Why Rounded Corners are Easier on the Eyes - <AUTHOR> http://uxmovement.com/thinking/why-rounded-corners-are-easier-on-the-eyes/ <comment><USER2> I can no longer see a conversation about round rects without thinking of this fascinating story on developing the first Mac's drawing subsystem:

 _"Rectangles with rounded corners are everywhere! Just look around this room!". And sure enough, there were lots of them, like the whiteboard and some of the desks and tables. Then he pointed out the window. "And look outside, there's even more, practically everywhere you look!". He even persuaded Bill to take a quick walk around the block with him, pointing out every rectangle with rounded corners that he could find.

When Steve and Bill passed a no-parking sign with rounded corners, it did the trick. "OK, I give up", Bill pleaded. "I'll see if it's as hard as I thought."_

[http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_E...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.txt)

Interesting example of Steve Jobs' leadership style that _doesn't_ revolve around him being an asshole. Also, given how prevalent round rects were in classic Mac system software, surprising to consider they almost weren't possible on early systems.

Amazing, the cleverness once required to create things we now take for granted.

<comment><USER3> Did they just ignore all the non-rounded rectangles around them? They're everywhere, too, and I fail to see how this does or does not argue for their use.

<comment><USER4> It's simple if you think about it. Making rectangles with rounded corners takes work. You have to go out of your way. That so many craftsman, engineers, etc. did so is suggestive.

Moreover, looking at a lot of rounded rectangles will have the same effect that the examples in the linked article did. You'll notice that objects with them are more appealing than their counterparts.

<comment><USER3> _That so many craftsman, engineers, etc. did so is suggestive._

In many cases it suggests that leaving a sharp corner, such as on a table, would risk injury to some users. But in general, that something took extra work, says nothing about the rationale behind it. Maybe it's a way of showing off skills; I've certainly seen that in _code_ , where the people did something the hard way for reasons other than "this is what is best for this situation."

 _Moreover, looking at a lot of rounded rectangles will have the same effect that the examples in the linked article did. You'll notice that objects with them are more appealing than their counterparts._

What I notice is that sometimes they are appropriate, sometimes not. They are not universally appealing.

In many cases they give things an inappropriately childish (childlike?) feeling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't like the diagram example because it looks like B is being given some form of precedence over C. The lack of symmetry throws me off.

I would suggest having it round in both directions and removing the bottom edge of the 'triangle', so that it looks more like a curly brace. I'm not sure though, that might look weird or too cute.

<comment><USER6> I agree it definitely looks as though B comes first and then C is a secondary option. Furthermore, I see nothing wrong with the other diagram that doesn't have a curvy path. I think this example is different because it's a three path node. It doesn't jar the mind as badly as a two path node having a sharp vertex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't believe that never occurred to me: rounded corners are like _serifs_ for borders. They make the structure more obvious when boxes are packed together and aligned.

<comment><USER8> You put it into words. Nice fit.

Letter and layout create space with edge and curve.

One big graphical language..

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe I'm strange but I found the sharp corners much easier to see.

The round ones were distracting, especially the rounded arrows. I also found the pointy circle much nicer to look at.

With sharp corners you have 4 things to look at and process - each line. With the rounded ones you have 4 lines, 8 spots where a line changes into a curve, and 4 curves.

At least that's how my eyes do it - they notice the curve for each corner and that wastes time.

<comment><USER10> Shouldn't that be:

      4 lines and 4 corners

vs

      4 lines, 8 spots where line changes to curve and 4 curves

If you have to process the fact that a line changes into a curve, then why don't you have to process that two lines are intersecting, or 'changing' at a 90deg angle?

<comment><USER9> I thought about that and mathematically it makes sense, but that's just not how I experience it. The corner is "simple" there is nothing there for me to process, so I don't need to notice it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think the answer is so binary. I think non-rounded corners convey a feeling of simplicity. And because of that, I believe using rounded corners in a simple design can actually be harder on the eyes. Take HN for instance. If the corners were rounded, would it really be easier on the eyes? Well, I guess we would need new users to verify that.

Or take Microsoft's or anyone's tile UI for instance. I think the tile UI gives a feel of simplicity. If the tiles were rounded, would it really be easier on the eye?

</comment><comment><USER12> When I was considering what to name "bulbs" (<http://bulbflow.com>), the round corners of the letters was one of the factors. For example, I think the round letters in google and apple help give the brands a soothing feel.

Likewise, I think the soft edges in the python and ruby syntax are more pleasant, and I find it irritating to switch between python and sharp-edged languages such as JavaScript }{ -- this may be one of the reasons lisp is so beloved :)

<comment><USER13> Your homepage looks like a rectangle with sharp corners. Have you considered making them rounded? ;-)

<comment><USER12> But then it would no longer be a _golden rectangle_ :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've found previous articles from the same source a bit thin. And I have a personal dislike of the author after reading the comments on another article on the site:

[http://uxmovement.com/navigation/designing-tab-navigation- th...](http://uxmovement.com/navigation/designing-tab-navigation-the-right- way/)

I was happily surprised as this was a pretty good read with some interesting references (with criticisms as well). I hope the articles keep improving!

<comment><USER15> I found this one extremely thin.

There's a title that says we're "hard-wired" for rc. Then makes claim that our aversion to corners is a result of socialisation (i.e. not hard-wired). The case is simply ridiculous. Do parents not mind when we play with jelly-fish, but get upset when we eat sandwiches? Do schools round the corners on textbooks lest children suffer physical or emotional damage from those nasty sharp corners?

There's no substance here, just vague claims and circular citations.

<comment><USER16> The some of the examples were pretty moronic: Is a sunburst easier to process than a circle - well yea but you could equally have a complex object with rounded corners that was harder to process that a triangle.

Would you trust your child with a beachball or a scissors... really?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I couldn't help but think about WP7 and how they chose an angled/square interface in "sharp" (hehe) contrast to Apple's rounded UI. Will this simple principle hurt them?

</comment><comment><USER18> can't believe _SPIKES_ and _SCISSORS_ are compared to squares, in order to claim rounded corners are "easier on the eye". Squares are more space efficient and just fine on the eye. If you make a ball with 100 tiny ball forms coming out of it, its going to be just as hard to process as spikes.

Can't believe people can even follow such thoughs. wow.

</comment><comment><USER19> If brightness at the edges is the visual cue, would you get the same effect as rounding by fading out straight corners?

<comment><USER20> it's an illusion created by the visual system, which will persist unless you completely remove the corners. It's similar to why you perceive the edges on your ceiling to be brighter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Rounded corners are friendly. It's almost as if they say "come play with us, we won't bite or cut you".

Sharp corners on the other hand are more like "I'll cut you if you come near me."

Perhaps this means that one can constrain user by placing sharp corners on contextually unavailable objects, and rounded corners on available objects.

Speaking in terms of progressive disclosure, one can animate sharpness of the corners depending on if the users need to interact with the info inside of the corners.

Then it's more like "oh, ok, now I won't cut you -- you're cool, boxes around me told me that, come enter me".

</comment><comment><USER22> optimization: like rounding corners when piloting a vehicle: it shortens the distance of travel. in the visual case, fewer arc degrees, fewer saccades for the eye to traverse, fewer bytes sent down the optical nerve to the brain for processing.

</comment><comment><USER20> There are some exaggerations there. Corners, like edges in general attract attention and our visual system exaggerates them (but not in the retina as is suggested). Just like gradients, round edges do not attract attention. I don't think it's true that the computational/metabolic cost is different for the visual system. So, use corners when you want to attract attention (that's why arrows are jagged for example)

</comment><comment><USER23> The two flow diagrams don't convey the same information because the left one lacks symmetry and singles out B. As such there is significant cognitive overhead as you have to convince yourself they mean the same thing (and only in this context, in most contexts I would not consider B and C to be equivalent choices). It can be easily fixed, but wasn't.</comment>


Police pull over and stop Google driverless car in Washington, D.C. - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/police-stop-google-driverless-car-in-washington-d-c.html

<comment><USER2> Better headline: "Police officer stands near parked car".

</comment><comment><USER3> Flagged. Seriously, how did this get upvoted? It is a picture of a police officer standing somewhat close to a google car. A tl;dr would be longer than the story because there is literally no text.

</comment><comment><USER4> This isn't a story. Google's current self driving cars are normal cars with an especially intelligent cruise control. They are at all times legally driven by a person, (s)he just might not have their hand on the wheel. Without any additional information, this is just a normal driver being pulled over.

</comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, someday maybe closer in the future than many think, the headline will be " _driverless police car_ pulls over ..." - probably in a war zone.

</comment><comment><USER6> Was anyone in it? How did the car know to pull over? How was it able to find a safe spot to pull over?

</comment><comment><USER7> This isn't much of a story.</comment>


Bailing out the Airlines is a Moral Hazard - <AUTHOR> https://mailchi.mp/723a0c4072df/airlines-bankruptcy-bailouts-and-moral-hazard <comment><USER2> It is bailing out Boeing that scares me.

Back in the 1980s they closed down most of the US steel industry because it was based the obsolete Open Hearth Furnances that Siemens had invented more than 100 years prior.

The US steel industry was getting it's clock cleaned by other countries that were using the post-WWII basic oxygen process that produced a better and cheaper product.

Their answer was to lobby the government to keep out foreign steel, which damaged other US industries such as the car industries since they were forced to make more expensive and inferior products than their competitors.

Instead of keeping up with aerospace technology, Boeing decided to string along the 737 with minimum investment. They didn't have a cent to spend on developing a better plane, but they sure have $18 billion and counting to pay because they screwed up.

If we bail out Boeing they will try to make noisy and cramped 737s with foul air until 2080, they will hold back our aerospace industry, and will be a fifth column that helps Russia, China, Brazil and every other country get a jump on the USAF.

That's a hazard, not just a moral hazard!

</comment><comment><USER3> Bailing out the banks were a moral hazard too. The moral hazard didn't stick to just banking- it's evident in hindsight that bailouts in general are a moral hazard. Too big to fail wasn't just a banking phenomenon. It's a corporation phenomenon.</comment>


How Sex Hurts the Workplace, Especially Women - Sylvia Ann Hewlett - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.hbr.org/hbr/hewlett/2010/08/how_sex_hurts_the_workplace_es.html <comment><USER2> A better article would be called, "How the Workplace Hurts Sex"</comment>


An Exit Strategy is Not a Business Strategy - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/millennial-entrepreneurs/an-exit-strategy-is-not-a-business-strategy-.html <comment><USER2> Agreed: if you're building a startup that simply recycles another successful company with hopes of being acquired -- and that is your predominant "business model" -- then you're in startup land for the wrong reasons. This isn't the dot-com-let's-build-something-that's-not-really-anything-and-IPO-or-sell-it- off-as-fast-as-we-can era anymore. Hint: look at the radical reduction in IPOs over the past 10 years (admittedly due largely to the onerous Sarbanes-Oxley regulations).

I'm already being asked by people what our exit strategy is. I'm like, "um, we haven't even _launched_ yet -- the last thing I'm thinking about is exiting, I just want to build this thing and make it cool!"

</comment><comment><USER3> Exit strategy is the fundamental difference between a startup in the Silicon Valley sense and a lifestyle business or a family business. Recognition and acknowledgement of the exit is what separates entrepreneurship from self- employment. In other words, exit strategy is an entrepreneurial strategy and exits are what makes puts the "serial" in "serial entrepreneurs."

<comment><USER4> > Exit strategy is the fundamental difference between a startup in the Silicon > Valley sense and a lifestyle business or a family business.

Are you suggesting that there is a dichotomy here, where you are either a SV startup with an exit strategy _or_ a lifestyle/family business? Can't we just start a business small, because that's where you start, and grow it over time in terms of customer base, employees, premises, and ultimately financials?

I found it rather sad when, on approaching a bank to open a business account for the first time, one of the first questions they asked was what our exit strategy was. It was as if the only recognised way we might get any satisfaction would be to start something and then sell it for zillions before we had to actually make it successful. Deriving satisfaction from building a long-term successful business that does something useful and makes a healthy amount of money doing it seems to be some bizarro weird idea that obviously only newbies would consider or something!

Curiously, our professional accountants, who deal with quite a few local startups and small businesses, had quite a different perspective: they figured that we should set up the basics now, and as long as we weren't cutting off options for later, not plan too far ahead in terms of things like dividend strategies and the like. Their reasoning was simply that as a startup with a credible idea but not even launched yet, you really have no idea how successful (or otherwise) you will actually be in say 2-3 years' time, and you might as well at least find out whether you're getting 100s, 100,000s or 100,000,000s of customers before you make any serious decisions on things like long term ownership, exit options, etc. After all, if you can build a successful business with a decent long-term vision, you are always going to have exit options -- including being a much better prospect for all these gazillion dollar acquisition exits that entrepreneurs apparently dream of.

<comment><USER3> > _"they asked was what our exit strategy was."_

Your banker was just talking shop. Banks are often involved in finding investments for their wealthy customers whose portfolios they manage. They also are on the lookout for potential clients for such services in the future.

There's nothing wrong with a lifestyle business, a family business, or self employment. But an a startup in the SV sense is built to implement an exit strategy from day one.

Of course it's not an either or - but in general many small businesses don't have an exit strategy until the founder's want to retire. Consider the contrast to YC companies. The founders have to be willing to part with ownership on the day they enter the program.

<comment><USER4> > Your banker was just talking shop.

Respectfully, I doubt that. He seemed to be working through a standard questionnaire for new business accounts, including a lot of questions likely to be of interest if we ever asked for credit/loans. We got much the same questions on another occasion, opening an account with the same bank but for a different company.

Of course, that doesn't mean he wasn't also interested for other reasons professional, personal, or both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem that has always existed is someone will come along, think they can do it better than everyone else that has come before them (basically that they're smarter when they're probably not), or is delusional enough to believe their the first to think of an idea, and when asked how they're different, they say crap like "we're going to kill it with X which is what Y company isn't doing". It's redundant and unbelievable how many people think this way.</comment>


ASK HN: Ideas for 10k Apart contest - <AUTHOR> https://a-k-apart.com/ <comment><USER2> HN/PH clone with better design.

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out the telescope app project. (definitely not 10kB but really interesting)</comment></comment>


AACS encryption key controversy - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AACS_encryption_key_controversy

<comment><USER2> Not only the key is number, the text "The key for XXX is YYYYYY" is also a number. So is the phrase "decode this from bas64 - XXXXXXXXXXX" which after decoding contains the key. Any information may be presented as number in infinitely many ways, even just counting the ways that are understandable without context.

All numbers long enough can be proved to be illegal if just one of them is illegal if you allow clever encodings.

You cannot invent a way to say which number is legal and which is not, because there's infinitely many ways to encode each information. And context can be included in the information itself.

Outlawing all numbers bigger than certain X is obviously stupid.

Therefore the whole concept of intelectual property is absurd and should be abandoned ASAP.

In the end intelectual property enforcement requires censorship. What's more important - free speech, or slightly better protection of margins of a few industries? It's not a hard question. The only reason the IP is there is because these industries had monopoly on massmedia for a few decades, which gave them leverage over politicians.</comment>


First Victory of the Mobile Ad-Blocking War: A "L.E.A.N." Digital-Ad Standard - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/10/are-the-ad-blocking-wars-already-over/412327/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I was interested in this standard until I read the following:

> _These ads will still track users across the web, though. Cunningham notes > that the IAB will alter its general industry standards so that ads appear > "before, but never AFTER" someone makes a purchase (emphasis his)._

Just don't track users. Don't mine data about your readers. It's impersonal, it's ugly, and it's wrong. What I want on the web is for you to create the content you want to share, and I want you to pick the advertisements you think I'll like. I don't want you to delegate that responsibility to a tracking third-party.

A few years ago I pulled all the analytics services out of my apps. All unnecessary server contact was removed (i.e., anything not initiated by the user). I was just emailed by a group wanting the "backend usage data" from one of my apps which has been very popular with kids; the group specifically wanted it for that reason. I was very proud to be able to tell them that the app makes no contact with any servers whatsoever.

<comment><USER3> >Just don't track users. Don't mine data about your readers.

I'd expand this to: "Don't ask your users to trust you or anyone you have a business relationship with. Be absolutely transparent about what they're giving up for the content you're providing." \--Edited for clarity

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I went to the Sydney Morning Herald on my OS X box the other day, and found that after about 30 seconds I could no longer scroll up and down the article. Turns out they had some big interstitial ad that was blocking the down and up buttons. I had a look at the JavaScript running in the background and counted at least five trackers all running at once.

This has honestly now changed my behaviour. I've decided that the SMH is too slow for too little value for the already paucity of quality news and analysis it provides. Heck, I can't even post comments to their site any more - it all gets rejected after waiting in a moderation queue for ages. I cancelled my subscription and now I read my news from The Guardian Australia which has more content and better analysis, and certainly very few ads!

Goodbye SMH, you were an institution for so long, but your golden days are behind you and you are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

<comment><USER5> This experience has always been why I've been against ad blockers: in some sense it 'rewards' bad publishers who choke their site with ads.

<comment><USER4> I've often wondered whether a similar policy should be given where you get the ability to whitelist certain third party domains and prevent any AJAX requests from triggering (and blocking) to domains outside of the website you are browsing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The only reason ad blockers work is because they serve external resources. When media sites really wise up, they will figure out a way to serve ads from their own domains. Building a system for ad bidding, rotation, tracking, advertiser monitoring, and external auditing is too big of a task for many sites, so I think there's a startup opportunity to develop and sell a platform that can easily be installed on a server.

<comment><USER7> They already have... My employer are running multiple native advertising techs to alleviate the problem of ad blocking. We are also running anti-ad-blocker techs to measure and take action on users with active ad-blocking technologies.

Personally, I'm thoroughly against this arms race where both we and our users are loosing. But the financial side of our company sees it a different way.

<comment><USER8> You're talking about 3rd-party tech? Could you name one (or some?). Given that Linux is big server-side the tech would have to fit into that stack so I'd like to see how that's done for curiosity sake.

I think having it native is actually better because then companies will see the impact on their bandwidth and compute resources so that'll force ad-tech to be less bloaty. In theory.</comment></comment></comment>


An Interview with Riley Newman, Head of Analytics at Airbnb - <AUTHOR> https://chartio.com/blog/2013/09/riley-newman-interview

<comment><USER2> I like his stand against companies being data driven. Management and decisions can be data driven, but companies are brand, product and customer driven.</comment>


Lego Axle Sorter [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fM9qGZCc4DY <comment><USER2> I highly recommend that user's full channel:

[https://www.youtube.com/user/akiyuky/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/akiyuky/videos)

Akiyuky is apparently a process engineer in Japan, and posts impressive lego- based contraptions.

A lot of of them are for GBC, or "Great Ball Contraption", a collaborative project to make lego modules whose sole purpose is to move standard lego balls from one point to another. You'll often see collections of these at lego conventions. For example:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cbpNV8ivME](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cbpNV8ivME)

<comment><USER3> Related, checkout matthias wendel who does woodwork and lego contraptions

Lego domino row building machine

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de4xdOVVROQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de4xdOVVROQ)

Also, for other mechanical motions I really like watching thang

[https://www.youtube.com/user/thang010146/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/thang010146/videos)

<comment><USER4> That Matthias video takes me back - one of the first channels I ever subscribed to back in 2007 because of this cool wooden marble adding machine: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcDshWmhF4A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcDshWmhF4A)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The sorting mechanism reminded me of the matrix sorter in the Linotype machine [1], in my mind still one of the most impressive mechanical achievements of all time.

Background: the Linotype allows you to type text on a keyboard, which is then automatically cast into lead slugs which can be directly used for printing. Oh, and it has optional automatic justification. It does all of this with 19th century mechanics. Here is one in action [2]. The casting mold is made up of small movable letters, called matrices [3], which have a 7 bit code at the top (made up of teeth). The matrices are then transported along a special distributor bar above the sorting bins until there are no corresponding teeth to hold them, at which place they fall down into the correct bin [4]

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

[2] [https://youtu.be/HEsAXZg-S04?t=24s](https://youtu.be/HEsAXZg-S04?t=24s)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine#/media/File:L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine#/media/File:Linotype_matrix.png)

[4] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine#/media/File:L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linotype_machine#/media/File:Linotype_distributor.png)

</comment><comment><USER6> The impressive part is the entire system is mechanically timed and synced without using any computer control. Also, that little motor is running the entire machine. Still the best toy ever made in my opinion. Been into technic sets since the 80's.

<comment><USER7> This is one of my favorite videos of his. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYhAKxOlfXQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYhAKxOlfXQ) All movement and actuation is powered by a single motor. The timing is synchronized through gearing and linkages. I am in awe whenever I watch it.

<comment><USER8> This is kind of like playing a Zachtronics game without using the sync instruction (I think each one has a "wait for signal" concept), but in real life!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice. This is standard industrial feeder technology, done with Legos. Here's a commercial bowl feeder, which uses many of the same tricks.[1] Here's a discussion of the design principles.[2] You don't try to align the parts much; you just push or drop the misaligned ones back into the feeder for another try.

It's good that people are doing this. The US doesn't have enough production engineers, and stuff like this is how you learn that kind of job.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsJzSFVAnhk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsJzSFVAnhk) [2] [https://www.autodev.com/vibratory-feeder-bowl-orienting- part...](https://www.autodev.com/vibratory-feeder-bowl-orienting-part-shapes)

<comment><USER10> I spent many years writing motion control software for medical instruments and I am absolutely in awe of talented mechanical engineers.

Something as seemingly simple as retrieving parts from a bin of bulk pieces, singulating them so they're in a straight line and correctly spaced, making sure they are all oriented in the same direction and then passing them off to another moving sub-assembly all the while achieving a spec of "no more than one jam every 5,000 pieces" and still maintaining sufficient throughput is amazingly difficult. Especially doing it while avoiding all the other patented solutions.

The subtleties of, say, fixing a problem by making a tab just 0.05" shorter need a level of skill that's only obtained through decades of honing your craft.

A nice discussion of doing something similar with zipper pulls:[https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4364](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4364)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I want a machine that could do this will all types of Lego. I've got a 25 lb box of Lego pieces in the garage I'd love to get sorted into little plastic bags.

<comment><USER12> Harder by orders of magnitude: [https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two- metric-tons-of-lego/](https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of- lego/)

<comment><USER13> Why I've been meaning to build a "Lego Refractory" instead: a leaf blower at the bottom of a 10ft tall acrylic tube, with exit doors at various heights. It would sort Legos by their terminal velocity in free-fall.

<comment><USER14> I've tried just that but could not get it to work. If you manage to get it to work reliably this is likely the fastest mechanism you could make.

Some problems that you will run in to:

\- the timing will need to be _very_ precise

\- you will likely need sensors before the stations

\- Lego bricks come in all shapes and sizes and will respond unpredictably to air currents

\- you will need a way to arrest momentum or they'll shoot right back out

Still, this is orders of magnitude faster than my contraption _if_ you can get it work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Amazing. Is there a mechanical "program" (similar to a player piano roll) that sequences all of the actions? I didn't see one.

<comment><USER16> There are drive shafts at the bottom of the device that drive mechanical linkages.

<comment><USER17> There is one obviously visible cam (yellow half-circle) that seems to control the little wheel that shoots a single piece into slots that move over the sorting bins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This gives me very strong ASMR.

</comment><comment><USER19> Its never too late to have a happy childhood.

</comment><comment><USER20> Add 2013?

</comment><comment><USER21> Isn't there a simpler way to do this by lining up the mixed axles parallel to each other and then lifting the longest ones with a perpendicular bar?

I recall seeing this mechanism in WWII archive footage. A factory worker came up with it and he was praised for improving efficiency.

<comment><USER22> Maybe less complex in terms of moving parts, but also sounds less space efficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> this is so ironic, I was googling around this morning trying to find out how lego organizes and classifies different blocks. This was the first video that came up</comment>


How Snowden's Email Provider Tried To Foil The FBI Using Tiny Font - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/10/03/228878659/how-snowdens-email-provider-tried-to-foil-the-fbi-using-tiny-font <comment><USER2> How can you not love this guy? Please donate to his defense fund:

[http://tinyurl.com/m65n4ko](http://tinyurl.com/m65n4ko)

[http://lavabit.com/](http://lavabit.com/)

Lavabit Legal Defense Fund 10387 Main Street, Suite 205 Fairfax, VA 22030 (703) 291-1999

<comment><USER3> Because, if this article is correct[0], his refusal to obey a court order is the only reason the FBI made him hand over private keys.

The story is the FBI asked for Snowden's emails and correspondence. Lavabit said they would not hand over the information(but admitted they had the technical capability ... it was server side encryption after all). Only after that refusal did the FBI start taking more drastic action.

This is, if that story is true, about on par with a Bank complaining that the FBI ransacked the safe all their safety deposit boxes were stored in. Expect the bank neglects to mention that the only reason the FBI had to break open the safe and be put in the position of being able easily break open all the safety deposit boxes was because the Bank failed to to hand over one box when given a valid court order.

This is particularly problematic in Lavabit's case because a major cornerstone of the argument against the NSA's warrantless surveillance is that there are legal means to compel access to data when it is actually necessary and that those means make it totally illegal to do what the NSA was doing. This is really a hard point to argue when those means don't work because other's thumb their nose at the law as well.

[0] [http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/10/lavabit_unsealed/](http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/10/lavabit_unsealed/)

<comment><USER4> After studying the requirements Lavabit said they could write code to do it for $3500. But the FBI said they didn't trust Lavabit to do it right and thought it cost too much. They demanded direct access. [http://imgur.com/A3RNQWY](http://imgur.com/A3RNQWY)

<comment><USER5> Why is scp redacted? And only partially so...

<comment><USER4> I think whoever created that imgur image had the word highlighted when they captured it. If you look at the pdf it's not there. (page 100 [http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/801182/redacted- pleadi...](http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/801182/redacted-pleadings- exhibits-1-23.pdf))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wouldn't the FBI have the technical capability to use optical character recognition to digitise the keys to actual text? Or maybe it's too small to be legible to a high DPI scanner? I really admire Lavabit here, they're not dealing with your average Joe, they're dealing with the American Government and that costs money. Everyone has the chance to help potentially make history by supporting Lavabit and donate to its legal fund.

Many would have just given up the moment things escalated, but Ladar Levison never gave in and fought for the privacy of his users at the cost of his profitable business and life. The cards are stacked against him, but he didn't let it get in the way of trying to fight the case and have it made publicly.

How many other companies have secretly complied with similar requests we don't know about? United States of America, the land of the free, right?

<comment><USER7> A simple character flip in a single letter would make the key unusable. ocr is fairly good, but it's not uncommon that you get a handful of errors. That's usually fine if the result is meant for humans, but here, 99.9% correct is not enough, you need 100% correctness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not totally related:

It remind me of the case of "Free" a French ISP, they were forced like others ISP to send to the government the customer information related to IPs caught on P2P networks [0].

But the law did not specified how the data had to be sent, so to troll the government they sent everything by fax. And the volume was around multiple thousand queries a day.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HADOPI_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HADOPI_law)

<comment><USER9> The govt after receiving the fax : [http://thehacktory.org/wp- content/uploads/2011/03/office-spa...](http://thehacktory.org/wp- content/uploads/2011/03/office-space-employees-smashing-printer.jpeg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Once again, if you want to support Lavabit, please donate to the defense fund either at [http://lavabit.com/](http://lavabit.com/) or [https://rally.org/lavabit](https://rally.org/lavabit).

</comment><comment><USER11> Other wonderful delivery methods:

\- Baked into cuneiform

\- Wax tablets. "Oh, sorry, it got hot in my car and they're a little runny..."

\- In the form of a crossword puzzle.

\- Knitted into a scarf. "Perl one, skip two..."

Best to have hardware from which it is impossible to export a key.

<comment><USER12> In all seriousness, is it possible to design a system where it is simply impossible to hand over data to a third party?

<comment><USER13> I believe Julian Assange worked on a system that would make it impossible for an external entity to determine if there is any useful information on a data partition. Basically you would have a hard drive full of random numbers and it would be unfeasible to determine if there is any actual information on it, without the right keys and tools.

<comment><USER14> I have never heard Assange's name in connection with this, but that's what Truecrypt purports to do: [http://www.truecrypt.org/hiddenvolume](http://www.truecrypt.org/hiddenvolume)

<comment><USER15> He did. It was a project called rubberhose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Wired Magazine details the ordeal_

From the HN guidelines:

'Please submit the original source. If a blog post reports on something they found on another site, submit the latter.'

</comment><comment><USER17> This was already discussed at length earlier today [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6487969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6487969)

<comment><USER18> And first revealed here yesterday [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6485562](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6485562)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Small moves like that makes me proud to be on the internet at this day and age of crisis. I hope I can tell my children or grand children that I actually cared and that I made a small difference, even if it's only the smallest of all.

I hope it will stay the way it is. Probably not, seeing how the public is ignoring and/or is not caring about the issue at all.

<comment><USER20> > I hope it will stay the way it is.

...this is the _Internet_ we're talking about. It's almost completely unrecognizable from the way it was 5 years ago.

<comment><USER19> I broadly meant that as in not controlled by any single state, entity or corporation.

I for one welcome the new holographic internet cats shared by our minds and made entirely of pastas that are shaped into code. So long as those pastas are open.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> See? Ridiculous key sizes do give additional protection (imagine scanning a 4MB key printout.) Eat that, Bruce Schneier!

</comment><comment><USER22> If my understanding is correct, the FBI could decrypt historical traffic if they had the keys. So, assuming the FBI/NSA has a huge archive of Lavabit's customer traffic (would not surprise me), couldn't they decrypt it all now since they have the SSL keys?

<comment><USER17> Probably, but not necessarily [https://www.net- security.org/article.php?id=1856](https://www.net- security.org/article.php?id=1856)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> >To make use of these keys, the FBI would have to manually input all 2,560 characters, and one incorrect keystroke in this laborious process would render the FBI collection system incapable of collecting decrypted data

That would take an intern less than an hour to digitize. Maybe three interns if you needed redundancy. This seems like a completely useless action on Levison's part since it end up giving the FBI the information they wanted but will still piss them off.

<comment><USER24> Probably he was confident that they were too lazy to do it, and infact they didn't but just whined..

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> >>"To make use of these keys, the FBI would have to manually input all 2,560 characters, and one incorrect keystroke in this laborious process would render the FBI collection system incapable of collecting decrypted data," prosecutors complained.

That's pretty misleading - they make it sound like if they press the wrong key once it'll destroy the FBI's entire system.

</comment><comment><USER26> Off topic, but brings to mind another technique famously used by Goldman when they dumped over a billion pages to the 50 staffers in the Federal Crisis Inquiry Commission:

[http://money.msn.com/top- stocks/post.aspx?post=00000065-0000...](http://money.msn.com/top- stocks/post.aspx?post=00000065-0000-0000-6ef7-1a0000000000)

</comment><comment><USER27> Clever. We did something similar for a friend getting married. Instead of giving his present directly we created a text file encrypted with his public pgp key. We printed out the ascii-armored cryptotext and handed it over. He had lots of fun typing it back into his computer.

<comment><USER28> I'm sure FBI didn't have as much fun.

Anyway, as he decided to give the SSL key, pulling this kind of prank seems bit childish. On the other hand, he must have been under a heavy pressure, so can't blame the guy for not thinking 100% straight.

Sad, that people are sidetracked to talking about the font size instead of warrantless wiretapping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Upvoted because of the story, but I like NPR less and less these days. So far they've been mainly pro-government than pro-Snowden.

<comment><USER30> NPR is very pro-government and pro-war.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm just happy the FBI doesn't know how to run OCR. Hell they could have mechanical turked segments, like captcha farms.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think he should have encrypted the key using itself. That way he can give them the key. And they can decrypt it and send it back in time so they can decrypt it.</comment>


Optimizing a Full-Text Search Engine - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/fprime/optimizing-a-full-text-search-engine-compression-49jm <comment><USER2> "Normal database engines (MySQL, MongoDB, Postgresql, etc) did not provide the level of performance I was looking for." ... "After indexing just 358 of the 1395 files available the index was already a whopping 607MB"

I don't understand why those systems couldn't handle fewer than 2000 text documents. Or Sqlite3 + FTS3 or FTS4 for that matter.

Nor why actual full-text search engines like Lucene/Solr weren't considered. The project page suggests that the point is simplicity, but I thought Solr was simple even to get started with.</comment>


Axel Springer bans adblock users from Bild online - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/oct/13/axel-springer-bans-adblock-users-from-bild-online <comment><USER2> The response to this by the members of this community is very interesting. On the one hand, there have been many calls and support for micropayments for content. Here is a publisher offering access to their articles for a low cost. The response? People want to "fix" the issue, instead of respecting the publisher. They are offering low cost way to view the content mostly ad-free. Isn't this what we should, as readers, hope for? An alternative to ads that is low cost, and still supports the publication? What am I missing here?

<comment><USER3> Publishing written content is not a good business to be in these days. Just as a decade ago the music industry faced a cultural shift now the publishing industry is transitioning. The gist is that this kind of looked at as an entitlement not a service worth paying to have. Basically, the fourth estate is a zombie about to be put down unless something drastic happens.

<comment><USER4> That users feel entitled to free content and that there is no willingness to pay for content has always been a myth fabricated by an industry unwilling to face its own failure. I'm really surprised that there are still people who believe in this myth because there are now plenty of examples showing that it is quite possible to make serious money by selling content (Spotify, Netflix, iTunes store, New York Times, among many others).

<comment><USER5> The difficulty here is that people refer to "content" as though it's a commodity, and it's not. There's a huge difference between the market value of content provided by the New York Times and the content in a tabloid (even if it is a popular publication like Bild).

With blogs and citizen journalism and everything else there are now millions of sources of "content", and content by itself has become almost value-less. I think _good_ content is getting more and more valuable by contrast, although its market is probably shrinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, the Washington Post started doing this last month...and at some point they've apparently decided to stop doing it:

[http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/the-washington- post-b...](http://www.buzzfeed.com/matthewzeitlin/the-washington-post-begins- blocking-ad-blockers#.kwY6X76g0)

> _In one case, using Chrome with AdBlock on, the Post had a dialog box > redirecting users to enter their email for a free six week subscription. The > anti-AdBlock measures don't seem comprehensive just yet — we were able to > view articles after clicking through from a search results link in Firefox > with the ad blocking software turned on. But when we clicked through to > another article on the site, the redirect screen popped up._

</comment><comment><USER7> War indeed. Well, since AdBlock introduced me to that addictive clean-browsing crack, I can't go back.

I don't read Bild but as I've said before, most content I view online falls under entertainment anyway. So, being blocked on sites as an AdBlock user (like Forbes now does) can only cut my procrastination time short, which isn't a bad thing.

Plus, ads are not the only way to make money online. So, if it isn't working for a company, then it's time to pursue another business model.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, when I click through to a site and see the content is blocked I just click back and move on, and 10 seconds later I've probably forgotten what I wanted to see there in the first place. I'm personally a fan of both adblocking _and_ of sites rejecting people who use it (my personal line is that adblockerblockerblockers are going one step too far; if sites want to explicitly say "enable ads or don't view the content" I'm happy to play along). People simply going elsewhere in droves will perhaps spur more work into micropayments, which the ad-and-tracking model has sadly diverted attention and resources from, and perhaps more interest in user-created content with some sort of micropayment-based hosting cost recovery.

<comment><USER7> Wonder how services like Blendle (content micropayments platform) will fare if such blocking increases. Interestingly enough, Blendle got investment from Axel Springer (Bild owner) and NYT last year[1].

[1][http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/10/05/blendle-is-up-to- someth...](http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/10/05/blendle-is-up-to-something- big/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to see a comprehensive history of adblocking. from webfree to adblock [0] to wherever we are today, because it seems like we're stuck in a cycle. Time and time again i see the web and it's users going through the same motions [1] [2]. It's the same arguments and the same experiments being tried, whose success and failure are as predictable as ever [3]. Today is just another day under the falling sky.

[0] [http://adblock.mozdev.org/](http://adblock.mozdev.org/)

[1] [http://www.zdnet.com/article/browser-makers-warned- against-a...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/browser-makers-warned-against-ad- blocking/)

[2] [http://web.archive.org/web/20071011004456/http://whyfirefoxi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071011004456/http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/index1.php)

[3] [http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/03/why-ad-blocking- is-d...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/03/why-ad-blocking-is- devastating-to-the-sites-you-love/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Fix already available for ABP: [https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41068](https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=41068).

</comment><comment><USER11> Fair play to them for trying, but this approach will only work for sites that host or create original content.

If it's a site that just runs Reuters feeds or press releases with some 'editorialisation' then they'll likely feel the impact of the back-button.

Recently I tried searching for details of the new Light.co camera. The first two pages of Google results were filled with _exactly_ the same release, regurgitated on dozens of websites. None of them were useful to me, but it shows how much competition there is for eyeballs.

</comment><comment><USER12> Without confronting the massively pro-adblock crowd here head on, I just want to ask what the statistics are for Adblock use Internet-wide. Is it 10% of users or a much smaller figure?

<comment><USER13> I manage a consumer website with 4-5 million unique visitors a month, monetized solely via ads. About 25% of our desktop users use an ad blocker. The site's desktop audience is 56% U.S., 8% India, 7% UK, 5% Canada.

When we detect the use of an ad blocker, we show a small appeal at the bottom to either whitelist the site or make a donation. Total donations received in the last 1 year: $0.

<comment><USER2> How do you measure ad block usage rates?

<comment><USER14> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10409429](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10409429)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >"Whoever does not switch off the adblocker or does not pay cannot see any content on Bild.de, as of now,"

uBlock origin with default settings seems to load their "content" fine and without ads. If that changes, I'm sure one of the optional filters like "anti- adblock killer" will be updated accordingly

<comment><USER16> ublock with latest chrome version here. site is blocked. i'm in germany

<comment><USER17> The Firefox version of uBlock Origin supports inline script tag filtering, which allows to work around Bild's block (and other such attempts).[1]

Chromium-based browser do not support inline script tag filtering, but you can still block all inline script tags at once, and the site will load fine, though with some broken functionality.[2]

[1] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Inline-script-tag- fil...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Inline-script-tag-filtering)

[2] [https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/821#issuecomment-14...](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/821#issuecomment-148908117)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm more than happy to pay for high quality content. For example, I pay for a subscription to LWN. But there are some things for life you'll take (in small doses) for free, but would never pay for - for me, tabloid journalism falls into that category.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm sorry but who gives a shit about Bild. Pretty much everyone who reads this crap wouldn't understand what AdBlock does in the first place.

<comment><USER20> You are sorely mistaken. The Bild is "the best-selling non-Asian newspaper and has the sixth-largest circulation worldwide." ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild))

A LOT of people give a shit about the Bild.

The German people are also very technologically capable and highly privacy minded. The linked article cites that 30% of German users have some sort of adblocking software installed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They're checking for "SMART AdServer" only. Fake that and it still works.

</comment><comment><USER22> Should be interesting to see what Google makes of this; it seems to be flirting with crossing the line into "showing different content to visitors than the crawler", if the anti-adblock script runs for a Google referer.

<comment><USER23> The Google bot doesn't block ads, and it runs full JS nowadays, so I don't see why would it see the blocked version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Never heard of 'em.

My gut tells me that by the holiday season we'll see more major sites blocking ad-blockers.

And, of course, we'll just use different tools. Or better yet, change our browser signatures. After all, it's a courtesy to content providers for consumers to tell them what kinds of tools they're using. That courtesy can be rescinded.

This entire spy vs. spy scenario makes me sad. I'm very sorry that the internet thought that folks walking by a storefront looking at your sales copy was a monetizable event. It is not. It was simply a fluke of the way the default technology was constructed.

And now I fully expect to see large, well-funded players enter the fray -- on the side of content providers. That's also a bad thing. Going to be a lot of pain before this gets sorted out.

<comment><USER25> Firefox with Noscript: big sign suggesting I switch Javascript back on.

Terminal with w3m - all text visible including the 'skip to content' accessibility link at the top of each page. Appears to be full text of articles (my German is sadly quite limited).

Yes, I agree, some kind of arms race will no doubt commence.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, but the adblockers will win in the end.

Worst case: we lose all bandwidth winnings, and have to simulate functioning ads to content distributors.

P.S.: NoScript blocks the Javascript warning for me, unless I allow the bild.de domain. The adblock-blocker only works with NoScript fully disabled. I'm using Firefox with uBlock and NoScript.

<comment><USER27> True, we can always cut the ad's element out after they render.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm happy about everything that decreases their reach even a tiny bit. Bild is the worst kind of "yellow press" and way to influential.

<comment><USER28> I am happy too. Anything taking views from this hate and lie spreading paper is good. Ad block should not even try to circumvent this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I was wondering about this the other day and thought someone here might know. How does one even determine if an ad blocker is running?

<comment><USER13> An easy way to detect is to see if an ad div is visible and > 0px tall.

Edit: Clarification: Most ad blockers collapse the divs where ads would have appeared. That's the tell I use to detect ad blockers. There are other, more sophisticated techniques but this is easy and works a good % of the time.

<comment><USER29> I suppose the next question is how does the ad blocker detect circumvention techniques?

If you have experience in this I would love to read about some of it as it sounds fascinating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One more take for ad blockers actually improving the Web.

</comment><comment><USER31> Leider, kann ich nicht Deutsch lesen :-(

</comment><comment><USER32> Good riddance.</comment>


What's the scariest part of starting a company? - <AUTHOR> +1's for describing how to overcome those fears. <comment><USER2> It hasn't been very scary. It's been pedestrian to be honest. I faxed in some details with my credit card, got an account setup with the state, sent in my business paperwork, paid the fees and... Company started. I did this a couple years after getting the product going. I waited until we actually had checks to cash that required a business checking account. After I had my paperwork from the state, I got a FEIN online, filed my federal tax return for last year (no income), and opened a business checking account.

There isn't any magic to it.

If you add VC money into the mix, odds are you will fail and have a lot of stress failing. Or you can go bootstrap something and have a lot less stress and still be successful even if your company only makes $400,000 - a couple million a year. Odds of success are still not extremely high. But I think it's a better angle. I moved to the SF Bay Area and worked at startups for a while to get a feel for if I was wrong to think bootstrapping was better. I left much more assured that I was right.

</comment><comment><USER3> Opportunity cost. Is this the company I should be starting instead of another one? What if it fails? Would I be better off just taking a steady job?

</comment><comment><USER4> Right now, I've started the company, I've got most of the products done.

My biggest fear right now is that I missed something in regards to the payment process, as I've developed several SaaS applications, with recurring fees, but I've also added some upselling points in there, so I'm just hoping everything works out. In my testing, Stripe has pretty much been on point, save for a few of my own miscalculations or errors. But having Stripe work with my database and doing all the checks to make sure no one is getting the product completely free (due to a bug) has definitely wracked my nerves and caused some delays in the whole process, aside from life happenings.

How I've gotten through it is by releasing additional products, free products usually, to see how the reactions have been, and generally, it has been well received. Just working on things that take my mind off of it, but have similar functions or features has actually helped me improve my code, so I've gone back and optimized it. It is helping me to get over my fear of screwing up something beyond any point of return, as I can always go in and fix it, whether I have to make a change to the code, the database, or even in Stripe itself.

It can be pretty nerve wracking sending off products into the wild, not knowing how they will be received, if people would pay, if pricing is right, etc. But for the most part, seeing competition out there actually does help, knowing other people have already done what I am doing helps put my mind a little more at ease. I also believe that there are 2 types of people in the world of SaaS: those who give it a chance, even if it might have a bug here or there, and those who don't. The best customers are the ones who understand that no product is perfect, but as long as you're trying, and actively care about addressing their concerns, you are likely to have more success.

I think the next of my concerns.. is going to be Marketing.

</comment><comment><USER5> Fear of public failure.

I had a startup for a while and this was something I battled with a lot. It's one thing to have a little side project that no one knows about and that you can just pass off as something for your "off-time". When you start a company though, you make a public statement to the world in some form or fashion that you are building this thing and you believe in it's ability to make money. And not just that - you believe that it can and will be successful. People tend to start judging you right then and there. It's pretty difficult at times to handle that on its own - and then the doubts come, and the fears of how it will reflect on you if you fail.

"What if some technical challenge is too much and I can't get it to work?"

"What if I release it too early/ and no one uses/pays for it?"

"What if I never get past that first user or first 10 users?"

"What if people see me fail at this and then feel justified in thinking that I'm an idiot?"

They all boil down to fear of failure. The biggest thing to realize is that failure is the path to success and to reframe how you view it. Failure is the beginning, not the end. The end is defeat - when you decide not to stand back up again. And the people who are judging you? They are generally just insecure. I heard a quote once (not sure where it comes from) that says something to the effect of how the greatest treason a crab can commit is attempting to escape the bucket. If you watch them in a bucket, when one tries to get out, the others will pull them back down. That's how a lot of people behave as well - they will judge you for your failure and try to bring you back down to their level. Just realize what is happening, and reframe failure as a growth opportunity. You can't really lose then - if you fail, you've grown and learned something, and if you don't, well... Then congratulations, you've "won", so to speak.

It comes down to this: you will learn a lot from building a company, and those hard-earned lessons will only help you. Embrace failure and you are 10 steps ahead of those who run from it, because you're stepping into the arena and they're not.

</comment><comment><USER6> The responsibility. Especially for CEO.

There's nobody left to cover you. Nobody to blame for a bad decision, or even for a lack of decision.

When things aren't going well, it's all you and your flaws. When your spouse is asking how you pay the bills, you can't blame anyone but yourself for the salary you take in.

When things go very well and suddenly a competitor or market shift blindsides you, it's all your fault for not acting on it earlier.

When you take a major gamble and fail, it's you. Or even if you don't take any gambles, your fault for being a coward.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not having a reliable income, in exchange for receiving stock that is (if you aren't lying to yourself) extremely likely to be worthless.

How to overcome: Don't. Stay employed in a traditional job. I mean, except if you have the most AMAZING idea and the PERFECT team to execute, and you are just SO JAZZED about it that you couldn't even CONSIDER passing up the opportunity. And if that is how you feel about it, then you might be on the right track.

</comment><comment><USER8> Being 100% responsible for any failures (bugs in the code, missed promises and deadlines, etc), and having no padding between you and the client.

Overcome this by being painfully detail orientated. And never sub-contract, except to _extremely_ trust sources.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ignorance, you don't know what you don't know, even if it's what you need to know.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's definitely the opportunity cost, like twobyfour said.

What if you fail publicly?

Who cares. As long as you do not have a big ego, or talk more than you walk (I'm looking at you Theranos). Then nobody is going to judge you. It's 2017, apparently starting your own business and "pivoting" (ie failing) is what all the cool kids are doing.

If someone puts you down and blindly says that you are going to fail. Then stop talking to them, and get them out of your life. They are probably too small minded to have a legitimate conversation with anyways. (At least in my experience)

What if you go broke?

That's fine. How much money does it take for you to be truly happy, with no external influences? For me, I need a workshop, a laptop,the gym, the local library, and my significant other. I can theoretically sustain that lifestyle working a minimum wage job full time. Not being spartan, just minimally comfortable.

So if I go broke, I know I have the skills and work ethic to make at _least_ what a full time min wage worker makes per month. So in my mind, money doesn't matter.

(This changes a lot if you have kids. On the flip side, if you go broke your kids will have such an enormous respect for money, that they will probably be financially responsible when they are adults. In a really twisted way,you might be doing your kids a favor by going broke.

Opportunity cost?

This is the real killer. Let's say your 25 years old. You start your company and put 5 years into it.

Now your 30. Your business isn't a unicorn, but you didn't explicitly fail. So lets say your making $150k profit a year (non-passive), working 40+/hrs a week. Plus the weight of the business on your shoulders. You look at your buddies working at Google/FB/MS/AMZ, they are pulling in $250k+, working less hours with less stress, and they spend more time with friends and family. Your other buddy wanted to bring you into his early stage business when you were 25, you declined and still struck it out on your own. Your buddy just made a 7+ figure exit.

Did you make you make the right choice 5 years ago? This hypothetical question is what keeps me up at night.

Here's what scares the hell out of me. Once you lose time, you will NEVER get it back. You are that much closer to being dead.

How do I deal with it? Ask yourself this question. Am I happy(but stressed) right now? If you say yes, then nothing else matters.

When I was working for the Fortune 500's, I would look out the window and wish I was working on my own project with my own terms. That's what I'm doing now. After starting my business,I never for a second, wished I was working for a Fortune 500. I only wanted the Fortune 500 paycheck, not the daily work/routine/office politics.

Perspective is an incredibility underrated way to manage stress.</comment>


How to get an idea for a startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.seldo.com/weblog/2008/08/04/how_to_get_an_idea_for_a_startup_move_to_the_bay

<comment><USER3> _The bay is necessary to get your idea in the first place. It's not because the people who live in the bay are unusually creative, it's because there are unusually large numbers of creative people in the bay._

What a load of crap. There are unusually large numbers of creative people all over the world, if you know how to recognise them.

In fact, creativity more often occurs from a meeting of unrelated ideas - <USER2> you're more likely to get that talking to someone who isn't doing the exact same job within the exact same mind-space within the same giant echo-chamber.

<comment><USER4> But completely unrelated ideas don't spawn the kind of creativity that is really useful. The point is that you want a lot of conversation on a particular topic, and some "accidents" to occur within those conversations. If the topic is "doing stuff with computers," then you'll have more computer- related creativity coming out of a place that has a lot of computer ideas bumping into one another.

This article falls into the "why are hubs hubs?" category.

Not to nitpick, but how could there be "unusually large numbers" of anything "all over the world"? What's so unusual about that large number, if it's everywhere?

<comment><USER5> _But completely unrelated ideas don't spawn the kind of creativity that is really useful._

I completely disagree. Intelligent people from differing fields getting together will yield creativity on par or better than when everyone from the same industry gets together. Unless your idea of useful creativity is 500 Bay area companies doing web feed readers from back a few years ago or everyone working on Facebook apps now. Alot of really great tech ideas don't come from the Bay area. You may not hear about them, but they are out there. So maybe your premise should actually be stated as:

"if you want to come up with an idea that everyone in the Bay area will like, than you should move to the Bay area."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't make much sense. I have yet to meet an entrepreneur who struggles to come up with a great idea; in fact, most people have lots of good ideas. The idea is the easy part, executing is harder.

<comment><USER7> _I have yet to meet an entrepreneur who struggles to come up with a great idea; in fact, most people have lots of good ideas._

I'm not sure about that. Most people have lots of ideas... but in my experience the overwhelming majority of these are very bad ideas.

I think it's worth considering the possibility that living in the bay area benefits startups by letting founders see lots of what does and doesn't work, and thereby helping them avoid spending time on some of their very bad ideas.

(Of course, this cuts both ways: I doubt you'd see an Amazon.com come out of someone who had spent years in the bay area -- more likely you'd get a response along the lines of "You want to sell _books_ online? Like... dead trees? Which you have to store in warehouses and ship across the country? You should write a facebook app instead, that would be so much cooler.")

<comment><USER6> I agree that it helps to be surrounded by smart, creative people. I also think there are decreasing marginal returns to this benefit - are 1,000 smart people really that much more useful than 100 people for bouncing ideas off of? Is Seattle, Chicago or New York really so bad? More than the Bay area, it's how resourceful you are.

Now I'm not saying the Bay Area is a bad place to be, just that you don't _need_ to be there to come up with and work on an awesome idea. Better reasons to be in the Bay Area: Investors, investors, investors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reads like self-affirmation more than anything else.

Frankly, in my field the ideas that are getting funded in the Bay are mostly derivative and hardly innovative - almost everyone is trying to monetize through online advertising instead of actually selling things.

</comment><comment><USER9> My problem with this is that everybody getting their ideas in the same place quickly turns to group-think. And that breeds derivative products and services with negligable added benefit.

</comment><comment><USER10> People move to bay area to find similar hackers and share/get-motivated from their experiences. Ofcourse the investors too. But moving to bay area to get ideas seems wierd.

</comment><comment><USER11> A large group of like-minded people constantly conversing is also a recipe for groupthink. Yes, the Bay area is the home of most the tech startups. And curiously they all look and feel the same, imitating each other in an innumerable number of ways.</comment>