Mistakes You Can't Afford to Make with Stock Options - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2011/06/05/5-mistakes-you-cant-afford-to-make-with-stock-options/ <comment><USER2> Very nice piece.

A few technical points on tax (of course, check with your professional advisor for any real-world case):

1\. IRC 83(a) sets the baseline: you are taxed on the value of property (stock) received in exchange for services as ordinary income. IRC 83(b) says that you do not receive such property immediately if it is subject to a "substantial risk of forfeiture" and that you will be taxed on it only when the forfeiture risk lapses and you truly own it. Thus, with restricted stock, you are subject to tax at ordinary income rates on the difference between what you paid for it and what its value is at each vesting point. If your 1M shares vest at 1/48th per month over 4 years, and you paid $.001/sh, you would have to pay tax on the "spread' at each vesting point as long as the price exceeded $.001/sh at that point. This theoretically could mean that you have as many as 48 taxable events during the 4-year period of vesting. All of this, of course, is done away with if you file a timely 83(b) election. In that case, you normally pay no tax up front and you pay only capital-gains tax on the stock as you later sell it. This is the optimum tax treatment for most startups but is normally made available only to founders.

2\. Now what about options. The default rule here concerns so-called "non- qualified" options (NQOs, sometimes called NSOs as well, for "non-statutory options"). The substantive law rules relating to such options are the same as any other options and they are "non-qualified" only in the sense that they don't qualify for the special tax advantage of "incentive stock options" or ISOs, which are special types of options that get special tax advantages. To understand ISOs, you need to understand how _all_ options are taxed apart from any special tax-advantaged rules.

3\. With NQOs, you get a right to buy company stock at a fixed strike price exercisable as your options vest over a prescribed period. If your strike price is $.001/sh, and you exercise 1M options, you pay $1,000 to get 1M shares of stock. If the fair market value of that stock is $.001/sh at the time you exercise, you pay $1,000 for stock worth $1,000 and you realize no taxable income. If, however, the fair value of the stock is worth more (let us say, $.20/sh) and you exercise your first increment of (say) 250K shares at year one of vesting on a 4-year plan, then you realize $49,750 worth of taxable income upon your exercise. This is taxed at ordinary income tax rates and the amount is factored into your employment income so that you effectively pay all normal employment taxes on it as well (social security, etc.). Hence, with NQOs, you pay tax on the "spread" at ordinary income tax rates upon each exercise. When the transaction is done, you very likely will hold illiquid stock, you will have no cash from the transaction with which to pay the tax, and you are generally in a highly disadvantageous tax position. Once you make the exercise, any later appreciation on it is not taxed until you sell it and, at that time, you will be taxed on that subsequent appreciation at capital gains rates.

4\. With ISOs, when you exercise your options, you are not subject to an immediate tax based on ordinary income tax rates and this is the special tax advantage that ISOs have. The idea is that, with these tax-advantaged options, employees should feel free to buy their shares by exercising their options whenever they like (once they have vested) and will only be subject to tax at the time they ultimately sell the shares. Having exercised and bought the shares, your holding period begins to run and, if you hold them for the prescribed period (which, in the case of ISOs, is 2 years), you pay LTCG rates - all in all, a huge advantage over the NQO tax treatment. But there is a clinker with ISOs and this is the AMT, or alternative minimum tax. With an ISO exercise, the spread amount is includable in your income for purposes of calculating your AMT and, therefore, even though you may not have to pay tax at ordinary income tax rates on the value of the spread, you may wind up paying a substantial tax under the alternative measure applied by U.S. tax laws. This means that, in a high-value company, you definitely need to check with your tax advisor to determine your tax hit prior to doing such an exercise.

5\. ISOs granted with an early-exercise privilege (as noted in this piece) are taxed substantially the same as restricted stock and this is a huge advantage. However, startups do not normally offer this privilege for various reasons (mainly because it is a mistake to make large numbers of employees instant shareholders) and so it is not really a practical answer to most such situations.

6\. Thus, restricted stock is near-ideal from a tax standpoint, avoiding most tax risks and positioning your holdings for LTCG treatment, but is normally granted only to a very few people (mostly founders). ISOs avoid ordinary income but may subject you to an AMT tax hit - in addition, they can be used only with employees. NQOs are least favorable, subjecting you to an ordinary income tax hit on any spread as of the date of exercise, but these are valuable for their flexibility (they can be used for contractors, directors, and others besides employees).

<comment><USER3> This makes it sound like shares are far too risky from a tax standpoint to be worth it for anyone but founders. Startups are risky enough from a career standpoint without having the threat of _personal bankruptcy_ hanging over employees' heads. Is this generally the case or is there a way out?

<comment><USER2> Options for employees usually work well in spite of the tax risks. Most employees get ISOs and exercise them without incident and without AMT. They take some modest financial risk in paying for the stock but these amounts are usually small.

Problems arise if you are terminated in your employment (or quit) and you face a 90-day window to exercise options that will otherwise expire in a company that is promising but not established. For example, a former client of mine did this (after being terminated) in a solar startup in which he had been employed and got hit with a $600K tax bill. The company is all the rage among some VCs but completely unproven in the market and the stock itself has no liquidity and will not likely have any for years to come. If the company makes it big as hoped, this man will be rich; if not, he will have run the risk of a personal bankruptcy.

I would say that extremely risky situations occasionally arise involving employees and options but these are the exception and not the rule. In most cases, the risks are limited and manageable and the use of options is an excellent vehicle for the employees as a key financial incentive. The key, though, is to know what you are doing and to understand the risks before undertaking them. Beyond that, it is up to each individual and his own sense of risk tolerance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is good stuff, but I want to chime in with a warning.

The major thrust of this piece is that you should exercise your options as soon as you can to start the tax clock ticking on them. That's true, as far as tax optimization goes.

However, doing that costs money. You have to pay for the stock. Once you do that, you probably can't just get the money back.

Be sure you _really_ trust the company if you do this; in fact, not just the company, but also the board. I have friends who bought shares in companies that wiped out the common stock in acquisitions and did retention grants to keep current employees. Anybody who had left got shafted, even though they had put their own money into the company.

(Full disclosure: I decided not to put my own money into shares of the last company I worked for, and that cost me a fair bit of money when they were acquired. I don't really regret the decision, though; I had a choice between investing in the company I was leaving and the company I was starting.)

<comment><USER5> > ... in companies that wiped out the common stock in acquisitions ...

I'm sorry for asking such a trivial question, but what does that mean?

<comment><USER6> My understanding is that during an acquisition, deals can be made which drastically affect the value of existing stock. Often at this stage the company basically belongs to the investors, so they could decide to (for example) massively dilute the stock by issuing new stock until the existing stock has essentially no value. Then they can allow current employees to retain their value using a buyback, i.e. you allow whoever takes your fancy to buy the new stock back so that their proportion of the company is more or less what it was. Or not, clearly this can also be used to change ownership percentages in the same way (c.f. Eduardo Saverin). Of course, the one group of people who get no protection at all in this case are ex-employees.

<comment><USER7> Maybe I'm not understanding you, or the terms of the deal, but this does not sound right to me. "Massive dilution of the stock" amounts to giving the company to someone else. The documentation ought to prevent this sort of thing.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but if it does I wonder if the persons harmed have fully explored their rights.

<comment><USER8> Let's say a company has 1 million shares and actually issues 1,000. You, as an employee may have ten. Hey sweet. You own one percent of the company at that moment, because the company owns the other 999,000 shares. But members of the board, who have a voting majority, decide to issue the remaining 999,000 shares to themselves. They don't incur hardly any capital gains, I imagine, because the overall value of their shares hasn't change much at all, though yours have just lost 99.9% of their value.

<comment><USER7> All shares should receive equal treatment -- if the majority-owned shares get a distribution, stock or cash, minority-owned should get the same deal.

If minority shareholders don't have protection against this, the company is poorly documented.

I'm not saying it didn't / doesn't happen, just that it shouldn't be easily accomplished.

<comment><USER4> The fact that all shares in a startup are _not_ equal is VC 101. VC doesn't get common shares. They get preferred shares. It's right there in the name.

Jacking non-employee holders of common stock in a private company is easily accomplished, through:

* Deal structure (non-employees don't participate in earnouts)

* Participating preferred liquidation preferences

* Antidilution

* Retention grants

Your stock purchase agreement is a document carefully crafted to denude you of troublesome rights that will compromise the best interests of the company. That's not conspiracy-theoretic; it's just good business.

The structure of any deal that brings liquidity to shares is a negotiation that occurs entirely between the board and the acquiring company. Any vote on the terms of that deal is a formality, since every VC-funded company of them --- _every_ one of them --- is itself structured to ensure the board has control over the company.

There is no entity with less power and fewer rights in a startup than a former employee holding shares.

<comment><USER7> Further clarifying, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great article. If you start or join a startup, you really need to educate yourself on this topic. When I started at Google, I bought a book called Consider Your Options: <http://www.fairmark.com/books/consider.htm> It's quite good.

I also have a copy of Piaw Na's book: <http://books.piaw.net/guide/index.html> (An Engineer's Guide to Silicon Valley Startups) but I have to admit that I haven't read it yet because most of my finances are in order at this point.

</comment><comment><USER10> From my understanding (disclaimer: I'm neither a lawyer nor an accountant, but I have been thoroughly advised by both on the topic), there is an important distinction between ISOs (Incentive Stock Options) and NSOs (Nonqualified Stock Options) when it comes to tax implications for the employee.

First, ISOs are not taxed at the time of grant or exercise. Instead, they are taxed when the stock is sold. NSOs, on the other hand, are taxed immediately upon exercise on the difference in value between the fair market value of the stock and your exercise price.

Second, ISOs are eligible for long-term capital gains treatment so long as the employee holds the stock for at least two years before selling. NSOs are always taxed as income.

From the employer perspective, there are implications as well, but I'm less versed on that side of things. It has something to do with tax deductions for the business when issuing NSOs that are not received when issuing ISOs.

For more info on this topic, here are a couple of links, but I'd of course recommend talking to a lawyer or accountant if you're serious about the topic:

[http://www.naffziger.net/blog/2007/03/31/startup-stock- optio...](http://www.naffziger.net/blog/2007/03/31/startup-stock-options-isos- vs-nsos/)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-qualified_stock_option>

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

<comment><USER11> And for those of you trying to figure out how to report NSO's on a schedule D or a tax program like turbotax - not intuitive at all. Since most employers report NSO proceeds and taxes in your regular W-2 wages and taxes, the schedule D has to show a loss - basically the reported income on that line is a loss because of exercise fees.

[http://forums.kiplinger.com/showthread.php?1690-How-to- repor...](http://forums.kiplinger.com/showthread.php?1690-How-to-report- nonstatutory-stock-option)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> We've got to get this AMT thing fixed; it's nuts that people owe taxes on money they never had. At the very least, when the stock in such a situation actually becomes worthless, one should be able to file a 1040X for the year in which the AMT was triggered, erasing the excess tax bill and turning any excess tax paid into a credit.

I can see wanting to tax people on paper gains as a way of closing loopholes -- but if the paper gain evaporates we should let them off the hook.

<comment><USER13> One very effective way to solve this would be to allow in-kind payments. If the IRS believes your shares are worth $X, and they think you owe 25% of X, they should be willing to accept 25% of your shares.

This would solve a lot of other tax issues relating to transfers of illiquid equity. Consider the estate tax - a guy owns a business the IRS values at $10M and dies. The kids don't have $1.75M sitting around in cash (35% of $10MM-$5MM exclusion amount) so they are forced to liquidate the business. Instead, wouldn't it be better to allow the business to continue running, but pay the IRS 17.5% of dividends/pass through income?

[edit: said profit, meant dividends. Thanks orijing.]

<comment><USER14> IRS is a revenue collecting body, not a VC firm. Why would they want to take undue risk?

I see the following reasons (atleast), the proposed solution is a no-go.

a. 17.5% cash >> 17.5% shares of a business, which is struggling to pay 17.5% cash.

b. what happens if the business goes under and IRS owns 100% shares of the business?

c. What happens if all IRS get in payment is shares. How the country economy is supposed to run? (with foreign trade etc.)

<comment><USER13> _17.5% cash >> 17.5% shares of a business, which is struggling to pay 17.5% cash._

If 17.5% of a business is worth less than $1.75M then 100% of the business is worth less than $10M. Thus the tax bill should be lower than $1.75M.

 _what happens if the business goes under and IRS owns 100% shares of the business?_

Then the IRS's initial valuation of $10M was inaccurate. Why should the business owner pay for mistakes made by the IRS?

<comment><USER14> _If 17.5% of a business is worth less than $1.75M then 100% of the business is worth less than $10M. Thus the tax bill should be lower than $1.75M._

No, The point I was trying to make was that shares of a struggling business is always less in value (due to inherit risk), as compared to hard cash (Which is equal, irrespective of its genesis.)

 _Then the IRS's initial valuation of $10M was inaccurate. Why should the business owner pay for mistakes made by the IRS?_

No reason. Similarly IRS has no reason to take the investment risks (as its interested in collecting revenues, not funding companies).

I just gave a potential risk of scenario, where the business is unable to pay to the IRS money (due to lack of enough cashflow in the business), but still getaway with it. (When it eventually does get bust, but at the cost of IRS/government/Taxpayers, not the owners.)

<comment><USER13> The point you are making is that the IRS's assessed value is higher than the value of the business. I.e., the IRS is charging the business owner taxes on $10MM even though they don't really believe his business is worth $10MM.

You gave a potential risk scenario where the IRS declares a company is worth a lot, but in reality it is worth very little. You then advocated that a taxpayer (the business owner) should suffer for this mistake by paying cash (some percentage of an incorrect valuation) instead of equity.

But that's silly - if the business is about to go belly up (i.e., it's really worthless), the taxpayer should owe very little in tax. Forcing the IRS to take equity is a self enforcing way to prevent the IRS from overtaxing people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is all 100% on the money and incredibly important. I'm actually kind of surprised in retrospect that something like this post has never come across my radar on HN before, as the tax implications of exercising stock options in the U.S. has a few common pitfalls that can make the difference between a windfall, a modest return, or bankruptcy, depending on when and how you exercise and if you remember to file your 83(b) at the appropriate time.

<comment><USER16> Glad you liked it! Would love your feedback on the Guide embedded at the bottom of the article, too. ([http://www.scribd.com/doc/55945011/Intro-to- Stock-and-Option...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/55945011/Intro-to-Stock-and- Options))

<comment><USER17> I think it doesn't include handling restricted stock grants (vs. options grants); everywhere I've worked has tried to do restricted stock for as many early-stage people as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very good post, aside from this: "So if you join a startup and don't exercise, you should probably try to stick it through to an exit." No. If you're thinking of quitting, presumably an exit which will make you rich is not imminent. Hanging on to a job when you have better alternatives elsewhere so as not to lose the possible value of your options usually is a tragic case of the 'endowment effect' bias in action.

<comment><USER16> Fair. I should probably have better written it: "If you join a startup and don't ever want to exercise, the only way to get to liquidity will be to stick it through to acquisition, which might be a long haul."

<comment><USER18> I only bring it up because a lot of people do "try to stick it through to an exit" only due to that bias. It's a sad waste of talent.

EDIT: In fact, I think that whole section should say the opposite: "2. Refusing to quit with unexercised options"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great writing.

One issue with "Forward exercise" tough: by forward-exercising and converting to "Restricted Stock Unit", you avoid the high tax risk, but you also need to pay a substantial amount of cash in advance and bet on the future value of the company. Let's say you get $10k options at strike price $20, you basically need to pay $200K in advance to forward exercise. If the company dies in the future without anexit, you basically lose your $200k.

So perhaps the best strategy is to: 1) Forward exercise in several batches as you are gaining confidence of the company (but before the world has much confidence of the company...yet), and try to exercise before the next valuation increase.

2) Delay exercise as late as possible (closer to exit or IPO). But this usually works only if you join a late-stage startup, whose fate is more predictable.

If you are a startup, try issue Restricted Stock Units, rather than Stock Options to poor and hard-working employees. That will make your company more employee-friendly.

If you are looking for a startup to join, prefer those who issue Stock Units (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, which are not necessarily startups anymore though).

</comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone happen to know the tax consequences of forgetting the 83b?

For example: Jan 1, 2000: it's day 1 of a new job and you forward exercise 100k options at $.01/option (total price = $1000). You forget the 83(b) form.

Jan 1, 2004: you quit on your 4 year anniversary, and the (still private) stock you own is now worth $1/share, which means the FMV of your stock is $100k.

Jan 1, 2009: your company IPOs at $10/share, so the FMV of your stock is now $1 million.

What is your tax status? Do you pay capital gains on $1 million - $1k? Capital gains on $1 million - $100k and AMT on $100k - 1k? Something else?

</comment><comment><USER21> Forward exercising seems to me to be a horrible idea.

When you forward exercise, you're putting all of your financial eggs in one basket. This is the best way to get majorly rich in a hurry. It is also a good way to lose your shirt.

A large fraction of your income is already tied up with the success of the company. Standard financial advice is to seek to diversify at every opportunity.

<comment><USER22> Forward exercising in an early stage startup is a great idea. The company doesn't yet have a meaningful valuation so you can exercise for next to nothing. The board typically sets the strike price of options low so that employees don't wonder if their options are already underwater. Also, by exercising early you pretty much guarantee that there is no difference between strike price and value at time of exercise, so you owe no taxes up front. Later, near IPO, when the value is much higher and set by external factors, it's no longer a good idea.

By exercising early, you effectively own stock at the date of exercise. If the company goes public or gets acquired, your gains are already long term capital gains as long as it's been a year. Also, you don't have to wait once the company goes public to exercise your options, then wait a year... you can sell right away, lock-up periods aside.

To summarize, early exercise is a cheap way to avoid paying taxes on your options until you sell the shares later. And then you're paying the long term capital gains rate on cash earned, instead of short term capital gains on a volatile stock which could easily go down in value.

<comment><USER21> From a tax point of view, sure. As a personal financial risk, no way. If the startup works out, you'll probably have enough money to cover the risk. If it fails, you've thrown good money after bad.

The #2 piece of advice about investment (after #1, which is to make sure that you are living within your means first) is to diversify your investments.

<comment><USER23> "The company doesn't yet have a meaningful valuation so you can exercise for next to nothing."

The missing bit here is a definition of "next to nothing". What's the normal scenario here? How much money are we talking about? Is "next to nothing" still in the tens of thousands, or could it actually be a few hundred bucks?

The principle of diversifying investments, etc. is good advice when you're talking about your primary investments, but irrelevant here if it's really "next to nothing" that's under discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for linking to this. The Guide embedded at the bottom has been on Hacker News, discussion at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2573970> \- happy to hear your feedback on this!

<comment> alok-g David, thanks for writing this as well as your excellent guide to stocks and options. I am convinced that I cannot miss any article by you.

</comment></comment><comment> X-Istence I've got certain stock options as an employee incentive program, how do those compare? What is a strike price? What is an exercise price? They vested immediately and I can technically exercise them today does that mean anything for me?

As someone that is new to this (at age 23) some non-professional guidance would be helpful. I understand that a good CPA would be much better at advising me in my situation, but I really don't have the money for that (student loans are KILLING me).

</comment><comment><USER24> In section 4:

 _The next day, you forward-exercise your four-year option package and quit. The company will simply buy back all of your restricted stock, and you'll end up with nothing._

Isn't it likely that the company will actually leave you with your Restricted Stock until just before the vesting date, _then_ buy it back (unless the company has completely tanked in the meantime, in which case they'll be happy to leave you with your worthless stock)?

<comment><USER14> I suppose the clause is to prevent the (hypothetical) case of an employee working 1 day and leaving with 4 years worth of potential stock options.

A company can certainly do what you suggest (i think), but I dont think companies operate to personally screw ex-employees :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> But in most cases, common stock can only be sold if and when an IPO takes place. VC investors won't want common stock, thus the employee must sell on a secondary market, back to the company, or patiently wait for an IPO. The first two options usually feature inherently dubious pricing due to reduced liquidity. Are there any other possibilities?

</comment><comment><USER26> Can you please give a non-scribd direct link to the embedded pdf?

Edit: Never mind, found it from an earlier post <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2574323> [thanks to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2623292>]

</comment><comment><USER27> This is nice. One thing I did to really learn assimilate all this was code it all in a big excel spreadsheet with all the meaningful scenarios I could think of for me and for the company.

It really gave me a great overview and helped me make a more clear decision to leave and start my own company.</comment>


SVT creates web site to get their iPhone app approved - <AUTHOR> http://www.dearstevejobs.com/en

<comment><USER2> A Swedish programmer creates an app to be used in Sweden on a Swedish network by Swedish people. Everybody wants it, but they can't. One person far far away has the power to suppress the app for no reason whatsoever, indefinitely. What a great system...

<comment><USER3> And yet you'll find no shortage of fanboys who'll go to great lengths about how great the system actually is.

<comment><USER4> Do you mean to say that there are plenty of fanboys who will go to great lengths about how great the AppStore review process it, that is to say that it is without flaws?

Because in all seriousness, I haven't seen any. Even hardcore fans of Apple universally acknowledge that the AppStore approval process is broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems the latest trend in application approval; Direct or Indirect ( in this case) letter to S. Jobs.

I wonder when he will fed up and change the whole process.

</comment><comment><USER6> Great way to promote themselves. My first thought was "I gotta have that app" (had I been an iphone user). The execution is good as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> Steve may not be able to approve it (assuming he uses Safari).

When I go there, I get the following errors in the Safari console:

XHR finished loading: "<http://www.dearstevejobs.com/service/ajax/AjaxAPI.php>. Unsafe JavaScript attempt to access frame with URL <http://www.dearstevejobs.com/en> from frame with URL [http://www.facebook.com/extern/login_status.php?api_key=0124...](http://www.facebook.com/extern/login_status.php?api_key=0124c15de178f54f6b852dd791d910f1&extern=2&channel=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dearstevejobs.com%2Fxd_receiver.htm&locale=en_US). Domains, protocols and ports must match. b.static.ak.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/z3C61/hash/7a40oc19.js:22XHR finished loading: "<http://www.facebook.com/ajax/wallkit_get.php>.

<comment><USER8> Nah, he just won't be able to connect his facebook account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Poll on the site:

 _Do you want Steve Jobs to approve the app?

\- No - Sorry, the No button doesn't seem to be working._

haha

(Full disclosure: I clicked on "Absolutely")

<comment><USER10> I didn't try the "No" button, but I was amused to see that you are allowed (actually encouraged) to vote more than once.

Chicago style polls: vote early and often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Silly me for thinking this would be an article about Ford's Special Vehicle Team (the high-perf division responsible for the Cobra et cetera)

<comment><USER12> Not that silly, that was why I clicked through as well. I was quite curious to see what sort of app they made.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, the link suddenly started sending me to Facebook. Anyone else?

Didn't happen when I went directly to <http://dearstevejobs.com>

<comment><USER13> works for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> not saying much for their app, when their site doesn't even seem to work properly.

<comment><USER15> Be specific! :)</comment></comment>


Mirai Botnets - <AUTHOR> http://blog.level3.com/security/grinch-stole-iot/ <comment><USER2> IANA Security Expert, but simple advice from Krebs:

>Anyone looking for an easy way to tell whether any of network ports may be open and listening for incoming external connections could do worse than to run Steve Gibson's "Shields Up" UPnP exposure test.

[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/who-makes-the-iot- things...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/10/who-makes-the-iot-things-under- attack/#more-36566)

another thing to remember... ALL IoT devices have admin credentials, its just a matter of whether or not they can be connected to, whether the credentials are compromised, and whether the device is susceptible to brute force.

</comment><comment><USER3> The main take-aways are: 1) Use a firewall between your Internet connection and your IoT devices, and 2) disable UPnP support on your firewall.

It's disturbing how many devices enable telnet and/or ssh by default, make it difficult or impossible for a user to actually change the default password, and subvert firewalls using P2P protocols. At the end of the day, to secure your network you really do need to run nmap regularly against your subnet checking for devices with open ports, and tcpdump between your gateway and your devices, monitoring what connections they are actually making.

For ordinary users, the situation is truly hopeless. They are pwned by default if they buy into IoT.

<comment><USER4> "For ordinary users, the situation is truly hopeless. They are pwned by default if they buy into IoT."

when was it ever different? This is just a repeat of the "buy anti-virus" phase of Windows, which wasn't sufficiently hammered home that it basically failed. No doubt there will be some responsible IoT manufacturers that address the vulnerabilities, but IMO, not many, and the market isn't exactly demanding of 'secure amazon buttons' \- in fact there will be devastation because the manufacturers won't give a flying fuck about security as they stamp out thousands of pieces a day with default passwords in their factories.

If ever there was a use case for ipv6 then I suggest this is it. Sadly we aren't going to get there in time to stop a new wave of botnets. Who do I blame for the failure to properly roll out ipv6?

gotta love some of those domain name lolz

imscaredaf.xyz swinginwithme.ru santasbigcandycane.cx

<comment><USER5> The average user is worried about their laptop. The idea of their laptop being hacked is worrisome because they keep personal information on it and it's a somewhat personal possession. So anti-virus get some play.

The average user doesn't care about their VCR. The average user won't set the time on their VCR much less set a password. In fact, _I_ don't care about my VCR or my light bulbs or whatever dumb thing someone decides should have the capacity to be on the Internet (except I care enough not to knowing buy such things but in the future may unknowingly buy the stuff). If someone manufactures Trojans to put in people's homes and it causes other people problems, it shouldn't be my problem.

<comment><USER4> Average users have a VCR? How would it work if they don't set the time on it?

You bought (whatever) it (is) - so that becomes your problem. The average user falls for the marketing of "your app controls your fried chicken" bullshit and buys the IoT chicken frier. So you won't buy that frier. Good for you

<comment><USER6> The manufacturers of these devices are selling faulty products. If their products are dangerously insecure, they should face repercussions.

<comment><USER7> The manufacturer might be in another country or bankrupt. You should go after the user and then he might go after the manufacturer or his insurance if he wants.

But on more realistic terms, my hope is that if this gets really bad, then a consortium of huge internet firms can start blacklisting bad IPs. If John- Random-Guy can't connect to google/facebook/akamai/etc then for sure he'll at least unplug the device

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those interested a couple weeks ago I did a source code review and write- up: "Mirai (DDoS) Source Code Review"

[https://medium.com/@cjbarker/mirai-ddos-source-code- review-5...](https://medium.com/@cjbarker/mirai-ddos-source-code- review-57269c4a68f#.nm45chqa5)

</comment><comment><USER9> The IoT is a disaster in slow-motion, and outside of highly technical circles, it seems to be one that is totally invisible.

<comment><USER10> These devices, when taken as a whole, will be largely vulnerable and there will be enough of them to carry-out enormous DDoS attacks. Our toasters are gonna take down the Internet.

<comment><USER11> > there _are_ enough of them to carry-out enormous DDoS attacks

Fixed that for you.

<comment><USER12> No there aren't. "Enormous" would be 15 million conficker nodes hitting someone, not a shitty 500k node "IoT" net.

<comment><USER9> _5 million conficker nodes hitting someone_

I can't be the only person who moaned out loud at that notion, and who also sees no way to stop it. People so often need to be burned to learn about fire, but in this case owning an IoT item is unlikely to burn the owner.

I don't see a good solution to this, that is likely to actually happen, unless as another person said, ISP's just start blacklisting people with compromised IoT devices.

<comment><USER7> Why can't Google/Apple/FB et al get together and start blacklisting them? if it gets bad enough, that might be the only chance (good luck getting a random Moldovian ISP to blacklist their spammers)

<comment><USER12> Maybe because _almost everyone_ is infected with some sort of malware?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> >Level 3 Threat Research Labs will continue to identify and track developments in these botnets

but not take any action against actual source of the traffic, AS that host BOTs with static IP.

>We will also work with hosting providers and domain registrars to block traffic to these C2s

but again not do anything to close the source of the problem. L3 admits they have a list of ~500K static IPs with bots behind them, they arent blocking nor reporting those, why? because traffic is traffic and they are in business of selling pipes?

</comment><comment><USER14> How bad are ubiquity devices, and the state of security and firmware updates for them? I was thinking about switching to a ubiquity amplify home router from tp-link partly out of concern for this, and was hoping that their firmware and security updates would be a little more on-point. But one of their routers are on this list...

</comment><comment><USER15> How many remember the Smurf Attack –[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smurf_attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smurf_attack) ?

I remember claims that this type of attack was fixed forever. But physics doesn't change... Easily.</comment>


Gladiators' graveyard discovered - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6614479.stm

<comment><USER2> Similar theme:

<http://discovermagazine.com/2001/dec/featglad>

</comment><comment><USER3> While an amazing find, reading this reminds me how twisted we - as a people - are and have always been.</comment>


Dilbert on Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070913.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder how much socialization occurs in marketing, where people treat them like liars and then (surprise!) they meet the expectations.</comment>


The Physical Web - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/physical-web <comment><USER2> Interesting, beacons are definitely becoming more and more present and QR codes never caught on outside factories.</comment>


Looking for a technical cofounder - <AUTHOR>

I am a designer. I started my project with a good technical co-founder, but he is having trouble committing the project and has to focus on paying work. The product concept is pretty detailed and well-thought-out.
What I am hoping for is someone who has an interest in working with music culture. The product is really easy to be passionate about if you are a musician, a producer, or are related to, friends with, or sleeping with one. This isn't a hard requirement, but it will help you understand the customer and his or her needs and how the product solves them. Musicians I have talked to get it instantly, and non-musicians tend to need a little convincing.
From  a technical point of view, there will be a lot of big data, relatively complex algorithms, and machine learning involved.
I am a lightweight coder from my UI background, so I can be a padawan coder or do unit testing when there is a lull in the design work.
It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway: I have a good design for a good product concept, but I am looking for an actual partner, not an engineering bitch. The long-term success of this product will be based on the ingenuity and creativity we bring to the engineering. I want to build a successful partnership with someone who can take technical ownership of this and work with me to create something amazing.
So if you are looking for a project to work on or to apply with, then give me a few minutes over the phone or skype or in-person and I'll tell you what I'm up to and why I think it will be a success.
I am based in Cupertino, CA. I am gabe kneisley at gmail -without the spaces of course :) <comment> simba-hiiipower Cool, I'd love to help as I'm hardcore entrenched in music culture and love seeing innovation in the space. But alas, I have no skills as a developer.. I did however just come across this article which may be of interest as you search for someone:

[http://www.virtuosimedia.com/business/startups/how-to- find-a...](http://www.virtuosimedia.com/business/startups/how-to-find-a- technical-cofounder-for-your-online-business-idea)

Now, if you're ever looking for someone on the biz development side of things, I'd definitely be interested..

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link. That is definitely the kind of thing I have kept in mind as I have created this product. I've spent enough years in software development that as a UX guy, I have been approached with far too many harebrained schemes that turn out to be "do free work for me to see if my idea is any good." I personally hate that crap and I'm doing what I can to not come off that way.

At the same time, I feel like I have to walk a delicate line between being open and forthcoming enough to attract potential partners and just opening my kimono and having a public discussion on the minutiae of my product, designs, market research, and business projections. Don't get me wrong, I certainly think the product concept is mature, viable, and worth building. I'll open the kimono willingly, it just has to be in private and with a potential long-term partner :)

<comment> simba-hiiipower Yeah I totally hear you on that. Wasn't really suggesting anything there. Best of luck with the project!</comment></comment></comment>


Binary Management – project management software for interior designers - <AUTHOR> https://www.binarymanagement.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> there is a free plan</comment>


Let's create a Wikipedia page for Rich Hickey - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/sferik/status/328308095463870464 <comment><USER2> Article used to exist and was merged after this discussion:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rich_Hickey)

<comment><USER3> How can you overcome politics like this?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

"There are no independent reliable secondary sources. His keynotes or videos may be very popular but they do not add to notability unless they get reported in the media. Artem Karimov (talk) 01:22, 11 July 2011 (UTC)"

"...Oh my god! The article has a photo in the lead! You know what, I also have a giant photo in Facebook. Still, common sense suggests that the man is not covered in RS and therefore there is nothing to post in Wikipedia, anonymous. Artem Karimov (talk) 01:25, 12 July 2011 (UTC)"

"Linux Journal is a reputable source. The guy really is notable. Let's at the very least agree to keep the article for the time being. What do you say? 184.108.40.206 (talk) 01:54, 12 July 2011 (UTC)"

"Merry-go-round. Again, there was no coverage of Hickey himself. Hickey cannot inherit Clojure's notability. As for "this guy really is notable" I suggest that you read which arguments to avoid at AfD. Artem Karimov (talk) 05:36, 12 July 2011 (UTC)"

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

If folks like Artem want to argue that Rich Hickey can not inherit Clojure's notability, then how can you get a page created about Hickey?

<comment><USER4> That type of behavior is why I stopped contributing to Wikipedia years ago.

There are way too many people there who get their jollies from deleting other people's hard work (probably because they're not capable of creating anything themselves). It's a form of vandalism, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hickey has done things besides Clojure that are fairly notable, for instance the "Hickey functor".

Edit: <http://www.tutok.sk/fastgl/callback.html></comment>


What Happens When You Walk Into a Bar Wearing Google Glasses - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/13/01/what-happens-when-you-walk-into-a-bar-wearing-google-glasses/272745/ <comment><USER2> Remarks here revolve around paranoid fantasies. But I don't think the bartender was concerned with privacy at all. His remarks were confined to how it looked. People want to look cool in a bar, and they were uncool and didn't appear to care.

I'm thinking hes just a Luddite, not typical of other bar patrons and not particularly technical - hes a bartender after all. So a bartenders opinion is maybe not something worth stewing over.

I'd be far more interested in the perception of other bar patrons. All we got was "a couple were jealous". Ok, that's more like it, an SF bar and a couple walk in with Google glasses, I can understand that reaction.

</comment><comment><USER3> "they were sitting there like it was TOTALLY OK"

Why wouldn't it be ok? Why do they care what people wear or use?

<comment><USER4> It wasn't so bad when things weren't digital, but now I am feeling more and more paranoid. I really don't want my image somewhere where someone can do face recognition or simply tag me without my explicit permission.

I already feel bad when someone uploads a photo to Facebook and tags me.

<comment><USER5> If you don't want your image stored anywhere, you need to stop emitting photons so promiscuously. It's inevitable that all public information in the world will eventually be stored, indexed and made available. If not by Google Glasses, then by some other technology, which may be completely undetectable.

Of course, we can make laws to leave some private areas in the world. In fact I believe such laws already exist. But in public places, people have been taking photographs for quite a while.

<comment><USER4> Photos used to be analog and not so easily transmitable. Even with digital cameras, not every photo gets uploaded.

This whole, lets film everything and store it concept is an entirely new thing. You can't get away from it. Someone just looks at you and you've been recorded. At the moment I can at least try and avoid appearing in pictures.

The fact that there could be spy cameras around also does not absolve you from filming me. Just because I don't know about some speculative super secret tech that may or may not exist does give you or anyone else any rights over me.

So far I am not entirely opposed to Google Glasses though. But I'm hoping that they turn out to be more than just an expensive camera.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I never thought people would stick bluetooth headsets on their ear and walk around either. If the utility provided by GG (or other product) is high enough, it will get over the 'un-cool hump' and become common.

</comment><comment><USER7> When things like google glasses becomes completely pervasive I will walk around wearing masks with designs and a hat to make my face difficult/impossible to recognize for both humans and machines.

<comment><USER8> Then you'll be 'the guy with the odd mask' and easily recognized unless there are a lot of people doing the same thing.

<comment><USER9> Relevant xkcd: <http://xkcd.com/1105/>

<comment><USER10> >xkcd >relevant

lol no

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Bartender: "So, did you hear the one about the guy who walked into a bar wearing Google glasses?"

Guy wearing Google glasses: stares at ceiling, fingers frames for a while; "Yes."

</comment><comment><USER12> How strong an infrared light would I need to ruin every picture and how close would it need to be mounted to my face?</comment>


What do the best web developers look for in an RFP?  - <AUTHOR>

I'm not a developer myself but I do have a good amount of industry knowledge. How can I attract the best talent (assuming I need to do this via an RFP)? I believe that I personally could weed out the groups who are making promises they won't be able to execute, but I work for a large company and my superiors may not and will likely just go for the low bidder.
What qualifications can I include that will make this distinction obvious?
How can I make my project appealing to the best of the best? <comment><USER2> At the heart of any good project is good communication. Start a dialogue with potential vendors, get a sense of their qualifications.

RFPs aren't always the answer. RFPs can be hazardous because:

* RFPs often don't have enough information to provide an accurate estimate–vendors make vague and possibly erroneous assumptions.

* "Scope creep" occurs as needs change during the project–initial estimates are too low.

* As you suggested, RFPs emphasize budget over quality–low cost may not entail an accurate estimate of effort or vendor skill.

See <http://www.slideshare.net/Advomatic/put-the-rfp-down> for a great presentation regarding the subject.

</comment><comment><USER3> c4rl is wise. The key is hiring for Discovery, then releasing a RFP, if you must, once you know what the project really is. There's no worse feeling than hiring a vendor, then adding so much to the feature set that they have no choice but to raise the price on you. Nail down the scope through discovery and you'll save your executive team stress and rage later.</comment>


Show HN: Coronavirus Preparedness Checklist - <AUTHOR> http://coronachecklist.org <comment><AUTHOR> A science-backed Coronavirus preparedness checklist/shopping list to help you get ready for COVID-19 (the Coronavirus). Please comment with any thoughts or opinions. First priority is getting the word out and spreading far and wide.

Science backed with research sources including:

The website: [https://www.coronachecklist.org](https://www.coronachecklist.org)

JHU: [https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594...](https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6)

WHO: [https://www.who.int/health- topics/coronavirus](https://www.who.int/health-topics/coronavirus)

US CDC: [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> I don't see any of the sources recommend buying so much stuff.

To illustrate my point, this is for example what the WHO page says:

> Standard recommendations to prevent infection spread include regular hand > washing, covering mouth and nose when coughing and sneezing, thoroughly > cooking meat and eggs. Avoid close contact with anyone showing symptoms of > respiratory illness such as coughing and sneezing.

I'm having a hard time to infer such an extensive shopping list out of those basic recommendations.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment! Most of the products on the site are general emergency preparedness measures and household 'necessities' that will likely get more difficult to find if the spread continues to worsen as projected and supply chains tighten. Further, you probably have a lot of this stuff at home currently!

The thinking behind the site is to encourage precautionary thinking and preparedness measures to help make it through the spread while minimizing potential surface area for exposure.

[https://www.ready.gov/](https://www.ready.gov/) has lots of advice on building lists/kits.</comment></comment>


Please, launch - <AUTHOR> http://findthetechguy.com/please-launch/

<comment><USER2> Agreed. Launch first, then iterate :)

Do a soft launch if you want, but get it out there!</comment>


Help me by drinking Beer - <AUTHOR> http://localbeer.me/blogs/6-Help-LocalBeer-me-prepare-for-a-public-launch

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure I follow the point of this site. You've the idea of well respected reviews & resources of a site like Rate Beer or Beer Advocate and put it into a location aware environment, yes. But I fail to see the usefulness of this over looking through the beer available by my local breweries on those sites. They do have indexes of breweries by locale which provide the same functionality with a few more clicks. The only thing I see here is a really obnoxiously styled page competing with two juggernauts of really good content.

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea is, most beer drinkers have no idea who their local breweries are - this site presents them right on the front page. Even if you know where your local breweries are, if you visit another city you might not know what their local breweries are.

I'm not trying to 'compete' with Rate Beer or Beer Advocate. I would rather use their reviews, but they don't make their information available via an API, so I had to add my own reviews.

<comment><USER2> I understand on the API issue, I've looked through that sort of thing too. The problem with that is if you invent any sort of beer site, you automagically have to try and compete with the big boys.

The usage problem I'm seeing is that if I search 'beer louisville ky', I get pubcrawler (which does put location first, but for argument is a horrible website) followed by all of my local pubs. If I were to search for 'hoptimus' which is a very likely query after visiting one of our local pubs, I get BA & RB followed by the pub's website. What use cases do you have that somebody would find your site useful over Google? Remember: these people have to be actively looking for pubs in the area already or they wouldn't have been interested in your page to begin with.

To me, you have many fronts of competition all better stocked with information here. You need more compelling reasons for use than just location information. One thought I've had (not to give away my own million dollar ideas) is crowd sourced beer stock information. Knowing where I can find that last bottle of Lucky Bastard would be pretty awesome. Not that I'd ever voluntarily fill in information to help other people find rare beers I want to buy on my next paycheck! ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What successful startups started as "Show HN"? - <AUTHOR> I thought pulling together a list of startups who've done this would be interesting, to explore and perhaps better document the influence of HN on the startup community. We'll count both stand-alone startups who used Show HN in their launch / iterating strategy and side projects that have evolved into stand-alone startups, for the sake of discussion.
Also, if your startup has gone through this: how do you feel using Show HN as a means of launching / gathering feedback my have helped or hurt your product? <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863>

<comment><USER3> This is the best part of that whole link:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224>

A good lesson that though someone could build it, most can't and if they could they'd rather not.

<comment><USER4> There's a really easy mental shortcut engineers or engineers who are aspiring entrepreneurs can make.

It starts with a thought like: "Oh, I can do that by gluing together X, Y, and Z and configuring the foobaz widget to sync via the 802.11q network."

Your second thought should be: "No normal person could do that, and even those who could probably wouldn't want to."

<comment><USER5> I remember that after "Find His Porn" website was featured on HN (<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3301137>) someone here presented an application that does the opposite - provides hidden, secure, encrypted drive - and that basically is TrueCrypt + some magic scripts that make it normal- user-friendly. Can't Google the link though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Heh, sbisker, don't you remember? We launched Tinfoil Security as a Show HN before we'd actually built anything and got great feedback. I'm not posting this as a measure of 'success' as much as a measure of a product that still exists, has raised venture funding, and is still trying to become a huge business. :)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2291944>

<https://www.tinfoilsecurity.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> ...ok, I think I just got told. I actually had forgotten we did that. :P

<comment><USER6> Ha, didn't mean for it to come off as snarky, though I suppose I'm okay with that tone too. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh the memories. I'm not going to put my startup in the Dropbox 'successful' bucket quite yet, but our multiple 'Ask HN' posts helped mold IActionable into what it is today.

Its really interesting to look back and see how our company was formed by the feedback we received. Early on we had one idea which we called 'KaBadge' and we asked what everyone thought here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=795952>

This made us discover an even bigger need. Before people were going to think about karma/badge/point portability they were going to need systems to help award them. We switched gears really quick and went to work. It look a bit of time to convince ourselves that it would be possible. This was way before someone tossed out the term _'gamification'_ so it was really hard to do any research on this new market.

Then we came back to the community with IActionable: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1126780>

Unfortunately at that time there was no way we could have moved to California to be part of YC. (families, babies, mortgages, etc) But, we were lucky enough to discover a local (Utah) incubator back in 2010. Eventually my friend and I convinced ourselves to quit our jobs: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1347464>

We quickly raised a seed round after the program and haven't looked back. Things are definitely still evolving but its been an awesome roller-coaster ride so far.

</comment><comment><USER8> Visual Website Optimizer - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=876141>

Great idea to compile such a list.

<comment><USER9> I also recently talked on Mixergy on how much "Show HN" helped me (special mention to @patio11) [http://mixergy.com/chopra-visual-website-optimizer- interview...](http://mixergy.com/chopra-visual-website-optimizer-interview/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Quora <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1197146>

<comment><USER11> _Quora_

What is the definition of "successful" for the purposes of this thread? I hear wildly differing accounts of whether Quora is successful or not, and I'm curious to hear from other HN participants whether or not they think Quora is a successful startup as they define success.

<comment><USER12> "What is the definition of "successful" for the purposes of this thread?"

My thought would be "validated by attracting reasonable investment money by angels or VC's". In other words the idea would be good enough for someone to believe in it that wasn't friends or family or someone's own money. Of course that's only a starting definition. Someone who did "show hn" and then used their own money but gained either customer revenue or a significant user base would also be a success. (And what is "significant" or "reasonable" is also open to interpretation.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> re "count both": It seems that many many YC startups have shown their work here, and they will swamp any others.

From the title, I thought this would be about projects that _began_ as "Show HN" (not began as YC startups, and then showed HN), and I find that idea, of sideprojects that became something greater, intriguing.

</comment><comment><USER14> LayerVault comes to mind. Depends on your definition of success, but last I heard they're doing well.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2941589>

</comment><comment><USER15> While it's no Dropbox, TinyLetter's launch was a Show HN. MailChimp bought it a few months ago.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1829101>

</comment><comment><USER16> RightSignature: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=510656>

It was great feedback--comment #1 (1055 days ago) is in our app and boosted our conversion into solid double-digits: "You need a sample document, so people can test out the 'using your mouse to sign' part without signing up."

</comment><comment><USER17> Nobody cared about my Show HN, so I'd say it's lukewarm.

And I'm pretty proud of my website, too.

<http://tuneup.fm/>

<comment><USER18> The idea is really nice! Maybe i would work a bit on the design, also maybe try not to focus on the same genres. This is something that is bugging me a lot with all these website like your, consle.fm etc... i really like theme but they focus on music kinds i am not interested in. I mean on your top bar there are at least 6 musics for "disco" and 1 pop/rock... this demotivates me because maybe i would love to see a "classical music" and "metal" etc... i think that if you expand your music horizonts you might expand your target audience and really stand out of the crawd of similar websites.

<comment><USER17> hey, I really appreciate the feedback and I'll see if I can add some more genres :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This community seems to need constant validation that it's worth doing start- ups and that some are, in fact, successful. I have to feel like if this were true, there wouldn't be this gaping insecurity.

<comment><USER20> I think it's more that it's the people who are on the fence about doing a startup that are likely to be on a startup-focused forum talking about it. The ones who _know_ it's a good idea are out there founding companies. And the ones who _know_ it's a bad idea are at their 9-5 jobs and don't pay any attention to the startup scene.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by math.

(Edit: BTW, Drew & Aston used to be regular posters on Hacker News, as did drusenko of Weebly, coffeemug of RethinkDB, lacker of Parse, danielha of Disqus, aaroniba of Etherpad, and a bunch of other YC founders I've forgotten. When they realized it was a good idea to start a company, they quit posting, got into YC, and started building their companies.)

<comment><USER21> What about people who are actively founding a company, work a 9-5 job, and still post on HN? Are we just nuts, or what? :-)

<comment><USER22> I would say yes and no. Bootstrapping in itself is not a bad thing I don't think, but at the same time, if you want to succeed with your venture, you have to fully commit at some stage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=2901156>

<comment><USER24> Just FYI (and for anyone else): The canonical URL is news.ycombinator.com and not hackerne.ws

so: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2901156>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> pen.io started here. Was noticed by the press and investors here.

</comment><comment><USER26> Our own: <http://thinkery.me></comment>


Introducing Progressive Equity – Increase employee ownership as company grows - <AUTHOR> http://blog.detour.com/introducing-progressive-equity/ <comment><USER2> Here is an example I made to help me understand it.

Say SuperAwesomeStartup had a system like this, and the threshold was an ungodly high amount of 50 million dollars. The company IPOs and is worth 100 billion dollars.

Founder X owns 10%, Founder Y owns 8%, Founder Z owns 6%, Early Employee A owns 1%, Early Employee B owns 0.5%, Early Employee C owns 0.25%

And there are 5,000 employees of the company

                          Before     After

        Founder X            10B      5.02B
        Founder Y             8B      4.02B
        Founder Z             6B      3.02B
        Early Employee A      1B       525M
        Early Employee B    500M       275M
        Early Employee C    250M       150M

        Amount Distributed to each employee: 12.72B / 5,000 = 2.5 million each on avg

That is awesome. Though obviously very very few companies ever become worth 100B, it is a great example of how spreading the wealth from the founders makes little impact to them and a massive impact to everybody else.

<comment><USER3> Ah, great minds think alike. We were doing the same thing at the same time. I backtested the process against Facebook's IPO so it could feel a bit more real

[http://kapuno.com/conversation/bblc6nqbe6qte](http://kapuno.com/conversation/bblc6nqbe6qte)

<comment><USER4> It looks like the average employee at Facebook would have received $4.5 million.

Once the IPO happens and you pay your employees $4.5 million, their $100-$200k salary doesn't seem worth much anymore. What actually would have happened to Facebook, if they did this? Is it possible that the company collapses, while too many employees quit so they can do their own thing, or retire? Would they have had to double or triple everyone's salaries to keep them on board?

I could see it being a disaster. It could also significantly de-value a company's IPO (or sale) because the investors would see this as a massive risk. At least until it's been tested with a company that IPOs.

<comment><USER5> I remember working at a large company years back, where I was told the story of some pre-IPO ops guy that was still hanging around despite clearly not needing the money.

Some more recently hired SVP brought him with her on a trip to various offices as her go-to guy to make sure she wasn't bullshitted when discussing a specific project with the local teams. He had often brought along on trips like this in the past because of years of experience he had with the company infrastructure.

To be nice, each time she would offer to get her PA to book the flights and hotels, so he could benefit from her ability to get them booked into better rooms than the standard policy would allow for his role. Each time he'd politely declined.

Finally she pressed the issue and asked why he didn't want the better rooms.

Turned out he'd done well enough out of the IPO that he soon afterwards had decided to buy apartments near the local offices in the 5-6 cities across Europe where the main subsidiaries were, so he'd not have to stress with packing etc. when travelling there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really interesting, and I always like rethinking of equity distribution--since it's so lopsided currently.

Some questions off the top of my head

\- Since employees leaving don't receive from the kicker pool. Doesn't this incentivize people who are unhappy and want to leave to stay? There are some benefits to this, but seem like a ton of costs too (and part of what Pinterest's change was addressing)

\- How is the kicker pool redistributed? Equally or along the lines of people's current distributions of equity?

\- Curious if you have opinion on where the threshold should be set? And if it eventually makes sense to do tiers of thresholds? Or if you think the simplicity makes it make sense not to.

But think this sounds like a great thing, and would love to hear updates on it as it develops.

<comment><USER7> > Doesn't this incentivize people who are unhappy and want to leave to stay?

So does any other kind of "golden handcuff" stock option or time-vested stock grant.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. But to different degrees. In its current form this would be the strongest--since you can never leave if you want any of those shares.

Also, consider this. Someone who joined one month before IPO would get more from the kicker than someone who worked for years and then left 1 month before IPO.

<comment><USER8> Yep, I think that's a big problem. It shouldn't matter if you're still at the company when the redistribution happens, it should just be based on how many shares you own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wouldn't this have the effect of changing the risk/return balance? For those joining your company early on, the risk would remain the same, but the return would fall sharply (by ~50%), while for those joining late in the game, the risk would remain the same, but the returns would increase a lot.

If everything else remains the same, people would be less willing to take risks and join early stage companies, instead trying to join near-IPO ones, where you can get a disproportional payout from minimum risk.

To maintain the same risk/return profile, you'd need to pay much higher fixed salaries to early employees and lower to late employees, which would probably drive the startup bankrupt on the early stage page.

<comment><USER10> Where is it written that returns should necessarily so heavily be tied to risk? Many enterprises are structured this way, but there's no law that says it must be so.

<comment><USER11> Because people won't generally buy high risk low return investments.

<comment><USER12> Zynga?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> That's a great idea! You're in kind of a unique situation, so I'm trying to figure out to what extent this idea can apply to your average startup.

What were the reasons the Groupon board opposed your original proposal to redistribute equity? This time around, what type of pushback did you get from your lawyers and investors?

Second, consider the "median" startup raising a series A or B--not necessarily a rocket ship with a lot of negotiating power, and not necessarily a famous founder. Do you think progressive equity would raise concerns from your typical series A/B VC?

<comment><USER14> If Mr. Mason had proposed the progressive equity plan to the board at Groupon, the board may very well have agreed (it doesn't really impact the investor), but he would have had to get buy-in from the rest of the employees too (or risk revolt and lawsuits).

It's fine that everyone agree to this up front as they join the company, but it's difficult to go back in time and re-write the employee stock plan.

<comment><USER15> > it's difficult to go back in time and re-write the employee stock plan.

As well it should be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wonderful to see this new idea.

But Andrew: instead of inventing this new model, why not achieve the redistribution by changing the percentages of the well-understood system. So instead of, say:

      50% founder, 35% investors, 15% option pool (i.e., all employees combined)

Something like:

      20% founder, 35% investors, 45% option pool

<comment><AUTHOR> The benefit to founders of progressive equity is that at a smaller exit they still get a big return. It's only when the numbers get huge, as they often seem to be doing these days, that progressive equity kick in. Like a progressive tax system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unique, glad this is being shared. I've always looked towards the Wealthfront Equity Plan of Early Evergreen Grants [1] as a good example. It is arguably more performance-oriented than this Progressive Equity. I really like the concept of giving everyone financial independence, but it must take the right combination of culture, investors, and valuation to make it more motivating than it is inhibiting.

Also, could the redistribution of equity at the time of sale have more cost in tax obligations than earlier redistribution?

While I really appreciate the legal docs, the truth is in a longer description that remains easily comprehensible. I think the main barrier to most of these alternative equity structures is a lack of understanding from all parties.

[1] [https://blog.wealthfront.com/the-right-way-to-grant- equity-t...](https://blog.wealthfront.com/the-right-way-to-grant-equity-to- your-employees/)

<comment><AUTHOR> In principle, I love the idea of weighting the distribution of an employee equity pool away from up-front grants and toward follow-on grants. It solves what I think is an even bigger challenge of equity grants, which is that someone's financial outcome is largely dependent on a guess you make about their impact before they've even worked a day.

In practice though, I think it's hard for a lot of companies, because unless you're planning on having a larger % of the company in the employee equity pool in the long-term, you're basically robbing from the size of the up-front grants to feed the follow-on grants. So when you give your employee his or her offer letter, you'll say, "I know this is less than what you're getting at other companies, but if you perform better than 50% of the employees here, you'll end up getting more than what you'd get from other companies." A lot of employees are just going to go for the sure thing, making recruiting harder.

At Detour we do give big follow-on grants, but we can do that because our employee option pool is like 45% or something, which we can only do because I'm funding the company, so it's not really a replicable model (while progressive equity is, I think).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I like that I can actually understand this program and don't feel like it was carefully designed to rip me off.

Unlike the usual jungle of capped/uncapped notes, dilution, vesting schedules, option pools, pre/post valuation, etc...

<comment><USER11> This doesn't get rid of any of those things.

<comment><USER19> Could it reduce (or simply eliminate) the need for more complicated ownership sharing schemes?

<comment><USER11> No.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If anyone has questions about how this works, let me know!

<comment><USER20> I guess you give the same amount of kickers to every employee. Wont the kickers then be too diluted to be worth anything? I haven't done the math, just a feeling.

<comment><USER21> It doesn't seem like it. My read is that 50% of the windfall is distributed evenly and 50% is distributed according to the existing equity disbursement. It's like a basic income. It's designed so that in a company of N employees, no one gets less than 1/2*N of the payout.

It's a great idea because it means that average employees will actually be motivated by the equity; let's be honest, 0.05%, vesting over 4 years, of a 100-person company isn't enough to motivate anyone except for a starry-eyed young kid on his first startup.

If Silicon Valley ever wants to grow up and remain innovative, that's the sort of thing we'll need. A 0.05% slice is just a bonus and, compared to Wall Street, a pretty weak one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't know if the mechanics work out (designing legal structures like this is super-tricky), but the idea is wonderful. Do you think it's possible to implement this in an existing (post-series A but pre-unicorn) company, or does it have to happen before the company takes on significant funding?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great question. I'll ask my lawyer and report back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Perhaps it's a bit evil for me to suggest this, but I have the feeling that distributing that much wealth to so many employees in these super exits that they might not be inclined to work any longer.

If I were a 4th level worker at your company implementing some important but invisible part of the core product, and suddenly the kicker pool rewards me with a couple of million, I might seriously consider quitting. Who wants to be a middle class salaryman in (pretty shitty) San Francisco when they could be a comfortable upper class person in almost everywhere else in the world?

Imagine running Facebook, and 50% of your 3200 employees suddenly earns $2M (for perhaps 2 years of work). How will your company suffer if even 10% of those immediately quit their jobs?

That looks like a possible catastrophe to me. A simple solution would be to make the kicker pool a bonus pool that just pays out the due amount linearly over 5 years. No one will be thinking of leaving if they're going to be paid a bonus that's 3 times their salary for the next 5 years.

<comment><USER24> A friend who worked at MS from the mid '90s when it was at least apocryphally common for employees to "call in rich" claims that this is a good thing.

The assholes leave, the people that you want to work with stay.

When the compensation model at MS shifted away from equity (because of an essentially flat share price) in the '00s, then it became correspondingly more valuable to game the promotion system, and so the assholes become political and the rest is history...

<comment><USER25> Sounds like not enough assholes left.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's dynamic range compression for equity!

Audio compressors have features such as "soft knee," which gradually eases into compression over the threshold. Easing into the threshold might be a beneficial complication to the idea of Progressive Equity.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is very cool. One thing I've also wondered about is letting talent adjust compensation on floating scale between $$$ and equity... also, as in "earn- in"! I thought this could be an great way to attract high-impact team members.

It's tough sell to leave a high-paying stable job for a risky lower paying job... but what if you could adjust your salary and "earn-in" more equity... It could lower the burn and align interests better. Thoughts?

Also, can I get paid in Megadonks ?

<comment><USER28> +1 to Megadonk as the currency of choice for my next job.

<comment><USER29> Yes and is 1000 Megadonks a Badonkadonk?

<comment><USER27> HAHAHAH!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Andrew isn't comfortable posting Detour's threshold, and i respect that, but for anyone actually thinking about using this in another company, a threshold must be chosen -- so what are other people's thoughts on what a good threshold might be?

I'll start with an estimate. i think i saw a retirement savings calculator somewhere suggest that one should try to save ~$2 million by retirement per person(!) (sounds a little high to me at first but i guess that's only $75k/yr for 26 years of retirement, assuming you dont make any money on investments). So if one wants to provide for themselves and a spouse, that's $4 million. Moderately fancy homes in very expensive areas can be around $5 million. So $10 million would provide for two people and a nice house in an expensive area (we havent accounted for children yet but somehow i bet you could get by on $10 million, after all, most people do). We havent yet accounted for taxes (income taxes on the initial payment (~50% including federal and state?), and also ongoing property tax on the house), so lets say $25 million, which is the threshold used by [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9337915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9337915) . This sounds like a lot but my sense is that for the threshold number youd rather overshoot than undershoot, and some people may have more expensive tastes than others; in fact it may even be too low.

$25 million is not that far off from the $50 million threshold used by [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9337837](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9337837) .

So, what do others (not Andrew) think; would $25 million or so be a good threshold to use if one were actually doing this?

</comment><comment><USER31> What about eliminating all of the risks that employee stock holders own:

      Dilution
      Liquidation preference
      Change of control

Investors get terms to protect them from these scenarios, but employee stockholders do not.

If your market salary is x and startup wants you to work for x-y cash + z equity/options/rsu, then there should be multiple scenarios in the contract when z shares will deliver you y * time worked in cash.

The thing that is so messed up is that in an actual liquidation event employee salary payable is the most senior level in the capital structure. If you are getting people to trade part of their salary for funny money it's better to have more scenarios where they are made whole than more scenarios where they hit the jackpot.

</comment><comment><USER32> If this doubles the chance of a unicorn, then everyone involved comes out ahead. Nice system

<comment><USER33> What does "the chance of a unicorn" mean?

<comment><USER34> Unicorn usually refers to a company valued at >$1 billion[1].

So if a scheme like this increases the odds of massive success enough, then the average return to everyone (even those 'taxed') under this progressive scheme would be higher than with a normal equity scheme and the reduced chance of a world-changing exit.

[1] [http://fortune.com/unicorns/](http://fortune.com/unicorns/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I worked for a company a few years back that followed a similar idea. We had a bottom line for operating costs (salary, benefits, rent, utilities, other general expenses) plus a flat 25% being invested back into the company. Everything else left over at the end of the month was distributed to the employees based on their roles. It took a while to iron out. At first we had issues as the money was rolled out as a quarterly bonus, which caused a lot of tax to be taken off the top. It changed a lot over the first year, and ended up being abandoned in favor of giving consistent raises.

</comment><comment><USER36> Has anyone read the book Slicing Pie? What do you think of the scheme presented there, with the "Grunt fund"?

<comment><USER37> I wrote Slicing Pie!

The problem Andrew is trying to solve, I think, is the core problem with fixed equity splits that give certain people an unfair share. The Slicing Pie model allocates equity fairly so no one person would have a disproportionate amount unless they made disproportionate contributions.

If you used this model with a traditional fixed split you would spread out the wealth a bit. If you used it with the Slicing Pie model you would be breaking a perfectly fair split.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is great, though one key practical challenge: in most cases only founders will really be "taxed" in a meaningful way, so it requires that founders want to and decide to do something that loses them some serious $$ (as noted in answer to the second FAQ).

While I believe the additional upside presented to employees will have a positive impact re: incentive alignment and motivation, it is TBD if the gains realized by the founders will exceed the cost to the founders - I think that will be required before massive adoption (probably the biggest challenge here is measurement of that impact).

Still, hopefully some just-plain-nice founders do this, and I hope it gets them a great team and great success.

Even without mass adoption, it would be awesome to see this get adopted by other companies who (like Detour) were started by already-exited founders who are on a second (or third/fourth/fifth) project - there are actually a lot of them, so hopefully enough are gracious enough to experiment with this AND achieve success so that there is a sound basis for adopting this more widely (of course the trade-off might not be in the progressive equity's favor – and while I'm making caveats, serial entrepreneurs generally do better than the first time entrepreneur for a bunch of other reasons like experience/connections, so it will be hard to determine/quantify what portion of success can be attributed to progressive equity and not to other factors…still hope they give it a shot anyhow).

</comment><comment> jim-greer I like the innovation here. If it catches on it will be interesting to see how the market values a company where a far larger slice of the employees are going to be financially independent. This arrangement doesn't really seem to be in the shareholders' interest.

</comment><comment><USER39> "This definitely happened at Groupon - and by the time it was happening, it was too late to fix."

When is it "too late" to set this up? Does it have to be set up around the time initial shares are allocated (a/k/a company incorporation)?

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder how the tax consequences work with this.

<comment><USER41> For educational purposes only and not legal advice:

This incentive plan is structured as restricted stock units that are paid out as shares upon an IPO or trade sale (called in the doc, the "Initial Vesting Event").

Tax laws in the U.S. will impose ordinary income tax on the fair market value of such shares when they are issued, which for clarity, is at the Initial Vesting Event.

\---

For the record, I am a bit peeved that the word "tax" is being used to describe aspects of this plan, as it may make looking up actually startup tax matters harder.

<comment><USER40> It's a good thing to know. Many employees who wanted to move on from companies find their stock options a financial penalty vs a financial benefit because of things like AMT.

Now if there was a way to do this and get the long term capital gains tax rate vs. the ordinary tax rate. I can't think of any without paying the IRS before hand to buy your options or doing some sort of strange cyclical loan program with investors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This formula is a way to unwind an unfair equity split. It is common for founders to take a disproportionate chunk of equity at the outset of the venture even though they may not really deserve it.

The Slicing Pie model ensures that each person on the team has exactly what they deserve to have. This would avoid unfair splits at the end that would need to be readjusted.

Here is an article about how it works: [http://www.slicingpie.com/how-to-use- a-dynamic-equity-split-...](http://www.slicingpie.com/how-to-use-a-dynamic- equity-split-program-so-everyone-gets-what-they-deserve/)

</comment><comment><USER42> How do you think this idea would combine with the Pinterest 7 year stock option idea? Both seem like good ideas that benefit the employees.

I assume that the Progressive equity would only be applicable to current employees of the startup.

</comment><comment><USER43> This looks like Mike Moyer's Slicing Pie

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

He might not be as successful in promoting it but it is trying to solve same issue.

</comment><comment><USER44> I think this is a very important cultural step to do. We believe that the first people to do something should be valued the highest. But taking out all the other people who come afterwards they also might not have succeeded. Therefore it's really an open argument who should be valued how much for his participation.

I also really like the idea of that, even as Founder number 1. Having a healthy, fair and equal relationship to many capable people might also be worth more to founders than another million bucks.

</comment><comment><USER45> One better solution would be to use something similar to the UK concept of the EBT (employe benefit trust) and gift your shares to the employees collectively.

This is used by Coops to handle the owners shares in a tax efficient way (cooperators in the jargon).

You might want to look how coops are structured in the USA before trying to invent your own scheme

</comment><comment><USER46> Plans like this sound cool, but I think it would be helpful to make a visualization so people could see how the payouts change for different exits, thresholds and % redistributed. Visualizations are an easy way to reduce uncertainty so people understand what they're buying into.

</comment><comment><USER47> I really want to believe in this idea and I really wish human nature and greed weren't relevant to this discussion...but this is one of those ideas (like communism) that looks great on paper but are destructive in action.

Just watch the final table of the world series of poker and you'll see what I mean. The guy who comes in second place or for that matter ninth place becomes a millionaire, yet he feels crushed and robbed by the few ahead of him.

People are generally terrible at being happy with what they have and the age old maxim is still true that he who gets $100 wants $200.

All these folks being taxed...even if they agreed initially will feel robbed by the recipients and resent them, and who knows how messy it might get. People are weird when it comes to their money.This will especially rear it's ugly head when peoples shares on paper cross their financial freedom number on paper prior to a liquidity event. (I.e. by each round of financing and a valuation is set.)

</comment><comment><USER48> This is essentially a way for founders to sell new employees a fraction of their lottery ticket, aka a risk transfer, aka insurance. It would be easier to assess this plan with traditional economics tools if it were stated in those terms.

</comment><comment><USER49> Okay this is a really cool concept. I'm going to read over the paperwork to make sure I understand this but if it's what I think it is I love it and will totally use it when I start my startup. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER50> What about people who joined early vs those who just joined?</comment>


Leek group guide to reading scientific papers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jtleek/readingpapers <comment><USER2> This is a great introduction to accessing the world of serious, sophisticated knowledge. But could someone discuss ways a layperson can get access to these expensive publications?

Subcribing one at a time is very to prohibitively expensive, especially as an individual. Options like joining a university library or JSTOR are also pricey and often too inconvenient: In my brief look at U. libraries, they wouldn't allow remote access to the information, requiring in-person visits.

Google Scholar is nice, but often points to articles that are inaccessible.</comment>


The iPad Put A Fork In Personal Computing - <AUTHOR> http://techpinions.com/put-a-fork-in-the-tablet-controversy/8165

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Although I tend to agree, it's worth considering one possible difference between cutlery and computing devices: cutlery may have very little usage overlap, and computing devices may have considerable usage overlap.

I actually use my notebook and tablet for reading (even the same content!), I actually use all devices for facebook, I actually use my phone and tablet for gaming, and so forth.

For some tasks, one device type is clearly superior to all others (notebook for typing, tablet for sketching). For many tasks though, clear superiority is hard to establish, or is heavily context dependent.

Ultimately, Steve had it right - for the iPad to succeed, it had to be clearly better for some important things. Strong separation of uses is not required.

</comment><comment><USER3> The iPad is succeeding because of a 10 hour battery life with wireless and a capacitance screen with an easy to use on screen keyboard. It was like Microsoft's Oragami project but worked for under $500. Android tablets can't beat it because now that platform has to duplicate the ease of use at the same price point, something which it has been unable to do.</comment>


Show HN: Website Load Tester/Crawler Electron App - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/varubi/load-have-mercy <comment><AUTHOR> Still in the early stages, but I am creating it to identify problematic areas on sites. By design it also only makes requests to URLS that would need to be generated, basically excluding images, css, js etc.

</comment><comment><USER2> How do I execute this ? npm run/build/dev didn't work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh my bad, I have electron installed globally and then in the project root directory I run

electron .

I'll have to update the devDependencies and read me later.</comment></comment>


Version Control Operating System - <AUTHOR> http://andrewfong.wordpress.com/2009/12/22/version-control-the-operating-system/ <comment><USER2> OpenSolaris does a lot of nifty things in this area. Closest to this is their Image Packaging System: <http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+pkg/WebHome>

Check out the links to Zones (sandboxes) and ZFS (filesystem with cloning/snapshots) at the top if you aren't familiar with them too.

While most of the heavy lifting for something like this would happen at the operating system level, you also want to rewrite/fix up many apps to be aware of what's going on. One of the big lessons from BaseShield was that these abstractions are very leaky. Things get confusing to users fast when all apps don't necessarily see the same view of the filesystem. If you want to see this sandboxing/contained apps thing done right, look at the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you familiar with GoboLinux? <http://www.gobolinux.org/>

It does the self-contained packaging you prefer. So if you install version 1.2.3 of a program Foo, it'll go in /Programs/Foo/1.2.3/ . Yopu can also have multiple versions of the same program, e.g. /Programs/Foo/2.1.0/ as well, if different packages depend on different versions of other packages.

<comment><USER4> GoboLinux is really quite nifty, but are they still doing that thing where they try and selectively hide the normal linux filesystem structure?

I approve of their goals, the method just seemed cracktastic.

<comment><USER5> Gobohide is an _optional_ kernel extension which is purely for aesthetic reasons.

<http://www.gobolinux.org/index.php?page=at_a_glance>

 _You may have noticed that the Unix paths did not show up in the system root listing in the very first example. They are actually there, but they are concealed from view using the GoboHide kernel extension. This is for aesthetic purposes only and purely optional, though: GoboLinux does not require modifications in the kernel or any other system components._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A versioning file system (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Versioning_file_system>) is not a new idea-- some old OS's, like ITS and VMS, had them. One of the biggest repeated bones of contention in the old Unix-Haters' Handbook was in fact Unix's lack of versioning.

</comment><comment><USER7> "I like to download things, but I also like the idea of being able to use multiple machines and have everything — my settings, files, and apps all sync up intelligently. Download an MP3 on one computer and listen to it on another. Version control lets you do that."

No, synchronization lets you do that. Version control lets you maintain history about the changes to a file or set of files. They are very different things. Live Mesh, for instance, gives a great sync experience that is pretty much exactly what the poster says he wants, but doesn't have history.

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but I feel version control is a much needed component when you have syncing. When you multiple versions flying around, you inevitably have a merging accident / older file overriding the newer one somehow. Being able to rewind is then your friend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mac OS X has implemented a lot of clever things in this area for a long time.

There's the obvious case of user applications being self-contained bundles, which works because nobody ever links against anything not provided with the system by Apple.

The really interesting part is the operating system ships with multiple independent versions of the SDK libraries, and the developer tools ship with several independent sets of headers for them. An application that was built against the 10.4u or 10.5 SDK will run against those libraries even on 10.6.

<comment><AUTHOR> Another interesting question would be which of the OS design aspects of the iPhone are going to be ported back to desktop OS X.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Things I'd like rolled into an OS:

\- version control + mini database in file system. \- forward and backward debugging. \- HTML rendering windowing system ( _not_ a browser but the guts needed for a browser among other things of stuff, something like XUL). \- Safe, fast Javascript interpreter. \- The usual unix-y networking and such but cleaned up a la perl. \- Fast, safe sandbox for low-level stuff

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like a combination of FS-level VC (implemented several times) and GoboLinux or Zero-Install (probably more Zero-Install.)

<comment><USER11> Talking of Gobo and 0install - I am surprised nobody has mentioned Nix (<http://nixos.org/>).

The aspect of Nix which is relevant to "versioned OS" is the package configuration database which can be snapshotted (<http://lwn.net/Articles/337677/> ).

 _In this approach, the static parts of a configuration —software packages, configuration files, control scripts— are built from pure functions, i.e., the results depend solely on the specified inputs of the function and are immutable. As a result, realising a system configuration becomes deterministic and reproducible. Upgrading to a new configuration is mostly atomic and doesn't overwrite anything of the old configuration, thus enabling rollbacks._

I recently wanted to install the same configuration as my Ubuntu laptop, on a desktop. The thread to list manually-installed packages in Ubuntu is huge and has no deterministic answer. Perhaps, a manager like Nix could have accorded me this flexibility.

<comment><USER12> There are some great comments in that LWN article, and I encourage everyone here to read them.

For reference, here are a couple of relevant links to some similar package and configuration managers:

vesta: <http://www.vestasys.org>

store: <http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~arnej/store/storedoc.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like you're describing plan9?

<comment><USER14> I'm totally taken with Fossil: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_(file_system)> \- which versions the filesystem.

Does Plan 9 cover any of the other things he discusses?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm aware of the peril of submitting my own stuff to HN, but I figured this was the fastest way to get some feedback.

</comment><comment><USER15> cloudlets [1] experiments with versioning an entire filesystem, but it's server-centric (disclosure: I'm the author).

[1] <http://bitbucket.org/dotcloud/cloudlets></comment>


Show HN: MIT DeepTraffic 75.01 MPS Solution - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gsurma/deep_traffic <comment><USER2> The .js file is not readable, I am interested in seeing the architecture that lead to the solution. It seems that much of the file is model weights.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point.

I put the weights into a separate file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is the net.js file the MPS solution?

<comment><AUTHOR> My mistake - it's miles per hour, MPH.</comment></comment>


How Nonsense Sharpens the Intellect - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/health/06mind.html

<comment><USER2> "Still, the new research supports what many experimental artists, habitual travelers and other novel seekers have always insisted: at least some of the time, disorientation begets creative thinking."

It's interesting that anomalies, events or things that don't fit our expectations or match patterns that we are familiar with increase our pattern matching and sensemaking efforts. I wonder if some aspect of "flow" is the continual reduction of uncertainty/confusion.</comment>


Ask HN: Where have you decided to move your Parse apps? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I will give a chance to parseground.com looks nice

P.S Join Parse Open Source Community on Slack bit.ly/1SxTVIi

</comment><comment><USER3> kinto works like a charm for me and i prefer hosting everything myself

AFAIK, facebook open sourced parse server</comment>


Is Tesla's Model S a good investment as a company car? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.euranova.eu/2014/07/test-tesla-model-s

<comment><USER2> "Investments" are something you expect to appreciate or create value. As much as I like cars, there is no way a Tesla qualifies as an investment. (I've driven a couple of Tesla's; love 'em.)</comment>