The Only Woman on Snap's Board Makes Significantly Less Than the Men - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/02/04/snapchat-ipo-woman-board-joanna-coles/ <comment><USER2> Since when did Fortune put out such clickbait headlines? The article does not talk about what Joanna Coles' role at Snap is, how much involvement she has in day-to-day or strategic long-term planning, or numerous other factors that would determine a salary and stock-option grants. All it does is say that she makes less than someone else.

The headline should be "One person makes less than other people". Unfortunately, that wouldn't get any clicks or reinforce the simplified narrative that women make less than men.

<comment><USER3> Women do in fact make less than men. This isn't just a narrative, it's observable reality.

Unless you believe women in aggregate contribute less to society and therefore ought to make less than men do, the wage gap is a real problem that needs fixing.

<comment><USER4> > Women do in fact make less than men.

This argument has been rehashed to death. There are multiple studies, all adjusting for different variables.

The original comment's point is fair, in that the headline is clickbait, in that it associates this particular person's lesser pay with her gender, by singling it out.

It'd be equivalent to saying "only woman in company of 10 makes less than everybody else" without mentioning her level of experience or duties.

<comment><USER3> She is in fact the only woman on the board and she does in fact make less than all the other board members who are men. The headline suggests that Snap isn't doing well on the leadership diversity front, and they back that up with facts.

As for your argument that different studies adjust for different variables, that's irrelevant. My argument wasn't that individual women or women in specific jobs earn less than men do, it was that women in aggregate (meaning: all adult women) earn less in total. By adjusting for different variables you can only conclude that the wage gap is justified (e.g. because women on average have less demanding jobs, work fewer hours, whatever) not that the wage gap doesn't exist. So the level of experience or the duties of the woman on the Snap board is totally irrelevant here, because even if there are reasons for why she earns less that doesn't change the fact that she does earn less and that therefore Snap contributes to the wage gap.

<comment><USER4> >Unless you believe women in aggregate contribute less to society and therefore ought to make less than men do, the wage gap is a real problem that needs fixing.

From your argument, based on decisions women make, they contribute less to the company, and ought to make less than men do.

Therefore, the wage gap is not a problem isn't a problem that needs fixing. Stop dog whistling.

<comment><USER3> You misunderstand. Studies about the wage gap look for reasons why companies compensate women less, and how much those different factors contribute to the gap. Research on the wage gap doesn't conclude that these causal factors morally justify the wage gap, because they don't.

<comment><USER4> > Studies about the wage gap look for reasons why companies compensate women > less

You're really begging the question here. You're assuming that companies do pay the women less regardless of their contributions to the company. As I have said before, there are dozens of studies out there, and you can find evidence for and against the existence of a non-justified gender wage gap.

> Research on the wage gap doesn't conclude that these causal factors morally > justify the wage gap, because they don't.

That doesn't make sense. If adjusting factors for contributions to the company reduce the wage gap to zero, there is no wage gap and there is no moral justification needed.

<comment><USER3> Identifying reasons for the wage gap doesn't make the wage gap go away. The gap is still there because women still earn less. So unless you believe women are worth less than men the wage gap is a problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of companies get pressured to have a diverse board, which means that the women and minorities on the board might not be expected to do anything besides being diverse. So it makes sense that Snap doesn't have to pay them as much.

</comment><comment><USER4> > So unless you believe women are worth less than men the wage gap is a > problem.

You really don't understand logic do you? Do you think that everybody should be paid equally? People who contribute less will get paid less and that's not a problem.

Women, who biologically generally have to take time off work for childbirth, do not contribute to the company during that time. In that case the woman is worth less to the company and should get paid less.

Not quite sure if you're trolling here, since this is a simple and abundantly clear point.

<comment><USER3> > Do you think that everybody should be paid equally?

I believe men and women in aggregate should get paid equally. I'm not trolling, I actually believe this.

Regarding childbirth: since earnings are determined by politics, biology has nothing to do with it.

It's pretty clear by now you believe that women in aggregate contribute less to society (paid + unpaid work) and therefore ought to get less money. That's why you don't have a problem with the wage gap. It's not an uncommon view, but plainly sexist.

<comment><USER6> > I believe men and women in aggregate should get paid equally. I'm not > trolling, I actually believe this.

Regardless of any other condition? Suppose 10% more men than women were working in any given year. Should the men in aggregate be paid the same as the women? What if 10% more women than men were working?

What if women on average worked 2 fewer years in their total career. Should the aggregates still be equal?

What if women on average had more education (or less education), or worked riskier (or less risky) jobs? I don't start with a premise that men and women should be paid the same in aggregate, unless you add additional qualifiers.

Men and women performing the same work, with the same skills and experience should on average be paid the same. Note "on average" rather than "in aggregate".

I have no problem with oil rig workers being paid more than food servers or nurses being paid more than valet parking attendants. I have no problem with career office workers being paid more than stay at home parents. Nothing in this paragraph is gender-specific; it's a function of the job and the value that job has to the employer.

<comment><USER3> > Regardless of any other condition?

Pretty much. There is no reason why one gender would suddenly become lazier or more productive than another gender, so equal pay looks like the sensible default position to me.

<comment><USER6> OK, so how do you implement it?

As an employer, how do I know how to trim the wages of the "overpaid" gender to make things balance out?

Do I go by how the individual identifies, or their genetic composition?

If someone takes a second job to help make ends meet, how do we notify their first employer to cut their wages appropriately?

<comment><USER3> Individual employers can't fix this by themselves. They can -- and should -- minimize their contribution to the wage gap, but ultimately political change is needed as well.

There are many studies on how to close the wage gap. For example see: [http://www.epi.org/publication/closing-the-pay-gap-and- beyon...](http://www.epi.org/publication/closing-the-pay-gap-and-beyond/#epi- toc-2)

<comment><USER6> From a reasonably quick skim, that study seems to boil down to "All we have to do is simultaneously dramatically increase wages, decrease unemployment, increase hours, decrease employer flexibility, increase collective bargaining, and regularize undocumented workers."

Seems easy enough; I wonder why no one's thought to do all those things together before...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zebras Fix What Unicorns Break - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sexandstartups/zebrasfix-c467e55f9d96#.fwn6ruj9e <comment><USER2> > 2\. Zebra companies are often started by women and other underrepresented > founders.

Is this really the number 2 reason? Like, is the suggestion here if we got white men to start Zebras then Zebras would be more popular?

The other obnoxious thing is that they don't actually provide evidence for this; they cite that very few women get VC money and then claim that it's because they're running Zebras. And it's not relevant to say they start "30 percent of businesses" because I doubt that's 30 percent of software businesses.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not convinced. By a lot of their definitions we're a Zebra (profitable, no VC, using 1% of our gross revenue to make a positive impact, not aiming for a 1 bn valuation) - but for my taste, their manifesto is way too much feel-good, self-limitation and mediocrity. It seems like a knee-jerk reaction to overhyped unicorns, but not much more. Why does it have to be exactly one way or the other? Although we're bootstrapped, it doesn't mean we're a "lifestyle business", we can still (and are currently) disrupt/ing an entire industry. If you look at Google or SpaceX as an end result, you might realize that ambitions and being a great employer that makes a positive impact on the world aren't mutually exclusive.

<comment><USER4> What parts of their proposal do you consider mediocrity?

<comment><USER5> 1). Operating on how the world should work and not how it practically works.

2). _" We believe that developing alternative business models to the startup status quo has become a central moral challenge of our time. These alternative models will balance profit and purpose, champion democracy, and put a premium on sharing power and resources. Companies that create a more just and responsible society will hear, help, and heal the customers and communities they serve ... The capital system is failing society in part because it is failing zebra companies: profitable businesses that solve real, meaningful problems and in the process repair existing social systems."_ Conflating start-ups (and business) with charities. Using an inefficient model for resource distribution in enterprise.

3). _" Think of our most valuable institutions — journalism, education, healthcare, government, the "third sector" of nonprofits and social enterprises — as houses upon which democracy rests. Unicorn companies are rewarded for disrupting these, for razing them to the ground. Instead, we ought to support companies that provide extreme home makeovers."_ Resistance to change.

4). Encouraging "sustainable prosperity" for a _startup_ whose main goal is to become a profitable _business,_ instead of exponential growth.

5). _" Sustainable, 2x exit."_ Slowing down future entrepreneurial pursuits with an arbitrarily exit limiter.

6). _" Plurality."_ I assume this means "heavily democratic," which is deadly for startups.

7). _" Win-win instead of Zero-Sum."_ I.e I assume "compromise." Self- explanatory (SE).

8). _" Cooperation instead of competition ... mutualism."_ SE.

9). _" Shared resources instead of hoarded."_ See: #2

10). _" Seeks enough instead of more."_ SE.

There's more, but there's a quote about how much effort it takes to retort bullshit in comparison to how little it takes to spout it.

The author brings heavy socialist overtones and a naive worldview on how businesses work. I'm not one to deny other's opinions solely because they have no experience, but in this case most of her points can be invalidated by going out and testing her zebra plan.

<comment><USER4> Cooperation is mediocrity? That's a pretty shitty outlook on life, and definitely not one borne out in either the human or animal worlds.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps, but one needed to survive and thrive in business.

<comment><USER7> No freaking way. No one says you have to cooperate with _everybody_. In fact, creating an alliance of cooperators to stand in opposition to an uncooperative entity is a fairly effective tactic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Gotta say it's a little ironic their Zebra's Unite DazzleCon[1] is itself being held in Unicorn-central San Francisco. Why not like ... Iowa? Not exactly helping the accessibility for real businesses nationwide by hosting this in SF.

[1]: [https://www.zebrasunite.com/dazzlecon/](https://www.zebrasunite.com/dazzlecon/)

<comment><USER9> Are cheap flights to Des Moines available? You'd probably want to hold it someplace with a reasonably low-cost venues but still accessible via low-cost carriers from many cities.

Looking at [https://www.southwest.com/flight/routemap_dyn.html](https://www.southwest.com/flight/routemap_dyn.html) and my memory of cities convention venues, St. Louis, Atlanta, and Nashville seem like good options

<comment><USER10> Startup person (at a "Zebra") in St. Louis here. We've got a neat little scene downtown, and a convention center right in the middle of it all. Definitely have some programs that would love to get this kind of thing into town (Arch Grants, etc.).

Probably not gonna happen, but it sure is tone deaf as shit to have this convention in SF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Their values are in the right place, though I think a glance at the "bigger picture" is warranted. (Ugh, not _that_ again! Yeah sorry.)

Literally most of the American economy, most of the GDP, used to be made up of "zebras," maybe still is. People sensibly and boringly making dependably useful goods and performing useful services at reasonably transparent prices.

What's great about that from an investor's point of view is that you can buy in and expect a reasonably solid rate of growth, especially when you optimize for the long term and ignore the short-term fever-dreams and diaper-crappings of the market.

Nowadays though, that part of the economy (the real part, the "zebra" part) has been faltering for several reasons I won't get into. That means you can't count on those steady or even decent returns in traditional places anymore. Which in turn means there's a lot more money out there circling the block, looking for a place to park where it won't lose value.

That is how the Silicon Valley venture capital ecosystem exists at its current size. When rich people can put their money in traditional places like refrigerator manufacturers, and confidently earn a decent return, they don't (not as much) go looking so hard for something better. They might take a small bit of their their portfolio and play around with it, but there won't be a huge "bubble" like you've got now.

SV is a market all right, only the good being "demanded" (by VCs) and "supplied" (by startups) is "growth potential." High demand in that market is possible only because the rest of the economy, the zebra economy, is so lackluster. And because everyone plausibly believes computers can extract value from a system in a disproportionate way that might pay off --- which is true by the way!

Anyway, all that easy money looking for a place to park, means at least some of the deals are fake and some of the startups are fake, and most of the valuations are fake, and all the fakery leads to all sorts of rampant _doucherie_ to use the French term.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. If you want more Zebras, raise interest rates. The capitalist system isn't the problem, it's the cheap money handed out by fiat from the government to banks that funds the madness and the impending fiasco as investors chase ever more fleeting returns. Zebras die when Unicorns have access to nearly unlimited cheap capital to chase after markets with subsidized products being sold at negative margins. It's price dumping on a massive scale. ZIRP turns the economy into a lottery favoring those with the best access to the trough. Raising interest rates will be painful, but it's the only way to fix the current situation and goes against the overwhelming Keynesian consensus. Central banks are great when you need to fund a war, but other than that, they can't take their foot off the gas and simply distort the economy, increase economic inequality, and exacerbate business cycles instead of smoothing them out. We never should have removed political from political economics. [1]

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been feeling a lot of this myself. This corporate balance can't last. People will strive to merge their outlooks and philosophies with their day to day actions, so companies that don't help satisfy that thirst for something more out of life in their employees will have trouble. Plenty of people just want a punchcard, but I doubt it crests 30% in a secure population.

Just what that alternate model might be... I'll keep searching. In the meantime, co-ops are promising. There aren't many tech co-ops; most seem to be farms. But maybe.

"Companies We Keep" \- an introduction to co: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005KTT65Q/ref=oh_aui_sear...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005KTT65Q/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

</comment><comment><USER14> The world could always use a few more zebras. In tech, they tend to be less compelling because of the easy-come easy-go dynamics: One day you might have most of the market, the next day the ecosystem has shifted, the market went somewhere else, and nobody buys your product. I think this, more than anything else, has pushed tech investment towards the unicorn model, since a company that aims to strangle out all competition is more free to subsequently operate at its own pace.

And if you look at "big tech", past and present, the survivor companies mostly have it in their culture to pragmatically engage in monopolistic behaviors: IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Apple, Oracle, Adobe, Autodesk, etc.

There's a big gap between that and the Stallman-style hard "free software" position, which also drives a lot of presently used fundamental software technologies. F/OSS has ultimately had a sort of accelerationist effect on the market by raising baseline capabilities, increasing the leverage of startup companies to challenge incumbents. In some respects, F/OSS is losing because the platforms most used are also generally more locked down and black-boxed than in the past. In others, F/OSS is winning, because people will no longer pay for certain categories of software.

These kinds of challenges define what the marketplace is today; verticals where a monopolistic, marketing-driven approach is bolstered by tech get a lot of press hype and VC interest, while pure engineering and social-benefit companies tend to live in the background, scraping by with a "side hustle" that funds their core mission, or if they're a little more naive, aiming to get acquired before their money runs out.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm all for it. But how do Zebras compete against Unicorns? Especially when Unicorns have VC magical funding supporting them...

<comment><USER13> Be real, work well and wait for the bubble to burst. You can't ride methane forever.

<comment><USER3> ...this, staying lean, smart and profitable - and waiting until the unicorns dismount themselves (see Uber vs. Lyft play out)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why zebras? By all accounts they are difficult to domesticate. If you want a non-magical unicorn, just get a horse. You can even get white ones.

<comment><USER7> A mule might be even better. Now _that 's_ an animal built for the long-haul, rather than the mad dash...

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sounds like they are talking about B Corps.

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

<comment><USER18> That is mentioned in the article: "For young companies pursuing both profit and purpose, the existing imperfect structures (hybrid for-profit/nonprofit, Public Benefit Corps, B-Corps, L3Cs) can be prohibitively expensive."</comment></comment>


Don't Talk to Police (video, 2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

<comment><USER2> Ran across this video a few months back, great watch and super informative. Could have used this lessons a few times in my younger years.</comment>


If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly - <AUTHOR> https://www.chesterton.org/a-thing-worth-doing/ <comment><USER2> Is it just me, or have some of the comments here missed the point of this entirely? This isn't about MVP or Lean Product Dev.

It's about doing the things that are "worth doing". And about doing them yourself, instead of outsourcing them to someone else. Take responsibility for doing the things that are difficult but worth doing.

Things that people outsource:

Gym - people outsource their Gym attendance to "the experts", Personal Trainers.

Their health - to "the professionals", be those Doctors, vitamin salesmen, or chiropractors.

Music - to professional musicians.

<comment><USER3> >Gym - people outsource their Gym attendance to "the experts", Personal Trainers.

Um, what? Your personal trainer doesn't go to the gym in your stead, they advise on how best to use your time there.

<comment><USER4> I think he meant "you shouldn't skip gym just because you don't have a trainer. Gym is worth doing, so it's even worth doing badly (without a trainer)"

<comment><USER5> I agree with this idea but if you work out badly enough you can seriously injure yourself.

<comment><USER6> You're probably over analyzing this. I don't need someone to tell me how to run if I want to go for a run, regardless of my experience level. But sure, having a personal trainer is important for certain types of workouts.

<comment><USER7> I agree for a one-off.

But plenty of people have permanently damaged their knees by consistently running without getting advice on how best to do it.

You don't need a personal trainer for that. But asking someone "to tell me how to run" ain't a bad idea, even if it's a question on a running board on the Internet.

<comment><USER8> "But plenty of people have permanently damaged their knees by consistently running without getting advice on how best to do it."

The people who read running boards all the time roll their eyes at stuff like this. Saying that running will hurt your knees is the running equivalent of "The GPL will infect your codebase." It's not true, but it sounds scary.

Usually, if you ask runners how to run, they will say something like, "It's not that complicated. Run more miles, slowly."

For example: [https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/wi8zq/want_an_easy...](https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/wi8zq/want_an_easy_way_to_drop_that/)

<comment><USER7> Interesting - thanks!

OTOH, "Runner's Knee" does seem to be a serious condition affecting a lot of people (much like "Fencer's Knee", which I'm more familiar with). From the same subreddit:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/3hx43k/how_i_cured...](https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/3hx43k/how_i_cured_my_runners_knee/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/26jaax/3_years_ago...](https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/26jaax/3_years_ago_i_blew_out_my_knee_in_a_marathon/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/1gdw5l/can_i_fix_m...](https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/1gdw5l/can_i_fix_my_runners_knee/)

And a number of people, when discussing the problem, reference bad technique as a causative factor.

However, you're absolutely right that it seems there's little evidence for permanent damage. I found this thread particularly interesting:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/1fehx2/wife_trying...](https://www.reddit.com/r/running/comments/1fehx2/wife_trying_to_convince_me_running_will_ruin_my/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For a bit more context, Chesterton is complaining about how the education system (1910) blindly processes girls as if they were facial-hair-impaired boys, and he digresses a bit into discussing creative/artistic play.

Here, I'll try to edit/snip/boil it down into something easier to read. Money- quote is at the very end. (Original text at [http://www.online- literature.com/chesterton/wrong-with-the-w...](http://www.online- literature.com/chesterton/wrong-with-the-world/41/) )

_____________________________________

All the educational reformers did was to ask what was being done to boys and then go and do it to girls [...] "Would you go back to the elegant early Victorian female, with ringlets and smelling-bottle, doing a little in water colors, dabbling a little in Italian, playing a little on the harp, writing in vulgar albums and painting on senseless screens? Do you prefer that?" To which I answer, "Emphatically, yes." [...]

There was a time when you and I and all of us were all very close to God; so that even now the color of a pebble (or a paint), the smell of a flower (or a firework), comes to our hearts with a kind of authority and certainty; as if they were fragments of a muddled message, or features of a forgotten face.

To pour that fiery simplicity upon the whole of life is the only real aim of education; [...] To smatter the tongues of men and angels, to dabble in the dreadful sciences, to juggle with pillars and pyramids and toss up the planets like balls, this is that inner audacity and indifference which the human soul, like a conjurer catching oranges, must keep up forever.

This is that insanely frivolous thing we call sanity. And the elegant female, drooping her ringlets over her water-colors, knew it and acted on it. She was juggling with frantic and flaming suns. She was maintaining the bold equilibrium of inferiorities which is the most mysterious of superiorities and perhaps the most unattainable. She was maintaining the prime truth of woman, the universal mother: that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

<comment><USER10> I'm glad society no longer expects me to loaf about with a smelling-bottle dabbling in Italian. The elegant female can kiss my ass. I'd rather be ferociously competent.

<comment><USER11> I read it less as "leave women to their vices," and more as "leave people to their vices," but maybe I'm giving credit where it isn't due.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> david-given I've always preferred Douglas Adams' version: _Some things you should care enough about to do badly._

<comment><USER12> He also wrote it as: _The Hitchhiker 's Guide to the Galaxy... does at least make the reassuring claim, that where it is inaccurate it is at least definitively inaccurate._

I've paraphrased it as _if I 'm going to be wrong, I shall strive to be DEFINITIVELY wrong_ which has proven very helpful advice.

<comment><USER9> I find myself thinking of the different between:

"Look at this cool code-trick I found... Maybe it's good?"

"Look at this cool code-trick I found... Warning: Despite the cool part, it actually contains several subtle and horrifying flaws and no sane person should ever trust it in production."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess this is the cycle:

1) "Some things you should care enough about to do badly." \- Start as a hobby

2) "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly." - You work on it some more but you are still mediocre at it

3) "If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing." \- You work at it, again and again and you have a ton of iterations

But you get tired and you question what you are working on; #4,#5,#6 creeps in your head

4) "If a thing is not worth doing at all, it's not worth doing well."

5) "If doing something isn't worth the effort, doing it well won't fix that."

6) "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."

I see 4,5,6 a lot in "features". Techs spend too much time on features that no one really cares about. Its the same for crappy movies.. lots of talented people work on really crappy work.. 99% of the time its not their own passion project. In todays, work-world, we are forced to do great work on really vapid stuff.

I see 1,2,3 in really passionate people and what the world gets are iterations, variety and meaningful work. *the world is better for it - scientist, entrepreneurs and artist do this. Many variations and angles of an idea. A lot of times, the body of work becomes meaningful.

</comment><comment><USER14> Years after encountering this in Chesterton, I read _The Soul of a New Machine_ , and found Tom West quoted as saying "Not everything worth doing is worth doing well." I don't know whether he had read Chesterton or whether he simply made an obvious additional turn on a turn of phrase.

<comment><USER13> wow-- thank you for this tidbit.. just quickly read the wiki on it.. and now Im gonna get on and read it. :D

<comment><USER14> You're welcome. When you read it, consider that the team originally wanted to build a machine with a VAX-like instruction set, and that those fell out of fashion soon after. I did used to know Eclipse assembler, and it had its peculiarities--no register-relative byte addressing, as I recall.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If we stick in the word "even", it's clearer: _worth doing even badly_.

If something is worth doing, it may be worth doing even badly, rather than insisting it must be done well, resulting in paralyzing inaction.

</comment><comment><USER16> Upon consideration, I think maybe it's clearer in the inverse:

If you _have_ to worry about how well you do it, it's not worth it for you to do.

I think this applies equally well to things doing the things you love doing - raising kids, making art - as it does to clearing blockers and doing-things- what-need-doing.

Note that the "have to" is a key part - most people will and/or should actually worry about how well they do - the difference is whether you're _required_ to worry.

This definitely doesn't apply to all situations - it missed the entire field of "things you're good at" \- but I found it decently insightful for my personal life.

</comment><comment><USER17> An inspiration for amateurs everywhere. It is a useful idea at the start. But at some point, you will acquire an itch to to hone your skills. By then, you probably don't need to worry about doing badly.

P.S. I love this guy's wit. I came into his works when I researched Catholicism and because of some references from Neil Gaiman. But I would have never thought that this writer would ever be in HN.

<comment><USER18> > An inspiration for amateurs everywhere. It is a useful idea at the start. > But at some point, you will acquire an itch to to hone your skills. By then, > you probably don't need to worry about doing badly.

Actually, I think it's even better advice someone who is already skilled at something. It's easy to forget that being able to do something well doesn't make that thing worthwhile. Right now I feel this way about my profession -- I need to choose between doing something I think makes the world a worse place "well" to pay the bills versus trying to redirect my skill-set towards something more "worthwhile", but potentially failing.

Obviously there are many factors to consider but I think the main point of the quote is to emphasize the nature of "worth" transcends ability, not just "don't be afraid to try new things!"

re: P.S. And yes, "Good Omens" is an awesome book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I got stuck starting a company with my friend and wasted months coding everything to absolute perfection with the latest bleeding edge tech when we could have coded it in a week, then we missed out chance because a huge competitor swept in with lots of VC money and ate the market. So it goes.

<comment><USER20> _Software is a very competitive business, prone to natural monopolies. A company that gets software written faster and better will, all other things being equal, put its competitors out of business. And when you 're starting a startup, you feel this very keenly. Startups tend to be an all or nothing proposition. You either get rich, or you get nothing. In a startup, if you bet on the wrong technology, your competitors will crush you._

You didn't read PG's essays [1] did you?

[1]: [http://paulgraham.com/avg.html](http://paulgraham.com/avg.html)

<comment><USER19> Yeah we thought we were going quick. "Takes years for people to launch and we built a perfect system in a few months!" was kind of our approach. We literally just should have bought a theme, connected our backend, and launched, then iterated the moment we saw cash. Reading all the things in the world won't matter until you start or have some frame of reference for the things you read. Now our frame of reference is our past failure.

<comment><USER21> I dare say even if you'd done the quick solution you may well still have been crushed by the competitor with VC funding. It's a tricky business. I guess one of the advantages of going through YC is the companies then generally have access to funding more easily than their competitors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Before realizing that this was a Chesterton website, I took the word "Quotemeister" to indicate that this was a website called "The Quotemeister", wherein, I guessed, popular quotes were analyzed to get at their true meaning.

Does such a website exist?

<comment><USER23> [http://genius.com/](http://genius.com/)

It started with rap lyrics (as Amazon started with books), expanded to poetry/tech/news, and is on a wibbaldy wobbedly course to break down any body of text or website.

Here's a page on Oscar Wilde quotes: [http://genius.com/Oscar-wilde-famous- oscar-wilde-quotes-anno...](http://genius.com/Oscar-wilde-famous-oscar-wilde- quotes-annotated)

<comment><USER22> Amazing – didn't think of that – thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As some context from Wikipedia:

Chesterton is often referred to as the "prince of paradox."...

"Whenever possible Chesterton made his points with popular sayings, proverbs, allegories—first carefully turning them inside out."

</comment><comment><USER24> >The line, "if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly," is not an excuse for poor efforts. It is perhaps an excuse for poor results. But our society is plagued by wanting good results with no efforts (or rather, with someone else's efforts).

This relates to weight loss and the dependency on weight loss drugs. I see ads all the time for new weight loss supplements, or new workout machines, or fat burning belts. Stating that this will burn fat faster, with less effort. Society now thinks that in order to look fit you must take a fat burning pill, or some crazy concoction to actually loose weight. >We have left "the things worth doing" to others, on the poor excuse that others might be able to do them better. But in reality it just takes a healthy life style to be fit, so if loosing weight is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think I prefer this quote without the context of the original author, given his attitudes and motivations in writing it.

Are there any quotes that you know of where you feel similarly? Where you have transplanted the quote into your own context, rather than the original context, and felt better about it as a result?

<comment><USER26> The Ender's Game series teaches kindness, thoughtfulness, compassion. The author is a homophobe. I'll take the learnings sans the homophobia!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "As for your second question, the Quotemeister generally tries to avoid explaining what Chesterton means. For two reasons. [...] Two, we think students should write their own class assignments rather than having us do it for them." Bwahaha

</comment><comment><USER28> Steve Tyler of Aerosmith:

"If it is worth doing, it is worth overdoing."

... and you know he would say that.

<comment><USER13> I think it was Ayn Rand (per Google) *I love that saying though

<comment><USER29> The knowledge that she had a penchant for amphetamines certainly adds an interesting perspective to that quote...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was thinking this must be the original source of a Zig Ziglar quote:

"Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly until you learn to do it well."

But the two quotes appear unrelated.

</comment><comment><USER31> Or another way of looking at this is the following. If you take on new, large projects, you're often worried about the problems you face, how things are going to work, if your skills, effort and knowledge are enough. More often than not, you will end up with something reasonable upon completion (if you have enough self-control to get that far) and even if you fail miserably, you learned valuable lessons. So it is not a bad thing to confidently step into new directions, even if there's a risk or certainty that it won't be better than bad.

Example: I never baked a cake (ok that's not a large project ;p). I will bake a cake. I know it is most likely not going to turn out well. The result of my work might even be garbage that I have to dispose of. I will bake a bad cake. But the next cake will be better, I learned something from my mistakes.

<comment><USER32> If you're baking a cake, and have never done so before, you don't wade in and try to make the multi-layer chocolate scratch cake with ganache first.

You buy the box of Pillsbury Funfetti mix[1], measure out the cup of oil and crack two eggs in and mix it up and pour it into a 13x9 pan. Bake it up and throw some canned frosting on top.

Is this going to be the greatest cake in the world, no; it's ceiling is maybe 80% (or maybe higher, depending on how nostalgic you are for Funfetti). But it's hard to really screw it up.

[1][http://www.pillsburybaking.com/products/funfetti-1378](http://www.pillsburybaking.com/products/funfetti-1378)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If a thing is worth doing, doing it badly is still worthwhile because what matters is that it is done - to whatever degree.

Were doing it badly not worth doing at all, then the thing is not worth doing - only doing it well is.

</comment><comment><USER13> What I find really interesting after mulling it over.. is that there's soo much crap out there -- being made well by really really talented people. _I wonder if there 's an easy heuristic to figure out if something is worth doing_ \-- I think that we've exhausted the whole-> "do what you are passionate about" and "solve problems" bit as a source to figure out what to work on. Or have we?

<comment><USER33> I think passion is the best heuristic. Otherwise it depends on things we cant know. Will we be invaded by aliens in 1000 years? If so then thats going to change the optimal side project!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Brain surgery is one exception.

</comment><comment><USER35> If it's not worth doing, it's not worth doing well.

</comment><comment><USER36> IOW: Perfect is the enemy of good.

<comment><USER37> Not quite. I think you could read it that way, but I suspect Chesterton had a bit more of a principled idea in mind:

 _It is a good sign in a nation when things are done badly. It shows that all the people are doing them. And it is bad sign in a nation when such things are done very well, for it shows that only a few experts and eccentrics are doing them, and that the nation is merely looking on_

-Chesterton

<comment><USER38> Hmmmm makes me wonder about the road construction crews. Is it a bad sign that they are so efficient?

Edit: How did this idea ever get upvoted by the progressives here on HN?

<comment><USER32> Where do you live that road construction is efficient?

It might just be that I live too close to Massachusetts, but we have a whole repertoire of "How many road workers does it take to change a light bulb?" jokes around here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Charlie Munger's quote is also insightful: "If a thing is not worth doing at all, it's not worth doing well."

<comment><USER40> I'm not so sure about this one. Doing something well can be a pleasure in itself, and even take the sting out of a job that looks like useless busywork. And if you find a really elegant solution it could be useful for something else later. At least you can take pride in yourself and keep your skills up.

<comment><USER41> Munger is something like a co-manager of Berkshire Hathaway. His quote should be considered in that context: if doing something isn't worth the effort, doing it well won't fix that.

<comment><USER21> Buffett's quoted that as a justification for not investing in small businesses in that he needs large deals to make a difference to Berkshire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Doesn't it depend on what it is though? If my todo app breaks, no harm done other than a few irritated users. But if a dialysis machine breaks...

<comment><USER43> Or, if a dilettantish crypto app provides a false sense of security to political activists, which may be life-threatening as well, depending on their country.</comment></comment>


Sticker Shock: Why are glasses so expensive? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50149025n

<comment><USER2> Single page link for those of us who would prefer to read the article whole, instead of broken up into four arbitrary parts:

[http://www.cbsnews.com/2102-18560_162-57588995.html](http://www.cbsnews.com/2102-18560_162-57588995.html)</comment>


Show HN: Haquery – jQuery for Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/recurziv/haquery

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here.

Maybe "jQuery for Haskell" is not too descriptive: it is a pure Haskell html dom manipulation tool, mainly useful for templating and/or scraping.

It uses the same selectors and API as jQuery, the only deviations are due to immutability (eg. if you modify a selection, the original graph will not be updated of course, so you have to use "alter" or something similar).

Edit:

Feel free to send a pull request or suggest any changes. The time I poured into the library was mainly focused on getting even the most complex nested selectors to work, because I felt that is the lion's share of the work.

<comment><USER2> Cool! I have a similar project, based on lift's CssSel's (which are sort of based on the jquery syntax): [https://github.com/tych0/hquery](https://github.com/tych0/hquery)

I've been playing around with making a DSL vs. using string based selectors, and I've had little success coming up with something sensible. Have you thought about this at all?

<comment><AUTHOR> I will check your repo too. If you have problems due to similar naming let me know and I will change it.

Regarding the selector DSLs, I also went with the string solution, however I translate all selectors to a recursive ADT which could be used directly.

Maybe we should unite our powers ;)

<comment><USER2> Nah, no issues with naming, mine was just a pet project to pick up a bit of haskell.

R.E. uniting forces, yeah! I looked through your code a bit, and it looks like we have the same underlying idea (yours seems a bit less convoluted than mine, though :-). I'm not really actively using hquery for anything more than a static site generator I wrote with it, but I wouldn't mind spending a few more hours/week on haskell code.

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems like we are on the same page, I also test drived this library with a static site generator =).

I was really surprised that there are no more templating languages for Haskell given the availability of the mighty parsec.

I am following you on github, stay in touch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks cool. I feel like you should try and integrate with existing Haskell concepts. Maybe you'd have to make small changes in the design decisions compared to jQuery, but honestly, using the typical Haskell abstractions things just seem to be "right" somehow.

Queries could easily be modelled with the list monad. Add the stateT transformer for effects. Add lenses for niceness. (Lenses could really beautify the internal implementation as well me thinks).

I'd love to hear about some of your design choices making this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I definitely agree with you regarding the idiomatic solutions.

However, the only defense I can come up with (not that I really want to excuse myself) is this is part of an effort (Hakit) to make Haskell web development accessible to HS beginners. I was a beginner myself when I started Hakit, a web toolkit, and I was overwhelmed by the seemingly complex Haskell APIs. So I tried to build a complete toolkit while forcing the users learning as few Haskell concepts as possible, without writing exceedingly ugly code.

I will surely try to make this more appealing to Haskell ninjas too though.

<comment><USER4> Interesting, as a web dev I agree that getting into Haskell can be a bit tricky due to exactly what you said... However, I feel that if you remove the Haskelly parts from Haskell it's no longer really what makes it so great. I think focus should rather be more on writing better guides (many of the existing ones are not very "hands on" so you can't get straight to doing what you want - web development - even though it's doable).

However, that being said, I look forward to seeing how this progresses and anything else you may have in store.

<comment><AUTHOR> As a beginner I got into Haskell for the basics - generics done right, ADTs, typeclasses, very nice syntax, crazy good list operations etc

My reaction to monads & transformers was: "I never asked for this."

I got used to them in a couple of weeks but I know multiple people personally who couldn't grasp them in months. I try to provide them with a toolkit to flex their muscles on and be productive with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks cool. There's another package for generating html called blaze- html. It's fast and elegant, I like it a lot: [http://jaspervdj.be/blaze/](http://jaspervdj.be/blaze/)

For parsing HTML, I wrote a library called HandsomeSoup. It adds CSS selectors to HXT, which provides everything you need for parsing HTML: [https://github.com/egonschiele/HandsomeSoup](https://github.com/egonschiele/HandsomeSoup)

<comment><USER6> Blaze is pretty cool. The same author has iterated on a neat static site generator lib that's now in its 4th iteration over the past five years.

Likewise, for serious Haskell webdev, Snap, or perhaps HappStack or Yesod, are the tools to consider for general Haskell backed web engineering

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is also Haquery framework for Haxe language, at [http://haquery.com/](http://haquery.com/) As far as I know it's a client server framework (Haxe can be compiled to Javascript and to PHP)

</comment><comment><USER8> This might be a nice way to get around the JS-FFI burdening things like Fay and GHCJS which compile Haskell to JS.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why parsec over attoparsec?</comment>


Ask HN: Setting fair market valuation for founder's equity - <AUTHOR>

Howdy,
We're incorporating a startup and need to set a fair market valuation for the company.   This valuation will decide how much the founders pay for their shares.
Has anyone heard of founders being audited by the IRS and being questioned on the FMV?  We think a $10,000 valuation is fair right now, but we hope to raise a series A later this year based on a multi-million dollar pre valuation.   We plan to file our 83b within 30 days and be as thorough as we can with our paperwork.
Any other advice on setting the FMV with regards to personal tax liabilities?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Talk to your lawyer and your accountant.

If you plan to raise venture capital, and you don't have a lawyer or an accountant to answer these important questions, you're not spending money on the right things.

That said, the value of our founders' stock (in a new company, before any IP had been donated to the company and prior to the raise) was a few hundred bucks.

Ten thousand sounds high - remember, with an 83b election you pay tax when you receive the stock (do _not_ forget to do this), so assuming a 50-50 split that's taxes you've got to pay on an additional $5,000 in 'income' you didn't actually get, at a time when your real income's likely lower than usual.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have an attorney and are looking for an accountant. But I wanted to check on HN as well.

We built a site and get a couple thousand visitors a day. But it's not self- sustaining - if we dropped work on it, the traffic would probably drop off. So I figured $10k was fair (?)

We plan to buy our founders shares, so I think (with the 83b election) our net income is zero — we paid $X for $x worth of shares.

<comment><USER3> IANAL.

Fair market value is pure hand-waiving in the beginning. Make it $400 or something. You could easily argue that the value is $400 because your position isn't at all secure (the company could easily fail).

Also, don't forget that you can contribute IP as payment for your stock. No reason to pay cash.

Your understanding of the 83b election is correct. You pay no tax until you realize a profit on your stock. The 83b lets you elect to be taxed immediately (at the same price you paid for it) which means a net gain of zero, thus no tax liability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't have any stories myself, but always look to Nivi and Naval at Venturehacks / AngelList for this kind of info... Might be worth reaching out to them?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the pointer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Regarding the 83b - 30 days from what point exactly? We signed the docs granting shares on a vesting schedule, but we haven't actually had our lawyer issue the shares or recorded it in the ledger. We signed the documents well over 30 days ago.</comment>


Ask HN: How to monetize 1.3 million page views? - <AUTHOR>

Hey folks,
I run inpics.net, a computer tutorial site that's getting 1.3 million page views per month according to our Analytics stats. How should I monetize that?
I posted that question here a while back, and got quite a few suggestions along the lines of, "advertise for a sponsor on SitePoint." Tried that, didn't work.
I, like a lot of other people, think that display ads don't work well online, and never will. So, no banner or suchlike ads.
Right now, I'm using it to pimp consulting services, but I don't expect that will generate much revenue: most of the site's visitors are individuals learning on their own, not people using it at work.
Given that the site is used mostly by individuals to learn the basics of various computer subjects, what product or service would you sell at inpics.net?
Chris C. <comment><USER2> What about something that combines making money with instruction? For example, you could add anothger page after each big section where you put a list of links to other helpful tutorials/blogs/official websites, helpful books, etc.

I really think your opportunity lies in putting something at the end of your tutorials. It means you don't have to do a site redesign. Just stick another page at the end, which users get to when they click next. and then you sell something.

I think Amazon can be key. People are looking to learn. That means some of them will be open to buying a book about it. You appear to be an expert in many of these programs, and people will gladly take a recommendation from you about what books are good on which particular subjects.

I'm not saying randomly list books, I'm saying go get them from the library, read them, and actually list what you think are the top three tutorials for each subject you have on your site. If you're upfront somewhere on the site that you earn money from Amazon commissions, I know people don't mind it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm...you interest me strangely, sir. Supplemental materials may be the way to go. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Chris,

A lot of people have suggested an Amazon affiliate situation, and unless my assumptions are wrong it just won't pay. The following is a copy/paste from a quick spreadsheet assuming some basic information. Amazon gives affiliates 4% of a standard sale, I assumed a CTR of 1% (which I think is very generous), I guessed a 2% conversion rate, and an average sale of $45.

You can see that your monthly take will still be quite low.

Traffic 1300000 CTR 1% Delivered 13000 Conversion rate 2% Converted 260 Avg Sale $45 Your cut/sale $1.8 Your take $468

It is entirely possible that your CTR would be higher, but I tend to think not.

You said that with Adsense you only earned $400 in a month, which means you were getting a $0.30 CPM. This is pretty low, and even in this ad market I think you should be able to pull off $1.50 or more. An Ad network would help you do that, and your traffic is high enough that they would be willing to talk to you. Of course this means ads on the site.

This is what I would do: * Add a forum; with your traffic I think you could have a community discussing issues pretty quickly. I would probably do this as a sister site given your niche name. Of course this 'only' increases your pageviews. * Optimize the site for ads, forget Adsense, and work with the ad networks. Better still, try to beat down doors of people who might want to advertise directly. * Despite the small payoff I do like the idea of selling books related to the topic and would try it. I tend to like the idea of dealing directly with a specific publisher however; your cut will likely be better. * I like the idea of premium content as well. I despise sites that show you only part of a solution, but your site shows that you have enough taste to do this in a way that users would embrace.

Good luck, Jer

<comment><USER4> I think Amazon could work pretty well. Using Jeremey's numbers, but taking into account Amazon's tiered affiliate percentages, you would actually get 7% assuming you make 260 sales / month. This gives $819 / month.

I run a tutorials site for programmers (its much more loosely focused than your site though, with code tutorials, career advice, a few open source projects I've built, etc.), and my Adwords CPC is similar but Amazon earnings are historically 5-6 times better than Adwords.

The key is to link to relevant books within the text of an article. In your case what might work is add references section to each category page that contains links to reviews on books on the subject. Review the book well, describing what type of user the book is geared toward, and only recommend books that you personally stand behind. This problogger article contains some nice tips for getting free review copies of books: [http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/02/14/how-to-get- fre...](http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/02/14/how-to-get-free-books- to-review-on-your-blog/)

Good luck to you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your tutorials are one screenshot per page.... so I'd guess that your pv per visit is high but it's fluff traffic. No one is going to abandon the "slideshow" to click on ads. Your best points to put ads are at the end or near the begining of the process of viewing a tutorial. Consider taking the pv hit and putting the whole tutorial on one page.

You say your audience is mostly people at home, learning. Maybe you can advertise for rentacoder (eg "make money working with Access!") or similar services.

Think about what other computer-related problems someone in that situation might have, like anti-virus, certification, jobs.

Hmm. reading back these options sound kind of sleazy. You could experiment with a tip jar as well. Don't write off display ads either -- give them an honest try for a couple of months.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I figure that whatever gets sold there has to benefit the folks taking the tutorials. "You've learned the basics, now here are some materials to take you further." Maybe that's it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _Right now, I'm using it to pimp consulting services, but I don't expect that will generate much revenue: most of the site's visitors are individuals learning on their own, not people using it at work._

Package up similar content in a way that is easy to deliver to employers for them to give to employees for training. Enroll your employees in our MS Word training, $45 per employee, just as effective as having a consultant or courses but at one-tenth the cost. You don't even have to develop the course yourself -- there are almost certainly a million available, and since they're infinitely scalable information products they should have generous affiliate payouts.

It doesn't matter if most people are using your site for work. They're the fuel in the rocket, the upsell to the course is the payload.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think your site's layout is not really great for ad placement, which is why that failed. It's very much a brochure like layout that you'd see for businesses. Contrast this with <http://net.tutsplus.com/> where it's "blog" like, but still a great format for presenting tutorials. If you're getting 1.3 million page views, you're almost certainly ranking high in search results, which is great, because those are the people who are exploring and clicking on ads. Check out what some of the other sites in your genre are doing, I bet they optimize their design for making money with ads.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, the site was designed around banner ads--that's why it's so narrow. It's 728px wide--leaderboard width. They were built-in between the header and content. I had AdSense serving 'em up, but it didn't generate much revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have thought about doing something similar but with mathematics. My suggestion would be to package up various tutorials into a course. Instead of static pages I would add videos using Camtasia or Captivate. There are lots of colleges and universities that sell courses on this stuff and you could sell such courses for a lot cheaper.

<comment><AUTHOR> We did a research study sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Ed that showed that for learning basic skills, black-and-white screenshots are best. Walking people through tasks step-by-step with static pictures is most effective. Video is really good for some things (showing the correct hand movements to operate an iPhone, for instance), but for basic "click here" stuff, simpler is better.

<comment><USER8> That is very interesting.

At the college I teach at we have courses for administrative assistants and I thought perhaps you could sell courses that are cheaper and better.

Good luck on figuring out how to monetize your site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would sell other e-learning products. Like the 'video professor'. Also, you could run ads in between slides, which might get you a higher CTR than alongside.

Or start running AdSense, and get some sort of baseline for private ad deals.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ran AdSense for a year. 1.3 million page views delivers about $400 through Teh Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What about additional phone based tutoring, eg "struggling? phone XXXX-XXX-XXX to speak to a tutor now".

Either a premium rate phone line or possible a prepaid call in 10 minute units.

<comment><USER11> highly un-scalable

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd bet that if you changed your site a bit you could get decent ecpms -- maybe even in the $6-$8 range. Also, links to amazon / whoever sells the software. If you want to talk more, hit me up over email.</comment>


Ask HN: Being afraid and not knowing how to start building a startup concept - <AUTHOR> I've been sitting on an idea for a while, and would like to build this out to a business.
It involves a digital product, and luckily I am a developer. Before I go into any coding I want to have the concept nailed down and solid, and then commit to building it.
To start, i asked some advice in my office. I work with service designers, and they told me "refine your problem statement".
I'm currently panicking in front of a blank piece of paper at the moment. Fear of writing bullshit, fear of not knowing what to actually do, fear of it not being good enough, just paralysis. Total writer's block.
Unfortunately I procrastinate easily, due to fear of failing and due to me not being able to resolve questions such as "is this better than that?" in my mind. I would love for some kind of "process" or "structure" to guide me through the whole thing.
How to get into a roll and keep building this thing, so to say.
I've read "the first 100" but i find that super vague and the thousand references the author gives keep distracting me. I think i need something a bit more rigid, like a set of tasks and examples for that on how to do it.
Is there any tool, process, formal way, that can help me through this? I don't mind paying for some product or course if it really adds some value. :)
Anything? :) Thanks <3 <comment><USER2> I've been there many times. First thing you need to do is managing the anxiety of "doing it wrong" that can be paralyzing.

Errors are the most enriching part of the process and can provide valuable lessons and make you closer to your goal. So don't be afraid to start. Just do it.

Prototyping can be handy to test a few concepts before investing your time coding. invisionapp.com is my fav tool. You can even share the prototype with a group of your target audience/users to get feedback.

If you want to go deeper and learn more about how to focus on your project priorities and productivity, I strongly recommend these books:

[https://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Doing-Twice-Work- Half/dp/038534...](https://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Doing-Twice-Work- Half/dp/038534645X)

[https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test- Ideas/dp/1...](https://www.amazon.com/Sprint-Solve-Problems-Test- Ideas/dp/1442397683)

I wish you success on your journey!

</comment><comment><USER3> As far as getting started, validating an idea, creating a startup while you have a day job, check out StartUpsForTheRestOfUs.com it's a great podcast. You can follow Rob on his journey. There are episodes that cover all of the topics above. Start in the archives.

I would be cautious, talking about your startup at work. Definitely don't work on it at work or with company equipment. Check any employment contracts and see if there are any clauses regarding IP or your company owning anything you do while employed.

</comment><comment><USER4> Try finding one person that you think has the problem you are trying to solve. Contact and talk with that person and see if you can build something small or even manually solve that persons problem. Expand out your market and product from there.</comment>


Mandrake Linux commercial (1999) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3szC4TGgFkc <comment><USER2> Although never user nor developer of Mandrake (Debian dude here) I really appreciated their effort and work, they really did some astonishing in those days, I just really think they didn't have the luck to hit it in right time. They were really innovative and really tried to make user experience great even before PCLinuxOS, Ubuntu, Mint, openSUSE and others tried that.

While Mageia is there, they seem to have hard time to innovate and keep the pace, but I am still glad they are here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fifteen-year-old me bought this circa 2001! There was a boxed product called "Linux for Windows" or something like that. It simply resized the Windows partition, installed Mandrake, and installed Grub or LILO (can't remember). I installed it on an old Dell Pentium 2 machine I had because I was scared that it would mess up the Windows ME partition on my Compaq P3 800.

It wasn't the first time I'd used Linux -- that was Trustix over ssh -- but it was the first graphical distribution I'd tried. Earlier that summer, I'd (painstakingly over a 33 kbps connnection) downloaded Phatlinux, an early live CD distro. I couldn't run it on my Compaq for some reason, but I did get it to work on my aunt's computer. Phatlinux gave me a reason to investigate more and Mandrake let me do it. I think I used Mandrake on that machine until I discovered Red Hat in college (ca. 2003) and I switched to Ubuntu shortly after its first release in 2004.

</comment><comment><USER4> Mandrake, which became Mandriva Linux, is history, but it lives on through ROSA Linux, Mageia and OpenMandriva.

See [http://linuxbsdos.com/category/rosa- desktop;](http://linuxbsdos.com/category/rosa-desktop;) [http://linuxbsdos.com/category/mageia;](http://linuxbsdos.com/category/mageia;) and [http://linuxbsdos.com/category/openmandriva](http://linuxbsdos.com/category/openmandriva)

Mandrake Linux was the third distro I used, after Red Hat and Linux PowerPC 2000. Btw, I still have my 2-set Mandrake Linux 8.1 CD.

<comment><USER5> > "it lives on through ROSA Linux, Mageia and OpenMandriva."

... and PCLinuxOS:

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

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

<comment><USER4> > ... and PCLinuxOS

No, PCLinuxOS used to be based on Mandrake/Mandriva, but not any more.

<comment><USER5> The same could be said for the rest of the distros listed. For example, ROSA Linux is now 'Independent' according to DistroWatch:

[http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=rosa](http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=rosa)

<comment><USER4> > ROSA Linux is now 'Independent' according to DistroWatch

ROSA Linux and those I listed became "independent" because Mandriva went bust. PCLinuxOS forged it's own part while Mandriva was still active.

<comment><USER4> That was supposed to be PATH, not "part".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Linux-Mandrake 7.2 was my first distribution. 14 years later, I'm now working full time in open source, and while I've been on the Debian side of the fence for a while now, I'm still using KDE!

So thanks, Mandrake developers!

</comment><comment><USER7> Mandrake was my first Linux distro that I installed in 1999. I remember some friends warning me against Linux at all saying the install would fry my entire computer.

I forged ahead and have ran Linux systems off and on from then until now.

</comment><comment><USER8> Mandrake got me into Linux some 12 years ago and it was an excellent effort in general. Quite accessible to the new user and lots of documentation. I have also used briefly Mandriva back in the day before moving to Ubuntu. I believe Mageia is their successor of sorts.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anybody else decide to go to:

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

after watching this?

<comment><USER10> I was tempted :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Boy, what a world that was. When everyone took for granted that Linux was a business and there were several competing commercial Linux distributors. How the world has changed.

</comment><comment><USER10> I had completely forgotten about Mandrake. But when I tested it way back I recall it seemed quite polished. Why was it that they disappeared?

<comment><USER11> They didn't disappear, they changed name to Mandriva. Can't talk about other people, but I remember when it went about in popularity people that used linux already mostly deemed it as too windows-like for their taste. Me included. Windows people didn't like lack of applications they used and games. So it was in that weird limbo between two worlds where neither wanted to use it. Probably the greatest mistake was that they marketed it towards home/desktop users. Game somewhat changed with SUSE, at about the same time, that pushed their distro to corporate environments (and was helped by a fact that Linux himself used it quite often). Only a couple of years later (5-7) would we see Ubuntu and a bit larger array of desktop users applications which were around.

<comment><USER10> Hm you're right about that. Also wasn't there a lot of people that thought qt wasn't open source enough. From what I recall there where some opposition against KDE for this reason. Shame really because it was quite neat.

<comment><USER11> Some opposition is how I would not describe almost a crusade against it :) QT got quite more liberal later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Didn't Yggdrasil do one of these, too? I seem to remember there were other distro TV ads, maybe it was the SLS guys ..</comment>


Google launches K-12 Art Contest - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/doodle4google/

<comment><AUTHOR> I won first place in Massachusetts in a grade 4-6 art poster drawing contest promoting US Savings Bonds ran by the US Treasury in the 90's, and met the Lt. Governor as well as receiving a $1,000 Savings Bond (the 2nd and 3rd places in each state also won $500 or $200, respectively). In contrast, state winners of the Google contest win a paid trip to New York City (presumably with a guardian) and get to meet other winners, and do not win money unless they are top three in the nation.

Another difference is that the judging criteria for my contest was split up in percentages, one of the largest being originality. My design was original in many ways, probably helped by the fact that I had just moved to the United States a year prior and avoided stereotypical patriotic symbols like the statue of liberty, the liberty bell, and eagles. However, the the 2nd place national winner (the top three got to visit Washington D.C. as well as winning an additional $5,000, $2,000, or $1,000) was simply a giant eagle perched on a tree branch, and even the first place winner the prior year was a drawing of the statue of liberty (both at the skill level of a middle-school student.)

It appeared that the national judges did not familiarize themselves with the judging criteria as much as the state judges. First of all, the theme was "Invest in your future today", so what a painting of an eagle perched on a branch had to do with originality or theme is very vague, and the art wasn't anything special, so I don't see how it could have even been in the top except for the patriotic angle, considering that those three factors was supposed to make up the majority of the judging criteria.

In contrast, I notice that the judging criteria for the Google contest is delegated to the bottom of the FAQ page instead of having its own section. Additionally, it doesn't list the relative importance of each of them (artistic merit, creativity of the use of google logo, how well the theme is expressed, and an essay).

All in all, while I'm happy there is a replacement for the Savings Bonds contest (which ceased in the early 2000's due to a combination of budget cuts and controversy over judging), and that it's a great way for Google to get brand recognition as an important company with the K-12 crowd, it would be nice for Google to 1) provide more specific criteria and 2) stick to it, since lots of children will be spending a month or more on the poster (about how long I spent, for example) with little chance of actually getting recognition or an award.</comment>


Archlinux on the System76 Darter Pro - <AUTHOR> https://blog.burntsushi.net/system76-darter-archlinux/ <comment><USER2> > So when it came time to buy a new laptop, I went to Lenovo's web site… and > literally could not find how to customize and purchase a laptop.

Never understood why they do this. Is their store that buggy? Are they playing games with inventory management? There are some days where you just can't order the computer that you want.

I've repeatedly had a hard time configuring ThinkPads with high resolution (wqhd or 4k) displays. It's definitely supposed to be a standard available option on several models but for some reason only appears in the configuration menu like 20% of the time.

<comment><USER3> In addition to inventory issues, my guess is that lenovo/dell/hp don't move enough product on their own website to care. Their sales channels are either enterprise or other retailers. All their websites are a disaster in general.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I was also attracted to the fact that their laptops are specifically built > for Linux

AFAIK this is not true, System76 rebrands Clevo laptops, more info in this comment.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17039414](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17039414)

</comment><comment><USER5> Great read! I am still using my T430 from 2012. Along some similar thoughts, I was looking at the T480 to run manjaro. After reading your post I am adding darter for consideration.

<comment><USER2> I have two T480 laptops (work and personal) running Debian and Arch. Highly recommended. If you do get the ThinkPad, update the Thunderbolt firmware before wiping Windows, as Lenovo hasn't released the update on LVFS for the T480 yet, and apparently there's a might-break-hardware class bug.

[https://github.com/fwupd/missing-firmware-lenovo- thinkpad/is...](https://github.com/fwupd/missing-firmware-lenovo- thinkpad/issues/32)

<comment><USER5> thanks! Very appreciated tip!</comment></comment></comment>


Progressive web apps are coming to iOS 11.3: Cupertino, we have a problem - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@firt/pwas-are-coming-to-ios-11-3-cupertino-we-have-a-problem-2ff49fd7d6ea <comment><USER2> This article doesn't mention what is in my opinion the worst part of iOS PWAs (or web development in general).

The engine that runs a PWA (or web-view, or app added to the home screen) is completely different than the one in safari.

The "WebView" engine, (specifically a UIWebView, WKWebView, or SFSafariViewController) don't have some features turned on, like WebRTC. And there are rendering differences between the 2 engines.

I was really screwed by this recently. I saw iOS 11 was to get WebRTC and getUserMedia support, so I tested out a POC and found it worked in safari. So I started building it out in safari, mostly just turning on the feature if it was supported in safari, and when I went to go test a production version of the app added to the homescreen, it was failing.

Turns out It's not only not supported on the WebView, but it still advertises that it's supported, and you just need to catch the failure when you go to use it to know that it's not supported...

Now I either had to tell my users to REMOVE the bookmark on the homescreen if they were to use this new feature, and warn people to NEVER add the app to the homescreen as it would break the feature, or just forgo the feature entirely, which is what I ended up doing.

<comment><USER3> This makes my blood boil. Safari is literally the IE of mobile. I don't get why Apple is making it so hard to deliver PWAs nicely?! I mean, they can fight it, but they'll at best delay the inevitable... Perhaps that's their game: delay until they have in place a system as lucrative as the app store but for PWAs.

<comment><USER2> Trust me, It made my blood boil too. I unfortunately let my anger get the best of me and ended up getting in an argument with an Apple engineer online where I said some things that I really regret.

But it did almost really fuck up my job, because we had promised a client that functionality, and like 2 weeks away from delivering had to back out and go with a fallback plan of staying up all night for many nights those 2 weeks coding something in cordova that would give me similar results.

It ultimately was my fault for not testing the feature in the correct way before committing to it, and it did turn out good for me (although it's far from ideal, having getUserMedia in WebViews is ideal, and I will be switching to it the second it's available and stable), but it was not a good time...

<comment><USER4> Funny how sometimes with software and the way it is distributed, we can either have a handful of engineers figure it out the first time and distribute it correctly, or let the rest of the world of engineers reinvent the tandem bicycle for the k+nth time. I'm glad they are working on it, sorry you had to go through that. Sounds like you are a super ninja though and did not mind the extra grapple. You know, I often send in feature requests and application feedback. Probably once a month to Apple, or a website, or some service, because that's how they get better. In the end, we are all somehow serving one another (it's not just clients and customers and experts) and I think that it's important to appreciate how we got here - meaningful conversation and discourse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So unless I'm mistaken, PWAs in their most "ideal" form (vs how Apple has implemented them) kinda hang around after I've visited them, can use some arbitrary amount of disk space, leave background processes running, and can send push notifications even after I've navigated elsewhere. It sounds like to some extent they effectively get to install themselves on my device without my permission, with visiting the site in question acting as consent. Am I incorrect?

If all the above is true, I can't say I'm too happy with the feature as a user and hope there's a universal off switch buried in settings somewhere. If I choose to use a website over a native app it's due to its ephemerality, so I have no interest in web apps that stay past their welcome.

If on the other hand the behavior is 100% opt in, that's fine as long as I'm not shown banners trying to sell me on the PWA all the time.

<comment><USER6> Just like a native app, the process requires user approval ("add to homescreen" vs "install"). A large difference, however, is that native apps go through Apple's approval process.

<comment><USER7> Does the Service Worker caching ability require approval?

<comment><USER8> I don't think so, just SSL is needed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you're wondering what exactly makes something a PWA, check out the Progressive Web App Checklist for the canonical definition.

[https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web- apps/check...](https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web- apps/checklist)

Check out the case studies for why businesses are (rightfully, IMO) interested in PWAs.

[https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2017/](https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2017/)

Disclosure: I work on Google Web DevRel team

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand why people make so much noise about PWAs. Am I the only one that doesn't mind opening his browser and then clicking on a bookmark?

<comment><USER9> There's a lot of case studies on PWAs driving significant increases in conversion rates and engagement.

[https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2017/](https://developers.google.com/web/showcase/2017/)

Disclaimer: I work on Google Web DevRel, which owns developers.google.com/web

<comment><USER11> Is there a single platform where I can add a web app to the taskbar, dock or home screen and start in as a regular app?

I don't use Android, but I've never seen this work using any browser on MacOS, Windows or iOS.

<comment><USER12> On both Android and iOS, you can add any url to your home screen ([https://www.howtogeek.com/196087/how-to-add-websites-to- the-...](https://www.howtogeek.com/196087/how-to-add-websites-to-the-home- screen-on-any-smartphone-or-tablet/))

<comment><USER11> I know, it just opens in a browser, not like a real app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The worst thing about trying to make something work in the browser for mobile is getting the UI to utilize the full height. This is common when the UI needs to have both something stickied on the top and bottom of the page. Both Chrome Android and Safari will cut off content if that content is 100vh with their URL bar that comes and goes as you scroll. Then you have full screen mode which iOS does not support but Chrome does, except that on Chrome invoking the keyboard does not tell the page anything about the height that it's taking up.

The only browser that gets everything correct is Samsung's default browser. This is pretty ridiculous and the hacks available with current APIs aren't very good compared to if these browsers worked properly with 100vh.

</comment><comment><USER14> Just a reminder that if you want the WebKit team to be aware of bugs or things that do not properly work or features/standards that need to be better supported, file bugs at [https://bugs.webkit.org](https://bugs.webkit.org)

They also have a mailing list, and one of the things they asked before this SW work started was 'let us know how important this is to you and what your use cases are'. I bet they are still listening and that they would love feedback.

</comment><comment><USER15> PWAs on iOS mean a huge shift in strategy for startups.

In many cases(including mine) it now makes more sense to go PWA first instead of native.

<comment><USER16> In which cases are native still better than PWA?

<comment><USER17> All of them, in my opinion.

I have not encountered a single case where a web app offered a better experience than a native app.

There is a reasonable argument that it's cheaper to develop, allowing support for more platforms to be rolled out with less development time. That's the single reason that might be valid.

<comment><USER18> I strongly prefer the Twitter PWA to the Twitter app. It uses only 279 KB storage on my phone. When Firefox 58 finishes rolling out, I'll play around with using web extensions to customize the app, which is something that will likely never be possible with a native app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Its a good thing the Safari App and Apps from facebook et all don't share the same Cache etc. I don't want facebook to be able to know which sites i have visited before from other Apps or Safari.

<comment><USER20> Service Workers Caches are not shared across origins, and they are completely isolated from the browser's HTTP cache [0].

[0] [https://w3c.github.io/ServiceWorker/#cache- objects](https://w3c.github.io/ServiceWorker/#cache-objects)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So this means the experience of extracting any useful information from any website I click on from a google results page is going to keep getting worse.

We already have popups to log in, popups to sign up for newsletters, popups to take surveys, popups to install the app instead of _viewing_ the website, full-screen ads, popups to enable notifications, popups for a site to access my location, popups about enabling cookies, and popups telling me to stop blocking popups. Every site now thinks just because I'm clicking on it from a search result page means I want to engage in some semipermanent _relationship_ with them, before I even get a chance to view the site. Now we just add one more thing to the pile of things every website under the sun will try to get me to do just because I clicked one link.

Remember when web pages were just documents you could view?

Honestly? Fuck the web.

</comment><comment><USER22> What about macOS? Are PWAs limited to mobile?

<comment><USER7> "PWA" isn't actually a _real_ thing.

This article focuses on Web App Manifest, and Service Workers (Caching). Safari on macOS definitely has Service Workers, but I'm not sure Web App Manifest support on desktop (nor am I clear on how that would make sense)

<comment><USER22> I was speaking about the concept. So essentially using ServiceWorkers, Web App Manifest etc. to produce something that resembles native apps.

Why would it not make sense? I was just thinking about giving macOS the same functionality as iOS (so "installing" web-pages), having them in the dock and giving them a different UI. I have some electron apps installed on my mac that don't need much more functionality and could just be converted to a PWA if supported on macOS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Are there some quick, easy and usable UI-frameworks for buttons etc. and other common UI-Elements? I am a bit out of the loop in the web-ecosystem, but the PWA look very interesting.

<comment><USER23> Ionic. I found it to have the most polished components. Better than Framework7. Also, you get a PWA with zero additional config when developing your SPA with Ionic. I'm happy with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm curious how Apple will balance PWA support with the business case for the App Store.

</comment><comment><USER25> Push notifications?

<comment><USER9> I'm wondering about this myself. Service worker support definitely paves the way for PNs (because the service worker handles receiving messages via the `push` event listener), but I haven't seen explicit mention of them in this announcement.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/PushEvent](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/PushEvent)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> PWA = Progressive Web Apps for anyone else confused.

<comment><USER9> Check out the Progressive Web App Checklist for the canonical definition.

[https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web- apps/check...](https://developers.google.com/web/progressive-web- apps/checklist)

Disclosure: I work on Google Web DevRel, the team that owns that site

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> TL;DR—Don't get too excited, Safari is still the new IE.

<comment><USER28> Lots of people believe chrome is new IE

<comment><USER27> Indeed, they may all be correct!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Advice for Freelancing - <AUTHOR>

Hey there HN, I'm new to posting but longtime reader.   I've constantly found awesome advice from quality people here.  I have decided to start doing some more freelance web design outside of my family/friends, but I am lost as to how to start.   Can you all give me a bit of advice of free/cheap ways to advertise myself to local small businesses and such?  Help me, Hacker News!  You're my only hope!    :) <comment><USER2> My first suggestion is to make sure that you have some type of portfolio even if it is small. In my experience a lot of web designers create their own brand around their name and have a site with their portfolio. I'd then make sure you have some decent business cards so that when you start attending local events you have something to leave with prospective customers.

In most decent sized cities there seem to be numerous networking and small business events that are usually free or have only a modest fee to attend. I recommend checking the local chamber of commerce as well as using Google to locate them. Sites like <http://www.networkingphoenix.com/> in Phoenix have a lot of events where you can get out and meet small and large business owners.

If that isn't your style there are numerous websites advertising the need for talent to do one off projects. The issue with many of these sites is they want a lot for a little. But if you need experience, want to build your portfolio and or don't mind working cheap then this might be a good route to start.

From there it is up to you. Also remember as you start getting clients, make sure you give them the best possible service as over time they can become your best source of business. Referral business often generates the best possible customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> First off thank you for the excellent post, this is exactly why I chose to post this here. Amazing advice compared to anywhere else. Second - In terms of "portfolio" - I am a college student, so I haven't had much of a chance to get a lot of work. Would you suggest making dummy/boilerplate websites with nice designs to start off my portfolio? Or is it generally better to save your portfolio for strictly work you've been paid for, etc?

Thank you for great advice so far, looking forward to more!

<comment><USER2> I think the answer is that you should post any work that you have done and want to share with potential customers.

If you are going to post work for hire, make it clear it was work for hire and done to a clients specifications. If you are going to post projects from class work, just make clear the purpoes of the project.

I also think it is a good idea to post projects you did for yourself to display your level of talent and creativity, espcially when you haven't done a lot of work for hire. Just always be honest about how and why you did the projects.

Check out this site for portfolio ideas: <http://alexmeraz.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Get out and meet people, call people, networking. Depends on what type of stuff you are building and who your typical client is, where you are, etc.

Just get out there and try and meet people who might be interested in your services, figure out what works for you, are you great at meeting at social events? could you walk into a business and talk the owner into re-doing their website? can you cold call and close sales? try, learn, improve, test, fail, fail, fail, succeed :)</comment>


Creating breakpoints with CSS-in-JS simply (styled-components,emotion.js) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Brew-Brew/css-in-js-media <comment><USER2> This is awesome!!!!</comment>