really neat idea.

What kind of analytics do you provide?</comment>


What does a gentrifying city look like? Talk to the man who delivers the mail - <AUTHOR> http://www.hcn.org/articles/cities-what-does-a-gentrifying-city-look-like-ask-the-postman? <comment><USER2> I've noticed a pattern, you know gentrification is in full swing once the neighborhood gets a new name.

For example my last apartment was in Downtown Hartford, CT. But Hartford gets a bad rap for some violent hotspots in the north end of the city.

So the Downtown "neighborhood" became "Riverfront", because downtown bordered the Connecticut River.

Events were held at "the Riverfront".

The municipal efforts to draw new business were "Riverfront Recapture".

They bought the domain Riverfront.org and go out of their way not to use the term Hartford too much.

My new apartment is in Downtown New Haven, and there's a similar story. Historic Yale is surrounded by some very violent areas.

So my neighborhood isn't "New Haven". It's "Chapel West".

They bought the domain chapelwest.com. It also avoids referring to New Haven, instead framing the location by street names and intentionally leaving out the city until much further down.

Any projects in the area are referring to Chapel sweat.

I think when your neighborhood gets it's trendy new name to avoid associating it with the heritage of the surrounding area, gentrification is in full swing.</comment>


What if we collected data to benefit the individual and not corporations? - <AUTHOR> https://littleblockchains.com/2018/09/15/hello-world/ <comment><USER2> I think about how we could continuously offer services to the bottom portions of society. We would know who might benefit from education, and who might benefit from immediate cash, and even who might be extracting wealth from our society in an inappropriate way. Along those same lines, I'm always amazed by how much is spent by companies like WalMart to quietly deploy facial recognition and associated data collection on every customer, monitoring all of us, while the wealthy can offshore their money and avoid taxes without any paper trail or any real reporting about their hidden wealth (the Walton family being one example - I've heard estimates of tens of billions hidden offshore in order to loan themselves money from offshore to run Walmart and avoid taxes.)</comment>


Show HN: Is anybody interested in these .com domain's I'm getting rid of. - <AUTHOR>

I'm doing some spring cleaning of my domains. If anyone is interested in these, I'd be happy to chat.
I'd prefer to keep the 'sneaky' domains all as one, but will consider selling them individually. Send me an email. email@example.com sneakyadventure.com
sneakyandgreen.com
sneakyapp.com
sneakyblizzard.com
sneakyboat.com
sneakycycle.com
sneakydelivery.com
sneakyevents.com
sneakyfood.com
sneakygear.com
sneakygroups.com
sneakyhire.com
sneakyhost.com
sneakyonline.com
sneakypaddle.com
sneakyparking.com
sneakyplanet.com
sneakyproducts.com
sneakyrental.com
sneakyrentals.com
sneakyride.com
sneakysail.com
sneakyscience.com
sneakyshare.co
sneakyshare.net
sneakyshare.org
sneakysharing.com
sneakyshop.com
sneakystorage.com
sneakystyle.com
sneakytask.com
sneakythings.com
sneakytransport.com
sneakytravel.com
joinplanet.net
thinkplanet.co
tryplanet.net
adangerousread.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

Your suspicion is fair enough. Price range is from $200 for individual domains but will be happy to discuss if buying as a group. I'm not looking to make five figures off this.

</comment><comment><USER2> I would use Namebox to sell: [http://namebox.io/](http://namebox.io/)

 _No affiliation_

</comment><comment><USER3> Please add this to the list too

[http://www.shopperoye.com](http://www.shopperoye.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> What'll you take for the very last one, 'adangerousread.com'?

<comment><USER5> Yeah these lists are a bit futile without pricing ranges.

Last time I saw a post with a domain I fancied I replied back with a £XXX amount and was told the price desired was £XX,XXX which was both insane and a waste of time for both of us.

<comment><USER4> LOL. I posted the message, then saw the request to submit inquiries via email. At that point, I realized that it wasn't worth it. I'd pay, probably, list price, maybe list price + a small markup... but I didn't want to set myself up for a 5 figure inquiry, even if it would be super easy to walk away from.</comment></comment></comment>


Cursorio: place where you can easily find mouse cursor for your layouts - <AUTHOR> http://cursorio.com/ <comment><USER2> I do miss the days when this sort of thing was a user choice, configured through the OS, and honoured by all polite applications.

<comment><AUTHOR> True! All this walking dinos! Do you remember it? :)

But I hope, that anyway designers can make their daily task easier with cursorio.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Extremely simple side-project made with Readymag that allows you easily find a mouse cursor that you need for your layout to show hover on some buttons or links.

Just grab it and drop it to your layout! Simple is that!

Hope that it can help someone. No more hard Google search as «mouse cursor png transparent real size» needed! :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Really useful! no more 'okay google i need drag cursor png actual size'!</comment>


How we used React to build GIF Battle - <AUTHOR> https://posts.postlight.com/how-we-used-react-to-build-gif-battle-fe196e0f824f#.kemo86b2g <comment><AUTHOR> > Developer experience is a much less commonly used term, but incredibly > important.

I loved this quote. Building something that devs love creates alignment and success.</comment>


Sperm Grown in a Dish - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/37073/?ref=rss&a=f

<comment><USER2> A much more intriguing and Gattaca-esque approach would be to use this to genetically engineer disease-free children. In the future, you won't have to screen for Tay-Sachs or Cystic Fibrosis, you could just eliminate it from the germline.

Of course, eliminating diseases is one thing, adding features is quite another ethical bag of worms.</comment>


Ask HN: My side project is ramen-profitable. What do I do now? - <AUTHOR> For context: The project is a PC-hardware recommender (https://www.pc-kombo.de). It looks at benchmarks and tries to find the best combination for the budget, for the parts where there are no benchmarks (hdds, case, …) it relies on reviews and finally coded heuristics (=my judgement). It's a side-project, I have a job (salaried PhD-student, finishing this year).
The jump from 0 to some monthly income was a really big thing and took a long time. Then everything moved fast for a moment, but now it did not evolve much in a while, and I'm not sure what to do. I see some options, but they also seem blocked.
For example, I'd love to extend the version for the US by adding newegg as a vendor. But the Usage Terms of its referral program are batshit crazy. The consequence by signing it were for me to have to pay them $20k dollars whenever they want, they'd just have to claim a problem with following their terms. I'd have no defense, nor the money.
I could also expand to other EU-countries. But I think the monthly work required to keep the database up to date would go over the time budget I have for this project. Maybe if I built that in a very robust way – but my tries to do that for Germany all only improved the situation, there is naturally always still manual work to do… Maybe that should be done anyway, I'm leaning towards it.
Maybe I could just make it more known in Germany somehow? Or maybe the site just needs to be improved gradually and would then grow by itself? Maybe (probably) there are other options I miss?
I'd love to hear some advice. <comment><USER2> Some suggestions for you:

\- Style it up a bit using twitter bootstrap. The main button looks awkward.

\- Found a small company (UG) with 500EUR capital to hold rights on the site if you want to further professionalize this project.

\- Add caching for search queries (it took ~ 10sec to calculate 800€ and 100€ which might be some of the most requested price points)

\- Add large buttons at the top which show the most sensible price points

\- As the others have said, this is easily expandible to other european countries. Add a French / Italian / Swedish version.

\- Add some social stuff so people can comment etc

\- Take some inspiration from PC parts picker

If you want to talk feel free to shoot me an email.

<comment><USER3> "Found a small company (UG) with 500EUR capital to hold rights on the site if you want to further professionalize this project."

Can you elaborate a bit? I have the same problem as the original poster. But founding a company requires IHK membership fees and tax consultant fees. From what I hear this amounts to ~ 1500 €/year.

<comment><USER2> If you create a legal entitiy you will have to pay taxes / IHK (depending on your annual profit) and some tax consultant fees.

But in my eyes the benefit overweights:

\- all your business expenses are kept in a professional setting and don't screw with your personal finances

\- you will have a separate bank account

\- you have a legal entity you can later sell to a real business

\- you can use leftover money to (re-)invest into nearby business areas

\- you have limited liability (and you can buy proper insurances for your risky business activities!!)

Your local IHK will be happy to guide you through this process.

I also started off as a sole proprietor and moved up the food chain through UG to GmbH(s), and there is so much you will learn during this process. I think every entrepreneur should have experience with local trade laws and taxes, so in my eyes you can't start early enough.

If you have any questions feel free to ping me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking in the direction of a limited in the UK, having read that this is the easiest way. Do you have an opinion on that?

I'm a german living in France, the tax situation is already difficult enough, but yeah – I also think it is a good idea to separate any project income and costs from my personal finances

<comment><USER2> I strongly advise you against forming a limited in the UK. The setup cost might be low but if _something_ unusual happens the fees for expert advice will eat you alive. Furthermore UK Ltd has a very bad reputation in mainland EU because they are used by many people who aren't allowed to form companies in they home countries (e.g. Germany) any more due to previous bancruptcies.

If you do it out of tax reasons and you are willing to take the risk of not being able to do any administrative "things" by going to a local government agency in the town where you live, then form an entity outside of EU for example in singapore.

Again, I'd suggest you start your first steps in business locally where you can talk to actual people. There are a lot of services available that can help you out in person.

<comment><USER4> Also, the German tax office will look at your UK registered company and your dividend payments and artificially lowered salary, and your German tax domicile, then tax you after the fact directly as if no company existed. Single ownership UK Ltd companies are a black flag to the Finanzamt.

My best advice is to walk into the local Finanzamt and speak to someone. I've always found them to be knowledgeable, courteous and genuinely interested in helping. Explain to them your goals (minimising tax liability / indemnity / etc) and they will advise you where they can (for free).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My personal opinion...

* It's pretty bare bones at the moment. Work on making it visually appealing, letting people know what the site does, language detection, mobile friendly etc.

* Concentrate on your home market - for now. Do coffee-shop testing with new users to understand how they expect the site to work.

* Expand into other Amazon countries. You have .com - so why not .co.uk, .it, etc? Should be a simple way to test the markets.

* Perhaps look at recommend accessories / peripherals / laptops. Might be a useful way to drive revenue upwards.

* Talk to an accountant to make sure you're paying the right amount of tax :-)

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the remarks!

> _Expand into other Amazon countries. You have .com - so why not .co.uk, .it, > etc? Should be a simple way to test the markets._

I'll give the other points more time to think through before reacting, but this got repeated below – I don't want to seem lazy, but it is actually not that easy. Amazon does not share its products api between countries. Every new country means putting work in a totally new product database, with its own serials and prices, meaning other products should be picked. Still something that can be done, but something that amounts in expanding to a new country.

<comment><USER6> Might not help you directly, but I've implemented a GeoIP-based redirector for the different Amazon countries -> [http://a-fwd.com](http://a-fwd.com)

In general I agree, it's a bit annoying that the same product might have different ASINs in different Amazon countries. Or even a different ASIN in the same Amazon :)

Otherwise (in addition to what others mentioned):

* You should also show the price split in VAT and price (for business users).

* Change the display to make it more "intuitive" by showing the casing in the middle and the components around it?

* If I pick 300 EUR I get a casing "Sharkoon VS4-V" without link?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yes, your GeoIP based redirector does not help me directly, as the problem is less that the ASIN is different and more that the prices vary. A 800€ pc won't have the same components in the US as in Germany.

> If I pick 300 EUR I get a casing "Sharkoon VS4-V" without link?

That's the maintenance work I mentioned, sometimes amazon's api search just stops finding stuff. I fixed this one, thanks for the hint.

<comment><USER7> Have you tried to outsource this kind of work through crowdworking sites like Amazon's Mechanical Turk, or Fiverr.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. Didn't even think of that option. The last time I wanted to automate via a service like that I found it to be quite difficult, because for example Mechanical Turk was blocked for european users. And there are pretty much always decisions to be made that are not easy to outsource. Still, the idea to consider it is good, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here's what I'd do:

\- I'd stay in the German market, because adding additional providers and keeping up with their terms, API etc. sounds pretty annoying.

\- Make it more accessible through small design improvements

\- Try to find new audiences who'd benefit from this tool. Say right now, it's gamers. But what about bitcoin miners maybe? Or small businesses that need a calculator like that? The next step is to find where those audiences are and tap into these traffic sources.

\- Show your tool to "influencers" (meaning: people with a small audience of 100 or more). Maybe gamers on Twitch, in hardware forums, games magazine forums, in Steam guides (or write a Steam guide)

\- Maybe write more blog posts. Could even be semi-automatically. Say: Picks of the month under 100€ / under 500€ etc. Try to distribute your blog posts (see points above)

\- Keep a sane mindset. Enjoy the fruits of your labor, but only do the stuff that you enjoy doing. No point in wasting time with integration some US service, if you hate that idea.

\- Use it to position yourself in a specific way. Maybe it's good for your resume (creator of the popular tool pc-kombo.de + proof of popularity -> shows you know how to execute and "finish" side projects and think about customer outcomes).

</comment><comment><USER9> I see this is now getting off the front page without input from some of the most notorious HNers, but some of them have explicitly stated they like to be contacted by email and to give free advice. I'd suggest you try emailing some of them. Unfortunately I don't remember now who else advertised as such, but I'm certain at least about patio11:

[http://www.kalzumeus.com/standing- invitation/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/standing-invitation/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that's great advice. Thanks. I have enough to think about and act upon for a day (that thread here worked so much better than I hoped!), but that is still a good thing to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great site and even better idea but looking at your public traffic data I am wondering what you mean by 'ramen-profitable', [https://www.similarweb.com/website/pc- kombo.de](https://www.similarweb.com/website/pc-kombo.de)

However, let's not look into how much you make now but instead how much growth potential this idea has:

\+ One opportunity is to further internationalize the product with more languages and vendors to other countries. Then you should be able to 5x to 10x your revs (but quite some work is involved)

I rather see some limitations in the chosen business model (if we talk about making this thing really huge):

\- Strong dependency to Google and hard to buy traffic since the CAC will be always higher than the affiliate revs

\- Most affiliate merchants fool you on the affiliate commission (except Amazon and ebay), so prepare for tough negotiations without any possibility to prove generated sales

\- Low LTV and customer loyalty if any because people configure a PC once every one or two years and in that time they might forget about your site and not using it the next time

\- In general the market is limited, 10-20yrs ago everybody did configure a desktop/tower, now with all the notebooks, ultrabooks and iPad the demand is way smaller

\- Content generation and maintenance should be small but it's still there (costs for one content manager should be considered)

\- And do not forget: this browsing and choosing of the best components is an important piece when building a PC yourself, it's fun, don't know if people would give this away

=> I would keep it as a pet project which brings some revenue but look for new business models where you can adapt what you learned in this process and improve on mentioned points

<comment><AUTHOR> I see no real traffic data on that page ;) But yes, this is very far from a high traffic website, and the main profit comes from using it as a tool to build recommendations for user asking for them on other sites, like reddit.

I agree with all your limitations, even the potential problem with affiliate programs – while the one I work with is generally trustworthy, I indeed observed sales that they never registered.

I learned a lot from the site and it was worth it even if that were the end now, lessons I'd take to the next project, but I feel there is still a lot that can be done without going all in and counting on it getting huge.

<comment><USER11> I was development lead for an affiliate program that never launched. One of the requirements was a percentage and threshold to basically hide actions that should have generated revenue for the affiliate. I refused initially but then the customer insisted that this was industry standard. I don't know if my experience is an outlier but it definately happens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wouldn't sweat the Newegg terms if you're playing the game "straight". Those terms are for things like browser-hijackers and other underhanded means of generating false affiliate referrals.

(Yes, it's great that you're reading the full terms of agreements. Too many people don't. But at the same time, you can't let ambiguous worst-case what- ifs paralyze you in business, or you'll never get anywhere. You can't steal second base while keeping your foot safely on first and all that.)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's too easy to be in non-compliance with those terms by accident. I absolutely intend to use them in a honest way, but just think of terms like having prices up to date, which can collide with caching, and easy stuff like that. Or a wrong formulated notice in the impressum that is than counted as wrong representation. I'm not willing to risk my personal existence by accepting draconian terms that would be illegal in europe.

But I'll reconsider if I manage to get a proper barrier between the finances of the site and my own.

<comment><USER13> first of all, to echo the gp, companies don't go after their own biz dev partners unless something has seriously gone wrong, most likely some kind of theft.

second, call them up and talk to someone. it's called 'business development'. you can negotiate anything. just say this part really scares you, and that you want to edit it, and that it may even be illegal in europe.

business protip: send them a european-legal version of their own contract that you feel comfortable signing. they might just say "sure, let's use this." \-- it really can be that simple. you might find out they're planning an expansion into europe and you're their first partner.

and yes, form a limited liability company or a corporation, don't put your own money at risk. there's way, way scarier things in the world than newegg's marketing department, i assure you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hello brother from another mother. I did a similar thing for my bachelor thesis ( source available at [https://github.com/za- creature/puls](https://github.com/za-creature/puls) ). Mind going into the details of how you designed yours?

Mine is extracting equations from benchmarks of the form ax = b where a and b are components, picking a random "unit" component and fixing it to 1, and then solving the overdetermined system in a least-squares sense. I designed it that way to take all equations into account (e.g. multiple benchmarks can and should include the same components with a potential different "factor") and to handle like a graph (as long as there's a benchmark-path between any two components, they are directly comparable)

Edit: to ensure the graph is always connected, an additional low-weight "metadata" benchmark is generated from the technical specs (e.g. amount of ram, cpu speed) and the total score of a computer is calculated as the weighted sum of all components, using target-specific weight factors (e.g. a gaming pc will want a fast cpu / gpu whereas a multimedia pc will want more capacity)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. I can give you a high level overview, but I fear that will be disappointing for you. It is not solving equations directly, thinking in graphs or doing anything fancy, but iteratively goes through the options and compares them. O(n²) and all.

First the benchmarks. I also added had to add a factor, because a benchmark where the fastest processor (in the following, all that is said about processors also counts for gpus) is not the fastest processor the recommender knows (that happens often, as not many benchmarks include Intels 5960X) would otherwise move its processors too much to the top. That happens by using the one benchmark that contains all existing processors as a reference point in that case. There is still the problem that many benchmarks are sparse, to counteract that there is logic in there to prevent illogical results (stuff like: assert that the 4690 is faster than the 4590). The benchmarks then compute a normalized result from 0 to 10.

When a recommendation is requested, he first picks the peripherals based on the budget. With the remaining money he then goes through all gpus and mainboard and picks the best possible combinations, with a factor favoring the gpu, and minimizing the difference between them.

The value in doing it like that is how the results are tuneable by code, and that it is possible to pretty exactly say which configurations to build for which price point.

<comment><USER14> Not disappointing at all; solving the system in a least-squares sense is O(n^3) and choosing the optimal setup is NP-complete (didn't prove it, but I'm _pretty_ sure it involves backtracking, especially when you consider stuff like adding a PCIe SATA controller to maximize the total amount of storage available).

I originally wanted to monetize the idea as well, but gave up and open sourced my solution due to the labor-intensiveness of adding and maintaining components and benchmarks.

I can't really help you business-wise, but from a technical standpoint, my suggestion would be to split up the problem in two (sorry for the formal definitions, this is mostly translated from my paper):

1\. Given n benchmarks each containing n[i] components each, assign a score to each component so as to obtain a total ordering that minimizes the error (as you mentioned above, one processor may be _way_ faster than another in one benchmark, but be completely outclassed in 50 others).

2\. Given n desired component classes, each containing n[i] components as well as their bus requirements or offerings (I stretched the 'bus' definition to also include stuff like S-ATA, 3.5'' slots, ATX power cables, etc), their performance relative to components of the same class (obtained at step 1) and their price, obtain a compatible component subset that:

i) satisfies sum(Price[i]) < max_price

ii) satisfies sum(Power[i]) > 0 (assuming PSUs provide positive power and everything else negative power; I used watts here but if you're feeling badass, you can extend this to amps on the 3.3 / 5 / 12V rails)

iii) maximizes weighted-sum(Performance[i]), given a certain target (this is how I implemented the "I don't want to play games" feature requested by another HN poster; in this case, each target would define a weight for each component class)

Since 2. is most likely NP-complete (again, didn't prove it), my approximate solution was a greedy PTAS knapsack ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knapsack_problem) ) that stored partial systems in one of 3 heaps of about 10k items each: one sorted by cost (to ensure the cheapest system is displayed in the event of a low budget), one sorted by performance (to ensure the best system is displayed, in the event of a high budget) and one sorted by performance/cost ratio (to hopefully obtain the best-bang-for-your-buck system).

Anyway, best of luck! Throw me a tweet (same username as HN) if you make it big :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From experience: do not under any circumstances start living on ramen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, a joke on HN ;)

Of course not. It's a nod to the discussion in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11615639), from their reference to the idea to get a startup to ramen-profatibility fast I got the idea to ask here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here's my advise:

* Don't worry too much about crazy contracts / terms of service. If you run a business you will end up signing all kinds of ridiculous contracts. If you are worried about the consequences, get a normal job instead.

* Don't expand to other markets before you've managed to crack one market. Right now you can experiment easily with the site, if you expand to many countries making changes will get a lot harder.

* Who are your customers? Who is using your website? This is the most important question, and further development of your website should start from here. Are you targeting hard core gamers who want to get the highest frame rate for a budget? Or are you targeting parents who want to find out how much they have to spend on a PC that runs Minecraft for their kids?

* What are you doing to promote your website? How do people find out about your website? I see you have this bbcode widget, so I assume you are hoping that forum users use your site to share configurations. Are you doing anything so people can share configurations on Facebook / WhatsApp / whatever people use to communicate today?

<comment><USER17> > * Don't worry too much about crazy contracts / terms of service. If you run > a business you will end up signing all kinds of ridiculous contracts. If you > are worried about the consequences, get a normal job instead.

Anyone here's been doing that, and is still running a business after 10 years?

<comment><USER18> No, that is terrible advice. People will try to throw ridiculous things in contracts, but as a business owner, it is your responsibility to read them, and negotiate adjustments. It is also your responsibility to know what is/is not acceptable for your business, and know when to walk away from a negotiation.

<comment><USER19> Sure, but sometimes it's worth the risk to sign these contracts to land a big customer, even if they are unfavorable and may ruin your business. Especially if the alternative is no viable business at all (which would be the case for me).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What are your plans for the next five years?

Do you:

\- Want to keep this as a side-project and hope to make enough to pay the rent?

\- Want to turn it into something bigger that will bring in an equal amount of money as your job?

\- Want to turn it into a business that is your sole income source?

\- Want to turn it into a business and then keep a part-time job?

The answer to this question will point you in the right direction. Think in terms of five years and work back from there.

</comment><comment><USER21> Also worth investigation the Intellectual Property rights of your work. I remember that some universities own the right to work produced by their PhD candidates, be it on or off premises.

</comment><comment><USER22> As a small thing, the site returns a server error if you enter >=$1350. It may be that there are very few people searching in that range, and you're not really worried about it. If it were me, I'd link to your most expensive build (the one for $1350) and then give a small message suggesting where extra money can be spend (SLI, crazy case, more HDD, RAM disk, etc.)

Edit: Now that I see the 'improve' and 'cheaper' buttons, and that they let you exceed $1340 if you manually 'improve' components, I'd be more concerned about the server error. Also, to make the 'improve' and 'cheaper' buttons more obvious, I'd put a prominent banner right above the build you return, where you point that function out to the user.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a bug. I have a limit at 4000€, the german site is working fine. I wonder what is breaking there… thanks for reporting it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm an affiliate marketer. I would recommend that you either partner with an expert, or do the following yourself (that's what I would do if I was hired to monetize you) 1\. Germany is a lean poc. You made your point. Move on to the real market- u.s. 2\. Hire a cheap designer from fiverr/similar service. 3\. Apply to all major related affiliate programs (eg amazon, cj etc) 4\. Start making money. 5\. Use profits to: 5.1 improve design 5.2 improve conversion 5.3 improve user value using a/b testing with different programs. 5.4 retarget your visitors with all said programs. If you wish to speak to me further about this I'm at aharonovich@gmail Best of luck

</comment><comment><USER24> First off, this is a neat project. I don't buy hardware often, but I think your idea creates value here (and could be applied to other industries too).

I think sharing some of your metrics with us should influence the advice. There is a lot of advice in this thread, but I don't know that it's _good_ advice.

\- How long are your users staying on the site for a typical session?

\- How many (monthly) actively users do you have? Do users return or really just come once?

\- Where do your users come from? (traffic source)

\- What are the typical price ranges your users search for?

\- What kind of parts bring in the most revenue?

\- etc.

Essentially I think you should put together the answers to the most common questions an investor would ask for a seed stage pitch deck.

</comment><comment><USER25> First of all - kudos for starting a pet project that's actually ramen profitable! At least it's not collecting dust and slowly syphoning out your money, which is the case with many "toys" that we all love to create.

I also think that you should make the site more visually appealing, it looks like what it is - a tool, but what you need is to create a product. Give users some eye candy and maybe decide what's best for them if they can't do it themselves. They came for advice after all, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> I note the suggestion to get a nicer design, and that this gets repeated. You should've seen it in the beginning ;)

> They came for advice after all, right?

Exactly. And that's the idea of the site, the recommendation for a giving budget is that advice. You'd expand on that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Really nice!

There are many good suggestions in the comments. I'd actually put out some roadmap to the site, and suggest that it is "beta" and is under development, and maybe create an uservoice page and link that from the roadmap, noting that new ideas are welcome, and can be voted on.

People like to feel involved in something they like. If they stayed for this long, they may like this, and you may get a hang of what people are missing from the site. (but don't implement every suggestion, just read them)

</comment><comment><USER27> I would improve the look a little more and try to find ways to get more visitors to the site.

Perhaps making the social buttons a little bit more prominent?

I was going to suggest using Google tag manager if you were using Google analytics to get an idea of how well visitors are performing certain goals, but I see you are using piwik. I am not sure if piwik has these same types of features.

I do not speak German, but I did like I could switch to English. However, I noticed the hover menus still display in German.

</comment><comment> ape-box I would go with adding a bit of diversification:

from simple peripherals suggestions (keyboards with different switches, mouses, headphones, etc) to a more complex configurator based on games genre, and an "upgrade" picker based on your current setup ... this way you keep your current maintenance efforts but amplify you marketable value.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds good to me. Thanks. I'll have to see how I can add this into to Ui without just making it bigger and bigger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm wondering how your site can come up with good deals when the cheapest combinations provided by the hardware stores are often fixed. I.e., the stores determine the discount on combinations, so picking your own combinations will only make everything more expensive (?)

(Yes, combinations often include software, but certainly not always).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thankfully those deals are a US-specific things. They exist in germany but are very rare. In 99% of all cases to ignore that does not harm the result.

For the US, pcpartpicker uses them, which means they are either coding that manually (they have a staff of several people) or are using API capabilities to get that info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I also would improve your site, first, before expanding.

Also, if I search for a PC at 460 € ... I get a CPU recommendation for 120,90 € But when I inrease the limit to 660, I get a worse CPU for EUR 58,32 ... but with a much better GPU. But I think the great GPU won't be of much use with that slow CPU ..

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Working further on the core of the site is a valid option.

To balance those properly, that's the hard problem. The first was a FX-8320E with a R7 370, the second a Pentium G4400 with a GTX 970. The first is okay in my eyes. The second would be better with an i3-6100 instead of the Pentium.

<comment><USER30> Just as a suggestions for the balance there, why not set a price ratio between the two? It would be a little odd to have a CPU that's 20% the cost of the GPU, so why not target something above that point?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just implemented that, as an additional small factor to find the recommendation. It seems to work very well. Thanks!

<comment><USER30> Awesome! Glad to hear it helped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Hey dude, nice project, congrats. ended up messing about quickly with it, probably not the direction you want to take it, but have a look anyways. best of luck.

[http://imgur.com/vEI6OED](http://imgur.com/vEI6OED)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man :) It's not the visual style I want to have, but I like the idea for the modified structure

<comment><USER31> cool, it's fun to play with the arrows, might be something in there...this one is a bit convoluted but gives you another idea.

[http://imgur.com/O2JnMUH](http://imgur.com/O2JnMUH)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What you have a little more than a proof of concept and it's a long way to being able to stack up to established sites like [https://pcpartpicker.com](https://pcpartpicker.com).

If you do something that they don't, then either they may just copy the idea or they might've already done and discarded it. That is, you must understand your competitive edge and what it would cost to obtain and maintain it.

And if you don't have anything unique to offer, then you must know how it is that you are planning to grow, because once you think it through there's a good chance it either won't be viable, interesting or both.

</comment><comment><USER33> I don't have specific advice but if you are considering incorporating as in germany, I am happy to talk with you about our experience. We recently incorporated as a UG (cloudron.io). Feel free to send me an email!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Ill try to find out whether UG is the right thing to do, or whether I should for example take a french alternative. If I try to go with the UG I'll ask if anything comes up. Thanks for the offer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'd like to see a "I don't play computer games" button, as I need a beefy CPU, but have no need for anything faster than a R7 250. Good luck with your project!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

My current response for that feature request (you are not alone with that wish) is to customise a recommendation with the arrow buttons at the side of each component box. It's mainly an UI problem – I don't see how to do it properly.

<comment><USER35> You could have the user to make a choice at start with buttons like office and gaming.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean a bit like [https://choosemypc.net/](https://choosemypc.net/) does? I'll be frank, I don't see it fitting in. For one, every complication of the UI of the site makes it more difficult to use (and I'm a big fan of keeping it as simple as possible). Second, I'm not sure you can reliably recommend a good office PC. Does that mean only going with an integrated gpu? Or do you even just need a slow cpu? A SSD certainly is not needed, is it, and what about a big HDD?

My impression is that while the initial reflex is to say yes to all of the above, in many cases at least one of the responses is no. When there is a lots of space needed, or when browsing needs a real fast processor (it indeed does for many pages and current browsers), or the R7 250 requested before (which is still a lot more than the integrated graphics of an haswell i3), and so on.

I still appreciate the suggestion, and if I see a way to built it in I'll certainly do it.

<comment><USER36> It might be nice to just have sliders to add a 'weight' to different components, maybe hidden behind an 'advanced' option .

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be possible, as there is already a weight for the gpu. Thanks, I'll try it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What would be nice is when you ramp up one component that it reduces another one to stay in the price range.

<comment><AUTHOR> I played with that in the beginning, it does not feel good in practice. You have not enough control what he should reduce next.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Do you know about [https://pangoly.com/en/](https://pangoly.com/en/)?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I did not know that site. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> You could use amazon associates to sell parts. Anybody who's anybody in America uses Amazon.</comment>


Ask HN: how to KB select "New York" in dropdown lists? - <AUTHOR>

Any US State that has a space in it is painful to type to completion because when I type space, my browser resets to any word and I'll jump instead of "Yukon" or something.
Anyone have an idea of how to choose a selection with a space inside a dropdown list?
Sorry to populate Ask HN with such mundanity but I couldn't think of a more avid group of life hackers except for possibly somewhere in a vim/emacs forum. <comment><USER2> I am not 100% sure if this is what you are asking but with a state based drop- down, hit the letter "N" six times in a row and New York should be highlighted. Hit the enter key and you have selected it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool - thanks, I guess this is faster than "New" + the hand move to the arrow keys + 3 arrow keys. I hate that these things bother me :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I go about audio background noise removal? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for suggestions from you folks on the following audio processing problem: After recording a speech, is it possible to remove background environmental noise (mostly vehicle engine and horning noise) from it?
Can I isolate just the voice somehow from a single sample?
Or can I isolate the voice by using an additional microphone placed outside to record the external noise, and then somehow "subtracting" the noise recording from the voice?
I'm more interested in understanding audio processing from first principles, understanding the math, reading relevant papers, exploring signal processing algorithms and implementing them, than in buying suitable microphones or using available software.
What approaches do you suggest and what topics do you think I should explore? <comment><USER2> I would suggest you start with reading "Signal Processing and Linear Systems" by Lathi (great book, had it on a course) so that you gain some understanding on signal processing.

After understanding filters, and frequency analysis, you will be able to ask more specific questions than "how to isolate a voice from a single sample?". I am just finishing a course on Image Processing and while some of the stuff that I learned on Signal Processing was useful, I would describe it as being only primitives (think of as integers, doubles, and control structures in programming languages) and we explore higher level of abstractions (segmentation and classification techniques). I assume the same is true for audio signals, and recommend as well to read a specialized book on the subject. I am sorry I cannot recommend one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions, really appreciated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not an expert, but I was during last 3 years editing the voice for videos to upload them to YouTube.

The best improvement was to buy a headset with microphone (not very expensive one ~$30). It killed most of the background sound and the mmmm. Also the volume voice is more stable, because the distance to the mouth is constant. I don't know if this is applicable to your problem, but a little hardware helps a lot.</comment>


Ask HN: Quant researcher vs. ML Engineer - <AUTHOR> I'm currently a Masters student in CS. I have summer internship offers from a top hedge fund for a quant researcher position and an ML engineer internship for a voice assistant team at FAANG.
I'm kind of interested in both and not sure which one to pick. The thing I'm mostly worried about is transferability from one industry to another, and prospects 5-10 years down the lane.
What factors do I need to consider while picking one over the other? (Apart from compensation) <comment><USER2> Relax and pick the one that is the most interesting. With your background, the signal these offers sends, and the high demand for ML workers, you'll be in a good place either way. It may matter what you want to do long term, they're different tracks. To me one of these is more unique with a much higher compensation ceiling but only directly "transfers" to other financial firms, whereas the other is more generic and so transfers very well. Every FAANG has one or a few groups like that.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's much easier to go from FAANG to financial firms than the other way around.</comment>


Tips to learn Git (version control) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/javarevisited/4-tips-to-learn-git-version-control-from-a-highest-rated-teacher-6c73fe013b7c <comment><USER2> Honestly, the most important tip to learning git is to _use_ it.

The way I learned was to just use it on all my hobby projects, I can not recommend it enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> I feel like git clicked when I learned the tree and node structure it used to store commits. once you get that, it becomes easy to visualize operations like creating branches, rebasing, and cherry picking</comment>


A man who created a tiny country he can no longer enter - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37941931 <comment><USER3> As someone who grew up and lived very close to that area I find this free- state territorial claim attempt deeply disturbing and here are some reasons for that.

Probably most important is psychological one since there was a war and violent clash between disputed sides in the 1990s and that land was claimed in very similar manner like this guy is attempting now. Coming there with such claims is very wrong and locals and authorities from both sides will be irritated by such attempts.

This guy's sad interpretation of current dispute situation would be something like: there is a free piece of land and everyone is invited to claim it. That is far away from reality. There is a dispute about that area but that doesn't mean that it doesn't belong to anyone and that it is not controlled. At the moment land part access is controlled by Croatian police and river access by both sides. Legally that land still belongs to Serbia and that comes from last legal border agreement between two sides which is constitution document of Yugoslavia dating from 1974. Borders between countries were defined back then very precisely but that document is subject of dispute from 1990s till now. Dispute and border changes were caused by war, politics and riverbed changes.

Both river and land were used for years by locals as a result of agreement between disputed sides in order enable local population to access that area without too much hassle by the border police.

Now, thanks to this idiot, locals are banned from using it any more. Besides collecting a lot of money for his agenda from similar people like him around the world, that is the only concrete result of his actions.

<comment><USER4> The BBC article claims Croatia doesn't want the land because claiming it would validate Serbia's interpretation of the borders leaving Croatia with less land over all.

I can't find the relevance of years 1974 and 1990 in the wikipedia article[1]. The article describes a long-standing dispute last addressed in 1948. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia–Serbia_border_disput...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia–Serbia_border_dispute#Start_Of_The_Dispute)

<comment><USER3> You are right about the long-standing dispute and arguments from both sides. I was referring to 1974 since that was the last time two countries agreed on document where borders were mentioned although in a very general way. That constitution was also foundation for succession rights and deeds of federal republics after declaring independence.

I mentioned 90s since that was the fist time international commission was involved in trying to help in determining the borders. But it was all in vain since one side states that border is determined by data based on cadastre and one is claiming that the river is the border. The riverbed changed during the years and that created fertile ground for political manipulations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From what I know about this guy's project, he is more concerned about PR, going around taking money and talking at circlefriendly libertarian conferences than actually doing anything meaningful.

Last I heard him talk at one conference, he was talking about making a Liberland app, that's Uber, AirBnB and ebay in one app, using smart contracts on blockchain. And it somehow connects to Liberland.

So yep, I don't see this as a serious attempt.

Edit: here is the app, I have no idea what is it actually doing.

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.liberland.s...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=cz.liberland.services&referrer=utm_source%3Dgoogle%26utm_medium%3Dorganic%26utm_term%3Dliberland+mobile+app&pcampaignid=APPU_1_eXcpWLTeG6zKgAacmo7IDQ)

<comment><USER6> Totally. If he were serious about his libertarian ideals he'd bear arms against the police and declare war between his state and his neighbours - <USER2> is he waiting for a pro bono pmc to do it for him, in true quasi-libertarian- but-actually-fascist style?

<comment><USER7> So you can only be serious about political ideas if you start shooting cops? Nonsense.

<comment><USER6> Why? One of the pillars of statehood is self defence. His political ideal is founding a state, not promulgating an ideology.

To be clear I'm not suggesting that he should, but if he wishes to found a libertarian state, that would be the correct step.

Can you think of any state that had a non-violent birth?

<comment><USER8> Canada gained its independence without a war.

You can call out the native issue as in the case of Brazil, but then you doom any possible future state to a "violent birth" just by virtue of some cromagnon somewhere beating the last neanderthal to death to establish Homo Sapiens dominion on the planet.

And in any case, so what if every state so far has had a violent birth? Are we doomed forever to repeat the same paradigm?

<comment><USER9> To be fair, Canada's not _actually_ independent yet. The queen is still our head of state, but that probably lasts only until she actually tries to act like it.

<comment><USER10> She's the head of state, not the head of government. She doesn't have the power even theoretically to make any executive or legislative decisions. Aside from "representing" Canada in a very vague sense, the closest thing to real power that she or her representative (the governor general) has is to "decide" which party to ask to attempt to form a government after an election. This is basically always simply the part with the most seats, barring very rare exceptions.

Anyhow, tl; dr: Canada is most certainly independent, and gained its independence peacefully (although there were minor conflicts prior to that).

<comment><USER11> This is woefully incorrect.

The Crown is the head of our State; all authority derives from our Sovereign.

[http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/House/compendium/web- content/c_d...](http://www.parl.gc.ca/About/House/compendium/web- content/c_d_rolecrowngovernorgeneral-e.htm)

<comment><USER12> He said she was the head of state. I don't know how this disproves the point that the queen has no legislative or executive powers in the Canadian government

<comment><USER11> The Sovereign may recall the Governor General, or request that their Governor General dissolve Parliament and call an election and the Governor General is compelled to comply.

Ultimately, all legislation requires Royal Assent, and all executive powers are granted by the authority of the Sovereign, who may revoke them at their will and so force an election.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For a recent (within the last 100 years) example of Terra Nullius, look at Svalbard and the Svalbard treaty. Any citizen of a signatory to the treaty is entitled to live there. In practice it's kind of hard to do, since there's not much economic activity up there and logistics/transport costs and energy costs makes everything very expensive. But theoretically an Afghan citizen could move to Svalbard freely.

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

also, no, it does not have any armored polar bears.

<comment><USER14> Fun fact: In Svalbard it's common to see people entering a (the?) bank wearing a balaclava and carrying a gun. Balaclava for the cold, and gun for the polar bears.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Shops, banks etc. have gun lockers just inside the door where you put your gun while shopping.

<comment><USER15> Just don't tell the polar bears; supermarkets are basically polar bear sardine tins then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The bigger story here seems to be that Croatia is treating the territory of Liberland as its own. I wonder what that means for Balkan relations? Has Croatia now accepted the revised borders?

Edit: Actually Wikipedia says that Croatia's position is that the land belongs to either Serbia or themselves, to the exclusion of any third party. Link: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_borde...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatia%E2%80%93Serbia_border_dispute)

<comment><USER17> >The bigger story here seems to be that Croatia is treating the territory of Liberland as its own

That's not a big story at all. Ever since around early 2000s the deal between Croatian and Serbian governments was to treat it that way until the borded dispute was resolved.

Vit forgot to read up on a lot of stuff before going on this adventure.

<comment><USER16> > That's not a big story at all.

I should have looked at Wikipedia first :) Although I do find the arrangement quite odd - Egypt and Sudan don't have a similar arrangement?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Makes me think about Ladonia in southern Sweden. Painter built a tower by using wood lying around on the beach, and proclaimed the 1 km2 area the name of Ladonia. Local authorities see it as a crime due to the area being a nature reserve and had plans of taking it down, but at the same time they can't say no to the increasing amount of tourists.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladonia_(micronation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladonia_\(micronation\))

<comment><USER19> The two stories are similar in that both founders seem mostly interested in getting publicity for themselves. Neither project is a real attempt to create a new state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Came across Liberland about a year ago and filled a citizenship form on their site ([https://liberland.org/](https://liberland.org/)) out of curiosity. I occasionally get their newsletter. Altogether i find this a an occasional and nice distraction from my work. Maybe this is how all countries came into existence.

<comment><USER21> Any country you can name came into existence when a collection of warlords established it by force. Ironically, you would expect libertarians to know this better than others.

<comment><USER22> Power of the state comes from its ability to engage in coercion and hence generally it is true that you can't expect to have a country without someone at the top with power to beat up the citizens into submission.

But generally the warlords are powerful only to the extent the underlying nation is engaging in extensive co-operation and wealth creation out of their free will. Nations are truly created by those ordinary people.

I am reminded of a powerful Indian tyrant named Muhammad Bin Tughlaq. He for some reason decided to move his capital to a different geographical area. By moving he literally wanted to move everything including the people to this new geographical area. Not only he failed miserably his name Tughlaq is synonymous with "idiotic behaviour high on power".

<comment><USER23> "There is more to the transfer of capital than what is generally written. It is believed that Tughluq wanted to make Daulatabad an Islamic cultural centre, thereby helping him to have better control over the region, reducing the number of "Hindu" rebellions. His efforts to bring Ulema and Shaikhs from provincial towns and make them settle down in that city give a clue to his true intentions. The view of Muhammad Tughluq was that something like the above had to be done in the Deccan to strengthen the Muslim position in that area.

As regards its remote effects, the Deccan experiment of Muhammad Tughluq was a remarkable success. The boundaries which had separated the North from the South broke down. It is true that the extension of the administrative power of the Delhi Sultanate into the Deccan failed, but so far as the extension of the cultural institutions was concerned, it was successful."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > _But in the mind of Vit Jedlicka, its first president, it 's the fulfilment > of the libertarian dream - a land with no compulsory taxes, no gun control, > with Bitcoins as currency._

Too true: A country that sounds great on paper, but is really an infrastructure-free swamp that no-one _actually_ wants to live in. It is indeed libertarianism at its finest!

<comment><USER25> It is, I encourage Libertarians & Anarchists to go live their dreams, you can live in a community or lack thereof that shares your values, and if you are unwilling to live in a community that shares the values you advocate and support, you should seriously rethink your values.

This is why I can't respect people like Peter Thiel, he would rather take all the benefits he can accrue from a society he so loathes, but he refuses to live in any of the Libertarian communities that exist. What kind of person can't even stand up for their core beliefs? An unrespectable pile in my experience.

I know I will get downvoted for this comment, and I encourage you to respond.

<comment><USER26> > you can live in a community or lack thereof that shares your values

The thing is, as a Libertarian you literally can't.

One principal idea is to live without coercion, but as long as you're part of a tax collecting state, you are to "share" part of the fruits of your labor with authorities you do not recognize or else...

Secondly, the rights and laws (such as really free speech or free contracts) are overridden (e.g., by hate speech, minimum salary, anti-discrimination laws, ...), so there is no way you can meaningfully establish a libertarian society within a current nation state.

Finally, there are other (possibly quasi-) monopolies (such as monopoly on violence, Taxi licenses ~ anti-Uber, Hotel Services ~ anti-AirBnB) that you cannot get rid of unless you get rid of the controlling entity.

Note the difference to e.g. communist societies where you can just start sharing everything (much like you might already be doing within your family).

<comment><USER27> I have heard of stories of people who move deep into the woods, disappearing from standard society, and actually successfully manage to live completely off the land. So, technically, this would certainly be possible.

Few people are willing to do pursue things on this level however. When more than one person gets involved, politics can easily enter the equation.

Personally, I find the libertarian philosophy a bit naive for that reason. The natural state of humanity is tribal in nature. "No rules" is a bit of a fantasy; eventually, _some_ foundation will have to be established. Inevitably, people will disagree on this foundation.

Technical achievements aside (the blockchain will live on), Bitcoin actually is a great example of how something with somewhat idealistic libertarian underpinnings ended up turning into the usual tribal politics in the end.

<comment><USER26> Moving into the woods is certainly a way but libertarians are big fans of the market and a far away single man show is not a market, so there is no division of labor and consequently no prosperity (relative to what is possible).

Well, all libertarianism is based on ownership and contract law (plus some other stuff like homesteading as initial means to acquire ownership). So rules there are, they are just not forced unto someone.

Consider the opposite - maybe you are in favor of Uber or abortion or against taxation. Yet somehow your state assumes that you implicitly agree to everything the state mandates, such as laws and sharing the fruits of your labor.

You can think of Libertarianism as a way to have many many states instead of just a single one the size of the US. In this way, you can choose with your feet what rules you accept because you have a choice. And you have this choice without travelling thousands of miles and leaving your family, friends and job behind.

You can avoid Donald and Hillary by moving a few miles, you can avoid paying taxes or your personal nemesis law (like abortion) because you have a _market of possible states_ (I'm simplifying here) and not just a single one.

Bitcoin is indeed a great example of Libertarianism (or rather the market) because if the BTC guys don't adapt to what people need, another crypto- currency will eventually take over. You now have a market of semi-anonymous currencies and that's not the problem but the solution to BTC's tribal politics.

<comment><USER27> There are many visions of "libertarian", and I do think that the decentralized version is more realistic than the anarcho-capitalist one. :)

The main problem I see with this vision is that, in order to achieve it, I feel that a large portion of humans would need to develop the ability to respectfully disagree with personal opinion differences, without resorting to conflict. This actually is difficult as it does not seem to be default human nature. Even Bitcoin showed this -- DDOS were reportedly used as a "weapon" against some of the forks.

I do agree that, whenever possible, it is a good idea to have some degree of state / municipal / etc. flexibility such that one can experiment with what works and what doesn't.

<comment><USER24> > _I feel that a large portion of humans would need to develop the ability to > respectfully disagree with personal opinion differences, without resorting > to conflict._

If we could do this, we wouldn't need libertarianism, or any other kind of -ism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is so crazy. Just out of curiosity, is there a list of places around the world which are claim-able yet still unclaimed?

<comment><USER29> The only other place, that is actually colonizable is Bir Tawil, but the land there is so terrible, but so terrible, that noone actually made a serious attempt (a bunch of people made bogus claims, for example one guy proclaimed himself king, just so his daughter could be a princess).

Even for desert standards, Bir Tawil is desolate, and it has no decent natural resources, so literally noone wants it.

<comment><USER30> Forgive me for only doing basic research into this, but couldn't one set up some solar panels for electricity, dig some shelter, and recover water from the atmosphere? Wouldn't that do a decent job of allowing at least some degree of livability there?

<comment><USER31> No, you wouldn't get a meaningful amount of water from the air (I think it is safe to assume the air is quite dry there). And you'd still need food, at least.

<comment><USER32> The amount you would need to reclaim is related to the efficiency at which you recycle the water you have. You would need to invent a real-life culture like the Fremen of Arrakis.

Of course, if you got efficient enough, you could simply buy water to be airdropped into a catch pond. Then you drain the pond and pipe the water into your recycling system. It would likely be cheaper than trying to dehumidify desert air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've been following this for a while now - I actually met this guy in a pub a few years ago, a friendly chap. While I don't subscribe to his ideology, I do wish him luck. As long as they are not harming anyone, I encourage people to push the limits of all sorts of established ideas, including big things like starting a country.

I'm still not sure - and nobody is I guess - if it's sincere, a PR stunt, or a scam, I guess it will take a while longer for us to find out. In the meantime, let's hope it's resolved in a friendly and peaceful manner and all the best to his new family (both literally and figuratively).

</comment><comment><USER34> They forgot the most important part, without which a country can't be created: the army that protects the borders

<comment><USER35> Lichtenstain, the Vatican and San Marino disagree. Unless you count in fervent catholic bodies as an army

<comment><USER36> San Marino has a military.

Lichtenstein and the Vatican have contracts with other nations, effectively "renting" their protection.

You don't need a standing army, but having military protection of some kind is vital to maintaining your sovereignty.

All that aside, the only real way to have a nation is to have other nations acknowledge its existence. Good luck claiming sovereignty when not a single member of the UN is willing to say you exist.

<comment><USER37> > the only real way to have a nation is to have other nations acknowledge its > existence

I always think of Taiwan / Republic of China.

While most countries don't officially acknowledge it (and, slightly amusingly, Taiwan doesn't officially acknowledge communist China), it is without a doubt its own country with its own military and democratic government, etc.

But yeah the only reason is that there is water between China and Taiwan and China never bothered to attack.

<comment><USER38> The onky reason Taiwan is there is that it has US support for it's existence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I for one don't see a point in these micro countries - they are philosophically inconsistent, nothing more than a make believe game for adults. What if I came to said Liberland and claimed one of the corners of the island for myself?

</comment><comment><USER40> > a land with no compulsory taxes, no gun control, with Bitcoins as currency.

There's a name for this: "wildlife". Humanity knows it very well. We escaped it as soon as possible.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is really interesting and reminds me of legal grounds for Lacota Republic in the middle of the US. Lacotas insist that white people did not fulfilled the contract that was with their forefathers, so Lacota current lands use legislation framework is void. However, Lacotas do not have enough nukes to enforce the consequences of white people misbehaviour, so the illegal use of their lands by the self-proclaimed "The United States" continues.

</comment><comment><USER42> This guy very much reminds me of Dave from the Republic of Dave in Fallout 3. A little quarky but he thinks he can do it. It's interesting to see if he can do this as it would set an interesting geopolitical precedent for the area.

</comment><comment><USER43> Related: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladonia_(micronation)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladonia_\(micronation\))

</comment><comment><USER44> Just applied for the citizen application form :)

[http://liberland.org/en/request/](http://liberland.org/en/request/)

</comment><comment><USER45> Let us not forget Ziqistan!

[http://www.zaqart.com/zaqistan/zaqistan.shtml](http://www.zaqart.com/zaqistan/zaqistan.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER46> "he can build a temporary settlement on houseboats on the Danube"

Reminds me of the movie "Crna Macka, Beli Macor (Black Cat, White Cat)"

</comment><comment><USER47> Obviously its not a real state because it doesn't have a `Monopoly on violence`.

<comment><USER48> Obviously, and non ironically, yes. Seeing that what makes a state a state, is the ability to keep others who want to run it/claim it for themselves, outside which takes (among other things) violence.

<comment><USER41> Yeah! Basically these days you need a nuke and to demonstrate that you are ready to use it.

<comment><USER49> Not necessarily a nuke, but you need an army or friends with armies otherwise someone else is going to march their army in and take your land.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How should I prepare for an interview? - <AUTHOR>

I was wondering how I should prepare for an interview for a technology company. They are a security research firm and they already have looked at my resume. I am already reading the companies website. What else should I do to prepare? <comment><USER2> You will probably have to be more specific about the role to get better feedback, but my general suggestions are:

1) Confirm the day before and get the names of everyone you're going to meet

2) Make sure you have all materials you're expected to bring, including several copies of your cv

3) Read the website or other materials to prepare specific questions about the business and prepare questions and ask those questions (they should mostly be related to your role, but a few general should be ok)

4) Arrive exactly 5 minutes before the start time

5) Look people directly in the eye at all times

6) Be yourself

7) Tell the truth, especially when you're tempted to bend it

8) Use language as if you already have the position like, 'I will report to ...', 'I will support ...'

9) Treat everyone like a VIP, even the FedEx guy

10) Smile

<comment><USER3> The parent comment covered it well, but just to make a point: the goal of preparing is to make sure the interview _process_ goes smoothly.

Assuming the interview is soon, there's only so much preparation you can do for technical questions in a short period of time. You can't be much more prepared for the technical questions than your current level of knowledge, so the preparation is more about making a good impression based on interpersonal factors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I recommend checking out the site of Ask the Headhunter: <http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/>

Specifically, start with this page on the "New Interview": <http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/basics5.htm>

The philosophy is very straightforward: show them you can do the job by doing the job.

</comment><comment><USER5> I find it really useful to re-read some reference documentation for any tools or languages I'll be expected to know, and to solve some simple practice problems (e.g. actually write some basic functions). The purpose isn't to memorize the documentation, but to refresh my memory so that I don't have to fish around for basic syntax or rules.

</comment><comment><USER6> Make sure you sleep well and eat well beforehand. If you are an gym rat like me, a workout is a good way to get the endorphins flowing. I think it's about getting your mind and body into a state where they can offer peak performance the next day.

</comment><comment><USER7> bring a copy of your resume and any supporting materials to the interview even if you know they've seen it. saves people from printing it out, and shows you're organized.

</comment><comment><USER8> The best thing you can do is just relax and be yourself. Seriously. If you are a good fit for the job, you'll be fine in the interview if you just act natural. If you aren't a good fit for the job, then I could give you 50 tips on how to micromanage the process and manipulate your way into it, but every day on the job will be extremely stressful and unpleasant. Not a life worth living.

<comment><USER8> Seriously, why downvote? If your attention is devoted to monitoring things like body language, handshake firmness, etc. then your working memory will not be operating at full capacity, and you're going to be less spontaneous with your code solutions as well as responses in general.</comment></comment>


Trio: The on-the-go dual and triple screen laptop monitor - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/747287659/trio-the-on-the-go-dual-and-triple-screen-laptop-monitor?ref=section-homepage-featured-project-list-recommendations <comment><USER2> This looks incredibly useful!

Ever since I started working with 2+ screens on desktops, I dread whenever I have to work on a laptop (and can't connect it to a monitor).

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have NO connection with the makers of this - I posted because it might be extremely useful for developers.

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems rather useful. Depending on the weight I might actually get this. Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Why I gave up on static types - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2010/12/why-i-gave-up-on-static-types.html

<comment><USER2> Context? The website contains no information about who this person is or what type of project he is working on.</comment>