Nintendo's Philosophy: Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@adamagb/nintendo-s-little-known-product-philosophy-lateral-thinking-with-withered-technology-bac7257d8f4 <comment><USER2> I think it's important to also understand that, despite broad name recognition, Nintendo isn't a _huge_ company in the way that Sony or Microsoft is. Their entire corporate revenue for 2019 was about $11b USD with about $2.3b USD in operating income. We regularly talk about startups here that are technically larger.

What Nintendo's philosophy boils down to in terms of business strategy is using the fact that they are smaller and more nimble to allow creative solutions to make it to market. We see the exact opposite from Microsoft/Sony where their strategy is pushing the highest possible technology they can get to consumers at a reasonable price, and their solutions are virtually interchangeable with fairly minor differences in overall tech.

While Microsoft and Sony's revenues per platform are around the same, their console businesses are small pieces of _very_ large organizations -- with all the ossification that comes from being huge companies.

It's also helpful that culturally Nintendo is a toy company, and thinks about the platforms and games (and toys) they create in terms of principles of play vs. electronic experiences. You can really tell this in their games, where each game feels like an integrated toy system with figures, playsets, very light stories, and a fair amount of open ended play (within the rules of the "toy"). Nintendo's focus is on how to create this play experience, and what's the right amount of technology needed for it instead of launching a rocket into orbit so that I can mow my lawn in the dark.

<comment><USER3> There have also been interviews where they've talked about how they won't do something unless they can add something new to it. For example, they haven't created a new F-Zero game because no one has really come up with anything to add to F-Zero to make a compelling game, rather than just "It's another F-Zero game".

In I think the same interview, it was discussed that they won't make a game unless it's fun if it's just geometric shapes or basic sprites. The idea there being that a Mario game isn't fun just because it has Mario in it, but if the gameplay is solid then it will be fun despite not having Mario in it. Presumably this also lets them crank out prototypes without having to worry about spinning up art assets to give testers context.

<comment><USER4> tbh that's probably just a polite way of saying they wont do a new one because ax was a highly expensive commercial failure. there have been 6 mario kart sequels since gx that all broadly fall into the category of 'just another mario kart'

<comment><USER5> I'd disagree on the Mario Kart example. The core mechanics of that series have stayed roughly the same, but the little additions have created a different, deeper experience:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3oz5uth_90](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3oz5uth_90)

It feels beautiful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Withered" is a really weird word to use here since all of these old-and-cheap parts are cheap only because they're massively widely used. I think a better translation would be "commodity parts".

In fact later in the article it says "This was a poor translation of the original, which was much closer in spirit to 'weathered.'" It seems to me that the use of the term in the headline was deliberately obfuscating clickbait. :/

That said, I always love seeing the ways that Nintendo manages to think outside the box and do genuinely new, fun things with far less.

<comment><USER7> The original word is 枯れる, which really is normally translated as "withered", or, contextually, "dead" or "dried up". Translating it as "commodity parts" loses the implication that common sense says the technology is "used up" in some way. It's not a word you'd normally use to praise something.

Here's a bunch of sentences with English translations that use the word:

[https://jisho.org/search/%E6%9E%AF%E3%82%8C%E3%82%8B%20%23se...](https://jisho.org/search/%E6%9E%AF%E3%82%8C%E3%82%8B%20%23sentences)

There is also a sense that means "matured" or "tested by time", but I've honestly never seen it outside a dictionary, and in fact for many dictionaries the example usage of that sense is just 枯れた技術, Gunpei Yokoi's term. Example:

[https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%9E%AF%E3%82%8C%E3%82%8B-468424](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%9E%AF%E3%82%8C%E3%82%8B-468424)

<comment><USER8> Yeah I think the article was off-base there - "withered" isn't a mistranslation at all. I'd probably have gone with "dried-up", but to translate it as "weathered" changes the meaning considerably.

<comment><USER9> I disagree, weathered often implies broken in, established, mature.

<comment><USER10> Probably a concept that would be helpful to adopt in the west.

Like, tech can be so concerned with the new new, we sometimes forget there's a bunch of old stuff that works pretty reliably, and can be applied in new and creative directions, with a little 'lateral' thinking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> " While you may think of virtual reality as the definition of a cutting-edge category, the Oculus Rift's two most important components are a cheap smartphone screen and a pair of fifty cent lenses. These two withered parts allowed for mainstream pricing ($350) and freed the team to work on peripheral innovations like decreasing latency and refining positional tracking."

Interestingly, a lot of our tracking and latency related work was withered technology too. We used MEMS sensors that were being made in enormous quantities for mobile phones, and a lot of the latency philosophy came from old concepts of "chasing the beam" in rendering.

<comment><USER12> For me, the use of the Snapdragon 835 in the Oculus Quest seems like a really good example of this philosophy as well. Definitely 'withered' by the time the Oculus Quest was released. Yet it's doing things to a quality that I've never seen it do in any Snapdragon 835-based phone.

<comment><USER13> Same can be said about the Switch - the Nvidia Tegra chipset used is absolutely ancient by modern standards, yet in the Switch it's used to much higher quality than in any other device with the same or similar chipset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While the article is most definitely talking about their hardware, I can't help but feel they probably take a similar approach to their software. Switch's OS is basically a fork of their 3DS OS, with much more thought put into play about security (the 3DS was swiss cheese). Of course, there were many bugs to be found (using a massively out of date webkit at launch, they outsourced this to some vendor). But after all these years, online play in their first party games is still just so .. atrocious. Ugh.

<comment><USER15> That also has to do with the state of software in Japan. For a very long time, being a software developer was seen as much less prestigious than being an electronic engineeer and a bit more akin to a secretary that codes up the requirements...

So the best and the brightest did not tend to go into software and the typical state of software engineering in a lot of big japanese companies was extremely bad... It's getting better but it's still not great.

Nintendo also has a tendency to outsource a lot of their software development (IIRC the SDK for the wii and the DS was outsourced to intelligent systems who themselves then outsourced part of it)

This is of course a generalization as things goes and there are great things coming out of Japan (hello Ruby!) but having lived there, there was a marked difference between the software engineering culture in Japan and the one I saw in the US and Europe, with Japan being easily a decade or more behind.

<comment><USER16> I worked for Namco Bandai's American branch for a few years around 2006. The Japanese developers could apply to work in America for the cultural experience, IIRC the ones I met told me they were paid about $30000 USA in Japan and got a temporary bump in salary to $75000 or so for cost of living adjustment and a company car and apartment (this was in Santa Clara, CA). I think they were all extremely good, competent programmers and we American programmers were making about double what they were making, our contractors were making I think triple what they made. One of the Japanese guys coding anonymously in the corner worked on several of the Namco cabinet video games like Dig Dug back in the day.

<comment><USER17> I hope this isn't too off topic but my son and I spent a lot of hours bonding over the game "Tank Tank Tank". If by some small chance you were part of that project, thank you.

<comment><USER16> Sorry that was after my time, may have been entirely Namco Bandai Japan production.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's remarkable how their fundamental "lateral" insight of the last decade was so blindingly obvious in this age of the smartphone - portability is king. I wonder if they collected data from the 3DS and WiiU and could tell that playtime on portable systems was orders of magnitude greater on portables.

If you ask me, given my experience owning a Switch and watching my PS4 and gaming PC gather dust, the most compelling product Sony or Microsoft could make right now would be releasing a system with PS4 / Xbox One level power in a portable form factor (and the latest smartphones do push more gigaflops than those systems). As has been said many times about smartphone cameras, the best gaming system is the one with you.

<comment><USER19> If your gaming PC is gathering dust but you play the switch, you probably are falling for the marketing.

PC has nearly every game switch has, and more.

Nintendo is a big marketing company, advertising when you were a child and unaware. Now people nostalgia and automatically but their products.

My best example of this is BOTW which is an average game, but the fans have claimed it's the greatest game of all time. (Which people have been saying about Zelda since TP)

<comment><USER20> So, I have an 8 year old. The switch is probably the most fun couch gaming we can do together. We also have an xbox and a pc for games, and we usually ignore them both in favor of Nintendo exclusives. Pokemon, BOTW, Smash Bros.

It's honestly a really good co-op couch experience. And when we go on road trips, it's better than the days when we would load up a fat crt tv in my parent's van and plug in the SNES.

Also, if I'm working in my office, he can bring the switch into the room with me and play while I work. Portable is nice.

<comment><USER21> Sure for kids the switch can't be beat. But the best games are all on Sony (some on PC too) Witcher 3, horizon zero down, god of war, uncharted 4, the last of us, persona 5, nier automata, assassins creed oddysey, red dead redemption 2, Spider-Man, etc.

<comment><USER22> Your list, with the exception of Persona 5 and somewhat Nier, are all games in the same, 3rd-person-open-world-AAA action/adventure genre. Claiming that 'the best games' are all one only one platform and that they are all in the exact same genre says much more about personal preference than the quality of game play experience on various consoles and PC.

— Edited a typo —

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Love it. Tech has been so obsessed with "the next Facebook" for the last 15 years that there have been thousands of useful concepts lying on the table. While everyone jumped from mobile to wearables to AR to machine intelligence, there are billion-dollar companies that amount to little more than a CRUD framework, a few innovations, and intelligent marketing/strategy/advisory.

It gives me hope for the future - if we can get more people from various walks of life to learn how to code and appreciate technology, there is so much more we can do. Of course, that "if" has always been a huge challenge.

<comment><USER24> Got some examples?

<comment><USER25> I can think of SalesForce, asana and others in the glorified crud category. Slack and similar chatting apps are just IRC for then common user, yet it worked seeing their valuations.

<comment><USER24> My experience with SalesForce is that it is way more complicated than a simple CRUD app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Even when they did ship with more cutting edge power and tech, they approached it as if they didn't have it.

It partly comes from the video game things being a bit of a gamble and side project to keep the company alive. "Success under constraint."

And not it's a bit of an intentional handicap, like setting a horsepower cap on a racecar. Anyone can go fast and make something spectacular with unlimited power, but when bleeding edge graphics aren't even available for you to waste time considering, you have to finds new ways to make your game "fun".

You have to think of new control schemes, new mechanics, endearing art styles, etc. You can't just melt faces (and wallets) with the visuals.

</comment><comment><USER27> Fancy literature but in the end it says little. There is a simple way to put it. Sometimes an era has missed some of the innovations it could have done and spends too much time caring only about the core technology but it might be beneficial to stay a little more and innovate on the general design rather than just the core technology.

</comment><comment><USER28> What strikes me about Nintendo is that their hardware quality is rather lacking. Maybe I'm spoiled by Apple et al., but my Switch feels quite the opposite of premium in the hand.

More to the point of the article, however: while Nintendo does use "withered" technology, perhaps it's too withered. The Switch uses an ARM-based CPU/GPU SoC from 2015: obsolete before the Switch came out! The GameBoy Color, released in 1998, was the first GameBoy to feature a non-monochrome display: a feature the Sega GameGear had, with its 8-bit color and a backlit display, in 1990.

Nintendo seems to be consistently about a decade behind the current standard of technology, but they innovate in such clever and serendipitous ways that their "Ludditism" is easy to forgive.

<comment><USER29> i have a lot of complaints about nintendo, but nintendo's only console to be well ahead of their competitors' offerings in terms of hardware was one of their worst competing consoles, in terms of sales. and that's the gamecube. so it hasn't made and doesn't make commercial sense for them to heavily invest in the underlying hardware.

ever since the gamecube, and maybe before then, nintendo has been on a divergent path from the likes of other console makers. they do not seek to compete in hardware power.

nintendo's true problems lie in online and cloud services, like account management and online multiplayer, and just pure laziness in game development and implementation. they get away with it somehow.

<comment><USER26> > _pure laziness in game development_

Ah you're one of those "how do they keep getting away with making more Mario games?" people.

The secret is that they don't release mainline games very often. You don't get a new one every year. You get one every 3-4 (or Metroid 6-10) years.

And when you do get a new installment it's just as fun and joyful as the previous ones.

They do need to get their shit in gear with the online stuff though. And emulation. They could and probably should acquihire a few companies to deal with those. If they made their entire back-catalog available on an official emulator that works one this and the next generation console, they'd be set forever.

Though they've already got enough cash in the bank to run for 50 years even if they stopped all new sales.

<comment><USER30> When was the last Metroid game that is "just as fun and joyful as the previous ones"? Metroid has had a tough 20 years or so. Last I checked Nintendo released a poorer version of a remake some fan released a year earlier.

<comment><USER31> I genuinely enjoyed Other M. I've always preferred the third-person platformer style for the franchise (Super Metroid is still the best installment in the series) and I thought Other M was faithful to this heritage while adding some more modern twists.

<comment> blaser-waffle Man, 100% opposite opinion -- I thought Other M was terrible, particularly the writing and pacing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> In a weird way, I think Nintendo's approach is basically "Zero to One" to differentiate from competitors, but doing it with cheaper hardware to reduce costs.

I'm not a gamer, but from a business perspective I'm intrigued with their approach.

<comment><USER33> Hmm I'm not sure if Zero to One fits into what Nintendo does - maybe the Wii was (arguably the N64).

Nintendo main differentiation revolves around their IP, which they manage to refresh with every new console release by making some console feature into a game mechanic (and the gameplay revolves around it).

You can see good examples of it in their hardware accessories for games, where they don't feel like gimmicks, yet on other consoles some accessories do feel like it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Reminds me of [http://boringtechnology.club/](http://boringtechnology.club/)

</comment><comment><USER35> This does backfire for them in certain cases though, especially in terms of networking. All of their games are still on a built-out peer2peer implementation they acquired in 2008 and it shows how much it holds them back - anyone that played a Nintendo online game on switch knows what I mean (no, 30 NES games I played on my Wii aren't a consolation).

Let's not even talk about friend codes in 2020.

</comment><comment><USER30> Didn't Nintendo drop this philosophy the moment Gunpei left to work on a GameBoy competitor for Bandai and pushed out the GBC? Or was it after Gunpei died in a car accident shortly after? The NGC also didn't follow this philosophy and neither did the GBA. It wasn't until the Wii/NDS era, when they kind of brought it back.

<comment><USER36> We perceive Nintendo as working under the principles of Yokoi because he wrote his vision in a book. The reality is more complicated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> _" the Oculus Rift's two most important components are a cheap smartphone screen and a pair of fifty cent lenses"_

I got a smartphone and a VR headset to put it in. Yes they are cheap, but the experience is completely different from the Rift.

These may be the most fundamental parts, but they are not what makes the Rift a good VR set.

<comment><USER38> "These two withered parts allowed for mainstream pricing ($350) and freed the team to work on peripheral innovations like decreasing latency and refining positional tracking."

The focus on decreasing latency is arguably what differentiated the Rift early on: [https://www.wired.com/2014/05/oculus- rift-4/](https://www.wired.com/2014/05/oculus-rift-4/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Often the British engineering philosophy, tbh - frugality of necessity.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, but Nintendo's don't leave oil stains all over the garage.

<comment><USER40> You can tell which parking spots I use most frequently at my apartment complex based on the size of the oil puddle. Jaguars are an opsec liability

<comment><USER26> Haven't checked my F-Pace now that you've mentioned it. It's sitting a lot during this quarantine

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> me parece una excelente idea</comment>


How to Suck at Branding - <AUTHOR> http://feint.me/2010/05/how-to-suck-at-branding/

<comment><USER2> Actually most branding experts don't fall into those traps.

They do however fall into the trap of thinking that you can actively brand something, just as you do with cattle.

At the end of the day, your brand reflect _everything_ about your company. From call center to email updates etc. Most importantly is your product (it didn't used to be like that)

The things that matter is the experience you give, not the narrative your frame it within.

</comment><comment><USER3> This was very funny. Great read, thank you. Tweeted @DotSauce

I've noticed alot of bloggers and app developers are making these mistakes.</comment>


The Eudyptula Challenge - <AUTHOR> http://eudyptula-challenge.org

<comment><USER2> Am I too stupid to even get an invite or is it taking so long to process? I tried multiple times, even analysing whether the email is in text and not html format..

</comment><comment><USER3> This challenge is really great. I'm stuck on task 6 because I'm somewhat lacking time and motivation, but I'd definitely recommend it to anyone interested.

<comment><USER4> How long did it take for the server to reply against Task 5? Its been a week since I submitted my results but no reply as of yet.

<comment><USER5> For me it took 11 days.

The upside to the delay is that it seems incorrect submissions get returned a lot sooner than correct, so you're likely on the right track :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435220](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7435220)

<comment><AUTHOR> Never saw it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been waiting about a month for confirmation that Task 8 is correct (or incorrect, either way!). Anyone else had issues with this one?</comment>


Apple hardware is garbage - <AUTHOR> http://byuu.org/articles/apple <comment><USER2> This is ridiculous.

The sales person sold you a part Apple included for free, and you're saying it's Apple's fault?

Hard drives die - it's a fact of life. If you didn't have a backup how is that Apple's fault?

Saying "no BIOS, no keyboard shortcuts" shows how little you know. Simply holding down the mouse button while a mac starts up will eject anything in the optical drive, as will pressing the eject button on any Apple Keyboard, once the device is on (i.e. in this case, the EFI is loaded and it's at a grey screen because it can't find any OS)

</comment><comment><USER3> Ram failure? May well be PBCK - last month I bought 8 GB RAM, tried to install it in my MBP, got the 3 beeps, said "bleeping newegg", put the old 4GB of RAM back in, used the MBP for a while, got annoyed because it was now quite slow, managed to look at System Profile, saw I now had only 2 GB, said "Hmm...", reseated the RAM, now had 4GB, removed it, and tried again with the new 8GB, and lo and behold, the PBCK was solved...

I've never had a Mac Mini, but I wouldn't be surprised if the RAM installation process there is as tight as for the MBP.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sure, one guys experience with a single Mac Mini is absolutely the basis for general statements regarding Apple hardware.

Especially when we are treated with such insight as the use of the "Death Star" moniker for Hitachi drives (a name given for a faulty production run circa 2004, an aeon ago in computer times) and the fact that Mac Mini's don't have a physical cd rom eject button.

Because, you know, there aren't tens of millions of satisfied users of said firm's hardware around, and the firm doesn't top computer user satisfaction surveys for 6-7 years in a row. And it's not like most alpha geeks, and around 70% of all hacker conference attendants use said firm's hardware (with a few even known to prefer to use the hardware even to run an alternative OS, like Linux, instead of a PC, because they consider it top notch).

<comment><USER5> The 75GXP death star debacle was in 2000-2001.

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I remember having 2-3 die on us on my startup at the time, but wasn't sure if it was 2004 or earlier. Those were IBM branded though, not Hitachi yet. I remember reading some hilarious advice on the net by IBM, like "don't run them for more that 18 consecutive hours" or something like it.</comment></comment></comment>


Love what you do, not what you earn - <AUTHOR> http://www.kevinholler.com/love-what-you-do-not-what-you-earn/

<comment><USER2> > I watched the clock carefully made sure I was out of there the minute my > shift finished.

Fulfilling your contractual obligations is not a sign of a worker who is just "getting on by", it's a sign they have other interests or ventures outside of the workplace.

This is why our industry is so fucked up with this bullshit "doing overtime means you're COMMITTED" attitude.

<comment><USER3> You got caught up on one line in the article and completely missed the entire point.

The article is a lesson in self-empowerment. It contains the truth that what you're doing in your employment can be even more for yourself than your employer if you adopt the necessary atitude.

He didn't say anything about not having other interests or ventures. You put that in there because of your preconceptions.

<comment><USER4> Not really. He walked into a job he didn't like and said "i'm going to start to like this". When is that going to happen?

If you adopt the necessary attitude of going above and beyond for your employer it will help you out? I've found that to not be true in most cases.

<comment><USER3> _When is that going to happen?_

Learning that atitude was something I at least partly could control in my life was very important in my overall personal development.

 _going above and beyond for your employer it will help you out?_

Yes. You learn your limits. You make time go by more quickly by being an active participant. You develop disciplines that can help you out in many contexts. You keep your mind active by DOING things rather than just watching the clock waiting for your shift to end. You make yourself more valued which can help you get that pay raise or promotion. You establish a reputation for being solid, which makes your future job searches a hell of a lot easier.

Look, you're going to be working your job anyway. You might as well do it well, make the time go by quickly, and help yourself along the way.

<comment><USER4> Well I still disagree with the premise. In my experience going above and beyond gets you nothing but more work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How about both?

Work takes up a huge portion of your life and if you can bring interest and personal growth to your job then your whole life experience will be better.

BUT money is what makes life flow outside of work. This quotation from the end is certainly true - _"If you're doing it for the money, you'll always be underpaid" - Scott Bell_

I just don't think it's a bad thing to want to be paid more and to be finding ways to achieve that :)

<comment><USER6> I feel you must have both. You can love what you do, but pay validates that your work is loved by others too. Without that validation you start to get down on what you are doing and start to hate it yourself. What is the point in working on something you love if everyone else hates it?

<comment><USER7> Absolutely. But if you ever work for a non-profit - which I did in a previous life - you will definitely have to focus on "loving what you do" - and loving the missio of the non-profit - because you will die a thousand deaths every time you think of your salary.

<comment><USER8> Even in nonprofits, salary is highly idiosyncratic. There are plenty of nonprofits with very well-paid employees and, in particular, executives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you love what you do and not what you earn, someone else will make sure to pocket the difference.

<comment><USER10> And sometimes, it's you pocketing the difference, because you're essentially paying a premium for your own happiness. Seems fair, actually.

<comment><USER11> I don't think it's unreasonable to both enjoy what you do and not undersell yourself.

That being said, there may be situations where you accept less money for something you enjoy more, because the satisfaction is worth it, but this isn't the same as underselling yourself.

<comment><USER12> This.

I used to work at an organization that paid conspicuously less than local market value for comparably experienced developers.

The work environment, however, was a really pleasant one to work in. There were quarterly and annual company-wide events, such as going to local sporting events, scavenger hunts, Christmas dinners at fancy restaurants, and the like.

My boss was great and took an active interest in developing the skills of his team, and successfully tanked upper management, leaving us free to develop in peace. All the developers ate together in our own break room, usually over board games. There was a sense of camaraderie on our team you don't just find everywhere.

I loved working there; though I didn't want to, I ultimately had to leave when I started a family, got a house, and my expenses outpaced my income.

Perhaps I should have left sooner. Perhaps I was unwittingly underselling myself. However, I prefer to think of all of the above I mentioned as "non- cash" compensation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wrote about this 2 years ago [0]. In my opinion, it's a choice between doing the things you already love, and loving the things you do.

Earning money is something you do. You may eventually fall in love with what you do (as I have, and has Kevin), but many people don't. Ever. And it's not for the lack of trying either. Some people simply can't grok certain things.

So the other option is to do the things that you love. But those things may not pay well. And so people are left with the original dilemma that Kevin posted. I have mulled about this, and came to the conclusion that I was merely very lucky that I had a job that I love.

[0] [http://blog.chewxy.com/2011/11/14/what-you-love-what-you- are...](http://blog.chewxy.com/2011/11/14/what-you-love-what-you-are-good-at/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Thanks for sharing. Personally, I am of the philosophy "doing what you love" rather than "loving what you do" (a subtle difference). However, "loving what you do" is still better than "loving what you earn".

<comment><USER15> Agreed. But in the same sense, if you love what you do you are doing what you love.

<comment><USER14> Yup, but the vice-versa is not true i.e. if you love what you do, you may not be doing what you love. It is more out of force than volition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Meh, easy to write blog posts like that if you are working at EngineYard and presumably earning quite healthily.

<comment><USER17> The point of the post is his attitude change that occurred while he was working at the pub, and presumably earning little more than minimum wage.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. When I first started there I was earning a "training" wage. As someone under the age 16 I started out earning roughly €6.00 an hour.

After that I progressed to minimum wage(€8.65) and before I left I was earning €10 an hour.

<comment><USER18> Where is this if you don't mind me asking? 8.65 EUR minimum wage is great. Minimum wage is is close to 3 EUR.

<comment><USER15> This is Ireland. More information here: [http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/employment_r...](http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employment/employment_rights_and_conditions/pay_and_employment/pay_inc_min_wage.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Worth pulling out the Stack Overflow survey analysis. Looks like Stat Wing found a weak, but statistically significant relationship between compensation and job satisfaction for what it's worth. <https://www.statwing.com/demos/dev- survey#workspaces/2496>

</comment><comment><USER20> That's easy to say when you make more than 1000 (one thousand) euros a month like I do..

</comment><comment><USER21> Do whatever you're good at that you get paid well to do. Learn to love this job. When you have a mortgage to pay and a family to feed, money trumps love EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

</comment><comment><USER10> Funny, that title is exactly how I'd describe my current job.

</comment><comment><USER22> Haven't we had this debate on HN once or twice before? ;)

</comment><comment><USER23> What blogging software are you using on your blog?

<comment><USER15> I built the blog using jekyll, a static site generator. (<http://jekyllrb.com/>)

Still working on improving it but it's allowed me to dynamically generate tag and category pages as well as a few other neat things. That and it's seriously lightweight.

<comment><USER23> Is there a python equivalent of jekyll?

<comment><USER24> If it's any consolation, you wouldn't have to write any Ruby code with Jekyll. You'd only write HTML templates, Markdown/Textile, and a sprinkle of YAML.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like this story because it does not end with some explicit or implied "and then I hit it big time ( _as a reward for my love_ )" as if loving what you do and sticking with it is some sort of super-secret method for guaranteed success. OP made it work for him in the present and enriched his life by doing so, it seems it even paid off later too. Great! His "win" was right there. There are a lot of ways to be successful and loving what you do can certainly help but it won't give you much of an edge on folks who are "just" doing an outstanding job for the money. The most perfectly and enthusiastic and welcoming bar can go belly-up for no reason but people's taste suddenly changed or the financial crisis hits hard and nobody has money to go out anymore.

If you are radically doing what you love for the love of doing it and you laugh about money, good for you. But don't blindly hope or subconsciously count on some miracle future success just because you loved your work so much. The people who completely bombed doing what they love(d) hardly ever share their crushing stories.

You cannot control all the things that can greatly influence your success and loving what you do won't shield you against it either. Keep that in mind. Get something out of it now, always get some sort of return for yourself and NOW, if that is "just" money and you consciously made that decision then that is ok. If it means really good connections and a technological playground you love playing/working in, then that is also ok. If it is a great opportunity to learn and grow it into a career even if the pay is horrible, well that is ok too. There are industries where this is pretty-much the norm and if you ever want to be anybody in those industries, you got to pay your dues. Luckily in IT, you are mostly shielded from that and can always expect at least not half bad compensation, given you can sit in a comfy and cool office and hit a few keys and get the chance to do 99% of your clicks over if you screwed up.</comment>


Do Most Americans Favor Radical Wealth Redistribution? - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/americans-favor-radical-wealth-redistribution/19684224/

<comment><USER2> How about pushing for a system based on merit rather than government intervention.

Wealth redistribution amounts to the government taking money away from people that earned it through hard work and giving it to people that may or may not deserve it.

Sweden might be a great place for some, but it sucks when you actually want to start a company or do something against the status quo.

<comment><USER3> Does a lottery winner earn their money through hard work? Or a rich man's kid? Do they 'deserve' it? Hard work will make you a decent living, but beyond that you need a significant amount of luck. We live in a society of laws that dictate wealth distribution, and those laws are currently skewing wealth distribution in a way that has nothing to do with merit. There is nothing wrong with adjusting those laws to distribute wealth more widely and give more skilled people an opportunity to build on what we as a society have achieved.

<comment><USER2> Please.

How many lottery winners are there in this world? not many. Does the lottery winner deserve it? Yes. They gambled with their money and won. This is an example of pure luck.

Does a Rich man's kid deserve it? Yes. Because someone in his family (grandfather, father, etc) put the hard work into starting or continuing a business.

"and those laws are currently skewing wealth distribution in a way that has nothing to do with merit."

I see. So, instead of providing for your own future generations with your wealth, it's better to "redistribute" it to complete strangers who really don't deserve it. This is even worse than any of our current systems because it's not based on anything. Money is just taken from the wealthy and given to the poor. It's out right theft.

"There is nothing wrong with adjusting those laws to distribute wealth more widely and give more skilled people an opportunity to build on what we as a society have achieved."

How are the current laws preventing any skilled worker an opportunity for success? The only laws I see preventing success are the restrictions and taxes imposed on new businesses. As an example, in Michigan (and a few other states), businesses are taxes on their gross rather than their net income.

"Hard work will make you a decent living, but beyond that you need a significant amount of luck."

I hate this line of thinking the most. It's used as an excuse for laziness and a way to cut down successful people.

There are opportunities all around us (the luck). Without skill, most people won't have any idea what do or how to capitalize on them. Most people also aren't willing to put the amount of work it actually takes to be successful. Success takes sacrifice.

<comment><USER2> HAHA. At least I know who downvoted me ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Of course we do -- look at the mortgage interest income tax deduction, or Medicare, two giant wealth redistribution schemes.

</comment><comment><USER5> These discussions really aren't going to go anywhere productive, it's pure politics. I flag both the ones I disagree with and agree with, though I'll comment too if the community decides not to flag because it's worth talking about.

Commenting here - there's two biases they're missing. The first is the "middle choice" bias. If you give people three options: "Do you prefer nothing, a medium amount, or a large amount?" overwhelmingly the middle will be chosen. That's before getting into the merits - when you give someone uneducated on a topic a choice, intuition defaults to the middle.

Second is the word "distribution" - wealth isn't actually distributed. It's built, mined, manufactured, planted, harvested, bartered, bought, sold, negotiated, renovated, cleaned, transported, traded, invented, shipped, developed, and many more things. But it's not distributed. The word itself is flawed, though unfortunately, the most obvious other way to describe is also flawed. ("Should people who honestly build and create wealth be allowed to keep it or have it taken from them by force?" is biased in the other direction) But regardless of questions on framing a debate and choice of words, I doubt this sort of post is going to lead to a good discussion. Someone in favor of mandatory-wealth-moving-aroundedness is going to reply that distribution is a fine choice of word. Someone against is going to reply no it isn't, and taking-by-force is an accurate description. In the end, no one's mind will be changed, and we'll have learned nothing new or interesting.

<comment><USER6> The word "distribution" has a meaning in statistics that is perfectly appropriate and correctly applied in this situation. To wit: "A set of numbers and their frequency of occurrence collected from measurements over a statistical population."

<comment><USER5> In the context of "redistribution of wealth" people aren't talking about statistical distributions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> apparently, because all the wealth somehow got redistributed to a small minority. that's what you're talking about, right?</comment>


Probability Models for Customer-Base Analysis (2013) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.brucehardie.com/talks/ho_cba_tut_art_13.pdf <comment><USER2> I have experience implementing similar models for analyzing and predicting customer spending behavior. The posted paper may be somewhat abtruse for the uninitiated, so I thought I'd provide some background knowledge.

As the title states these are probability models for describing the purchasing behavior of customers. The paper outlines outlines several models depending on if customers may purchase at discrete times or continuously, and whether the customer relationship is contractual or not. As an example let's take the "BG/NBD" model for continuous time, non-contractual customer relations.

We assume each customer, `i`:

      1. Makes purchases according to an exponential distribution with mean rate `lambda[i]` [0].
      2. After a purchase becomes inactive (never makes a purchase again) with a fixed probability `p[i]`.

And, across all customers:

      3. The purchasing rate, `lambda[i]`, follows a Gamma distribution with parameters `alpha` and `beta` [1].
      4. The inactivity probability, `p[i]`, follows a Beta distribution with parameters `a` and `b` [2].

This is a generative model of the purchasing behavior of each customer. The goal is to find values of the parameters `lambda[i]`, `p[i]`, `alpha`, `beta`, `a` and `b` that "fit" your data the "best". Emphasis here because there different notions on what "best" means, but the two main approaches are optimization (typically maximizing the likelihood) and Bayesian approaches which rather than finding the "best" value for a parameter, find a distribution over all possible values called the posterior.

There are implementations of these models for python [3] and R [4].

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

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

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

[3] [https://github.com/CamDavidsonPilon/lifetimes](https://github.com/CamDavidsonPilon/lifetimes)

[4] [https://github.com/cran/BTYD](https://github.com/cran/BTYD)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the Github links. I would like to add [https://github.com/mplatzer/BTYDplus](https://github.com/mplatzer/BTYDplus)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you enjoy this work, you may also enjoy reading other work Peter Fader has done (in cooperation with Hardie in some cases, as in parent post).

[https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/faderp/#research](https://marketing.wharton.upenn.edu/profile/faderp/#research)

</comment><comment><USER5> I just started studying CLV models for a research project. Has anyone implemented/seen these kinds of models in production?

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there an updated version? It would be nice to see the same rigour applied to SaaS.

<comment><USER7> Peter and his former student Dan McCarthy have done a lot of work on CLV calculations.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Wave – Join people around you doing cool things in Real-Time - <AUTHOR> https://letsgetwavey.com/ <comment><USER2> Cool idea. Especially in a culture where most media seeks to keep people online/connected. It's nice to see an effort to drive more connections IRL.</comment>


Clojure/core quick reference - <AUTHOR> http://clojuredocs.org/quickref/Clojure%20Core <comment><USER2> Excellent reference! This is going to be handy for "->" and "->>".</comment>


Energy drinks may pose danger to public health, researchers warn - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/10/141014170727.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmind_brain%2Fnutrition+%28Nutrition+Research+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

<comment><USER2> >Part of the risks of energy drinks are due to their high levels of caffeine. Energy drinks can be drunk quickly, unlike hot coffee, and as a result they are more likely to cause caffeine intoxication.

Imo this shows that caffeine is a drug, and more dangerous than most people (even here) know. I quit drinking caffeinated coffee regularly for 2 months now, and only once in a blue moon when I have a long day ahead. I feel better, I sleep better. And when I'm not as awake as I'd like, I know to fix my sleeping, and not cover it up with coffee.</comment>


Why do credit card forms ask for Visa, Mastercard, etc.? - <AUTHOR> http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/51346/why-do-credit-card-forms-ask-for-visa-mastercard-etc <comment><USER2> Could someone who deals with PCI compliance please explain some other nuances of credit cards that I've been curious about:

* Fault/Decline Codes returned from processors like CyberSource. How are these factored? How do processors do Regex on names/addresses? [1][2]

* CVV numbers and what they mean/how they are treated in the system? If CVV number is included does this increase chargeback protection?

* How CHIP cards work differently in the processing system, if at all?

* Do "knuckle-busters" (carbon copy physical imprints) follow any sort of compliance anymore?

[1] [http://apps.cybersource.com/library/documentation/dev_guides...](http://apps.cybersource.com/library/documentation/dev_guides/Reporting_Developers_Guide/reporting_dg.pdf) [2] [http://apps.cybersource.com/library/documentation/dev_guides...](http://apps.cybersource.com/library/documentation/dev_guides/AFS_IG/20050726_AFS_IG.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Checks are typically very simple, no regex-ing involved.

First, names are not really checked.

For addresses, usually only the number (and sometimes just first three digits) are checked as well as the zip.

Generally the processor tries to decline as few txns as possible and instead deliver the information to the merchant to make a decision. The merchant can usually pre-configure error codes that it would like the processor to decline. This might be preferable to the merchant from a cost-saving standpoint as well as not needing to "void an auth" in order to free up the cardholders spendability.

The idea behind CVVs is that merchants are disallowed from storing them so they are far less likely to be included in stolen credit card databases. Thus, requiring them significantly decreases fraud risk. And, yes, many gateways/processors charge more for missing or incorrect CVVs.

It's harder to "steal" a chip card since the information is not sitting on an easy-to-read mag-stripe. It's not clear that chip cards would have avoided the Target thing since the fraudsters infiltrated the terminal software. I'm guessing more current terminals/software is simply harder to compromise. "Chip & pin", as is widely used in places such as Canada and Europe, might help a bit since you would need the PIN to shop off-line. But it would have minimal effect for online shopping since PIN is typically not requested.

The reason we still sign receipts and yes, you still see a carbon copy here and there, is mainly because it protects the merchant if the cardholder does a "chargeback". Merchants typically store the receipts and only turn them over if a chargeback is received. Showing the signed receipt to your processor will usually absolve you from any loss.

I think the above is accurate or close to.

<comment><USER4> > charge more for missing or incorrect CVVs.

Wait, what? Can transactions still go through without the CVV, except the merchant's transaction fee is a bit higher? They're just not declined outright?

<comment><USER5> Yes, the CVV is not required. If you think about it, it is obvious CCV isn't since many self-serve card swipe machines (gas stations, grocery stores, fast food restaurants) don't ask you for it.

<comment><USER6> There are two CVVs: one printed on the card, one on the magstripe. So for swipe transactions they're still getting a CVV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's certainly not necessary, but my guess is that it follows from the "Don't Make Me Think" school of UX design. If a majority of consumers have been conditioned to expect a credit-card-selection menu (or series of clickable icons), then the absence of such might confuse them and cause measurable drop- offs in the purchase completion funnel. It seems a little farfetched, but I'm sure at least someone has done the tests and proven this to be the case. (And if not, then there is truly no reason for the continued presence of these menus.)

Anecdotally, I've noticed that more and more sites are using autodetect features based on the first 4 digits entered. It certainly didn't put me off as a shopper; in fact, I found it a lot more elegant. But I'm an unusual guy, as are most people who work in tech. We can't assume that what's appealing or efficient to us is necessarily the same for the broader masses.

<comment><USER8> I worked for a company which sold goods online and ran their own shopping cart. We took out the 'card type' drop down and just auto detected it. We had a bunch of greyed-out logos and once you entered a valid credit card number it would light up whichever card type it was (Visa, Mastercard, Discover, Amex).

What we found was a huge increase in people typing 'Visa' or 'Mastercard' into the 'Name on the card' field (whatever the field was called, I don't remember). People were so used to having to provide that information that they began to provide it _in lieu of providing the cardholder name at all_.

Think about that for a second; they stopped putting their own name _anywhere_ on the credit card form, and instead started putting the card type in that field. Conversion went down, customer service issues went up.

We added the field back to the form, even though it was never checked and did nothing, and it resolved the issue.

<comment><USER9> We do a similar thing here in Australia with states and postcodes. Except for a couple of unusual postcodes the state can be predicted with a 100% accuracy from the postcode. We found that if we didn't include the ability for the customer to select a state then they would do silly things like put the state in the street address or even their own names. We added a functionless state dropdown and these errors stopped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you only accept the 4 biggest card issuers, you can get away with some dead-simple code to indicate to the user what card type their number indicates they are.

Personally, I bind an onkeyup event handler to fade in the appropriate icon based on the first digit of the number. This is not safe if you accept more than these 4 card types, (we don't).

        function detect_cc_type(number){
            return {
                '3': 'american_express',
                '4': 'visa',
                '5': 'mastercard',
                '6': 'discover'
            }[number[0]];
        }

<comment><USER11> _If you only accept the 4 biggest card issuers_

Heads up: If you're in (say) Europe or UK, then American Express and Discover aren't a "big card issuer"

<comment><USER12> >Heads up: If you're in (say) Europe or UK, then American Express and Discover aren't a "big card issuer"

Do you only have Visa and Mastercard then?

<comment><USER13> Yes. And local bank debit cards usually combined on the VISA card, in Norway there is BankAxept, Dankort in Denmark and something else Germany can't remember. The fees for these transactions are next to nothing compared to Visa/MC here in Norway. But very rarely accepted online (unfortunately).

<comment><USER14> This is similar in Australia and New Zealand as well. Visa and MasterCard are extremely common, AMEX is sometimes offered with fancy accounts (usually as a second card), and Discover is all but unheard of.

We have a checking account payment system called EFTPOS which has near universal acceptance, and can be combined on the same card as a Visa/MC/AMEX.

Contactless payment (PayWave and PayPass) is rapidly becoming commonplace among retailers, and can be used for transactions up to AU$100.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debit_card#Australia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debit_card#Australia)

Australia plans to deprecate the use of signature verification for domestic credit cards later this year, requiring Chip+PIN for all cards issued by Australian banks. Signatures will still be accepted for foreign cards, because tourists.

[http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2014/01/credit-card-pin- number-...](http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2014/01/credit-card-pin-number- changes-in-australia-everything-you-need-to-know/)

Visa Debit is available and works, but doesn't really have any domestic advantages over EFTPOS. Maestro and PLUS aren't brands Australians generally interact with, except when traveling.

Frustratingly, Australian Chip+PIN cards don't seem to travel overseas well -- in ATMs they work fine (with fees galore) but in retail, the terminal often insists on a signature instead of a PIN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it was just a convention and made people feel better about having entered the form correctly. It makes sense to tell a merchant what type of card you are using even though someone "in the know" might know that it can be sussed from the digits.

Most payment gateways still require it even though it's probably superfluous.

I've also wondered why forms ask for name on card even though I'm pretty sure it's not checked by most/all processors and would never lead to a decline. Worse is that hardly any merchants pre-fill it if they've already collected your name.

<comment><USER15> The name on the billing address is handy if you need to contact the person making the purchase.

<comment><USER3> Well, then you'd need to ask for their email or phone which I've never seen.

<comment><USER15> most online purchases ask for the person's email address.

Also, you've never shopped at Amazon? They ask for the phone number for the billing address. [https://www.monosnap.com/image/4QZmCDNdlsqei8BLIsjw6Z3q00tml...](https://www.monosnap.com/image/4QZmCDNdlsqei8BLIsjw6Z3q00tmlD.png)

<comment><USER3> I was referring to when merchants ask for the name on your credit card. I can't recall that ever being accompanied by email or phone. Here's Amazon's form: [http://imgur.com/Azd1VKZ](http://imgur.com/Azd1VKZ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'd like to see an A/B test between the 2 options. It sounds plausible that a less-sophisticated buyer might see the Visa logo light up after they've typed the first digit of their card and get confused ("WHAT WITCHCRAFT IS THIS").

<comment><USER17> I don't have published version of data, but I can confirm from running a checkout flow that's processed $100M that fewer fields = more conversions. If you light up the logo people understand it when done properly.

It helps that more savvy ecommerce sites are moving to this model so more and more users are familiar with the experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why do credit card forms ask you to enter the credit card number without spaces between the clusters of digits, when it's simple for the machine to parse with or without them?

<comment><USER19> I'm going to guess that the most likely reason is that a terrible progranmer or manager was behind the decision of making the customer do the extra work instead of the development team spending a little more time to parse it.

I doubt there's a reasonable explanation as to why a CC field can't contain dashes or spaces. I'd love to hear one but I doubt there is one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Working for nonprofits and church's, I know we do it because AMEX and others charge higher rates per transaction than say VISA, thus some clients only take VISA and giving a select list of options, lets the user know to use that type of card.

<comment><USER3> Not taking Amex for cost reasons is almost always a bad move. First, it annoys the person giving you money (always a bad move). Second, Amex cardholder spend _way_ more than average (frequently a bad move). They may still spend as much when asked to use Visa instead, but maybe not.

<comment><USER12> I'm an AMEX cardholder. I don't really mind too much when people don't take AMEX. I understand they are a "premium" brand and I adjust my expectations accordingly. That being said 99.9% of the time they take AMEX.

>giving a select list of options, lets the user know to use that type of card

No. AMEX cardholders know they aren't welcome 100% of the time, and they know to look for an AMEX logo before typing in their info. You need to have the proper logos or lists of payment methods right next to your way to pay.

<comment><USER21> Seconded. I know to look for an AMEX or Discover logo at a cash register or on the bill cover at a restaurant/bar. Those cards are accepted at many more businesses than they were ten years ago, but acceptance will never hit 100% due to the fee differences for merchants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> For a good example of how to do this right, see skeuocard:

[http://kenkeiter.com/skeuocard/](http://kenkeiter.com/skeuocard/)

<comment><USER13> Good example? It is an interesting concept but while it resembles the physical object it does not fit in with the normal way of filling out a form on a webpage. And has anyone used this in production? I really like to see some stats on how this performs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Worked in restaurants for years while I was in college. All but 1 restaurant I worked at had systems that asked for the type of card.

I dont think this is limited to web forms.

<comment><USER24> Probably to add the surcharge? Vendors pay AMEX a % of the purchase.

<comment><USER23> Could be a possibility, in the situation where I didnt have to select a card type the system would automatically register the correct type as soon as I swiped the card.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This has always been a pet peeve of mine, it's totally unnecessary to ask for the card type.

Also, it bothers me that I can't type in my card number _exactly_ as it appears on the card, with embedded spaces for readability. Stupid form! Don't tell me the number is invalid since it has spaces in it! If you don't like my spaces, take them out!

</comment><comment><USER26> If anyone is curious about the luhn algorithm, here is one I made in C# from the example in the question:

static bool IsValidLuhn(string numbers) { if (numbers == null) throw new ArgumentNullException("number", "number must have a value.");

var allNumbers = numbers .Where((c) => c >= '0' && c <= '9') .Reverse() .Select((c, i) => (i % 2 == 1) ? ((Convert.ToInt32(c) - 48) * 2).ToString() : c.ToString());

return allNumbers.Count() > 0 ? allNumbers.Aggregate((x, y) => x + y).Sum((c) => Convert.ToInt32(c) - 48) % 10 == 0 : false; }

Edit: Can sum one link me to HackerNews markdown?

<comment><USER27> I also did one in javascript (i've requested it be ammended to the accepted response but we'll see how it reviews) anyway here it is:

      function validateCC(ccNumber) {
        var ccNumber = ccNumber.replace(/ /g, '');

        console.log(
          /^3[4|7]\d{13}/.test(ccNumber) ? 'AMEX' :
          /^6011\d{12}/.test(ccNumber) ? 'Discover' :
          /^5[1-5]\d{14}/.test(ccNumber) ? 'MasterCard' :
          /^4[\d{12}|\d{15}]/.test(ccNumber) ? 'Visa' : 'Unknown',
          ccNumber,
          ccNumber.split('').reverse()
            .map(function (v, i) { return v * (1 + i % 2) })
            .reduce(function (agg, v) { return agg + v; }, '').split('')
            .reduce(function (agg, v) { return agg + +v; }, 0) % 10 === 0 ? '(valid)' : '(invalid)');
      }

btw to markup simply append 2 spaces to the front of the newline

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think it's one of those things where convenience for those looking at the underlying data has bled over into the UI. While you can deduce the type from the number, it's not easy for humans to do that at glance while looking over SQL query results. I could be wrong, but often, we ask users for more input than we need to because elegant UIs take lots of work.

<comment><USER29> Is it really hard for anyone in 2014 to get the type of a card from the first 2 digits of a card number and add a field to an INSERT query?

<comment><USER28> It's not difficult, but quite a few developers I've worked with were unaware of that algorithm, which is one reason I think they pushed it into the UI.

<comment><USER29> All developers I know of, including myself, do have this unawareness of simple things, but I prefer to call it for what it is: simple human laziness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Might also be that some people will try to enter an amex or discover card number if you don't do this. Even if you state that only visa or mc can be used, people don't always read it. Having to select an option is how you can be sure that they are aware of it. Kind of like having to check off the "I agree to the terms" checkbox.

</comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if this was used to discourage AmEX cards(Higher processing fee), as to my knowledge these forms have originated in pre-checkout JS era and have just been copied thereafter. Would be helpful if we could get a look at the processing rates 6-7 years back.

</comment><comment><USER32> [http://creditcardjs.com/](http://creditcardjs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER33> The same reason forms make your enter your phone number in a particular format.

It's easier to make the user do all the work, and lazy developers can't be bothered to do simple things like strip all non-digits from a phone number.

</comment><comment><USER34> Mostly it's because of PCI DSS and dinosaurs in the market leaving very little customizability of the iframes they provide.

</comment><comment><USER35>
       if (strcmp($POST['cardtype'], "mastercard")) {
          $Processor = $PaymentProcessorFactory.InstantiateByType("mastercard");
          $Processor = $PaymentProcessorFactory.InstantiateByType("visa");
       }
       $Processor.process($POST);

Sorry, cannot simulate "real-world" (lame enough) PHP OO code, but you got the idea.)</comment>


Avgrund.js - <AUTHOR> http://labs.voronianski.com/jquery.avgrund.js/#

<comment><USER2> One of the most important things to get right with lightbox libraries is making sure they work well when the user has already scrolled down the page, this one fails in that case: <http://i.imgur.com/Gh1Vd.png>

<comment><USER3> I don't get that, it's fine for me. (Chrome 21.0 Mountain Lion)

<comment><USER4> I see the same thing the GP does, Chrome 21.0.1180.82 on Lion.

I re-created the test by shrinking the browser window on the Y axis and then pressing the button with the page mostly scrolled down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems to stutter a lot. I'm continually amazed that 9.2 billion clock cycles per second + GPU isn't enough to render a webpage animation smoothly.

Other than that, looks really cool! I particularly like the background blur. We're starting to see some really cool effects with CSS3.

<comment><USER6> Works fine for me but it's not 60fps. Animation and graphics in javascript will never be good. I can't wait for the native app model to come to PC's so we can stop shoehorning all this crap into html/javascript which it was never designed to support.

<comment><USER7> In this example the animation and effects aren't using javascript, the javascript is just is just firing the events. CSS3 (as implemented here) can leverage the same general advantages as a native app (GPU acceleration, etc). It's still early days, so browsers are various levels of implementation support, but the point is that moving forward it's not crippled by the same limitations of javascript DOM manipulation; vendors can actually optimize the software and hardware support.

I'd say it's quite likely animation and graphics in the browser (not specifically javascript) WILL be good.

<comment><USER6> Low-level access to memory, cpu, and graphics(through opengl or directx bindings) are all needed to approach what the hardware is capable of. Pipeline bottlenecks are the real performance killers. Vendors can spend decades trying to fix them one by one, but there's no real substitute for low-level access.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For the curious and/or lazy, the core of the trick is

      -webkit-filter: blur(1px);

plus

      -webkit-transform: scale(0.9);

and requisite wrapping. I'm sure I'm not the only one that just learned the former existed (and is supported!), so I thought I'd point it out.

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow! I just took a look at the original author's page and he's got some amazing stuff: <http://hakim.se/experiments>

<comment><USER10> To be clear, this jQuery plugin was not made by @voronianski not @hakimel. The original Avgrund concept is Hakim's. I think the way this was presented is really freaking confusing.

<comment><USER11> @hakimel is Hakim El Hattab :) he's author of original idea. but @voronianski (Dmitri Voronianski) have brought this idea to plugin that everybody can use with ease

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there any way you can see this several levels deep? I think it would be a cool way to keep visual context of navigation.

</comment><comment><USER13> Really neat. I think it would be better if it didn't do any sort of blurring on IE. Not sure if that's a side effect of zooming out the page or blur but the page content looks horrible when the modal is up.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Yea, this might be the cooleset modal I have seen. Thought I'd share it.

</comment><comment><USER14> Great job, I'm actually very surprised as this is the javascript first animation I've seen that runs smooth on an iPad (3)

<comment><USER15> The trick is that it's not using JS to animate (not setting position manually or even depending on requestAnimationFrame). It's using CSS transitions to let the rendering engine optimize the animation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> You can't click outside the page (ie. on the background texture) to close the modal. But it looks great!

</comment><comment><USER17> Awesome but makes me dizzy

</comment><comment><USER18> does not work properly on iphone if you zoom in and then click show

</comment><comment><USER19> Relevant code for most of us without downloading a zip:

<http://labs.voronianski.com/media/js/jquery.avgrund.js>

<http://labs.voronianski.com/jquery.avgrund.js/avgrund.css>

Is it really too complicated to simply link to a repo somewhere?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a banner on the side to GitHub and a link in the demo to GitHub as well. So yea, not going to link it here. Click on it. The demo is more important.</comment></comment>


Fact-checking the Tor Project's government ties - <AUTHOR> https://surveillancevalley.com/blog/fact-checking-the-tor-projects-government-ties <comment><USER2> I don't see this as a controversy. The Signal protocol is funded in the same way.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/whatsapp-is- now-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/whatsapp-is-now-most- widely-used-end-to-end-crypto-tool-on-the-planet/)

<comment><USER3> It almost looks like governments have two conflicting interests. Keep things secure and break the security.

<comment><USER4> > It almost looks like governments have two conflicting interests. Keep things > secure and break the security.

That's because governments aren't a monolith, the projects and interests of the NSF or the OTF do not necessarily overlap with those of the NSA or CIA.

<comment><USER3> Even a monolith like NSA has this same conflict.

<comment><USER5> Publicly stated conflict.

Seems they've made their decision on that long ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's bad about it? A good tool to remove hostile regimes, and something which probably can't be used to do much harm to the U.S.

If Tor is a CIA invention, it is one of their best inventions ever.

<comment><USER7> Tor is a US Navy invention.

<comment><USER4> But the implementation isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tor's US government roots have been public knowledge since its inception. Why is this suddenly trying to be a scandal?

<comment><USER9> Desperate for book sales.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the document header: "The Tor Project, a private non-profit that underpins the dark web and enjoys cult status among privacy activists, is almost 100% funded by the US government. In the process of writing my book Surveillance Valley, I was able to obtain via FOIA roughly 2,500 pages of correspondence — including strategy and contracts and budgets and status updates — between the Tor Project and its main funder, a CIA spinoff now known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). These files show incredible cooperation between Tor and the regime change wing of the US government. The files are released to the public here. —Yasha Levine"

<comment><USER11> Isn't secure private communication that can't be intercepted often aligned with the goals of regime change?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This seems hyperbolic. Did anyone truly think TOR was some grassroots tech? I'm only casually interested and even I was aware of its links to US government.

Digging past all the hyperbole the more interesting "revelation" is that the TOR project is friendly with Broadcasting Board of Governor (BBG), an independent agency of the US Government.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yasha Levine likes to spin these grand conspiracies but comes off as completely clueless, technically (not sure if deliberate but it doesn't really matter). Completely absent from his work are any sort of technical advisors or rigorous technical writing.

Result being that less than _1_ minute of looking into his latest "scoop" from someone with a technical background is enough to see through Yasha's bullshit. The code of TOR is not only there for everyone to examine, the incentives are so big that serious protocol issues would have come to the surface many times over, esp taking the number of security experts who are constantly looking there (meaning this goes way beyond "many eyes => bugs are shallow").

I used to read him when he was at Exile (together with Taibbi and Mark Ames), he was good for a few laughs (and Exile was full of black humor and sarcastic writing).

At some point, he started seeing himself as a serious journalist and hilarity ensued. Stick to being a clown Yasha!

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh please, not this FUD spreader again.

The Tor Project finances and IRS Form 990 are openly and publicly available: [https://www.torproject.org/about/financials.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/about/financials.html.en)

Yes, a sizeable portion comes from the US government, and from the NSF, from the Open Technology Fund (OTF) ..et cetera and over the years the number of donations that they receive has been increasing, especially with the campaign last year where Mozilla matched donations: [https://blog.torproject.org/powering-digital-resistance- help...](https://blog.torproject.org/powering-digital-resistance-help-mozilla) (they reached 400k$ with Mozilla grants IRC)

The way it works is that there's a set of deliverables or goals that must be fulfilled and that get a funding from Sponsor X. And there's a wiki page with all the Sponsors and the set of deliverables

[https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors)

For example for SponsorV [https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/S...](https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/sponsors/SponsorV)

> Timeline

> October 2015 - September 2018 (...)

> Overview

> Joint project with Georgetown and NRL focusing on research about resilience > to attacks that reduce anonymity or that deny service.

> The grant also includes a "transition to practice" component, which means we > should not only help with the research side, but also build and deploy the > more promising solutions.

> Deliverables

> \+ Produce research papers

> \+ Release software (e.g. Tor) that includes fixes based on the research > papers

> \+ Work with Micah Sherr and Rob Jansen

THIS IS ALL PUBLICLY AVAILABLE.

WHAT THE HELL IS SPOOKY ABOUT THIS? DO YOU KNOW OF AN OPEN SOURCE ORGANIZATION THAT IS AS TRANSPARENT AS THE TOR PROJECT?

To Mr. Yasha Levine: Please point to a single alternative that offers the same low-latency anonymity as Tor if you're serious.

And yes, Mr. Yasha Levine has a big history of pushing smears like this on the Tor Project, see this for example: [https://micahflee.com/2014/12/fact- checking-pandos-smears-ag...](https://micahflee.com/2014/12/fact-checking- pandos-smears-against-tor/)

<comment><USER14> Simple, there aren't any. Never, EVER, assume anonymity on the internet. Also I'll add the fact that if you even so much as download Tor, you have made it on a watch list; also exit nodes are a massive vulnerability. With those two things plus government involvement, it is unwise to assume Tor is anything but a honeypot. You want anonymity? Keep a low profile and try to hide in plain sight, maybe check out some add-ons recommended on privacytools.io

<comment><USER15> That's some bad advice all around.

If everyone thought like that we wouldn't even have HTTPS because "why would you want to hide your internet traffic?!"

"Hiding in plain sight" doesn't work. At all. The NSA has automatic systems that classify everything you do online and then it issues alerts if enough "signals" are gathered. That also means that the more stuff you do in "plain sight" the better it will know what you're doing, as the data will have very high accuracy rates.

<comment><USER16> Thats not the only reason to use HTTPS though. It is just as important to be able to ensure you are communicating with the server you think you are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Larger discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16501330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16501330)

</comment><comment><USER18> Nobody tell Yasha where the internet came from.

</comment><comment><USER19> Given TOR's U.S. Navy roots and the theme of TOR's origin story, I can't say I'm particularly shocked at this. That TOR was a technology developed as part of naval research that "no one wanted anymore" was kind of a flimsy veil, since there weren't any names associated with the narrative.

Similar to bitcoin's story: no one knows who built it, but gee, it's _so_ useful... ~ _shrug!_ ~

<comment><USER20> Tor has no value as an espionage tool if only spies use it, so the "no one wanted it" narrative doesn't make sense. They need people to use it in massive numbers for it to be an effective tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Oooooh the government of the most benevolent and freedom-loving country in the world is funding a tool to speak anonymously on the Internet! Such a plot twist! And they're not even keeping it secret! How scandalous...

<comment><USER22> I think the surprising angle is more like "agency that among other things specializes in monitoring people online sponsors program to make it easier for people to avoid being monitored online". It's the regime change wing of the CIA doing the sponsoring, so in the end it does make sense, but I can see why this would be surprising to many.

<comment><USER23> Does the CIA do any monitoring of people online? I guess given that it's a huge agency they probably do some because of mission creep, but I thought the idea was that the NSA is supposed to be in charge of it.

<comment><USER22> Oh absolutely they do. NSA specializes in mass surveillance and cryptography (both design thereof for national security and breaking thereof to spy on others - they probably have way more cryptographers and mathematicians than any other agency). But even then all the other intelligence agencies will do a lot of online spying, hacking, and following of people of their own, in alignment with their respective missions - that's just the world we live in now, where there's no way to run an intelligence agency and not have a massive online surveillance apparatus. FBI will do it nationally for federal investigations, CIA will do it 'on foreign soil' (although this is extended to nationally as well whenever there's a counterintelligence justification) and they'll do it both to screen for and keep tabs on potential threats (e.g. terrorists) and for knowing their plans, and maybe know where they will be at a given time for e.g. drone strikes, rendition or special forces ops. The regime change wing of the CIA will undoubtedly also be monitoring any regime they want to overthrow and supplying insurgents with intel to help them, warn them if they are hunted. On top of this there's the different army ones under the Defense umbrella that will do similar things as the CIA but under a 'cyberwarfare' moniker and in coordination with their respective troops. And finally there's agencies with State, Justice and Energy that will indubitably also have their fair share of hackers - the full list of agencies is pretty long: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community#Members) I'm sure books could be written about the effort required to coordinate them all and prevent too much redundancy, but you can be damn sure they all monitor people online and don't just leave that to the NSA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Tor wouldn't work without an abundance of users, it would have no value as an espionage tool if the CIA was the sole party using it. This isn't news, the CIA has a vested interest in keeping Tor anonymous, to protect their overseas assets.

</comment><comment><USER24> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16501330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16501330)

</comment><comment><USER25> whether what the author said is true or not is irrelevant. not that i am on any side. am i the only one that is noticing that TOR and Signal can be tools which could be used to extend clandestine intelligence gathering abroad. they are sort of like trojan horses, except they can be deployed remotely... why chase when you can just create an ecosystem that attracts and then you can sit back, watch and analyze then act.

</comment><comment><USER26> Also - add here the most popular VPN services that claim they "don't have access logs" and are very stable without any legal problems.

<comment><USER4> There's no parallel here since, (1) Tor doesn't rely on the promises of "no log" and that's why it uses a 3-hop design (and a 6-hop in the case of non- single onion services), (2) the Tor Project isn't the one that operates the entire Tor network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Use i2P, Luke!

<comment><USER4> > Use i2P, Luke!

Even zzz himself (the current lead developer of I2P) says that Tor is the way to go for browsing the clearnet

> zzz: First of all I want to say that I have a tremendous amount of respect > for Tor, Roger Dingledine and the other Tor developers, and what they have > accomplished. I2P and Tor started at about the same time and have a lot of > similarities.

> Tor has benefitted greatly from funding, academic analysis, and a large user > base. We are exchanging ideas with Tor and I expect that both projects will > benefit from that as well.

> The fundamental difference is that Tor is designed for "exit traffic" to the > regular internet. I2P is designed for in-network traffic - what Tor calls > "hidden services". Tor has 1000 "exit nodes". I2P has only one. Exiting from > an anonymous network to the regular internet has serious potential > vulnerabilities.

> As Roger Dingledine said in his talk at 25C3 (Dec. 29 2008), "Tor does not > magically encrypt the internet". Neither does I2P. Accessing standard > services through exit nodes can be done safely, but it takes great care. > Snooping or worse by exit nodes, and blocking of exit nodes is problematic. > That said, if your primary goal is anonymous access to the regular internet, > Tor is the better solution.

I2P is great for torrenting and other such uses, there's no doubt about that.

[1] : [https://www.gulli.com/news/2913-i2p-an-anonymous-network- int...](https://www.gulli.com/news/2913-i2p-an-anonymous-network- interrogated-2009-03-09)</comment></comment>


Choosing a Text Editor: An Important Decision Demystified - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tindleaj/choosing-a-text-editor-an-important-decision-demystified-c414baf8dba8 <comment><USER2> I usually find extensibility a kind of Turing-tarpit of distraction. You download extensions, try to configure them, get a good flow through them, etc. You have to try extensions, find good ones, and replace them as old ones stop getting maintained. You have to upgrade extensions, deal with breakages, and so on. They frequently don't have the same quality as the core, and bring their own bugs/problems along. When I have extensibility, I mostly try not to use it.

Mostly, I'll take something that packs a decent amount of what I'd want into a first-party integrated package and live with it. On the other hand, I don't mind opening a terminal and doing an in-place transformation on a file with perl, or opening vim/vi on a file, doing something, saving it, and coming back to my original editor to say "yep, load those changes from disk."

Syntax highlighting seems overrated to me. I haven't really felt any functional difference in how well I parse things either way.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I definitely agree with you to an extent. However, I think extensibility is something that for a beginner can be very helpful. Code formatters, linters, git integrations and even code snippets can be super helpful for someone who is trying to get their head around new concepts. But you're right, once you've reached a level where tools like vim, git, and other lower level solutions, editor extensions can become superfluous.</comment></comment>


The Logic of Failure (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://tersesystems.com/2011/06/10/the-logic-of-failure/

<comment><USER2> > _Delayed Feedback. Human beings tend to assume that an action will yield a > response immediately, or not at all. This is the way that we interact with > the world on a daily basis, and we can become very confused when there 's a > significant delay in the system's response._

This is what I find the most difficult, personally. When the feedback actually arrives, it's hard to link it to possible causes located far away in the past. It's also difficult to live with the fact that our actions can have distant consequences (but of course they do).

</comment><comment><USER3> I was a project manager on web development efforts at IBM when I read that book and "Managing the Design Factory"[0] around the same time. The combination of the two completely changed how I approached managing projects generally.

[0][http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Design-Factory-Donald- Reinert...](http://www.amazon.com/Managing-Design-Factory-Donald- Reinertsen/dp/0684839911)

</comment><comment><USER4> Systems Theory; the greatest miss in general education.

<comment><USER5> just having a better feel for Stock and Flow would be beneficial for everyone who is voting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It is fascinating to read about all these thinking failure modes - but my own (very tentative) takeaway from that book was that there is no one way of thinking that is appropriate everywhere, that if many people are failing in a particular way in one simulation game - then there is probably another game where their way of thinking would be the winning strategy.

<comment><USER7> Your comment seems to encapsulate the thinking process found to be effective in the experiment.

E.g. You say: _very tentatively_ ... there is _probably_ another game ...

Such measured language suggests that you'd try to test your hypotheses, given the opportunity.

<comment><USER6> Well - there was another game described in that book (but not in that linked article) where it was better to act quickly upon any tentative hypothesis instead of gathering data first and doing much testing.</comment></comment></comment>


Looking for a Method in Cellphone Price Madness - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/business/15price.html

<comment><USER2> From the article: _Americans spend more money each month on their wireless bills than people in any other country._</comment>


Groupon Discloses 'Material Weakness,' Lower Quarterly Revenue - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-30/groupon-discloses-material-weakness-lower-quarterly-revenue.html <comment><USER2> My accounting buddy says 'Material Weakness' is code for fraud. If so, it'd explain why Andrew Mason and Eric Lefkofsky cashed out before the IPO.

Thoughts?</comment>


Bitcoin poker exec: "I was led out in handcuffs in my underwear" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/03/bitcoin-poker-exec-i-was-led-out-in-handcuffs-in-my-underwear/

<comment><USER2> > Bitcoin poker exec: "I was led out in handcuffs in my underwear"

Sounds uncomfortable -- and don't the police frisk suspects any more? How could they overlook handcuffs in someone's underwear?</comment>


A History of the Jerks: Bodily Exercises and the Great Revival (1803–1967) - <AUTHOR> https://urichmond.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=8ef7a0dd39af4aa8ae0d8a3e884a406e <comment><USER2> multimedia? or confessional.. let the captive and passive observer of the museum exhibit here decide, since they cant use the data, rebuild the components, see and understand how the exhibit was built, or legally share it with modifications elsewhere.. might as well muse on the basis of this long- past social sideshow .. good to look at..</comment>


Show HN: Create self-guided walking tours of your city - <AUTHOR> https://www.goroam.city/creator/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello HN! For the past few months I've been working on this tool for creating and sharing neighborhood walking experiences.

Usually, when I have a friend in a city I'm visiting and ask them for suggestions, I end up with a list of 20+ good places, but planning visits to them feels like a chore. So I built this app to solve this problem---you create a route (which amounts to a long-ish plan for the morning, afternoon, etc.), grab a link, and send it to someone who's visiting.

Of course, it might be useful in other cases too. Some of my friends have found good use of it as a lightweight travel planning tool.

Eager to hear what you all think!

</comment><comment><USER2> This is great. I was travelling recently and had this exact idea as planning the trip and dropping pins on Google maps sucked. I was not able to plan an ideal route and see adjustments. I wanted to make something exactly like this. There are a lot of product improvements you can make with this and I am excited for you!

My one suggestion would be to broaden the intended audience. I am not sure if this is only useful for hosts. I could just want to do this as a traveler who has read a bunch of suggestions online.

Best of luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! That's a good point - admittedly, as time goes by, I hear a lot of people who might be interested in this for planning their trips. I just didn't think of that initially, but I think I should incorporate that further.

I'd be really happy to make any improvements or changes that will make it easier for you to try the tool for your next trip. So feel free to drop me an email at david <at> davidovic.io :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good to see idea one hesitates to implement gets implemented. If it wasn't for money I'd implement this already (poor me). May I ask do you intend to make money from it? If so how :)?

I'd also add any type of transportation too. It could replace Google My Map if it also provides tools like layer for arbitrary group of things.

I like it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Multimodal transportation is something I've been thinking about as well. The original idea was to focus on neighborhood exploration via walking. But I'm wondering if allowing folks to put in biking or car (e.g. for an Uber from point A to point B) might open more use-cases.

I agree that stuff like arbitrary layers and things like that is really cool, but this was hard to implement as-is :) I want to wait and see how people might react to this set of features before I add more.

As for monetization, I think it's too early for that - right now, I want to see if this is something that people really want and would use. There's always the option of promoting local businesses in various ways, or paid plans for additional features that might get built along the way. But the prerequisite for all that is that this fills some need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> this is so cool. I love walking tours myself, so it's cool to see someone developing a website like this. I normally join as many walking tours when I visit a new city.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like [https://hoodmaps.com/](https://hoodmaps.com/) but adding actual walking routes.

</comment><comment><USER6> Love this! I would totally use this if there were more cities in there.

FYI the `<article>` panel doesn't scroll on firefox

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Would be happy to add your city (you can post it here or send it via email to me if you don't want to reveal it publicly).

I'll take a look and fix the scrolling issue - thanks for the heads-up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> looks really nice! How long implementation took?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It was around 5 months of full-time work, give or take. However, this is end-to-end i.e. idea to finished product, so the time includes UX and UI work (which then again includes user testing and research) as well as coding, figuring everything out technically (I used a tech stack I wasn't the most proficient with), devops, soliciting feedback along the way and iterating, etc.</comment></comment>


Lifestyle business, defined - <AUTHOR> http://cubic-m.blogspot.com/2011/03/lifestyle-business-defined.html

<comment><USER2> There are three different things that I've heard it mean:

• A business that is meant to support a particular lifestyle of its stakeholders, and would not risk that lifestyle for higher growth. This is the proper and non-derogatory meaning.

• A small business. Usually one that has something in its DNA to keep it small – market size, product focus, etc. These businesses would often be hurt rather than helped by a capital injection and accompanying expectations.

• The thing a bootstrapping startup gets called after "ramen profitable". The founders still aim for high-growth, but without external capital. Here the term is damning by faint praise.

They're all businesses that at a given point may be about the same size, but the term becomes condescending as you move along the spectrum above towards the second and third instances where the _goal_ is not to be a _lifestyle business_.

</comment><comment><USER3> I run a lifestyle business and I don't think anyone would say anything bad about it including VCs. I just think they probably wouldn't want to invest in it. That's cool with me because I'm not sure I would want investment in this particular business. I escalate my goals with it after meeting each new goal but I don't think I want to sell it or go public ever. I just want to run a profitable business that makes my customers happy. I end up reading a lot of VC news and blogs and I never feel like anyone is putting me down or discouraging me from doing what I'm doing.

I do my thing and they do their thing. That's the end of it.

<comment><USER4> I'd like to read about your experiences. Do you have a blog?

I'd like to see more posts on HN about small lifestyle businesses (which I define as "generates enough money to comfortably support the owner's desired lifestyle") since it's the path I'm aiming for myself.

<comment><USER3> Nah. If I spent any time on a blog I wouldn't have time for my family or any of the other things I have going on. Maybe in a few years :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> i always felt that "lifestyle business" implied a business that not only was bootstrapped, but also wasn't really high growth/pressure. something that you could do to make a living and spend your time however you like, not something you push really hard to grow and succeed like you would with a standard startup, bootstrapped or no.

<comment><USER6> So a "lifestyle business" is a business that's not governed by the "business lifestyle" mentality?

<comment><USER5> i'd say that it is not necessarily governed by it. it could be, if you want it to be. or not. its that flexibility that defines it, more than anything else, imo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I agree with the referenced article, the term has been devised to be derogatory. In the past these sorts of businesses, with no VC ownership, were called software companies. Now they are called "lifestyle businesses", a term that calls to mind a precious hobby, but one that is not taken seriously by customer, the market, or even the owner. Hearing that the business is not a serious one but just a means to leisure, customers get the message that when the owner tires of his hobby he will move on, and customer support is at the whim of his leisurely schedule.

I don't use the term. I call it a software business. Call it an independently owned small software business if you like, but lifestyle business is definitely a derogatory term carefully chosen to make independent software companies seem non-serious.

</comment><comment><USER8> Corporate fool here.

I take issue with the use of "derogatory". I would be ecstatic if I could bootstrap a startup into providing myself with $100k+ per year, with no potential for substantial growth from there.

My impression was that the term also strongly implied that the business owner had the freedom of spending their time how they liked. I have a friend who lives relatively comfortably and does freelance development. If he wants to work 16 hours one day on a cool project and take a long weekend for some biking or hiking, he can. He isn't going to be a rich, rich man in terms of money anytime soon, but he is not wanting of much, either. He is happy, satisfied, locally respected, relatively stress free and content. That sounds like a lifestyle I would enjoy.

<comment><USER9> "I would be ecstatic if I could bootstrap a startup into providing myself with $100k+ per year"

Me too, except that I would prefer that 100k to be (relatively) passive income. With passive invcome it is easier to be creative, innovate an existing product without too much time pressure, learn etc... Freelancing does not differ from corporate work that much (except if you earn so much money that you have to work less.)

<comment><USER10> One of the things I've learned through years of bootstrapping is that there's no such thing as truly passive income(other than investments). There's always something demanding your attention.

<comment><USER8> I imagine that is true but I am striving for something less "active". I work 45 hours a week for an upper middle class income. But including the commute, the inflexibility of 9-5 and being just plain drained from working in an uninspiring environment, it feels like 60 hours a week. I'd be ecstatic with a 30 hour a week business of my own at the same income level. (Of course maybe I'd start a second business with that extra 30 hours...)

<comment><USER11> My feelings are almost exactly the same. I work 60+ hours a week and make an upper middle class income. I'm trying my hardest to change that because I'd like to have time to enjoy life while I'm young (I'm 23).

<comment><USER12> Here's an alternative: save as much money as you can. This buys you tremendous flexibility when you're in your 30's (compounding interest plus a healthy savings buffer).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I agree. Also if a business seems to be 'lifestyle business' at a moment (whathever this means) it does not necessarily mean that it cannot grow huge. (E.g.: Ikea, Microsoft)

</comment><comment><USER13> I just don't see the "plot" by VC's.

A lifestyle business is one that isn't meant to grow beyond a certain point because it's "enough". Obviously, a business like that is not likely to "change the world" ala Google or Apple or something, but it's probably more realistic for many of us.

<comment><USER14> It's not a plot, just a derogatory term they use to belittle a trend they are most definitely not happy about.

<comment><USER13> I don't think they really give a rat's ass. There have always been small businesses. It's not something VC's invest in. If the economics of industries change, so be it; VC's will always have to seek out those industries where a big injection of capital makes success more likely. I know, you know, and they know that, so it's not some trend they need to quash, just a fact of life they will need to deal with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you want to tell people you've got a great lifestyle business but don't want the baggage - tell them you run a "small business" or a "small software company."

"Lifestyle business" focuses on what you're not rather than what you are. It is loaded with all sorts of "no ambition" or "that's nice, son" connotations.

"Small software company" is something most people can understand and appreciate. Even VCs.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been at four startups. Of the ventures, one of the two with investment is successful, the rest are not.

I can't know if the secret ingredient is having a VC. But having someone whose interests are aligned, has experience in the industry, and can contribute more than just sweat seems really valuable. Maybe that's not every VC (good god, if it's not find someone else!). But that seems like a requirement for a good investor.</comment>