I'm Everyone, a live, anonymous image/video site (potentially NSFW). - <AUTHOR> http://imeveryone.com

<comment><USER2> Really interesting, as long as you can stop it from becoming 4chan. :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man.

The thing I'm hoping is that it 4chan continues to be the best place to trade porn. They do it better, ImEveryone is more about the actual communication, hence the semi-persistent identities, threading, etc.

I can run ImEveryone in black and white with little difference.

In the gap between the post and the submission hitting the front page there's some degree of filtering - you could get around it if you wanted to, but why not just send to 4chan?

<comment><USER3> There was quite a pornographic picture top of the page when I visited, a couple of minutes ago (there's a new top picture now).

You probably need some sort of warning for that..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks good. I'm impressed by the design, and interested to see whether "high class" design (the oldey-worldey 1920s sort of feeling you have going on here) will encourage "high class" content. It feels somehow wrong to post a lolcat with all those fancy curlicues around.

Just a quick comment: I don't think the "each person in a thread has their own animal" feature is working correctly -- I posted a comment in a thread and got the same animal as an existing comment. In fact it looks like all comments at the same level wind up with the same animal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man, you've hit the nail on the head.

Working on the animals fix now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would suggest a way to see how many comments have been made on each photo. Fantastic blog, I'm enjoying all the content so far. Also when an image is clicked it would be great to see the full size. For example there is a long image file that has been shrunk down so all the text is unreadable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ack, will do in next revision.

Edit: done - comment count and full size images now running.

<comment><USER5> I'm not seeing comment count on the live page, it's working on the top page however. Full size image by link is working now however.

<comment><USER5> Also the comment count does not count replies, only fresh comments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I'll fix both these shortly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really like this - very simple (although I am guessing there is a lot of complexity behind the scenes to make it so simple).

One idea — what about making people authenticate with Facebook Connect to post? This would help with concerns about bad content being uploaded, as well as give a little bit of info about the author, and down the road you could subscribe to posts by a particular author?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've thought about this, and haven't made up my mind yet. I want people to say what's on their mind and part of that means that the post can't be easily tied back to their identity. Facebook connect seems the antithesis of that, but I guess at some point people have to trust the site they're posting on.

<comment><USER6> Definitely see what you're saying.

Two things:

One is that it would lose the "I'm everyone" feel, as now there are identities of the authors.

Second part would be that just because you would use Facebook Connect to authenticate wouldn't mean that you would have to use their personal info on their post - they could choose between using their own info and using an alias that gives no tie back to who they are. Would just have to work on messaging so that people aren't scared away by the Facebook Connect logo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yeah, I get that: FB just to prove you're a real person and tag you to something other than an IP and cookie. Still anonymous.

True: re how to focus that - I'm all ears.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please add NSFW to the title ..

<comment><AUTHOR> Done.

Something got past the adult filter - it's now gone. Sorry about that.

<comment><USER8> How have you implemented the 'adult filter'?

<comment><AUTHOR> A good question, but I'm not sure I want to give out details on the specifics right now - sorry.

I may be discussing the site at PyCon, at which point I'll happily let you know what works and what fails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is it that this post is not dead, but the author's description comment is?

<comment><AUTHOR> Edit: I see, the comment itself was [dead]. Not sure what happened there. Dead comment deleted and replicated below.

<comment><AUTHOR> I launched this late last night, a few things that make it unique:

\- You can actually have a conversation with someone - each person submitting gets a unique animal for the thread. All replies from the same animal are from the same person.

\- It's realtime, you can happily sit there and watch idly if you wish.

\- There's a ranking algoritm that's based on interaction rather than vites.

There's still a few bugs to work out: post errors are at the top of the page Stack Overflow style but the first users all seem to hate this location - I'll move it back to the comment box. Also replies will get images very soon, but this isn't yet implemented yet.

I'm trying to chase the PostSecret demographic, but expect the odd birth of anonymous mirth in their too. The audience is anyone who is interested in the lives of others, or who has the basic human need to have a witness to their lives. Tech stack is Python, Tornado, MongoDB, my own ORM.

<comment><USER5> Hmm, I'm noticing duplicates of the animals even when they are from different posters. (The savings thread for example)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up, I'll check this out and fix.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always wanted to do things like this, but the potential illegal uploads freak me out. Even if I wouldn't end up liable for anything in the end, I'm sure it could still cause me a big headache.

</comment><comment><USER11> I tried uploading an image without entering any text. I then got a message "Cat got your tounge?". I then tried uploading same image, this time with text. Then I got "You triggered the spamfilter". I can't see the submission, so I'm guessing it didn't get created. You might want to add the typical red asterisk or something to both input fields, to signify they are mandatory.

In any case, really cool concept, congrats!

</comment><comment><USER12> Giving it about 3 weeks until it's overrun by spammers.

<comment><AUTHOR> We use a couple of peer-based spam filtering services, generally they tend to be quite agressive. They've been successful in testing so far with the odd false positive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Do you know Simon Collison? I was just wondering as both your sites have the same unique theme going:

<http://colly.com/>

Anyway, great site, though I find it rather cluttered with all the oversized text and images. Scale it all down a bit, and it will be much easier to get an overview of what is going on. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> The vintage animal pictures are from iStockphoto, but yes, I asked Colly where he got his animal pictures - he directed me to iStockphoto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Tried posting a couple times, it didn't work.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you didn't have an image or embed, or your post set of a filter, check the very top of the page.

Errors in posts are at the top of the page, an idea I borrowed from Stack Overflow.

In testing, though, people don't like this, so I'll move the error messages next revision.

<comment><USER14> I did have an image and only a few words unlikely to set off a filter. It could be a problem on my side, maybe the AJAX request timed out or something similar. I didn't see any errors at the top.

<comment><AUTHOR> It could be a length limit - the site will post 'cat got you're tongue' on top of the page. A lot of people have commented it wasn't prominent enough so it wouldn't be your fault if you did miss it.

I've moved the errors to the form area now.

Retry if you'd like, and if it doesn't work I'd be support happy if you email me the post - I'll check it goes through next time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1939945> \- oh well. I like what you've done and will be interested to see how the content evolves as more people start using it

</comment><comment> Ocho-Bits I've read that you used Python and other technologies, care to go on a little detail?

</comment><comment><USER16> Every time I try to post a comment I get a 500 error. I like the concept but the site seems a bit buggy right now. Also, I tried to post my comment from an iPhone 4 running iOS 4.2.1 if that info would help.

</comment><comment><USER17> The style, idea and execution of this site is brilliant in its simplicity.

Very well done.

Now let's just hope it doesn't get covered with porn. :/

(or at least branch off the porn section ;)

</comment><comment><USER18> The page keep scrolling up to the top with every automatic refresh (once a minute?). Not very nice if one is browsing/reading/watching-video below the fold.

</comment><comment><USER19> Classier 1 board 4chan, without any pagination. Other chans have the semi persistent identities too, and other features that 4chan lacks.

</comment><comment><USER20> this is really cool, of course bad apples will make it a neverending challenge but I like the concept of a truly live group blog.

just a note, chrome appears to be hanging on ping.chartbeat.com and somtimes GA. uploads are hit or miss.

<comment><USER21> I've had nothing but success since I edited /etc/hosts and mapped GA hosts to 127.0.0.1. I loathe that lag which was introduced just so someone can save themselves the trouble of analyzing logs.

<comment><USER20> there is a massive difference between the data you can get from logs and what you get from GA

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Looks like posting a youtube embed in the comments breaks things

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, if people try to poste the actual embed code than the URL it's ugly. I'll fix that and come up with a suitable error.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I get a 500

<comment><AUTHOR> Was restarting to handle the flood of traffic - retry.

A better 'sorry' page for these times is on my todo list. In fact I'd love some way for nginx to realize a proxy is down and redirect to a sorry page automatically.

<comment><USER24> 500: Internal Server Error</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there any good reason to jailbreak iOS now? - <AUTHOR> Thinking about trying the Unc0ver jailbreak but having a hard time coming up with any good reason to... <comment><USER2> Big one that comes to mind is a personal pain point. Automatically running sync in the background for non apple backup. For example Google photos has to be opened once to trigger a new back up

</comment><comment><USER3> UI customisation, app sideload, possibility to use iPhone as mobile storage (like Android phones) are good reasons</comment>


North Korean hackers 'could kill', warns key defector - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-32925495

<comment><USER2> Yeah! And Saddam Hussain's army threw preemie babies from incubators out in the street.</comment>


Gamma error in picture scaling (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/gamma.html <comment><USER2> I wrote the Lanczos3 scaler that Picasa uses (about 14 years ago!), and it doesn't (by default) correct for gamma.

For most images & kernels, you can get by with doing math in about 31 bits total precision (a bit for underflow clamping), so that's the magic speed improvement from ignoring gamma on old 32-bit architectures.

If you gamma-correct, your sources will need to be 10-12 bpc after transformation, and you'll need >32 bits of integer precision for large kernels. Even though x86 has a 32x32 -> 32bit high word multiply, this all gets a lot better on x64.

So basically: today on 64-bit machines (or wide SIMD) you could do gamma- correct resampling a whole lot cheaper than you could do 10 years ago.

[edit] In the end you notice the difference with line art, but for most photographs you want to spend spend your CPU budget on sharpness (by using wider kernels).

<comment><USER3> > I wrote the Lanczos3 scaler that Picasa uses (about 14 years ago!),

What are you doing now? Picasa hasn't changed much since Google bought it and ignored it (except for adding G+ integration)

<comment><USER4> It pops up wanting to download an update about every week for years and years now.

<comment><USER5> Is it the same update?

<comment><USER6> Nah, sometimes they ship with a blank or missing dock icon, but IIRC they always include windows .exe files buried within the Mac app bundle ?!

Curiously, even after all those annoying update popups, this photography viewer app still does not support retina displays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is someone going to put Emergent Orange down to improper scaling?

[http://krazydad.com/blog/2013/12/05/emergent- orange/](http://krazydad.com/blog/2013/12/05/emergent-orange/)

(Emergent Orange made to front page here on HN yesterday. However, this gamma article says the movie industry gets gamma scaling right, and KrazyDad's day job is for Disney iirc.)

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone who designs algorithms dealing with image manipulation should have at least a basic understanding of colorimetry and color perception. It's absolutely not hard to understand but it is not trivial either. I can only suggest to read [1]. It's a rather thick book but you only need to read the first few chapters to avoid such mistakes.

[1] Wyszecki, Stiles: Color science

</comment><comment><USER9> That seems a minor complaint about GIMP. It's should be easy to fix after the major changes get done. By that I mean full integration of GEGL and migration to GTK3. IMHO if these don't get done soon, GIMP will get replaced. It's been years since they "inadvertedly ported the core graphics code to GEGL".

You might say my priorities are wrong and GIMP is short on developers and I care about infrastructure more than something like gamma. But I'm moving to Wayland soon, and if GIMP has to run with GTK2 via XWayland I'm just not going to install it. OTOH I'm not a major user of it.

<comment><USER10> Replaced by what? I'm not aware of any candidates. A VirtualBox with Photoshop, I guess.

<comment><USER11> Krita [1], probably. They focus on painting nowadays because they don't want to be competing directly with GIMP, but it's a very capable photo editing tool. I use Krita for a lot of my photo stuff because it supports more than 8 bits per channel. Still, I think GIMP has enough developer attention, and GEGL is powerful and compelling enough, that GIMP won't get replaced any time soon.

[1] [https://krita.org/](https://krita.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a serious pain in anti-aliasing also. The math is not cheap in compositing.

</comment><comment><USER12> Steve Mann covered this in some mathematical detail his paper called "Comparametric Equations with Practical Applications in Quantigraphic Image Processing", IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Vol. 9, No. 8, August 2000.

Link: [http://www.eyetap.org/papers/docs/comparametric.pdf](http://www.eyetap.org/papers/docs/comparametric.pdf)

The section, starting on PDF page 4, is called "On the Value of Doing the Exact Opposite of What Stockham Advocated", and describes exactly both this problem, and the solution.

</comment><comment><USER8> Firefox's SVG handling for feDiffuseLighting has the same problem. They calculate the Phong-model in the sRGB space but it should be calculated in a linear colorspace.

Reference rendering and SVG: [http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Test/20061213/htmlEmbedHarnes...](http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/Test/20061213/htmlEmbedHarness/full- filters-diffuse-01-f.html)

You can see that in Firefox the SVG has much darker colors.

</comment><comment><USER13> ImageMagick works fine:

      $ convert lama.jpg -gamma .45455 -resize '50%' -gamma 2.2 slama.jpg

<comment><USER14> That is clearly and directly covered in the article. Also, forcing the user to include manual gamma correction for a format that already has a known gamma curve is not ideal.

<comment><USER15> > Also, forcing the user to include manual gamma correction for a format that > already has a known gamma curve is not ideal.

To this point, ImageMagick has built in understanding of colorspaces:

        convert lama.jpg -colorspace RGB -resize '50%' -colorspace sRGB slama.jpg

In English: Read lama.jpg, convert it to a linear RGB colorspace, rescale to 50%, convert it to sRGB, write to slama.jpg

This is apparently also covered in the article, more as an aside, but it should be the first and foremost way to do it with ImageMagick.

<comment><USER13> Neat thanks, did not know about the -colorspace option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This has been on hacker news before, and that I gave some thoughtful comments on it. Anyone have the link?

</comment><comment><USER17> A photographer I know wrote a PhotoShop script that tried to correct for this when he resized images.

</comment><comment><USER18> OS X' Preview.app gets it right.

</comment><comment><USER19> (2007)

<comment><USER20> Thanks; added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is not really a Gamma correction issue (although gamma shouldn't be ignored for other reasons). It is the result of attenutation of high frequency information close to the Nyquist rate (1 pixel wide details) when downsampling. The applied gamma is adding emphasis to these high frequency details so that they survive the anti-aliasing filter and downsampling process.

<comment><USER22> You didn't understand the article. Read his cannonballs analogy. The problem is the formula used to average colors is wrong in most software. The problem is most software is averaging the numeral values of the RGB component when it it should be averaging the light output intensity, which is not linear to the RGB numeral values.

<comment> mark-r More specifically any addition of color values generates the problem, not just averaging. If you add two linear values and gamma-correct the result, you get a different answer than if you added the gamma-corrected values directly. Multiplication doesn't have the same problem. I.E. a^x+b^x != (a+b)^x, while a^x _b^x == (a_ b)^x. P.S. it has nothing to do with Nyquist limits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We have to make compromises in everything. Yeah, it'd be nice to have better scaling algorithms in web browsers, but is it worth the added overhead of processing power and energy usage when it mostly only matters for extremely contrived examples like the one employed here? Yes, people with specific needs won't be able to use the common tool, but that's the very nature of compromise: you give up the little potatoes to satisfy the majority. There is still room for precision, it's just in the craftsman market, not in the consumer market.

He's also being a tad disingenuous. Early in the article, he calls out Photoshop as an offender, but Photoshop has multiple image reduction algorithms that it can use. I haven't used the Gimp in a while, but I'm pretty sure it does, too. Yet it's not until nearly the end of the article that he mentions Photoshop is capable of doing a correct job.

>> "On the other hand, there never was a gamma problem within the printing or the movie industry. They have defined tight and scientifically-grounded standards and procedures and they perceive the public software tools as toys."

This line gave me the impression the article was written by a disgruntled analog-era print or movie industry employee, probably someone who wasn't the best in the world but was employed at the "peak", who is upset about their growing lack of relevance and is foisting the blame on "stupid consumers" and "non professionals". You see the same thing with old line-of-business- application Java programmers. The key is it's not the specific technology that is the problem, it's the relative mediocrity of the writer.

If you argue from a craftsman perspective, but come off as bitter, unemployed greybeard, then you probably weren't ever as good as you seem to think you are. The car didn't kill the horse whip industry, by evidence that one can still buy horse whips. It killed the cheap, commodity horse whip industry.

>> "Knowing that difference, even if you wouldn't notice it, do you accept it?"

Yes, because itty, bitty photos of dragonflies on my cellphone don't mean anything of monetary value to me. For all his grandstanding about professionalism, who is using such tiny, crappy images for work?

<comment><USER24> Not really going to address your rant, but just wanted to point out that we can and do have better scaling algorithms in web browsers. Works pretty well on safari osx and safari ios. As far as I can tell, it passes his test, which seems to corroborate that OSX added full support to the sRGB standard as of 10.6</comment></comment>


Tap Tap Revenge Approaches 1 Million Users, Music Industry Takes Notice - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/31/tap-tap-revenge-approaches-1-million-users-music-industry-takes-notice/ <comment><USER2> I count myself as one of the almost million users. This is a great app that is actually interesting to me (compared to guitar hero, et. all).

I'm really interested in seeing what ways free iPhone app developers will generate revenue. Tapulous certainly has a few options for this.</comment>


Africa set to be declared polio free - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/africa-set-declared-polio-free-nigeria-marks-three-years-without/ <comment> ga-vu See what happens when you don't have antivaxxres on a continent?</comment>


My Blog Was Hacked - Here's What They Did And How I Found Out - <AUTHOR> http://willnathan.com/valise/2013/3/21/my-blog-was-hacked-heres-what-they-did-and-how-i-found-out

<comment><USER2> Amateur Hacker Moment (AHM) I love it!</comment>


Dope and glory: the rise of cheating in amateur sport - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jun/01/dope-and-glory-the-rise-of-cheating-in-amateur-sport? <comment><USER2> I will never understand why people would be so ambitious to win in amateur sports and truly devote their life to it.</comment>


Google will block access to its Autocomplete API on August 10 - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/24/google-will-restrict-access-to-its-autocomplete-api-on-august-10-asks-developers-to-use-custom-search-engine/

<comment><AUTHOR> Does it affect location apis or places auto complete apis as well?</comment>


Don't Use Black For Links - <AUTHOR> http://e2open.org/black-for-link/

<comment><USER2> It depends on the target audience. I agree that there should always be some difference between non-visited and visited links. Also, if your website's main audience is Joe User I guess having it in a color (if you play it safe: blue) is an advantage as well.

However, Dustin Curtis' site is not for regular Joe, it's for geeks. In general I think it's okay to break some usability conventions as long as you are aware of what you are doing. It's also about what you want to achieve. How much attention do you want to attract to your links? Maybe you only want people to notice links if they are looking for them, or maybe you really want the links to stand out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, I use Zbench which defaults to black (or gray maybe). There may be a better way, but here's how I changed it: [http://www.jcopro.net/2012/09/06/change-the-link-color-on- th...](http://www.jcopro.net/2012/09/06/change-the-link-color-on-the-zbench- wordpress-theme/). There is probably a better way, but it worked with my limited knowledge, and should work for any WP theme.</comment>


NewSQL overview - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/IvanGlushkov/newsql-overview <comment><USER2> For anyone else too lazy to read the slides to find out what NewSQL is, this is slide 13:

        NewSQL: definition

        "A DBMS that delivers the scalability and flexibility
        promised by NoSQL while retaining the support for SQL
        queries and/or ACID, or to improve performance for
        appropriate workloads."

        451 Group

<comment><USER3> Better one is on the next slide:

\- SQL as a primary interface

\- ACID support for transactions

\- Non-locking architecture

\- High per-node performance

\- Scalable, shared nothing architecture

Michael Stonebraker

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The first time I ran into the NewSQL terminology was when I checked out CockroachDB: [https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach](https://github.com/cockroachdb/cockroach)

'A Scalable, Geo-Replicated, Transactional Datastore' written in Go, influenced by Google's Spanner.

<comment><USER5> There's an interesting presentation on cockroachdb [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEAuFgsmND0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEAuFgsmND0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a shame that most of these aren't open source.

At one point I had great hopes for RethinkDB. It seemed like a great fit when I first heard about it: It's among the newer databases, it's open source, MVCC, distributed, sharded, multi-master, and has a neat query language with some advanced features.

Unfortunately, while RethinkDB does feel very pleasant and modern, performance is pretty terrible, and it's quite lacking in some other areas.

<comment><USER7> Daniel @ RethinkDB here

We're still optimizing the performance of certain operations. There are definitely still a few rough edges, especially with analytical queries as you'd pointed out.

As far as basic operations (inserts, updates, retrieving documents etc.) are concerned, RethinkDB already has competitive performance and we hope to publish official benchmark results soon. As you know, good, comparable benchmarks aren't easy, and we're currently spending most of our time on improving RethinkDB rather than working on those. But they're definitely coming.

This is just a guess, but a query involving COUNT(*) might execute faster with PostgreSQL since it can use an index for making the count basically a constant-time operation, while RethinkDB doesn' currently support this. That is definitely a missing feature on our end.

If you get a chance, I'd be very happy to hear from you about the specific queries and the data you'd been testing, so we can look into those specific performance problems. My email is daniel at rethinkdb.com .

<comment><USER6> Benchmarks are indeed hard, which is why I only posted a very specific couple of numbers.

Postgres isn't using an index for the count. When you're essentially tallying an entire table it's a lot less efficient to traverse a B-Tree than to just sequentially stream the table, which is something Postgres is pretty good at.

Here's a sample explain output [1]. Mind you, that server was under heavy load (load avg 12) when I ran the query, which is why the numbers are higher than usual; with no competing CPU or I/O, it normally takes about 500ms.

That box has only 4GB of RAM, out of which it's using about 512MB for caching, and the OS is using about 1.5GB for the file page cache. As you can see from the plan, it's hitting 38,108 buffers, or 297MB of data, meaning its plowing through approximately 148MB/sec to compute the aggregation.

For comparison, RethinkDB chugs about 6GB of RAM before it manages to eke out some results from that query. I'm honestly not sure what it's doing.

[1] [https://gist.github.com/atombender/e97dde73ed90054c7626](https://gist.github.com/atombender/e97dde73ed90054c7626)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's strange he doesn't mention Google's Spanner, or references a paper ([http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.co...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en/us/archive/spanner- osdi2012.pdf)).

<comment><USER9> I'm going to. I just don't want it to be half-done, and this paper requires a lot of time :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> We consider ourselves NewSQL [http://schemafreedb.com/](http://schemafreedb.com/). We are looking into using Nuodb as one of our backend storage options when scalability is a concern, default is MySQL with TokuDB.

<comment><USER9> Take a look also at FoundationDB, very promising DB with a good performance and scalability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there a non-slideshare link?

<comment><USER12> share the sentiment, to the point I'll never visit an SL link

<comment><USER13> mind if i ask why?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is there any open-source/free newsql db ?

<comment><USER15> Slide 27. VoltDB.

Or use posgres-xc, or mariadb 10 with galera and maxscale. Postgres has JSON storage. MariaDBB has dynamic and virtual columns, and the CONNECT engine which can now directly create new or edit existing JSON files using the SQL interface, instead of dedicated functions for JSON manipulation.

[https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/connect-json-table- type/](https://mariadb.com/kb/en/mariadb/connect-json-table-type/)

<comment><USER14> voltdb free has no HA

postgres-xc/xl has no HA

Maxscale looks like it doesn't yet offer sharding

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> MySQL/MariaDB/Percona with its different modern db engines and MySQL Cluster should be mentioned.

<comment><USER9> I haven't found any notion about good scalability as a feature. Could you provide a link to a good article about it so that I could mention them

<comment><USER16> [http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/11/4/facebook- at-13-mil...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/11/4/facebook- at-13-million-queries-per-second-recommends-minimiz.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Is the Mobile Web Dead? Some Mobile Entrepreneurs Say Yes - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_the_mobile_web_dead.php

<comment><USER2> A lot of people are responding to this article by saying "The Mobile Web" is dead insofar as reading stripped-down websites for mobile browsers are dead. I think everyone is missing the point, and this has frustrated me for some time.

What's important to the mobile web isn't presentation, it's _context_. It's correct to say that mobile browsers are no longer the sub-par readers of teeny-tiny pages anymore. But the type of information you want when you've got one hand free riding the subway, or when you're stranded in an airport, or when you're waiting in line at an ATM, is fundamentally different than the kind of information you want when you're sitting at a PC or laptop. _That's_ the key to understanding the mobile web - it's context. When a user is browsing on a handheld device, chances are that they want more concise bits of data, or data which is related to their geographic position, or a way to remotely "check in" with a home base.

I've tried to envision a business that addresses this gap, but I haven't quite gotten there yet. Anyone have any ideas? :)

<comment><USER3> I don't think that is true. There are probably opportunities for new services (location based), but mobile users will still want all the other internet services on the go. For example, sitting in the cafe and chatting with friends, they might check wikipedia to clarify some topic they are talking about. They see somebody walking on the street with an interesting fashion accessory, and they might check ebay to see if they can get it, too. Not everything that is useful on the mobile has to be location based.

<comment><USER2> OK - you're right. I should clarify what I meant, I guess. The point I was trying to make (and doing a poor job of it) was to re-define "Mobile Web." I.e., it no longer means tiny, content-less web sites. Instead, it means the information itself, not necessarily the presentation, is applicable to the context of a mobile device.

You're absolutely correct to say that there are sites which will be useful on a mobile device, like Wikipedia or IMDB or whatever. But the web is like one of those Ven Diagrams where there are sites that are mostly applicable to PCs, sites which are mostly applicable to mobile sites, and a large area of overlap. The area that's mobile-directed is comprised of what I was speaking of (location aware stuff, remote checkins, etc), and what defines that area is not _how_ the information presented, but _what_ is presented.

<comment><USER4> What sites do you see as being mostly applicable to PCs?

<comment><USER2> Hmm - good question... perhaps graphics-intensive games (yeah, I know, there's not much of these that are web based yet)? Writing long online document? High- resolution pornography? Maybe stuff involving heavy research (e.g., large medical publications) where you want to cross-reference multiple documents and/or take notes?

I guess it's basically stuff that either works best with a large detached monitor for graphics-related reasons, or stuff that requires any amount of intensive typing. I suppose there's not a _huge_ amount of that type of thing on the web yet, but there are a _few_ examples and probably (?) will be more in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd say "Mobile web", yes. Browsing the web just as you do with a PC, using your iPhone etc, - growing massively.

The distinction has just gone away. People want a fully functioning web browser on their phone, and that's what they'll use. Not some WML stripped down horrible to use thing.

<comment><USER6> I disagree completely. If you look at the facts on what websites that are being used on iPhone the vast majority of sites are mobile websites or sites designed specifically for the iPhone - not normal webpages.

Mobile web is not WML

Mobile web = XHTML

I work for Heysan and we've been seeing a tremendous growth in the last 6 months. Mobile web is for more than 100 million people in the world the main way to experience the internet. In a year or two there will be more people having their first experience of the internet on a phone than on a computer

<comment><USER5> Maybe I really am the absolute odd one out then. I use my iPhone to browse the web. Why would I want to view a 'mobile' stripped down version, when I can view exactly the same sites I view on my PC? The screen is big enough, zoom+scroll work stupidly well...

I agree that more and more people will view the web on a phone, but I disagree about them going to sites built specifically for mobiles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No I disagree Mobile Web is not dead. I agree with the author in regards to the 2" screen mobile space. I think the mobile device market is shifting to larger screens. More people are buying devices like the iPhone/blackberry. Larger screens provide a must enhances user experience for native mobile apps. If you look at native apps on certain devices such as the BB or iPhone you can see the heavy use for certain types of apps. Mainly email and maps and safari on the iPhone. with the SDK for android and iPhone you will see a the increase in mobile traffic as these devices start showing up in stores.

The mobile market is not dead, its just starting to get some momentum.

</comment><comment><USER8> Pre-iPhone I suppose.

Worldwide mobile advertising is projected to surpass $2.7 billion in 2008, up from $1.7 billion in 2007, but the market has developed slowly and obstacles remain, according to Gartner.

Ref: <http://www.cellular-news.com/story/30208.php>

</comment><comment><USER9> I think the sentence about the fractured market and restrictive biz practices is key: There still is a need, but the market needs to evolve before filling that need becomes profitable.</comment>


FutureFeed - What will your friends be doing? - <AUTHOR> http://www.futurefeed.net/

<comment><USER2> Cute.

Funnily enough, I've been tinkering around with a service that does just something kinda similar in my spare time. The idea is that it will take a calendar published in ical format and automatically publish calendar events as tweets.</comment>


Nvidia Vulkan Ray Tracing Tutorials - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nvpro-samples/vk_raytracing_tutorial_KHR <comment><USER2> Maybe better with a link to [https://nvpro- samples.github.io/vk_raytracing_tutorial_KHR/](https://nvpro- samples.github.io/vk_raytracing_tutorial_KHR/) as it's the actual tutorial and has all the content.

<comment><USER3> That page doesn't load. It says:

        (insert vkrt_tutorial.md.htm here)

Meanwhile the repository readme actually loads and shows useful information when loading from [https://github.com/nvpro- samples/vk_raytracing_tutorial_KHR](https://github.com/nvpro- samples/vk_raytracing_tutorial_KHR)

<comment><USER2> Yeah, looks like they are doing weird stuff to load the actual content, not sure what that is about, maybe loading stuff dynamically from GitHub or something?

Looking at the source of the page, they are using some JS library called markdeep that seems to render the content, so if you don't have JS activated, it won't work. Similarly, overzealous or misconfigured adblockers would probably make it not work as well.

<comment><USER3> Do you think it's really overzealous or misconfigured to block unusual use of content?

<comment><USER2> Well, I myself use adblockers for all my browsers and I sometimes add my own rules that blocks more than I actually wanted. Are you saying it's impossible to misconfigure the blocklists in adblockers?

Just trying to help you out with figuring out what's wrong. If you don't want help or to fix the issue, maybe refrain from posting next time.

<comment><USER3> No, it's definitely possible. But I think your definition of what you want and my definition aren't wholly compatible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shameless plug: We created a simple game engine with this technology. I am planning to upgrade it to cross-vendor ray tracing support with the upcoming Vulkan SDK. Cheers.

[https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Raygun](https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Raygun)

<comment><USER5> Do you have a video demo somewhere?

<comment><USER4> Done: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZSoVidqV2Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZSoVidqV2Q)

<comment><USER5> Awesome! That looks absolutely amazing!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't mean to sound cynical, but, this is a long and detailed tutorial. They've clearly spent time working on it. IMO they should have tried to come up with a final result that is visually more appealing. Otherwise, people come to the tutorial and it's like, why go through all this work to recreate something that just looks meh? (a poorly lit model of a house floating on a grey flat rectangle) IMO, just a plain old Cornell box[0] would have looked better (and not been more complex to achieve).

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

<comment><USER7> Going to go out on a limb and guess that it's because the people who would actually go through these tutorials are people who already know what can be accomplished with raytracing and want to get their feet wet with doing so in Vulkan.

The average person who's looking for "What can raytracing do for me" is going to get their answer from Control, Battlefield, Metro Exodus, or even the Quake II and Minecraft demos, and not some developer-centric Vulkan tutorial from Github.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. The meat of the tutorial is the Vulkan aspect. The final render is just scene composition and easily changed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> At the risk of tooting my own horn, here is a ray tracing tutorial series in Python: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8ENypDVcs3H-TxOXOzwD...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8ENypDVcs3H-TxOXOzwDyCm5f2fGXlIS)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting to see Nvidia willingly working on what for a while seemed like an open source platform that was really only being pushed for by AMD.

<comment><USER10> AMD also has another interests beyond open source.

Wondering when Vulkan will get mesh shaders.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What pain point did Twitter solve? - <AUTHOR>

Entrepreneurs are often asked what pain point their product solves. (I think it is even on YC apps.) I think that's a great question that can help clarify what a business is doing. But it got me wondering ... if you were pitching Twitter to a seed stage investor and they asked you what pain point it solved, what would you tell them? <comment><USER2> It's valuable to broadcast a message to large numbers of people, but hard to get people to tune in.

One way to mitigate that problem is to make messages cheaper to listen to, and broadcasters cheaper to find and follow. In a medium more carefully optimized for listeners, audience sizes will be sufficiently improved to make it worth the extra effort demanded of broadcasters.

The result is a new kind of broadcast channel: one in which broadcasters don't need to invest millions of dollars into to overcome the cost of acquiring listeners (like television, or even news websites), so many many more broadcasters can profitably use it; a virtuous cycle ensues where more listeners are attracted, attracting more broadcasters, and on and on.

I don't think that was the original thesis of the site (original thesis: "users will enjoy a site that lets them tell their friends what they're doing right now"), but I do think that's where the value turns out to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm going to go against the grain here and ask people to consider this: Maybe Twitter doesn't "solve" _any_ "pain point" at all. IOW, maybe this whole analogy with painkillers is flawed and not the best model for looking at the world.

OK, yes, you can pretty much always twist and manipulate semantics and express anything in terms of a "pain", but is something getting lost in translation? I don't have the answer, but I think it's worth thinking about.

"What problem does your startup solve"? Important question, no doubt. But if you go back to the "vitamin or painkiller" analogy, sometimes it's OK to be the vitamin. And sometimes something becomes popular just because it's fun and novel.

All of that said, what made Twitter so interesting? I think originally it was the idea of a "near real time" way of distributing messages to a group, coupled with the knowledge that A. the messages you _receive_ would be short, so you could parse them quickly, and B. the messages you would be _composing_ would be limited, which meant that tweeting couldn't turn into too much work, the way writing a blog post might.

<comment><USER4> Twitter allows public mass-messaging better than any other media, but this was just a feature before being a pain solution. Now it is also a pain solved for some kind of people (politician for example need public mass-messaging so now it is a pain it solves too but now, not at its beginning). I think maybe twitter didn't solve any pain. That's it: you don't always have to solve problems to get "success". Really, sometimes it's just because it's something cool or amusing or new or becomes a fashion for some strange reasons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> People enjoy that feeling of achievement when they've written a blog post. But writing is hard. By limiting posts to 160 characters, we make blogging easier but just as fulfilling.

(Though if you're asking about the historical pitch, I believe it was originally about having a blog that people could follow on a dumbphone)

<comment><USER6> As someone that has not used Twitter much and often made fun of it, your response was very close to my initial answer.

Thinking about it more though, I would say that Twitter should not be compared to blogs. I think Twitter is more like IRC. Twitter is a simpler version of IRC for the masses that can be used via dumb phones. Add in hash tags, search and an easy to use filtering system, and Twitter actually seems pretty good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Twitter allows you to interact anyone in the world (that is on Twitter, of course).

I'm going to NYC for the first time this week. I want to eat at places where the locals eat, not what's trendy on the Web or TV. How did I get recommendations?

Twitter.

I reached out to NY food bloggers and they happily responded with tips.

I don't need to get introduced by someone else. I don't need to personally know them or "friend them". I don't need to pay for 3rd party services to hunt down a phone number or an email address.

People often miss on what I think is one of the most fantastic features of Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER8> Reading Hatching Twitter ([http://www.amazon.com/Hatching-Twitter-Story- Friendship-Betr...](http://www.amazon.com/Hatching-Twitter-Story-Friendship- Betrayal/dp/1591846013)) will give you a more historical and give a bit of context of how they evolved to where they are now.

</comment><comment><USER9> Twitter solved phone-to-internet and one-to-many communication when text message communication was expensive, internet access from a phone was limited and expensive, and free public wifi was rare.

</comment><comment><USER10> A high throughput (via length limit) communication method where you don't have to specify the recipient(s).

It's a good way of broadcasting news in realtime.

</comment><comment><USER11> 1) ESP with anyone you care to follow. 2) As someone tweeted today (paraphrased): a venue to directly scream at famous and important people.

</comment><comment><USER12> Twitter made it easy to post in broadcast mode, as well as fun and easy to consume the broadcasts of others.</comment>


Religious infiltration of state schools in the UK  - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10775755/State-schools-isolate-non-Muslims.html

<comment><USER2> very, very bad</comment>


You gotta be rich to own a cheap car - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/02/no-fixed-abode-gotta-rich-cheap-car/ <comment><USER2> I'm twice bitten, once shy on used cars.

I know plenty of people who are reasonably frugal who still go for the new car, though I think they view it as more of a slightly risk-averse heuristic than an optimal decision. I think most of them recognize that with planning, effort, and a bit (but not a ton) of luck, they probably would do better used.

The risk averse heuristic goes like this: identify a car with a reputation for value, purchase under a buyer's plan, take very good care of itfor the useful life of the car. These aren't the people who show up in a shiny new car every few years - they often keep the car for 15 years or more.

Like I said, it's a bit risk and effort averse, since with a lot of research, careful evaluation (including a mechanic inspection), and a bit of luck (more the absence of bad luck), you can definitely beat the above strategy by going used. It's a lot of effort, though. Personally, I did all the things you're supposed to do, and still ended up with lots of $$ repair bills, so I'm no longer interested in used cars. I understand that I got unlucky, but I'm just done.

I suppose I'm also particularly convinced by the argument that people generally don't sell good used cars, since I'm one of those people who hangs onto a car until it costs me more to own it than replace it.

<comment><USER3> Buying a one or two year old car is far better than buying new. The first few years of depreciation are the worst and if the car is a lemon you'll generally know in the first year.

<comment><USER4> Anyone ever buy a car off a car rental place (Enterprise, Budget, etc.)? They continually buy new cars, so they always have old inventory to sell, and they keep their cars in good condition. It seems that you might avoid both lemons and the immediate deprecation that way, but have a 'almost' new car.

<comment><USER5> Imagine if you went to buy a used car from Craigslist:

Q: Who drove this car?

A: Oh, whatever random people wanted to pay me money.

Q: What kind of maintenance did you do?

A: The bare minimum to get it to last a year.

Q: What options did you get?

A: The lowest ones the manufacturer would sell us.

Does that appeal?

<comment><USER6> Actually you can pretty much guarantee optimal maintenance, because all cars are on a schedule and regulated by the corporate office. Everything else is spot on. You'd be surprised about the % of used cars starting in a rental fleet, even if they aren't sold by those companies directly.

<comment><USER5> True, but on a new car with relatively low mileage, I would think maintenance is essentially oil changes and tire inflation, and maybe brakes if the car is really abused.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's a reason that I have always loved reading TTAC and will always continue to read it. These guys are thoughtful and interesting to a degree that is only rivalled by how insular and myopic most car people are. They taught teenaged me a lot of lessons about critical thinking by laying it on top of one of my favourite topics - cars.

Enough of a love letter - I agree with the point. There's a similar thing that happens with house owners: owning a whole bunch of tools and being able to fix your own stuff is a privilege that middle class people enjoy, but poor people do not. You have to pay for the ability to plan for contingencies, and if you can barely afford to pay for your living expenses, you definitely can't afford to pay for the $50 battery charger, or the $30 socket set, or the time and energy required to learn all this stuff in the first place and put it into action when you need it done.

<comment><USER8> It's the same with the tastefully minimalist lifestyle - being able to say "I'll just buy (another) one of those if I need it" and throwing something perfectly good out, is a privilege of the rich. It takes money to own very little.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> _Last but not least, I had the ability to just let the car sit. I didn't need it for anything. It wasn't the way I was going to make my rent money that month, it wasn't the way I was going to get my child to the hospital. It was just a car that I was driving for fun. And that's the biggest kind of Privilege! I can imagine._

Wherein we arrive at a key point of strategy in cheap vehicles.

Have two.

I spent half of college riding a pair of $500 motorcycles. On any given day there was a good chance one was broken with the engine sitting on my driveway- but I never once missed a day of class, thanks to redundancy.

Of course that did mean I had to invest $1,000 into vehicles instead of $500. _Privilege!_ , I suppose, but a smaller one.

 _Bonus: the second vehicle takes you to Autozone when you are halfway through a rebuild on the first and discover you are missing your 12mm socket and six bolts_

<comment><USER10> Many parts stores deliver, fwiw.

I got a part in 20 minutes this past weekend for no upcharge, delivered to my house. And I didn't need it--my car was operable. Just a heater control valve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This was a fun read and I can relate, I own a Toyota with over 300k km's on the clock. At 160k the timing belt snapped and bent the valves. Luckily I could afford to take a week off, buy a second hand imported enjin, have a dad who is a mechanical engineer, and learn swap the enjin myself. Then take a second week off work because the new enjin had timing issues which I finally pinpointed to a pirated camshaft pulley where the outer ring of the part would slip.

Long story short, my car, even with all the troubles is by far cheaper than any other option, but just like the article states, you have to have certain "privileges" to make it work.

<comment><USER12> Could the timing belt issue have been avoided if it was replaced? Or would you say it was something else that _caused_ it to break, and would have happened regardless?

<comment><USER13> Timing belts are 100-120k mile maintenance parts depending on the vehicle. Expect bent valves if you don't replace them at the recommended interval. My car is on it's third.

<comment><USER12> So if you were to replace them at the 80% mark of those miles... Then you should be very unlikely to have them snap on you unexpectedly?

<comment><USER11> No it doesn't work like that, statistics etc. As with any fixed interval maintenance part there is some chance that the part can fail before being serviced. As per my example, the timing belt was replaced at 100k, so the new belt failed at 60k, just bad luck.

Fixed interval maintenance is used for parts with a tight normal distribution when failure occurs and where you can't predict the failure before hand, or it is difficult to measure / predict. Timing belts fits this use case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Meh. Older luxury cars can be great cheap cars for the kids, as long as you avoid extreme high mileage, known expensive parts issues, and dubious service records. CARFAX is useful: You get to see service records. I would pick a 10-15 year old Benz with 100k miles (where the prices come down quickly) that's been dealer-serviced, over a Subaru or Volvo. Any decent car should go 200k miles before it becomes a money sink, and Lexus, BMW, and Benz engines should run to 300k miles before anything expensive wears out. Automatic transmissions and rev-limiters make it hard to destroy an engine through abuse. Non-turbo 6 and 8 cylinder luxury car engines have led an easy life.

The cars they are talking about are either semi-exotic high performance models that probably have been whipped, or super-high-mileage. That's called having a hobby.

<comment><USER15> Used German cars are among the biggest money sinks on the planet aside from unaffordable exotics. Out of dozens of friends and dozens and dozens of Euro cars, not a single person has had an inexpensive to repair or own BMW/Mercedes/Audi/SAAB...new or used. And these are cared for vehicles, not rolling wrecks or the result of careless owners.

My 95k Ford had 1 repair in the years that I owned it (a rarity for Ford)...a thermostat. My 70k miles Honda has had $0 in repairs since 2006.

German luxury cars only make sense if leased from new (which 70% of them are). Used? Run far away, and run fast.

<comment><USER16> You can make it a good value if you are a diehard car hobbyist, but I concede that this is not most people.

I am still holding onto a 21 year old mid-luxury BMW. I have spent countless hours working on it and probably have $2000 in parts in it (I have owned it for 9 years.) I am grateful that I have the free time, collection of tools and documentation, know some tricks about buying parts, and can figure out machines. I feel that I have obtained a great value considering what it will cost to get a newer car, in similar state of repair, that gives a similar experience driving. I would not enjoy most other car makes.

People buy these German cars for some reason, and the reason is not ever to have a maintenance free automobile, or to never spend time or money fixing the car. You are going to expend some resources one way or another, but it does not have to be mostly money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I come from a poor family, and I'm no rich guy now. My family has always owned used cars. My current used car has saved me a ton of money, and as long as I maintain it, it will last a very long time. And by no means am I some great mechanic. I know how to change the filters, I get jiffy lube to change my oil, and thats it.

So buying a used car can make a lot of sense. Of course, I'm not buying a used Maserati. That's just stupid.

<comment><USER18> He didn't write about buying used card. In fact, he even made a point about buying not-that-old Civics, because there is no risk to owning a used Civic. But changing your oil and filters won't help you when the CV joint snaps going down the road (and it's _going_ to happen someday), or when the alternator seizes up, or when the starter won't turn over, or when the timing belt snaps without warning.

All of those things can happen on an older vehicle without a moment's notice, and besides the timing belt, none of them are commonly found on a scheduled maintenance calendar. Changing your oil only helps until that odometer rolls over 250k (for a reliable car) or even 90k (for a cheap econobox).

The point isn't "don't buy a used car", it's "don't listen to articles saying you should buy a car with a million miles for $1000".

<comment><USER19> CV joints 'snap' when they have been left without lube or have been driven _way_ past their lifespan (normally the life of the vehicle but for smaller cars they are fragile enough that it is not rare to see them go).

One major reason for CV joint problems is the CV joint boot tearing allowing road grime in and grease out of the joint (they warm up enough that the lube becomes fluid and of course there is all the swirling which will happily empty a fully greased up CV joint in a few hundred kilometers). So you inspect those periodically and replace them when they have a large enough number of miles on them. Maintenance is _everything_ with things that you use every day and that you depend on. It's like technical debt in software: you can ignore it for a bit but then you end up paying double or worse.

A CV joint is a wear part itself too, so if it has done its duty you replace it. (Not all that hard, but definitely not 'can barely replace a tire' territory.)

<comment><USER18> I looked at the manual on my Fiat and my Silverado, neither of them recommend checking the CV boot for damage as part of routine maintenance. And I say that with 90% certainty that the CV joint on my Silverado (357,000 miles) is about to fail with the boot still intact. I can't come up with any other reason why the passenger side wheel has an inch or so of play side to side when it's jacked up, or why it clunks when I turn left. From the outside, the boot is in perfect shape.

(for those commenting on the CV joint thing, this is what I was told by two licensed mechanics after they had inspected it. Thank you for prompting me to get another opinion though).

Everything in your car, you can say "if it has done its duty, you replace it". Sometimes that includes the entire car. That Silverado is still on it's original engine. Has that done it's duty? How would I know when I should replace the engine? The frame also has 357k miles on it. I know from inspecting it that it's rotted in certain spots. Has it done its duty?

You and I know how to inspect various parts of the car to see how much wear they have. Not everyone can. A CV joint might clunk or grind before it fails. A timing belt won't give you that luxury.

<comment><USER20> A CV joint ideally does not transmit any force other than torque on the axle, if there is a lot of play in the wheel from side to side you really need to replace that ball joint or control arm or whatever suspension component is broken. Your car is currently dangerous to drive, if that joint fails completely at speed you will lose all control over the orientation of that wheel and there's a good chance it will want to immediately turn sideways. If the side to side play is at the 3 and 9 o'clock position then your tie rod end has failed, if it's at the 12 and 6 o'clock position then it's probably a ball joint.

But back to the topic at hand, every repair manual I have seen has listed inspecting CV joint boots for tears every so often.

<comment><USER18> It's interesting that you say that, I've actually had it at two mechanics to get their opinion. I bought it about 400 miles from where I live, so I had to drive it back. I wanted to make sure it was safe to make the drive. Both of them said "it's the CV joint, but as long as it's not in 4WD, you're fine". When I jack it up, I can move the top of the wheel side to side like wiggling a loose tooth. So on that judgment, I drove it 400 miles clunking along.

But back to the topic at hand, repair manuals are different from the manual you get included with the car.

<comment><USER19> You're making the mistake of assuming that CV joints are 'customer inspectable', they are not, but the garage has it in their maintenance schedule (including scheduled replacements), so as long as you want the car to pass 'MOT' or whatever it is called or if it is still in scheduled maintenance with a dealer they'll be taken care of every so often and inspected at least once every year.

That doesn't mean you can't do it yourself, just that that is not usual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Just bought my first new car in November. I tried really hard to get a used car, but honestly, it just didn't make any sense -- the cost of financing was much higher, and the cost of the vehicle itself was nearly as much as a brand new model year (this was the case for both the '15 Toyota Corolla and '15 Honda Civic, and their '11 to '13 model year used counterparts.) This doesn't even touch on how difficult it was to find a decent used car in the first place.

I guess if you're comfortable with dropping $10k in cash for a decent used car, then you'd save money, but when/if you can finance a new car for very low interest rates, why tie up your liquid cash like that?

> For those families, a new-car payment is a burden — but it's one they can > predict and live with. It sucks to "throw away" $300 or $400 every month, > but it's never a surprise and in exchange they have freedom from surprises.

How exactly is paying $300-$400 monthly for a new car "throw away" money? It's going towards the ownership of a useful piece of property. Maybe the author is talking about leasing? I don't know.

<comment><USER22> Low interest rates on new cars are a smoke and mirrors game. If you weren't getting low interest rates, you'd be getting a better cash price. I bought a used car earlier this year and financed it at 3%. I'll pay around $1500 in interest. I save several times that in depreciation, and even new with 0% interest, the price still would have been close to that $1500 more.

Also, the decision isn't necessarily between brand new car and a 10k used car. If you're buying a two or three year-old car, it's probably over 10k.

<comment><USER5> > If you weren't getting low interest rates, you'd be getting a better cash > price.

Not necessarily. If dealers get a kickback on the financing, they can actually charge less for a financed car then a cash one.

<comment><USER22> That can be true, but if you're not getting a subsidized interest rate, the difference in interest you'll pay on a new car vs. a used car isn't big at all. Not enough to make up for depreciation.

This is also a good tip -- if you go into buying a new or used car with financing lined up, you can tell the dealer that, but tell them you'll go with them if they can give you a similar rate because you might get a better price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This lead me to:

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

<comment><USER18> Is it just pictures of people who backed into a parking spot? The gallery requires Flash, so I haven't seen it.

There are actually some places around here that have signs explicitly disallowing backing into a parking space for one reason or another. Anyway, I was taught in drivers training (in the US) that if you are able to pull through a parking space so the front of your car is parked towards the road, you should. Not sure how common that message is.

<comment> Brian-Puccio > I was taught in drivers training (in the US) that if you are able to pull > through a parking space so the front of your car is parked towards the road, > you should.

My girlfriend and I call that "pulling through" and fist-bump with excitement when we can pull through a parking spot into another so the car's front faces the path of travel eliminating the need to back out. (Almost all parking by us is parallel parking on the street, so it isn't often.)

<comment><USER18> When I was in driver's training, the instructor (and the book) called it "the ideal parking spot".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I found this piece to be pretty much garbage. OMG only rich people can get a ride from their wife!!!!

The article should have been: You gotta be a mechanic to own a cheap luxury/sports car.

<comment><USER25> It was more than just "being a mechanic".

It's

      * being a mechanic (so you don't have to pay $500 for a $200 job).
      * having a job with flexible hours (This happens on the way to McJob and your late? McBye Bye.)
      * having someone else dependable with a flexible job (Friday night and everyone know you know is working at McJobs?)
      * having someone to take care of your kids so the kid is at home/daycare/babysitters and not freezing in your car
      * having spare money so the choice isn't food vs radiator
      * being able to easily adjust to different circumstances.

Not everyone can lose a car and adjust with minimal effort. car breaks down and you expect McJob holder to be able to afford another car? thousand(s) for fix? downpayment on a replacment in short order?

All of this revolves around the fact that he's in a good place, and able to count his blessings. If all you got out of this is "you gotta be a mechanic" then you need to re-read it.

<comment><USER26> "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.

"Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

"But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.

"This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness." - Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms: The Play [http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the- ri...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/72745-the-reason-that-the-rich-were-so- rich-vimes-reasoned)

<comment><USER25> I'll second that in a heartbeat.

I have a good friend that always struggled with money - rent, food, you name it... yet somehow has an expensive car with expensive insurance. He makes 1/2 what I do (or less) yet somehow drives a car worth 2/3x more than what I drive (just got a new used 2011 Honda Civic).

Generally you become, and stay, a millionaire by saving money. It's why so many people can win Millions in the Lottery and be broke a few years later. Getting money is only the first part. The second part is keeping it.

<comment><USER27> Even saving a lot, not everyone has sufficient income for that in a first place (even considering saving for a long time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> First, if you have no mechanical inclination and don't have mechanical friends, then used cars are problematic. Although you probably be in worse shape buying a new car also. The second problem now is an awfully lot of used cars and used car parts got trashed by the "cash for clunkers" program. I can think of few worse government programs to put the boot to working folks then that program.

Its all risk management. Not much different from the buy vs build in computing. Sadly, mechanical training is a dying skill and the risk is much higher.

My co-worker just bought a used Subaru for $1,000 and other than needing a belt replacement ($60 and about a hour of time), it was in really good shape. He knows how to look at a car, so all good.

Always, always, check the timing belt (or chain) and oil pump on old vehicles. That repair will kill you.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand how someone can drive but not know basic car maintenance, especially if you can only afford an older used car and depend on it.

I don't mean everyone should know how to replace a clutch but you should know the basic wear components (filters, belts, lights, brakes, etc) and how to diagnose and replace them. On most cars these are fairly simple (except on some newer cars that make them overly complex).

This is a rule I feel should be applied to your entire life. At a bare minimum you should understand the basics about things you use on a daily basis. Computers, cars, homes, etc.

<comment><USER29> > I don't mean everyone should know how to replace a clutch but you should > know the basic wear components (filters, belts, lights, brakes, etc) and how > to diagnose and replace them.

F..k Renault. Lights on these (especially Laguna front lights) tend to be an adventure to replace. Or every car with the high-voltage Xenon gas lamps.

I was pretty happy with my VW T4, I could tear that car down and reassemble without any problem. With modern cars, filled with dozens of computers, not so. And to make things worse, once one of the computers or sensors breaks or has issues, you'll need OBD diagnosis computers or even specialized computers to diagnose the problem or repair it.

That's stuff for expensive maintenance shops, while I just needed a small garage and a couple of basic tools for the T4 (okay, and a motor crane for lifting out the engine).

<comment><USER3> Yup, that's why I said except on some newer cars. Headlights were what I was thinking about too. Even some non-HID headlights have become a real pain to replace.

<comment><USER29> The problem with the headlights is crash resistance.

Old(er) cars had plenty of space available in the engine room because the "air" was used to absorb impact in crash situations.

New materials/manufacturing processes allow for entire removal of "dead space", with more and more components for "luxury" stuff (luxury compared with an old car, like all-side radar, active parking assistants, multi-zone AC,...) squeezed in every cubic centimetre of the car.

And so, no more space is left for your hands when you try to replace a f...ing 4mm wide lamp. Unless you disassemble the container for the window washing fluid, unmount the brake fluid container and bend two multi-wires (Renault Laguna, right-front lamp assembly).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a bit too black and white.

The numerous Spanish-speaking men I saw at Autozone at around 10pm on Arizona (the only place I've lived where parts stores were open until 11pm) were good counterpoints[1].

The reality is that it comes down to some combination of know-how, discipline (nobody _wants_ to change an alternator at midnight), resourcefulness, and innumerable other factors. The example in the article -- a failing radiator -- has workarounds that would allow someone to nurse it to and from work. An overworked, single mother of three is pretty unlikely to know the workaround.

That said, by all means, buy the newest car you can afford, unless you're specifically seeking a challenge.

[1] I noticed that, somewhat ironically, the people in the poorer neighborhoods around Phoenix had the 'privilege' of more parts stores open later.

<comment><USER31> You also have to amortize tools over multiple cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Spending $300 - $400 dollars a month with the idea that you wont have surprises in terms of your 'brand new' transportation is a fallacy. I've seen new cars back in the dealership often times more frequently than used cars with 100k on the clock. Although you may not have to 'pay' for the repairs it is still the inconvenience that you'll have associated with a rental car and the time lost.

As another commenter pointed out, these guys posses a skill, it's not just about free time. And the skill can be acquired or bought just like most other skills. Some basic education on how to buy a used car and what to look for can save you big $$$, I wrote about how I pick up sub $5000 cars and why financially it almost never makes sense to buy a new car here: [http://www.tropicalmba.com/entrepreneurmobile/](http://www.tropicalmba.com/entrepreneurmobile/)

Most cars have a sweet spot in terms of maintenance cost and depreciation. You don't have to go down to the $5000 if you aren't comfortable there. Problem is however that comfort for most uneducated used car buyers is relative and mostly not related to the actual condition of the vehicle. Most people think newer is more reliable. While in many instances that can be the case, IMO it certainly doesn't justify the price that comes with it.

For many buyers a good window to consider is 2-6 years old. The vehicle will still be going through it's depreciation cycle (so you will be paying for that) but will generally have somewhere between 20-100k miles on it. In most modern vehicles you probably won't have to repair anything major during a 2-4 year ownership period depending on where your car is in the cycle.

It's a good idea to have an ownership timeline for your purchase. I personally like to drive something different every year or two. I know most people like to set it and forget it. Either way, having a plan for ownership length is an important part of the equation and can help you to factor depreciation and mitigating risk.

Finally. The Japanese and Germans still build the best vehicles unless you want a truck. It's very unpatriotic but save yourself the headache and don't buy an american car. It's really easy to try and argue this one until you try and remember the last time you saw a mid- nineties Ford Taurus on the road. Same can't be said for a Civic.. The resale prices will corroborate here as well, you may be tempted to jump into a $6000 2008 Chevy Malibu... it's a trap! Poor build quality and low resale potential make these very bad choices.

</comment><comment><USER33> I know a number of friends who hear the sticker price and think my decision to acquire a Nissan LEAF electric car is an expensive and ridiculous luxury. They're both wrong and right for the same reasons the OP's friend is wrong and right.

At the time I bought my car, one study had shown the LEAF as the second cheapest total cost of ownership of all US-sold automobiles after the Toyota Yaris. My own research showed their electric cost assumptions didn't factor in off-peak rates at one-third of normal costs. Even with today's low gas prices, some new electric cars' TCOs can compare favorably against their gas competitors.

On the other hand, privilege has to factor in. Range anxiety doesn't matter if you have money. I've never run out of electricity and I can afford to be late to appointments if needed. I can afford the uncertainty of being an early adopter in a cold weather state with fewer chargers because I have alternatives available if needed.

Electric cars will become a no-brainer for cost sensitive people in future as ranges increase and used ones become more available. However, my decision only makes sense with some level of privilege.

</comment><comment><USER34> Give me a break.

I've never bought a new car in my life and never intend to.

My current daily is a 1992 Subaru Loyale that I bought for $450. It has selectable 4x4, gets amazing mileage on the highway (>35mpg) and has lived through many Yukon winters. It starts nicely even below -40C/F. Being a wagon it's an awesome road-trip car and the roof racks often have something on them.

It has a few clunks and rattles, and when something major dies I'll ditch it, but at this point I've driven it over 50,000 kms so it owes me nothing.

Also in 2007 I bought a 7 year old Jeep Wrangler for $6,250. I then drove it 65,000kms (40k miles) from Alaska to Argentina and never had a single mechanical problem. I sold it after the drive for $5k, so it only "cost" me $1,250.

<comment><USER30> _I then drove it 65,000kms (40k miles) from Alaska to Argentina_

That sounds interesting. Have you written about it anywhere?

<comment><USER34> [http://theroadchoseme.com](http://theroadchoseme.com)

If you're interested in traveling like that, checkout [http://wikioverland.org](http://wikioverland.org)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm reminded of the song "$1000 Car" by the Bottlerockets. Here's a video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsbJA9RM4Cc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsbJA9RM4Cc)

"Now you're the owner of a $2000 $1000 car"

<comment><USER36> Nice tune, thanks. I like to say, you can afford a $500-2K car if you can afford another $500-2K car today. A buddy replied yesterday that then you have two non-op cars ;) I agree with what the article and one comment says about time and privilege, I'm lucky to have the other circumstances align so as to be able to afford these cheap cars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> So the problem with cheap cars is risk. Are there companies selling after market warranties for these things? I'd be curious to compare a cheap car + triple A + some form of insurance to a recently new car still under warranty.

<comment><USER38> We have them in the UK

[http://www.moneysupermarket.com/car-insurance/car- warranty/](http://www.moneysupermarket.com/car-insurance/car-warranty/)

It is also $50 per year for vehicle rescue - they take you to a repair centre of some sort.

For $100 per year they will take you to your UK destination.

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

<comment><USER39> More like £18.90 ($30) with [https://breakdown.rescuemycar.com/](https://breakdown.rescuemycar.com/)

I've used them and never had a problem.

Things might be a bit different in the UK because the annual MOT gives a good indication that these schemes are going to be dealing with cars that have been mechanically checked. For example my previous car (Renault Clio) failed a couple of times due to the CV boot being torn. CV boot was mentioned in an earlier thread.

More on the MOT: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOT_test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOT_test)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Yep, a nice example for comparison. How many of you would buy an used car with a million miles on the clock? Weren't anything with less miles available? Consider the value depreciation of a new car, this will usually be several hundred per month, add more insurance costs, costly servicing (because you can't service it anywhere you want), add financing costs (loan or leasing) and you'll see why everybody wants you to buy a new car. Ten year old car is not really that old, come on, and most of the parts/systems are probably perfectly allright.

</comment><comment><USER41> No you don't.

New Toyota corolla: $16,000 2005 Toyota corolla: $4,000

I don't think there exists a scenario where you can end up outspending the MSRP if you buy a used previous model. Say for example your absolute lemon has chassis damage and needs to be scrapped (that's the absolute worst scenario). You still have $12,000 with which to buy another used car. Say you spend a whole week working on it to fix something catastrophic. I don't think anything would take that long but anyway. How many people actually make $12,000 in a week? Not many that need to save money on cars.

<comment><USER42> It's almost like you didn't read the article to discover that his point was only tangentially related to the headline.

<comment><USER43> Bingo. It's pretty common for people to comment without reading the link on sites like reddit, but that was never the case here. Until recently, that is.

They see the title, then head right to the comment section to give their "superior" opinion.

<comment><USER18> When I came in here, there were three top-level comments and all of them were variations on "I drive a late-model used version of a reliable car with relatively low miles and it's never broken down!"

I would say more than half of the people commenting here either did not read or did not absorb the message of the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is a great resource for when your teenager comes to you with terrible eagerness - "Hey Dad, I found a truck online and it's only $1000. Will you come look at it with me?".

</comment><comment><USER45> The only person I know who has been able to own and enjoy cheap cars is my friend who sells and fixes up cars. It's not just knowing how to fix up a car that's important, it's also knowing what to look for when buying a used car.

</comment><comment><USER46> There is only one way buying a used car ever makes sense. If you have zero credit, no-one to co-sign with you, thousands of dollars in spending cash, find a perfectly maintained not-damaged low-mileage reliable formerly popular car for 1/10th its original value, and do not depend on getting places in a timely fashion.

I have owned about 7 used cars, so I consider myself an authority on bad decisions when it comes to cars.

There is no way to cheat the gods of autos. If you want a luxury car, you will forever pay luxury prices. If you want a fast car, it will break quickly. If you want an inexpensive car, the only one worth buying will be the one you want the least. Cheap, reliable, sexy: pick two.

Any used car you buy for $1,000 after tax tags & title, and it has no problems, is a good purchase. But don't ever repair it. Use duct tape and WD-40 and change the brakes, but never fix anything on it. When it finally stops running [which will be in 6-12 months] go buy another car. You're still paying less than for a new car.

Here are two fun stories. One about a modified sports car, and another about a used luxury car.

\---

The 1993 Toyota MR2's chameleon paint job gleamed purple-blue-red-orange as I walked around it to the underside of the engine, next to the trunk. The mechanic showed me where the turbo needed to be mounted up, the oil ring seal that had failed (causing turbo overheat and almost explosion) and the OEM replacement they'd tried to order. Only this turbo (and maybe engine?) wasn't OEM - not for America anyway. Apparently the old part had come from some mystery shipment in Japan and installed by a mystery tuning shop in North Carolina, and the mechanic had no idea what kind of oil seal to replace it with.

Of course, I had another car to drive, because i'm a privileged 20-year-old IT worker with cash to throw away on a ridiculous used purple sports car. So I continued on to work with my other car(s) while I researched where to find a replacement part. Finally I found it - thanks to a very helpful Toyota dealer in Australia - and had it shipped over for a small fortune.

About a month after the initial failure and my little baby was purring like a kitten once more.

\---

The 2004 Lexus IS300 had what you would call a "colorful history" of parts failures.

Long ago the driver side speakers had stopped working and half the speedometer lights had gone out. It had experienced no less than four water-pump-induced radiator meltdowns, with miraculously no warping of the engine. The left rear speed sensor had been replaced after the shreds of cheap drifting tires wrapped itself around the rear axle and tore the wire away. The entire front left suspension i'd replaced over the course of two weeks (at that time I lived 30 minutes walking from my job, so no biggie) after bumping into a curb.

After the bumper cover was stolen in Baltimore I collected approximately half it's value from insurance and never replaced it. After another curb-bump (due to ice) and parts replaced by a shady mechanic, the left front speed sensor suddenly stopped working, leaving the traction control disabled. The O2 sensors had long since thrown codes requiring their replacement, or possible investigation of the catalytic converter [of which a replacement is $1,000, one forked proprietary chain of three catalytic converts].

But the most pressing problem was more obvious.

The left front headlight had intermittently stopped working some years before in the coldest periods of "Florida winter". It would eventually start working again, so it was ignored until it finally stopped coming on at all; then the headlight that was out would switch places, finally going back to the first. Tried the usual fixes; replace the bulb, nothing. Get a new HID projector (because luxury cars don't come with "stupid old bulbs"; that wouldn't be luxurious), but still nothing. Fuses are all good. Final thought? Electrical problem.

No big deal, right? Could be a mystery wiring problem. New wiring harness cost? $1,000. Well screw going OEM, let's go to a junk yard. Oh... IS300s never come into junk yards, do they? Ah huh... seems the parts are so expensive and rare, people get paid to strip the parts and sell 'em on ebay for near-OEM prices, without a guarantee.

So here I am, finally paid the _used_ car off after 7 years, in quite a state of disrepair, with a value that is thousands of dollars less than the cost of total repair of all the broken bits. All the rest of the problems can be ignored, but the police stop you for a bad headlight. And then there's the safety inspection.

I could have just bought a new car and had half this stuff warrantied, would have been paid off sooner at lower interest rate, and would have been much cheaper to replace had the badge been a large encircled "T" instead of a large encircled "L". Because the same car sold in Japan by Toyota costs thousands less.

<comment><USER47> > There is only one way buying a used car ever makes sense.

When you have enough sense not to buy a new car!

I regret purchasing my new Mazda for $25k when I could fix my older SUV (like, major, rejuvenating fixes) for $5k.

<comment><USER46> You'd just end up fixing it again for another $5k, and another $5k, and another. It adds up, in small amounts of time, labor and parts.

There is no used car fairy. You don't get to pay $5k for the equivalent of a $25k car. Physics pretty much puts that to a stop by constantly degrading every part in the car.

The whole point of "mileage" in buying used cars is not that a car is better or worse at a given mileage, but that it's more and more and more likely to fail. Each part has a guesstimated point at which it will fail, because all the parts have defects. As your car gets older, practically every single part fails. You end up replacing everything. Your old SUV will eventually cost you as much as that new Mazda.

The hedged bet with a new car is that by the time you pay it off, you won't have paid anything other than regular maintenance costs, and you can now buy yet another new car. If you drive like a grandma or barely drive at all _and_ garage the car you can stretch this out for a long time. Most people are not grandmas.

Leasing is a very sensible solution for most people because it combines hassle-free maintenance-free car ownership with a promise for an always- working car at a fixed [read: no surprises] price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> > Tavarish and his friend are both skilled mechanics. [ ... ] Privilege!

Skill is not privilege. Skill is acquired through sweat, not conferred.

Of two unequally privileged people, one may attend mechanic school, but only the ones who sweat will attain skill.

<comment><USER49> You're ignoring the systematic factors that lead to one person being able to attain car-repairing skills over the other.

"Al, in fact, was a former Lamborghini tech. What's that training worth? Do most poor people have it?"

No one is denying that Al probably put in a lot of hard work, but that he was able to get to that point is a part of privilege too.

<comment><USER48> You seem to claim that privilege will give you skill. It will not. You need sweat to gain skill.

Here is a quote from someone who actually became a Lamborghini tech[1]. It supports my statement that sweat is more important than privilege in acquiring skill, emphasis mine:

"i did need not go to any toher after school like audi etc. i got perfect attendence and didnt have a grade under 94. i always went to another school at night during my course in high performance engine building. _just work hard and when you go to school work hard_. more than half the kids sat thier all day talking about cars and didnt care about there grades. and the most important thing you need luck. haha to be honest. i am a technician here on the service side. you never know unless you try. every body told me i was nuts cause _i sent about 60 resumes to every top dealer and performance shop that had something to do with lambo and ferrari_ and all these great companys, and i got it. _just work hard and dont give up_. my first day at work i got to work on and drive the veyron. it was insane "

[1] [http://www.lamborghini-talk.com/vbforum/f4/how-become- lambor...](http://www.lamborghini-talk.com/vbforum/f4/how-become-lamborghini- technician-5790/)

<comment><USER49> I never claimed that you needed only privilege to gain skill, or that you didn't need sweat to gain skill. What I said was that even those who work hard were able to do so (able to work hard) because of some privilege that they had.

<comment><USER48> > "those who work hard were able to do so [...] because of some privilege they > had."

Yes, this is where you are wrong. It _is_ possible to work hard without starting from privilege. Try re-reading your statement in a week when you are less attached to it and see what you think:

Working hard does _not_ require privilege.

Working hard is a choice every individual makes, every minute of the day.

It is possible to work hard with starting from privilege and then gain skill.

Skill is gained by hard work and is earned. It is not the result of privilege.

Skill is not the same as privilege. Skill is earned by sweat and can not be granted.

Privilege can grant many advantages, but it can never confer skill.

Skill can only be earned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> That is how you make money on internet. Car broke down? Dress it up and write an article.

In next level write about someone sooo rich, he does not even own the car.

<comment><USER51> What are you referring to?

Tavarish's blog is gold. Baruth's post is thoughtful commentary and reflection.

None of it is click-bait.

<comment><USER50> I just don't get this guy. He is trying to thoughtfully mock some reflection, but it just show him as an alien from different planet.

Yes, there are people who have to rely on $500 cars. Yes, cars sometimes broke down, people have to walk, freeze whatever. And yes, you should do maintenance even on cheap used cars. And yes, if you buy junk you should probably change some critical parts.

And no, it is not a privilege to own this sort of car.</comment></comment></comment>


Gittip - Set up recurring tips to people who do great work. - <AUTHOR> https://www.gittip.com/

<comment><USER2> I love the idea, but I'm not so keen on the name.

The mission statement gives examples of how this is a great idea for musicians, coffee shop owners, and other generally smart people ("genius grants for the rest of us"). On the other hand: the name, the required GitHub authentication, and the list of suggested tippees all strongly imply that this is solely for programmers. This says to me that the grand plan is to start out by focusing on programers (which makes sense, since it's a group of people who are on the whole really good at recognizing and rewarding people and projects that make their jobs easier), and to eventually expand from there.

The problem with this is that 'Gittip' is an incredibly technically-focused name; it makes perfect sense in context of tipping your favorite GitHub contributors, but not so much when your average non-engineer Joe wants to give money to the guy who makes his coffee every morning.

<comment><USER3> You know, I thought the same thing. The idea started as a tipjar for Github and I bought Gittip.com, but then I realized it was much bigger, so I decided to use Logstown.com, a domain I already own. But then I was talking to my bro- in-law this past weekend, a non-technical musician, and he was like "Logstown makes me think I'm taking a dump. I like Gittip a lot better." So I renamed it back.

He has no idea what git and github are, so the name gittip to him is just a nice, symmetrical name that has "tip" in it and evocations of "gift."

Go figure.

Look at the way that "bit" and "wiki" have evolved beyond BitTorrent and the WikiWikiWeb. I console myself by hoping that with gittip, the same is maybe happening to "git."

<comment><USER4> > [Insert name] makes me think I'm taking a dump.

That's about as good of feedback as you can ask for.

<comment><USER3> :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is potentially nefarious to everyone.

1\. People perform poorly, creative and intellectually, when there is a reward at stake, specially if it is cash. This is proved by multiple studies.

2\. Small cash compensations will shift the focus from the main reason people enjoy to code and contribute. Worst, if the amount of cash reward is inferior to the true value of the work they do (and it will be), people will feel undervalued and loose motivation. Either pay them well, or not pay at all.

3\. It will be a constant remainder they should be making real money instead of making tips on github.

4\. The system benefits developers by popularity instead of quality. Besides popular developers are those who need it the least.

5\. Popularity and profit will poison the minds of the young Jedi's while coding thus decreasing overall code quality, creativity and productivity.

<comment><USER3> It's also potentially virtuous.

1\. Gittips aren't a paycheck, they are a no-strings-attached gift.

2\. Small cash compensations will free people up to contribute to society on their own terms rather than wasting their time surfing Facebook in a cubicle.

3\. It might be a reminder that their society values the contributions they make based on their passions and interests and not on their utility to a corporation.

4\. Popular developers know who is doing the grunt work and deserves more recognition. They can call out such people via Twitter, etc. In the future I can imagine upgrading Gittip to allow high earners to distribute higher amounts per person per week.

5\. Young Jedis will be incentivized to add true value to society as adjudicated by the wise crowd, rather than answering to a monolithic corporation as their societal proxy.

<comment><USER5> The only argument which makes sense at the light of what I said is number 4.

<comment><USER3> You'll have to say more if you want to try to merge horizons.

<comment><USER5> The open source community works well despite, and thanks to, no money being involved (at least explicitly). The motivation obviously exists without money, and the results are better because of that.

So, there is no problem to solve, just potential to poison one of the biggest qualities.

The only argument which makes sense at the light of this, is number 4, and that is an interesting problem. Distribution of wealth.

<comment><USER3> Where I'm coming from is that I want to work on open source software, and I get really down on the hoops I have to jump through to do it--consulting, employment, starvation. I want to add value to society and I want society to value me in a more direct way.

Tips are small so there's no strings attached. That's different than with other uses of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It appears some of the people who you can tip on the site actually had the tip jars set up for them without their knowledge. I think this was on HN before about why that isn't cool.

[http://krisstraub.com/2011/11/20/kachingle-and-the- transgres...](http://krisstraub.com/2011/11/20/kachingle-and-the- transgression-of-opt-out/)

<comment><USER7> What if you could pledge a tip to someone but your card wouldn't actually be charged until they accepted?

<comment><USER3> Hmmm ...

I imagined money accumulating over time until it was significant. Then finding out about it would be like getting a call that you won a genius grant.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacArthur_Fellows_Program>

I could see this as a possible compromise if opt-out turns out to really suck as bad as with Kachinga.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is an interesting idea. Presumably taxes are the responsibility of the recipient when they "withdraw"?

Also, would it be appropriate to have a widget? Includes stuff like:

-"Hey. Here is how you can support this work"

-Gittip Overview Link

-Github handle

-Public income numbers

Or is that too "gimme"? Is this meant to be more of a "for hackers by hackers" thing? Or more mainstream?

<comment><USER3> Gifts don't count as income in the US. There's a gift tax on the donor, but that doesn't kick in until you give $13,000 per person per year. Not sure about other countries.

Widget: Heck yeah! Wanna write one? :-)

Intended to be mainstream, starting w/ Github. But Guido isn't on Github, only Google+. :-(

<comment><USER8> Yeah...i had to look at the distinction between "gifts" and "tips" a bit on the IRS site. I am sure a tax accountant can clarify, but (in my mind) the name "gittip" had put it informally in the tip category. A little digging made it seem like that was a restaurant-related thing. Does simply earmarking money as a "gift" make it so? Is it a special rule in restaurants (in US) that prevent you from giving a "gift" instead of a "tip"? But I digress.

Perhaps it is just a potential FAQ situation: "If I get some 'gittips' what are my tax responsibilities?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do you really think the tips should be recurring to the same person every week, rather than also having a one off option? Also, once you've started tipping someone, it's possible to stop?

<comment><USER3> a) Eating isn't a one-off option. Expenses are recurring so income must be too. I can imagine a one-off option down the road.

b) Yes, it's trivial to stop. And because tips are anonymous, there's no social awkwardness to stopping a tip.

<comment><USER9> Of course eating isn't a one-off option, but it's highly unlikely that anyone will be using income from this to make ends meet. Mirroring the tip analogy offline, I don't go into my favourite restaurant and tip the service staff there every week, even if I haven't eaten; it only happens if I eat there. It seems to me that one-off tips will be a heavily requested thing at least.

Great idea, I hope it really takes off.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, you're probably right.

<https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/5>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the name I thought it's about sending tips to someone (like tips & tricks) how he could improve his code via some git pull request or something.

</comment><comment><USER11> Kickass!</comment>