Ask HN: I'm 26 and would like to make 100k/yearly before I'm 30. How do I do it? - <AUTHOR> Like the title says, I am currently 26 and would like to make at least 100k a year by the time I am 30. I am a front-end dev with about three and half years experience but, professionally speaking, I feel like I am stagnating.
I have a very deep understanding of html/css and I know enough jQuery/JavaScript to handle DOM manipulation, as well as build out image sliders, tabbed content areas, etc. etc. I am also very knowledgeable about WordPress. As far as locations go, I live in the central US and won't be moving to San Francisco, New York City or any other large coastal city. Taking that into consideration, 100k would be considered more in the central US than somewhere like San Francisco.
Basically, I see two options. The first option is to start learning a backend language, something like Ruby/C# and hoping for the best. I seriously doubt I could get enough experience learning a new language part time though. My second option is to really start focusing on MVC JavaScript frameworks and becoming proficient in something like Backbone or Angular.
Are those my only two realistic options? If so, are there any recommendations on which route I should go or any general advice? <comment><USER2> If you are that good with Javascript - jump on the node.js bus rather than Ruby or C#.

In terms of making more $ the first thing I would work on is salary negotiation, not necessarily skills. There are a few great salary courses on udemy that can help with asking/answer the right questions when looking for something new or even a raise.

In terms of location/salary - I would also recommend looking to freelance for companies in NY/SF as you can get a higher rate rather than central US.

Lastly - I would say to not just think in terms of $100k but in terms of products. What products/site could you build that charges $30/month (SAAS) and can get 500 signups. Just that would get $18k/month in revenue or over $200k/year. Now $30/month may sound like a lot but take a look at Basecamp (<http://basecamp.com/pricing>) $20 minium a month or dive into b2b saas and checkout some of the crazy #'s they charge - <http://www.marketo.com/small- medium-business/pricing.php>

500 clients sounds like a lot at $30 - but no matter how you do the math (10 clients $1000/each) or (100 clients $100) a product can easily pay over your $100k/year especially if you spend the next 4 years building it. Focus on getting your first paying customer within 1 month of today and just keep going hard.

My 2 cents :) Good Luck!

<comment><USER3> Why your node recommendation? Does node pay particularly well?

<comment><USER4> Node.js is a section of services that will be needed now and in the future to create distributed web services/ sites, so yes node js is important to the next level of the web resources.

<comment><USER3> I don't think you've read my question.

<comment><USER5> I believe s/he's saying if you invest the effort to learn Node (considering you already know js), you could find yourself in a significantly more marketable position in the near future (thus increasing the chances of making that 100k).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm 27. I've crossed the 6-figure barrier twice.

1: Consulting on the side.

Find a company that has you working an actual 40 hours per week (government contractors are good for this), which doesn't bar you from doing some side work (bonus points if they have a culture which supports this). Then, find a client or two. You won't have to charge much in order to cross the six figure barrier.

2: Work outside of the software industry

Within a year of when I started consulting, I was recruited by a shrinkwrap products company to work in their intelligent products division. Because I was already consulting successfully, and because I didn't really feel like I wanted the job, I threw out some high numbers during salary negotiation. In the end I wound up with a compensation package North of six figures in an area with very low cost of living.

General advice:

Quit focusing on what _solutions_ you'd need to learn in order to get to the next level. Instead focus on what _problems_ pay the most. Never, ever market yourself in terms of the tools you use. Market yourself in terms of the problems you solve.

Edit:

One other thing - definitely do learn more. Always. The more you learn, the more problems you'll be able to solve. Just make sure that you're letting the problems focus your learning and career development, not trends in solutions.

Edit 2:

Did I really write "done crossed the six-figure barrier" up there? "Well shewt!"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice, I appreciate it! It seems like a lot of people are suggesting consulting. Do you know of any good resources on how to start consulting? I live in an area with a population around 200k and there really aren't any large business interested in hiring people to do web dev work. Also, businesses here severely undervalue developers so the chance is finding a decent paying gig is quite low. Is it possible to do remote consulting or something along those lines?

<comment><USER6> Remote consulting exists, but it's harder to find work that way -- infinitely so if you have no reputation.

The only advice I can really offer on how to get started is to network. Talk to people about their problems at work and take genuine interest, even when they're not a potential client. Where possible, help people out in meaningful ways and show (don't tell) them that you're smart and that their problems are important to you. You'll probably end up doing some free work this way, but you'll make friends who trust you and that's far, far more valuable. As long as you're clear that you're looking for consulting work, it'll find you eventually. Just don't belabor the point.

One trick of mine is to focus on selling the minimum amount of complexity. Figure out exactly the value that the customer is looking for - often times they don't know what it is. There's a saying that a person in a hardware store looking for a quarter inch drill doesn't need a quarter inch drill, they need a quarter inch hole. But more importantly almost nobody needs a quarter inch hole -- maybe they need a new shelf. If they need a new shelf, maybe they just have too much stuff. No matter what it is, get to the bottom of their problem and sell them the simplest solution with the maximum value, even if it doesn't make you any money today.

Also consider trying to tackle some stickier problems in well-known open source projects. PostgreSQL is a favorite example of mine for this as they make it very easy to contribute. Why hire someone who "knows" PostgreSQL when you can hire someone who helps _write_ PostgreSQL?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The money's what matters? Go into an investment bank (i.e. Goldman Sachs) and start doing stuff. It's easier to move teams internally than get hired for exactly what you want. Demonstrate that you are willing to put in the time and take the risks and you'll get your 100k, for all the good it will do you.

Learning a new language part time is easy - if you're smart you could certainly pick up Ruby or C# in a couple of weekends. You don't need "experience" to get good at something, only to get hired for it. So again, the secret is to get hired for a position that's nominally doing something on your CV (web developer), then transition within the company to doing what you want. If need be, once you have your C#/whatever "experience" from doing it at this company you can then use that to get a job as a "C# developer" at a second company (possibly at higher salary). It's insane that this is how things work, but that's hiring practices for you.

<comment><USER8> This. They'll treat you like shit, but you'll be making great money.

If you want to be treated well and make money, well you're going to need to be a high-tier professional. Maybe a software architect or data scientist. Both require a lot of knowledge and practice.

<comment><USER9> I know people who work in IBs and are treated well. There is more then one you know. Sales still make more money then devs in Google but you could think the opposite based on their marketing. Maybe working in IB is more honest. You are not trying to "change the world" by working on some small feature in another smartphone OS or something like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Dive into something that compiles.

And also, what is the job pool like around you? Certain companies just don't pay as much as others.

If you want to continue web dev, learn the backend. Take some time, and write a small webapp in Django, Rails, Play Framework, Node, and anything else that sparks your fancy (and learn their accompanying languages).

Also, one other thing that will get you paid really quickly is databases. Learn your RBDMS theory, optimizations, normalization, etc. And learn about some noSQL databases, and you will qualify for a whole different class of jobs, which will be higher paying, for sure. Much less people are knowledgeable about databases.

These days, the easiest and quickest way to get a rise in paygrade is to switch jobs and renegotiate.

[EDIT] - philliphodgen's answer is possibly more right than this one. A practical application: go look on job sites like glass door, and see how much money is getting paid on average for which job descriptions, then get those skills.

<comment><USER9> "Dive into something that compiles. ... Take some time, and write a small webapp in Django, Rails, Play Framework, Node, and anything else that sparks your fancy (and learn their accompanying languages)."

Err... None of that compiles - they get interpreted.

<comment><USER11> The Play Framework compiles ;) But yea...other than that, wtf.

<comment><USER12> > Dive into something that compiles. > If you want to continue web dev, > Django, Rails, Play Framework, Node, and anything else...

I imagine they're alternative options.

<comment><USER10> This is exactly what I meant, congratulations on discerning it haha, I got confused about what I wrote also.

But the point stands, those things will give him full stack experience while staying in web land

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Move to Salt Lake or Atlanta...depending upon your social likes/dislikes. Atlanta has a very large 6-18 month consulting community. Better than anywhere else in the US vs. cost of living. 100k here is equivalent to 175 in New York or San Fransisco. Consulting because you can move/learn every 6-18 months.

</comment><comment><USER14> Advice about Ruby or Python is stupid. Sorry, but it is. You focus on that, you compete with hundreds of thousands of willing people, which drives salary down. You have to be truly exceptional to make more than $70k outside of SF/NYC, and in just a few years of learning you likely won't be that special. A trendy language or platform is never going to return the highest salary unless you're in the SV mind-bubble.

If you truly want to make that kind of money, become an expert in one of these: Fortran, Cobol, mainframes, project management and architecture, Oracle, SAP/Sage/SAS (or other ERP dialect). They're boring, but that's precisely why the jobs pay well. These jobs are almost always open, and almost always pay more than 100k with 5+ years of experience. You pay for it in stress though.

<comment><USER15> I can verify that $70k outside of SF/NYC is very achievable for less than exceptional programmers doing Ruby/Python work.

<comment><USER14> Maybe at the moment, but not by the time he's 30. It will go the way of people turning in a resume with "HTML" experience. It'll be expected as a minimum.

<comment><USER15> A couple things make your scenario less likely than you might believe.

1\. Salaries rarely go down once you've landed the job. So if he can get an $70k job now and get a $5k raise each year for the next 4 years that puts him in a pretty good spot to switch jobs and jump to the $100k.

2\. Depending on his desire he could leverage his programming + design skills in a unique way that allows him to get to $100k from freelancing, building products, etc. Learning the backend is a stepping stone not the destination, but combined with #1 above means earning an extra $20k on the side is very doable.

3\. I doubt that the ability to build enterprise applications out of ruby/python/js will ever be seen as bottom tier office work. People can't figure out how to work their own printers at work, I don't think we'll see these people suddenly learning how to build enterprise applications. Again, even if that is the case, sit tight and your salary probably won't decline as long as you don't leave the job.

<comment><USER14> Agreed, if he could somehow get the $70k now. He mentioned no existing backend experience, so that was my point about getting this future backend ruby job. One thing in his favor is that people are throwing money at it now, and he might be able to trick his way into such a job with just a Code School course or two under his belt. This would be the "job hacking" way to accomplish it, at least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You're aiming way to low. By the time you're 30 you may be married, might have a child, might like a home. If you drift into Silicon Valley proper, where I live, your $100,000 will not allow you to buy a house. What were once working class neighborhoods are now filled with $2.5 million dollar homes. (But the houses are the same.) Aim higher, or learn to love to commute.

Most importantly, enjoy what you do. No matter how much you make, if you hate going to work, it won't matter.

<comment><USER11> He said he does not want to move to the valley or NYC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> You are looking at the problem backwards.

What do people want so badly that they will give you $100,000 to get it?

</comment><comment><USER18> I have been struggling with these types of questions in my career as well. For a while, I was more of a front-end developer doing Swing rich-client desktop applications and touched on some mobile development with some basic back-end. The last few years, I spent doing more of the back-end development, "big data" technology like Hadoop/HBase and worrying more about HA, consistency, redundancy. What I found is that if your not careful with the type of job, this applies to everything but more so for back-end, you can be stuck doing grunt work, data quality, operations and system up keep. Moreover, I think most of the innovative, creative, and interesting work is moving away from back-end and into the space of data scientist type positions. So currently I am stuck in between, I have experience in front and back end -- this makes it hard to find the right job. I think I might go back to doing mobile development just because it seems to be more of a greenfields with some hard problems still to be solved. In terms of pay it's about the same, maybe back- end developer gets 10% more. That's just my thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER19> Salary may be misleading and not the best indicator of how much you're really making. For a more accurate number you have to calculate taxes and cost of living at the location where you're working as well as benefits (if any).

1\. don't stay at a company more than 2 years (unless they give you what you want) and ask at least 20% more every time you change jobs.

2\. become a contractor and eventually run your own business

</comment><comment><USER20> Options not on coasts: \- Own your own company, sell your as* off. \- Sales, \- Management at small company then get hired at a bigger company. \- project management \- consulting preferably at a large firm willing to travel alot. \- specialized platform like guidewire. \- C# or java at a big company(banking or insurance) jump around alot.

</comment><comment><USER21> Become a full-stack dev and learn to negotiate your skills. If you want to build skills quickly, you can always become a contractor. That way you learn a new skill/framework/etc every 3-6 months. Contractors also make good money, but may not always get the greatest vacation benefits.

I live in Minneapolis, and I've noticed that the bigger companies pay more. Best Buy, 3M, Pearson, Microsoft and Oracle are notable ones near here. If you don't mind giant, slow moving corps then an easy way to make more is to work for one.

100k for a front-end or JS developer is very doable, especially if you know the MVCs and a backend language. Node.js might be a good path as its growing quickly and it's done in a language you already know.

And lastly, build cool stuff in your spare time and list it all on a nice website. Use those projects as proof and reference during salary negotiations.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm 27, I do PHP Programming, I moved from Ar. to salt lake ut, There is a large and growing need here for programmers. I know I need a frontend guy with skilled in js, and html.

give me us a resume email@example.com

<comment><USER22> What's the culture like in Salt Lake? I visited there once a few years ago, and there seems to be a nice pocket of liberal open minded people and artist- types living there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> $100,000 a year works out to be ~$50/hr. Enterprise consulting will get you into the 6 figure club. It is not as sexy as working for a startup but a lesson that took me too long to learn is work for the people who have lots of money to spend.

The company I work for is hiring for front-end developers on the project I am working on in Denver. It would put you over $100k. If you have strong JS skills and are willing to come to Denver my work email is in my profile.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't mind enterprise consulting at all. Do you have any suggestions on how to start down that road?

I would actually love to move to Denver but my wife is currently working on a masters degree so moving is out of the question for the next couple of years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's definitely achievable. I'm and independent consultant in Minneapolis, with a mortgage and kids. I went independent just before I turned 30 and have passed that threshold every year since. How? through a ever changing mix of consulting clients (throughout the US) and my own product dev. I agree w/ benjamincburns - focus on solving client problems rather than being a tool operator. It's both more lucrative and more fulfilling.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is great to hear. Could you go into a little more detail on how you got started consulting and exactly what type of consulting you do? Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you want to make notable money jump to mobile. You don't even have to know Objective-C, Java etc. You may hire somebody to code and make decent money even for basic applications. You can also learn mobile concepts by yourself which basics are very much same with front-end tech. You can also built apps with PhoneGap like technologies which I assume you may find yourself more comfortable with.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'd look at AngelList jobs, set the slider to $100k minimum, and see what comes out.

<https://angel.co/jobs>

</comment><comment><USER27> It's a free market, always be interviewing so that you have offers to leverage your current employer. The cost of talent acquisition is high enough that it's always worth it to bump your salary than loose you to another company.

</comment><comment><USER28> Firstly, you are in the wrong industry to make money; however being 29 and having made over 150% of your goal last year without living on the coasts I have a few tips that might help you.

Unfortunately, those that make money decisions see you as just a resource. You are a thing. You have a recurring cost, you produce products, and they don't really care about the quality of your work unless it becomes a problem. What you are worth to them depends on the amount you are willing to take, your rarity, and what it would cost to replace you. To make more, you should learn to market yourself as a thing.

If you want to stay a front end guy, learn good design and develop your taste. Business people in general have a higher respect for designers than front end coders, as their work visibly and directly impacts the perceived quality of the end product. Being a designer also gets you more face-time with product managers, who's opinions are generally taken seriously by the money people when deciding your value. Being able to come up with both designs and implementations for those designs will help you shorten the development cycle on projects that you are assigned to (as there are fewer required meetings, and you are not going to push-back on yourself).

In my experience the back-end plan is a better (but more difficult) one. It will open more doors for you in the long run, and is less vulnerable to shifts in the market. Your work will have more depth, and it's an easier place to set yourself apart from your competition later in your career. It's very important that you focus on learning OO first, before taking a deep dive into the language itself.

You CAN get to "senior" level without having a real understanding with OO. Anyone that does know OO well (likely everyone in development management depending on the company) will be able to tell you are a hack when they look over your code, and will be less likely to promote (or trust) you. From a development management perspective it is common to separate the developers who work for you into two separate camps: cattle (who build what they're told), and problem solvers (who solve problems). At all cost, you want to be in the latter camp. If you find yourself in the cattle camp, it is easier to swap jobs than change that perception.

[http://adriancheok.info/post/26835527269/secret-for- innovati...](http://adriancheok.info/post/26835527269/secret-for-innovation- the-shokunin-spirit-of-japan)

If you choose c#, the framework is massive. This is daunting at first, but you will learn to love it. It is very discoverable (you can learn quickly by poking around). Whichever language you choose, find some heroes in your company, and talk to them often. Offer your free time to help them with their projects. Ask them to mentor you. Read their code. Ask them to be rough on you in code reviews. Never talk back to them, and listen to what they say; however remember that they are just people like you, and your goal is to get better, not to become them. These relationships will be important later in your career, as these people will help you get jobs later if you are good to them.

The language choice depends on what sort of company you want to work for. C# is not often used in startups, and ruby (as far as I know) is rarely used in large corporations. There are exceptions to both, but the exceptions are not what you want to bank your career on.

Whatever path you choose, this industry is difficult if you plan to be a world class player (where the money is). You should move into something you enjoy instead of making a decision based on earnings potential.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Firstly, you are in the wrong industry to make money"

Are you talking about the front-end side of things being the wrong industry or web development in general being the wrong industry?

Also, i'm definitely not making a decision solely based upon monetary reasons. I really enjoy what I do but I know there is the possibility to make more than I am now and I would like to advantage of that possibility.</comment></comment>


FORTRAN should virtually eliminate coding and debugging - <AUTHOR> http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/FORTRAN/BackusEtAl-Preliminary%20Report-1954.pdf

<comment><USER3> Well, it did eliminate some kinds of coding (the part where human produces machine code from block diagrams) and debugging (the part where you look for errors in the above translation.)

<comment><USER4> Yes, and the paper distinguishes between programming and coding. Step one is "Analysis and Programming", step two is "Coding." It's step two that FORTRAN virtually eliminates.

<comment><USER5> Correct. It's only because of the success of higher-level languages like FORTRAN that "coding" and "programming" came to mean the same thing. Before that, programming was part of the requirements.

We've become inured to silver-bullet bullshit in software, but it's an anachronism to think that about this report, which was dead right. In fact by subsequent standards their claim was rather modest. The full quote reads:

 _Since FORTRAN should virtually eliminate coding and debugging, it should be possible to solve problems for less than half the cost that would be required without such a system._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Compared to hand-writing machine code, it might even be a reasonable thing to say. The majority of effort is eliminated.

</comment><comment><USER7> Being currently involved in GPGPU research, these descriptions remind me of the state we are in for GPGPU computing. CUDA, OpenCL and now OpenACC have been steps towards a higher-level abstraction of stream computing and every time a new framework / language bubbles up, the inventors praise it as the end of coding close to the machine.

</comment><comment><USER8> Half a century later, people are still overly optimistic about software development. According to recent studies, this is true for everything (and society at large is actually in favor of it).

Yet it is particulary visible in computing. Why is that?

Side note: bullshit in marketing brochure is here to stay.

<comment><USER9> Half a century later the change isn't from assembly to an actually useful level of abstraction. The bullshit-o-meter is damped further when half the document shows code examples that would be much more difficult in assembly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you limit yourself to the types of programs that were created before FORTRAN existed, then this might be true. But of course as capability increased, demand for more complicated program increased just as fast (or faster?)

</comment><comment><USER11> This vision of eliminating coding will eventually be realized. It is inevitable.

However, people will still need to know how to program (AI not being a factor).

<comment><USER12> > eliminating coding will eventually be realized > people will still need to > know how to program

I think that by coding, you mean typing? In your example, we won't be eliminating coding, we'll just be entering code using a different language.

<comment><USER11> Not coding and not a programming language to speak of. For example, when someone configures their browser to use a proxy server they are programming without coding (though they do need to type).

It could be possible to verbally configure the browser to use a proxy server and I guess that would be the different language you speak of. However, this leads to the need for AI or some kind of "intelligent" system: difficult to make one that isn't domain specific.

Though such an intelligent system is also inevitable (in my opinion), I think there is a step between describing software using such a system and writing code as we do today.

This step would be some kind of domain agnostic software framework that can be used to create software without the need to "code out" a solution. The framework itself would need to be coded, but the usage of the framework would not.

<comment><USER12> Coding is necessary for computing, it's not going away, just like math isn't going away due to the evolution of computers. The better computers will use math better, but math is there because it's the basis for what we call "computing". Coding is the method by which we turn our ideas into practical logic.

If you think typing in long programs is going away, you may be right - <USER2> future looks more like a Lego type of programming rather than the current sea of logical equations. But in that case I'd say you've coded your message in the form of lego blocks, but coding is still there in essence.

When you speak instructions into a computer, you've still coded. When you change your proxy like in your example, you've coded(in a non imperative way).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thankfully, they were right - it did. I've known a lot of C programmers, C++ programmers, Python programmers, and Java programmers; only a tiny handful of those programmers actually knew how to "code" (that is, write machine code.) FORTRAN, and the interpreted languages that came after it, really _did_ "virtually eliminate coding and debugging."

</comment><comment><USER14> Please mind that the report was written in 1954. The real complexity of programming and computing in general was not fully understood at that time. (I'm confident that we still do not understand it in its entirety, however.)

<comment><USER15> What do you mean by that, exactly? Just out of curiosity.

<comment><USER3> Many results about unfeasibility of computer-based solutions to some problems were not known. For example the first important results about NP-hardness come from the seventies.

I believe it wasn't even clear that the big O complexity is important in assessing how effective an algorithm is. This is pretty much obvious to us now (sometimes too obvious - there are some edge cases when the constant factor wins over the asymptotic complexity).

<comment><USER16> I agree with everything you said, except the parenthetical. I have difficulty considering matrix multiplication an "edge case," and I think that it's more common than you imply for us to choose algorithms with a higher asymptotic bound because of constant factors and architectural effects (mostly caching).

<comment><USER3> Ok, agreed about matrix multiplication and probably a few other problems, disagreeing about cache.

You cannot really say that cache-aware algorithms have higher asymptotic bound. Some of them might happen to have below-optimal asymptotic bound _in a cache-unaware memory model_ , which sort of misses the point of the algorithms being aware of cache.

<comment><USER16> _You cannot really say that cache-aware algorithms have higher asymptotic bound._

Don't worry, I'm not. I'm saying that sometimes, naive algorithms have better cache behavior than more complicated algorithms with lower asymptotic bounds.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's something most people don't know about you? - <AUTHOR> http://indexfortytwo.com/

<comment><USER2> That caps are evil?</comment>


Ask HN: Starting a Software Development Consultancy. Need Advice - <AUTHOR> Hey guys,
I'm starting a software development company. I have 4 people in my team currently all based remotely around North America.
We have experience with technologies like React, React Native, PHP, Laravel, Python, Flask, Django, Ruby, Sinatra, Angular.js, Vue.js, Node.js etc.
All of us have decided to form a company and try to get work as a company/team. Currently, we have a lot of inbound work coming to us via LinkedIn but those are as jobs at existing firms. We're looking to scale it up.
We would love to work on project to project basis and that's why looking to build the software company.
Any advice on how we could market the company and find clients would be great and really appreciated.
Thank you so much in advance. <comment><USER2> The best way I found when I ran mine was to network. Trying to get jobs from advertising and marketing is an expensive way to do it, and you will go through a long and expensive learning curve. Best thing for consultancy is to keep the queue full and to do that you need the networking going 24/7\. Use existing clients that are happy with you to find the next client. Do this while the client is happy with your work.

Some people I have talked to about running a consultancy think they will never upset or disappoint a client, don't fall into that trap. You could do everything right and still have a client pissed off cause their coffee was too hot, shit happens. So after a few weeks, the client is happy with you and most importantly you have delivered something to them, pick the right time and ask for recommendations or introductions to other teams or companies. I found a ton of work that way. Even when I would have the unavoidable client that was a douchebag in the end, I usually got at least 1 reference that led to work. I got better about client selection as we grew since we could be more picky, so that also helps a lot, but in the early days you generally don't get to be as picky as you'd like.

If you have specific questions let me know, I did it more than once, with two successfully exited as product/consultancy companies. Others here have done similar so hopefully you'll get other opinions too.</comment>


Confessions of a Paywall Journalist - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/novemberdecember_2015/features/confessions_of_a_paywall_journ058444.php?page=all <comment><USER2> already posted and upvoted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10508914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10508914)

<comment><USER3> On HN we don't consider a post to be a duplicate if the story hasn't had significant attention yet. Otherwise too many stories would languish unseen.

We're working on a way to let users indicate which posts are dupes of one another by submitting their HN ids or urls, so this hopefully won't be confusing for much longer.

<comment><USER4> Too many articles are duplicated in Hacker News recently.eg. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10532349](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10532349)

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's changed recently? But we're working on it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Survival v. Antitrust (AKA, Remember The Browser) « Uncrunched - <AUTHOR> http://uncrunched.com/2012/01/12/survival-v-antitrust-aka-remember-the-browser/ <comment><USER2> _Will the government come along and knock some heads together in a few years? Maybe. But this is a much more nuanced situation that Microsoft's execution of Netscape. That could take years and years, and the government may question Facebook's willingness to throw data to their shareholder Microsoft while withholding it from Google_

Exactly, and reading MG Siegler's interpretation of antitrust law is the same as reading his musings on string theory.</comment>


The Day Feynman Worked Out Black-Hole Radiation on My Blackboard - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/the-day-feynman-worked-out-black_hole-radiation-on-my-blackboard <comment><USER2> This is not at all unusual. Poincare discovered special relativity before Einstein, Hilbert found the correct equations for General relativity one week before Einstein, Hamilton almost discovered quantum mechanics decades before everyone else. Newton found solutions to major mathematical problems and never published them. Gauss discovered hyperbolic geometry before Bolyai and Lobachevski and never bothered publishing his results. I can go on and on in the fields of physics and mathematics which I know best. Certainly, the same thing is true in chemistry, biology, etc. I wouldn't doubt someone got there before even Feynman did. Still in every case, the recognized discoverer not only made their discoveries independently but also managed to convince their communities of their merit, something which is FAR harder to do.

This smells like classic Feynman. He did more things than people realize even coming up with his own ideas about the Riemann hypothesis even though he wasn't a mathematician at all. In a certain sense Feynman didn't discover a single physical law. (arguable) . This little anecdote if true would be Feynman's "single" discovery of an actual new physic law (which happens to not have experimental verification).

Feynman was brilliant. If you have a physics PhD you can still benefit enormously by reading Feynman's lectures on physics. His work on statistical mechanics is essential reading too especially if you already know everything.

<comment><USER3> _This smells like classic Feynman. He did more things than people realize..._

He used to be ribbing Danny Hillis all the time, saying that he came up with just about all of Computer Science during the Manhattan Project. "Just what is it that you do again?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This just says he came to the conclusion that there should be spontaneous emission and estimated it. Coming up with how it actually happens (particle- antiparticle pair) is another story, so it seems a bit unfair to Hawking to say that Feynman got it first.

<comment><USER5> What other thing could be the emission?

Besides, isn't particle-antiparticle pair obvious, if one knows about their spontaneous appearance?

<comment><USER6> I am always skeptical of retrospective claims of obviousness (partly from the number of times I have seen it made in math textbooks.)

<comment><USER7> > I am always skeptical of retrospective claims of obviousness (partly from > the number of times I have seen it made in math textbooks.)

I agree with you about your claim, but not about your justification. I believe that "historically obvious" things ("that's the first thing I would have thought of in that situation; how did it take them so long?") are usually subject to considerable _ex post facto_ bias.

On the other hand, when a mathematics textbook says that something is obvious, it means, or should mean: we've specifically set up the presentation to this point so that there's a unique best way to assemble the material so far, and that unique best way will accomplish the next step. This isn't always true when it's claimed, but it _is_ possible in textbooks in a way that it isn't (or that has only a small probability) in history, since textbooks are consciously organised and history isn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do cleaning staff actually wipe blackboards at Caltec?

Makes me question the authenticity of the story.

<comment><USER9> I think Lightman uses artistic license a lot and has rehearsed the story mulitple times in his mind. Lightman is a writer who wrote 'Einstein's Dreams'. This article is basically transcript of the interview from 2014. [http://nautil.us/blog/why-hawking-radiation-was-almost- feynm...](http://nautil.us/blog/why-hawking-radiation-was-almost-feynman- radiation)

Another weird think in the interview is Lightman saying that he don't think Feynman didn't have a big ego.

Feynman loved Feynman stories and was very intellectually very competitive with his peers. His reputation and those stories were not completely spontaneous. His breakup with Gell-Mann came because he sometimes forgot that it was not he who invented all those ideas they came up together.

I think one of the things that makes Feynman a bigger than life characters are his quirks and personality. There is no need to clean up his image into some king of humble guy.

<comment><USER10> > Another weird think in the interview is Lightman saying that he don't think > Feynman didn't have a big ego.

I only got to know him pretty late in his life (when he was in Boston) and FWIW, compared to many folks around MIT he was not especially or showily egotistical and he had the time to talk to random students about interesting things. He was more patient than most of the MIT faculty.

I can't say I was some sort of pal or anything so perhaps I got the benefit of a more edited persona?

<comment><USER9> Assuming Feynman's identity and self worth were tied around his intellect, accomplishments and reputation. I don't think his identity was challenged in day-to-day encounters with his students and colleges. Only people like Gell- Mann might be able to push his buttons. If I remember correctly the stories, the two were always trying to one-up each other even in trivial matters. That kind of mutual challenging was probably beneficial.

Ego is weird word because it can mean opposite things in common use. "Weak ego" \- person is easily upset when their identity is challenged. "Strong ego" or "big ego" \- used as positive thing, opposite of weak ego. "big ego" \- used negatively as synonym for egoistic, selfish or self centered. "egotistic" \- excessive and objectionable reference to oneself in conversation or writing; conceit; boastfulness, selfishness

<comment><USER10> Insightful theory. Impossible for me to have tested as I am not, and have never been, in the Gell-Mann zone!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think I'll ever get tired of Feynman stories.

<comment><USER12> You and I both, if you haven't already - read 'Surely you must be joking, Mr Feynman!"

<comment><USER11> Some other good ones on the 'net:

"Richard Feynman and the Connection Machine" [http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection- machine...](http://longnow.org/essays/richard-feynman-connection-machine/) and a smaller TEDx talk on the same topic by Danny Hillis: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CKW4A6jnJA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CKW4A6jnJA)

"Los Alamos from Below" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aKM- MeDMSI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aKM-MeDMSI)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for those, I don't think I've seen the TED talk :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds credible, up to the point about the cleaning lady... If he realized their importance, why would he not be able to work out the equations again, possibly with Feynman's help?

<comment><USER14> Precisely!

Violating the sanctity of one's blackboards is one of the worst possible offenses in the academic world. Cleaning staff sure knows better than even glancing in their approximate direction.

<comment><USER15> Was that true in the 1050's? 1960's? Back then, the upper-class folk who inhabited offices would not think of emptying a wastepaper basket, clearing a desk, cleaning a floor. They may have had different expectations about who's job it was to erase the chalkboard as well.

<comment><USER6> I would guess the cleaners would clean off the board only if the author had made it very clear, some time beforehand, that this is what he wanted and expected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _But when I got back to my office in the morning, the cleaning lady had > wiped the blackboard clean._

Didn't something that happen to the notes of a very famous mathematician as well? That they were burned by the person cleaning up his belongings after he died?

<comment><USER17> Perhaps you're thinking of Fermat[0], who famously remarked "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem which this margin is too small to contain.", and promptly proceeded to take the solution with him to the other side.

I doubt anyone burned his manuscripts however, but I seem to recall an article where they mentioned that everyone searched for the solution (or for his approach) in every one of his notebooks, but couldn't find it.

[0] [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pierre_de_Fermat](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Pierre_de_Fermat)

<comment><USER18> Isn't the accepted version of this that Fermat _thought_ he had an elegant solution, but had actually made some simple logical error in his reasoning? And Andrew Wiles' solution is certainly not simple. However it is very seductive to imagine that Fermat was correct, and it's just that no-one since has had the insight to rediscover it.

<comment><USER19> Very seductive but highly unrealistic. Wiles' proof required math techniques undiscovered at the time Fermat made this famous statement.

<comment><USER20> Just because our proof is complicated does not mean Fermat's proof couldn't have been simple, as no exhaustive search of all possible short proofs has ever been carried out. Vanishingly unlikely yes, but not proven false, and after all it is exceedingly romantic. ;)

<comment><USER19> > and after all it is exceedingly romantic.

Agree on that part. (:

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> AFAIK, Hawking got the idea of black hole radiation from Zeldovich. See [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation#Discovery](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation#Discovery)

</comment><comment><USER22> The article doesn't explain why light would bounce off a rotating black hole and that doesn't make intuitive sense to me. I think of light as bouncing off of surfaces and I think of a black hole as being an event horizon and stuff inside. Does anyone have an explanation for this?

</comment><comment><USER23> there are multiple derivations. my guess is he used the simpler of the two that does not require the field equation: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation)

<comment><USER6> Feynman's argument is made from a phenomenon predicted for rotating black holes, that is analogous to stimulated emission. I believe Hawking radiation is predicted for all black holes, whether rotating or not, so I am wondering if there is a phenomenon analogous to stimulated emission from non-rotating black holes? (I am making an analogy of analogies here: if the original phenomenon is like stimulated emission from rotating black holes, and Hawking radiation is the corresponding spontaneous emission, then is Hawking radiation from stationary black holes also like spontaneous emission, and if so, what is the corresponding stimulated emission?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This story may or may not be true, either way it encapsulates what a scientist should be: distracted by reality and allowing other smart people to play their roles. Feynman had his own things to work on, and clearly there were more people needed for humans to advance.

</comment><comment><USER25> This made me wonder if Rick Sanchez was based on Richard Feynman?

<comment><USER26> I thought it was well-known he was based on Doc Brown, and transitively, Albert Einstein.

<comment><USER25> I know that, but Feynman seems more fitting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Kinda reminds of me Fermat's equation though.

</comment><comment><USER27> `Feynman said that what Bill and Saul were describing sounded like simulated emission...`

Proof we live in a simulation! (presumably this is a typo)</comment>


Marissa Mayer's Plan for Yahoo Takes Hold - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/22/technology/personaltech/marissa-mayers-plan-for-yahoo-takes-hold-the-question-now-is-time.html?referrer= <comment><USER3> You have to read between the lines of the recent criticism of Mayer: she's sitting on a load of ca$h from $BABA, and their eyes are set on short-term gains. They want to butcher the company up, collect their pound of flesh and be off.

I think she's on a decent path, and by replacing the old upper management with the new hires[1], she seems to be putting the right people in charge. Yeah, she made some mistakes[2], but that's a part of the game.

[1] [http://marketingland.com/yahoo-promotes-flurry-exec-lead- adv...](http://marketingland.com/yahoo-promotes-flurry-exec-lead-advertising- product-teams-114662)

[2] [http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-on-henrique- de-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-on-henrique-de- castro-2014-5)

<comment><USER4> I think Yahoo's current path is headed toward disaster. They're obviously bulking up to be an ad tech provider in the online video space. So she's taking the $23 billion (or however much it was) from Alibaba and spending it on buying up ad tech companies.

But the problem with buying ad tech companies is that they're not a great long-term investment. Microsoft learned this the hard way with aQuantive - $6 billion in value disappeared in under 18 months. The market is just too fragmented, the services are commoditized and things can change almost literally overnight. And Yahoo doesn't really own a lot of these customer relationships the way Google and Facebook do - Yahoo is heavily dependent on partners for sourcing their data. This is not a path that leads to success for an ad tech provider; your competitors will look to disintermediate you and you have very little room for sustained competitive advantage. It's not an accident that the largest players in advertising own the portals through which consumers access content: Google for search, Google (YouTube) for online video, Facebook for mobile, Comcast for TV video.

And what's really happening is that the overall advertising market isn't really growing, we've just seen online ads take over the budgets companies used to spend on print advertising. So what happens when the next advertising trend comes along? You've got to go out and buy more startups to fill the hole; meanwhile your newly acquired companies are just taking business from your older companies, so it's not a net value add. Companies tend to engage in protective acquisitions that erode the bottom line.

Granted, I don't think Mayer has very many attractive options in front of her. But CEOs rarely want to admit that it might maximize investor returns to just hand out a large dividend and let the company fend for itself. And that's the big argument: the investors would probably be better off taking that $23 billion and investing it in companies other than Yahoo. What is the exit strategy for an ad tech company? Usually it's "get acquired by Google/Facebook". Yahoo's strategy is "become Google/Facebook", but ad tech is a zero-sum game, and Google/Facebook have sustainable competitive advantages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pretty much the content of this article:

"Yahoo is showing progress. Revenue from the businesses Ms. Mayer created or acquired are growing at an annual rate of 80 percent, she announced in Yahoo's last earnings update. She also said she expected overall growth to begin this year, which is pretty much in line with her original, optimistic timeline."

</comment><comment><USER6> What Mayer has been tasked with is an almost impossible mission, just stopping the free fall is impressive in it's own right. People really love to dig on her, and I can't help but think it's largely because she is a woman. She's clearly not perfect and can be pretty callous towards employees, but it's not like she is the first CEO in tech to behave that way.

I don't know what the future for Yahoo holds, but it's hard for me to say that she has done a bad job so far.

<comment><USER7> > think it's largely because she is a woman

Really? I haven't read anything like that.

Seems to me most of her critics are from people who want Yahoo! to sell (or merge) so they make tons of $$$$$$. Before she came in they were set to strike it rich as Yahoo! went down in flames, now their money is tied up until she "fails" (from their perspective).

These people have just lost faith in the company after several consecutive failed executives promising similar things to Mayer. If she actually made Yahoo! profitable again they'd likely change their tune pretty quick, but she hasn't just yet, and she's spent a lot of "their" capital buying other companies which has further upset them.

Honestly I've seen very little "she's a woman" criticism, and rather a lot of broad criticism about the overall strategy. Although there has been a discussion of her interpersonal skills (however I've also read that about a lot of other, male, CEOs).

<comment><USER8> It's called the glass cliff: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_cliff)

She takes over after years of neglect at a time of even more substantial crisis, and yet gets and will take far more of the blame than her very incompetent predecessors for Yahoo's failure. What's worth wondering is whether her being a bossy boss woman was also responsible for her being sidelined and pushed out from the OC at Google: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/technology/in-googles- inne...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/technology/in-googles-inner-circle- a-falling-number-of-women.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER9> Did she get pushed out? I thought it was her seeing an opportunity for a higher prestige+pay as a CEO vs being a VP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not pushed out so much as sidelined -- it was clear that she was never going to get promoted beyond where she already was at Google, so if she ever wanted to move up she had to move out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What I find interesting is how big the "swing" is with articles about Mayer's strategy. You see articles essentially calling her a Steve Jobs wannabe, while others call her Yahoo!'s saviour (I place this one in that second category).

It will be interesting to see if her strategy pays off or not. It is certainly bold.

<comment><USER10> The ones calling her a Steve Jobs wannabe tend to be backed up by numbers. This article is backed up by cherry-picking third party forecasts.

That said, two years is a pretty short timeframe to turn around a 12.5k employee company. A tumblr success may be her saving grace.

<comment><USER11> I believe this is the article being referenced: [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened- whe...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/what-happened-when-marissa- mayer-tried-to-be-steve-jobs.html?_r=1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My bet is that Microsoft will buy them to bolster their ecosystem (second time's a charm), and Yahoo's strategy is still angling to get bought, the question is just price.

Personally I have a problem seeing much value in Yahoo except maybe Flickr and some other assets but maybe MS can use it to boost Bing or something

<comment><USER10> YHOO is going to be way more expensive now (possibly 10x the price) than the last time MSFT tried to buy them. I think it's unlikely.

Edit: maxerickson pointed out my wrongness. YHOO will be much more expensive, but the 10x number was in error.

<comment><USER13> Microsoft offered $44.6 billion. Current market cap of Yahoo is $45.76 billion.

The market cap doesn't necessarily capture the takeover price, but I doubt it is wrong by 10 times.

<comment><USER14> Buy the company for $50B, sell the alibaba / japan stock for $45B, and the net cost is $5B.

Let's not pretend like Yahoo is a $45B company. It is consistently valued between +/\- $5B.

<comment><USER15> This isn't accurate.

If you dumped the Alibaba and Yahoo Japan holdings, Yahoo would be doing $1.x billion per year in profit.

That $1.x billion would still be valued at a likely 15 to 25 times. Yahoo's core business is worth a lot closer to $20 billion, and under no scenario would it ever be valued at $5 billion.

The calculation you're using is backwards: it's the Alibaba & Yahoo Japan assets that are being discounted. Typically assets and cash are _always_ discounted. It's earnings that matter the most, by far, when it comes to the valuation.

And that's trivially easy to prove: your argument rests on the claim that $1.x billion in earnings would be valued at 4x times. That would never happen.

<comment><USER16> Be careful about numbers. Yahoo consolidates baba and Japan earnings as 20+% owners. Baba may be deconsolidated going forward. Does your $1b number take the consolidation into account?

<comment><USER15> Yahoo has historically been capable of generating 15% to 20% net income margins (before Alibaba contributed anything meaningful to their results). I see no reason why they wouldn't be able to continue that in the future. Yahoo has also become more efficient, having trimmed a lot of expenses from operations.

Even if you were aggressive and pushed their net income down to $500 million on $4.5b in sales, you're talking about a 10 pe ratio. That also would not happen.

Even when things were at their absolute worst in the last ten years - <USER2> Alibaba - Yahoo still carried an $11 to $15 billion valuation. And that's the absolute worst context post dotcom bubble crash.

The parent's position was that Yahoo's core is worth $5 billion. Well today AOL is worth $3.7 billion (with not much on their balance sheet of consequence). It's plainly obviously that under no scenario will Yahoo's business be valued at $5b when AOL is commanding a $3.7b valuation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Did anyone parse the earnings update to find the source of this assertion?

"Revenue from the businesses Ms. Mayer created or acquired are growing at an annual rate of 80 percent,"

Growing as in revenue or usage or both?

<comment><USER3> That quote is from the last quarter.

<comment><USER11> Hm, the article says "she announced in Yahoo's last earnings update"

Still would like to know what products saw this growth...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Who cares? Yahoo is just another ad company clamoring for eyeballs.

</comment><comment><USER18> The market will decide. Numbers usually don't lie.

<comment><USER19> That's so very interesting given we're talking about YHOO. The market drove YHOO's stock through the roof over the last couple of years based on nothing to do with the fundamentals of YHOO's underlying business.</comment></comment>


Huawei P30 Pro alleged to be querying China servers - <AUTHOR> https://en.ocworkbench.com/huawei-p30-pro-alleged-to-be-querying-china-servers-behind-the-scenes/ <comment><USER2> It seems like this is a side-effect from using baidu.com as a connectivity test domain:

[https://github.com/pe3zx/huawei-block- list/blob/master/analy...](https://github.com/pe3zx/huawei-block- list/blob/master/analysis.md)

<comment><USER3> Also cursory search of ExploitWareLabs highlights lack of publish rigor from previous expose last year. Juice:

>Our research team studied the video and we have several reasons to doubt its authenticity. We've conducted a thorough audit over the last 48 hours based the few details that are in the video and didn't find anything. We reached out the researcher and instead of replying he removed the video*. We'll communicate if indeed there is a risk.

[https://avleonov.com/tag/exploitwarelabs/](https://avleonov.com/tag/exploitwarelabs/)

Tl;DR an amateur with no presence outside of facebook did not actually find what state level security experts tried to find for 10 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sending to Chinese government servers or Huawei servers? Not a convincing article.

I feel uncomfortable with what seems to me to be a campaign against Huawei at the same time our government is worried about being competitive in 5G tech. I could be wrong through, I didn't believe that Russia would dare to meddle in our election until there was hard evidence.

<comment><USER5> I thought it was common knowledge that the USSR and Russia have a long and continuous history of engaging in disinformation campaigns and covert actions of all kinds. But based on the way the Russian election meddling story has been reported over the last 2+ years apparently I was wrong. Lots of people seem to have been surprised by these activities.

The most disturbing aspect of this ignorance is that apparently our own intelligence agencies were among the ignorant.

<comment><USER6> Wait, when did we find out that the intelligence community was ignorant? When they launched a formal investigation several months before the election? When, exactly, did the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of full time employees in the IC collectively forget about Eastern bloc disinformation campaigns?

<comment><USER5> Maybe "ignorant" was the wrong word choice. To the extent that they were aware why didn't they intervene? Shouldn't have all the campaigns been briefed/warned about Russian actions? Why was a special prosecutor required to investigate what they already knew?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the last couple of hours the author rolled back some of their comments.

They way I'm reading this, they were seeing DNS requests to beian.gov.cn which was worrisome. Now they say those are the result of manually visiting baidu.com which makes more sense.

See [https://github.com/pe3zx/huawei-block- list/blob/master/analy...](https://github.com/pe3zx/huawei-block- list/blob/master/analysis.md)

<comment><USER8> It's hard to read on account of the dodgy use of English, but this smells of "amateur security researcher". Of course it feeds the narrative of Huawei paranoia so it makes it to the HN front page. (I'm not saying Huawei is innocent but this article surely is no smoking gun).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm trying to figure out what exactly this is getting at? Is the worry that these requests to random Chinese servers are nefarious or is this some random piece of software pinging a server for some tiny piece of information?

"ICP Beian" stands for the process of obtaining the Business ICP registration number that allows you to host your website on a Mainland Chinese server. [0]

So these communications could be literally anything on the phone and all we know is that it's communicating with a server in mainland China?

[0] [https://www.tmogroup.asia/entering-china-ecommerce-icp- beian...](https://www.tmogroup.asia/entering-china-ecommerce-icp-beian-must- knows-in-2017/)

<comment><USER10> Do tell, why my Huawei P30 Pro should contact Chinese servers without my awareness or consent?

<comment><USER11> Why should my iPhone 8 contact servers in the US without my awareness or consent?

Because it was developed by an American company and runs software written by an American company.

If I don't trust them I might as well throw the device away now.

Is this really not obvious?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This isn't particularly surprising. It's becoming more and more common hearing about these stories, the last one I remember being Nokia HMD and Xiaomi both sending packets to Chinese servers.

<comment><USER13> I have a Xaiomi Android One phone and it only pings google servers, most activity is from Google Play Serives which many Android apps require to function, have never seen a Chinese server in the logs. It's probably a different story with the MIUI OS.

Sinkholing all requests the most concerning one Ive found is Google analytics running as root continually trying to dial out every few minutes. It doesn't give up and keeps retrying even after hours of failed requests. This is without any phone/internet usage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This kind of smear campaign against Huawei is unprecedented and politically motivated in the history of telecommunication technology.

<comment><USER15> Was it really necessary to make 3 substance-free top-level comments on this topic?

<comment><USER16> Well, two of them were useful, although somewhat redundant with each other. Would have been better combined into one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm of the opinion that only something radical like a new platform and/or device shift (i.e. away from smartphones to some other form factor, or a new, open, network-local-by-default mobile operating system) is likely to save us from this.

All contemporary smartphones leak a ton via DNS and various background sync processes. Perhaps scrappy developers from emerging markets are more egregious in violating expected norms, but these outcomes are pervasive at the moment across the whole ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER18> > It is unknown whether there are any differences in firmware for different > countries/regions.

It is perfectly known that Huawei sells Chinese and Global editions of their phones. It's a pity there's so much vagueness when reporting that you can't even know which edition or firmware were they testing.

I think we'll be doing a service to ourselves by ignoring vague reporting about IT security and decide based on documented and repeatable reports.

</comment><comment><USER19> Every windows and ios device also queries US domains. Not everything is done maliciously.

</comment><comment><USER20> Would be nice to see what they are doing to generate those DNS requests.

</comment><comment><USER21> Anyone have seen the list?

[https://github.com/pe3zx/huawei-block- list/blob/master/maste...](https://github.com/pe3zx/huawei-block- list/blob/master/master.txt)

Looks like a troll.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think google ads know more YOU than China, why don't you just cut your cord?

He even know what's my favorite porn site, I don't believe china will know that better :)

</comment><comment><USER14> Android phones are querying servers in the US all the time.

</comment><comment><USER14> iphone found to be querying servers in the US, discovered 10 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER23> Url changed from [https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3685669](https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3685669), which points to this.</comment>


Ask HN: Why big companies don't use Angular.js? - <AUTHOR> Is it just because big companies adopt things more slowly or it has something to do with Angular.js itself? <comment><USER2> Not all big companies avoid it.

Some big companies do use, others do not.

The reason for the variability is that it's neither the be-all-end-all framework not a de-facto standard, so no reason to prefer it over another good framework like Ember or Knockout etc.

Besides most companies already have codebases in other frameworks.

</comment><comment><USER3> I work on a product at Salesforce.com that uses Angular.js for our frontend. So there are definitely big companies like us that use it.

We are doing a rewrite of our frontend and evaluated Ember, Backbone, and Angular. Our frontend devs liked Angular best so we went with it. We're about 8 months into the rewrite and it's gone very well so far.

Shameless plug: we're also hiring Ruby and Javascript devs local to SF as well as remote. My email is in my profile.

</comment><comment><USER4> Big companies generally have big legacy code bases they have to support and departments that want stuff done but have little stomach for working things from the ground up and don't care about what technologies you're working with.

I work on a large e-commerce site, we are moving towards Angular where it makes sense but projects that allow us to scrap existing code and start over are few and far between.

</comment><comment><USER5> We bit the bullet and rewrote our entire frontend in Angular recently. It was a 3 month project but our frontend devs thought it would be a better foundation for future development. You can see it at www.room77.com.

</comment><comment><USER6> Who said big companies don't use Angular?

Google uses Angular for a few projects.

Amazon AWS uses Angular for their dashboard.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's because it's an additional layer of complexity with the end result of hopefully removing lines of code.</comment>


Admit it, data hogs: you know you should pay more - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/admit-it-data-hogs-you-know-you-should-pay-more.ars <comment><USER2> Single best quote from article: "But if consumers see them [data caps] simply as tools to squeeze more cash from customers (as they did in the Time Warner trials), then low caps will probably bring out Congressional resistance once again."

Which, usually, is the actual reason for data caps. To generate artificial scarcity in a market where there is essentially no scarcity, and thereby recreate a cash cow.

<comment><USER3> It certainly was the reason for the outrage over the caps Bell tried to impose.

It's not that caps, or usage-based billing is inherently evil, it's just that the caps were very low, the per-usage rate beyond the caps were very high, and Bell was forcing the independent ISPs that use the network to share the same model, effectively disabling any competitive advantage they might have.

edit: I fear the phrasing of my first sentence may sound like I am arguing against your point, but in fact I am empathically agreeing and just kind of fail at text sometimes.</comment></comment>


AMD Naples server processor: More cores, bandwidth, memory than Intel - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/amd-naples-server-processor-more-cores-bandwidth-memory-than-intel/ <comment><USER2> Anandtech's article on the same chips: [http://www.anandtech.com/show/11183/amd-prepares-32-core- nap...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/11183/amd-prepares-32-core-naples-cpus- for-1p-and-2p-servers-coming-in-q2)

One of the AMD images claims a naples cpu + 4 instinct cards (gpu) have the equivalent computing power of a brain. I get that its marketing / advertising, but I am still curious about what they mean..

Is it a trivial number like:

# of transistors == # of neurons? or

# of calculations per second

or some reasonable estimate of the brain's processing capacity.

</comment><comment><USER3> Man that sounds like a beast of a CPU... And if they nail the GPU usage, it could be a _VERY_ good option for Windows VMs (where needed) and, not to mention, the GP/GPU workloads, though CUDA seems very entrenched in that space.</comment>


OnLive assets acquired by newly formed company - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/17/source-onlive-found-a-buyer-cleaned-house-to-reduce-liability-prior-to-acquisition/ <comment><USER2> This article is bullshit. The CEO of a company cannot "take back" or "wipe out" your right to purchase stock, aka stock options.

More likely what happened is that the company sold for equal or less than the outstanding preferred stock overhang. Another way of saying this: OnLive's investors got all the money (they raised $56MM) and the founders and employees got ZERO for their common stock.

A stock option is a binding CONTRACT to purchase stock (typically common stock when you're dealing w/ employee stock options) at a set price. If a company is acquired and the price of common stock is below the "strike price" of the employee stock options then the employee has a valueless option to buy stock for more than it's worth.

Oftentimes in an "exit" that's just shy of bankruptcy, common stock holders will get nothing and investors will get all the proceeds, often at pennies or nickels on the dollar.

So... Did OnLive screw its employees? Highly unlikely.

<comment><USER3> You're arguing the wrong details.

From what I understand the legal corporate entity that employees had options in essentially ceased to exist before employees had a chance to exercise their options. And, that corporation ceased to exist because it built no effective value, so employees had underwater options with no logical incentive to exercise in the first place.

Summarized as 'your options are now gone'.

<comment><USER2> If the company ceased to exist, then it died in an asset sale and the founders got nothing while investors got cents on the dollar.

If the company was acquired and common stock holders cashed out in a positive way, then it was a proper acquisition and OnLive was required to disclose its stock optionees and the buyer would have been required to set aside cash/stock in escrow to pay them out. Otherwise yes they would be subject to liability and lawsuits, which would be dumb to expose yourself to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the most heartbreaking thing about all of this is the lady in the comments who said her husband just lost his job and she's pregnant with health complications. This is ridiculous, if someone bought OnLive, they just bought a publicly tainted company and apparently it's EA (a company that is no stranger to being dicks).

<comment><USER5> Steve Perlman should be publicly shamed, that's the only way to prevent this. These greedy people should be scared to do this in the future.

You may get more money, but your reputation is fucked.

Morally i find this way more infuriating than Yahoo suing Facebook.

<comment><USER6> Because if he just shut down the company instead, his employees would totally have it made. There's no happy way to do a fire sale, which is what this looks like.

<comment><USER5> Well somebody got a lot of money, we will find out later who, but definitely not the one who needed it the most. And please USA, get your health care fixed. It is so sad to read these stories all the time. You are the richest country on earth.

<comment><USER3> From the sounds of it, 'a lot of money' is probably both an overstatement and also a value significantly less than 'money they invested into the company'.

Nobody came out a winner in this deal.

<comment><USER4> If the CEO was going to get nothing which I strongly doubt, he should have just quit. Nobody would taint their reputation for zero return, Steve Perlman definitely would have made something out of this - it might not be a lot of money but I can almost bet that it is a hell of a lot more money than those who were fired and shafted received.

I think someone needs to orchestrate some kind of small-scale campaign to smear Steve Perlman from ever running any kind of company in the future.

<comment><USER7> He's been working on this for over a decade. It's a bit unfair to assume that his motivations are purely monetary and reputational.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Luckily this sort of thing rarely happens. The reason is that you need great engineers to trust you if you want to succeed. By founding a startup you are taking great personal risk, but your employees are also taking some of that risk with you. Most startups pay (very very) below market salaries, and bring employees up to parity with a much less terrible place to work (very few very bright people would prefer to work in at a big company), and by giving out options.

I suspect that the CEO and other high level managers at this company will have serious trouble recruiting the next time they want to start something new, because they now have nothing to offer. Nobody is going to trust their promises, stock options they issue will be seen as basically worthless (since everyone will think they are likely to be screwed out of them), so they will have to pay market rates (which is probably 2x-6x what startups generally pay in total compensation).

If I were a founder of a company, and I were faced with this choice, I would probably rather let the company fold than cash out (or in this case probably just not go under) while leaving employees behind. Failure is rarely punished in the valley, but nowhere is dishonesty or double dealing more likely to be recognized and rejected.

<comment><USER9> I would argue that these employees on "(very very) below market salaries" are taking more risk than that hypothetical founder.

They take same uncertainty risk [company failing]. Similar financial risk [unless founder has invested own money]. But. They don't have any control over the company. That results in larger uncertainty risk.

<comment><USER8> I disagree. Employees are still collecting a salary, and they probably haven't put lots of money into the company up front (although over time they are effectively doing so in the form of lower salary).

Generally founders of startups have taken a leap of faith well before there are any employees collecting a salary. They work full time on the idea for a year or two before they can approach investors, living off of savings or small investments money from friends and family. By the time the first employees are brought in, there is enough money in the bank to pay salary and benefits for a year or longer.

Do I think that most startups under value the opportunity/uncertainty risk that employees take? Absolutely.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure, that past activities of founders (or employees) are relevant to risk estimation.

It should be just financial/lost opportunity/uncertainty risks that go into the equation. A particular founder or employee is _going_ to take some risk by joining/or staying with the company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If something that you have equity in has no value or little value.. then it's all really a mute point. Remember kids start ups are high risk ventures; your equity can be diluted, and taken away... all legally.

<comment><USER11> Double-check how soon your options will start vesting before you sign-on, so that you don't get screwed over by something like this.

(Also, btw, it's "moot", not "mute")

<comment><USER12> How much difference does it really make? If all of OnLive's folks were vested, couldn't they still could have been fired and their shares diluted w/ another round or creepy acquisition terms?

<comment><USER11> Diluted, yes. Eliminated, no. See other comments in this thread about the "cliff" -- once you're past it, it's harder to get screwed over.

<comment><USER12> I don't find this distinction very useful, and I disagree that it's harder to get screwed over. It's in fact, just as easy.. we're only talking about degree. I think your argument is that instead of your shares being worth zero, they can only be diluted to any positive real number... which brings me little comfort.

<comment><USER13> There is a distinction.

With dilution the founders, who are more likely than you to have a say in what happens, are _also_ likely to suffer that dilution. However in the incident that happened the founder didn't lose a dime.

<comment><USER14> Can't the founder be issued a bunch of new shares as part of the dilution? (I mean in theory, not in this specific case.)

<comment><USER13> In theory, yes. However in practice you generally need signoff from other investors, who are unlikely to be supportive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So their PR firm has put out this statement: <http://www.engadget.com/2012/08/17/onlive-confirms/>

It feels a bit (actually a lot) strange that they'd dissolve the entire company and lay off everyone to attempt to get out of an agreement for servers or something. It just doesn't add up. Also, why the employee reports aren't saying this... just strange. PR spin at its best?

<comment><USER16> i read somewhere that they had INSANE capex spends on the hosting.

<comment><USER17> opex, I think you mean.

I'm curious who they were using, who negotiated the deal, and what drugs they were on. I heard something like 1800 simultaneous users and $1000/seat/mo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There appears to be quite a bit of confusion as to what happened here. The TechCrunch article doesn't really provide enough detail, saying only that the staff was fired in order to "reduce the company's liability" which doesn't really make sense.

I am not a lawyer, but as an investor I have seen this happen before. My guess (no connection to the company, wasn't aware of them prior to today) is that in lieu of filing for bankruptcy, they did an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors.

But what may have happened is: 1\. OnLive recognizes that they're essentially bankrupt. Directors and managers now have a fiduciary duty to maximize the recovery for creditors, not for shareholders.

2\. Instead of going through a formal bankruptcy process, the company does an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors (see a good explanation here [1]). Any price paid for the assets by a buyer above what is owed to the creditors goes to satisfy the liquidation preferences, though it's unlikely there will be much if any recovery of value above the debts owed to the creditors. The value of the common equity is totally wiped out (both common stock and employee options) as the total value of the assets is well below the amount due creditors + the liquidation preferences.

3\. A buyer for the assets (the source of money with which to pay off the creditors who now own the assets of the defunct company) forms a new company, call it OnLive Asset Acquisition Corp.

4\. OnLive Asset Acquisition Corp purchases the assets (not the stock) of the defunct corporation now owned by creditors. The new acquirer buys the assets so as to avoid any existing/potential liabilities of the defunct corporation from whom it purchases the assets. Imagine there's a company whose only asset is a rack of servers that you wish to purchase. To gain ownership of the servers, you could buy all the shares of the company or you could just buy the servers as an asset with no encumbrances. You would likely do the latter, as buying the stock comes with potential liabilities for past/future money owed or lawsuits. That's likely what happened here, but for IP, etc.

5\. The original employer OnLive is no longer operating. The employees are all terminated, as their employer is gone and its operating assets are owned by a new company. The new company may or may not seek to hire some or all of the employees of the defunct company.

6\. Even if employees had been able to exercise their options, they were virtually certain to be worthless. There is no way the price paid by the new owner for the assets of the dead company would exceed the debts + liquidation preferences (otherwise the directors wouldn't have liquidated it). Had the employees exercised their options, any cash they paid to do so would have gone to the creditors to satisfy the company's debts and they would have received zero in proceeds.

It's a sad story for the employees, but there are rarely any happy outcomes for a company in bankruptcy.

Again, I'm purely speculating on what happened. But based on the facts disclosed so far, it's not clear that one can conclude that the employees received a specific and unusual screwing by management vs. a typical screwing associated with the liquidation of a bankrupt employer.

[1] [http://bankruptcy.cooley.com/2008/03/articles/the- financiall...](http://bankruptcy.cooley.com/2008/03/articles/the-financially- troubled-compa/assignments-for-the-benefit-of-creditors-simple-as-abc/)

<comment><USER19> The details make it sound more like a PE rescue to me, but I agree that it's unlikely that there is some kind of windfall being withheld - the likely other option probably would have been bounced paychecks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> In another thread, the rumor is that they were going out of business, not getting acquired.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4398439>

</comment><comment><USER21> Quite splendidly some one has edited - <http://www.crunchbase.com/person/steve-perlman> his middle name as (The DICK)

Revision history here <http://www.crunchbase.com/person/steve- perlman/diff/8/9> at 4:59pm by 22.214.171.124

</comment><comment><USER22> Loiks like TheVerge was covering this live and had a reporter stationed outside. www.theverge.com/2012/8/17/3250507/onlive-employees-fired-all-hands- meeting-acquisition-imminent

Onlive declared a "variation of bankruptcy" to get out of employee liabilities.

<comment><USER23> We'll see if that gets them out of class-action territory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Anything to substantiate the rumor?

<comment><USER25> Onlive employees walking out the front door carrying boxes is pretty convincing to me..

<comment><USER24> No, them being fired was not in question - them being fired, so that the owner can walk away with all of the money from an acquisition is the substance of the article.

<comment><USER6> The "owner" in this case is mostly some VC firms who almost always have liquidation preference over employees anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The se kinds of things seem to be more and more common. I hope employees take note and protect themselves when they sign up in new places (read no more cliff agreements).

<comment><USER27> What's a cliff agreement?

<comment><USER28> If your options (1 option = chance to buy 1 share, at a price that's typically fixed when the options was issued) vest over a three year period, it means you would be issued 1/(12*3) of your total options per month, for three years.

A common clause in such a vesting schedule is a "1 year cliff", meaning you don't actually get any options granted to you for the first year of employment. After a year, you get a third (1 of 3 years) worth of options in a lump sum, then the usual monthly amount each month after that.

If you fire employees before they reach their cliff, they don't get any options, and won't benefit at all from any liquidation event / sale / etc.

<comment><USER16> i think typically you get your full 25% at the end of the first year and then it starts vesting monthly.

<comment><USER29> It varies. Amazon does every six months after year 1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sounds a bit like what happened to GM

</comment><comment><USER31> OnLive CEO Considered Harmful.</comment>


Helping People Who Help Themselves - <AUTHOR> http://nathanbarry.com/helping-people/

<comment><USER2> Want someone well known to help you? Ask for help with a really specific issue that should take them less than 5 minutes. Then, include something that demonstrates very clearly you are the sort of person who actually acts on advice.

This alone is so rare, it will get you noticed.</comment>


Porting Hacker News links to Delicious - <AUTHOR> http://delicious.com/hn_links

<comment><USER2> someone should write a greasemonkey script that looks at each HN user name, checks if there's a delicious account with the same name, and if there is, puts a link next to their name.

I'd use it since you guys always seem to be up to interesting things and often it's the things you don't think worth mentioning (e.g., your bookmarks) are more interesting than the things you actually blog about or post to HN. At least IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting, but how do you choose which tags belongs to a specific bookmark?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am using the suggest API to get popular tags for the links.

<http://delicious.com/help/api> <https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/suggest>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the tag cloud: [http://delicious.com/tags/hn_links?view=all&](http://delicious.com/tags/hn_links?view=all&);

</comment><comment><USER4> awesome. Really handy. I love delicious. I'd love to pick the brains of the founder, clever chap.

<comment><USER5> He sometimes comments on here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=joshu>

<comment><USER6> lol wut

<comment><USER7> quiet, you

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Good work :)

</comment><comment><USER9> why?

<comment><USER10> I think the biggest benefit is to be able to explore with tags. However a personal version would be of better use.

One of the reasons I upvote an article (apart from liking it) is to bookmark and to be able to refer to it some other time (most Ask HN posts around scaling, infra, marketing etc)

If in the future PG supports this on HN itself, I wouldn't bother to duplicate.

<comment><USER10> I just revisited this thread. In a split second this comment of mine got downmodded and the one above which just said 'why?' upmodded. I really cannot reason out why. Can someone please tell me why you would do that if at all you would.

If there is something I shouldn't have said, I would benefit by knowing that.

<comment><USER11> I have no clue but I have seen the same happen to other otherwise very sensible comments. It seems that the up/down voting system is too complicated for some people to use properly ;)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Castle Game Engine: Cross-platform 3D and 2D game engine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/castle-engine/castle-engine <comment><USER2> Probably most interesting is the gallery (games using the engine): [https://castle-engine.io/gallery_games.php](https://castle- engine.io/gallery_games.php)

<comment><USER3> I thought that the most interesting thing was that it was in pascal! which I do have a bit of a soft spot for. It was my first "Real" language I learnt after Atari Basic/6502 asm, good ol Turbo Pascal

<comment><USER4> If you want to see more Pascal game code, a few months ago there was an MS-DOS game jam and i wrote a 3D adventure game in Free Pascal[0] :-). It comes with the source for the game and editor (the editor is in Lazarus).

I might do a proper submission to HN once i finish the OpenGL [1] and OUYA [2] ports. There is also a Windows port (this one is already available) that runs even on Win95, though it uses GDI so it isn't exactly fast (i might do a DirectDraw version at some point too).

[0] [https://bad-sector.itch.io/post-apocalyptic-petra](https://bad- sector.itch.io/post-apocalyptic-petra) (scroll down for the downloads)

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/xH9asnp.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/xH9asnp.jpg)

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/NFOkDL6.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/NFOkDL6.jpg)

[3] [https://i.imgur.com/iOhcUtf.png](https://i.imgur.com/iOhcUtf.png)

<comment><USER5> I love the aesthetic. I'm impressed.

<comment><USER4> Thanks :-).

The hardware accelerated versions will lose the "grittiness" of the software renderer, but i want to eventually have them working in my Voodoo 1 PC and such visual differences weren't uncommon at the time :-P.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This reminds me to libgdx. The first time I saw libgdx my first thought was that it was dead but after making some small games with it I discovered that the small community is very active and was really trying to grow and help each other. It was really nice never the less it was very small. So I will keep an eye out on this project. Maybe its a good option to do next ludum dare with.

</comment><comment><USER7> Heh, not to be confused with [https://castle.games](https://castle.games), a lua/LOVE based gaming platform.

<comment><USER8> Or Castlemania Games, a retro gaming store.

[https://castlemaniagames.com/](https://castlemaniagames.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> how is this compared to Godot?

<comment><USER10> At a very quick glance, less featured and Pascal. I'd expect to find more Godot resources online as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> seeing .php on the links .. I dunno about this one.

<comment><USER12> not this topic again...</comment></comment>


Silicon Valley versus Seattle (and Everywhere Else) - <AUTHOR> http://www.tonywright.com/2008/silicon-valley-versus-seattle-and-everywhere-else/

<comment><USER2> The idea that Seattle is more supportive of "hybrid" business models than the Valley is nice bit of spin. Seattle is perhaps supportive of these models, but only to the extent that it _isn't_ very supportive of models that are purely digital.

The first time I walked into a startup event here, I was cornered by one guy whose "startup" involved heavy industrial manufacturing, and another two whose "online" business involved selling things in web-based stores. There are definitely good people making online-only plays here, but it goes against the grain.

<comment><USER3> When was that, 10 years ago? I was just at lunch 2.0 last weekend and it was very reminiscent of Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER2> Last year. I went to the same event two weeks ago, and the same people were there.

If, by "reminiscent", you mean that there are lots of single dudes with laptops, I might agree.

<comment><USER3> I was just at the YC dinner last week and the same people were there as the week before. Lots of dudes with laptops.

<comment><USER2> Uh, yeah. That was a joke.

<comment><USER3> :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I'm a full-stack developer, looking for a side-project - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiehackers.com/post/im-a-full-stack-developer-looking-for-a-side-project-5591656814 <comment><AUTHOR> Hi all,

I'm a full-stack developer with 8+ experience. I developed from many startups to large enterprise companies . Currently, I'm working from home like everybody else and looking for side projects I can join or create together.

Here is my mail, happy to share my projects over an email and discuss ideas. email@example.com

Thanks!</comment>


Ask HN: Should non-technical founder of an AI-based photo startup learn AI? - <AUTHOR> It's been 6 years of trying to build an touch-based (AI) photo sharing network. Within this period, 5 engineers have joined, contributed codes and left; with each succeeding engineer building on top of their predecessor's code base. Today, I felt I should've been gradually learning technical skills that supports my startup; probably, I could be contributing code to my project today without over-relying on others. Is it too late for me consider transitioning gradually to technical role or should I stick to my natural role (UI/UX & project management)? Given we've achieved good results so far? <comment><USER2> If you are the CEO you should not take on the task. It's great to be able to talk the talk but you need to sell your business. Focus on selling.

You probably need a great technical partner to help drive your intellectual property development, but any time you take off growing your business is time wasted.

</comment><comment><USER3> No</comment>