Health dangers of sleep deprivation - <AUTHOR> https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/how-much-sleep-is-enough-sleep-deprivation-health-dangers-a8328126.html <comment><USER2> > Lack of sleep changes how insulin operates in your body and how quickly your > cells absorb sugar. After a week of short sleep nights (say, five or six > hours), your doctor could diagnose you with pre-diabetes, Walker says.

My father intentionally tried to sleep as little as possible in his 20s, 30s, and into his 40s - sleeping four hours a night was common - in order to get more done - and he ended up with diabetes.

Chronic and extreme lack of sleep was his only risk factor.

Don't screw around. Get your sleep.

<comment><USER3> the flipside is you really get a lot of quality time in in your 20s 30s and 40s. Doesn't that count for something? If you sleep five instead of eight hours a night that's actually about two years of _additional_ lifetime even if your lack of sleep kills you at 70 rather than 80, and I'd guess 10 years of life reduction is way too pessimistic of a guess, and it's the bad years at the end you're sacrificing anyway

I'm somewhat serious actually, I'm not convinced that sleeping your youth away is actually a good trade-off. Not to mention that sport, a healthy diet and checkups can probably mitigate the downsides to some degree.

<comment><USER2> > even if your lack of sleep kills you at 70 rather than 80

If only it were that simple.

There's lifespan, and there's quality of life. Diabetes attacks both.

So, not only will you likely die earlier, you're at far greater risk for developing a degenerative disease - possibly cognitive in nature. Or organ failure. Or amputation. Or blindness. Or all of the above.

And if you don't, you'll still spend your remaining days worrying about it.

<comment><USER4> Such a shame the subtitle of the article is all about quantity. Quality of life far outweighs quantity, but this subtitle probably serves better as clikckbait.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Based on the other sleep link posted here [1], this article itself warning people about sleep might be the thing harming people's sleep and health.

It's fine to tell people who are doing other things instead of sleeping that sleep is important. But many people don't sleep that well/long and I think this message about getting 8 hours of sleep is very harmful to them, since it causes anxiety and insomnia. It seems many people and cultures naturally sleep around 6.5 hours not 8 hours, so people should not worry if that's how long they sleep.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/20/cant- sl...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/apr/20/cant-sleep- insomnia-identity)

<comment><USER6> How does a culture have different sleep needs?

<comment><USER7> Siesta cultures a.o.

<comment><USER6> I meant quantity. That's moving some to a different time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you drive while sleep-deprived, you're at a significantly higher risk of being involved in a fatal accident. And it might not be you that gets killed.

[https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/best-cars- blog/2016/12/d...](https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/best-cars- blog/2016/12/drowsy-driving-worse-than-drunk-driving)

<comment><USER9> Yep. We need to treat driving while sleep-deprived like driving while drunk. This has some societally untenable implications: new parents, people whose jobs/commutes/responsibilities do not leave time for enough sleep, people with on-call jobs, etc. need to have their driver licenses revoked. But I can at least set this standard for myself: if I haven't slept enough, I don't drive.

<comment><USER10> I don't think that will work. For example, I just admitted that this happened to me in a sibling comment, and immediately my reflex was to delete it.

Then I thought better of it. We are all human, and we're all pressed for time. We're not out partying. No one drinks to do their jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is built on the premise that the modern 8 hour night is settled science. To my knowledge this isn't the case. I'm not saying that depriving yourself of sleep when you're tired is good, but I'm not so sure this should be taken with more than a grain of salt.

<comment><USER12> > This is built on the premise that the modern 8 hour night is settled > science.

What do you mean by this? Urging people to sleep enough is not really a new and untested concept.

Is there a strong reason to think that frequently sleeping <8 hours is unlikely to cause harm? I think it would still be prudent to give all the studies in the article some consideration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew- walker](http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/matthew-walker)

<comment><USER14> One of the best (and most eye-opening) podcast episodes ever. Worth every second of the 2 hrs.

<comment><USER13> I wish there was a transcript, it was really full of interesting facts. I personally have a tinnitus so lack of sleep is big a issue for me so I identified myself with a lot of things he said. I'm happy I discovered Tryptophan lately, it really helped me to get good a quality sleep.

Btw, another great episode is [http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/peter- attia](http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/peter-attia)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sleep is one thing I never sacrifice, everything else can wait/ be put off and Im in my mid 30s. 8-9 hrs a night and I feel fucking great every day.

<comment><USER16> I follow exactly the same rule. Sleep is maybe the greatest productivity factor. Same for rest in general. If I don't rest, I know for sure I will pay later adding "interest rates"

<comment><USER17> "...I will pay later..." this is so damn hard to grasp when you are young and pulling all nighters every day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Tell it to my children, partner, co-workers, and the whole system.

Our society isn't designed for average to poor people to be healthy.

<comment><USER19> > Our society isn't designed for average to poor people to be healthy.

The truth. Capitalism isn't about needs and wants but miseries you can tolerate. Unfortunately a bunch of people raced to the bottom on lack of sleep and now that's the level of misery required to compete...

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Original article from Business Insider with links to statistics: [http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-much-sleep-is-enough- healt...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-much-sleep-is-enough-health-risks- dangers-of-sleep-deprivation-2017-11)

</comment><comment><USER21> In 2016 I was diagnosed with idiopathic epilepsy — essentially epilepsy with little/no explanation for the cause. Prior to my diagnosis I had horrible sleeping habits. Though we have no official evidence, my neurologist and I both think that years of abusing sleep was a large factor in my development of epilepsy. Finally, sleep and fatigue are major triggers for my seizures (if I don't get a good nights rest then I'm much more likely to have an episode).

</comment><comment><USER22> Where do naps fall into this? Does a 6 hour sleep + 2 hour nap later compare to 8 hour sleep?

</comment><comment><USER23> > The World Health Organisation and Walker both recommend about eight hours a > night as a good baseline.

I'll take the shorter lifespan and bet that more diseases will be cured in the future. The extra hours of life I get every day will ultimately allow me to afford treatment.

<comment><USER24> Good for you if it doesn't cause you any problems, but if I don't get enough sleep I really notice my mood and productivity dips. Everyone is different, so just don't enforce the same regime on others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interestingly enough, this study seems to go on the oposite direction as this one from 2002:

\- [http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/health/sleepstudy.h...](http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/archive/newsrel/health/sleepstudy.htm)

> _" individuals who now average 6.5 hours of sleep a night, can be reassured > that this is a safe amount of sleep. From a health standpoint, there is no > reason to sleep longer."_

</comment><comment><USER26> Dr. Walker has actually stated that very few people can operate with 5 hours of sleep due to genetics. Most of us need between 7 to 9 hours of sleep.

<comment><USER27> You're also more likely to get struck by lightning than be one of these people.

<comment><USER28> In bed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> After struggling with this problem while a student at Notre Dame I started a company to solve my own problem.

To that end - we've developed a behavioral therapy program combining neuroscience, sleep health products, hardware, analytics, and coaching to improve sleep. It's designed to make long-term changes to help you improve the quantity, quality, and regularity of your sleep. [https://puresomni.com](https://puresomni.com)

If anyone has sleep specific questions let me know.

</comment><comment><USER30> > men in Japan who sleep less than six hours a night are 400-500% likelier to > have a heart attack

Seriously? People who sleep less might be at risk of all sorts of health problems, but not necessarily because they sleep less - people generally sleep less because they're doing [strenuous or destructive activity]. And it's much more likely that partying / working late into the night causes health problems, rather than solely the lack of sleep.

Correlation ≠ causation

<comment><USER31> I'm sure they control for that. I doubt the people doing the study are unaware of the most basic cognitive biases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I find 8 hours of sleep excessive.

I'm always battling myself to sleep less than 6-7 hours every night but my body always manages to get better hold of me.

Sleeping more than eight hours gives me a headache and getting fewer than 6 hours sleep makes my entire day feel drowsy.

But I'll take feeling drowsy than a headache as it's been shown that working in sleep deprived state improves 'creativity'.

<comment><USER33> Headaches may come from poor sleep position or lack of caffeine.

If you get your sleep in order, you should sleep the same amount every day and wake up without an alarm clock.

<comment><USER34> See this doesn't work me. Even when I sleep 7 to 8 hours every night with alarm, when I put off alarm (say, in long holidays) I naturally sleep 7 to 8 hours a few days then suddenly I sleep very long (>= 10 hours) which completely screws my Circadian rhythm since it makes me harder to fall asleep.

<comment><USER35> Same thing happens to me, if I have so much as a day or two without an alarm I just careen off into ridiculous sleeping patterns. I have to set alarms during the weekend just to keep on course. If I have a week or more off I start to run off 25 hour days with ~9-10 hours sleep a night, and turn completely nocturnal in a couple of weeks.

<comment><USER34> Same, but I also need to note that I have a life-long insomnia that attacks every now and then which might be affecting this pattern.

<comment><USER35> Interesting. I've got the opposite problem. I can't even remember the last time I woke up in the middle of the night without an extremely loud alarm clock, and I feel like absolute death if I try and get up with less than 8-9 hours sleep.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have to sleep at least six hours in order to stay alert for the entirety of the following day. Any less results in segments of the day when I'm zoning in and out, though it's not continuous.

Normally I can get an 8-9 hour sleep, sometimes even longer, at the end of the week, so I'd say I'm ok.

</comment><comment><USER37> After we had our son, my sleeping pattern has changed. I sleep early at around 730PM. Then wake-up at around 8 or 8:30PM. Then sleep around at 12:30-1AM. Wake up at 7AM.

I get to take some sort of power nap for the day. And when I wake up, I feel fresh. Does any one else have a similar routine?

I'm not sure if it's healthy, but I do not feel tired or deprived at all.

</comment><comment><USER38> good night

<comment><USER39> Moon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I sleep therefore I am.

<comment><USER41> I dunno why you're marked as dead (FYI: your posts haven't been showing up for over a year at this point), this isn't a particularly _bad_ comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Going to sleep. Peace.</comment>


Jupiter: RISC-V Assembler and Runtime Simulator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/andrescv/Jupiter <comment><USER2> Highly appreciated. In absence of actual hardware this seems to be the next best thing.

<comment><USER3> There are several other simulators.

For professional simulators working on software for RISC-V hardware there are Spike [0], rv8 [1], and QEMU [2] are popular.

For educational purposes, Venus [3,4], RARS [5], and RIPES [6] are popular.

A fuller list can be found at [7].

Disclaimer: I am the maintainer for RARS. I have my finger on the pulse of the education simulator scene so if you want a fuller list of educational simulators, I can wrangle those URLs.

[0]: [https://github.com/riscv/riscv-isa-sim](https://github.com/riscv/riscv- isa-sim)

[1]: [https://github.com/rv8-io/rv8](https://github.com/rv8-io/rv8)

[2]: [http://git.qemu.org/qemu.git](http://git.qemu.org/qemu.git) (upstream URL)

[3]: [https://github.com/kvakil/venus](https://github.com/kvakil/venus) (original project)

[4]: [https://github.com/ThaumicMekanism/venus](https://github.com/ThaumicMekanism/venus) (currently maintained fork)

[5]: [https://github.com/TheThirdOne/rars](https://github.com/TheThirdOne/rars)

[6]: [https://github.com/mortbopet/Ripes](https://github.com/mortbopet/Ripes)

[7]: [https://riscv.org/software-status/](https://riscv.org/software-status/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Somewhat unrelated to this particular bit, but I'm kind of growing tired of RISC-V news at this point. You can only promise the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow to people for so long before they lose interest. I've been reading these news for what 3-4 years now? And yet, there's still no practical way to use any of this with my platform of choice (Linux). There's a $1K prototype board and that's it. There's also an Arduino-like board that costs more than the latest Raspberry Pi 4.

In the meanwhile I can buy a $100 quad core ARM board with a CUDA capable GPU onboard and 4GB of RAM. Proprietary? Sure. But it's 1/10th the price, several times faster, and it's available in any quantity right now.

Real artists ship, not just go to conferences and discuss how glorious their ISA is going to be in 10 years when they get around to actually getting something out the door.

<comment><USER5> RISC-V cores ship in certain quantities already. They just don't happen to be general purpose / hobbyist chips. They are embedded into specialized controllers, such as SSD controllers [1], or FPGA cores.

[1]: [https://www.anandtech.com/show/13678/western-digital- reveals...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/13678/western-digital-reveals- swerv-risc-v-core-and-omnixtend-coherency-tech)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your dream company? - <AUTHOR> Software engineering is vast. There are companies specializing in certain areas and not all companies do everything. Some companies are tackling problems that are unheard of whereas others are tackling more immediate and visible problems. Every software engineer has a favorite niche and possibly likes companies that are working on those projects.
Considering the above, what is your dream company? (regardless of your ability/opportunity to work in that company)
Why? <comment><USER2> My dream company is my own company with enough to have a nice lifestyle. Not sure what problem the company would be solving but still...

To answer your question more directly, I don't have a specific company in mind, I just want to do something that is interesting and challenging. What is interesting to me changes all the time (right now it is Elixir stuff) so it is hard to give a definitive place to work.</comment>


WebRTC Copy – OTR and fast file transfers over WebRTC - <AUTHOR> https://rtccopy.com/

<comment> mike-cardwell The problem with sites like these are that you have to trust the site owner to not just add some javascript to the page which breaks the security of your conversation.

Except this site is worse, because they also let their third party user tracking provider run arbitrary script on every page too.

Nice as a demo of technology though.

<comment><USER2> If your concern is the security of 3rd party JS you should already be using NoSript/ScriptSafe [1]. Keep same-domain policy as safe and 3rd party domains blocked and opt-in only by default.

The day-to-day UX experience of browsing the web is only minimally affected and significantly safer.

Better than adblock.

If your concern is the host operator, well obv can't circumvent that. Unless you use OSS chrome plugins and client code verifications (ala CryptoCat). But that's also an imperfect solution (cue tptacek).

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scriptsafe/oiigbmn...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scriptsafe/oiigbmnaadbkfbmpbfijlflahbdbdgdf)

<comment><USER3> _If your concern is the host operator, well obv can 't circumvent that._

Of course we can circumvent that. Make a plugin to alert the user whenever the JS changes.

<comment><USER4> What do you base your initial known good JS on though? What is the user supposed to do with the information that the JS has changed? A diff of minified JS isn't that helpful.

<comment><USER3> The author would say "the current version is 0.6.4 and its JS hashes to this SHA256 hash: xxx"

Open source already does this for binaries. Why not JS?

This assumes it's even possible to get a consistent hash of all javascript executing on a page, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can anyone explain please, whether WebRTC is a protocol or not? After reading this: [http://www.webrtc.org/faq#TOC-Why-should-I-use- WebRTC-](http://www.webrtc.org/faq#TOC-Why-should-I-use-WebRTC-) I thought it's just an API to enable other protocols (XMPP/Jingle, SIP etc.) to be built through JavaScript. Or is it a protocol after all?

<comment><USER6> I'm also a bit curious about the protocol part, found this tidbit on their site "The session components are built by re-using components from libjingle, without using or requiring the xmpp/jingle protocol." ([http://www.webrtc.org/reference/architecture#TOC- Transport-S...](http://www.webrtc.org/reference/architecture#TOC-Transport- Session))

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Security issues are one thing, but I've been using this site as a simple way to transfer (nonsensitive) large files without having to wait for the file to go through a third party server, sit through the ads required to pay for the bandwidth for such a server, or require the recipient to download specialized software for a P2P transfer. For this purpose it's very convenient.

</comment><comment><USER8> You know what they say about javascript browser crypto, but for what it's worth, it worked fine for transferring a file from my desktop to my phone (Firefox on both ends).

I wonder: when using WebRTC between two devices on a single LAN, is my ISP involved (possibly: beyond bootstrapping the process)?

<comment><USER9> 1\. WebRTC is natively compiled into browsers. This app uses WebRTC's data channel to transfer files and WebRTC guarantees that the data channel is encrypted (via DTLS). So - tehcnically the crypto is not javascript based - it's native code similar to crypto over HTTPS.

2\. WebRTC tries to create a P2P connection between the devices. The ISP is only involved in the initial bootstrapping of the P2P connection - the actual data packets travel over the LAN and not through your ISP. In the rare case a P2P connection can't be established, a relay might be used (though this is optional).

<comment><AUTHOR> A minor note on 1. - rtccopy.com does use (optionally) OTR in javascript on top of the DTLS channel in order guarantee identity (something not currently guaranteed with the DTLS channel).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It would be lovely if it would explain what features it needs out of Chrome Canary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Chrome Canary is the only Chrome version that has working SCTP (reliable) datachannel support at the moment. It's broken(undetectable also) in every version before that (you can try, the website won't stop any version, just display warnings).

I did have unreliable datachannel support initially, but as both Firefox & Chrome now support reliable, I see no reason to keep that overhead/extra code around. Hopefully working reliable datachannels in Chrome will reach the primary version soon!</comment></comment>


Working for a Start-up: Expectations - <AUTHOR> http://dandemeyere.squarespace.com/blog/2011/2/28/working-for-a-start-up-expectations.html <comment><USER2> Good use of the "sandwich method" of delivering unpleasant news.

The pattern is this:

1\. Upper slice of bread - happy light carbohydrate empty calorie news.

2\. Bad News - the meat of the message

3\. Lower slice of bread - happy light carbohydrate empty calorie news.

In this specific example:

1\. You'll learn and have lots of hours to work.

2\. We pay bottom of the scale and are proud of it.

3\. Fun, friends, cv, grow, reward, grow, stock options.

</comment><comment><USER3> You mentioned something that i think is _really_ important:

"My age, duration of employment, or who I know shouldn't play nearly as large of a factor as what I'm doing for the company."

I have heard this more than almost anything else recently. The true entrepreneurs and hard workers want to know that if they go out there and kick ass they will be rewarded for kicking ass. Not be rewarded "as a 24 year old should be rewarded".

Love this article. keep it up

</comment><comment><USER4> > There's a subtle assumption hiding in here: you must be willing to learn, > especially if you're not coming in at an executive level.

Erm... Why should executives get off the hook? They generally manage more diverse areas of the company and should be willing to learn as much as anyone else.

</comment><comment><USER5> Join for all of the reasons given and alluded to, but drop the 'Expectations' part. Or if you insist on having them, go read Charles Dickens 'Great Expectations' one more time (or for the first time) and then ponder...

</comment><comment><USER6> A little off topic, but the way text is handled in this blog threw me off. The links are more prominent that the main text, they actually look the way main text should look.</comment>


Best Stack Overflow Question Ever - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6163683/cycles-in-family-tree-software

<comment><USER2> Don't tell google. They'll make it an interview question to see how you do with pointers and linked lists.(1)

 _(1) I know this one. It ends with you being your own grandpa._

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm upvoting because the question is pretty interesting/funny, but you should change the linkbait title.</comment>


Ghost Pepper Leads to Torn Esophagus - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/56532-ghost-pepper-ruptured-esophagus.html <comment><USER2> As hot as ghost pepper is, it barely makes the top 10 of the hottest peppers anymore. Sitting atop that list is the Carolina Reaper, which at about 2,000,000 Scoville units, is twice as hot as Bhut Jolokia.

I use Bhut Jolokia whenever I cook, but I only add just enough in my food to give it a kick. About two years ago I cut one up and swallowed the pieces with water. Chewing them would have been too punishing.

The effect was not funny. For the next two days, the heat was slowly melting all the fat in my body. Even my brain started to feel like it was melting. I swore never to eat it like that again.

<comment><USER3> _the heat was slowly melting all the fat in my body_

Did you actually lose weight? Honest question. I'm always interested to hear about fat burning metabolism triggers. That said, I'm not much for spicy food, so this one might not be for me. :)

<comment><USER2> It didn't last long enough for me to notice any weight loss, but I could just feel things melting away slowly. It's something you have to experience to know how it really feels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Link bait.

It did not.

Person had pre-existing condition.

Vomiting caused issue.

<comment><USER5> Where did you draw the conclusion that he had a pre-existing condition? I can't find that in the article; it says he was otherwise healthy.

I can see the title being clickbait if it had said "causes", but "leads to" seems perfectly apt.

<comment><USER4> > Where did you draw the conclusion that he had a pre-existing condition?

Might be wrong another article implied it. I thought Boerhaave syndrome had pre-cursors.

Ghost pepper is pure clickbait.

He also had 6 glasses of water which was the probable "leads to" of the real cause and the thing that mattered, vomiting.</comment></comment></comment>


Immutable-Props – Simple Immutable.js PropTypes for React - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/contra/immutable-props <comment><USER2> How does this differ from react-immutable-proptypes?

[https://github.com/HurricaneJames/react-immutable- proptypes](https://github.com/HurricaneJames/react-immutable-proptypes)</comment>


How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France - <AUTHOR> https://christianpetroske.com/how-i-got-the-french-tech-visa-to-start-my-company-in-france/ <comment><USER3> Honestly, this reads as those books titled "How to make money selling books on Amazon".

Living in France, I can tell, France is very startup hostile.

The amount of taxes a company has to pay and the amount of paperwork to do (or money to delegate it) is just absurd.

The only way a small tech company can make any money and be sustainable (let alone grow) is having all employees as associates (with all the organizational problems that such thing will bring) and take dividends instead of salaries, otherwise literally more than half of the salary is gone in taxes.

And of course, this is all having their own day job, or taking a "company creation" sabbatical year, which is the only actually helpful thing for startups you'll find in France. You can take a year off from your job, try to create a company, and after the year your employer has to take you back in the same position (if you want, obviously). You need to have worked a number of years before, both in global and with your current employer, though.

VC culture is close to non existing, so you need very good connections to have investors, and those connections often times aren't in France. Financial and investing groups in France are very conservative.

Literally all new companies I've seen founded are like that, and from those that live longer than a year, about 50% move their HQ elsewhere, normally the place where the funding came from.

With the numbers we made back in the day (we were 5), the gap from "we're making some money on the side" to "we need to hire someone who isn't a founder" was about €300,000 yearly in extra revenue. Otherwise it wasn't worth it.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, as a French I can only completely agree. The amount of paperwork is just absurd. For instance, when you create a company, you have to pay a separate fee (~200eur) to a _private_ "official journal" to publish the fact that you're creating a company. That's just plain racket, and that kind of things is everywhere.

France is dying, because France can't have a private sector because of its regulations.

The fun part is, now that France is in the neo-liberal EU, France is dismantling its super-big-yet-working-ok public sector to make place for private companies... That can't exist because of regulations.

France is dying to me. As an 18-yo, I'm seriously concerned on what to do for my future. The country has a super good education system (I would easily say the best in the world, by far) (just check out the ENS's Nobel prize / admissions ratio) but has no companies where people do any work. Most of the brilliant French minds go to work in other countries where it's possible to create and operate a company.

<comment><USER5> >France is dying, because France can't have a private sector because of its regulations.

>France is dying to me. As an 18-yo, I'm seriously concerned on what to do for my future. The country has a super good education system (I would easily say the best in the world, by far) (just check out the ENS's Nobel prize / admissions ratio) but has no companies where people do any work. Most of the brilliant French minds go to work in other countries where it's possible to create and operate a company.

You're young, and you are, quite honestly, fully misinformed as to how things work in France. I know it, I live here, I was born here, I work here.

France is at the forefront of airplanes, rockets, AI, has hundreds of startups and old companies. The only places where the private sector cannot exist directly because of regulation are fully justified. Take the upcoming dismantlement of EDF in multiple companies, leaving 35% to the private sector. Handing off electricity distribution to private entities is quite possible the worst thing a country can do. This is an essential service. And so are all the other ones that limit the private sector. Everything else is absolutely fair game, and evidenced day after day. Things like visa applications ? Handled by private companies. URSAFF & Pole Emploi ? Mostly handled by private companies.

So, yes, we have a sizeable public sector. Yes, we have laws that prevent employers from abusing employees. Nothing that prevents you from starting your company, in any sector. It does prevent you from treating employees like shit. Hell, you can become a micro-entrepreneur today if you want.

<comment><USER4> Airplanes? You're right. Rockets? Ariane is being eaten alive by SpaceX, and the bureaucrats won't move fast enough. They can't even agree on Ariane 6. AI: Yeah France's really good at supplying engineers for Facebook. There's a reason why François Chollet and Yann LeCun have fled away.

Old companies in France don't build anything new. Maybe we do have startups, but do we have successful ones?

Concerning your last point, saying that the current 3000-pages laws are just "preventing you from treating people like shit" is a simplification.

<comment><USER5> >Ariane is being eaten alive by SpaceX, and the bureaucrats won't move fast enough. They can't even agree on Ariane 6

Arianespace and SpaceX are not even playing in the same court. Ariane 6 is made for heavy payloads, SpaceX can barely lift medium weight satellites.

Yann LeCun? He was literally already studying in Toronto in the 80s, he didn't flee France for Facebook.

As for startups, yes, we do. Are they unicorns? No, because contrary to HN's belief, they're an absolutely awful idea. Hell, I'm working in one, that's raising 5 millions, has clients throughout european countries and serves millions of daily users.

>Concerning your last point, saying that the current 3000-pages laws are just "preventing you from treating people like shit" is a simplification.

No, really, repeating the MEDEF's talking points without even fact checking them makes you look bad. Especially when it comes from Gattaz. 3000 pages includes the legislation AND the reglementation, including every single decree, as well as copies of the main jurisprudences. And the final 400 or so pages are mostly about what corresponds to what between versions of the law.

I literally have a copy of the work code with me. It's a sizeable book, yes. It's not 3000 pages.

However, there is a lot of added complexity because private entities want to add their own set of rules. So, instead of only knowing work law, you also have to know the 180 pages or so of Syntec when you start working in a french company that does IT. enjoy.

<comment><USER6> > Arianespace and SpaceX are not even playing in the same court. Ariane 6 is > made for heavy payloads, SpaceX can barely lift medium weight satellites.

Ariane 6, which isn't even flying yet, is projected to lift 10350 kg - <USER2> kg to LEO, depending on the version [0].

Falcon Heavy can lift 63800 kg to LEO in expendable mode [1].

You were indeed correct that they are not playing in the same court.

[0] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_6](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_6)

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

<comment><USER5> SpaceX _pretends_ it can lift 63 tons.

In practice, their payloads have been a few tons at best. Whereas Ariane's track record with Ariane 5 is almost flawless and actually hitting those announced maximums.

But sure, trust the company that has regularly been lying on their abilities :)

<comment><USER6> > SpaceX _pretends_ it can lift 63 tons

You can't be fucking serious.

Falcon Heavy launched 6465 kg satellite to GTO, while landing all 3 boosters.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. 6400kg. 6.4 tons. Not 63. Nor the 26 they pretend they can do on GTO

<comment><USER6> Are you at all familiar with the payload scaling between different orbits and the payload penalty for reusability?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> From what a few of my colleagues told me: France is very racist. Apparently this is true in most of Europe. Everything looks okay on the surface but they are deep racial undertones. They tell me that believe it or not America is the one of the least racist countries. It does not mean there's no racism in America just that it's lesser.

It's easy for immigrants to assimilate into society in America than most places in EU. Till that changes no matter how easy it is to get a startup visa it won't make a difference.

I don't know how true that is. Can someone with more experience please validate?

<comment><USER8> > France is very racist

Literally the biggest lie I read here for a long time. Yeah France is so racist that 20% of the population is of foreign non-white ancestry, nationality is easy to get (notably got automatic if botn on national soil), no welfare programs discriminates on nationality basis, illegal aliens are rarely expelled (being sentenced is not more automatic ground for it), there is laws forbidding criticizing immigration, land are given for cheap to build foreign religious buildings, etc. If anything France isn't putting it's original citizens first enough. The super high tax rates explained elsewhere is in great part used to fund immigrants life.

Also from the point of view of most French, the important thing is speaking good French and integrating well with our culture, regardless of skin color.

<comment><USER9> Btw, just because people are immigrating, it doesn't mean racism is low. Economic opportunities and better quality of life might be the main drivers, even at the cost of facing discrimination.

Most of the French immigrants are from erstwhile French colonies like in the case of Britain, racism and exploitation of their homelands didn't stop them from moving to seek better life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please write a blog post with a more complete list of podcasts that you listen to and sites that you read!

It turns out it is surprisingly difficult to find pointers to sites and podcasts if you speak French, but do not live in France. The internet is really good at keeping us in our bubbles, making a lot of assumptions on geolocated IPs.

As a side note, I will add that there is one thing that is somewhat problematic about the French business culture, namely that French companies will really go out of their way to deal only with other French companies. It is very difficult to do business with France because of this. It does help if you speak fluent French, but even then, unless you are a French business, you are at a big disadvantage and your product needs to be _really_ much better than the competition. I guess in the case of the OP this worked well, because the business was based in France after all.

<comment><USER11> > Please write a blog post with a more complete list of podcasts that you > listen to and sites that you read!

>It turns out it is surprisingly difficult to find pointers to sites and podcasts if you speak French, but do not live in France. The internet is really good at keeping us in our bubbles, making a lot of assumptions on geolocated IPs.

If you have a good level in french, I would advise you to listen to France Culture. I think the programmes are quite good, I personally really liked the audio series, for instance "L'incroyable expédition de Corentin Tréguier au Congo". Another interesting programme of this summer is the ongoing interviews with "modern mercenaries/privateer" [3]

[1] [https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions](https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions)

[2] [https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/lincroyable- expeditio...](https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/lincroyable-expedition- de-corentin-treguier-au-congo)

[3] [https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/le-monde-des- espions-...](https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/le-monde-des-espions- saison-2-les-nouveaux-corsaires/saison-29-06-2020-23-08-2020)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> We often hear stories on how hard it is to start a business in France. As a French, I'd like to hear how _easy_ it is in other countries (UK, US?). For example, what are the costs, the amount of paperwork...

<comment><USER13> I have done it in Germany. I had to register my website as a business, and documented how to do it on that same website.

Honestly, it wasn't so hard, and I can honestly say that I made it a little easier. The hardest part was taxes, and the honest solution is "hire a tax advisor, pay 300€ a year, be done with it".

The biggest problem for me is the cost of health insurance. As a self-employed person, you pay double. I pay 850€ a month in health insurance, and 550€ a month in rent. The fix is to switch to private health insurance, but that has its own caveats.

Here's an overview of what must be done: [https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/start-a-business-in- german...](https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/start-a-business-in-germany)

[https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/become-a-freelancer-in- ger...](https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/become-a-freelancer-in-germany)

<comment><USER6> > As a self-employed person, you pay double.

What do you mean, pay double? If you mean that, with regular employment, your "employer pays half" \- that is just an accounting trick and you actually pay all of it.

<comment><USER13> You pay twice as much as regular employees, whose employers cover half of it. It's not an accounting trick, since the half the employer pays is not included in your net income. The same applies to public pension payments, although freelancers can opt out of them.

For those who are curious, I wrote a plain English introduction to German health insurance: [https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/german-health- insurance](https://allaboutberlin.com/guides/german-health-insurance)

<comment><USER6> > since the half the employer pays is not included in your net income

There is a total cost for employer for a particular employee and the take-home pay for that employee. Where between those two we put a number that's called "your net income" is just arbitrary convention.

Employer knows how much the total cost will be when they negotiate the salary. It's all the same to them if the entire amount goes to you personally and then you use it to pay health insurance, or they first pay some of that amount to health insurance and then give the rest to you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hi Christian, welcome to France.

My suggestion to add to your French podcasts list:

Tête à Tech - [https://teteatech.fr/](https://teteatech.fr/)

This is my favorite podcast about technology by Awa Ndiaye and Jeremy Lezac.

Enjoy the croissants.

</comment><comment><USER15> Thank you for sharing these details, however what you've described seems to fall under "visa abuse" in eyes of developed countries who offer startup visas... mocking up something one weekend in order to go live in the country certainly goes against the spirit of these visas.

</comment><comment><USER16> For those interested in moving to Europe, seedtable maintains a list of European Tech Visas which could be handy

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wLPGB2BdRxHWbdOXXtKA...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wLPGB2BdRxHWbdOXXtKAoCQimY_4RjBjRH8Grv3U0tI/edit?ck_subscriber_id=855671361#gid=0)

</comment><comment><USER17> Don't. There are so many other countries with great programmers in Europe. I would go with Bulgaria or Romania when EU is a requirement. Otherwise I would go to Georgia (the country).

First row countries like France or Germany are start up hostile.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm debating doing something similar for Japan. It's always nice to read how it is around the world.

In Japan, it is "Fairly" easy, provided you know Japanese and Japanese Culture.

For "hostility" a-lot of it comes under not knowing how to do things the Japanese way and finding an office location. Though there are government city sponsored incubators.

Mostly though, it's an excuse to just pay money to get a visa and residency, that can turn permanent.

</comment><comment><USER19> Well I lived in US and created a company in Paris. US administration didn't look simpler to me... Tax in NYC were huge and it didn't include the schools for my kids. If you're 18 yr old and care only about your own needs, go to US (if you can get a visa, remember trump don't like foreigners and 401k). France is better when you want a family or life conditions of a rich country.

<comment><USER20> NYC is arguably the highest taxes locale in the US.

Try the same comparison with say, Seattle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm intrigued on how it's just the opposite of the United States. Here if you get accepted into an incubator they pay you. In France you pay them!

If France really wanted foreigners to start companies there why wouldn't they make the tech visa as close to free and frictionless as possible?

<comment><USER22> See my comment over here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24233291](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24233291)

Some of these incubators are _gaming_ the system to make money. I'd not be surprised if they are giving these approvals to people who should not be eligible (ie: people not interested in starting a startup).

<comment><USER23> Incidentally like the author of the linked article. He states he lifted off the idea template for his first startup from Canva. Fortunately for him, he lucked out because he found another startup co-founder for an actual idea much later on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> French Talent Passport has streams for employees as well as founders. Does anyone know what happens if you use the employee stream and then lose your job, e.g. because the company who hired you has gone under? Do you have to leave France immediately, or is there a grace period for you to find another job?

Also, does France have similar to Permanent Residency in other countries? How long do you need to live in France before you can obtain a status that allows you to stay, live, and switch employers in France and does not depend on keeping your job?

<comment><USER25> I have the Talent Passport as an employee, and my first company went under. I was lucky to find another job before quitting, but generally, there is no obligation to "leave France immediately".

<comment><USER26> Also, if you've worked for at least 6 months in the past 2 years and your company went under / you got fired / the company did not renew your CDD (temporary contract) / you had to quit because your SO is moving, you're given unemployment benefits (whether you're French or not) as well as help to get back to employment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I suspect my first question is - does it matter now, post-COVID. Is there any investment money out there still? If I get a visa, have a plan, is there anyway to raise enough money to even keep me in baguettes?

<comment><USER28> Many startups were still founded during 2008 recession. There are new needs after every crisis, and entrepreneurs just have more time and motivation to build something. Investors also try to diversify their capital like always. They're just more careful now. Crisis definitely has a negative impact overall. But, it can't stop everyone.

[https://news.crunchbase.com/news/lessons-from-2008-how- the-d...](https://news.crunchbase.com/news/lessons-from-2008-how-the-downturn- impacted-funding-two-to-four-years-out/)

[https://mattermark.com/2007-2009-financial-crisis- surprising...](https://mattermark.com/2007-2009-financial-crisis-surprisingly- kind-tech-startups/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> tl;dr: France made a program where they defer idea/talent assessment to third- party "incubators". Some of these guys are now taking the opportunity to give you the approval for a "fee". That's around 5.000 euros.

ps: UK/Hong Kong have similar programs.

</comment><comment><USER29> Taxes and paperwork in France (and Europe) really doesn't sound that bad to me. What does sound very different are the labor laws.

You can't just fire someone because its illegal to do so. You can't just hire a bunch of people quickly because people dont switch jobs as often. The team can't work 80 hrs a week because that isn't allowed either.

<comment><USER30> What's worse is that I heard rumors they don't allow slave labor either. Labor laws, ugh, they're the worst.

<comment><USER29> OK then, in your opinion what are the main reasons there are many more successful tech companies in the US vs EU?</comment></comment></comment>


The Source Control Shingle - <AUTHOR> http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Source-Control-Shingle.aspx <comment><USER2> FTA: "Wait," a third one questioned, "did you do an UPDATE before the COMMIT?"

"Did I what?" the second developer replied. "Oh. Crap."

Thats the real WTF here. Die CVS, die.</comment>


Fluid Actuators from Disney Research Make Soft, Safe Robot Arms - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/beautiful-fluid-actuators-make-soft-safe-robot-arms#.VDaXD69x3zs.hackernews

<comment><USER2> The section of the video where the robotic arm "plays ball" really impressed me due to the kind of playfulness which it exhibited. Beyond being impressed by the fluid actuator system I was just starting to be amazed at the programming involved with making a robotic arm that can show such accuracy to "catch" the ball and roll it back but also do it in such a playful manner..... then the camera zooms out and shows that the arm was being controlled by a human. Damn.

* I'm at working and watched the video with out sound, so maybe I missed as it was explaining what was going on.

<comment><USER3> The fact that you can have something responsive enough to _mirror_ human movement is very impressive.

<comment><USER4> You'll be amazed when you see the video of this device. It's accurate enough to mirror human hand writing!

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's a nice way to make a low-friction pneumatic or hydraulic cylinder. It's not original with Disney. Rolling diaphragm seals for pneumatic and hydraulic cylinders have been available commercially since the 1950s. ("[http://www.marshbellofram.com/belgas/files/2012/05/design_ma...](http://www.marshbellofram.com/belgas/files/2012/05/design_manual.pdf")) It was used for humanoid robots as far back as 1985. ("[http://cyberneticzoo.com/robots/1985-mcandroid-jon-barron- et...](http://cyberneticzoo.com/robots/1985-mcandroid-jon-barron-et-al- british/"))

There's no power source in that demo. That's an un-powered Waldo, with the manual operator providing all the power. If you put that mechanism in a robot, you still need a motor, in addition to the four pneumatic cylinders and plumbing for each joint. For Disney's anamatronic applications, where the character is fixed in place and can have lots of plumbing to an external control unit, it makes good sense. For working robots, not so much.

<comment><USER6> This pneumatic power design could improve working robots. Yes, you would still need a motor to actuate each joint, but now you can put the motor anywhere. Placing the motor in the torso removes weight from the arms, which means you need less power to control the arms and the arms have less momentum, both of which greatly increase safety.

<comment><USER5> True. You can also get rid of the motor entirely and just use proportional valves and compressed air. Festo's robots work that way.

A common model of human and animal muscles is to treat them as two opposed springs, where the spring constant and neutral point are both adjustable. Mechanical systems for that have been built for research robots, but they're mechanical nightmares of cables, pulleys, and springs. Two opposed air cylinders, though, can directly implement a pair of adjustable springs. That's been done a few times on research robots. This gives you muscles of adjustable softness, just like humans. A running robot with spring-type energy recovery could potentially be done that way. (Humans recover about 60-70% of energy from one stride to another when running. Cheetahs, 90%.) Mechanical running machines with springs for energy recovery have been built. With fixed springs tuned for running, all they can do is run.

To make soft air springs work, you need position and pressure feedback on everything, and small, fast servovalves. Fast servovalves tend to be very expensive. They also have to be near the cylinders for good position control - too much air line and there's no way you can make the system stiff when you want to. Of course, you need compressed air.

Meanwhile, brushless DC motors have improved so much, and are so easy to control now, that the trend is away from pneumatics and hydraulics. Boston Dynamics' humanoid is all hydraulic (it's really a modified Big Dog), but Schaft's is all electric. Google now owns both, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you liked this, check out another project from Disney labs called "Touché" \-- [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4tYpXVTjxA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4tYpXVTjxA)

For some reason, the girl's reactions to the 2 bzzzt-wrong sounds @ 2:55 are hilarious.

<comment><USER8> What is Disney's interest in this type of technology?

<comment><USER9> Disney has a whole R&D division to develop theme park attractions: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_Imagineering](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_Imagineering)

Alan Kay and Danny Hillis both used to work at Walt Disney Imagineering

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The big deal appears to be that the're using hydraulic cylinders with what's called a rolling diaphragm: [http://machinedesign.com/hydraulics/rolling- diaphragm-seals-...](http://machinedesign.com/hydraulics/rolling-diaphragm- seals-stay-strong-under-pressure)

It doesn't look like a particularly new innovation, but perhaps something that's not commonly used in robotics?

<comment><USER11> I've used them in robot arm prototypes, but they're basically 3x as big as regular cylinders (1.5x for the rolling diaphragm overhead, and another 2x because you need two single-acting cylinders instead of a double-acting one).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you're interested in this, I highly recommend looking at the stuff that Festo (a german industrial automation company) is doing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7KIp7A8iqs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7KIp7A8iqs)

(This is from 2008).

And not necessarily related, but really cool anyway: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnR8fDW3Ilo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nnR8fDW3Ilo)

</comment><comment><USER13> It's not a robot, it's a Waldo¹ – a puppet, essentially. Which is fine for Disney, which wants to make puppets for puppeteers, but this has basically nothing to do with new developments in robotics.

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

</comment><comment><USER14> What, aside from the reduced mass of the robot arms, makes it safe? How, aside from operating pressure, is this different from traditional hydraulics?

I'm afraid I just don't see the novelty of a low pressure hydraulic system.

<comment><USER15> I believe the new part is the "rolling diaphragm" actuators, which have a high torque density.

<comment><USER16> And very low stiction compared to pistons.

FTA:

"With pneumatics and hydraulics, you can certainly get power and speed, but you often need to deal with leaks and friction and elaborate arrangements of pumps and valves and whatnot."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is Disney Research really making cast parts for their prototypes, or are these is this off-the-shelf technology from somewhere else?

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/img/fluidtrans2-1412583381292.jpg](http://spectrum.ieee.org/img/fluidtrans2-1412583381292.jpg)

[edit] Nevermind, in other photos it is clear that the parts are machined. I'm still surprised they've gone to such lengths to remove weight in the prototype, but that's more of a cool thing than something truly unexpected.</comment>


HTTP Trends: 2010 to Present - <AUTHOR> http://httparchive.org/trends.php?s=All&minlabel=Nov+15+2010&maxlabel=May+1+2014

<comment><USER2> Well, the data points are pretty much unreadable, with everything being smooshed on top of each other.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suggest starting the Y axes at 0. Otherwise the graphs are misleading (the slopes of overlaid lines are incomparable).

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice to see Flash downsloping to its death.</comment>


Repairing a 1960s-era IBM keypunch: controlled by mechanical tabs and bars - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2017/12/repairing-1960s-era-ibm-keypunch.html <comment><USER2> It's interesting to see that the number keys are almost exactly in the same spot as they are in the integrated numpads of modern laptops' keyboards, although the layout is "telephone style" with 123 at the top.

 _Since each character can have punches in any of 12 rows, you can think of cards as using a (mostly-sparse) 12-bit encoding._

The sparseness of early punched-card formats has always seemed a little odd to me --- instead of storing up to 960 bits per card, this encoding only holds 480 bits (80 columns * 6 bits/63 characters each.) Perhaps people just didn't understand binary very well at the time?

The way that the mechanism works also reminds me of early teletypes --- they encoded and decoded characters using a similar system, essentially doing serial/parallel conversion entirely mechanically. Here's one example:

[https://kb8ojh.net/station/teletype/](https://kb8ojh.net/station/teletype/)

<comment><USER3> People understood binary perfectly! This was only about 50 years ago!

It's a function of the electromechanical technology: It's a lot easier and more reliable to have a wheel with ten index positions on it than to have four wheels with two index positions.

Many early electronic computers used binary coded decimal as a bridge between the electromechanical and the purely electronic worlds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Those keycaps are gorgeous.

What does it feel like to type on?

<comment><USER5> Slow. You can only press one key at a time. Like an old manual typewriter.</comment></comment>


Do Slow Online Ads Really Pay More? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pubnation.com/do-slow-ads-pay-more/?utm_source=hn <comment><USER2> What is the sample size for the experiment?</comment>


Uncle Bob: The Hacker, The Novice, The Artist, and The Craftsman - <AUTHOR> http://thecleancoder.blogspot.com/2010/09/hacker-novice-artist-and-craftsman.html

<comment><USER2> I've seen Uncle Bob speak at a few conferences and his talks are always the best of the lot. He's brilliant, knowledgable, a great presenter and also seems like a heck of a nice guy.

This is a real question though - where can I see code that he has written? What product or project has he created? Has he only worked on proprietary software, or has he made any major contributions to free projects?

I realize that free/open source software is only a part of our craft and that plenty of brilliant people out there work exclusively or almost exclusively in the closed-source world. I also realize that people can make major contributions to software by doing things other than writing code.

But because he speaks so much on _how to write code_ , it would inspire confidence to actually read and use code he has written, look through commit messages, and actually see how the guy manages a real project.

The fact that my Google searches turn up nothing tempt me to cynicism. Somebody please point out something obvious that I have missed.

<comment><USER3> <http://fitnesse.org/>

<comment><USER4> Also, see his profile on github: <http://github.com/unclebob> . Some clojure stuff, which he is really enjoying lately.

<comment><USER2> Thanks - that definitely qualifies as "something obvious" that I missed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this the same Uncle Bob as the Object Mentor Uncle Bob, i.e. Robert Martin ([http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/category/uncle-bobs- bl...](http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/category/uncle-bobs- blatherings))? Or is this another programmer going by the nickname Uncle Bob?

<comment><USER4> Same uncle bob that starts his presentations with physics stuff. See his comments on light and uncertainty principle, from a few days ago:

[http://thecleancoder.blogspot.com/2010/09/uncertainty- princi...](http://thecleancoder.blogspot.com/2010/09/uncertainty-principle- and-quantum.html)

He even twitted about this very post: <http://twitter.com/unclebobmartin/status/25396579220>

His twitter profile points to his object mentor page though. So the confusion is understandable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. When working on my DBs, I am 75% Artist 25% Hacker. When working on anything else, I tend to become the novice.</comment>


Recruiters Approved by Developers - <AUTHOR> We now have a list of recruiters approved by developers. Post them below. Once the list has been voted on, we shorten the list by requiring financial records. Then we can decide how much of our salary they deserve.<p>It's in your best interest to only use Developer-Approved Recruiters. <comment><USER2> > It's in your best interest to only use Developer-Approved Recruiters.

Brilliant idea, a Good Housekeeping Seal of recruiters. Who exactly _approves_ the Developers doing the approving?

Linkedin remains the best resource (social proof) to quickly ascertain if you're dealing with a legitimate recruiter or a complete bozo. Look for individuals with a long track record and solid industry background.

It's perfectly acceptable upfront to inquire specific details about their relationship with the client, history, contractual status, and process. If they can't answer those basic questions to your satisfaction, move on.

A good recruiter is interested in engineering a good match between his clients needs/priorities and the personal/professional goals of individual candidates. Not an easy job when dealing with humans.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Do you vouch for any recruiter? Leave a comment with your favorite recruiter's name, contact info, the company/position they got you hired for, and preferably the % they took from your salary.

It's an open source list, feel free to repost to Facebook, LinkedIn, Reddit, etc. Getting some traction on Austin Digital Jobs.

</comment><comment><USER3> Could you please add or link to some context for what's this about?

<comment><AUTHOR> If it's not self-explanatory, please explain what you don't understand. Maybe I can add clarity.

<comment><USER4> Anything? I don't know what the heck are you trying to do or in what form.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you ever interviewed with a recruiter? Here's what I think every time:

A) Does the job really exist? Or is this a leadgen tactic? Recruiters want a steady flow of developers walking through the door all day. Hustlers catch prospects with honeypot listings. That's the reality. Once the interview is over, now you're on their list and they can claim to represent a huge pool of talent.

B) Do they really have a good relationship with the company? You're asking me to waste time driving across town for an interview, and pester my references, without showing me your track record?

C) What percentage do they take? Are they pitching me too high? Are they bad at negotiating? Do they have too much overhead?

D) Would I be better off working with another recruiter?

E) What are they not telling me?

etc. etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps a better name: D.A.R.L.

Developer-Approved Recruiters List</comment>


Nic.io stores administrative passwords in plaintext - <AUTHOR> https://www.nic.io/mailpass.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I would have thought a domain registry wouldn't do something so egregiously stupid.

Oh, wait, a domain registry seems like _exactly_ the sort of org that would do something so egregiously stupid. :-(

</comment><comment><USER2> Are you absolutely certain that it's not just bad phrasing? Perhaps they're generating a new password, and mailing you that one.

(I'm not a nic.io customer, and I don't want to bother registering, so I can't check.)

<comment><AUTHOR> I was hoping for something (more) sane like that, yes. I verified it though — and yes, the original password is returned, clear as day.</comment></comment>


A Guy on Reddit Turns $766 into $107,758 on Two Options Trades - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-17/a-guy-on-reddit-turns-766-into-107-758-on-two-options-trades <comment><USER2> For everyone of these lottery winners, there's thousands of other idiots in the red. /r/WSB is definitely an entertaining read though.

If you want a funnier read at the expense of a company, read about /u/1R0NYMAN basically conning Robinhood by withdrawing $10k before they ate a $53k loss. Subsequently they stopped allowing box spreads. I believe there was also talk that he could sue Robinhood for being so irresponsible with him, but I'm assuming he cut his winnings and ran.

[https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trader-says-he-has-no- mone...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trader-says-he-has-no-money-at- risk-then-promptly-loses-almost-2000-2019-01-22)

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're after a more interesting trade on reddit thread then ir0nymans box spreads are legendary [1]. Invests $5k and proceeds to turn that into -$57k and ends up banning box spreads on Robin Hood.

1\. [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trader-says-he-has-no- mone...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trader-says-he-has-no-money-at- risk-then-promptly-loses-almost-2000-2019-01-22)

<comment><USER4> I work in risk management in financial services (and also a /r/wsb lurker, because who doesn't like a little excitement in their life), and this is my absolute favorite story [1] to share about the tech industry running head long into a regulated industry where real dollars are at stake. Not only did Robinhood ban box spreads [2], there were additional risk management positions open the next day on their career site. It cost them at least $100k, which is lucky for them! They extended /u/1R0NYMAN almost $300k in credit (not traditional margin, but counterparty/assignment risk) inadvertently, and the user pulled their remaining $10k cash out while settlement was in flight for the $58k loss. Traditional brokers have no issue automatically managing the risk of this type of option trade, and if something goes sideways _they will call you_ if you exceed trade risk limits.

It's not quite Knight Capital [3], but it's still a fun failure/risk management lesson.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/aeqcvt/i_do...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/aeqcvt/i_dont_know_when_to_stop/) (Original wsb thread)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_spread_(options)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_spread_\(options\))

[3] [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/03/bad_algorithm_lost_...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/03/bad_algorithm_lost_440_million_dollars/)

<comment><USER5> What ended up happening to the guy? Did he have to pay that $53k?

<comment><USER6> Based on his post history they closed the account and never contacted him, but who knows what they might do in the future. Perhaps the debt can/will be sold to a collector at some point?

[https://www.reddit.com/user/1R0NYMAN](https://www.reddit.com/user/1R0NYMAN)

<comment><USER4> It's unlikely. They could file a FINRA and SEC complaint. It's cheaper to walk away from it on Robinhood's part. In my experience interacting with financial regulators, the conversation would not go well for RH as a broker-dealer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Less popular is the other story: Several Guys on Reddit Turn $107,758 into $766 on Two Options Trades.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really. Loss porn is equally if not more popular on WSB than gain porn.

<comment><USER7> How many of those are on Bloomberg?

<comment><AUTHOR> I mean in wallstreetbets. I think a story about a massive literal Wall Street bet is well within reason for _Bloomberg_ news

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Was it fool proof?

Previously on reddit - a guy on reddit loses $60'000 [1]

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/agovgl/only...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/agovgl/only_invest_what_you_can_afford_to_lose_they_said/) SFW

<comment><USER6> It appears this guy actually profited 5k, he started out with 5k and withdrew 10k before his account was closed.

As it appears that RH isn't going to go after him for the negative balance, that's free money.

So maybe it is foolproof? Even if you lose, you still win :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A million monkies at a million typewriters...

</comment><comment><USER4> Related Reddit thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/dj5xru/u_di...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/dj5xru/u_did_it_autists_youre_on_front_page_of_bloomberg/)

<comment><USER10> A WSB thread. What else could it have been?

"Choi credited luck". At least he knows it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Bloomberg confirmed Choi's account via screen shots of his Robinhood > Financial trading history.

That doesn't seem sound...

<comment><USER12> It does when you're Bloomberg and touching anything tech related.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> is this much different than someone winning millions on a 2 euro accumulator bet at a horse race?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. It's more a story about wallstreetbets and Robinhood.

<comment><USER14> I intake WSB content like any other meme sub.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> There are so many fun /r/wsb stories.

Just in the past few months there's been 1ronyman, analfarmer and my favorite - well I guess I shouldn't name him in case it violates rules - but some guy that yolo'd his student loans by accidentally buying puts and then tried to convince people he was a good trader.

I also just remembered that time someone tried to share his success with SquareSpace and it turned out he'd bought Square stocks instead by accident and didn't even realize it.

<comment><USER16> >well I guess I shouldn't name him in case it violates rules

Can you provide links or terms to search for those of us who want to read the story?

<comment><USER15> [https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/bi1dub/wsb_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/bi1dub/wsb_trying_to_convince_ujoco645_to_stop_yoloing/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> How is a gambler winning some money even remotely newsworthy?

<comment><USER2> It's really an opportunity to talk about the craziness of wallstreetbets

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amazing! Everyone should gamble with options more, because, winnings.

I can't see how Bloomberg could possibly benefit from that.

</comment><comment><USER19> Why is this flagged?</comment>


Fuckyourcode.com - <AUTHOR> http://fuckyourcode.com

<comment><USER2> There are total 64 pages. Sending request for (int)(Math.random() * 64 th page. Thats all... Back ground color is also generating with random function. Good attempt to study the basics of web programming...

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get it. Sorry. Just saw fuckyourdesign from your link and that doesn't make much sense either but at least it's prettier

</comment><comment><USER4> Oh look, another edgy developer thinks he's funny. At least it's a nice design.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't get it.</comment>


RetroBSD: Unix for the Microchip PIC32 - <AUTHOR> http://retrobsd.org/wiki/doku.php/

<comment><USER2> I have a box to install this on, its a cool project. It even has a C compiler that runs on the host...

</comment><comment><USER3> Amazing. BSD on Sub $20 boards. They list a bunch of hardware that it runs on and also include support for a simulator so you can try it out without hardware.

<comment><USER4> "BSD on Sub $20 boards."

I'm not sure that's the amazing bit seeing as you can get a Raspberry Pi for not much more than $20.

<comment><AUTHOR> Considering the requirements, I'd say you could build a BSD machine for less than U$10 (the microcontroller is about US$5). Nowhere near as functional as a Pi, but much smaller.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which JavaScript framework is worth investing time in? - <AUTHOR> Nowadays it seems like there are endless choices for javascript developers. Having just learned javascript a few months ago, what framework would you recommend i invest my time learning and why? <comment><USER2> Focus on continuing to learn JS well. Try to make the time you spend carry it's own weight. Don't waste time learning JS frameworks just for the sake of learning JS frameworks. Instead, build something that you or someone else will use. Otherwise, learn JS well well enough so that you understand what the framework does and why it would help you. Then you can answer this question yourself.

Also, there is this post by the author of Sammi.js which the author probably answers this pretty well.

[http://www.quirkey.com/blog/2012/09/04/client-side- framework...](http://www.quirkey.com/blog/2012/09/04/client-side-frameworks- suck/)

</comment><comment><USER3> First of all I would recommend that you go through code samples in to do mvc

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

Read or try out a few libraries so you can get a feel for them.

For fronted development I use knockout js. Their documentation is very good. The interactive tutorials offer a great way to learn the framework. The framework itself is not vast and you can get started pretty quickly.

Although it is a matter of preference among the devs but I like the declarative binding style of knockout. It felt natural to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> For frontend frameworks, I like Knockout.js the best, because it has a single purpose. It's starting to catch on.

As far as adoption goes, Angular.js seems to be the big winner.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why not build your own framework ([http://microjs.com/](http://microjs.com/))?

[http://minifiedjs.com/](http://minifiedjs.com/) is also great

</comment><comment><USER6> If you like to make ui widgets to knock your users out then jQuery is where it is. A host of tools come with the basic library but jQuery UI delivers the sort of capability you need to delight your users.

<comment><USER7> Glad someone mentioned JQuery. Say what you will, but the flexibility of JQuery and the community behind it makes this one of the strongest, compatible and more stable JS frameworks to-date.

<comment><USER8> This might be pedantic but I wouldn't consider jQuery a framework at all.

For the OP: Most of the frameworks out there have different advantages/disadvantages. Some are relatively easy to just dip part of a project into, while some will completely take over how you structure your project. I would continue learning JS until you really know you could benefit from a framework and why. Don't fall into the trap of looking for the 'best' framework, because there is not one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a fan of Ember.JS - easy to get started with, good docs, great community, really powerful.

</comment><comment><USER10> +1 for angular.js

</comment><comment><USER11> Meteor.js

</comment><comment><USER12> backbone.js

</comment><comment><USER13> Listen I've learned JavaScript the wrong way and then the right way [by reading JavaSript: the good parts] and i say hands down - Angular.js --- even thought it's in it's "premature" stage it's simply AMAZING! [easy to learn to compared to Backbone.js or Can.js]</comment>


The Next Rembrandt - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextrembrandt.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> The collaborative effort between TU Delft, Microsoft, the Mauritshuis, and the Rembrandthuis yields this beautiful project. Really impressive.</comment>


Ask HN: Buying domains for side projects - <AUTHOR> I bet many on HN will have the domain buying fetish. i.e) You think of a side project and immediately buy the domain for it. There is also the practice of simply buying a domain just because you thought it was cool. I am one of those people and my reasoning is that if i spend some money and buy the domain, i will have the motivation to get started on the project and it has worked at times.<p>On the other hand, i have accumulated many domains which seem pretty useless now! I do renew some domains hoping that i will work on it some day. How do you tackle this? <comment><USER3> It's funny I had this exact conversation with a coworker just this morning. The company we work for has a portfolio of nearly 1 million domain names, and most of them point to simple placeholder pages with ads.

I personally own about 50 domain names...most that I bought with the intention of using for a specific project that never materialized. With a handful of them I paid a writer in the Philippines to write a dozen articles for each, and I threw together simple wordpress sites with RSS autoposting and they make about $10/mo each, which pays for the renewal fees for all of the other domains.

I suppose in theory I could register 1000 domain names and repeat the process of paying for content, setting up wordpress RSS autoposting, and possibly make $10,000 a month, but I never seem to get around to it, and there's the possibility that it won't be as profitable as I think.

<comment><USER4> > I suppose in theory I could register 1000 domain names and repeat the > process of paying for content, setting up wordpress RSS autoposting, and > possibly make $10,000 a month, but I never seem to get around to it, and > there's the possibility that it won't be as profitable as I think.

That's what this kid is doing with 500 domains.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dvkdc/i_pay_for_colleg...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/dvkdc/i_pay_for_college_with_adsense_ama/)

<comment><USER5> Not exactly. He was a bit smarter. He is mainly using free blog services (blogger, etc) so he avoids the annual domain and hosting costs. He also notes that by using blogger he automatically gets more weight from Google searches (I'm not that sure of that though).

<comment><USER3> There is a risk with free blog services like Blogger and Wordpress.com...if someone complains that you are stealing their content, your account can get shut down instantly. It is also harder to sell your site later (e.g. on Flippa) because you don't own the domain. There is also a better opportunity to pass pagerank around to your own sites using a real domain. You can get a domain for $8/year and considering the small amount of traffic from even a few hundred sites, you could host them all on a small hosting plan of $10/month. So the cost per site for domain and hosting would be pennies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I must say, when I was doing some domain research, I though to myself more than once : "this is, this is criminal".

These were domains dealings with quite serious subjects and just seeing them sitting there full of ads, making it so very much difficult for me to acquire, absolute gorgeous domain names, just felt not only immoral but purely and simply criminal.

Of course I got over it and moved onto domains which were available and suitable and just as good, but, and this is not to you personally but companies who buy such domains names en mass hopping to profit, simply, find a way to make money which allows you to get sleep at night.

<comment><USER7> Squatters are pretty vile. I've never had the opportunity, but I've heard such domains can be obtained relatively easily if you have an existing legit company(doing actual business) and can threaten litigation.

That seems extreme, but I think of it like real-estate: If your business buys a warehouse, you may have to hire an exterminator to clean out all the parasites that have set up their nests therein.

<comment><USER8> > ...I think of it like real-estate: If your business buys a warehouse, you > may have to hire an exterminator to clean out all the parasites that have > set up their nests therein.

With real-estate I'd think of it more like considering a property that has squatters in it already, together with the long and uncertain task of evicting them (or paying them to leave) if you decide you want to commit to buy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> i have a personal domain (jcs.org) and i just create a subdomain for a new project. it lets me put it online quickly and it also means i'm not tied to the name if i want to change it.

sometimes i finish a project and it never moves (<http://metra.jcs.org/>) because i can't find an appropriate domain name.

though as someone else suggested, try <http://hntrades.com/> to buy/sell/trade unused domain names.

</comment><comment><USER10> I recently instituted a "no domains after midnight" rule. I've dodged a few bullets with that one.

<comment><USER11> I'm sitting on a 3-month-old gem: theomnomnom.com

Purchased time: 2am.

Hilarious potential: check. Chance that I'll touch it before the renewal reminder email: 20%

<comment><USER12> Would you be willing to lease the domain to someone with a good idea?

<comment><USER11> email me andrew at aawsolutions.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I only register the domain for a year, and if it expires in the year without me doing anything I let it go. I mean, it's been an entire year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good thought! I did the same thing and let a few domains expire this year. If i have not worked on it for a year, there is a good chance that i will never do it in the future. Better ditch it and focus on other things!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the important thing is to have some measure of self-control; if you buy a domain for a project, promise yourself that you won't buy another until you've either: (a) built the project, or (b) sold/traded the domain or otherwise used it in some gainful way.

Disclaimer: I've got a bunch of domains that I purchased for personal projects and never got around to. But at some point, I realized I was just wasting money and promised myself not to buy any more until I finished at least one of the projects.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hmmmm, I have 49 domains. That's costing me $400 a year. I'd say a good two dozen are active(ish). They just seem to accumulate...

<comment><USER3> for the 36 that are inactive, put up a quickie site like I did and in theory you could be making $360 a month (assuming $10/month per site). Even at $1/month per site you would make $432, or enough to pay for all of your domains.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I am totally guilty of buying domains for side projects and then not following through.

I own 17 domains, 5 of which are currently actively hosting meaningful content or webapps. I went through a scrub of the ones that are unused, and realized that I need to let some go.

Here's a list of ones I'm letting expire. If you have a meaningful project idea for one of them let me know.

concoctail.com geogames.org gpsrpg.com istherewind.com jamhunt.com runubc.com

<comment><USER17> how in the world do you come up with those names? what was their appeal to you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've encountered this same problem multiple times.

The fix: don't buy the domain until you are ready to launch the project. This allows you to build without having to adapt your project to a domain name. It's much easier to find a domain that describes your project after it has been completed. It also saves you money if you never carry out your grand ideas.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm going to be a little contrary and say you should register as many as you can when u can.

I have over 300 domains, but the value in a good domain is well worth the cost over the years. TouchArcade.com is one I picked up before I had a solid plan for its use. Now it's annual revenue dwarfs the "wasted" money on domains.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't really consider it a negative for my years-old untapped ideas to cost me a token amount of money per annum. If my unused twitter accounts did the same, I'd probably have a few more active projects, or a few fewer dormant ones.

</comment><comment><USER21> I recently evaluated all the domains I had accrued, took a critical look at all the apps I wanted to built for them and at what state they were in (if at all) and decided to ditch 50% of them.

It felt ...liberating. :)

</comment><comment><USER22> I've stopped myself from buying domains for projects. I also force myself to let a domain expire if I don't use it within a year. It's extra motivation to shit or get off the pot.

<comment><USER17> hopefully the pot gets pretty dirty. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I never start by buying the domain. Instead I spend a bit of time to write down the concept, see if it sticks.

It's only later that I look for a name for the project itself, and I buy the domain at the same time (it's a kind of whois brainstorming).

</comment><comment><USER24> I've managed to accumulate about 150 domains, almost all of them were bought with an idea in mind (quite a lot are duplicates/complements/variants to the main idea).

This year I listed all of the ones that didn't have websites yet on sedo, and set all of them to a couple of hundred pounds each buy-it-now. The idea is that either I focus on building an idea quickly, or risk that someone who thinks he has a better idea than me snaps the domain name up in the meantime.

Hasn't worked. But, so far three of those domains have been sold, so that essentially covers all my domain name renewal fees this year.

Perhaps I should drop the prices to increase the pressure on myself.

</comment><comment><USER25> You post a large update in a place where you value your integrity stating that the goal you were going to achieve will be accomplished by a certain date (that appears reasonable).

In my case, it was to tweet that we'd be selling our latest discs (<http://twitter.com/Thisoneisonus/status/27176693962>) on a certain date, and then coding through the night a couple of days before because I didn't want to look like an idiot to our 5,000 obsessive Twitter followers :D

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm just like you. But I've started winding down my portfolio of ones I know I'll never get around to building. The interesting thing for me has been to see some businesses spring up with the same concepts for which my domain names were bought. That's happened with more than a few of my domain names.

I've also been fortunate to have a couple of my domains result in unsolicited bids ... generating enough profit to cover the carrying costs for the 20 still in my portfolio. Just got a completely unexpected offer for one last night.

</comment><comment><USER27> For every three domains I buy, I probably keep one longer htan a year. And only half of those stay longer than two years (1/6). But those that last longer than two years are generally gonna stay around for a while--I bought them because I like the name, not because of a project sitting in my mind. Eg, AffinityScore.com just has a nice ring to it and would make a nice social ranking product or services business. (If you google "Affinity score" it's most often used by people describing EdgeRank...)

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm shaking my head right now. Literally 5 seconds before checking out the HN home page right now, I just finished the checkout process for yet another sideproject domain :)

</comment><comment><USER29> Someone just released this last week: <http://hntrades.com> Post your domains there and get something for them.

</comment><comment><USER30> I used to buy tons of domains for all the ideas I have or planned to do in the future. The problem is ... most of the time, I could never get around to work on it. Either because one idea took up more time then expected, etc. Now I will just register domain once I'm almost ready to launch.

Looking at the rate startup fail, I guess it's quite alright to not get the domain I want. If things do work out, I can always rebrand it later.

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm the same, currently just have 3 though - om.gd - we.gd and whi.im - <USER2> planned for all of them, but am also interested in getting something going with them sooner than latter. Very interesting the money some people are making from links and basic content... hum...

Tempted to work up some decent ideas into ebooks, and have sites specific to each - just making sure they don't look spammy/rubbish. No point if they do.

</comment><comment><USER32> You can use a subdomain of your personal website for testing. There will still be a good domain name available when the project is ready to launch.

<comment><USER33> Because your idea is good, but not _seven dollar good?_

I mean really, if you're going to the trouble to fire up the IDE and actually write code for a new project, aren't you already a little bit committed? Like committed enough to spend four billable minutes worth of income on the domain name as insurance that it won't be gone in a few months' time?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I only buy .coms, which means I have to be very creative in thinking up names. This on its own is a good throttle on buying names. Lately, I've been toying with the idea of using subdomains from <http://freedns.afraid.org/> to host small projects that don't warrent a domain name. I do wonder what this would do to search rank though.

</comment><comment><USER35> Someone just emailed me today about one of these 'side project' domain names.

Back when I was a business noob I would register domains for just about any bright idea. It got expensive.

What I do now for those, 'on the shelf domains', is simply a white page with an email and a brief message explaining the domain is for sale.

A few inquiries so far, nothing much, we'll see how today's negotiation pans out.

<comment><USER35> Bah, it was only a $100 offer! I'm holding out on this one for $1k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Actually I have 5 domains left that are all 6-7 letters and make really sounding words. Bought them 6 years ago, holding on to them and use them whenever I start up a new company.

</comment><comment><USER37> I consider the purchase price of a new domain to be the first, and one of the best, barriers when vetting new ideas.

If I come up with a sweet idea, I sit on it. If after a few weeks the idea is still burning a hole in my pocket, I'll purchase the domain.</comment>