Robot Macroeconomics: What can theory and economic history teach us? - <AUTHOR> https://bankunderground.co.uk/2016/09/06/robot-macroeconomics-what-can-theory-and-several-centuries-of-economic-history-teach-us/ <comment><USER2> Yes, that's the conventional wisdom from economists.

The real problem is simple: there are a lot of people now, and more in the future, who cannot generate enough value by working to be self-supporting, let alone have a good life. They're competing with machines which are better than they are.

The conventional wisdom used to be that more education would fix this. That failed. Unemployment and underemployment of college graduates is high and growing. Trade schools like ITT, which went out of business yesterday, were even less effective. The number of educated people needed is limited, and we have more than enough.

There was the assumption that new kinds of jobs would appear. They did, but not in large numbers. Information technology is only 1.8% of US employment, down from 2.2% ten years before. The only big growth area is health care and social assistance, which is a consequence of an aging population.

Where this takes us, under standard economic assumptions, is the favela model - giant slums where most people are just surviving, with a small core group that's doing well. This is what many third world countries look like. The US is headed there, but is more spread out - the decaying slums are far from the successful cities. (That's where Trump voters come from. They're angry, and they found a demagogue. That's common worldwide, and seldom ends well.)

Remember, capitalism is not optimizing for individual income. The fitness function is return on capital.

Alternatives? Welfare was tried from 1960 to the mid-1980s; it ended up with third generation welfare mothers in giant housing projects. Having a large non-working group of poor people leads to a dysfunctional society. Higher minimum wage? Worth a try; the places that are doing it now should be monitored to see who gets laid off. Basic income? Same problem as 60s welfare. WPA-style government as employer of last resort? Maybe; Saudi Arabia does that, and they have a massive number of useless workers.

Somebody had better think of something.

<comment><USER3> I'd like to offer some quotes from the book "Economics in one lesson", a book from the 40s that is still very relevant today. Specifically, from the chapter called "The curse of machinery":

 _Among the most viable of all economic delusions is the belief that machines on net balance create unemployment.

Let us turn to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. The first chapter [...] is called "Of the division of labor," and on the second page of this first chapter the author tells us that a workman unacquainted with the use of machinery employed in pin-making "could scarce make one pin a day, and certainly not twenty," but with the use of this machinery he can make 4,800 pins a day. In the pin-making industry there was already, if machines merely throw men out of jobs, 99.98 percent unemployment.

Arkwright invented his cotton-spinning machinery in 1760. At the time it was estimated that there were in England 5,200 spinners using spinning wheels, and 2,700 weavers - in all 7,900 persons engaged in the production of cotton textiles. The introduction of Arkwright's invention was opposed on the ground that it threatened the livelihood of the workers, and the opposition had to be put down by force. Yet in 1787 [...] the number of persons actually involved in the spinning and weaving of cotton had risen from 7,900 to 320,000, an increase of 4,400 percent.

[...] Technophobes will assert: "That may have been all very well in the past, but today conditions are fundamentally different; and now we simply cannot afford to develop any more labor-saving machines."

If it were indeed true that the introduction of labor-saving machinery is a cause of constantly mounting unemployment and misery, the logical conclusion to be drawn would be revolutionary, not only in the technical field but for our whole concept of civilization. Not only should we have to regard all further technical progress as a calamity; we should have to regard all past technical progress with equal horror.

There is also an absolute sense in which machines may be said to have enormously increased the number of jobs. The population of the world today is four times as great as in the middle of the 18th century, before the Industrial Revolution had got well under way. Machines may be said to have given birth to this increased population; for without the machines, the world would not have been able to support it. Three out of every four of us, therefore, may be said to owe not only our jobs but our very lives to the machines._

<comment><USER4> This is a pretty good theory but it lies on certain implicit assumptions that are becoming untrue. One is that there is abundance of energy and resources to exploit, so there is always more to be done (demand for labor) to transform it. But with automatization, we are coming to a state where limitation of economic activity is not labor, but resource consumption (mainly energy).

Also, what is the definition of job? But what the people worrying about automation are saying, there will not be more jobs that satisfy both of these conditions:

(1) Economic efficiency - the job is required to sustain the same level of production.

(2) Sustenance - the job must be capable to give person doing it enough money so he can live on it and participate in society.

For instance, we can always create jobs that break the condition (1), because we can always have more people being security guards or checking expense reports. Or we can always create jobs that break the condition (2), you know, you can always be a personal servant to somebody for really miserable pay.

I would actually argue that we are well past the point where (1) is true. But since our societies are so obsessed with jobs, we cannot really openly admit it.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure if I understood your points correctly. There is always more to be done. There is not a fixed set of things humanity needs that will one day be fulfilled. We didn't know we wanted cars, computers and smartphones until they were invented. This is regardless of scarcity, possibly even because of it (scarcity of resources will drive the need to be more efficient handling them).

I also don't understand your two points since (1) automation increases efficiency and thus production levels and (2) as a result of that increased productivity, there is a raise in wages.

<comment><USER2> _" (2) as a result of that increased productivity, there is a raise in wages."_

That stopped years ago. Ask any auto worker.

There's no economic reason that increased productivity should lead to an increase in wages. The benefits of increased productivity accrue to capital, not labor. What produced the increase in wages with productivity was labor activism, and fear of government intervention.

It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when American companies were seriously afraid of what workers could do, both through unions and politics. Communism was considered a serious competitor to capitalism from about 1930 to 1980. That's what kept wages rising.

Once Ronald Reagan successfully made the case for unbridled capitalism, that ended. Now the US has "just in time" workers, few unions in the private sector, and weak worker protections. Competition between employees keeps wages down.

<comment><USER3> Of course there are economic reasons for wage increases with productivity. They are the same reasons that explain any other increase in prices.

First, employers don't want to lose their more productive employees, and they have to compete with other employers offering jobs at higher pays. Second, once productivity rises, employers increase their earnings and can therefore hire more. This creates more demand for employees, and the price of work rises.

It's in fact the view that companies should be "afraid" that create regulations and restrictions that are usually what's responsible for reduction of wages and quality of life in general for workers.

See also: [http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/productivit...](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/07/productivity- and-compensation-growing-together)

Finally, I find it really unbelievable that someone can claim in a serious conversation that the US have anything remotely similar to "unbridled capitalism".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >Technological progress won't create mass unemployment ... In Krugman's celebrated example, _imagine there are_...

Stopped reading right there. Hypothetical scenarios are not a replacement for empirical evidence. I can just as easily imagine a scenario that runs contrary to the one given.

This kind of baseless speculation cheapens economics as a science and is why a lot of people don't take macroeconomics seriously.

<comment><USER6> If reasoning based on 'empirical evidence' were so good, economists and politicians would know everything that is going to happen. Yet they don't.

<comment><USER7> 1) They lack data and 2) sometimes they choose to ignore it.

First happens because sociological data collection is hard, slow and expensive. Second usually due to various kinds of politics and lobbying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article is blithe about how we overcome economic dislocation. During the first industrial revolution, farmers were made obsolete and had to crowd into cities looking for wages. Children worked in factories and poorhouses. I don't know if this was worse than farm life, but the art of the period depicted it as such.

Some people never recover from economic dislocation. They either abstain from having children because they sense how marginal they are, or they have families anyways and raise children with few opportunities.

I am using genetic propagation as a measure of human success, which of course is arguable, but which means a lot to many people. More importantly if a human line dies out, there is no voice for it anymore. Such losses are silent and largely ignored by the historical record. So this economist is gravely undercounting the human suffering that technological change can bring.

<comment><USER9> Saying that farmers were made obsolete kind of glosses over the real reason that they were forced into cities: enclosure. Land that they were previously free to use for subsistence farming was taken and combined into larger landholdings. Had they been properly compensated for the loss of the land, they would have been less desperate to rush to cities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> So what are we doing with 33% additional hot dogs? I'm full already.

Why should the market need the additional capacity? This is where i stopped reading.</comment>


Teachers unions are not the reason many schools suck - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2285650

<comment><USER2> I think a lot of people have problems with teachers unions because they think of teaching like any other job. It's not - here are the important differences:

Pay raises. It's a fantastic idea for a company to increase the pay of individuals based on performance. If individuals do well, the company does well and makes more money, and can therefore afford to pay the employees more, so this reward system is great.

In schools, there is no profit. So if teachers do better, their students perform better, and the teachers should get paid more. But they don't, since this has not brought any more money into the school. In fact, if schools are doing well they are less likely to have their budgets increased, since people will see no need to increase the budget of something that is functioning well.

This fixed-budget kind of thing is the root of the difference between the education system and private enterprise. In a business, if you are not making enough money (that is, if you have a spending problem), you cut back on things: often you may lay off employees. You will have fewer employees now, but since your business isn't doing well you probably have less work to do, so it can even out. Or, if it doesn't even out, your business closes down.

Neither of these is true of education. Except for rare cases, it is unthinkable to close down a school. Obviously closing would bad for students and education in general, so it is avoided.

More importantly, workload doesn't flex as easily in schools. That is, if you run into budget problems and have to cut teachers, the other teachers must work harder to pick up their slack, since the student body population remains unchanged. Thus it is in the interest of both the teachers and the students to keep budgetary layoffs to an absolute minimum.

So what do you do with a tight budget? Who knows? Removing teachers decreases the effectiveness of education severely. So does the numerous other things I've seen schools do - stop providing textbooks, make the quality of food go down, shorten the school day, remove planning time of teachers, stop giving teachers their own offices, stop plowing the parking lot, etc. In other words, make schools suck in every way possible.

I don't have a good solution for this, beyond the obvious "spend more on education". Personally, I think this is our best bet, but that money would have to come from somewhere else, and people are not willing to pay more taxes for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Having it not come from taxes seems like a bad idea(at least on a large scale) since besides a tiny bit of charity the most likely source is fund-raisers which will mostly fund the richest schools and not the poorest schools that need the money the most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Unions are based on the idea that fungible "workers" need to unite against "management" to avoid being replaced with workers who will accept lower compensation. The primary interest of unions is to preserve for their members jobs that pay above-market compensation.

The presence of teachers' unions means that teachers see teaching as an industrial factory job in a mature field where no more innovation is possible. Students in such a world are the products of the factory. They come into the school system at 5 years of age as unprocessed raw material and they exit 12 years later as high-school graduates, ready to take on a job.

This whole mindset is wrong. The industrial-factory model of schools should be abolished. People, whether young (students) or old (teachers), are not fungible. They should not be viewed as factors in factory. They are not.

<comment><USER4> This is a politically charged issue about union-busting that's not particularly relevant for HN.

And since the article written by a political operative [1, 2], it's no surprise that he either avoids the main issue or fails to support his arguments with much evidence.

[1] [http://tcf.org/about/fellows/richard-d.-kahlenberg-senior- fe...](http://tcf.org/about/fellows/richard-d.-kahlenberg-senior-fellow)

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_Foundation>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this is a bit of a straw man. I haven't met anyone that believes that teachers unions are _the_ problem. Schools face many problems, and the inability of school districts to fire lousy performers is just one of them. Teenage pregnancy is fast rising as one of the major problems in urban school districts, but I don't foresee any politicians campaigning on a "kids these days need to stop fucking" platform.

<comment><USER3> Once a person can reproduce, that person should be able to live independently and support himself/herself. The current educational system keeps fifteen- year-old men and women couped up together in a "school" and treats them as children, giving them no real responsibility and no chance to be independent. The problem is not that teenagers are fulfilling their biological purpose and starting families. The problem is that teenagers are forced to remain in a state of infantilism and not encouraged to take on adult responsibilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those who haven't seen it:

[http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Reports/SSO/Worlds_School_...](http://www.mckinsey.com/App_Media/Reports/SSO/Worlds_School_Systems_Final.pdf)

 _The experiences of these top school systems suggests that three things matter most: 1) getting the right people to become teachers, 2) developing them into effective instructors and, 3) ensuring that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child._

<comment><USER7> Well then, the solution is obviously to throw more money at the problem!

In the US, you spend $20K per student.

I think part of the solution in the US is to tear down the whole system, go local and market-based.

<comment><USER8> Where did you pull that number? I went to high school in the state with the absolute highest spending per student (New Jersey) in one of the school districts that spent so much money per student we lost all state funding because the local taxes were paying so much, and we only were spending $8-9k per student.

<comment><USER7> I believe New York now admits to spending about $17K, which is not $20K (which I heard on TV last night).

On average, it seems that it was around $10K 5 years ago. This would be a respectable amount _IF_ the results, on average, were good. But they are not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Single page: <http://www.slate.com/id/2285650/pagenum/all/#p2>

</comment><comment><USER10> "Chancellor Joel Klein terminated only three teachers for incompetence between 2008 and 2010."

This seems dishonest given how hard he tried-- only to be thwarted by a union which always closes ranks.

[http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_...](http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill) [http://gothamist.com/2011/01/30/joel_klein_easier_to_prosecu...](http://gothamist.com/2011/01/30/joel_klein_easier_to_prosecute_a_ki.php)

</comment><comment><USER11> Let's not forget that Rhee was only at it for 3 years. The kind of reform she's aiming for will probably take decades to implement.

<comment><USER12> Additionally, I think Rhee saw herself as the "Bad Cop" that DC needed to make the unpopular decisions, shake things up, and pave the way for a "Good Cop"^ to come in and build the system up in a more positive way. Rhee certainly wanted to stay longer than she did - but she had to know that she couldn't keep alienating folks and keep her job.

^Kaya Henderson, the interim chancellor, may very well be this "Good Cop."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you examine a school in terms of those who teach and those who don't excluding service personnel then you should quickly be able to understand who catches the money when they 'throw money' at the problem. In the long ago, even the principle taught classes--- same boat, everybody rows. Now the less useful (useless?) level of bureaucracy begins well down from the top of your typical school and extends all of the way up. Since demonization has already been going on for years, instead of attending to the real problem, Union busting (note that no one calls it that) is being pushed as the necessary silver bullet without regard to other problems (maybe even the real problem...) Now that many school systems can't afford textbooks (at least not one per student) removing teachers doesn't seem like a useful addition to the solution set.

</comment><comment><USER14> The only real evidence they present is the Stanford study that found charter schools don't perform better than regular public schools. So their argument is that unions can't be the problem because charter schools don't have them and are doing just as bad. But that's a straw man.

Charter schools allow for better management they don't guarantee it. So in the first few decades of a charter school system there will be a lot of bad ideas and a lot of good ideas. But the bad ideas will throw off the average.

But the bottom line is at least the well managed charter schools can take steps to correct problems where as regular public schools can't because of union rules. Which is why some Charter schools do dramatically better.

<comment><USER8> You can't say that is _why_ they do better. _Maybe_ that is why they do better.

In my experience with charter schools (tech magnet schools in NYC, Delware charter schools) entry is competitive. Of course charter schools will do better if their students start out smarter.

And in other cases, it is at least elective. If your parents care enough about your education to sign you up for a charter school, aren't you already more likely to do well in school than the kids with parents who don't care that much?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm slightly biased here because I will almost certainly never need a union to protect my job or interests (I'm well educated, with in-demand skills, and I'm mobile). But it really bothers me how unions produce such inefficiencies in specific industries. Teachers and autoworkers being the biggest have crippled the ability of their respective industries to innovate and compete globally. While this may protect the livelihood of current workers, it hinders the ability of future workers to compete and earn a living. Like national debt its one generation fucking over the next...

PS - I'm young and pissed with the general recklessness of baby boomers.

<comment><USER16> Poor engineering in the auto industry was not caused by unions. The unions are basically assemblers -- how does the assembly line create engineering problems? I have no love for unions but what you say is way off-base.

Anyway, if you want to look at excessive compensation and benefits in the auto industry, look a little higher.

And at any rate, they only got what they negotiated, so if you want to blame anyone, blame management for poor negotiating, poor planning and just generally screwing up.

Finally, if unions ruined the auto industry, why is Ford doing well relative to GM and Chrysler? I drive a foreign car at the moment, but my next car will be a Ford because they did not take bailout money, and they make excellent, reliable cars (nowadays).

<comment><USER15> I agree with you and @jrwoodruff that management also deserves blame; their focus on short term metrics stops them from negotiating reasonable contracts (if they don't strike this quarter I get my bonus, etc.)

As for the assemblers preventing innovation, its much harder to pump cash into R&D when your assembly costs are twice that of your competition.

And as for ford doing well _relative_ to GM and Crysler, you're basically saying they're doing good compared to bankruptcy. I like ford (especially their current lineup), but they've fallen a long way from their massive dominance of a few decades back.

To be clear, I agree with you (this reply seems a little ranty), the entire auto industry is a mess; a large part of these inefficiencies I feel comes out of dealing with unions - and I see the same things happening with teachers.

<comment><USER16> I hear you.

But to put your last statement another way, a large part of these inefficiencies comes out of _having to create unions in the first place, to counter the abusive employment practices of management._

I think it's a two-way street. Auto unions are corrupt now, but they were obviously created as a reaction to some pretty bad behavior from management.

The worst, most unnecessary, most counter-productive unions, in my limited experience, are at universities :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> An honest question: Why do highly skilled professionals like teachers require union representation whereas computer professionals do not?

<comment><USER18> An honest question: Why do computer professionals not exercise their rights to prevent abuse (unfair firings, increased work hours without compensation, demeaning bosses) like some teachers?

Edit: Also where do you get "require" from. Not all teachers belong to a union? Did you read the article at all?

<comment><USER19> If I were to be abused by my workplace, I'd vote with my feet and leave.

I'd rather work in a system where the quality of my work determines my wages and not my seniority or how many masters degrees I've obtained.

I'd rather work in a system that doesn't strong arm my employer into paying benefits they can't afford. I don't know about you, but I'm not worried about my 401k being there in 40 years, but I'd be really scared if I had a municipal pension.

<comment><USER20> I feel I should speak up about this one as a teacher (admittedly Australian however) and a supporter of teachers unions.

Let's assume we are in a performance based pay system. How do we measure performance? Is it average student grades? If so, then do we pay teachers who work in affluent areas more because every effort is afforded the students (tutoring etc)? Do we pay teachers who choose to work in more challenging schools less (and more likely have lower grades but possibly greater impact on students' lives with their successes)?

What do we do with teachers hand picking elite classes to improve their perceived performance? It already happens even without performance pay? Or it could just be the luck of the draw. Sometimes I end up with difficult student groups simply because of a timetabling issue. Less pay?

There are other metrics for teacher performance that have been proposed, and all the ones I have heard have been very flawed.

Just to touch on the abuse bit at the start, if there was one employer in your town (as there effectively is in many rural areas when it comes to schools), should you relocate because of abuse you have received? (or indeed at all? Who doesn't deserve to feel safe from abuse in their workplace?)

<comment><USER21> This is a solved problem. The solution is Value Added Modeling. This has been known for many years, but unfortunately it doesn't fit within a soundbite.

You build a statistical predictor of student performance, then you pay teachers proportional to Actual Performance - Predicted Performance.

If teachers pick elite classes to improve their performance, the bar is raised. If their class has a predicted score of 80%, then the teacher needs an actual score of 90% to get a bonus. Conversely, if you get a class of low quality students, the predicted score might be 20%. To get the bonus, you need to achieve 30%.

The only incentives you have are hand pick classes of students that you can improve. If you are great at moving students from the 50'th percentile to the 60'th percentile, but suck with other student groups, your incentive is to get a class of students in the 50'th percentile.

<comment><USER20> It's hard to argue with the logic of that approach. Classrooms aren't always logical places though. Consider factors like student movement between classes, courses and programs designed to move students to the workforce rather than complete school, parental pressure on students and teachers to place students into unrealistic pathways, and so on.

I suppose you could factor all that into the model, though I'd question the feasibility of doing so.

I'd also argue that grades aren't the only important factor in schooling. Building social skills, discipline, time management, helping to realize goals... All ways in which good teachers can influence students, and only some of them reflect in neat packages like test scores.

Edit: I'd like to clarify that in my previous post I mentioned getting more difficult classes sometimes as the luck of the draw. I didn't mean low ability classes. I meant classes with students with serious behavioral issues, students with learning disabilities and so on. These will very often negatively impact the learning outcomes of the entire class, and is something you very rarely if ever have to deal with in top end classes.

<comment><USER21> _Consider factors like student movement between classes, courses and programs designed to move students to the workforce rather than complete school, parental pressure on students and teachers to place students into unrealistic pathways, and so on._

This would only matter in the event it did not average out over a teacher's entire cohort of students. I.e., you would need to get a situation where all the students who wanted to move into the workforce were taught by teacher A, and all the students who wanted to complete school were taught by teacher B.

The law of large numbers helps here.

Also, this would only matter insofar as this factor is uncorrelated with the things you do use as predictors - parental income, race, prior grades, etc. If all the low income students want a job, and all the high income students want to complete school, the predictor already incorporates this factor.

 _I meant classes with students with serious behavioral issues, students with learning disabilities and so on. These will very often negatively impact the learning outcomes of the entire class, and is something you very rarely if ever have to deal with in top end classes._

If this factor is strongly correlated with income (as you suggest), the predictor will already incorporate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That peer review system that was mentioned seemed nice. I wonder about how well it works.

<comment><USER12> Not sure, but more info on DC's (non-peer) eval system here: [http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/In+the+Classroom/Ensuring+Teacher+Su...](http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/In+the+Classroom/Ensuring+Teacher+Success/IMPACT+\(Performance+Assessment\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yes, there exist schools whose suckage isn't due to teacher's unions.

</comment><comment><USER21> tl;dr

Many schools suck because they are full of low quality students. Rhee made some improvements, but no improvements to teachers can compensate for low quality students.

<comment><USER12> That is a terrible summary of the article.

The author's actual point is "Michelle Rhee's war on teachers' unions was a sideshow that distracted from the more important effort to give more low- income students a chance to attend middle-class public schools."

<comment><USER21> And what is the difference between low income and middle class schools? There are two significant ones - teacher quality and student quality.

If the difference is teacher quality, then Michelle Rhee's war on low quality teachers was on point and exactly what was needed. The article disputes this.

Thus, it must be student quality.

<comment><USER12> The article doesn't actually dispute that the difference is teacher quality. The article just claims that teacher quality can be improved without doing battle with teacher unions. There's a nationwide struggle to get high quality teachers into low income schools that I don't think anyone on either side of the ed reform debate would deny.

Additionally, as a teacher in a low-income school, I'd argue very strongly that you should replace "student quality" with "student attitudes." The latter doesn't suggest that poor kids can't learn.

<comment><USER21> I don't agree that the article thinks teacher quality is the difference.

Here is what the article says about altering teacher quality:

 _Most education researchers, though, recognize that Rhee's simple vision of heroic teachers saving American education is a fantasy..._

 _If the ability to fire bad teachers and pay great teachers more were the key missing ingredient in education reform, why haven't charter schools, 88% of which are nonunionized and have that flexibility, lit the education world on fire?_

 _New York didn't get ahead by firing bad teachers._

On student quality:

 _Rhee knew that attracting more middle-class students of all races into public schools would strengthen the schools for all students. In one interview, she recounted Warren Buffett's advice to her that the nation's education problems would be solved if private schools were made illegal and students were randomly assigned._

 _In D.C., the goal of making all schools majority middle class is not immediately possible, given that 63 percent of the city's students are low- income, but Rhee could have made significant progress in many schools for three reasons._

I won't replace "student quality" with "student attitudes" because I don't know if the relevant factor is attitude.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Online JSON Editor - <AUTHOR> http://jsoneditor.com/ <comment><USER2> Not entirely sure what this is doing at first glance beyond providing a plain textfield for text entry, and some controls to save it as a file.

Compared to something like this: [http://jsoneditoronline.org/](http://jsoneditoronline.org/)

Which has auto-parsing, auto-formatting, and relatively intuitive controls for manipulating the object structure inline.

<comment><USER3> Or this [http://jeremydorn.com/json-editor/](http://jeremydorn.com/json- editor/)</comment></comment>


How I Failed, Failed, and Finally Succeeded at Learning How to Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/06/how-i-failed-failed-and-finally-succeeded-at-learning-how-to-code/239855/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> In general, I've found that almost all success at anything worth doing comes from repeatedly failing until you don't. If you fail the first time and give up, you probably didn't care enough to do it anyway. If you succeed the first time, it probably wasn't that hard. Fail often and fail hard and be proud of it! It's a sign of progress, or at the very least attempted progress.

<comment><USER4> Or a sign that you should try something else. Not everyone can succeed at everything. Obviously it is best to recognize that as early as possible in the endeavor.

<comment><USER5> the best story always involves the ones where somebody WANTS to do something so bad that they just keep at it at all costs and eventually make it. Great story but the more common story is somewhere between giving up vs realizing that something isn't that valuable to you (or as fun) as you thought it might be. you realize you don't or probably won't enjoy the process. The no pain no gain model is true to an extent but often a person got a closer look, they can probably deal with the pain, but the gain is no longer all the shiny and worth pursuing.

So you must look at the objective with short and long goggles to see if your understanding about it is right. As you do things well they might get more enjoyable with time. Finding a balance where challenge is still there but you're in the zone of craft. Where you know you can make it work and the challenge is something surmountable. The memory of how hard it was to get to that point isn't one of regret or pain. Just learning, and maybe relief.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Was easy as a kid - effortless even. If your day job doesn't involve coding then it fades fast though.

The mindset / thinking style thankfully doesn't seem to fade though. Thats why I'm all for making kids learn to code. Yes they'll suck & no they won't become real programmers but it leaves a permanent imprint on the minds of those that take it seriously.

<comment><USER7> I loved it. I bought my first domain when I was 10, intending to create a game like Neopets. I obviously quickly learned I wasn't going to be able to, but I created a fan site, kept hacking at it, and learning. I learned security, etc. By the time I was out of high school, I was recruited by Barracuda Networks.

Some of those kids will go on to be decent programmers. And it definitely leaves you with a much more analytic way of thinking, for better or worse.

[1] [http://www.screenshots.com/ghostlypets.com/2005-12-15](http://www.screenshots.com/ghostlypets.com/2005-12-15)

<comment><USER6> >leaves you with a much more analytic way of thinking, for better or worse.

I'm curious why you say "for better or worse"? (Not judging either way - <USER2> curious as to your thinking)

<comment><USER8> Not OP, but I'd like to chime in here. Getting good with computers is often best done by spending a large amount of time on computers. For many of "us" that involved teenage years playing MMORPGs, general programming, IRC, etc.

Despite a certain illusion of sociality involved in these activities, I am of the opinion that they are uniquely anti-social, and thus were in one way or another a deprivation of my childhood.

Sure I now have a much higher earnings potential. But was it worth it? I don't know. And thus I'm in no position to recommend it for anyone else.

Theirs probably a balance in it somewhere. And you can be damned sure if I'm ever a parent I'm going to tread lightly between "my child should learn to program, go to college, etc." and "my child needs to live a happy, normal, life".

That why it's a "for better or for worse" mentality in my opinion. We don't really know which is best do we?

<comment><USER9> > Despite a certain illusion of sociality involved in these activities, I am > of the opinion that they are uniquely anti-social

Makes me wonder about my 'choices'\- did my anti-social tendencies arise from my interest in programming (and math, etc.), or did it drive me to them?

<comment><USER10> I think about the same thing quite a lot. I remember having anti-social tendencies from a really young age. No idea why, I was just rarely interested in other kids. So I spent a lot of time dicking around with my computer. That paid off, but I got a little better with social skills later on after working at it. I always wonder how my life would be different if I didn't have all the computer escapism and worked on social skills earlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm waiting for an article about "How I Failed, Failed, and Am Still Failing" to provide the flip side in contrast to these success stories we are so biased towards

<comment><USER12> here you go - "So I fired up my IDE and spent an hour, finally getting my C# program to compile. It put out bullshit, I couldn't figure out why. I gave up. Then I fired up my ole' Putty and tried to get into my server to figure out why my database kept giving me an error. I thought about rolling back but couldn't figure out how Chef actually works, even though I set it up. Finally, I had this really cool idea for a javascript game I could code up real quick, and spent an hour in the javascript console trying to figure out why it wouldn't execute. Gave up on that too. I read some forums, there was a cool app to scrape my facebook, I ran it, it just requires Python, but it wouldn't run. Overall I accomplished nothing. Oh, and Chrome is still crashing at the most random times, no idea why."

Not quite the story we like to read.

<comment><USER13> Holy shit you just articulated all of the reasons that hackers value their knowledge - and the very important quality of _never giving up_. You search. You go on IRC. You get the source and compile it. You step aside and learn a tool better in isolation - then use it on your problem. You poke, prod, test. And your understanding begins to form, to conform to the shape of the problem, the map of what you know, what you've tried, what you have yet to try. You talk to others to fill in the important blank of what you don't know yet to try.

Because that story you told is abhorrant, even profane, but all too common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I keep seeing all these programming articles and schools that'll teach you in 3 months and you'll make 70k+. Someone is trying to flood the market to drive wages down.

<comment><USER15> >>Someone is trying to flood the market to drive wages down.

Why resort to such a conspiracy theory? Do you have any evidence?

I subscribe to a much simpler explanation: the market is simply responding to demand for higher-paying jobs. Colleges are obviously failing to train people for such jobs, so vocational schools (i.e. for coding) are picking up the slack.

<comment><USER16> I saw this recently.

Make of it what you will.

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

<comment><USER17> Hmm, help me figure out what to make of it. Where did see you it (I'm trying to understand the context)?

<comment><USER16> It was a response to the comment:

>>Someone is trying to flood the market to drive wages down.

As you can see here. Someone who was an analyst, self taught themselves to "code" in rails, php, python and javascript.

Which by their own omission is using "scripting" techniques to build the application from a template.

They are wanting to go on a bootcamp where they cramp you with tons years of knowledge in just what 12 weeks?

Once working, they expect to earn 85+k.

Does this remind you of anything?

Remember the whole MCSE debacle pre 2001. Where colleges where promising $100k salaries for doing tech support.

Where are the wages now? Oh yeah, for an MCSE, A+, Cisco Cert don't expect to be paid much.

<comment><USER18> Anybody entering the market that has even a grain of intelligence would be spending their time both before and after being hired learning how to engineer software (language/framework agnostic) instead of forever monkeying around with a scripting language in a single environment. Doing anything less is eventual career and paycheck suicide. Python or Ruby are fine as starting points, but if you stop there you're fucking yourself over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I am curious if project euler teaches you programming. I does teach you mathematics and thinking logically, but software engineering is different and is really learnt on the job. I am always confused when someone says about learning or teaching coding. What is meant by coding here? Writing fizzbuzz? Or writing enterprise software with so many levels in between and around as well.

<comment><USER20> > _I am always confused when someone says about learning or teaching coding. > What is meant by coding here? Writing fizzbuzz? Or writing enterprise > software with so many levels in between and around as well._

Isn't that like asking, "What is meant by 'learning to write'? Subject-verb sentences? Or the next Great American Novel?" It's possible to learn programming without getting into software engineering.

<comment><USER19> Point noted and accepted. It seems I haven't even graduated and am already becoming insular and elitist. Need to do some self-realization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> [2011]

It took a while before programming really "clicked" with me too, and I started with BASIC on an apple ][. It probably wasn't until a year or two into CS that I could approach a problem in an organized manner.

Now after decades of exposure, as my CS algos professor prophesied, it takes me a week or two to pick up a new language.

</comment><comment><USER22> Welcome to the New World, the education system in America is broken especially when it comes to teaching evolving topics like programming. Imagine what the world would be like if instead of the 30hrs Americans spend on average watching tv a week, they instead took that time to learn and create.

<comment><USER4> I imagine it being much more competitive for us if it was the case. I'm actually very happy that not many people know how to code or have the interest in it. It almost feels like we have unfair superpowers.

<comment><USER22> LoL alright fair point, but they don't have to learn to code, just find something instead of zoning out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "In a way, the ORIC-1 was so mesmerizing because it stripped computing down to its most basic form: you typed some instructions; it did something cool. This was the computer's essential magic laid bare. Somehow ten or twenty lines of code became shapes and sounds; somehow the machine breathed life into a block of text."

Oh, yeah. I still remember that feeling from Atari 65xe and then C-64. Now it's much harder to get such instant gratification. While trying to revive my passion and learn new stuff as an adult I also failed several times, because I set my aspirations too high and wasn't able to quickly learn all the necessary stuff _at once_ :) Nowadays the path to "cool things" seems to be much harder, until you adjust your personal definition of cool.

<comment><USER24> I think today you get that kind of interactive computing with something like the IPython notebook. You can load an image, apply an effect on it and immediately see the result. You can lookup documentation interactively too.

If anything, I think nowadays there are too much cool things, and the challenge is figuring out what can be achieved with them in a small number of steps, instead of getting lost.

<comment><USER7> > If anything, I think nowadays there are too much cool things, and the > challenge is figuring out what can be achieved with them in a small number > of steps, instead of getting lost.

And which are actually important to know vs. which will fade in less than a year.

<comment><USER25> Cool things are rarely important to know, even if they stay cool for a long time. The important thing when starting programming is to have fun. You don't need to keep the knowledge. When I was learning programming in BASIC on C64 I knew that's not the language people write real programs in, but it was still fun and it thought me to think analytically and gave me some technical basics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I always felt weird about this kind of math, because problem don't have an "API", or an algebra, it's too open. But if you're into creativity and search then it's even more fun. Maybe a psychology thing in the end.

Took me far too long to find the triangle area.

</comment><comment><USER27> Not having success at the beginning isn't failing. It's learning.

</comment><comment><USER28> ORIC-1 was the Raspberry PI of my day as well. Though I had a Commodore 64.

<comment><USER29> Still got my ORIC-1, and a few Atmos' to boot .. the kids love 'em!

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.

Samuel Beckett</comment>


SECRET DOM DO Not USE OR YOU WILL BE FIRED - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/80bff5397bf854750dbe7c286f61654ea58938c5/src/umd/ReactUMDEntry.js <comment> louis-paul Explanation on Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/3m6wyu/found_th...](https://www.reddit.com/r/javascript/comments/3m6wyu/found_this_line_in_the_react_codebase_made_me/cvcyo4a)

</comment><comment><USER2> Question to HN: I'm trying to find the commit that originally added this line. How do you do this elegantly?

Git blame:

[https://github.com/facebook/react/blame/80bff5397bf854750dbe...](https://github.com/facebook/react/blame/80bff5397bf854750dbe7c286f61654ea58938c5/src/umd/ReactUMDEntry.js)

The last commit for this line:

[https://github.com/facebook/react/commit/d17091ddebf317173eb...](https://github.com/facebook/react/commit/d17091ddebf317173eb30e3ab4a8e28e124c8f50)

It says:

 _src /React.js → src/umd/ReactUMDEntry.js_

and essentially, the line was moved two spots down. Now I want to see the git blame _before_ this change. Here is where it gets messy...

Best I can think of is go to the parent commit:

[https://github.com/facebook/react/commit/d8ee071c92994879fa8...](https://github.com/facebook/react/commit/d8ee071c92994879fa82ba4d2775b4f38fb78f1d)

Then look for the original file, src/React.js. So I go to "browse files at this revision", browse to the src/ dir, click React.js, then blame again:

[https://github.com/facebook/react/blame/d8ee071c92994879fa82...](https://github.com/facebook/react/blame/d8ee071c92994879fa82ba4d2775b4f38fb78f1d/src/React.js)

Alright, we're there.

Is there an easier way? This feels very convoluted and hacky...

<comment><USER3> Use pickaxe

$ git log -S__SECRET_DOM_DO_NOT_USE_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED

commit d17091ddebf317173eb30e3ab4a8e28e124c8f50

Author: Paul O'Shannessy <firstname.lastname@example.com>

Date: Thu Mar 24 11:00:38 2016 -0700

        Make Browserify-specific modules to remove DOM dependencies from npm package

commit 712199ef9830359c35c1c2442d79676396c06a2d

Author: Jim <jsfb@github>

Date: Mon Oct 5 15:02:34 2015 -0700

        React -> ReactDOM for render() and findDOMNode()

commit b2ca3349c27b57b1e9462944cbe4aaaf76783d2b

Author: Paul O'Shannessy <firstname.lastname@example.com>

Date: Tue Sep 8 10:13:24 2015 -0700

        Actually build react-dom file with the build

<comment><USER4> Perfect solution!

$ git log -p -S "SECRET_DOM_DO_NOT_USE_OR_YOU_WILL_BE_FIRED"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Off topic, but this is the second submission I've seen where the title was all in caps except "Not" and having just done a test it seems that HN converts "NOT" to "Not". I'm curious as to why...

Other submission was this one: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11411368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11411368)

<comment><USER6> I think a lot of people like to post NOT in capitals, so they had to implement this.

Things NOT to do if you are a developer. How NOT to apply for a job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What is the point of making a private reference to (what I assume) is a public ReactDOM reference?

<comment><USER8> Do not ask these questions you will be fired.

<comment><USER9> Do not make fun of that statement or you will be fired.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Funny variable name for being part of Facebook's official React repo.

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone able to offer an explanation of what this means?

<comment><USER12> explanation here [https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/3nhk5e/sec...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/3nhk5e/secret_dom_do_not_use_or_you_will_be_fired/)?

<comment><USER11> Why not just repost an explanation here?

<comment><USER13> Maybe because the answer is a whole thread that includes comments and other pieces of context that a simple copy&paste of just an explanation wouldn't have?

<comment><USER11> Then that should be the main link.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New app connects travelers and locals who want to party - <AUTHOR> http://partywithalocal.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm amused because this is basically the app from the (forgettable) movie The Darkest Hour: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkest_Hour_%28film%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkest_Hour_%28film%29)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haven't seen the film, what's it about?

<comment><USER2> Aliens invade. The protagonists happen to be startup founders who were in Russia negotiating a deal at the time. It has a rather implausible take on what being a startup means, as I recall.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha sounds entertaining

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > new app

> screen shots of ios6

<comment><USER4> ...true that. The Android App is brand new... the iOS app design and website design is not. Working on it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> No better way to travel! Would recommend this app to anyone who wants to really experience a new place...

</comment><comment><USER6> I remember you guys from Startup Weekend Amterdam! Good job on making your app happen!

<comment><USER4> Thanks dude. I'm the Founder of the app. It's been a lot of work and has changed forms a number of times, but it's finally out on iOS & Android and is starting to grow and work at connecting people around the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can I download the .APK somewhere?

<comment><USER4> Google Play

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pwal](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pwal)

<comment><USER7> I meant besides Google Play. I prefer not to use it.

<comment><USER4> There are some 3rd party sites offering it for download, we didn't give them permission to, but they are there. If you just do a search for 'Party with a local app apk' you will find them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome toolie!</comment>


Development content accidentally shipped on a DOS CD-ROM game from 1993 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Fortyseven/RA_1993 <comment><USER2> Imagine my surprise when I came across the full C++ source code of UEFA Soccer 96 for DOS on a demos CD that shipped with a magazine!

I never saw that leak mentioned anywhere. I think I still have the code. Should I share it, and how?

<comment><USER3> I would share it with Archive.org for preservation. Not 100% sure how to do so, sorry, but here might be a good start:

[https://archive.org/create/](https://archive.org/create/)

<comment><USER2> Just got in touch with Archive.org (by mail)!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really wish game companies would publish their old source for really out of date games. I really wish I could see what went into making the games I love like Fallout 1/2.

<comment><USER5> Rather than attributing this to typical corporate behavior, I think there's a simpler explanation: the source code simply doesn't exist anymore. Source control wasn't especially distributed, pervasive, or reliable in the 90s (at least compared to modern standards). And it's unlikely that anyone official had the foresight to keep a copy around for the sake of digital preservation twenty years in the future, especially given the licensing/copyright issues that would probably prevent legal dissemination anyway. And even if a rogue developer had the foresight to take a copy home and stuff it in a box in the attic, that media has probably degraded to unreadability by now unless they've been actively backing it up for the past few decades.

<comment><USER6> No, nonsense. Publishers keep everything, certainly the publishers I've worked for. Sierra is one of the oldies that, to my slightly out of date knowledge, still curates an archive of almost every asset for every game they've released. I'm certain the source for some of the earliest titles have been lost due to their hobbyist nature, but I've personally seen a raw list of the available archive that included games released from 1980 onward.

<comment><USER7> This may be true of publisher in-house development teams, but I've seen and worked at third party studios that do little to nothing about post-release archival, a fact connected to having minimal IT controls and the end of a project often resulting in a massive layoff. Things get lost in the dust-up; dev kits get lent out from a publisher for one project and then aren't returned. The build server gets "reused". The same version control repo is used to ship two different games sharing the same engine. One coder stays behind after the rest of the team has been let go or moved to something else, in order to fix bugs, so he's the only one with the most up-to-date build. What is left over is a mishmash of project artifacts but no guarantee that "project K at point in time T" can be reconstructed in full.

And with some of those Sierra projects, their archival might have all the assets they could find; that doesn't mean they have all the assets.

<comment><USER6> Sierra only had a hand full of devs who worked in-house.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sort of related: I don't remember specific examples, but I recall that several games/apps have inadvertently shipped with partial source code recoverable by an undelete tool because the developers simply deleted the source/build files from the floppy that they were using for development before imaging it for production, rather than wiping a new disk and copying only the release files.

<comment><USER9> I only recall OSes. DOS SDK with email dump captured in empty space of full disk image and not completely deleted scraps of source code for Amiga Kickstart shipped on 1.0 disk.

<comment><USER8> I found a reference to source code recovered from the DOS port of Double Dragon II: The Revenge [1]. I could have sworn that I heard this story about some well-liked Amiga or Atari ST game, though.

[1] [https://archive.org/details/DRAGONII](https://archive.org/details/DRAGONII)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > NET USE C: \\\JUSTIN_GRAHAM\DRVC

This must be the one and only, Justin Graham [1][2]. Congrats on your move to Unity in January btw!

[1] [http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/by_genre/devel...](http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/by_genre/developerId,1145/)

[2] [https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinagraham](https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinagraham)

[3] [https://github.com/Fortyseven/RA_1993/blob/master/UTIL/X.BAT...](https://github.com/Fortyseven/RA_1993/blob/master/UTIL/X.BAT#L11)

<comment><USER11> Cool find over there, let's see if he will come for this topic here =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's been a lot of years, so my memory is vague, but on Wipeout (one of early ones, probably the first one) either on PSX disc or PC one (more probably the PC one). Psygnosis shipped norton commander makefile (equivalent) shortcuts and random dev stuff on it. I regularly poked around game distributions like that as a kid to see if there's anything of interest. I think that was the only jackpot I came around. Poor jackpot, but exciting!

<comment><USER13> I remember poking around the resources of Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun back when it came out, and found sprites for a load of units that never made it into the game. IIRC, they were actual tanks rather than the weird mech units that where in the final (and IMO, disappointing) version.

Fun to think about the game that could have been.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Ah i have this disc right here.[1]

25 years and it Still works. I will start looking at the files.

Loom is an excellent game by the way.

[1]:[http://i.imgur.com/7YUXGnf.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/7YUXGnf.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER15> I remember finding this on the CD as a kid and being blown away - I couldn't understand why all this stuff had been included. Most of it was over my head, but I played around with Deluxe Paint for ages. Would love to know the backstory on this.

<comment><USER16> This seems awfully familiar to me as well, but I can't be sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Quite funny how times have changed. I think these development programs could be written in a few afternoons these days.

Of course, most implementations would be 2+MB and require several frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER18> As an aside, for those that may not be aware, id Software has source code for some big games on github.

[https://github.com/id-Software](https://github.com/id-Software)

</comment><comment><USER19> >UTIL/2B.BAT Copies files to the B: drive

Aw, man. I thought I was so original. (guess what I named copy copy-files- to-A:-drive)

<comment><USER20> I don't know. I'd guess either the practical 2A.BAT or the clever NOT2B.BAT

<comment><USER21> 2B.BAT or NOT2B.BAT, that is the question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> While I find the content itself to be fascinating, I'd love even more to hear the tale of HOW this happened. :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was afraid I wouldn't be able to make an ISO of the disc, because it's so damaged... HOWEVER, it turns out someone ALREADY backed up v1.2 of this disc to archive.org back in 2013. :)

[https://archive.org/details/Star_Wars_- _Rebel_Assault_1993_L...](https://archive.org/details/Star_Wars_- _Rebel_Assault_1993_LucasArts_)

</comment><comment><USER22> I owned this game as a kid and still have the CD; if only I had bothered to explore the disk!

<comment><USER23> We didn't have Internet for the longest time. "Browsing the web" for me meant browsing random parts of the file system and trying to figure out how it all worked.

One time I broke my mom's work computer by renaming the Windows (95 or earlier) system folder to be my name. She had to lug a desktop back to work on the bus so they could fix it. Sorry mom.

<comment><USER24> My mom tought me how to 'manage' my own floppy disk...

Too bad I mixed up A and C while formatting... back then, nobody knew how to install an OS; machine was declared 'bricked' and when on the attick... it was 6 years before another PC entered our household...

<comment><USER25> That's rough, I remember when I thought I broke our PC when I was young (turns it was just a bad VGA cable) but I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to lose it after having had access to it... books, TV, even my NES were nothing compared to the things I could do on my PC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is this the first time these utilities (particularly DK.EXE) have ever been seen in public?

<comment><AUTHOR> There was a reference to it among a handful of SCUMM documents released last year. The site is down at the moment, but Wayback Machine had some backups: [http://web.archive.org/web/20160412081654/http://wilmunder.c...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160412081654/http://wilmunder.com/Arics_World/Games_files/The%20SCUMM%20Manual%20-%20Glossary.pdf)

<comment><USER26> This is amazing. It looks like this is the first time some of these tools have seen the light of day outside LA. Wow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Has/can anyone verified that these tools are safe?

We just had a false positive from our virus checker on our internal software prompting me to go search checksums etc (not easy when you software is as dated as ours) so I've been thinking about this, we are the perfect delivery vehicle for malware.

Because this was an internal product our response was to white list the file, but the whole dev and support teams were too eager to jump to do that before even thinking to verify the dll in question was legitimate. If a nefarious person every had enough access to our machines to modify these binaries then it would go out company wide.

<comment><USER28> Even if they are infected it would be with an ancient DOS virus. I guess it could infect your DOSBox install?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Just to echo some other sentiments, please put this on archive.org for long term preservation.

</comment><comment><USER30> Awesome, thanks for sharing! Took me right back there. I was soo happy to have that 2X CD drive and a 486DX to be able to play this game.

Back then we were implementing our own bitmap drawing apps (simply called a PROGRAM back then) in Turbo Pascal (bgi256 ftw). We would challenge each other to come up with faster flood fill algorithms or smaller image file formats.

Good ol' times

</comment><comment><USER31> I love stuff like this. Some source code was shipped with the Ultima Online Demo in 1998. It was encrypted, but a few private UO server hackers cracked it and reverse engineered their internal scripting language. Really interesting stuff: [http://uodemo.uo98.org/](http://uodemo.uo98.org/)

<comment><USER32> That demo is extremely interesting. I was active on the old UO Demo forum. I reversed _tons_ of UO clients and created patching tools that worked on hundreds of client versions from T2A onward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> yeah I'm just going to clone and download that because github is a horrible place for "historic preservation". Copyrights can be extended forever for all practical purposes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Aye, that's fair. I figured GitHub would just be a first step -- I just started archiving all this today.

<comment><USER26> Ooh. What other things have you got tucked away? :)

<comment><USER34> I'm very interested to see what comes next too! Please do post about any future uploads to HN.

<comment><USER26> (Psst. I got this, not OP. One level up. Don't worry, I've made the same misteak.)

<comment><USER35> It's a rare misteak

<comment><USER35> Rare, steak, get it? Nevermind

<comment><USER26> ...Yup. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Isn't this a GitHub TOS violation.

<comment><AUTHOR> If it turns out it is, I'll remove the infringing content. But considering the age and circumstances, I'm giving it a shot for now.

<comment><USER37> I'd recommend possibly sticking it on archive.org - I've seen other old software on there. Either that or reach out to lucasarts and ask if it's okay, I suppose. (As long as you get it in writing)

<comment><USER38> You'd need to contact Disney. They own the IP now.

<comment><USER39> LucasArts still owns the IP, Disney is just its parent company now. LucasArts is the licensor, so I'd still recommend contacting them.

<comment><USER40> IIRC, Disney shut down the game division when they acquired LucasFilm, so you would have to talk to someone at the parent co (Disney). Disney has a lot of old IP that's still very valuable, so they guard it aggressively[1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_Willie#Copyright_sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamboat_Willie#Copyright_status)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Related story: I put the game disc for the PS2 game "BCV: Battle Construction Vehicles" into my PC last year to see if there was anything interesting on it, and found several .h and .a files in a subdirectory:

[https://s17.postimg.org/itph8rsnz/agatha.png](https://s17.postimg.org/itph8rsnz/agatha.png)

Note: Despite what this image shows, the text encoding is actually SHIFT-JIS.

</comment><comment><USER42> Pretty sweet to have Deluxe Paint 2 on there. I wonder what "Enhanced" meant? (Almost what you could get on an Amiga using version 3 or 4?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Found an old PC Magazine article talking about it: [https://goo.gl/cZ1R3M](https://goo.gl/cZ1R3M)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Deluxe Paint was an amazing tool! I spent so many hours on that tool doing animations and paintings. I wonder what happened to that company?

<comment><USER44> EA never really kept up the PC version for some reason. I actually used it until around 2001 for all my web artwork (along with a DOS file conversion tool whose name escapes me). I have a friend who's a very oldschool pixel- artist. He still has an old DOS system purely because he's got so much work in dpaint and can't get it running on anything else.

There is a spritual successor of sorts, called Cosmigo Pro Motion. I haven't tried it yet (although I picked up a copy in a Humble dev bundle a while ago). I hear it's the closest thing to dpaint for a pixel-oriented workflow, but with more modern Photoshop-like features, as well as dpaint features from the later Amiga versions that never made it to PC.

<comment><USER45> Also, grafx2 is very heavily DP-inspired: [http://pulkomandy.tk/projects/GrafX2](http://pulkomandy.tk/projects/GrafX2)

Great for pixelling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> in other news, the source for killer7 is no longer available here, lol:

[http://interone.co.jp/interone_games25/killer7/](http://interone.co.jp/interone_games25/killer7/)

<comment><USER46> We had the source for it? Damn! I hope someone archived it! That game was a masterpiece.

<comment><USER32> I mirrored the whole site some weeks back with a recursive wget, the source is in there. I can post it up, not sure how big it will be, but there were quite a few assets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> All those tools brought back some pleasant memories! Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER48> Do not recall ever making such a find.

But once i picked up a demo cd that seemed to hold a demo of Birthright: The Gorgon's Alliance that seemed to be fully functional on the strategic level.

</comment><comment><USER32> I hated this game, probably still have the CD somewhere

</comment><comment><USER49> Loved Rebel Assault! Thanks for posting.

<comment><USER50> It's part of the current Humble Bundle, if you're interested in replaying it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> A friend of mine once found a Windows 98 copy on an 'empty' still wrapped CD-R.

</comment><comment><USER52> I wonder if this still runs on Windows 10?

</comment><comment><USER53> Please edit title to replace "it's" with "its".</comment>


Three Reasons Why I'm Ditching ChunkHost (and Moving to Linode) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.charleshooper.net/three-reasons-why-im-ditching-chunkhost

<comment><USER2> It sounds like he has legit reasons for leaving ChunkHost, but doesn't address how Linode will be better about these problems. (I'm assuming they have an SLA, but he doesn't even say that.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi wccrawford,

Thanks for pointing that out. I've been using Linode for about as long as I've been using ChunkHost and the following reflect my experiences with them:

* Feedback: Linode's community support and official support are both very responsive. You won't see any year-old feature requests that haven't been answered. In fact, most (all?) of their employees are active on IRC along with a large group of customers.

* There isn't a SLA at Linode either, but I have only experienced one incident of scheduled maintenance. That maintenance happened to be on Linode's "birthday" and when my VM came back up (seconds later) it had more RAM than it did previously. I also had the option of rebooting my VM itself whenever I wanted.

* Notice for scheduled maintenance: Due to the lack of scheduled maintenance that affects the customers, I can't really speak on this. I seem to recall having more than adequate (5+ days?) notice for the RAM increase, but I can't find the original email to verify that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Complaints at the hosting low-end always amuse me.

You're paying <$20 a month for a _slice of a server_ and expect not just a tight SLA but ideally also a personal account manager who jumps when you whistle?

And would you like champagne with your Happy Meal, too?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi moe,

Thanks for commenting. I'm confused by part of your comment: where did you get the idea I want a personal account manager? Because I'd like to improve my experience with my hosting provider by providing feedback?

Regarding your attitude that if one is paying < $20/month then they don't have a right to complain: The VPS "package" itself is valued (by ChunkHost) at $20/month. While I happen to be paying less than that, that is irrelevant. The fact is, competition exists within that same price range and they provide better service. I highly recommend you sit in on the first couple weeks of a macroeconomics class to learn all about supply, demand, and elasticity. In particular, you should pay close attention to how substitute products affect one-another's demand curves.

As for a "tight SLA," I'm not sure not wanting to experience downtime three times in a single week qualifies as my SLA needing to be "tight."

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's all fine and great. Except that if you're so keen after most uptime and service per dollar then you should have gone with linode, slicehost or any other of the proven options in first place.

You didn't do that. You compared their prices to ChunkHost. You decided _against_ the ~$20 bucks that would have bought you guaranteed performance at linode and _for_ the free beta at ChunkHost. Dare I say you "cheaped out"? Now you complain because in 8 months they haven't managed to catch up with the competition that's 2-3 times longer around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Eight months ago there were not any reviews about ChunkHost and I wanted to try them out. I think you could s/"cheaped out"/"experimented with a new vendor." Do you not shop around and try new things or did you not buy the iPhone or the Droid because you thought your Motorola Startac was still the only proven option?

And now I've written a review on my experience. I don't understand why you are so offended that I did so, but you're welcome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find it funny and strangely coincidental that both linode and chunkhost seem to building their admin web interfaces on top of Drupal.

<comment><USER5> I find it funny that you appear to have visited neither site.

Linode pretty clearly uses ColdFusion, and Chunkhost looks to be built on Rails -- look at the source HTML for the 'members login' page for both sites. Linode has lots of 'CFM' and 'CFIDE', and Chunkhost has the telltale 'javascripts/' URLs.

<comment><USER4> Well I feel like a dumbass. I always thought the linode signin page looked like the default drupal signin form.

:/ I would like one rock to put my head under.</comment></comment></comment>


Q: "Other" Startups - <AUTHOR>

So, most of the time here people talk about software startups — no real surprise there — but I'm curious...<p>Who has some stories about non-software startups they're working on/with/around? Biotech, printing, design, restaurants: it's all fair so long as it's not the regular fare. <comment><USER2> I am in the process of writing my book summarizing my own experience in startups. The following chapter talks about success and failures of one of them. Hope it helps.

<http://www.lovemytool.com/blog/2007/09/why-startups-fa.html>

<comment><USER3> Awesome. Love your blog. Can't wait for the book!

<comment><USER2> Thanks. I am halfway there. One of the things that I am experimenting this time is "self-Publishing". When I wrote my first book about 15 years ago, it was the standard practice. I typed up the manuscripts and worked on the graphics, then made about 10 copies and started shopping for publisher. Once I signed the contract, it was totally out of my hand and I just get a (small) check every year after April 15th. This time I am putting the contents on the web so essentially the book is free. But once I finish, I plan to publish the hard copy on my own (even audio book). It is an experiment and it should be fun. Either way, I get very little money for writing a book (which is not why people write books).

Anyone has any experience with self-publishing that they can share?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Live It Green, LLC (<http://www.liveitgreen.com/>) founded 2006.

What started as a collection of side projects by two late 20's entrepreneurs (a green real estate developer and myself, primarily on the software side) has started taking a life of its own =) We've developed:

A certification system for Carbon Neutral Clothing. CNC certified clothing will be in Whole Foods stores starting next month.

The TreeTini - A martini that plants a tree (avail at both Uncommon Ground locations in Chicago, soon to be available at 3 more bars: The Whiskey Bar, Whiskey Blue, Whiskey Sky (the latter two are in W Hotels))

Tunes for Trees - search iTunes' catalog for music AJAXily; for every 10 tracks purchased we plant a tree.

We're having a lot of fun seeing these grow =)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've been doing some research into bio-deasel production. It's very neat stuff.

non-software companies require a lot more capital, So you won't see many first time entrepreneurs in those fields.

<comment><USER6> Never underestimate a man with a lathe, a mill, a bandsaw, and an attitude. All of those tools together can be had for less than the cost of a Xeon server.

<comment><USER7> Speaking of a lathe, I know a few kids who recently started a custom drum company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I sold my software startup last year, and while it's the "easy option" to get back into that scene.. I'm thinking I might get into publishing! Can a book be a startup? Hmm...

</comment><comment><USER9> Furniture manufacturing in East Africa! <http://mibaofurniture.com></comment>


The State of the Octoverse: top programming languages of 2018 - sahin-boydas https://blog.github.com/2018-11-15-state-of-the-octoverse-top-programming-languages/ <comment><AUTHOR> As long as JavaScript is the only language that runs in the browser, I expect it to stay at the top. Not necessarily because its the best or the favorite language, but because it is the only language. It is like having a chart of how many women versus men give birth. Shockingly women are still at the top.

<comment><USER2> Are you aware that one language can be compiled to another?

<comment><USER3> When a language is compiled to javascript, it's still javascript that's running in the browser.

<comment><USER2> Yes, but that's not the point: you don't have to write JavaScript yourself.

<comment><USER4> No, but you still have to suffer the fact that the language you do write in is translated to JS, and doesn't have first class browser support.

<comment><USER2> This doesn't seem to deter the users of TypeScript, one of the languages that made it to this top 10 ranking.

<comment><USER4> That's because it was created to keep all the semantics and underlying behavior the same.

So this is not like using Python to JS, or Haskell to JS, or whatever, where there are even types (e.g. any not float numerical type) that are not supported directly by the underlying engine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if something got lost in translation and the "thread safety" section should have been called "type safety"? It seems to be what the paragraph is talking about (though in the case of rust you could say the static typing lends it a measure of thread safety)

<comment><USER6> I agree. That paragraph is odd. They seem to be trying to use the concepts interchangeably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Python's versatility and interoperability are also impressive; for example, > developers can directly call Python APIs from Swift.

Well, AFAICT, there's a branch of the compiler/stdlib with an "early stage research project" that lets you call Python from Swift. It's "hard-coded" to use an 8-year-old version of Python, and they say supporting anything newer would be "non-trivial".

It's a pet peeve of mine to see people exaggerate the capabilities of software systems, especially already-popular ones that don't need free PR.

<comment><USER8> And that seems like a feature of Swift, not Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think some of these stats are a bit misleading when it comes to js, and how GH calculates it. For instance, my project is mostly php (Laravel). It uses webpack to compile a few assets, really... a FEW (Vue + a few vue components + my custom code). However, those few dependencies pull in hundreds of other dependencies, which pull in a ton more and on it goes. When all is said and done and the js (my actual code) gets compiled, it's only like 50k of js, yet github classifies my project as "javascript" purely due to the number of dependencies, when in reality it's probably more like 3-5% of the entire codebase in terms of what is actually getting executed. It would be nice if you could tell GH which dir to look at to judge. For instance (with laravel) the compiled assets are placed in /public while the uncompiled assets are in /resources. I'd like it to only count JS located in /public, as that's accurate for my app in terms of js usage.

<comment><USER10> Last I checked this should be possible with some contortions on your end; Linguist (the tool GitHub uses to detect repo language) has some hardcoded paths which it will ignore for the purpose of counting lines of code. See this issue where Servo managed to convince GitHub to count it as a Rust project rather than an HTML project: [https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/6332](https://github.com/servo/servo/issues/6332)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting data but why did they show the breakdown of popularity by geographic area as a line graph and label it as a trend? It makes it look like eg python is losing popularity at first glance but the lines are actually meaningless

</comment><comment><USER12> Every time I see something like this I'm reminded how easy it is to get into a bubble in this industry. If you were going by hacker news, you'd think Go and Rust would be way higher ranked.

<comment><USER13> Well they're both on the 'fastest growing'[1] list, which is about what I'd expect.

1: [https://blog.github.com/2018-11-15-state-of-the-octoverse- to...](https://blog.github.com/2018-11-15-state-of-the-octoverse-top- programming-languages/#fastest-growing-languages-by-contributors-as-of- september-30-2018)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The chosen visualizations are not helpful. They look like slides from a slide deck for executives. The green blobs in the corners are not related to to the data. Geographic data should be shown on a map.

<comment><USER15> I actually would object that geographic data should rarely be shown on a map.

A data visualization should be chosen such that it helps the viewer to better understand the information contained within.

Maps are great at showing some very specific types of information, namely boundaries around areas and the positions of those bounded areas relative to one another. If you have information that is intimately related to those boundaries and areas, then by all means plot the information on a picture of those.

The geographical regions in the article serve only as categories. There is no intent to educate or present the relative positions of those regions to one another.

You criticize the extraneous green blobs. What benefit and clarity is gained by adding other blobs (shapes on a map) and divorcing the relative ranking from an easy-to-interpret linear scale? How does that aid in understanding the relative popularity of languages?

<comment><USER16> Maps can serve as a chart of data relations _and /or_ a listing for easy lookup. But, yeah, it's disappointing most people dislike non-map charts with geographic categories.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Rust and Kotlin are also on the rise, both of which find built-in audiences in JavaScript and Java, respectively."

Is this a typo? Why is rust drawing an audience from javascript programmers? I would imagine c and c++ to have more synergy here.

<comment><USER18> We're seeing a lot of interest for two reasons:

* WebAssembly

* "I've always wanted to try something lower-level"

That said, this reads like a typo to me, I think it should be TypeScript.

<comment><USER19> Maybe add TS into the mix, but I doubt it's a typo. TS is just a subset of JS.

I'm a JS developer and learning Rust is one of my side projects. I've built a few hobby projects that combine both. They work well together and Rust is a much friendlier language to work with than C/C++ (IMHO).

<comment><USER18> The reason that it would have an "in-built audience" is due to the superset relationship, that's why I think it is.

<comment><USER19> For TS? I actually wonder how much of the TS stat is due to Angular. I only picked up TS because it's required to use Angular. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have bothered. TS is fine, but I have yet to see any real benefit compared to plain JS.

Rust going up in popularity is pretty cool, though. I can think of production cases I'd use it for on the server side.

<comment><USER18> Since all JS is TS, it's very easy to transition to. Similar to how Kotlin runs on the JVM, and is sort of, if you squint, just a nicer syntax for Java.

Anyway, who knows, it's not really _that_ important.

Glad you have some use-cases in mind for Rust :). If you ever need anything, feel free to reach out!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > Rust and Kotlin are also on the rise, both of which find built-in audiences > in JavaScript and Java, respectively.

I would have said C and C++ for Rust. Are Java developers actually even in the same universe as Rust?

<comment><USER21> Rust -> JavaScript

Kotlin -> Java

Which is still somewhat weird and they were probably thinking about TypeScript, not Rust

<comment><USER22> I believe there was a typo responsible for this confusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> What about languages like Haskell, which are also growing nowadays?

<comment><USER24> Growing sure, but still extremely niche. I think a recent report showed ~15 open jobs worldwide. A lot of Haskell users learn it for intellectual curiosity rather than any expectation of actually using it at work.

<comment><USER25> I get what you mean, but I bet it's more than 15 :) Hell, I bet just FB has more Haskell openings than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Anyone have any insight on the relative popularity of C in Asia?

</comment><comment><USER27> I find the rank graphs in this post a bit unsatisfying - I keep wanting to see what the relative magnitudes are. I've been experimenting with a visualisation that combines rank and magnitude. It needs another few iterations but I think the direction is promising:

[https://netograph.io/data/stats/connections?q=all](https://netograph.io/data/stats/connections?q=all)

</comment><comment><USER28> > Type Safety (?) [Used as a reason for current popularity]

This is odd, specially coming from GitHub. Not only does static typing not always guarantee type safety nor dynamic typing always ensures a lack of it (python, for instance, is strongly typed) but both of them have existed for over fifty years.

</comment><comment><USER6> The PHP plateau, then decline in just the last 2 years in interesting.

<comment><USER29> tbh I'm surprised it took this long, PHP has been unfashionable for a _very_ long time now. I suspect some of it might be because Django has become "the new wordpress" in many ways, and some because a lot of PHP users are one-man- bands who could already do JS and so find it natural to move onto Node.

<comment><USER30> The large majority of ISPs still only does Perl and PHP on their classical offerings, and I know which of the two I would rather use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> CMake is on the rise? Anyone has an explanation for that?

Edit: I mean it's an old build system for C. Is there some new developments that would cause it to rise in popularity?

<comment><USER31> It seems like the most popular option for portable C and C+++ builds. It seems to have solved the nasty Windows build problem the best, as far as I can tell.

Autoconf is another option, but it doesn't support windows. I think people perceive CMake is old and gross, but autoconf is older and grosser as far as I can tell.

For example, LLVM now uses CMake. It used to use autoconf.

I don't know of any new developments, but I think people do want to get off of autoconf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Top Programming Languages.....bit of a title there eh

</comment><comment><USER33> I know for sure without looking that there's less C than could have been and no Snigl [0] in there, since I recently packed up my stuff and moved to GitLab. For my needs, the platform is fine; and they embrace remote workers, which I think is great; the only thing it's missing is users. As it stands, 1 star on GitLab is worth a thousand on the hub.

[https://gitlab.com/sifoo/snigl](https://gitlab.com/sifoo/snigl)

Edit: Down voting without commenting obviously makes this a worse place for discussions. May I suggest stopping for a second and reflecting on your motivations?

<comment><USER34> GitHub also embraces remote work. About 2/3 of GitHub is remote.

I'm not saying move back to GitHub because of that, but it's one of the many things that GitHub and GitLab share in common.

<comment><USER33> That's cool, didn't know. We need more of that, some people just don't function very well in office environments and the talent is often somewhere else.

Right now though, everything is up in the air when it comes to GitHub. I would be very surprised if it just keeps humming along under Microsoft's weight.</comment></comment></comment>


Wizards of the Coast, Equity Distributions: Part 1 - <AUTHOR> http://www.peteradkison.com/blog-entry-2-wizards-of-the-coast-equity-distributions-part-1/

<comment><USER2> This is one of the reasons why I like HN, because nothing in my lower-to- middle-class upbringing prepared me for the notion of stock as anything other than shares of IBM which you held at the brokerage until you needed to retire. Pretty much everything I learned about the mechanics of tech investing I learned as a direct consequence of this site, in many cases to material effect.

One would hope that investors, on dealing with unsophisticated entrepreneurs, would tell them "Hey, it seems like you don't know the ropes of this yet, let me explain it to you" but the overwhelming number of anecdotes where I hear that have that sentence followed by advice so bad it shocks the conscience.

<comment><USER3> FWIW, TechStars was great about this. David Cohen and Andy Sack gave fantastic advice to our round (Seattle '12). I've been doing this for awhile, have read the relevant books and heard a lot second-hand from people who've raised a lot of money, but having mentors give great guidance around this from personal and networked experience was leaps and bounds better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone explain to me how this is even possible? I mean, when a corporation is created, before it takes any investment, _someone_ has to own it, right? How is it possible for the founders to not start out owning 100%?

<comment><USER2> It's more clear if you read his follow-up to the post. ([http://www.peteradkison.com/blog-entry-3-wizards-of-the- coas...](http://www.peteradkison.com/blog-entry-3-wizards-of-the-coast-equity- distributions-part-2/) <\-- highly recommended)

What probably happened is that they (on the basis of really, really, REALLY bad advice) started with something like 1,000 shares of the company, valued at $0.50 apiece. They did genuinely own 100% at that time. Then as they raised the 300k they _issued additional shares_ , at valuations between $0.50 and $4, diluting the founders _horribly_ , because the founders did not award themselves new shares.

The fundamental problem here is grossly misvaluing the company (i.e. the total value of 100% of the shares) at the time new shares were issued. For example, if you had hypothetically bought them a drafting table for $100 (an example used later), you ended up with a 0.5% stake in the company (implicitly valuing the company at $2k at that point). A tech company which only exists as a napkin held between two hungry young men with no asset other than a gleam in their eye gets a notional value of $250k+ on day one. If you attempt to invest in them later, after they have e.g. a product with customers for it, the value gets re-pegged SHARPLY north of that, perhaps in the single digit millions or higher if they're doing really well.

He mentions that a lot of the money men involved were annoyed by hordes of small investors making seemingly outsized returns on their initial investments. I don't think he quiiiiite understands that they're not wrong: their outsized returns were essentially large gifts of surplus value from the founders to them. (The money men, of course, seem a little put out that the founders didn't instead make a large gift of surplus value to them.)

<comment><USER4> _The fundamental problem here is grossly misvaluing the company (i.e. the total value of 100% of the shares) at the time new shares were issued._

Aha, that makes much more sense. So the problem wasn't that they didn't have founders' shares, or that they didn't have enough shares; but rather that they were selling off shares at ridiculously low prices.

Tarsnap Backup Inc. officially has 100 Common shares outstanding, but there's no way I'll issue new shares for $0.50 each. ;-)

<comment><USER2> I would certainly not suggest giving away those 100 common shares for picodollars because that would compromise your business results and make it affirmatively more difficult for sophisticated investors to join you, leaving your company to only receive investment from worse investors.

By the way, I signed up for Tarsnap and am using it "in anger" for Appointment Reminder. My predicted bill for this month is something on the order of 60 cents. It is, literally, the smallest business oriented bill I have ever forced my accountant to look at, and would fall below the noise floor but for the fact that I want paper records of me having paid for a professional backup service in case I ever have to prove this for my insurance agency. (I have professional liability insurance and data loss/data breach insurance for Appointment Reminder, chiefly because I have hospitals as clients and they want to know that if I screw up there will be deep pockets in the neighborhood to sue to settle up with. The insurance company is basically renting their deep pockets out on a "We are willing to bet that you won't screw up" basis, but to protect their interests, they have a 15 point checklist for various things Serious Businesses do regarding data security and if it turns out that I'm not a Serious Business than my Serious Business Insurance Policy will not actually cover me.)

I would, and this is my honest and true opinion as a customer rather than as someone who has nagged you for years to raise your prices, prefer to pay $100 per month for no reason other than to avoid having my insurance company think that _I_ am a stupid kid playing at being a real business by entrusting core parts of my infrastructure to a service which costs me sub-coffee money. In the event of me having an insured loss (which, n.b., I hope to never have and to just set fire to the $10 _a day_ I pay for insurance), I really don't want to have that conversation. Please make me not have to have that conversation. I can pay.

<comment><USER5> Let me introduce you to "Bigiain's Managed Tarsnap Backup Service" \- for the low low monthly fee of $99.40 (on top of Tarsnap backup charges), we'll provide you with a professionally monitored, secured, authenticated, managed, and 100% guaranteed digital _and_ paper invoicing service - complete with 99.999% SLAs on the invoicing and _punishingly_ punitive guarantees of eventual consistency in your long term invoice and payment ledger.

(Call now, our operators are standing by…)

<comment><USER5> Perhaps a little less cynically, I wonder if there's a market for "Enterprise sales as a service"?

How many Tarsnap-like services are there, which with the right salespeople and a 5,000+% markup could be sold into "The Enterprise" \- which would be a completely non-competitive demographic to the developer/startup trying to sell at <$30/month (or even <$1/month)?

Patrick, iterested in going 50:50 partners in BEMTBS? (Bigiain's Enterprise Managed Tarsnap Backup Service) You do sales, I'd handle "fullfillment" (read: invoicing), out of goodwill we can cut Colin in for 15% of all sales (and not even charge him commission on the Tarsnap bills incurred by our customers).

(Oh, and Patrick, BTW - my offer above of our $99.40/month plan is the "Personal Plan". Our "Business Plan", which includes all the features of the Personal Plan plus the words "Business Plan" on each invoice and statement is $248.40/month, and our "Enterprise Plan", which includes everything with the Business Plan plus the words "Enterprise Plan" on the invoices and statements _plus_ up to 3 faxed copies of each invoice as well as the PDF and USPS physical/paper mailed copies, is only $499/month.)

<comment><USER4> Patrick: Please say yes.

Seriously, I'd love to see people reselling Tarsnap. This is the main reason I provide accounting details in CSV format. As long as you pay me for your / your customers' usage, I don't care how much you charge your customers.

<comment><USER6> I've often considered the ways I could pack up Tarsnap for Windows users, and/or make a pretty GUI for Linux/OS X. It's encouraging to hear that you'd be supportive of that!

<comment><USER4> Very much so. Windows support is something I may be able to do myself, but a GUI is definitely something I don't have the expertise for; at some point I may end up hiring someone to write one, but if someone writes one on their own, all the better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The story of all the small investors surprised me, because i thought there were more rules about who could invest in a company. Are these rules new, or do i misunderstand something?

<comment><USER8> I'm a "suit", without a "Esq.", so if you want real detail here perhaps an attorney with a focus on equity issuance can reply.

Rules do exist about non-accredited investors buying shares of private companies or shares in public company private placement. Those rules give the "little guy" extra rights. This is why you won't see them investing capital in venture led financing rounds or able to trade on places such as Second Market.

Non-accredited investors end up with equity in private companies all the time through "Founder's stock" or grants from the option pool. They may even put in "seed money" to get it started so often in a venture backed company you'll have some early capital from what gets called "friend and family money".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is painful to read, especially the part about rich establishment late- comers whining about early, small investors getting "too much" payoff. Apparently people from middle-class backgrounds who "got lucky" don't deserve it. This reminds me of when Mark PinkAss whined in public about the Google chef making $20 million.

The people at the top of society really don't want anyone else to win because, as they see the world (and the OP clearly does not subscribe to this) it's completely zero-sum. These people do not believe in fairness _at all_. They're constantly looking for ways to take advantage of people, which I suppose is how they ended up at the top, but it makes the world ugly and I wish it would stop.

<comment><USER10> It wasn't a case of establishment late-comers whining. It was a case of establishment late comers not actually coming at all, late or not, because the system was rigged so they couldn't make any money. Since WoTC needed the investment, it was WoTC's problem and so they amended their terms.

If you're in a situation where you need to borrow people's money, it's up to you to offer terms that are acceptable to them. If you don't, then there's no law that says they have to lend to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've started one business and had options in two. In the end, one of those businesses (not the one I started) wound up paying me some lump sum. Presently I distrust futures of any kind; to put it simply, I am more interested in present-day pragmatism than greed.

I think the author comes from a similar line of thinking, as his tone seems to suggest. I'm not rich but I do fine. I'd recommend: do what you love; money comes and goes, someone with more flexible morals or risk affinity will certainly make more of it, but in the end you won't regret it.</comment>