MIT Gets $140M Pledge from Anonymous Donor - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/mit-gets-140-million-pledge-from-anonymous-donor-1496866275 <comment><USER3> It would be interesting to compare the utility of one large $100 million+ grant to an institution like MIT, Yale or Harvard that is already well- endowed, compared to a hundred different million dollar grants to institutions across the USA or the world, where the money might arguably be more effectively used or sorely needed.

The counterpoint would be that the money could support fundamental research that eventually results in a much larger payoff to the world at large, but I'm not convinced that this outweighs the benefits of funding hundreds, or even thousands of students/scientists in less prominent schools who might go on to make such discoveries themselves.

Of course, all this assumes that donor's primary aim is to make the largest possible impact, when in all likelihood it's motivated more by an affinity for the school, or in the case of other donors, prestige from having their name on the walls.

<comment><USER4> "I'm not convinced that this outweighs the benefits of funding hundreds, or even thousands of students/scientists in less prominent schools who might go on to make such discoveries themselves"

While it's plausible anyone can discover anything, the only rule of thumb about finding great research is that great researchers generally train great researchers - or, to put another way, it's likeliest to end up doing nobel price worthy research by being trained by a nobel price winner.

The other thing is bad schools do not turn magically into good schools by pooling money into them. Improving education requires human intervention by experts - experienced teachers and so on. Money helps, but if you are sitting on a 140 million dollars, you can't just donate it to some struggling place and imagine it will transform it to a better institution. Or, pick random ten laboratories that have done unremarkable research and imagine a grant of a 10 million dollars will improve the quality of their output.

I think the only rational choices to well spend such a sum of money is to support established high performers, or, to proactively invest the money. If proactive involvement is not what the donor wanted then I can't really fault his decision to go with MIT. Or, well, if we follow the silly "nobel price winners beget nobel price winners" rule of thumb and use nobel prices as metric of research quality which itself is also silly, there would have been other options: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_uni...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_by_university_affiliation)

<comment><USER5> Mark Zuckerberg generously gave 100M to improve the education system of Camden New Jersey. At the time the mayor was Stanford grad Cory Booker, now Senator, and future Presidential material. Camden was and still is a minority shithole of New Jersey. Neither Mark's generous gift nor Cory's public service had a lasting effect. Deeper structural problems. I do not know the answer.

<comment><USER6> Except the gift was nothing but funding the charter school grift (don't get me wrong, charter schools could work, and in some cases do work, but for the large part, in the US, the charter school movement has pretty much entirely been hijacked by union busters and people who want to profit off the privatization of education).

<comment><USER7> Exactly. There are plenty of laboratory schools attached to universities, where teaching research is done under the eyes of the public. Those are as a rule doing well but Zuckerberg _chose_ to boost unaccountable charter schools. Glad to see that it went as one would have predicted it to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Full text:

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Wednesday announced that it had received a $140 million pledge from a graduate of the school—with no name, and no strings attached.

An unrestricted gift of that size is rare in higher education, as donors often want a say in how their dollars are spent. Unrestricted donations can be used for things like facilities upkeep, as well as to pursue early-state scientific research.

In the past, MIT has put unrestricted funds toward online learning and Alzheimer's research, as well as scholarships.

MIT said in a news release Wednesday that it would "invest in daring, high- risk ideas; address some of the world's most urgent challenges; and sustain support for students, faculty, and the physical campus."

MIT is in the second year of the public phase of its $5 billion fundraising campaign, and has already brought in $3.4 billion. So far, roughly 20% of that is unrestricted.

"No one has ever made it through life without someone else's help. As a past recipient of MIT's generous financial aid, I benefited tremendously from the opportunity to pursue my MIT education and am extremely appreciative of all the ways that MIT has shaped me," the anonymous donor said in a statement shared by MIT. "I am blessed to be able to give back to the Institute so other students can experience what I did, and so that the Institute can continue to excel in groundbreaking achievements."

The largest gift to MIT was pledged in 2000, when International Data Group founder and chairman Patrick McGovern Jr. , and his wife Lore Harp McGovern, committed $350 million over 20 years for a brain research institute.

<comment><USER9> >pledge from a graduate of the school

That is the most important part. He is saying: use that money to help others like you helped me.

<comment><USER10> In that he wasn't really financially able to attend MIT as most are. I feel like he is saying, help those less fortunate.

<comment><USER11> > financially able to attend MIT as most are

In fact, the vast majority of MIT undergraduates receive financial aid. About a third of MIT undergraduates attend without paying tuition, and over half of undergraduates receive a need-based scholarship (i.e. they are not rich).

[http://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html](http://web.mit.edu/facts/tuition.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hey! Ya know what HN? It's fucking awesome that $140m was given to one of the finest institutions in the entire world, rather than pissed away like so many other fortunes. I'm sorry it didn't fit [insert pet issue that needs money]. More rich people should do this! And anonymously donated too! Feels good

<comment><USER13> I think it's definitely nice for philanthropists to give to institutions for higher education. But I also think it's valuable to critically evaluate how the money is spent because there's an opportunity cost to any expenditure.

Wouldn't it be nice if instead of being spent on a new academic facility, or administrators' salaries, that it was instead used to offset tuition or directly fund research?

<comment><USER14> Are you suggesting the donor should have specified how the money is spent? 80% of the money MIT has raised is restricted to specific uses, but the less sexy things like salaries and office supplies are still required for the organization to run.

<comment><USER15> I think the suggestion is that MIT has more than enough money (and access to money) and there are less well-funded institutions and causes where $140M might move the needle more significantly.

<comment><USER16> I'd be curious if one of the unspoken goals is to make people outraged enough by the donation to make donations to smaller institutions. Wishful thinking?

<comment><USER17> Outrage rarely matters.

Actually -- and I _really_ hesitate to mention this, but it seems sufficiently intellectually interesting -- has anyone noticed that after the last election cycle, outrage has ceased to matter altogether? United Airlines stock price is up 12% despite their behavior, for example.

I'm not sure outrage has ever mattered much, but internet outrage in particular has gone from "effective when focused" to "this is a normal day." The rise of justice-porn subreddits has fueled this obsession. Everyone has a grudge. In fact, they have multiple grudges categorized by computers and aimed at faceless, nameless ideas.

I'm reminded of 1984. It's so cliche, but remember the "daily hate"? When did we all start falling for this 24/7 outrage cycle?

It's made all the more dangerous by the fact that in nearly all of these cases, the outrage is deserved. In fact, that's what makes it work at all. Everyone's feelings _are_ valid, and the grudges _are_ justified. But what kind of world is it when your grudges are handed to you? Aren't grudges supposed to be personal? I'd rather not have them at all, but a personal grudge is at least better than being told what to think.

<comment><USER18> Ironically I think this comes from more awareness. I don't think people were aware of how many problems there were in the world. Now anyone with the internet can get informed on hundreds, most with no solution, a solution that is blocked from being implemented, or one so complex that no one can agree on said solution.

This article has a clear slant, but I think it has some serious merit for health, awareness, and activism. Excuse the absolutely horrid title as well.

[https://thecoffeelicious.com/how-to-stayoutraged-without- los...](https://thecoffeelicious.com/how-to-stayoutraged-without-losing-your- mind-fc0c41aa68f3)

<comment><USER19> That's not awareness - awareness, aka mindfulness, is quite a neutral state. I'd define it as recognising things for how they are.

What going on is more like the opposite - not accepting reality; instead trying to fit the facts into an inconsistent (and hence imaginary) worldview. This causes cognitive dissonance which leads to frustration. Outrage is one way people cope with that frustration.

<comment><USER18> 1\. I would be careful to paint with that broad of a brush.

2\. Awareness can most certainly lead directly to frustration.

Some of it could be that, but there are plenty of issues where they are mostly independent of worldview. The frustration comes from the solution that is not yet known or cannot be implemented. Have that on dozens of big issues and frustration is understandable.

<comment><USER19> If you're a Nihilist, no solutions are needed or even possible. That's just one obvious counter-example, but in general there is nothing inherently frustrating about any truth (or falsehood).

Frustration is "understandable" but that's because many people do have worldviews that don't match up with reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> ~1% of their 13 billion dollar endowment.

that's somehow both more and less significant than I had expected

<comment><USER21> Sounds like your expectation of the percentage (or of the total endowment) used to follow a bimodal distribution.

Or that you expected the 1% to be higher and the 13 billion to be lower, which is the same thing. (Or the reverse of this last thing.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> After I turned 50 the faculty and administration of MIT got real friendly about alumni legacy grants. Before then they barely gave you the time of day.

</comment><comment><USER22> There is this perception(not invalid) that more research money should go to the best schools because that would result in more impactful research. I, myself don't quite disagree with that.

But one of the claims for this argument that a huge donation suddenly doesn't turn a bad school into a good one is a strawman argument. Things don't have to be so extreme. There are plenty of middle tier schools specially state schools where amazing research is happening, and there are brilliant researchers who can also make use of that money having huge impact on the world. These schools already have very advanced infrastructure to utilize additional research money.

But as a graduate student in a state school, I might be biased.

<comment><USER23> I agree with you. It is natural to think that this is a simple problem - <USER2> money to the very best university and get the best research. Unfortunately, like many things, it's not quite that simple.

Is there any reason to think that research at MIT has been limited by lack of funding? That seems highly implausible to me. And if the answer is that MIT could hire additional researchers to do more research with that money, those researchers can do the same research with that money at many other schools.

It's not clear to me that giving the money to MIT will result in any more research, and a good chance that it will result in less, because researchers at other universities currently are limited by financial constraints.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm sorry but I can't help but be reminded of this Curb Your Enthusiasm episode [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049250/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049250/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Carnegie at least funded libraries across the country, from New York City to Podunk, USA.

<comment><USER26> How did you know that the donor didn't do the same?

<comment><USER25> As far as I can tell there is no wave of new libraries that would suggest such an occurrence. Perhaps you want to point out some evidence I've missed?

Finally, I'll note that your post is a mis-inference of the point of my own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That guy with 400 million in bitcoin?

<comment><USER17> Who has 148,000 BTC? Besides the FBI?

<comment><USER28> The Winklevoss twins. And, of course, the person or group known as Satoshi Nakamoto.

<comment><USER29> Satoshi is now worth, what, just under $3 billion. Insanity!

<comment><USER30> Unless he/she lost the keys to those wallets which is always a hilarious recurring story.

I really wonder how many BTC are permanently tied into wallets that the owners have lost the keys to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Probably Drew Houston of Dropbox ;)

<comment><USER32> I had the same thought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Does anyone have an account I could use to read this? Wall Street Journal are seemingly trying to limit their audience by shrinking their online reach by charging people to read their content.

I would much rather them show me some adverts at the side than have to pay to read one article by them every month or so.

<comment><USER34> [http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/mit...](http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/mit- gets-140-million-pledge-from-anonymous-donor-1496866275)

Credit: a HN news poster from a few months noticed that by prefixing: [http://facebook.com/l.php?u=](http://facebook.com/l.php?u=) You can avoid the paywall

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This should be imitated all around the globe, in this way more research, new jobs and a better society is possible. The National University of Engineering (UNI) needs this such funds. For sure this money will return more Zuckerbergs, Gates, Khan, Bose, OCW, EDX... to the world.

</comment><comment><USER36> Don't tell anyone but I'm pretty certain the donation was from Ted Danson.

</comment><comment><USER37> They should instead give that money to the schools and organizations that need it.

Nothing against MIT, but most kids don't go to MIT. They have a shitload of money. Give it to a community college if you want more impact.

<comment><USER38> I'm going to have to disagree here - while this donation may be less impactful to MIT than it would have been to XYZ Community College, the graduates and research of MIT will probably have a far larger impact on the world than those of XYZ. I'd expect a greater benefit from pushing the bleeding edge just that little bit farther, if that makes any sense.

<comment><USER39> "XYZ Community College"

Another false dilemma between MIT and XYZ Community College. There's all sorts of Universities and probably some community colleges with teams that are doing great work with way, way less than _billions_ in funding. There's chances for great impact if they likewise get the piles of money MIT has been using to do great impact on top of brand name and connections. It will take time for the smaller players to develop the latter but they can use the former immediately.

<comment><USER37> It's just a suggestion. It very well could be that giving money to MIT is the best thing to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> m-p-3 If you want to bypass the paywall, use this bookmarklet

      javascript:window.location="https://m.facebook.com/l.php?u="+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

<comment><USER40> Same paywall for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Wouldn't it be funny if it's Dolph Lundgren.

</comment><comment><USER42> Yay, now all students enrolled go for free! sike

</comment><comment><USER43> Read without a subscription [https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/mit- gets-140-million-pledge...](https://www.fullwsj.com/articles/mit- gets-140-million-pledge-from-anonymous-donor-1496866275)

</comment><comment><USER39> Great, an organization that's rich enough to waste money on piles of BS research and toys gets a pledge of money instead of a cash-strapped one with bright people that have lots of potential they can't act on.

<comment><USER44> There are plenty of people with the money who don't donate it at all. What's the use of this?

<comment><USER39> I agree. It's why my original comment implied they should donate it to people with potential to do good to great things with it that aren't receiving many donations because they're not MIT or something. The MIT that already has over _$10 billion_ endowment.

[http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2016/09/12/mits-13-2b...](http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2016/09/12/mits-13-2b-endowment- generated-small-investment.html)

So, lets give MIT more money they don't need while smart people everywhere else continue to get anywhere from less to near nothing depending on institution or area.</comment></comment></comment>


Robot will beam live Moon pictures to Oculus users - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29704953 <comment><USER2> I work on that robot. There has never been a serious attempt to use an oculus to control it. Also, Daniel did not build any part of that robot and is trying to take credit for other people's work. The BBC refuses to contact the Robotics Institute at CMU or Astrobotic to verify any details in the story.

<comment><USER3> Will the feeds be available to consume with a Google Cardboard?

<comment><USER2> Calculate the bandwidth required to send two high definition streams from the moon. Add the bandwidth required for telemetry from the rover and lander. See what communication speeds are available to and from the moon.

Also, try using an oculus with seconds of latency and see how pleasant it is.

The real point is that Daniel Shafrir borrowed that robot and a video camera and proceeded to take credit for years of work by a team of students and staff at CMU and somehow got a BBC reporter to publish his claims without verifying any information.

<comment><USER4> That seems perilously close to academic fraud, although there's also the possibility that an ignorant reporter mistook speculative commentary for specific intentions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Presumably they've got a 360º camera module that'll be proxied through an Earth-local server, rather than actually sending movement controls to a stereo camera on the lander? If nothing else the multi-second latency would be nauseating.

<comment><USER6> I've thought about this a bit, but how can you achieve 360° stereo? If you have two 360° cameras side by side, as soon as you look 90° L/R, you no longer have depth and one eye would just see the side of the other camera. If you just have one 360° camera, you don't have any depth.

<comment><USER7> You could build a 360 degree 3D camera that works for any viewing configuration, but it would involve nontrivial image processing and wouldn't be totally free from small visual glitches/artifacts in some cases.

1\. Build an array of a few (let's say 8 or so) cameras pointing outward from the center.

2\. Use a stereo matching algorithm to extract a depth map from the perspective of each camera. Keeping track of the position and orientation of each camera in 3D space, these depths become a point cloud associated with each camera.

3\. Determine the 3D location and orientation of each "eye" you want to render, then render all point clouds in 3D space to reconstruct a "reprojected" version of the scene from any desired viewpoint. Of course, the farther the eyes deviate from actual camera locations the more stretched/warped the image will appear, but that won't matter much as long as you keep the eye coordinates within the physical space occupied by the camera.

Honestly I'd be kind of disappointed if CMU doesn't actually try this. It's disappointing to think that perhaps all this buzz about "hackathons" (as the article mentions) is encouraging -- even at major research universities -- quickly slapping together components to make something kind of work, as opposed to fundamental algorithm development and proper engineering solutions.

<comment><USER8> If you pair it with a laser scanner (which won't have any atmospheric interference to deal with on the moon!) you can get a near-perfect depth map without needing to do stereo correspondence (whose accuracy can be thrown off if there are identical features in nearby points - insert joke about all moon rocks looking the same). You could even throw a still DSLR with a telephoto lens on a perfectly calibrated, positionable mount, aim it at rocks in sequence, and get high-resolution textures. For bonus accuracy, have it so that the DSLR mount and the laser-scanner mount can swap positions, so you're getting the textures from the _exact_ same position as the scanner. Send the depth map and textures back to Earth in non-real-time. Program the robot to autonomously explore regions where the depth map hasn't covered. Then on the client side, just feed those textures into a gaming engine or render farm. Bam. _That_ would be a scalable Moon Explorer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It looks like getting real-time HD video from the Moon may be more in reach than one might think using laser-based communication technology: [http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/laser- comm.ht...](http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/laser-comm.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> We really need voxel cameras. I think the rift will act as a forcing function for their developent.

</comment><comment><USER11> An occulus is just a dual display device (ie 2 cameras video feeds need to be transmitted)

There is no "beam" or magic. Its 2 cameras, 2 video feeds. That's great and exciting if as general public, we have access to those video feeds.

<comment><USER4> 'Beam' is a common synonym for 'transmit'.

<comment><USER11> of course it is else it wouldn't make sense now would it. Synonyms don't have the same connotations.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Noah Carter Jr. – Barbershop (Demo for Simple Websites) - <AUTHOR> https://argonproject.com/ <comment><USER2> This is a nice project and the design is very clean. The back end feels very programmer-oriented though with the camelcase key-value pairs and raw HTML to edit. You might consider making a few tweaks to make it more approachable to non-technical business owners if that's the target market.

</comment><comment><USER3> Google spreadsheets = free + your soul

Static front-end? = almost free on S3

$5 seems like a lot for a one page with barely any information. You can get more for about the same money with shared hosting (yes I know, not great).

But maybe this appeals to small business that are still working on their main site and need a landing page?

<comment><USER4> Hi!

Thank you for taking the time to comment! You make good points!

Our website are pretty clever, enough to cost $5 - we think.

Think of us as Linktree but we DON'T keep any information about you. We just host this app that caches Spreadsheet data and adds form entries to it too.

Also, these websites are NOT static. If you update the spreadsheet, they update.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Using Tor implies guilt? - <AUTHOR> A relative of mine, I believe, is being made the scapegoat and criminally charged for modifying files on his former employer's server.  SSH keys were shared by dozens of people.<p>One of the things mentioned in the charges is the fact that his home computer shows he connected to Tor multiple times.  Can anyone point to any online resources that address this as legal precedent or not? <comment><USER2> This is a really good time for him to shut up and lawyer up.

The duty of the prosecution is to prove their case in court. The fact that they have seized his computer(s) and carried out forensics already, means they are looking hard for a conviction. If they freak him out with this sort of circumstantial evidence, he will say something, and it's never a good thing.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE)

Legal precedent depends on jurisdiction and you haven't shared that. Connecting to Tor is a 'fact'. What value that fact has is up to the prosecution to prove. Relevancy is key. Best to wait and see what they alleged happened and then challenge just those set of facts.

If he says nothing, they have a lot to prove. In many places in the US, they will come in with multiple felonies then accept all sorts of plea bargains as it drags on and on and on, like a bad used sales car man.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree. Thanks for your help!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If the offending IP was a tor exit node, and dude was using tor at home during the same time period, that would almost certainly be appropriately admitted as circumstantial evidence.

He would of course be permitted to make an argument as to why that circumstantial evidence is weak and should not be given any weight.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq- abuse.html.en#WhatAboutC...](https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq- abuse.html.en#WhatAboutCriminals)</comment>


Firefighters Fighting Fires and Now Cell Towers (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://mdsafetech.org/2019/09/28/firefighters-fighting-fires-and-now-cell-towers/ <comment><AUTHOR> sharing this because I thought it was very interesting that firefighters in CA affected the legislation to prevent cell towers from being installed on fire department facilities.

>> (3) The small cell is not located on a fire department facility. [0]

[0] [https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml...](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB649)</comment>


Lesser known cool features of HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/html5-whats-new/template/index.html <comment><USER2> If that sort of page is cool, please give me back an HTML4 page I can just browse through without wasting several minutes waiting for the content to appear.

<comment><USER3> This should bypass it. On the page, open up the console (right-click Inspect Element and go to Console tab) and type these 2 lines to remove 'to-build' class. Then you can read through the slides without having to wait.

      j = document.getElementsByClassName('to-build');
      for (k=0; k<6; k++) { for (i=0; i<j.length; i++ ) { j[i].className = j[i].className.replace(/\bto-build\b/,'');  } }

PS I haven't done too much Javascript and someone else can probably write a shorter version, and I'm also not sure why looping just once isn't working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My ears!

I know it's not the point but his audio synthesis sounds terrible, and that makes me feel like nit-picking:

\- 8-bits at 20 kHz really?

\- He's actually specifying 20480 Hz in the code, so it's not in tune

\- He's using the range 255, but it's 8 bits _signed_ so it should be 127, so he's getting lots of distortion.

His wav header should be:

       0x44,0xAC,0,0,       // 44,100 samples per second
       0x88,0x58,0x01,0,    // byte rate: two bytes per sample
       2, 0,                // aligned on every two bytes
       16, 0,               // 16 bits per sample

and then in the synthesis:

      var samplespercycle = 44100 / frequency;
      var samples = new Uint16Array(44100 * duration);
      var da = 2 * Math.PI / samplespercycle;
      for(var i = 0, a = 0; i < samples.length; i++, a += da) {
        samples[i] = Math.floor(Math.sin(a) * 32768);
      }

</comment><comment><USER5> Got some error messages, then a stalled page. If this is the future of the web, we are doomed.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't open in IE9. Worked in Chrome though.

<comment><USER7> Not my Chrome, got half way through it, stalled.

Also realised that some pages which looked blank loaded after about 2 mins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm just going to take this opportunity to shake my fist at Internet Explorer, because much of this stuff is useless on production websites (some things are usable with Javascript hacks).

<comment><USER9> "HTML 5" features like

        <input type="text" x-webkit-speech>

surely won't work.

<comment><USER10> Microsoft had their Windows SpeechAPI available in IE, like what, 5.0?

        var a = new ActiveXObject("SAPI.SpVoice");

It can do TTS and Voice Recognition, _locally_

And don't forget MIDI and Drect3D support was introduced in IE4. Before SVG, there was a trend of VRML in the industry and VML was added to IE.

And don't forget, the very first AJAX as made possible by the IE xmlhttp object.

TIME+dHTML was cool before Flash, even before these Web2.0 and HTML5 cool kids start yammering around.

And then Microsoft killed these features with their Silverlight.

<comment><USER9> The emphasis was in _webkit_.

<comment><USER11> Features that haven't been standardized are put in their own namespaces. For example, webkit-* and mozilla-* had conflicting implementations of CSS gradients for a while. After the standard was ratified, the prefix was removed. Safari still supported the old webkit-* syntax, and Firefox still didn't, just like before, but new pages could use the functionality without the prefix and it would work in both browsers.

Also, if webkit has settings or features that are specific to the library used, it makes sense to put those in a different namespace as well, to avoid pollution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This presentation is pretty evil (or maybe incompetent?). It mixes up proposed standard features that are broadly supported, proposed standard features that are not well supported, and proprietary WebKit extensions that have no chance of being standardized as they are and presents it all as "HTML5". It also has code snippets that try to look like they'll work cross-browser but are actually broken in non-WebKit browsers due to relying on some of those extensions...

<comment><USER13> Google is pulling a Microsoft here. Back in the day, there was a lot of really neat stuff you could do only in IE. Like filters in CSS, etc. The problem was that you could only do it in IE.

Unless you're doing an internal facing site and restricting usage to Chrome, be careful. Unfortunate. Most of the stuff is pretty neat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Element.classList is a bit of an odd addition. No doubt it'll be useful, but wouldn't something more generic have served us better? Class isn't the only attribute that takes space-delimited values. (Or is there also Element.relList?)

<comment><USER12> To a first approximation, no one uses 'rel', much less does anything with it dynamically. The case of 'class' is somewhat different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Too slow. Didn't read.

<comment><USER16> Same here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Page appears totally blank in Mobile Safari.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, it must have been targeted at Chrome. I got the same blank page in Safari 5.0.5, and an error dialog in Firefox 5.

 _Edit_ : It's meant for Chrome 14.

<comment><USER18> My experience was: worked fine in Firefox 6, crashed on today's Chromium 14 nightly, worked with ridiculous occasional lag on Chromium 14 dev.

Obviously, more of the feature demos worked in Chromium than in Firefox, but the presentation experience was smoother on Firefox.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I tried the link on a Mac using OS X 10.6.8 with Firefox 5.0.1 (latest) and I get this quasi-popup error

"[https://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/html5-whats- new/slide...](https://html5-demos.appspot.com/static/html5-whats- new/slides.js) (line 480) : slide.dataset is undefined"

<comment><USER20> It's not just a version problem; I'm on the Firefox 8.0a1 nightly, and I got the same error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A lot of these examples are not working for me (I'm running Google Chrome 12.0.742.112), especially the Audio example which I really wanted to use. I'm really excited about the features this presents, I just wish they worked on my browser.

</comment><comment><USER22> I clicked the "speech input" element on the webpage and said "this is cool" and... the element showed "this is cool". It just works, no configuration or anything. This is so cool.

</comment><comment><USER23> Anyone got a transcript so I can read it at normal human speed?

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm using an iPad. I see nothing.

<comment><USER24> Me neither. Just the background pattern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> About half the demos worked for me. I'm running Chrome for Mac, with the Developer Channel. Will Canary Build (only available on Windows) run them all?

<comment><USER14> I haven't tried it, but Canary is available for Mac:

Announcement: [http://blog.chromium.org/2011/05/adding-more-yellow-to- mac-c...](http://blog.chromium.org/2011/05/adding-more-yellow-to-mac-color- scheme.html) Download: <http://tools.google.com/dlpage/chromesxs>

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Chrome caps sampling at 60fps (no big, your monitor is ~60Hz)

No. My monitor here works up to 85 hz, a lot of LCD screen out there are capped at 75 hz. By limiting the framerate to 60 hz on a 75 hz screen you'll force it to look inferior to 60 fps because of duplicated frames (20% of them). It may actually matter in a game.

</comment><comment><USER27> I spotted a few typos, then came across the Spell Check API! Either way, I learnt a few new things, so I'm happy!

</comment><comment><USER28> You all are bums. There are some excellent features to be up and coming. The point is not that some features do or don't work in some other browser. The point is you can point your users to an free, cross platform app they can download that runs you web-app with native implementations.

X.platform > X.browser

</comment><comment><USER29> Is it really HTML5 if it requires javascript? I saw more with no javascript than with javascript.

<comment><USER12> In Google-speak, "HTML5" means "anything we implement in Chrome, even if it will never actually get standardized".

</comment></comment><comment><USER30>
        <body style="display: none">

I see nothing... as expected, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER31> this is kind of bad because it mostly uses webkit specific tags, so thatll only work on webkit, even if other browsers would support the tag too

<comment><USER32> It uses webkit tags because they aren't standardized yet (or implemented in standard form).

This slidedeck is intended as a supplement to the html5rocks demos. Html5rocks has stable HTML5 code, whereas this one has a lot of experimental stuff that isn't quite ready for real use yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The video and audio recording APIs look cool. Though what people will end up using them for them will probably be dreadful.

</comment><comment><USER34> Couldn't get it to work in Chrome, Firefox, or IE

</comment><comment><USER35> Press F11 to to better appearance.

</comment><comment><USER36> Blank in safari, stops at slide 2 in chrome 12 and firefox 5... Safe to say that these features are not worth exploring yet.</comment>


Making Adjustments in the Search for the Perfect News Feed - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/25/technology/personaltech/making-adjustments-in-the-search-for-the-perfect-news-feed.html

<comment><AUTHOR> > _" it's easy to imagine that Twitter could tinker with inserting tweets that > link to a major story that might be unfolding, tweets that are relevant > based on whom you follow, or even tweets based on a user's location. And > would that be such a bad thing?"_

Yes.

> _" Information delivery in the online age is still evolving, and the only > sure bet is that no one will ever agree on what makes the perfect feed._"

Are the impending Twitter changes intended to recruit Facebook users? It would be helpful to define the target audience which would be attracted to Twitter by the proposed changes.</comment>


Platform Control - <AUTHOR> http://www.markbernstein.org/Apr10/PlatformControl.html <comment><USER2> Had it not been for all the work done before on freeBSD or the mach kernel design, if the industry needed to rely on the heavy hand of Patent hounds and closed system advocates, the reincarnation of Apple would not be possible. Indeed, Google its current chief rival, could not scale to what is today, if the reliance on open technologies was not to be found.

Apple is playing a delicate balance between its business interests and the support of the industry as a whole, it releases code to the benefit of the public, I am of the personal opinion that it is not enough.

Like Microsoft before it, we know what the pursuit of the ever higher balance sheet, control of market, can do to innovation and technologies. I think everybody hopes that Apple will not go to that extreme, but the lawsuit against HTC, and the extreme paranoid secrecy in which apple conducts itself gives pause, and make people rightly suspicious.

Of course, in the issue of Flash, it seems fairly clear, proprietary technology company can block another proprietary technology. But the language used in the 3.3.1 is so broad it engulfs other possibilities as well, it is the future of other development platforms that is of concern, not just flash.

</comment><comment><USER3> John Gruber clearly has some kind of ego-search thing that tells him about every article that mentions his name or links to him.

Just because he then links back to every fluff article that agrees with him doesn't mean we need to.</comment>


Why You Should Believe Your Friends' Claims About Food Allergies - <AUTHOR> https://www.countbayesie.com/blog/2016/1/22/why-you-should-believe-your-friends-claims-about-food-allergies <comment><USER2> Personally I believe my friends' claims about food allergies because I'm not a jerk.</comment>


Elvie – The world's first silent, wearable breast pump - <AUTHOR> https://www.elvie.com/shop/elvie-pump <comment> Fire-Dragon-DoL Can you use it while asleep? There is one breastpump out there that claim it can be worn like a bra and you can pump while sleeping (so, laying on bed). That gives a much bigger advantage.

Also, what's the quality of the pumping? Is it hospital grade?

Price range?

</comment><comment><USER2> This strikes me as one of those "Ah-hah" projects, why didn't someone do this sooner. Breast pumps were ripe for disruption. One thing I don't see is how cleanable it is/whats the cleaning process. IMHO, that's one of the biggest headaches for today's breast pumps.

<comment><AUTHOR> All of the parts are very easy to clean. We've been trialling with dozens of breastfeeding moms and I don't believe this has come up as a concern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We've removed "Show HN" from the title because the product isn't ready for users to try out yet.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Sorry about that</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can we expect users to create these passwords? - <AUTHOR> Password requirements for a government website:

  Must be changed every 180 days
  May be changed only once per day
  Must contain a minimum of 8, and maximum of 20 characters
  Must contain at least one uppercase and one lowercase letter
  Must contain at least one number
  Must contain at least one special character
  Must be different from the last six passwords
  Cannot contain the User ID
  Cannot contain any commonly used words, and only two letters may be used in a row, for example: Hr1hi2Hi$
  Cannot contain any of the following special characters:
     Question mark (?),
     less than (<),
     greater than (>),
     left bracket ((),
     right bracket ()),
     apostrophe ('),
     quotation marks ("),
     forward slash (/),
     backslash (\),
     and ampersand (&)
 You also cannot CTRL-V (paste) into the password field.
How did it get like this? How do we fix it? <comment><USER2> > How did it get like this?

Too many users using weak passwords, too many password breaches, too many users reusing the same password everywhere, too few users using password managers.

> How do we fix it?

For existing sites, and govt. esp., it is unlikely you'll be able to fix anything.

> You also cannot CTRL-V (paste) into the password field.

1) Use Firefox 2) Go to about:config 3) Turn off (set to false) the option named dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled

No site can block your using paste in a password field again.

</comment><comment><USER3> It got like this because a premature spec became a government department standard and then a widely used government convention and finally an ISO standard. The guy who wrote the standard these stupid conventions are based upon considers it a complete mistake. Part of the reason this really bad idea was acceptable at the time is because many government software systems were old and had limitations on storing large passwords (yes, some systems store literal passwords instead of an equivalent hash).

A better alternative is a natural language sentence containing a minimum of 64 characters and no sequence of identical characters greater than 2 that is hashed to a 256 character hash.

The military solution to get away from that stupidity is use of CAC, which rolled out about 15 years ago, and is now universal across the military.

EDIT:

It is a NIST standard and not an ISO standard

* [https://www.cleartechgroup.com/why-do-passwords-have-to-be-s...](https://www.cleartechgroup.com/why-do-passwords-have-to-be-so-complicated/)

<comment><USER4> No.

It is NOT really-really a NIST "standard", as a matter of fact the mentioned NIST documents linked to in the article make a completely different set of suggestions fron what the OP listed:

[https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html](https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html)

and in any case they are guidelines that only apply to some government infrastructures and actually sport:

>These guidelines provide technical requirements for federal agencies implementing digital identity services and are not intended to constrain the development or use of standards outside of this purpose.

The relevant section is 5.1.1, apparently the NIST calls passwords "Memorized Secrets"

Here is the older version (now superseded by the above):

[https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-63/2/archiv...](https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/sp/800-63/2/archive/2013-08-29)

[https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.S...](https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-63-2.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Of particular note: the current NIST standard _actively recommends against every single one_ of the requirements listed in the OP, with the exception of username derivatives and previous passwords.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is no good reason to limit passwords to 20 characters. If a site requires a limit so a user doesn't try to use the entirety of _Don Quixote_ as a password, it should still allow enough characters for a reasonably long passphrase, which _should_ then be hashed.

<comment><USER2> An arbitrary, short, upper limit is also an externally detectable code smell of a site that potentially stores passwords in plain text.

If the passwords were salted and hashed (preferably with a KDF) then the output of the salt and hash stage would be a fixed length value, independent of password input size, making external, small, limits of maximum length unnecessary.

Instead, a statement of "maximum of X" where X is small like 16 or 20 or some other number implies that the storage for the password is a char(16) or char(20) column. Which also implies plain text storage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very few people actually understand and can explain security, for everyone else it seems to be a monkey-see-monkey-do situation. In this case they probably had an intern spend a week coping password policies off of other web sites then they just took one of everything.

But in reality longer free-form passwords will trump crazy rule sets like this, especially in combination with 2FA like Yubikey or TOTP (Google Auth).

I really wish I knew who was responsible for the idea of blocking cut and paste and how it got so popular. My mortgage company blocks paste on their online payment forms - I think they are hoping people will mistype the amount and they will be able to charge their fat $200 late fee. Luckily there is a great browser extension called Don't Fuck With Paste that keeps sites from doing stuff like this, everyone should have a copy IMO.

</comment><comment><USER8> My favorite one to hate the most is chase.com.

\- Must include at least one of these special characters: ! # $ % + / = @ ~.

\- Can't include any other special characters (&, <, *, etc.).

That's bad enough. But the worst requirement I've seen anywhere:

\- Can't include more than 2 identical letters or numbers (aaa, 111, etc.), and can't include more than 2 consecutive letters or numbers (123, abc, etc.).

In fact a!1a$%+/a is invalid because there are three a's. Try coming up with a passphrase of 32 characters (the max allowed) where a letter of the alphabet isn't used three or more times. I couldn't do it. My password manager couldn't do it. I had to go fully random and try several times to make it work.

Egregious.

</comment><comment><USER9> Blocking these: ?, <, >,(, ), ',", /,\,& probably came from a fear of SQL injection.

<comment><USER2> Arbitrary limitations on characters, esp. on the set of punctuation style characters like the above, is an externally visible code smell of a site using plaintext storage of passwords.

If the passwords were properly salted and hashed (preferably with a KDF) then the output when shown to humans would normally be a hex encoded string. With only the characters [0-9a-f] appearing in the hex encoded string, there is zero risk of SQL injection, so there would be no need to restrict the users from these characters.

Restricting the characters implies that some portion of the system handling the passwords will see the raw input from the user and might break should those characters appear. But a properly hashed password up front would insulate those systems from the users input. So a character restriction implies a lack of proper password hashing, and a lack of hashing implies a high probability of plaintext storage of those same passwords.</comment></comment>


Ubuntu 20.04 is first LTS release in two years - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/23/canonical_releases_ubuntu_2004_claims/ <comment><USER2> How is that surprising? Ubuntu LTS is released with a two-year frequency, _by design_. (Meanwhile there have been point updates to the previous supported LTSes, 18.04 is on 18.04.4 now; and the twice-a-year "normal" releases have been released as well)

<comment><AUTHOR> It isn't surprising. It is just pointing out the event.

<comment><USER2> Ok. I have read "first X in two years" as "we would have expected one earlier", but perhaps I'm reading too much into it.</comment></comment></comment>


Docker Service Discovery Using Etcd and Haproxy - <AUTHOR> http://jasonwilder.com/blog/2014/07/15/docker-service-discovery/

<comment><USER2> Really neat! There's not enough posts going into this depth of configuring Docker contains for a HA setup.</comment>


Ask HN: Passive income ideas? - <AUTHOR> I can code well and I have 1-2 hours daily that I can spend on any project/activity that will, after some work, generate $1000/per month net in passive income. I have kept the number at 1000 as my hours to spend are limited. Change the number if you think I can have a bigger passive income with the amount of time I am have. I would like to hear ideas from the community, specially from folks who have done this in the past or are doing this currently. Please give concrete actionable ideas.<p>EDIT: I am willing to learn anything. <comment><USER3> Some options:

1) Do you have freelancing or other experience which has exposed you to multiple people with similar problems? For example, have you implemented the same "$()#% authentication system for a web application 20 times? Package up that one little piece of the puzzle into a scalable way to teach people to do it without needing to have you or someone similarly skilled on their team. Common form factors include ebooks. Sell the ebook. If you want to sell lots of the ebook, start by offering some free incentive to get people to trade you their email address, then send them email about $TOPIC for a while to make them trust you as an authority on it, then ask them to buy your thing. (Note: You don't have to be the world's leading expert on building authentication systems. You've just taken somebody's shilling to do it twenty times, which means that it is likely much, much cheaper for somebody to buy your thing and hand it to his junior developer than it is to pay a similarly-experienced engineer to do that part of the system.)

2) Failing that, talk to businesses. I could give you a vague fact pattern to ask about (a problem which is amenable to a solution with code) but people seem to get hung up on that so I'll give you something really specific: you are looking for a MS Excel spreadsheet which has ever been mailed by Bob to Cindy, had Cindy edit it, and mail it back to Bob. _Every time this happens a SaaS app gets its wings_. Now go out and find, in the actual physical world, ten firms which have that same darn spreadsheet. Offer to build them a software system which solves the business problem which that spreadsheet represents. Ask if they would pay (pick a number based on how big the firm is) $50 to $250 a month for it. If yes, ask them to commit to buying it when it is ready. If you get 5 commits, build it, sell to them (n.b. you'll lose some commits here), and then start trying to sell it in more scalable Internet-y ways.

3) Failing that, Bingo Card Creator, an app which does _everything_ wrong in terms of business model and market selection, sold ~$1k a month something like 6 months after launch just because I got halfway decent at organic SEO. If you're willing to get good at one generalizable acquisition strategy (SEO, Facebook ads, AdWords, etc etc), with that wind behind you even turkeys can fly. (It often turns out that there are more lucrative options than pushing turkeys around.)

4) Find or create one proprietary data source which is not currently exposed to Google which answers a question that demonstrates commercial intent. Expose that proprietary data source to Google. The federal government has approximately 100,000 CSV files of interesting data which are not helpful to someone asking questions like (not a good example site, but a great example of there-is-an-answer-to-this-buried-in-a-free-CSV) "What is the median salary of mid-career dentists in Topeka, Kansas?"

How you monetize a site like that depends on the specifics of the niche and how savvy you are about it. Lead generation is very lucrative, if the question you're answering tends to suggest near-term commercial intent in something with a liquid market. If you want to make a _lot_ less money in a braindead simple fashion, just slap adsense on it.

Also, I think I alluded to this above, but anybody capable of executing on _any_ of these has ipso facto developed skills which can be employed by Real Companies with Real Budgets to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in marginal revenue. I know you said you want passive options but more active options, like selling consulting, are things that might well fit where you are in life a few years down the road.

<comment><USER4> It's worth noting that Bingo Card Creator is very amenable to organic SEO. Not only that, but the process of SEO actually expands the product offering at the same time. That's the beauty of it. Creating a new bingo card is as simple as pasting a bunch of related words into a form and maybe a description paragraph, but now you have a new page full of words (hello Google) and you've increased the real value of the product to some customers and the perceived value to many more.

I think it would be challenging to duplicate Patrick's extremely low-cost and synergistic SEO strategy with a SAAS offering that was not so text-centric.

<comment><USER5> User generated content is one way to grow content footprint at scale, you just have to invest in seed content and then moderation. My site (also in education space) [http://www.TestDesigner.com](http://www.TestDesigner.com) has about 150K pages indexed in Google with 90% of the content coming from users.

SEO is not just about content though. Huge part of Patrick's success comes from link building via his very popular blog and his personal brand, this is the part that I think is harder to replicate.

<comment><USER4> I like your site. Can we talk offline? You don't have an email address in your profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you have 1 - 2 hours per day and you're willing to learn anything, learn to write and build an audience.

An audience is a more valuable asset than a product. Once you have an audience you can launch anything you want.

<comment><USER7> totally agree with this. learning how to market is underrated big time. i'm taking this route now by writing first, building an audience and then see how i can launch things later on

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate to be the cynic (lies), but there's no such thing as a "passive income". The moment you put your service online you'll have active maintenance and support, even if you don't charge for it.

The other problem is that if you solve a problem well, it's actually extremely hard to avoid the business scaling. Once the revenue goes past 1k/month, it'll carry on going, and few people can bring themselves to remove purchase links.

I know that's essentially what you're asking, but my answer would be no, it's unlikely that you can find a model that fits exactly the criteria you have.

I notice many people posting ideas, rather than low-maintenance ideas.

<comment><USER9> Totally agree - in my experience, passive income is anything _but_ passive. It's more involved than most 'real jobs' I've worked.

Have you tried negotiating tax forms, outsourcing (ha) customer support, maintaining a partially hacked-together codebase, or even having legal documents written that cost an entire month's salary?

There are a great many unsexy things that need doing when you run your own business, which regular jobs shield you from (my next 8 weeks' task list is currently averaging 300 items) - that's the trade-off. And then there's the 12-hour days you'll put in for months, while setting it up...

PS: it's _so_ worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I made a lot of passive income by coding trading bots for bitcoin.

Its a steep learning curve but if you are willing to learn, it can be very profitable.

Like you, I can code confidently so during my morning commute I would read books about trading and economics. In the evening I would play with bits of code interfacing with broker API's. Within 3 months I had a working bot that automatically traded away as I slept and went about my day job (passive enough for you?).

Fast forward 6 months with a couple of hours coding a week refining my algorithms, my bots earned me more than double what I made in my day job that whole year.

<comment><USER11> What did your bitcoin bots trade?

<comment><USER12> Bitcoin and another currency (presumably dollars, as BTCUSD has the highest liquidity). Buy when bitcoin exchange rate is low'ish, sell when it's high'ish, reap the margin.

<comment><USER10> Yes thats correct. And yes, in a sentence you've described a simple but profitable strategy, one of many :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Here is a problem that I would pay a subscription for a great solution to: Cron as a service.

Sometimes when you set up a simple codestack on Heroku or Parse or similar, it would be great to be able to specify a web hook that should be called repeatedly just to run maintenance code, summarize scores, clean up logs etc. If you have root access you can set up cron but this is not always the case, and I think it would be possible to build a SaaS that people feel is easier to use and more flexible than cron. I would easily pay a few dollars a month for a simple reliable cron service. Reliability is key, your service needs to never ever fail.

<comment><USER8> > Reliability is key, your service needs to never ever fail.

Then that sounds like it need a serious full time commitment. The OP seems to be looking for a specific category of ideas that require minimal maintenance, rather than any ideas.

<comment><USER14> 100% uptime is impossible. Remember you can get 99% uptime (2 nines) if you're down for 4 days in a year.

<comment><USER13> "Never ever" is at least two nines.. perhaps three. 4 days of consecutive downtime would probably hurt a Cron as a service-service a lot in terms of user happiness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I created a simple SaaS app, [https://www.pageblox.com/](https://www.pageblox.com/) that makes $300 dollars a month. I think that in a year or slightly more it could break a thousand a month if I market aggressively. I think I was able to pull it off by targeting a very specific problem and its accompanying keyword phrase: "css layout generator". Over-simplifying, the steps are: 1. find a problem that people and have and its niche, low competition keyword that get about 5000-8000 searches a month 2. build a web based app that solves that problem 3. grow your traffic 4. a/b test and iterate

Marketing is by far the hardest part!

<comment><USER16> Have you thought about charging $3 / month, or maybe $12 per year for this instead of a one-time purchase?

If you're saving / hosting the layouts, in which users can come back and create new ones or alter old ones, it jives nicely with charging on a recurring basis.

Throw in another service or two on top of what you already do, and the value proposition just keeps going up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pick an app on the iPhone that is currently selling well and you feel you could build, then make a competing app. It's boring, but it works and it's a good confidence builder. A lot of the advice in this thread is to build some cool new tech, but I'm gonna say that's a bad idea because it's very risky to do that. Sounds like you're trying to find a reliable way to make money. Also, online offerings will need constant babysitting to make sure the site is up etc. iPhone apps on the other hand can be fully self contained with just little updates for new iOS versions and phones needed.

<comment><USER18> YES.

New = risky. Risky = bad if you're just looking for income.

One of the biggest lightbulb moments I ever had in online business was when I realised that if I saw a whole bunch of competitors in a given niche, that meant _there was definitely profit to be made there_.

<comment><USER19> Got any other "light bulb" moments to share?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Find a very boring problem that you can automate into a product that needs minimal support.

By "very boring" I mean: necessary for a certain line of business and not well addressed by current competitors and not inherently interesting to work on and full of ugly gotchas and corner cases.

In general, solutions to these problems will be very profitable because they represent untapped markets. The only difficulties are: finding a problem sufficiently boring, and how much of it you can tolerate before it crushes your soul.

</comment><comment><USER21> If there was some method of turning a skill into passive income with any reliability, people would replicate the idea again and again and so get 1,000,000/month eventually. You're asking for the impossible.

<comment><USER22> False.

Imagine you had a magic formula to create businesses that make $5,000/month and only take up 10 hours/week of your time. Wave that wand once and you have a $60k salary and a thoroughly leisure class lifestyle. Wave it twice and you're living quite nicely without really breaking a sweat. Most of us stopped there.

Notice that every time you use your magic formula, you take away another chunk of your free time. By the time you've done it four times, you've got a full time job.

That's the reason most of us are smart enough not to build $1,000,000/month worth of micro businesses. If that's the sort of money you'd prefer to make, you'll need to find another way to get it. But don't knock the magic formula. It works really well. You'd be doing yourself a disservice to believe otherwise.

<comment><USER23> I think you've miss read the question

> I have 1-2 hours daily that I can spend on any project/activity that will, > after some work, generate $1000/per month net in passive income.

$1000/28days at lets say 1.5hours = $23 per hour.

So I'm guessing they are not wanting to do the 1-2 hours per day once it's up and running, because $23/hour is not passive income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Ramit Sethi has a great post from last year on why passive income is largely a myth for most people:

[http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/how-i-traveled- for...](http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/how-i-traveled-for-3-weeks- and-made-passive-income/)

</comment><comment><USER25> 1\. Identify a problem that affects a significant market, and a problem that you can solve within reason yourself.

2\. Create a solution that people are willing to pay for.

3\. Sell it.

Tune out everything else. Ignore the gurus. Focus on the important things only and just do it. Tune out HN, tune out everything.

I would look into doing paid mobile apps. But you still need to have 1-3 nailed.

Definitely read PG's startup ideas article. You don't just sit down one day and think of startup ideas. It will come to you naturally because _you_ will experience the problem. Any other way (other than partnering up with a problem experiencer) will yield fluff.

<comment><USER26> Find a problem. Solve It. Charge For It.

Start off with a service you provide manually. If you get a good response, turn it into a tool or software that automates it in exchange for a monthly fee.

Stop looking for "easy get rich quick" ideas and find the annoying, difficult stuff that people want to offload from their task list. That's where the money is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Work someplace. Live frugally. Don't spend the money. Leave it in term deposits or other low risk, relatively high yield (ie. at least above inflation) locations. Rinse and repeat. (Recently, I heard that Vietnam offers solid rates on term deposits in foreign currencies.)

<comment><USER28> Having spent some time in Vietnam, and spoken with residents (expats and natives), I would _not_ invest my money there. Or most SEA countries. Too many tales of foreigners getting screwed with little to no recourse.

<comment><USER29> That's quite a sweeping (and inaccurate) generalization.

I have no experience banking in Vietnam but what he said certainly applies to both China and Thailand, if you stick to the largest banks (ICBC and Construction Bank in China are both probably safer than any US bank - <USER2> Bank, Bank of Ayudhya (owned by GE) and Siam Commercial are all rock solid in Thailand - along with HSBC in both countries). Singapore and Hong Kong are both also extremely safe places to bank and very foreigner friendly.

Source: Lived over there for 6+ years. Still bank with all of those banks, more or less doing exactly what he suggested. In China I earn 3.5% on my RMB term deposits + appreciation vs the dollar, which is almost as predictable as the interest. Personally, I prefer that to 0.1% at Wells Fargo.

<comment><USER30> I've been living in Vietnam for more than two years now and there is _no way_ I would put any significant amount of money in a Vietnamese bank. Interest rates have already fallen to under 10%. What's worse - just about everybody I've talked to that understands the Vietnamese economy thinks that the banks here are headed for a serious insolvency crisis.

A number of expats here that had planned on living comfortably off the interest of their Vietnamese bank deposits are now scrambling to come up with a plan B.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There are several replies that start with "find a problem". How do you find problems small enough for a single developer to tackle but not trivial enough for having people willing to pay for a solution?

<comment><USER32> I would suggest leaving your comfort zone.

Developers like myself have a tendency to reinvent the wheel, as in, solve problems like online team chat over and over again. Because that's what we know first hand and are comfortable with.

The webapp for online marketeers I'm currently building, with feedback from a friend in the industry, caters to a bit of a niche but I'll probably have far greater success with it because that niche is quite underserved. I would never had thought of that particular idea had I not wondered off outside my comfort zone and talked to people in other areas.

I don't expect my project to become a passive income stream. It'll take work. But maybe the same method can be applied to find a problem which has a trivial, low-maintenance solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> A service I'd pay for: Mailing list management that doesn't suck, and isn't Google Groups. Something that can be backed up, and has a web interface. Mailman is still king in this niche, and I'm not entirely sure why.

<comment><USER34> This is a good idea, surely someone has already made a good mailing list tool?

<comment><USER35> Zed Shaw's [http://lamsonproject.org/](http://lamsonproject.org/) looked interesting, last time I looked at it. (If you forgive it for pretending all the world is UTF-8, which it emphatically isn't.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> One way is to write ebooks and sell them on Amazon. If you write things that don't get dated, there is no further work on your part, Amazon just deposits money in your account.

It's highly unlikely you'd make $1000/mo on a single ebook, but if you write several, the trickle from each adds up.

<comment><USER37> I'd definitely buy your book about compiler construction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Passive income isn't. Lots of little projects may look like passive income but almost all of them (not saying it can't be done but I just have not seen any) have some kind of overhead.

It may be better to search for something that can be started small but that you can eventually scale.

<comment><USER39> When people say they want "passive income", I take it to mean "I want to start a tiny business and then neglect it and hope it dies slowly".

<comment><USER22> In my experience, tiny SaaS businesses tend to grow when neglected, rather than die.

Once a product is good enough for people to start signing up for and using, it often doesn't require much more development work. As long as people can find it, more people will sign up than cancel in any given month.

"Passive" is a really good way to describe the experience of owning one of these little businesses, once you've dialed things in so that the support workload is measured in hours/month and you're firing up the IDE maybe twice in a heavy month.

<comment><USER40> > In my experience, tiny SaaS businesses tend to grow when neglected, rather > than die.

Just curious: what if a new competitor moves in? Or is does that not happen often?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I am in continuous search for this type of passive income for about 8 years. I've tried with (automatically generated) content farms, social media spamming and all kind of more or less moral stuff.

I got to the conclusion that the answer should be in the immaculate white hat area and i am focusing on building software in that area.

Also, i dont think that100% passive is even possible, but you could reach a level where your product gets you enough income so that you become an entrepreneur

</comment><comment><USER42> Please read this post by Amy Hoy: [http://unicornfree.com/2013/how-do-you- create-a-product-peop...](http://unicornfree.com/2013/how-do-you-create-a- product-people-want-to-buy)

</comment><comment><USER43> When you have some ideas, before you start, spend the first couple hours reading "The Lean Startup" [1] by Eric Ries. This book will give you a measuring stick to see if these ideas work.

[1] [http://www.amazon.ca/The-Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs- Continuo...](http://www.amazon.ca/The-Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs- Continuous/dp/0307887898)

<comment><USER44> The problem is most people don't know what they want even when it slaps them in the face. Lean startup is just a search algorithm, finding what people say they want, it doesn't create or educate markets. That's where the real progress is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Two ideas.

1\. I desperately want to be able to send a link to somebody and have them be able to book a N-minute meeting on my calendar (CalDav) without any further interaction. I have spent probably several hours trying out products, all of which suck. I currently spend $30/month on a tool that really doesn't even work.

2\. The enterprise IM (CampFire, HipChat, etc.) is pretty well done at this point, but the "group chat for the somewhat public" space isn't. If I am supporting an open-source project the only game in town is IRC, which is hard to use for people who need support. If I want to have a permanent chatroom with 15 software developers that I know socially and allow people to drop in, there's no system for that.

<comment><USER32> 1\. Just out of curiosity, could you please share what that tool is?

2\. Like iffyuva said, I believe HipChat has that option. As does Campfire. The thing is maybe those groups aren't willing to pay for such a solution?

<comment><USER45> > The thing is maybe those groups aren't willing to pay for such a solution?

Actually I think they want to pay more. At least I do. HipChat charges $2/user; I would pay $5 or $10.

The real problem is that tools designed for companies consolidate the billing. If I start a chat for my local user group then I am on the hook socially to upgrade my plan to let new people join. If I am successful in cultivating a useful chat then essentially I am punished for it, and the punishment grows without bound. One of the groups I participate in has over a thousand members.

Meanwhile I would be happy to pay for a friend or three, with the understanding that the other 997 people who may want to join need to pay their own way. And with mostly individual accounts you can probably ask for significantly more per user than HipChat can.

And the effort to get people to sign up might be effectively free if you funnel part of the license fee back to the organization who no longer needs to pass the hat around for pizza money or whatever. This may create regulatory problems, but if we're just talking about the customer acquisition equation, there are a lot of awkward situations where somebody forgot to bring cash that I would very happily roll into a monthly debit to forget about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I've also been thinking of the exact same thing myself, something which will generate enough profit to pay off bills, buy something nice and invest a little in growing the idea.

Recently I've been working on [https://www.emlipo.com](https://www.emlipo.com) which was scrutinized by HN for essentially being "little code nobody would pay for". So I've not really wanted to work on that now.

Still, there will be something out there I'm sure.

 __By the way, the demo is currently offline. I 'm currently at work, but shall try to get it back on. __

<comment><USER47> That semicolon (;) in your footer should be a colon (:). [0]

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/VHYGbSd.png](http://i.imgur.com/VHYGbSd.png)

<comment><USER48> Same in the tagline, or better yet, just remove it there. Interesting idea and nice site.

<comment><USER46> Thank you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> 1\. Identify a very niche pain for businesses. 2\. Make phone calls every day to the people making buying decisions for that pain. Try to close the deal, even without a product. 3\. Start building after your first deal closes. 4\. As you build, keep calling and closing. 5\. Script out common support issues as you encounter them, and offload to VA.

My previous startup generates many times more passive income than $1k/mo, and I did it the "hard" way by building the product first, then try to sell to customers. Also, don't underestimate support costs.

Finally, keep in mind that you'll probably have to start an actual business in order to open a business bank account to collect money, and you'll have all the fees and legal obligations that goes along with owning a business, so your $1k/mo can easily turn into $500/mo after all that jazz.

Edit: I'll also add to stay away from targeting consumers directly, and instead go after businesses. Much easier to charge $199/mo to a real estate broker than $9/mo to Joe Consumer. The former won't blink an eye for a truly useful service, whereas you'll get overwhelmed with support issues on the latter.

<comment><USER11> Businesses are way better than Joe Consumer, they need less support and pay more.

On that subject, stay away from "free" plans, unless you really need freemium marketing - the support for free users is usually the most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Save $200k and buy a 33% leveraged muni bond closed end fund, which are currently yielding approx 6% tax free at a 10% discount due to the recent bond selloff.

Disclaimer: if interest rates rise you will be unable to reclaim your principal but, generally speaking, this income stream should be pretty safe for the foreseeable future. And of course, $1000 a month today is not going to be as much in the future if inflation returns to 3%.

<comment><USER16> Doing this at the point in time in which money is about as cheap as it has ever been in history due to hyper QE to hold down rates, is a very, very bad idea.

It's not a question of if rates will rise. They're going to rise a lot, because every day that goes by the cost of artificially suppressing rates gets more expensive (which is why the Fed has had to keep expanding their QE program). Equal but opposite reaction, is what will occur, conceptually. To the extent they've created hyper cheap money, is the extent to which money will be expensive, sooner than later I'd argue.

The bond bubble is nearing an end. If the Fed wishes to continue it, it's going to cost trillions worth of new inflation, setting up a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. The era of cheap money is over.

If you want to earn a return on your $200k, wait for the inevitable disaster that follows these insane central bank policies. Swoop in with your pile of cash and pick up dirt cheap assets after the next crash. Or go after yield as rates skyrocket in the next five years.

<comment><USER50> You have no idea if this is true, this is 100% speculation. Rates could rise dramatically, they could rise gradually (which is the most likely scenario), or they can stay at 0% for the next 10 years.

This is why buying a bond fund at a deep discount (these are at 10% discount as we speak) provides a nice cushion for all cases except the catastrophic "yields rise quickly" scenario. If you are worried about that, you should be setting aside some cash to try to time the market.

<comment><USER16> No, it's not 100% speculation. Although that's an amusing claim, because your own parent post would fall under your same position of being 100% speculation if you were in fact right.

However, your premise requires a world in which nothing can truly be known for certain and all outcomes are equally likely. Such is not the case; not even remotely the case.

Rates cannot stay at 0% for the next 10 years, the math involved won't allow for that scenario. The Fed is already having their hand forced right now, as is easily demonstrated by the huge spike in bond yields, oil being at $100, housing and stock prices skyrocketing due to asset inflation generated intentionally by the Fed (as they openly said they wanted to have happen). It's a repeat of the last asset bubbles they brewed, and for exactly the same reasons, only this time it's 100% intentional. The clock is rapidly running out on their fraudulent game. They're already being wedged between a rock and a hard place; continue the policies of cheap money, and assets go so high they rip the economy apart upon implosion, again; stop the policies, and the economy implodes instantly. Rates skyrocket either way, as the bond buyers begin demanding higher yields to compensate for worsening inflation with continued QE; or rates skyrocket as the Fed stops QE and stops artificially holding down rates.

You might as well claim that rates can stay at 0% forever, or for 1,000 years, or for 100 years. Again, your position requires the premise that all outcomes are equally possible, and that is not true.

It's obvious the era of cheap money is ending. The era of expensive money is about to begin, as it must by the basic laws of economics (which is in fact a science, despite the many witch doctors in the field).

<comment><USER50> When did I say all possible outcomes are equal? The _most likely_ scenario is not a sudden explosion of yields but a gradual increase in yields. Other possible scenarios are low yields for much longer than you expect, or your "armageddon" scenario where yields jump by a few hundred basis points in a year or something. If you don't believe central banks can keep rates low for another decade in the U.S. see: Japan. (Don't assume I am claiming this is a good idea, I am just explaining the reality of the incredible leverage central banking has.)

If you buy a 10% discounted tax free bond fund (a taxable equivalent of a 9% yield currently) that has medium duration (~6 years) then you are fairly well cushioned from gradually rising yields, as the fund turns over and moves into higher yield bonds your distributions should increase. In other words, all of your fears are not hidden, secret, insider knowledge, but are largely getting priced in at this point.

The biggest risk with long-term CEF muni bond holdings is not interest rate risk (since you don't have to sell them, you have a 10% cushion, they have moderate duration, and a large enough spike in yields to really impair your principal is a pretty low probability outcome. but again: you don't have to sell them.) The real risk is inflation risk. And this is what I said in the Disclaimer:, which you seemed to not read. Also, your viewpoint seems to indicate the best assets to hold are gold and cash, and the cash side of your portfolio is going to be exposed to the same inflation risk as your bond coupons. There's also risk of default, but you can find national funds that are well diversified, etc, so this doesn't seem to serious a concern either.

edit: Also, one thing you are overlooking is that if the shit hits the fan, there is a lot of greedy, borrowed money in equities right now, both people chasing dividend yield and people chasing capital gains now that we're in a bull market, thanks to the Fed's bubble, that will head for the exits. It will go where it always goes: government backed fixed income and money markets. This will cause downward pressure on yields in the scenario where Fed moves cause a panic in the stock market, even though ironically the Fed doesn't even buy equities, it only buys bonds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Another thing you could try is building dashboards for firms/companies that are plug-able into major databases (Excel also as a "bonus", there are many using Excel as database...).

Most will require your board to hook into their ERP system, which is run by a database. The idea it's not new but existing solutions are over-complicated or expensive.

Build a few templates and run them in browser (HTML 5, Java Scrip, CSS, database connector, and a scripting language), get them to look good/attractive (I know it's not easy, but hey... it's not that difficult either).

I believe most companies will be happy to just invest in a LCD screen, an Android device and your labor - to have the boards displayed on the factory floor or at reception (they can also run presentation slides).

As a bonus you can manage the systems remotely - for servicing after installation or changes, if required (another source of income).

I know that this is not a really "passive" income idea, but if you get passionate about it, I think that it has the potential of turning out nice. I have build one of this boards for my work place, and I am thinking of putting this into action.

</comment><comment><USER52> Think of problems, outline a solution into a video and a pitch, put it on kickstarter and market. You only need to implement it after you received the money (the lean startup method).

To find problems, do searches on google, yahoo answers, and twitter. Look at the bureau of labor job outlook handbook online and see which parts of each job could be eased with software, or whether online marketplaces could be created (taxi drivers -> uber, hotel desk clerks -> airbnb). Also, each section of craigslist is potentially a online marketplace.

Grab data and build recommendation systems. Movie, music, book, stock/currency prediction, photo, video, blog, vacation, sentiment, patents, similar people (from facebook/twitter/blogs).

Programmatically generate data visualizations and put them on youtube, slap ads on.

Build control systems for drones to automate transportation/photography/surveillance/games. Look at the academic research and commercialize it. Drones that can play catch games, deliver orders to tables, do photography for functions/weddings, do surveillance of perimeters of offices/homes.

</comment><comment><USER36> Cut your spending so you have a few hundred extra per month. Invest it in SPY (an index stock for the S&P 500). Over time, you'll build up passive income.

One reasonable way to cut spending is to sell your car if you have financed it, and buy a car you can afford to pay cash for. Financing is a huge drain on your cash.

<comment><USER16> This isn't a good strategy. First of all the timing factor alone can hammer your principle (particularly with stocks sitting at all time highs).

If you have a skill that is valuable, you're far better off leveraging into that, for the returns are massive by comparison to the puny returns in stock indices. If you can earn just 10% every year in stocks, you're a wizard that should be working on Wall Street earning millions.

It's radically easier to invest $100 into hosting ($10 or $20 / month at digital ocean), build a service, and make $1,000 a month (a huge return on the invested capital) - than to earn a mere 10% per year in stocks.

$1,000 / month = $12,000 per year. To put together $12k per year from stocks, at a 10% return (which is a great return per year historically), you'd need $120,000 in capital to begin with.

Scenario 1) you need $120k in cash to put to work in stocks to yield just $1,000 per month average in new capital, assuming a great historical return (and assuming you don't get demolished by a market down turn). And if you're riding dividends, you're going to be hard pressed to consistently yield 10% every year even from the best dividend investments (such as public trusts, real estate vehicles etc).

Scenario 2) invest $20 per month into a hosting account at digital ocean and build a service that yields $1k per month in income.

#1 is silly compared to #2

<comment><USER53> >It's radically easier to invest $100 into hosting ($10 or $20 / month at digital ocean), build a service, and make $1,000 a month (a huge return on the invested capital) - than to earn a mere 10% per year in stocks.

But the stocks can happen with no effort from my side. Just invest in some fund and let it ride. Building a service that will make $1k/mo isn't "racially easier", it would take many hours of work to accomplish which means I can't be using that valuable time for something else more interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I am no expert, but if I understand correctly, a blog can generate passive income from archives, although this requires that you steadily update the current content (to retain and/or increase site traffic). Not sure this would meet your needs, though, because maintaining a blog can require a lot of work.

</comment><comment><USER19> No such thing as "passive income" except maybe buying securitized debt (bonds, etc. but then you got inflation to worry about).

A business is a business; the amount of labor you'll have to put into it will be proportional to the supply and demand that exists in that specific market.

Sorry, but there's no free lunch.

<comment><USER55> He's not looking for a free lunch -- he's looking for specific market ideas.

Also, while I sort of agree about the "no such thing as passive income" point, I think he just means 1-2 hours a week level passive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> You could generate targeted affiliate links on social media sites. (from social media sites to amazon, etc)

</comment><comment><USER57> How's your maths? Here's something I'd pay quite a lot for: intelligent inventory optimisation in an easy to use SaaS format. Quite mathematically intensive to do well, so most SMEs don't have the skills, but directly saves money so has a clear value proposition.

Some pointers for an MVP I think might be sensible: Model stock arrival and product ordering as Poisson point process with probability based on recent data Combine with sales data & length of ordering cycle to reach suggested quantity per order (you could make suggestions to account for covering variations in customer ordering based on standard deviations)

I'm thinking of doing this myself for my business but really not finding the time to get it done!

<comment><USER58> There seems to be a lot of competition in this field. Did you evaluate existing services? It's an interesting problem.

<comment><USER57> I've had a look (but not intensively, it's a back-burner thing for me at the moment). Everything seems very heavyweight and aimed at big businesses with long supply chains.

For a small ecommerce retailer, you don't want much like that; maybe I've missed it but there seems to be a gap for the Basecamp of this niche. A shopify plugin might be a good way to get standardised i/o rather than adapting to proprietary systems

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> If you have any kind of social media following, you could exploit it with affiliate links.

Someone posted a good article about finding niches in the app store recently. Something simple that satisfies an unmet need could earn decent ad money.

<comment><USER60> [http://www.trevormckendrick.com/how-to-choose-a- profitable-n...](http://www.trevormckendrick.com/how-to-choose-a-profitable- niche/)

<comment><USER59> Yeah that's the one. There's a follow up worth reading as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5207179](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5207179) Discussion on making your own "Incredible Secret Money Machine".

</comment><comment><USER62> Write an ebook on something you're passionate about (it would be better if it solves a problem, in a niche) and self publish it online, use gumroad or something to handling payments and delivery!

</comment><comment><USER63> I recently bought a Blackberry because of its built in encryption features. It's a great phone but is missing two popular apps: Evernote and Audible.

If you made an app to substitute for either one and charged a few bucks for it, you'll make passive revenues for a long time. Not only that, you'll be loved by crackberry users the world over.

Seriously, how many business types subscribe to Audible and to Evernote? And people are looking for more secure communications. It's an incredible opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER64> Does anyone have experience with what they call "app tender" sites like [http://appcity.org/](http://appcity.org/) ?

I've heard one anecdote about a guy who knows a guy who bought a very simple iOS app for 10K, did some marketing on FB and made like 20K within a month.

I'm more interested in any experience from the developer perspective selling apps on a marketplace like this. I've also heard the new iOS makes this easier to do.

</comment><comment><USER65> Learn PHP and write software for Wordpress, like useful plugin or theme. Distriubute free version to wordpress.org repository and then develop and sell premium version of the same thing on your own.

I personally made $100K+ with this approach and it works like a charm.

</comment><comment><USER66> If you think there is such thing as passive income, you have anything thing coming.

If you want to be sold a "passive income mega business", go and have a look at Blackhat World, the scummiest place on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER67> Follow the paper trail. State or Federal governments mandate business regulations. Z new piece of paper work or efiling gets created which someone can create a service to help businesses with.

</comment><comment><USER68> Ever noticed that all the suggestions you are getting are to some other person a passion and full startup that they are pursuing? That should tell you something. Good luck :)

</comment><comment><USER69> Monetizing your hobbies/interests would be a good way of enjoying your free time and make some money. It won't be very passive though.

</comment><comment><USER70> I've done this through licensing SaaS to social gaming companies (apps). It took a fair bit of work though -- I'd say 6 hours daily.

</comment><comment><USER71> I think it will be hard to build much of note in 1-2 hour chunks. Better to spend 16 hours every other weekend, in 2 eight-hour blocks.

</comment><comment><USER72> do any kind of freelance/consulting work then invest the process into high dividend stocks and eventually shift to bonds as interest rates rise in the next few years. you can find quite a few large cap, stable companies on the cheap that yield on the order of 5%. take into account the lower tax rates on dividends and your real income rate becomes higher.

</comment><comment><USER73> create an iPhone/Android app

</comment><comment><USER74> I trade stocks as a hobby and have been able to make some money.

<comment><USER75> It is not passive...

<comment><USER36> Buy & hold is about as passive as it gets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I never get why these vague I want money posts get to the front page, how is this hacking? Wanting more money, for little work? That's status quo.

Anyway stop wasting your life on stuff would be my tip.

Or

Learn to cook well(healthy and tasty) over a few months, it'll save you money and health costs. Great tax free not wasting money passive habit to pick up.

<comment><USER3> Consider it the creative application of computer code to systemic weaknesses in the global economy, with a clearly defined success function which is fairly difficult to fudge. That might help explain some of the attraction. (There's also the "If you only know W-2 employees, then making money by a legitimate means other than a day job _feels_ like cheating", and for some reason a lot of hackers like winning by rules exploitation more than they like winning.)

<comment><USER23> Good hack, yep that's a interesting question.

Edit: Weakness - language. Solution get a bi-lingual friend who can suggest a non English success story. This in reverse [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-02-29/the- germany-...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-02-29/the-germany- website-copy-machine)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> Have you tried getting reincarnated as a rich guy?

Alternately, you could create your own crypto-currency and get chumps to bid it up.

Buy some oregano and try to sell it as marijuana.

If all else fails, you could try doing some actual work.</comment>


Stensal SDK: Retrofitting C/C++ code with quasi-memory-safety - <AUTHOR> https://stensal.com/ <comment><USER2> Thanks a lot for reposting it here. Our original post [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18894032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18894032) has answered some of the questions you might have.

</comment><comment><USER3> One unusual thing is that, at least for the curl example binary, the pre-built installable version is an x86 one and not an x86-64 one.

From briefly looking at the assembly, it seems like each variable or stack object has metadata associated with it in the stack frame. Some of this metadata seems pretty heavyweight, e.g. having `0xDEADBEEF` as a magic constant, what looks like the size, a pointer to a global variable, etc. One worry is that this metadata appears adjacent to memory it protects.

I wonder if it would be easier to just make all local variables into heap allocations and handle things uniformly there. This would make it easier to upgrade the runtime in the future without requiring recompilation.

<comment><USER2> Nice try bro! That will make C like Java, it will not happen. C should be like just C.

<comment><USER3> I think you could produce much better machine code by "templatizing" the stack allocations into function-specific pattern variables, passed to a single alloca-like function which uses the template to figure out how much stack space to allocate, displaces the stack pointer, and sets up all your metadata in one swoop. Also, this would improve the upgradability of the runtime/metadata, as it would be decoupled.

<comment><USER2> Heap is a centralized resource. Each allocation/free will have to acquire/release lock. It's much more costly than stack allocation/deallocation. You might get more efficient machine code, but using heap will likely cost more.

Hope this clarify what I meant your idea will make C like Java.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does this differ from valgrind in practice?

<comment><USER5> and memory/address-sanitizer, which are super helpful too

<comment><USER2> If ASAN/MSAN works for you well that's great.

You want to give Stensal SDK a try, you will find it's easier to use provided Stensal SDK can build your code. If you have any problems, feel free to send bugs report to email@example.com. What communication method do you prefer? a mailing list.</comment></comment></comment>


Find the Taxes That Do Double Duty - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/20/business/economy/20view.html?ref=business

<comment><USER2> _Taxes levied on harmful activities kill two birds with one stone. They generate desperately needed revenue while discouraging behaviors whose costs greatly outweigh their benefits._

Actually, I've long been of the opinion that such taxes can lead to a "dependency on the dependency." That is, while a government may intend to discourage the "undesirable" activity it's taxing, it may in the long run grow to depend on the revenue that tax generates, which may in turn reduce incentive to discourage that activity in more effective ways, like anti- smoking or anti-drinking campaigns. After all, do you _really_ want to discourage the activities that build up your revenue?

Now, let's consider the payroll and income taxes Mr. Frank laments for discouraging job creation and investment. While this may be true, maybe our government could develop campaigns or programs to _encourage_ these activities, and so counter the discouraging effects of taxation. I don't know off the top of my head what such a program might look like, so I can't say how feasible it would be. If nothing else, though, the potential for even greater revenue from increasing _desirable_ activity sounds like a fairly strong incentive to me.

I'm no economist, so maybe this "addiction to addiction" hypothesis is just another crackpot theory. I'd be interested to hear if anyone competent has actually explored this?

[slight edit for grammar]

<comment><USER3> While it's plausible that a government could come to depend on such revenue from undesirable acts, the act of collecting a tax from undesirable acts will decrease the level of activity. In short, the tax is effective. It kills two birds with one stone (less harmful activity, more tax revenue) as the article describes.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that we're pretty bad at predicting the long-term implications of discouraging consumption.

Examples:

Tobacco. State revenues in particularly are dependent on tobacco taxes, which were enacted under the theory that since smoking is bad for you, reducing consumption would lower heath care costs. Unfortunately, the end result is a regressive tax that gets more regressive over time as consumption drops -- without the corresponding reduction in health related costs.

Real Estate. Since World War 2, we have been encouraging the development of new building of all kinds. We heavily subsidize personal mortgages, slums, and commercial/retail, both directly via cash incentives and indirectly via massive public works.

Environment. We discourage activity that damages the environment, but often single out marginal activities with minimal impact. For example, New York now fines construction workers $500 each for burning scrap wood in a burn barrel for warmth, to protect society from air pollution. But it's ok to drive 70 miles to work every day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hacking the economy...

\+ Carbon Tax

\- Sales Tax

commit -m"Deter consumption in proportion to its harm."

</comment><comment><USER5> _Clearly, reduced spending alone can't solve our deficit problem_

I respectfully disagree.</comment>