Farewell Foursquare - <AUTHOR> http://marsbot.tumblr.com/post/36814339883/farewell-foursquare <comment><USER3> Off-topic: Ha, I like the detail of it starting from meetings at Think Coffee (in Manhattan). I can hardly ever sit down there anymore and not overhear startup talk.

More off-topic: If you need a distraction this morning, here's an NYT article about why Think Coffee is enormously popular among South Koreans: [http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/a-coffee- shop-a...](http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/21/a-coffee-shop-as-seen- on-tv-becomes-a-must-see-for-south-koreans/)

<comment><USER4> I always met at Think and never really thought of it as a startup place, just one that is convenient. But now that you mention it I do run into all the startup folks there now. Good stuff, though they stopped serving lemonade :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I personally use Foursquare for nothing more than tracking my travels. Initially, I checked into places just so that I could go back and look at my Foursquare history to remember where I was and when I was there.

Then I realized that I should be archiving that data off-site and plotting it on a map for my readers to see. So I wrote a Python script (i.e., hacked together a Python script) that reads my Foursquare history KML feed every 30 minutes and then appends the data to a master KML file on my web server. I then use a plugin called jKMLMap to show my travels on a Google map on my site: <http://raamdev.com/travels/#map>

I think Foursquare has (had?) huge potential. The digital and the physical world are coming together and apps like Foursquare allow us to connect the two. The trick, as is the trick for any startup, is to figure out how you can monetize such a bridge. I thought the idea of allowing businesses to give away coupons for checking in or becoming the mayor was a great idea, but that's subject to abuse and I'm not sure how that makes Foursquare any money.

If Foursquare improved on features that allowed businesses to incentivize using Foursquare, and made such incentives worthwhile to patrons as well as businesses (product reviews, service reviews, maybe a way for patrons to offer suggestions to business owners for improving business, etc.), then I think Foursquare could save themselves, maybe by charging businesses for offering such features once there's a demand for them by users.

</comment><comment><USER6> The most surprising for me in this post was to learn that Foursquare apparently has 150 employees. It's an incredible contrast to the low revenues of $2M this year. [1]

[1]: [http://mashable.com/2012/11/21/foursquare- revenue-2-million-...](http://mashable.com/2012/11/21/foursquare- revenue-2-million-2012/)

<comment><USER7> News about Foursquare has been pretty bleak lately. I tried using it to find restaurants but their search results page was a disaster on mobile: tiny text and it wouldn't allow zooming in. They just updated the Android app but it has a bunch of reviews along the lines of "doesn't work": [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joelapenna...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.joelapenna.foursquared&hl=en) All this when they apparently have only 20M users, which seems low for how long they've been around.

Any HNers with an optimistic view, and/or use Foursquare and think it's awesome?

<comment><USER8> I use it fairly religiously and love it. I like the nearby updates for adhoc meetings with friends and - because close friends of mine also use it - <USER2> provides a nice way to estimate full party arrival. And it has a lot of Amex $5 off deals. I've probably saved $100 on those. I also use it to find nearby pubs and such when in unfamiliar cities.

And, of course, I still like earning new badges.

edit for additional note:

If you have friends that use it heavily while on tours it is fun to track their travels. Follow an entire band or tv crew on tour and get anecdotes from different personalities live updated as they travel - it's like a _real_ reality show in small doses.

<comment><USER9> If you like the savings from check ins, have a look at our connected app, GeoPerks (<http://4sq.com/Q8uIW3>). You get replies to checkins at venues where you have membership discounts and rewards (e.g. AAA, museum memberships, student discounts, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Four-year vest, early December 2008 and all? :P

</comment><comment><USER11> TIL: Square is not what Foursquare had pivoted to.

(I seriously thought Foursquare turned into Square as the news is full of Square and I had not heard anything about Foursquare until now.)

</comment><comment><USER12> The thing that's most surprising to me is that their design team seems to have lost a lot of key staff recently--and it's not a huge team right now.[1]

Mari Sheibley's work was a huge part of defining the culture/visual tone of 4sq early on. Interesting to see where they go from here.

[1]:[http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/27/ex-foursquare-designers- foc...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/27/ex-foursquare-designers-focus-on- sunrise-want-you-to-do-more-with-your-calendar/)</comment>


Ask HN: How to Handle Argumentative Developers? - <AUTHOR> You probably all know the drill. An engineer with strong opinions on anything and everything. Product, business, sales, ops, stack, roadmap – they have to have to understand and agree on every little detail before they're onboard. As a leader, you want them to be onboard, you want them to see, and you want them to be happy – but you don't want to spend eighty percent of your day arguing with them to get there.<p>What's the fix? I know to fire them. I know how to not go into arguments and keep the friction slow burning. I have no clue how actually solve it. <comment><USER2> This is the time to have a conversation about their role in the organization. They have opinions, sure, are those opinions argumentative by themselves probably not.

Most engineers want to know the why's. If there in the dark on the big picture it can impact the overall results as they make wrong choices in design and architecture if they don't know.

The conversation needs to be about their career path, and the aspirations. If they're a good engineer, maybe they want to be more. Maybe their ideas are sound and they are being ignored which leads to frustration and more friction because they have insights of a problem you don't see or are blind to.

I would suggest scheduling this first conversation, then daily or weekly 1:1 sync meetings. Keep them in the loop and feeling they are valued members of your team.

After you have reset your rapport with them. Listen to them, reinforce you have their back and part of the team. Delegate some responsibility through stewardship make them the owner of something. Let them succeed or fail.

If they still exhibit the same behavior, and can't handle what you delegated to them, then it's time for them to go.

Don't loose a talent because you labeled them with a "communication issue". The issue may be you are not listening or effectively communicating the direction or tone.

It also sounds from you post and described issue, is a result from your management style and possibly being a micro-manager. I could be wrong, but that is what I inferred.

</comment><comment><USER3> This problem is psychological and you cannot solve it. When I have seen this, it was rooted in a type of societal insecurity where the person feels the need to control - just as your behavior is being controlled. You will do what they want, or they will refuse to work.</comment>


Ask HN: How to Find Artists for Mobile Game? - <AUTHOR>

If you are working on an indie game for iOS/Android, where would you go about finding and hiring a graphic artist?
I feel like most of the good artists already work for existing game studios. Is there an HN for independent game artists, where I can post a job listing / contract?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Odesk isn't a place for quality artists. If you are not confident in your ability to identify professional artists from amateurs than I would not advice you to go through odesk.

conceptart.org is a good go to community to concept artists. The community here generally stride for realistically rendered artworks. However, in the recent years this website became flooded with more newcomers and students. It may take you a while to sift them through.

polycount is a good go to community for 3d production artists. There's actually a good amount on top industry professionals who are active in this forum.

Deviant art is the largest community by user count. But you're more likely to find a mix bag of talent here. If you're looking for more anime / stylized art, this would be a good place to start.

Behance is mostly concentrated with graphic designers / motion graphic artists. So you can look for UI related talent here.

A source I would recommend is CGHUB (www.cghub.com). It's now the most active community among industry professionals.

What kind of game are you making. If you provide a little more detail I may be able to help you pinpoint where to begin looking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

Still in the (very early) planning stages. I was thinking a board game. I like the art styles and color palettes of games like Kingdom Rush and Hero Academy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One good source is Behance (behance.net). A lot of good game artists have profiles and portfolios on there. You can message them directly or post a job for applicants.

Odesk (odesk.com) also has game artists, although the quality is all over the map. You can post a job description and review the portfolios of the artists that respond to find a good fit. They allow you to do a short "working interview" project, too, where you have the artist spend an hour or two creating a piece or two of your game art so you can see how well they will execute your vision, how they are to work with, how fast they can produce, etc.

I haven't used twitter to find game artists before, but I'd image if you look for the right hash tags, you could send out a request for available game artists and get some responses from available folks.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Behance looks good. Thanks for the tip!

I'd rather avoid generic contracting/freelance sites, as I feel like the quality would be "all over the map" as you say.

I'd prefer looking for artist communities, especially if they have forums that talk about iOS/Android game art.

<comment><USER3> No problem. Although I think Behance is probably better for your purposes, you might also want to check out DeviantArt (deviantart.com). It's another pretty big artist community, although I'm not sure how many game artists are on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Go to conceptart.org, establish an account, enter the job listings and employment forum, read the stickies so you know how they want ads structures, and then post accordingly. There are quite a few amazing artists on that site looking for a chance to work on a real project. Some of them are amateurs trying to break into the industry, some are seasoned veterans that have worked for major game publishers. I'm sure you will find something within your budget.

Deviant art has some talented artists, but conceptart.org is where most of it's serious members end up.

There are a few other similar forums, but I can't remember what they are. Maybe there's some other artists on HN that can name them.

<http://www.conceptart.org>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Awesome site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Check out <http://www.polycount.com>. Its a community of VERY talented artists dedicated to game art. Most of the people make 3D models for current/next gen console games, but there are a bunch that do mobile (both 2D and 3D). Some of the best artists on the internet that also have experience and passion for games.

</comment><comment><USER6> I would probably go for odesk. Tried it before, saved a lot of money but choosing the right person to do the job is critical.</comment>


Harnessing technology to make zero-hours culture less exploitative - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/apr/16/one-mans-quest-to-meld-adam-smith-and-marx-by-creating-an-uber-for-jobs <comment><USER2> This article is pure propaganda. Look at the "flavoring" in it, it's sneering, snotty, and has strong indications of being dishonest:

> a man from McKinsey insisted that "while it isn't politically correct to say > so", the one thing that the workforce needed to rediscover was discipline.

Note what is in quotes and what isn't in this sentence. The "offensive" bit is left out of quotes so the reporter can pretend like he didn't lie about what was said, but the quotes over the first part implies that the speaker is ashamed (About the lie the reporter is about to tell) and gives the impression-- no, _makes the claim_ \-- that this whole thing is an actual quote.

This is the kind of stuff that causes articles to lose all credibility, and it's not like the guardian has much to begin with. Other than the snowden revelations they've been printing thinly veiled propaganda for years.

<comment><USER3> The article I read before this one was Paul Graham's "The Submarine"[0], so I too was highly suspicious.

[0] [http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I may be missing something, but I'm really not seeing the Marx side of "Marx meets Adam Smith" here.

It sounds much more like 'If we embrace Moloch more than everyone else, maybe it'll be kind to us!".</comment>


How People Used to Download Games from the Radio - <AUTHOR> http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2014/10/13/people-used-download-games-radio <comment><USER2> Yarghh! That reminds me of 'downloading programs from computer magazines' back in the 80s by entering hexadecimal numbers into RAM locations while trying to read memory dumps printed in smudgy, miniscule fonts on low-quality paper.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I get $2.2M dollars? - <AUTHOR> I've decided that the optimal path I want in life is $2.2 million dollars, and then to live the rest of my life off of the interest generated from an index fund (approx $80K/year after tax).
Right now I'm in college studying Computer Science, and in my free time I write (I'm not any good at either yet, but now's the time to get good, so I'm not worried).
I've thought about a start-up, but the risk and reward are both too high. A successful startup is around the $10 million to $1 billion, depending on what you create. This is way over my goal. I'm sure the risk is proportional to the potential money earned, so it'd be inefficient to overshoot my target. <comment><USER3> I'm surprised no one has mentioned this, but if you want to attain your goal, you're basically swearing off having a serious relationship.

It's very rare for you to meet someone serious about saving money. Before you know it, they're complaining that you never do anything even though you have plenty of money (relatively).

Are you sure you won't want a relationship? You're young enough that within a decade you'll be a completely different person. It doesn't seem that way now, but a decade is a massive force.

There are other things you'll be giving up: Pets, for example, are quite expensive. Sinking $3k into an electronics hobby is also rewarding. You'll also be buying everything second-hand if you're really serious about saving, and it's hard not to become frustrated with all of the poor-quality things in your life.

And then before you know it, your youth will be gone. Time is more valuable than money.

Just think carefully about your goals. It's easy to set a lofty aim, like becoming a doctor, and then set yourself on a trajectory you may regret.

<comment><USER4> > you're basically swearing off having a serious relationship.

Ha! What nonsense. It is cheaper for two people to live together, to cook together, to go on holiday together, to travel together, to game together, to invest together...

I'm struggling to think of anything that isn't cheaper when done as a couple. Even if you find the cheapest living space possible - it becomes a lot cheaper if someone else is contributing 50% of the costs.

<comment><USER5> Couples have this tendency to produce children, which tend to come with additional costs.

<comment><USER6> Couples also have a tendency to use something called a contraceptive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1\. Get a programming job with decent salary.

2\. Live far below your means, saving most of your salary.

If you can live with less than 80K you will (A) save faster (B) need to save less money.

See [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly- sim...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math- behind-early-retirement/)

Also, you're young, so you may find you have different life choices in the end. Saving money is always a good plan, but there's other paths to having a life and a job (I cover them all in my book: [https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/](https://codewithoutrules.com/saneworkweek/)).

</comment><comment><USER8> Build something:

2,200,000 = Delivering $1 of value to 2.2mi people. Just play with that numbers until you can figure out something that you can build that fits into that model....

$1 of value to 2.4mi people (in a year) // (i fudged the number to make the math easier)

$1 of value to 200k people a month

$2 of value to 100k people a month

$3 of value to 75k people a month

$4 of value to 50k people a month

$8 of value to 25k people a month

$16 of value to 12.5k people a month

$32 of value to 6.25k people a month

...

The tricky part is figuring out what people want to pay for.

There are also abstractions to this... like advertising... An average cpm is $2.80. So you'd have to get ~$3 of value from 75k people a month (if they viewed 1000 pages/mo each).. or 75mi page views a month would get you 2.2mi a year.

<comment><USER9> Building something actually drastically reduces the requirements. OP stated $2.2MM to live off of the interest ($80k/yr); put it another way, OP wants a passive income stream of $80k/yr, which can come from $2.2MM invested via the 4% withdrawal rule.

In the case of building something, that replaces the need for $2.2M in capital, which means the 75mm page views/mo reduces down to 2.7mm views/mo, or in the case of the SaaS business, looks something like:

$1 of value to 80,000 people / year

$1 of value to 6,667 people / mo

$5 of value to 1,334 people / mo

$6.67 of value to 1,000 people / mo

$10 of value to 666 people / mo

The key insight is that $7/mo (in perpetuity) from your "1,000 true fans" gives OP the lifestyle he/she is hoping for.

<comment><USER10> The problem with this is that no service is likely to maintain that level of profit indefinitely in the way that $2.2m of capital will.

In fact, it might be easier to build one product that millions of users pay $1/year for a few years than it would to get $1/year from 80,000 till one's death.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The best way to get a ton of money, really quickly, with little risk is to go work for one of the big 5 tech companies.

Google, FB, ect pay 150k+ total compensation to new graduates and can quickly rise to 300k+ for "senior developers" with 4-5 years of experience.

I'm not really sure how much higher it goes after that, once your are promoted higher than a "senior developer". But it is probably a lot. And I am NOT exaggerating on those previously mentioned salary numbers.

</comment><comment><USER12> The simplest advice* people can give you without predicting the future can be found here : [https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/01/08/46...](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/01/08/462250239/when- an-index-card-of-financial-tips-isnt-enough-this-book-is-there)

Basically: Get awesome grades, get a top offer, jump ship when you can earn 15% more elsewhere (and its not a down step job), Save at least 20% of your gross salary into some kind of index ETF/fund, live way below your means, wait 10+ yrs.

* Assuming you're in the USA

<comment><USER13> You also need to graduate from a recognized top university or have to get really lucky.

Whoops, now you have some hundreds thousand of student loan.

Unless you studied abroad in a country with free education.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> start and sell a million dollar business 2.2 times

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll tell you what my plan is. It will vary from your plan because we're different people and I'm in the UK.

1\. Don't have children. They're probably the biggest expense that you'll ever have.

2\. Find a partner who also doesn't want kids. Everything is cheaper when you're a couple.

3\. Loyalty doesn't pay the bills. Whether it is your phone supplier or your employer - if someone is offering a better deal, take it.

4\. Your equity in a start-up is worthless. Even on the chance that it does take off, there are some very clever accountants out there who will make sure you don't get much.

5\. Remember Citizen Kane. "Well, it's no trick to make a lot of money...if all you want is to make a lot of money." At some point the quest for riches will be harmful to you. Make sure you have a release valve.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER15> You can find inspiration here: [https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/)

</comment><comment><USER16> You forgot a key variable in your equation: WHEN?

When do you want to retire with this $2.2M? That might guide your investment choices. Sounds like you might want to take some financial/econ classes as well ;P

</comment><comment><USER17> Don't get sucked into the idea that "startup" means VC funded startup with high risk, multi-year investment of your time. Consider bootstrapping many "utility" startups with the aim of getting 1-2 that have an aggregate value of $2.2M and that, as assets, will provide > $80K in revenue versus $80K in interest, which amounts to the same thing practically speaking.

I think the math in valuing these things is tricky but just for the sake of this conv let's say you want to create assets that produce $160K in income/year (to offset for the fact that these assets might only produce value for a few years or require additional investment down the road). That means you need assets that produce $13K/mo. Which, honestly, is not much.

So ask yourself this, what is more fun, easier, and more likely, making $2.2M from a single big gamble? Scrimping your dev salary for 20 years working on someone else's dream? Or making 2-3 bets (apps/products) year for a 2-3 years where 1 or 2 turn into actual money makers? I think by following a strategy like this, by the time you are in your mid 20's you easily should be basically retired. There are a million little needs and still backward industries where people are willing to pay for some automation and/or convenience. Finding and scratching those itches is pretty satisfying IMO.

It is a very personal thing and obviously you need the few years of space to build these things without also worrying about how you are going to eat.

</comment><comment><USER18> Others have mentioned similar things, but there are a few things to consider.

Remember, $80k/year now may seem fine, but you have no idea what the future holds. First, you may average $80k/yr, but remember that volatility can be rough. If you got your $2.2m in 2007, you'd see losses for several years, and a decade before it recovered -- can you afford not to draw down on principle for a decade?

And then if you're aiming to live off of $80k/year, that's today's dollars. It sounds like you're pretty young (college), so if you're expecting to live another 60-80 years, you have to account for inflation. For example, if you had $100 in 1937, you'd need $1,666 today to have the same purchasing power[1]. If you do the same math going forward, you'll need $1.3m/year in 80 years to have the same purchasing power.

On top of that, there are other things to consider: having kids, unexpected costs, health care, rising taxes, etc. As has been posted even here on HN recently, a wealth tax would almost certainly blow your plans up in a big way. And if you have kids, they're not going to qualify for financial aid, because you're a multi-millionaire! So you'll be in an interesting pickle there.

This isn't to say that you shouldn't aim for this goal, just wanted to mention some things to at least consider...

[1] [http://www.in2013dollars.com/1937-dollars- in-2016](http://www.in2013dollars.com/1937-dollars-in-2016)

</comment><comment><USER19> Start doing interships at companies that look good on your cv and pay well enough (Google, Facebook, etc). Get hired at one of these companies after you finished studying (or if you can see it catch one of the up and comming companies at the time). Invest as much as you can into stocks (and if you're adventurous a small fraction into the main crypto currencies). After 10-15 years you will have a pretty high chance of having $2M+ in your accounts (just 401k at e.g. Google will give you 416250 without any returns and after 15 years it's ~800k with 7% returns). Even if you enjoy your live you'll be able to have no problem getting there if you don't spend your money on stupid things like leasing/new cars or overly expensive vacations. Everything you save in the early years compounds so much that you'll likely have no problems spending much more after 5-10 years when really your investments start to bring in the same or more as your salary.

Startups are for lottery. So if you have saved a nice amount you can start playing it and see if you can get to the next level and get to 10M+. But otherwise big (and better companies on the way to get there) will be a much much safer bet.

</comment><comment> the-dude Start with a billion and create an airline.

</comment><comment><USER20> You work, you save, you make safe investments, and you wait.

Seems mostly like common sense, really. Regarding "over-shooting"\--the risk of startup-like-entities is manageable, particularly if it's a low-input resource.

Lower-risk passive-income projects don't necessarily bring in a lot of money, but they're largely no-input once the initial investment is made, and every little bit helps.

</comment><comment><USER21> If I got hit by a bus tomorrow - dying in the streets - I would not want to think about how I put 2.2 M$ in my savings account.

To get you started... you could try to think about the cliche "how to be the person selling shovels in the gold rush".

Write an online course on how you parametrized RNNs to predict Bitcoin markets. I got it to work well on predicting a certain low frequency event well with not too much effort. This resulted in 2~3 trade opportunities per day, making only very few $ each trade. So no luck in the gold rush but maybe not a bad shovel to sell?

Switch professions, maybe? 2.2M$ are not uncommon if you can wait a few years... Become a medical doctor and freelance across the country? Enter the middle management in any 200+ B$ company? Marry into a rich family? Low tier drug dealer in Europe (short prison times)? All of the above require working long/stressful hours over years. This brings me back to my first point: forget about the 2.2M and do s.th. you enjoy doing.

</comment><comment><USER22> Adding to what everyone else is saying, remember that $80k/year will be great for now, but if you're not letting the principal grow at all, you'll still only be getting $80k/year in 40 years, at which point it'll be a lot less useful

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I've considered this. Maybe in years where return exceeds 4%, you invest the excess.

<comment><USER23> I'm going to assume you mean 'in years when 4% exceeds $80k, leave the excess invested'. As the whole point of using 4% as a safe withdrawal rate is that it allows the good years to balance out the bad years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "live the rest of my life off of the interest"

You are still young but the people who live the longest and happiest are the ones with purpose.

While you didn't ask for an opinion on this, if I were you, I would first identify your true purpose. Maybe that purpose is playing tennis 5 times a week and reading books (I know I'd like that) and which case, your question above makes total sense. But maybe it's helping improve the life of others via biotechnology innovation. Who knows. Don't discount having purpose in this mystical thing we call life. I've seen what happens when people retire early and have no purpose - it can lead to the unhappiest time of your life.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice! There are a lot of things I kind of like, so I'm pursuing them more, hoping that one will stand out. We'll see how it goes!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> After you get 2.2 million, you say you can take $80K per year. So you're saying that you'll be able make 3.6% interest per year. I think that rate of return (after taxes and inflation) is reasonable. In my opinion, the best way to get this is to invest in the S&P 500 via a low cost ETF such as SPY. There are many different opinions on this point.

Assume you can get the same 3.6% rate of return while you are saving. Assume you save the same amount every year. How long will it take to get to $2.2M?

Save $10K per year - 62 years Save $20K per year - 45 years Save $30K per year - 37 years Save $40K per year - 31 years Save $50K per year - 27 years Save $60K per year - 24 years Save $70K per year - 22 years Save $80K per year - <USER2> years Save $90K per year - 18 years Save $100K per year - 17 years

But I suggest you look at the whole thing a different way. Start with your estimated salary. How can you have about the same amount of spending money while you are working and after you retire? (A lot of people say you need a little bit less money in retirement, so you can adjust for this.)

For example, assume you get a job with take home pay of $100K per year. If you save $20K per year, and work 45 years, you'll have $80K per year while you're working, and $80K per year in retirement. If you are able to save $30K per year for 34 years, you'll have $70K per year while you're working, and $70K per year in retirement.

I made a little spreadsheet, and came up with all the above numbers. It's not too hard to set up a small spreadsheet and play with these numbers yourself. I have some constants at the top - A1 has amount saved per year and B1 has interest rate, as a fraction, not a percent, 0.036. After that, each row of the spreadsheet has a different year, starting with year 0, balance 0. The first column is the year, for easy reference. The second column is the new balance. Old balance + (Old balance * interest rate) + Amount saved per year. Use $A$1 and $B$1 to refer to the constants at the top.

I ignore inflation to simplify things. Instead I use an after-inflation interest rate. These are all very rough estimates, after all. Who can really predict investment returns 20 years from now?

</comment><comment><USER26> [Random Remarks from the Internet]...because this sort of thought experiment is intoxicating.

\+ The scenario is based on applying the wrong capital allocation strategy at the wrong time. When you have 2200k dollars and you want to make it last, the important thing is capital preservation, not growth. Because growth can be negative and even positive average growth can be locally negative.

\+ Once you have 2200k dollars keeping it in your mattress rather than investing it will for growth provide 80k dollars/year for more than twenty- five years. Twenty-five years is a long time even if you're old.

\+ Assume the plan is to get to 2200k dollars in five years. This requires an after tax income of 484k dollars/year. And the discipline of living on 80k dollars/year while earning 6x that amount. In ten years it is 282k dollars/year with a 3x discipline. In twenty years it is 181k dollars per year with 2x discipline. That's still tough.

\+ The proposed plan does not reflect a discipline of spending only a small fraction of available yearly income. The proposed plan is 80k dollars/year in and 80k dollars/year out.

\+ More broadly the proposed plan's 80k per year does not strongly imply holding frugality as a principle virtue. It's about the top 1/8th of US incomes (before not after taxes). This suggests that status is playing a role alongside financial independence.

\+ 2200k dollars is an abstract X in an X -> Y problem if the goal is 80k dollars/year of passive income. There are more concrete X's in the X -> Y problem. For example twenty years US military service as an officer could come close to providing 80k dollars/year in retirement. It would still require discipline but not the 2x spending discipline.

\+ Not that I am suggesting a military career, only that it is a concrete plan with a reasonable chance of producing 80k dollars/year in twenty years. The downside of concrete plans is that they are less intoxicating.

\+ There's an old joke that the easiest way to make a small fortune is to start with a large fortune. That's why most people don't have a small fortune.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER27> I recommend a goal of creating a product and/or SaaS.

Listen to this for inspiration: @DHH Start Up School Talk [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY)

Great advice here: StartUpsForTheRestOfUs.com Listen to the archive you'll follow Rob from drop shipping beach towels to selling his SaaS for $XXM exit.

Since you're in college you have plenty of time to make this work and build a 'lifestyle' business that will allow you to get to $2.2M and maybe even have ongoing recurring revenue on top of that.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of people on HN talk about SaaS - why this route? It _seems_ passive, but then you have to maintain it and update it to the current needs of the market. Furthermore, unless you're a really technical mind and can do straight CS work, you have to completely understand the needs of a different field. Is this really the best way forward?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Assuming you want to do this with low risk by the time you're in your 40s, and that you're starting with a net worth of around $10K, you'll have to invest over $5K/month and generate an average rate of return of at least 5%/year. If you want to play around with the numbers, there are lots of investment calculators like this one: [http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/retirement/investment- go...](http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/retirement/investment-goal- calculator.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER29> Haha nice, I always like when people think this way because I've realized I only need so much money also and killing myself working to get more than that is pointless because I already know very well that money doesn't bring happiness by itself but having too little also leads to unhappiness. I have no idea what the answer is to your question but I'm going to be reading the comments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's quite freeing in a way, knowing that I don't want a billion dollars. Everyone wants to be rich, but by knowing _how rich_ , you can plan a lot better.

<comment><USER29> I think it can be a good way to size up a person too, I once was in talks with an entrepreneur who was working on a business and wanted to eventually hire me as a technical lead. He would keep mentioning how he wanted to make the company into a billion dollar company (at the time I think it had like $30k in revenue), of course it didn't work out. Setting realistic goals is very important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Treat startups as lottery tickets. That investment risk class is way too high for your goal. A high salary and saving will get you there.

</comment><comment><USER31> There is a subreddit dedicated to this idea [0]. There is lots of good content there to go through.

[0] reddit.com/r/financialindepdence

</comment><comment><USER32> the problem with living on a fixed income is some big unexpected inflationary event.

This happened to my parents in the 70s. They retired in the early 70s and then BOOM inflation went nuts and what was a comfortable retirement turned into subsistence.

doesn't seem likely anytime soon, but it is still a risk.

<comment><USER6> I don't see why this would be an issue, as you still have the principal, and such events can be amortized into the adjusted "income" you pay yourself out with.

<comment><USER13> Because say you remain with say 40k/y (instead of 80k/y) of value in the principal in addition to reduced compounding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "interest generated from an index"

Who generates the interest? You're saying you want to live off other peoples hard work and creativity for the rest of your days. To do that fairly, you need to be thinking how you can contribute a lifetime of value in a short period of time.

</comment><comment><USER34> I created [https://bitbank.nz](https://bitbank.nz) providing live crypto forecasts.

I havn't reached that amount but in terms of income... You don't need to build a 10M+ business, just one with a 80k a year income rate, which is fairly achievable.

I only just launched it, i have negligible traffic and we are already getting about 1 customer every week, each customer pays .03 Bitcoin for 3 months ~300 usd perhaps the lifetime value may be 1000 usd if they continue, i'm sure there will be some churn but its fairly achievable that in a few years we will have atleast 80 paying customers.

I'm currently reinvesting the money that comes in into marketing/improving the business and into trading the cryptocurrency markets with the product to validate that its got value for our customers, its not too hard to double your money every few weeks using a high leverage trading platform like bitmex, or something like poloniex if you pick the right coins with our forecasts :)

I built the product in between my day job at Weta Digital.

You can do the same!

Also checkout our referral program where you can earn .003btc every paying user :)

The Sooner you get your business/secondary income stream off the ground the sooner you'll hit your financial freedom goals, with running a business you build trust/authority and traffic over time through many sources and the sooner you start the easier it will be, i started bitbank.nz as just a ghost blog about cryptocurrency trading about a year ago to get something out and eventually snowballed into doing things in a more advanced way, now the company is benefiting from the odd blog post i writ a year ago,

Keep doing things that don't scale and hitting 80k year on year is very reasonable, you don't need to have hockey stick growth or be unicorn level, you should be happy to run a business that would never get funded because your aiming for 80k and not the moon.

</comment><comment><USER35> Buy Bitcoin and wait a year...

<comment><USER36> ... a year ago.

<comment><USER37> Or now.

<comment><USER13> To get these returns, BTC would have to appreciate 100x in value and you would still need those 200k$. While it has done this before, past returns are no guarantee of future returns. If you want to finance the 200k$ with debts... well... the percentage can kill you, or require you to or in a sizable chunk of income to pay it off. (Mortgages in some cheaper places in US are this size. )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> _> >How do I get $2.2M dollars?_

Get $3.5m and give away $1.3m. You'll have exactly what you asked for.

If you get atop job, salary plus options you could do it. Of course, unless you spend it.

</comment><comment><USER39> The way for me is the stock market - building trading robots, this is the way to get your FU money and believe me it is well worth it and it is the ultimate freedom in life...

I would recommend starting with Interactive Brokers or similar API (it is free), small linux VPS, some data for back testing and off you go, for around $100 you can start + a lot of time of course... Start by testing any trading strategy you can fin on the net for free, they will fail, but you'll observe why and one day you will find your own edge...

<comment><AUTHOR> I've considered going into this with neural nets - given your bio it seems you have some experience. But is this viable with a low amount of starting funds? If I programmed a .51 optimal crypto trading bot, it'd take a long time for my money to grow.

<comment><USER39> Crypto is too risky for me: the market is tiny, lot of hacks and crooks, not regulated/no government protection and probably manipulated...

For the money, yes, to make money you need money, e.g. trading with less than 6 digits account is not going to make a difference and for sure it will take time, this is not a get rich quick gimmick...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Read reddit.com/r/financialindependence for more ideas, but the gist of it is what itamarst says.

</comment><comment><USER41> Why do you wish to stop working once you reach your goal? How do you intend to spend your time?

<comment><AUTHOR> Um, I just like doing my own thing more than doing what other people want from me. Maybe running my own business is the best foot forward.

This is a good question, and I'm going to keep thinking about it.

<comment><USER42> How would you describe your "own thing"? What does a day look like when you're living off the 80k interest? Be as specific as possible.

I have a lot of experience in this area. (Obsessed about retirement from about age 22, and set a goal for 30. Did it.) This is a very important question to ponder at the beginning. :)

I should probably add why I'm asking this question. I thought all those years I was working my ass off, missing out on so many things in life, and destroying my marriage over this goal that I needed to have the money first THEN realize my dreams. If your dreams are "freedom" and "doing my own thing" you probably don't need $2.2 million to do them today. But I don't know what they are, so that's why I asked. Sure, if your dream is to buy Ferraris and pop expensive champagne every night, you really do need that money.

Mine or more simple: traveling practically full time, getting a farm and building crazy inventions on it, etc. I really didn't need a lot of money to do either of these things. For example there are sites like workaway.info where you can go live and work on a farm, or on a beautiful vineyard in France, or in a cool hotel in the tropics, etc. TODAY.

There are similar resources for travelers.

For anything I could imagine wanting back then, I could've easily achieved by being a little resourceful, creative, and reaching out to those who could help me in exchange for my skills/talents.

Bottom line is, you would be amazed at the life you can live outside the mainstream economy. I think it's one of the best kept secrets in the world.

I don't regret how I did things entirely, but thinking about this very carefully in the beginning would've saved me a whole lot of heartache and distress.

I'm excited for you and wish you the very best.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm saving this under my important quotes folder, because it's something I'm going to need to think about a lot. Thanks for the insight!

<comment><USER42> My pleasure. I'm here if you need to bounce some ideas around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> In my very limited experience from what I have seen:

build a company and then sell it.

</comment><comment><USER44> Something like 15 years at one of the mjors should do the trick.

</comment><comment><USER45> Find a niche problem, solve it

</comment><comment><USER46> Don't marry :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I think marriage helps give life some sort of meaning, and from a pragmatic standpoint, two salaries and a permanent roommate for life. So it might actually make more sense _to_ marry.

<comment><USER29> You can do everything that a marriage entails without the legal contract that gives someone else leverage over everything you own.

<comment><USER47> This is why am not married. Signing a legally binding contact to say I will be with someone forever is as ridiculous as it sounds. You can just live that way and do 99.9% of what a married couple does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Honestly? Just master data structures, get competing offers at FB and Google, make 350-400k a year, invest heavily and aggressively, retire in 7 or 8 years

<comment><AUTHOR> Why data structures?

<comment><USER11> When he says "data structures" he actually means "interview questions".

Data structures and algorithms interview questions are the only thing that Google and FB care about.

<comment><USER49> I can imagine an UI designer coming in for an interview. ...yeah I want you to invert a binary tree.

<comment><USER11> You joke about that, but I had a friend who interviewed for a developer Evangelist role at Google, and literally the only stuff that they were asked was algorithms questions.

Yeah, it was a 50% technical role, but Google didn't care about the OTHER 50% of the job at all...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> So you will need to generate 3.6% on your 2.2 million to take 80k a year. No idea what your tax rate is so i cant comment on how far out i am here.

I doubt you can consistently make that kind of return year in, year out. Accounting for 2% inflation its looking even worse.

There is a pretty good discussion here which expands further - [https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/5xmr3y/does_anyo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/5xmr3y/does_anyone_live_off_their_dividends/)

<comment><USER51> The S&P 500 has an inflation-adjusted yearly average return of about 7%. 4% is a generally agreed-upon "safe" percentage if aiming to live off that amount.</comment></comment>


More info on graphene (1 atom thick sheets of carbon) - <AUTHOR> http://onnes.ph.man.ac.uk/nano/

<comment><USER2> oh man, check out that floating frog ;-) bring on the jellybird gel (extra points for naming that movie) <http://www.hfml.ru.nl/pics/Movies/frog.mpg></comment>


Ask HN: A high level language that compiles to VBA ? - <AUTHOR>

I don't have a lot of background in computer science (4 years), but it seems to me that recently, we saw some new languages coming alive.I just heard of Elixir which is built on top of the Erlang VM. Scala is a little bit older (2003) and targets JAVA VM. Clojure(2007) targeting JAVA VM and being compilable to javascript, seems to be a really clever move.
Javascript rising popularity have triggered the rise of transpilers that targets that language.
My point is that designing high level language that transpiles to another seems to be a pretty active field. I guess that tools to do so have evolved in the recent history (I actually would be interested to know about the state of the art, any resources are very welcome). Leveraging an existing platform by adding concept-comprehension at the syntactic level (i'm thinking of list comprehension, for example) seems to add productivity at no cost, no trade-off (?)
OK now, the real topic.
In my opinion, VBA is as annoying to write as it is present in the industry. A lot of companies rely on it (I'm working in the financial industry, so mainly VBA for Excel).
A lot of people uses VBA, a lot of people already have that tool, and struggle to use it,and still use it. VBA allows you to do what you want to do, but I don't think it is optimal to directly write VBA.
I think of it as a telegraph line: the network is already there, Morse code allows you to write anything you want, but it a PITA to work with. Build a tool that automatically encodes and decodes what's on the channel and you're on the internet (OK, oversimplifying here).
Can't we put excitement back in VBA technology by hiding it ? I'm sure we have tools to make it happen.
I really would love to have developer's opinion on that. If you think that nobody has ever been that wrong, please include enlightenments. <comment><USER2> This question comes across as rather meandering, and I wasn't sure what you wanted. As far as I can tell, you've asked only one question: "Can't we put excitement back in VBA technology by hiding it ?"

No. That is, why should it? You can write native components as a DLL using OLE Automation, and Microsoft wants people to use .NET. Why target VBA when you can target C#?

"it seems to me that recently, we saw some new languages coming alive" \- That's a sign of your inexperience with the field. Transpiling has been around for a long time, and is a frequent way to boostrap a new language. For example, the cfront implementation of C++ used to compile to C, and many Eiffel languages do the same.

For one of the most advanced projects, see PyPy, which is a system for producing JITs for different language front-ends (the most popular is Python) and backends (the most popular is x86 but Javascript is also possible).

<comment><AUTHOR> 'why should it?' because VBA feels horribly wrong to write, at the opposite of intuition. One can say that this is just my own opinion, but i would be curious to talk to somebody that thinks 'it's like VBA reads my mind!'. When I I switched to coffeescript and less, I wasn't even unsatisfied with js and CSS. But, writing it, I always think they took productivity a step forward. If you can avoid writing things that are implicit, it lowers the probability of faulty code. it saves you time and pain. that is just smart.

You mention dlls, C#, PyPy ... those are big tools for writing whole projects. They implicitly request the use of an IDE for the compilation/linking steps. This is definitely not the solution i,'m looking for.

<comment><USER2> I can't reconcile "it's like VBA reads my mind" with the goal, since it wouldn't be VBA; it would be another language which compiles to VBA.

CoffeeScript isn't "Javascript that reads your mind." Scala isn't "Java that reads your mind."

CoffeeScript had some difficulties, for that matter. It wasn't until CoffeeScript 1.6.1 that there was a way, in collaboration with browsers which support source maps, to get error line numbers relative to the CoffeeScript source instead of the intermediate Javascript.

Any language which isn't VB but which compiles to VB will have the same problems - how do you report report run-time errors in a way that your users can understand them?

There's similar problems with debugging. How do you step through your source? How do you inspect intermediate values? These are things that VBA supports, but your language won't be able to support.

You might end up with a great language design that ends up taking more time to implement in because it isn't debuggable.

Regarding PyPy, the reason I mentioned it was in context of "I actually would be interested to know about the state of the art [in designing high level language that transpiles to another], any resources are very welcome." PyPy is state of the art for that, if you want a JIT.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you mean that PyPy is a state of the art transpiled language? Actually I was looking for state of the art tools that helps designing/implementing languages.

I have come across CoffeeScript's annotated source, on their website, and I'm definitely going to digg deep in this documentation.

I also might get more information on the difficulties that appeared at the creation of CoffeeScript, as you say.

Although, I am thinking about a language that compiles to VBA, meaning it produces visible VBA, and that VBA would be debuggable I guess.

<comment><USER2> I mean that RPython toolchain of PyPy is a language implementation platform. It has multiple back ends. The most common is x86, but one of the more experimental backends is Javascript. There are several languages implemented in PyPy. The most well known is Python, but Ruby, Prolog, and others exist.

Thus, PyPy is a transpiler from, say, Python to Javascript, etc.

LLVM is another such tool. It supports an asm.js backend, which gives quite good performance in modern Javascript engines. The end result is that you can compile C and other languages into Javascript. See, for example, the Doom port for the browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I suspect that the problem here would be that VBA in Excel is all about the environment (of Excel) and the manipulation of Excel objects and that this would make it an unsuitable target for cross compilation - which is generally successful only for general purpose languages.

Your "source" language would have to be so constrained by the limits and peculiarities of Excel that it would be as hobbled and as difficult to write well as VBA.

[Edit] Joel Spolsky's FogBugz team did something interesting in this area though (see [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/09/has-joel-spolsky- ju...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/09/has-joel-spolsky-jumped-the- shark.html) for a take on that) but there again he was pretty responsible for the development of VBA when he was at Microsoft.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the kind of answers I was looking for. Does the nature of Excel VBA limits the possibilities of making it simple ?

The fact of it being all about the environment means to me that there is room for what I called 'concept-comprehension at the syntactic level'. I mean, I can see myself manipulating Ranges and Arrays in a lot more intuitive way, and that's, in my short experience, the main use of macros.

Come on, Excel is a spreadsheet software, it's basically meant to be use for numeric arrays manipulation and it does not offers any syntactic sugar around array manipulation.

<comment><USER4> If you want to write code to manipulate numeric arrays, why not use an existing high-level language that is good for this? In other words, why are you using Excel?

Not suggesting that you shouldn't; just curious to hear what benefits Excel has for you that keep you using it past its sweet spot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Writing VBA code for users that can't is part of my everyday job, and I guess that it is the job of a lot of support/commando developers. Excel is a great tool foto implement simple investment strategies but it often ends like 'hey could you write what we are trying to do in VBA ?', and most of the time it can be done. But I have that feeling that writing VBA costs more than it should, that VBA is playing against the developer while any other language makes him feel like there's no limits.

<comment><USER4> What kinds of things are they trying to do that you end up implementing in VBA for them? Do you ever have the feeling that some of these things ought to be doable in Excel without having to resort to VBA?

(I ask because I'm working on a product in this space.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Mostly functions that could be achieved with Excel formulas, but would require to add some more columns. As we are already struggling with file size, we often go with VBA implementation. I'm talking about calculating things like drawdowns in series, and other timeseries properties. We compared both implementation (Formulas ad VBA) and most of the time, VBA is several times faster, and reduces chances of application freeze; So we are not even discussing the need for VBA in the team.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


84.66 MPG: Toyota Yaris Diesel Wins 2008 MPG Marathon - <AUTHOR> http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/10/13/toyota-yaris-aygo-win-world-mpg-marathon-with-80-mpg/

<comment><USER2> Not quite sure what a "TreeHugger" post is doing on HN but I must say the Toyota Yaris is a great car. We have one of the current diesel models and use it for all of our running about. It turns in an effortless 60+ MPG with no attempt on our part to conserve fuel. 84 MPG is a bit of a challenge - I might give it a go when next we fill the car up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Those mean bloggers copied Toyota's press release and didn't provide a link to it. Can I take back my click, please?</comment>


Ask HN: Any other sites like WeWorkRemotely.com? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for remote work and sites like WeWorkRemotely.com and Angel.co are useful, but are there are any other sites I should be looking at? Or even any just precise startups that allow people to work remotely?<p>Thanks.<p>:) <comment><USER2> From my experience Angel.co jobs are mostly pure hoax - I believe it is for investors - to justify how startups are spending money.

Anyone had other experience to share?

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.wfh.io](https://www.wfh.io)

I think the creator is on HN which is where I learned of it.

Also, [http://www.indeed.com](http://www.indeed.com) ... you can put 'Remote' as the location (make sure not to accidentally choose Remote, Oregon).

</comment><comment><USER4> SO: [http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?allowsremote=true](http://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs?allowsremote=true)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd be interested in similar site but more relevant to remote core/C++ engineering jobs, which are really rare, especially outside US.

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://gun.io/](http://gun.io/) is pretty good!

</comment><comment><USER7> workingnomads.co

</comment><comment><USER8> remojobo.com</comment>


Who's watching you? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bubbletimer.com/2009/05/15/whos-watching-you

<comment><USER2> To go on record here: it was a really hard decision for us to try this, but we felt there was a huge and eager audience there that was looking for a solution that was a little more restricted than what we were selling. Interestingly (and happily) 80% of businesses that monitor employees (and 75% of 'em do, supposedly) actually do it in the open. So I think what businesses wanted was a cheaper/lighter version that was entirely manager focused and didn't offer quite as many employee controls. It's a good alternative to stuff like Spectorsoft (<shiver>).

The absolutely _awesome_ part of this is by offering the more restricted version, we've seen a notable increase in the open version (which is the one we really believe in).

So far, we're guardedly optimistic that this is a net positive for us and for the world... But we're still plenty anxious about it!

<comment><USER3> > So I think what businesses wanted was a cheaper/lighter version that was > entirely manager focused and didn't offer quite as many employee controls

Know this: you are selling lighter, stronger, cheaper, etc. manacles for the powerful to chain up the powerless. Justify it however you like.

Not all technology is morally neutral:

[http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/global/the-second- amendm...](http://vinay.howtolivewiki.com/blog/global/the-second-amendment-in- iraq-combat-robotics-and-the-future-of-human-liberty-820)

In order to make a buck, you are shifting the balance of power from workers towards their exploiters. Do you deny this?

<comment><USER2> Just saw this-- dunno if you'll see my response.

I think you're being ridiculous-- I don't say that too often to people.

First of all, painting employers as exploiters is ridiculous. Many of them aren't. The "balance of power" has nothing to do with RescueTime-- it has to do with how in-demand you and your skills are. If you are unexceptional, you have very little power.

If I, as an employer, say "Part of working here means that we keep track of how you spend your time on the computer", I don't see that as being ethically different than saying that you have to fill out a timesheet. It's just automated and accurate rather than painstaking and subjective. I also don't see it as morally different to measuring code check-ins, lines of code written, punching a timecard, or measuring the number of widgets you build on an assembly line per day. It's just data.

Bad managers can abuse software like this. Bad managers can also abuse employee review processes, boilerplate employment agreements, and lots of other things.

Good managers, on the other hand, can benefit from software like this. They can understand when employees don't have enough to do (the 2nd most common reason people quit just after being micromanaged), they can understand how a lousy new team-lead is hurting team engagement/productivity, and more.

Time is a resource, like money. Tracking how it's spent isn't evil.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's an overreaction. We clearly don't like that our use of employers computers is monitored. But it isn't reasonable to expect that we'd have so much privacy on those computers that our managers wouldn't be allowed to see how we're spending our time. Just because we don't like it, doesn't mean it's wrong.

Of course, we're all free to work for companies that promise not to perform this kind of monitoring.

<comment><USER5> It's not an overreaction. It's an ad that attacks a competitor. :)

<comment><USER4> He asked if it was, and I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Definitely not over-reacting. I'd say that's under-reacting. Going to job everyday to work under an eye of an overseer selling best days of your life to some corporate schmuck.

Now excuse me while I go work on my side business even more as this was incredibly fucking motivating.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is a surprisingly even, respectful, and intellectual discussion going on at the original post between Tony Wright and Sean Johnson, respective owners of RescueTime and BubbleTimer. I would urge you to read through it.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Unlike many professions where ethical decisions must be made everyday... we > in the software business are often (though not always) engaged in ethically > inert pursuits

This attitude is the real problem. There scarcely exists such a thing as an ethically inert pursuit. I am reminded of a proposal I once read for something like a Hippocratic Oath for programmers:

<http://glyf.livejournal.com/46589.html></comment>


Reddit raising $50M round; YC, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz involved - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/reddit-to-raise-50-million-round-on-500-million-valuation-report/

<comment><USER2> Is the CNET article correct in naming YC involvement, or are they just keying up on the fact that some investors are affiliated with YC / YC partners? I ask because of the recent comments about YC not doing Series A due to signaling - so I imagine it would also not do Series C or D or whichever round this would conceivably be for Reddit.</comment>


Disqus launches Sponsored Comments - <AUTHOR> http://blog.disqus.com/post/82003625662/heads-up-were-testing-a-new-form-of-advertising <comment><USER2> Disappointing, considering how ubiquitous Disqus is on American news sites. This means we'll be seeing more ads and promos on pages already packed with commercial messages.

FWIW, I rarely bother reading Disqus threads (glacial load times and poor sorting) and stopped contributing after many of my comments started being flagged as spam.

<comment><USER3> I already have Ghostery set to block Disqus both because of the slow load times and because 99% of the commentary on news websites and blogs is mind- polluting drivel. I struggle with clinical depression and ADD, and I've taken up using blockers and CSS restylers to hide the comment interface completely on most websites I visit because I reliazed I was only look at them to get an emotional kick similar to troll venom.

I think there's a much better business model that Ghostery (and many other vendros) have completely missed, but I'm pretty sure I would gt heavily flamed for proposing it.

<comment><USER3> Sigh...that should have said 'that _Disqus_ (and many other vendors) have missed', not Ghostery, which is awesome and has a smart business model already. Sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am sure they will be pilloried for this, but I never begrudge a company trying to come up with a sustainable revenue model. Nobody ever thought "I sure wish I saw more ads online" and people gripe every time they pop up somewhere new, and yet everyone wants free services. So I say good luck brothers.

<comment><USER5> Free service does not mean "riddled with advertisement".

A lot of the sites I consider high-value don't do advertising at all. Khanacademy, Coursera, Hackernews, Github ...

It's like saying open source software is created by students trying to avoid license fees.

<comment><USER4> That's kind of silly to point out not for profits and freemiym services. Not all products lend themselves to one of those.

<comment><USER5> It's kind of silly to point out that not all products lend themselves to any particular model, isn't that right?

I have the impression that would-be-creators are rushing towards specific advertising or pay-for-access models too quickly.

<comment><USER4> They've been in business for over 7 years. I know because I was in the same YC batch as them. They have not rushed into anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It should be noted that Disqus ads are opt- _out_ , meaning that new accounts have to explicitly disable ads.

Ads were OK when they were text link to another site a la AdWords: it was clear that they are ads. Native comment ads, however, can be deceptive.

<comment><USER7> Interestingly I don't see an opt-out option for sponsored comments in the admin panel.

<comment><USER8> Do you already have ads turned off?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are the ads going to say things like "my sisters cousin makes $2000 a month by surfing the internet"?

Because if so, I think the program has already started

<comment><USER10> I wonder if people already have gotten a head start on becoming ad-blind to these types of ads...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the OP: "So, What Are Sponsored Comments?"

> _Sponsored Comments let businesses deliver a message to the people they need > to reach. A Sponsored Comment can use all types of media to get their point > across, just like any other Disqus comment. But they're not part of the > discussion happening on that thread or community itself. That's too > disruptive._

 _So instead, they're pinned to the top of the discussion environment where things are just getting started. It's like movie previews._

So...why not call them by their old fashioned name: "ads"? I don't disapprove of ad-based models, but something seems a bit disingenuous to use the term "Comments" when they are not "comments" at all. Unless users are able to respond to them and not have their comments hidden.

It's hard to imagine advertisers being happy about users getting to attach negative comments onto the ads. And if those threads get to be a snark train, then that pushes all the regular discussion down even further. So either the "sponsored comment"-discussions are hidden, or advertisers AND site-users are inconvenienced.

<comment><USER12> _> Unless users are able to respond to them and not have their comments hidden._

In the screenshots, there's a "Reply" button under the ad^W"Sponsored Comment". Want to take bets on how long it'll be until that goes away? I can see exactly what you described happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Sponsored Comments", "Sponsored Tweets"... amazing how many people struggle to spell "Spam" properly.

Oh well. Won't bother me. I've already got Ghostery configured to block Disqus.

<comment><USER12> Seriously.

Let me say up front that I have a strong dislike for marketing and sales people. They surprise me sometimes, though.

FTA:

 _> "If we can complement the experience people already enjoy using Disqus ..."_

 _> "So instead, they're pinned to the top of the discussion environment where things are just getting started. It's like movie previews. It's not the thing you came for, but if done well, it adds a little bit to your experience ..."_

I've learned over the years that some of these folks really truly _believe_ this -- that they are making the world^Wweb a better place by displaying more ads in more places.

I don't remember the last time I left a comment on a site that uses Disqus but, seriously, who the ____ "enjoy[s] using Disqus"? It's just not something that you "enjoy" doing, although the marketing/P.R. people would seem to believe that you do.

<comment><USER14> _> I've learned over the years that some of these folks really truly believe this -- that they are making the world^Wweb a better place by displaying more ads in more places._

As Upton Sinclair ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair)) used to say, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

<comment><USER15> _" It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."_

This is a useful reminder for many topics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I do own a couple websites using disqus but I don't care too much about what comment makes it first. But for a personal blog, or a company that makes a lot of money, seeing people advertising in your comments would be a good excuse to start coding a home-made comment system.

<comment><USER17> A. Commenting at scale is hard. Believe me, I know. We run the largest Wordpress website out there, and decided to rewrite commenting inhouse. It's been... hard.

B. There are a handful of other good providers out there that hopefully this will give more business to.

<comment><USER18> "We run the largest Wordpress website out there, and decided to rewrite commenting inhouse."

Can you elaborate on the reasons for doing so and what motivated that action?

<comment><USER17> We wanted to own our data, wanted to maintain existing user accounts, don't care about federated commenting login, want to keep old comments on old stories, and didn't really feel like paying someone (or letting someone suddenly add ads to it).

Building it from scratch on top of the WP database made sense for us. The WP commenting code is some of the worst (and oldest) stuff in the entire codex.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How do you propose Disqus earn revenue/stay in business. There's little incentive for publishes to pay for a commenting platform when they could just go back to using a shitty internal solution. (Although, admittedly, some publishers do pay discuss for enterprise solutions, but if that were more lucrative than ads, why would the bother with ads?)

I never cease to be amazed by people who bitch about seeing ads within a product/service they use for free. Someone has to pay for this.

<comment><USER5> Ads are annoying. People bitch about annoyances. No wonder there.

"Someone has to pay for this" is the wrong attitude. Either the service provider provides the service or he doesn't. If I'm not in a contract to pay them, I don't assume responsibility for paying anything...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It was clear that Disqus had jumped the shark after they first added opt-out ads, but I suppose the slope is slippery.

<comment><USER21> I commented on this elsewhere in this thread:

 _> This is no longer true – they're opt-in. And by invitation only._

<comment><USER20> I don't see what that has to do with my comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Any recommendations for alternatives to Disqus that have roughly feature parity and which allow me to pay them for their services?

<comment><USER23> LiveFyre, IntenseDebate are the only two that have rough feature parity and they don't take money either.

I guess an opportunity for someone to go build one? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Honestly I think this is promising. The format is not "shady" or disruptive, and the company seems to have a good understanding that adds done poorly can be damaging.

</comment><comment><USER25> wonder how much this has to do with them getting rid of showing down votes on comments

</comment><comment><USER26> This is disappointing, but not surprising. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER27> Just reached out to them to test this out.

</comment><comment><USER28> Yet another reason to avoid Disqus</comment>


The Dumbing Down of Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/04/04/the-dumbing-down-of-silicon-valley/

<comment><USER2> Seems pointless to be criticizing a reality show for being a reality show. I have a perfect solution for dealing with reality shows. I don't watch them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe hackers all across America will see the show, be inspired, and come flocking to Silicon Valley - solving your skills shortage problem?</comment>


Gasoline is $8.52/gallon in the UK, yet Americans pay $200 more for gas per year - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/08/fuel-economy-efficiency-gas-oil-uk-usa.php

<comment><USER2> thats a fairly silly comparison, imo.

as the first few comments point out, the whole of the UK is a large island about the size of oregon state.

its more of a testament to the structure of cities and land usage in the US than the gas/car usage. i don't want to use my car, but i use my car because i have to. my city is a sprawling bike-unfriendly city with few centralized urban areas and crappy public transit. and i live in a capital city. compared to an average european city, my city's transportation options are a joke. and most US cities are just like mine.

just my $0.02.</comment>


Ask HN: What is missing personal money management services? - <AUTHOR> Personal money management has been tremendously helpful for me. I have been doing it for past decade, storing daily income and outcome and tagging them with categories of spend, etc. Every year I set goals to set some money aside, and use software to help me achieve it my monitoring and analyzing.
Apart from Mint/Quicken, banks have rolled out this kind of service too. But it is still missing something. Most people do not want to record personal expenses, and manage their own money with a software.
What do you think is missing? How can it be more democratized that more and more people intelligently manage expenses and adapt spending habits? <comment><USER2> Json downloadable tagged spend data from card providers on a suitable authentication basis.

Uuid tagged spend events. Include a uuid in the transaction and The phone tap app can match it up to location so all those sales pos who use anonymous or shelf companies make sense.</comment>


4chan Founder "moot" to Speak at TED - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2009/12/22/4chan-founder-moot-to-speak-at-ted <comment><USER2> I'm very excited about this. Chris Anderson asked for an intro to moot (who I only barely know through ROFLCon[1]) earlier this year; when he said it was to have him speak at TED, I was floored.

The thought, "Chris Anderson reads 4chan?! Maybe even /b/?" crossed my mind only for a moment -- instead, it dawned on me just how obvious a speaker for a session on "provocation" he would be. I was impressed he'd be on the TED radar, frankly, which goes to show how ignorant I am.

The theme of the 2010 TED is "What the World Needs Now" -- for all of the garbage on 4chan, it represents the 'cost' of the free and open exchange of ideas that is the Internet.

I'm expecting a thoughtful talk from Chris. But even if he trolls TED, it'll still make for a great talk. And in a way, further underscore the importance of provocation (at least for some) in what the world needs now.

[1] <http://breadpig.com/blog/category/rofldna-project/>

<comment><USER3> it's not really surprising that he is on their radar, 4chan is pretty much synonymous with the underbelly of the internet + they are a pretty big site by traffic alone(Top 750 website)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I guess I'll be the first to speak up in defense of m♡♡tles speaking at TED.

It's clear that he's relevant to the HN community, given that 4chan is a startup begun from his mom's basement when he was just 15 years old. Despite misinformation about 4chan being run for a loss, he does make money and can afford to run the site without ads from time to time.

He took some available code (2chan's), which was initially very simple, and grew it into a profitable site that is ranked in the Top 1000 on Alexa and that has an outsized influence on internet culture. That's an extremely rare phenomenon, and one that most people here would ostensibly like to repeat.

I'm sure that even if his TED talk features inside jokes it has the potential to be really interesting, and certainly doesn't warrant the _prima facie_ dismissiveness from the other commenters here.

<comment><USER5> Personally, I just find it kind of shameful for anyone with credibility to lend some of it to 4chan. From where I'm standing, it seems like the primary exports of 4chan are the stifling of independent thought and social validation for antisocial teenagers.

In brief, I think people who participate in shaping 4chan are bad and they should feel bad.

<comment><USER6> I think you underestimate the cultural influence of 4Chan.

\- The Times, the UK's largest and most well known conservative newspaper, now has a regular column on 'lolpets'

\- Oprah dedicated an entire show to the 'rainbow parties' hoax

\- 4Chan have raised awareness of Scientology beliefs with protests that have been memorable, interesting and fun enough to be covered wherever Tom Cruise goes.

<comment><USER7> Ummm - pretty sure that the rainbow parties myth pre-dates 4chan. Wiki tells me the oprah special was oct 2003 - the same mont. 4chan launched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I heard him speak at a media arts festival here in Vienna a few months ago.

I'm pretty sure he won't be trolling TED or throwing around in-joke references: He actually seemed pretty sick of all the mindless repetition of memes (and how could he not be?).

He's a smart and thoughtful guy, was very humble, self-deprecating and sarcastic, and had a bunch of interesting anecdotes to tell -- although it did appear that he fairly randomly stumbled into the situation and doesn't have many deep, original insights on online communities/social software/the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

Then again, I believe he same may be said of Jimmy Wales, for example...

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't really see any good from him speaking, at worst he will pull off a giant troll and his whole speech will be a flop, and at best he will be talking about 4chan's culture.

<comment><USER10> He's spoken before at a conference at Harvard, and at least had some things interesting to say. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1E_bYRZT5-E> (part 1)

Don't ask him how to make money though

<comment><USER11> It's interesting, all up, the money making idea. Even though /b/ contains the best and worst of the net, the other boards are quite reasonable (as long a /b/ stays up to keep the trolls from wandering). Is the sites image so bad that advertisers can overlook such an opportunity for targeted ads? (ie. its unlikely anyone would be in the anime board if they weren't quite interested in anime)

<comment><USER12> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=484583>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Exactly what can Moot offer, in terms of discourse? Moot's fame was very much a matter of happenstance and ungodly luck - the whims of the internet, rather than anything innately genius about his approach or handling. It'd be like asking a kid that's, by chance, made a paper airplane with an unusually long flight time about aerodynamics.

<comment><USER14> Considering the amount of failed *chans that showed up both before and after 4chan - world2ch, 5chan, etc, I wouldn't count Moot as merely lucky. At the very least, he kept the site sane by continuing to run it -- in contrast with, say, the constantly fluctuating staff at 7chan.

<comment><USER15> 4chan survived out of his sheer stubbornness to run the site at a loss for a long period of time and refusing to sell it to some porn network (possibly on multiple occasions?) It's impressive he was willing to spend the past 6 years running; 4chan clearly means a lot to him, god knows why.

<comment><USER16> _4chan clearly means a lot to him, god knows why_

Forgive me if I presume too much, but it sounds to me like you've never had a wildly successful project of your own.

<comment><USER15> I was just making light of the... dubious content that springs forth from 4chan. I do understand how he could be quite proud of the fact he created such an incredibly popular site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I was more excited to hear Bill Gates was going to speak.

<comment><USER18> In all fairness, as much as you may not be a Bill Gates fan, it's pretty difficult to suggest that he's as unimpressive as the founder of 4chan. All the 4chan guy did was make an unmoderated message board.

<comment><USER3> here is a question...was 4chan the first image board, or did it just use the main image board script?

<comment><USER19> Better question- How does 4chan keep itself from getting raided for the endless amount of CP that gets posted there?

<comment><USER20> What's CP?

<comment><USER12> NFSW

<http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/CP>

Also, CP stands for Christopher Poole. It is quite likely that Christopher Poole is a fake name, chosen becase of the CP meme.

<comment><USER21> I'm pretty sure it's a fake name. 4+ years ago I mailed something to him and the name he gave with the mailing address was completely different (no I don't still have the mailing address, I'm not that organized) and I've heard that same name bandied about elsewhere (at least the same first name). But who knows it could also be fake.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The hard things about bootstrapped startups - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@Ashwinizer/the-hard-things-about-bootstrapping-a-startup-511c15cd990 <comment><USER2> "Certain marketplaces like hyperlocal or transportation don't allow you to pace growth."

Can someone explain why this is true?</comment>


Service Level Agreement – Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/s3/sla/ <comment><AUTHOR> The best part: "To receive a Service Credit, you must submit a claim by opening a case in the AWS Support Center."</comment>


Ask HN: What are your top 3 UX resources? - <AUTHOR>

If you were learning UX, seeking answers or insight, what are your top 3 resources? <comment><USER2> www.goodui.org is great

my biggest 3 takeaways from trying to improve my ux were:

\- vertical spacing makes things feel more relaxing, so always use more vertical space than you need

\- typography is key: [http://practicaltypography.com/summary-of-key- rules.html](http://practicaltypography.com/summary-of-key-rules.html) is a really good guide

\- users have no idea what your favorite icon does, you have to put a label by it</comment>


What the Obama IT team teaches us about polyglot programming - <AUTHOR> http://blog.appfog.com/what-the-obama-it-team-teaches-us-about-polyglot-programming/ <comment><USER2> _> 4Gb/s, 10k requests per second, 2,000 nodes, 3 datacenters, 180TB and 8.5 billion requests. Design, deploy, dismantle in 583 days to elect the President. #madops – Scott VanDenPlas, Obama for America IT team_

That's impressive. Glad that tech is on the Democratic side.

But then again change, liberalism, progress, technology and innovation are all leftist tenets - so it isn't so surprising.

Here's hoping to another tech assisted Republican defeat in 2016. May the morons stay out of power - least they screw us all once again.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think that what they accomplished is amazing, but remember that their goals were very different than your typical business. Their goals were to create something in a short amount of time with a really random group of people given a fairly short lifetime. The individual projects will live on, but the whole thing was shut down at the end of the campaign.

A business is about sustainability. You are creating things that you will be maintaining and using for (hopefully) years to come. You get to be picky about who you are hiring. In that given, its not unusual that you want all of your employees to be able to work on various parts of the stack as focus changes or what not.

This isn't to discount the value in polyglot groups. Its almost an inevitability at this point. While totally possible that you could have entirely js stack in node, more likely you'll have ruby (or something) and javascript and maybe objc for iphone and java for android and maybe .Net for windows or more objc on osx or whatever.

<comment><USER4> > In that given, its not unusual that you want all of your employees to be > able to work on various parts of the stack as focus changes or what not.

Isn't it? I'm a frontend dev. While I'm _capable_ of digging into the backend and mucking around, it's not a typical part of my job. There are backend devs who I can talk to, who are writing Scala or Java rather than Javascript or Ruby, who can deal with problems faster and better than I could.

Changes of focus like what you describe seem to be typical of far more nascent companies. In that sense, Reed's team was like a startup: everyone had to be ultra-capable because they had to pick up _anyone's_ slack at any time, just like a CEO of a ten-man group sometimes has to clean the kitchen or code a component that no one else has time to.

<comment><USER5> _In that sense, Reed's team was like a startup: everyone had to be ultra- capable because they had to pick up anyone's slack at any time_

It's important to note that in this sense, "polyglot" refers to the collective group -- ie, the Obama campaign had numerous talented people with a huge variety of skills in-house -- vs the individual sense of the word.

Not to say that there weren't incredibly talented generalists, but when you have a team of this size (dozens of designers and front-end developers, engineers focused on the back-end APIs, a team dedicated to data integration, a handful of dedicated ops and DBAs) the ability of individuals to specialize in an area could be a strength.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like it or not, the democratic party owns technology compared to republicans today.

<comment><USER7> It seems more likely that this was an Obama campaign advantage, rather than a Democratic party advantage.

The translation over isn't obvious. From what I've heard their internal organization was pretty fluid. That kind of thing depends on the quality of people involved, their commonality of purpose, and the organizational culture. You can't box that and roll it over to party HQ.

That said, Democrats do seem more likely to attract and motivate the kind of people you'd need for this. That's a pretty important head start.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree pretty strongly. I read, for example, that the Obama campaign expanded the Democratic Party's voter database by something like a factor of 10.

<comment><USER8> But the database (and accompanying tech platform) then gets cycled back into the hands of state and local parties, where it can be incredibly useful.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is this a suckers rally? - <AUTHOR> anyone watch stocks close enough to predict? <comment><USER2> I would hate to try to predict.

Right now the economy is not that bad, but it is not that good either.

The P/E ratio is near the high end of "normal", which means if we got a 50% rally in the next few years, we would be in bubble territory and I think that would all get given up.

The long term factor is that there is too much capital built up, which is why there is so much demand for US dollars, US government debt, etc. If they really did anything to reduce the national debt it would create a crisis for the international financial system since you really have to have a hole in your head to buy EU debt, Chinese debt, etc.

It is heresy but I think a good burst of inflation would help align future debts with reality. If I was boss I'd print money and give $100,000 to every American. Trouble is it might wind up in the housing market or the stock market and contribute to the problem, not the solution.</comment>


Show HN: VETS – Volunteer Effort Tracking System - <AUTHOR> About 5 years ago I volunteered to help our local SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) build a computerized system for tracking hours that their volunteers spent. This an important part of the volunteer coordinator's job, as there are hours/year requirements for volunteers, awards given out annually, etc. Prior to that they were using a paper binder with sign-in sheets, and adding up everything by hand at the end of the month. With about 1000 active volunteers, this was no small task, and seemed like a place computerization would be an amazing help. I wrote up a simple system in Rails (which I had spent a fair amount of hobby time with) and it's been running there ever since.
Today, there are about 67,000 "hours" entries in the database, about about 3,000 volunteers (1/3 of them active), and the system is a little slower than it ought to be (my original testing was with tens of records, since there was no existing database to import). Rather than try to update and re-learn ruby and rails, I opted to give a try porting the essential parts of the system to Python using bottle.py
The result of my work is now up at https://github.com/vets/vets and licensed under MIT.
I'm at a point where things are about functionally complete and I'd love to hear feedback from anyone willing to take the time to take a look at it. It's a generic enough system that I could see other non-profit organizations (who often have much/any money available to spend on commercial software that can track things like this) being interesting in this.
Things I'm not that great at, which are incidentally the main things this project uses:
* Python * bottle.py * SQL * HTML/CSS
This is a hobby project for me (I'm a C programmer by day) so I am probably taking a naive approach in most cases, but in some cases I know that when I re-deploy this version of the system, it's likely to sit for another 5+ years. <comment><USER2> I have been putting together a list of software to look at for a tech-based activism/volunteerism site I'm working on. This looks like it could be very useful and I'm looking forward to checking it out this weekend. Thanks for this!

<comment><USER3> Have you published this list yet? I'd be very interested to take a look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Need a foursquare for volunteer projects: Check-in that youre here doing X (with GPS checkin, as needed)

</comment><comment><USER5> Clickable link:

[https://github.com/vets/vets](https://github.com/vets/vets)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks I hadn't submitted on HN before- was there something I should have done to make it clickable?

<comment><USER6> Posts without URLs are penalized anyway, so you'd be better off reposting this whole thing with a link to the project, and adding your text above as a first comment to the thread. Good luck. Email us at email@example.com if you have any trouble.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Reposted as [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8182973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8182973)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reuters: Yahoo email scanning done with a Linux kernel module - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2016/10/08/reuters-yahoo-email-scanning-done-using-a-linux-kernel-module/ <comment><AUTHOR> Why they would use kernel module for such task? It is completely unrelated. No matter how much I think, I couldn't understand rational behind that.

<comment><USER2> "rationale"</comment></comment>


Books on Capitalism and Human Nature Recommended by Robert J. Shiller - <AUTHOR> https://fivebooks.com/best-books/robert-shiller-on-capitalism-and-human-nature/ <comment><USER2> All book links are Amazon affiliate links (tag=fivebooks001-20)</comment>