Ask HN: Where to incorporate a European startup? - <AUTHOR> Mostly concerned about tax and governance, ESPECIALLY if I choose to switch jurisdictions later.<p>Would appreciate any people's opinions and experience. <comment><USER2> Estonia e-residence program[1] is worth looking

[1][https://e-resident.gov.ee/](https://e-resident.gov.ee/)

<comment><USER3> Estonian business climate and taxes are attractive, and it's possible to handle the paperwork almost remotely.

But in the end it does not matter. If you live and run your business from country X, then that country is going to treat your business as a local one no matter where it is registered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Depends on where you live and where you have to pay taxes at the moment. Usually, incorporating in a country that's not your country of residence isn't worth the trouble.

For certain business models some countries make more sense than others. For instance, many franchises are based in the Netherlands because of low taxes on licence fees. However, I wouldn't worry about that in the beginning. Those potential future benefits are likely offset by the additional hassle of essentially having to run a company in two legal systems simultaneously.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you are making incorporating decisions based on taxes, you should probably not incorporate. How will you address CFC rules in your home country?

</comment><comment><USER6> Should mostly consider who you'll be raising money from. Rasing American pre-A money with a European incorporation is going to be tough.

</comment><comment><USER7> Be careful with CFC rules. If you own more than 50% of the company you'll be liable to pay taxes in your country of residence.

</comment><comment><USER8> Ireland with the UK as runner up.

<comment><USER9> UK is a bad idea considering Brexit. You should really choose country that you are living in. If you want to go trough a trouble of company in another country you can look in to Malta, Ireland, Austria or Estonia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A lot of people here in Israel incorporate in Cyprus.

</comment><comment><USER11> Where are you based now?</comment>


The Coming Age of the Polyglot Programmer - <AUTHOR> http://notes.willcrichton.net/the-coming-age-of-the-polyglot-programmer/ <comment><USER2> A lot of statements in this article aligns well with that of MyDef: [https://www.gitbook.com/book/huizhou/programming-with- mydef/...](https://www.gitbook.com/book/huizhou/programming-with- mydef/details)

The ideal of MyDef is actually have each programmer customize and maintain their own meta-layer compiler so he can develop his own syntax and vocabulary as he grows -- just like the way we develop our natural language skills. In our natural language, we do share most of our vocabulary (which is the base of our ability to communicate), but each of us all attach some individuality to the words we use. When I tell my son to go to school, I meant exactly to finish lunch, pack up bags, get out of the door and board the bus by specific time. That is potentially very different from the same word being used by other people. My own customization allows for the efficiency in our use of natural language. The efficiency is supported by the context established between me and my son (and rest of the family to certain extent). A custom user maintained MyDef (or any other eventually chosen) toolchain where individual programmer can easily search, read, check and add or modify will provide such context for programming language to achieve this efficiency.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Compilers are hard.

Could have been true in 1980s. Not any longer.</comment>


Twitter for Android – Now with Push Notifications and Multiple Accounts - <AUTHOR> http://blog.twitter.com/2011/07/twitter-for-android-now-with-push.html <comment><USER2> This is great news. Finally able to manage all of my twitter accounts with the native app.</comment>


Snapchat is raising another $55M, with a $2B valuation - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/12/05/who-needs-facebook-snapchat-is-raising-another-55m-with-a-2b-valuation/

<comment><USER2> Would someone more informed that I am about VC please explain why this is a better move than taking $3B or $4B in cash?

</comment><comment><USER3> _Snapchat's latest raise comes just a few weeks after The Wall Street Journal reported the company was looking to raise $200 million with a valuation of $3 to $4 billion. One company named in the rumors was China's Tencent Holdings, which would love to be a part of a growing American tech company like Snapchat._</comment>


Trello can now show you everything you're working on at once - <AUTHOR> http://blog.trello.com/the-new-cards-page/

<comment><USER2> Cool, but I need to be able to disable certain lists from showing up here.

I don't want to see all of my "done" tasks when I visit this page.</comment>


The golden age of YouTube is over - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/5/18287318/youtube-logan-paul-pewdiepie-demonetization-adpocalypse-premium-influencers-creators <comment> frosted-flakes Youtube drama is just that, drama. Despite the end of the "golden age", there's still a lot of quality content on YouTube. However, you won't find it on the Trending page, and most of it is funded through platforms like Patreon, not ads, or is not funded at all (like hobbyists).

Here are my rules for YouTube:

1\. Disable search and watch history. This restricts the factors that drive your video suggestions to videos you've explicitly selected.

2\. Never go to the Trending page. Most stuff there is clickbaity garbage.

3\. Actively curate your suggestions. If there are videos in your suggestions you don't care about, click "Not Interested" in the flyout menu. If you watch a video you like and you'd like to see more, subscribe to the channel, upvote the video, or add it to a private playlist.

My home page suggestions are limited to videos directly related to videos I've upvoted or channels I've subscribed to, except for the occasional time Google adds a "Popular music" or whatever section that is easily dismissed. Suggestions below videos are also pretty relevant.

One of my favourite channels is a New Zealander called Geoffrey Croker who is restoring his classic Land Rover, with dry humour, excellent lighting and cinematography, and good pacing. He just posted a video about the LR's engine that I haven't watched yet, but I'm sure will be great[0]. Rather than using YouTube's algorithm to discover new channels, I rely on comments like this one that I see around the Web, as well as when channels I watch call out other channels, the way This Old Tony[1] frequently does.

[0] [https://youtu.be/KSjA3KJPwro](https://youtu.be/KSjA3KJPwro)

[1] [https://youtu.be/qMrlyEreba8](https://youtu.be/qMrlyEreba8)

<comment><USER2> One more important thing, one should never, ever make mistake and spontaneously watch any random, interesting video without using incognito mode - few mistakes like this and your feed will be pure garbage river, flowing uncontrollably.

<comment> frosted-flakes No, that's why I disable search and watch history. Watching a video won't affect my feed; only upvoting it or subscribing to the channel does that.

<comment><USER3> That doesn't work for me. I've had watch history disabled for years and I still get recommended videos in the sidebar that are related to videos I've merely watched.

I wish there was an extension to remove all the "Recommended for you" entries and only show videos related to the current videos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not saying it's a panacea.

But we can't begin to see a better YouTube, or a better internet without fixing copyright laws. The instant we start fining companies or possibly arresting individuals for filing false copyright claims against fair use of copyrighted content, that racket will collapse.

The most egregious part is that short clips of music or videos can strike a YouTube video. This is despite the ability to easily automatically detect the total length of the snippet. Short clips are fair use almost by definition. Howe could you possibly diminish the value of a copyrighted work by playing 5 seconds of it? I don't think it can be done if you try.

Ending this problem will take immense pressure off of YouTube and the people who create content for it. The resources invested in this manufactured problem can be reallocated to solving the other problems.

</comment><comment><USER5> There is no accounting for people's tastes. "Amateur" YT'ers may be upset about Google de-emphasizing their vids on the Recommended panel, but I'd wager that there is a significant audience that absolutely despises the low-quality, middle-school level "drama" content that fills the "Trending" page.

I appreciate early YT's role in bringing unconventional content to the fore, but we are way past that point. People are on YT today to make money. That is why so many videos are the same formulaic garbage as cable TV, just tweaked to reflect YT "culture":

"Kids react to [something]"

"I was almost arrested [NOT CLICKBAIT]"

"[thumbnail with screaming face]"

"Feminist cringe compilation No. 2535366"

</comment><comment><USER6> My favorite corner of YouTube— lengthy, thoughtful, and often artistic video essays and skits addressing culture and politics— is flourishing right now. Some examples:

Unfolding Ideas – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0)

ContraPoints – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtj7LDYaufM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtj7LDYaufM)

Philosophy Tube – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qihG6AGjkRk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qihG6AGjkRk)

Lindsay Ellis – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FJEtCvb2Kw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FJEtCvb2Kw)

Innuendo Studios – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agzNANfNlTs)

HBomberguy – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnPOQr1pxY8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnPOQr1pxY8)

and so on. And it seems like it's only in the past couple of years that many of these channels have reached their current levels of artistry and production value.

Most stuff on YouTube is trash, but there's plenty else to watch.

<comment><USER7> I would particularly recommend Lindsay Ellis' series "The Whole Plate[0]," a multi-part primer on film theory presented through the analysis of Michael Bay's Transformers films.

[0][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRXI__Wixas&list=PLJGOq3JclT...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRXI__Wixas&list=PLJGOq3JclTH8J73o2Z4VMaSYZDNG3xeZ7)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> the answer is, as always, decentralization. The link between creator, consumer, and optionally, the sponsor aka advertiser, should not be in the hands of a single monopolist.

<comment><USER9> There are some decentralized video platforms popping up now, like peertube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The golden era of YouTube ended when it was bought out by Google in 2006.

Ten years ago, YouTube was just a very popular video hosting service, with videos that were not made for profit but for entertainment. Videos were made by fans for fans, by enthusiasts for other enthusiasts, and they were quality. Regarding the football vids, they were a perfect blend of action and music, paced well and with well designed rhythm.

I used to go on YouTube to watch compilations of my favorite footballers, and back then the content wasn't restricted or monitored for intellectual property breaches. Those compilations were fantastic for the reasons above.

Today's youtube is just trash.

<comment><USER11> As long as you don't monetize your videos, I don't think anyone cares about your footballer compilation video. I still watch a lot of highlights/compilations (tennis, not football) to this day.

I agree with the statement that the golden era of YouTube is over, but before Google bought it out there was virtually no way to make money off of it, except through abusive networks. I could be wrong, but most companies don't bother striking videos that aren't monetized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like these issues will always appear at scale where the company is just overwhelmed at what people can do. Will be a lesson for anyone who wants to take their company to that level.

</comment><comment><USER13> I watch a lot of youtube and spend a lot of time just watching regular uploads by the close to 90 youtubers I follow. More time actually than Netflix, for which I pay per month. I've been following a lot of these youtubers for several years and quite a few of them seem to be doing this for a living. As far as I can see most of them are doing fine financially and seeing increases in subscriber rates and converting some of that into e.g. patreon support, sponsorships (e.g. nordvpn and squarespace seem to enjoy burning a lot of cash on this), and other revenue. I've followed quite a few long enough to remember their early years when they were amateurs and their gradual learning process as they got better at editing and producing content and figuring out what worked for them.

Youtube as a business seems a combination of insanely profitable due to ads and at the same time hopelessly inept when it comes to practical details like filtering/recommending stuff, and bleeding cash by doing silly things like not monetizing my behavior in any way that is obvious to me.

Like many long time users, I ignore their trending feed. It's beyond terrible and seems aimed at German teenagers who consume content in German. Thus showing their 'AI' (the quotes are intended sarcastically) hasn't figured out that I'm a middle aged expat who never consumes any content whatsoever in German despite living in Berlin. And presumably they are intimately familiar with my search and browsing history. I carefully micromanage recommendations to get any value out of them. Basically it defaults to "more of the same shit I saw recently", or "the exact same shit I already watched or that I dismissed repeatedly". Occasionally I get some value out of it though. But mostly I seem to find my way to new channels via referrals by those I follow. Collaborations among youtubers seem to be a thing and I often end up following new channels this way. IMHO a lot of youtubers could do well exploiting this more effectively. E.g. curated lists of similar channels could be a thing and being on such lists ought to bring a lot of traffic where Google's 'AI' just doesn't get the job done.

Youtube's failure to convert people like me to paying customers is a problem. I spend hours watching great content for free; and like most clued in users these days, my browser has an ad blocker which works great on Youtube: I never see ads. I'm grateful that it is free but I'd like this to be long term sustainable as well because I genuinely enjoy the content.

I feel slightly guilty about not doing the Patreon thing, which I know a lot of youtubers depend on. The thing is, I'd gladly distribute 10 euros or so a month among the youtubers I enjoy watching but I can't afford to pay that to each of them, which seems to be the patreon way; or micromanage dozens of donations more or less aribitrarily. Also, 20 cent patreon donations are not a thing as far as I know I'd feel vaguely embarrassed doing that when people are clearly expecting/hoping for more. I also have some reservations about Patreon as a platform and its content policies. IMHO puritanism and political correctness is a not a good thing and it seems ad publishers and VC funded companies are hyper sensitive about this. When F-bombs become a monetization risk and e.g. European youtubers feel compelled to self-censor or bleep out their own swearing, something is wrong.

10 euros is ballpark what I spend on Spotify and Netflix every month. I get good value for money on both. Measured in hours, I probably spend about as much time on Youtube.

However, Youtube red/premium or whatever it is called now as a value proposition is completely uninteresting to me because it does little or nothing for the channels I actually follow and I rarely seem to encounter any youtube premium content that would require me to sign up AND is compelling to me. Additionally, I already get an ad free experience and for whatever reason Youtube seems to be completely fine with this. I'm sure they are well aware that their ads largely don't work on desktop or maybe their mobile revenue is such that they can't be bothered to give it a second thought. Either way, that 10 euro is something they have not figured out how to tap into for me or indeed hundreds of millions of other users.

I believe that this is true for the whole of Google. Yes, they are making a lot of money but company wide their product strategy seems messy and subject to rather large and arbitrary changes rather frequently without obviously yielding results other than year on year growth in ads (which I never see). At the same time they seem super sloppy about monetization. E.g. up-selling for stuff I clearly use and appreciate never seems to not be a priority for them. They are not actually trying very hard as far as I can see. I suppose it is nice to be able to afford to spend blindly on R&D like that and to not have to worry about monetizing.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle the business structure and taxes of side projects? - <AUTHOR> For those of you with income generating side projects, have you incorporated? Do you pay quarterly taxes? Do you list it as other, unreported income on your returns? <comment><USER2> Lawyer and entrpreneur here. There are 2 main reasons to incorporate: liability protection and ease of administration.

You don't say what your side project is, but you have to ask your self whether you need liability protection, that is what are the chances someone is going to sue you for damages. If you feel you need liability protection, then you should form an entity. I recommend an LLC in most cases. It is a pass-through entity for taxes which means you pay taxes on your individual return (though it still must file a business tax return). Also buy insurance.

The other reason is ease of administration. A legal entity will have some form of controlling document. In an LLC, it is the Operating Agreement. This spells out the rights and duties of the principals in the business. It also allows for common ownership of the business assets. As principals come and go, the LLC continues on. Finally, if you get big and you bring on investors, they will want to see a legal entity for their protection.

The drawbacks of forming an LLC are the time and effort of drafting and filing all the proper incorporating documents, paying the filing fees (in California $800 per year), and the extra tax forms.

This is a complicated topic and I have given a high level view. There are lots of resources on the internet and in bookstores on this topic. Nolo.com would be a good place to start.

<comment><USER3> > paying the filing fees (in California $800 per year)

Wow, that seems super high. So if I was running a side project in California I might be stuck deciding between wasting 10% or more of my income on fees or putting my personal assets at risk in a sole proprietorship?

Since you mention you are a lawyer, can you comment at all on the limits (if any) of liability protection with an LLC. Is a single-person LLC going to be a solid shield over my personal assets, or are there still possible risks?

Edit: It looks like the fees to maintain an LLC in my locality would be less than 5% of the $800 fee mentioned for California. Does California just not like small businesses?

<comment><USER4> >can you comment at all on the limits (if any) of liability protection with an LLC. Is a single-person LLC going to be a solid shield over my personal assets, or are there still possible risks?

Think of liability as a 2 way street.

1\. Someone suing your LLC and trying to collect against you/your assets personally. Generally this is the type of protection you will receive with an LLC (single or multi member) barring any exceptions, such as piercing the corporate veil in which case the plaintiff _might_ go thru your LLC protection and reach your personal assets to collect.

2\. Suing you and trying to get to your LLC. This is the direction the single member LLC _might_ not offer protections. Imagine a scenario where you are personally sued and you don't have personal assets to cover the judgement. Say if you owned 1 share of Apple, obviously they can't collect against Apple just because you are an owner, and the same protection will _typically_ exist with a multi-member LLC. However, in the case of a single member LLC in these types of cases the courts will likely allow the plaintiff to collect against LLC and/or even foreclose on your LLC company/assets if need be.

>Does California just not like small businesses?

CA likes revenue and as high as the fee is, small businesses will pay because they don't have options (they could incorporate in CA as opposed to organizing an LLC or moving states).

One possible _hack_ is create LLC #1 in another state, qualify it as a foreign LLC to do business in California, and and the end of the year repeat the process with LLC #2 and transfer all assets from LLC #1 to LLC #2. The only reason someone might not recommend this route is because people prefer continuity of a business, but that shouldn't really be an issue when the main goal is liability protection from side projects.

Edit: dissolve and file final tax return

<comment><USER5> You have not advised "hack." You've just advised someone to commit borderline tax fraud. Please note that tax practice is unique in that _advisors_ can go to jail or be criminally sanctioned for advising tax evasive strategies.

Also, I don't think you realize that foreign LLCs are required to pay the franchise fee in California in order to be licensed to do business (meaning, having employees, facilities, or activities in CA). Thus, if you're in CA, your suggestion really just amounts to paying franchise taxes (or their equivalents) to _two_ states instead of just one, and then committing tax fraud in _two_ states instead of none.

I strongly suggest you delete this post and your followup post, because it can be used against you in a court of law.

<comment><USER4> >Also, I don't think you realize that foreign LLCs are required to pay the franchise fee in California in order to be licensed to do business (meaning, having employees, facilities, or activities in CA).

No, LLC's file an LLC-5 form and pay the $70 filing fee. The business will not be liable for the Franchise Tax if the entity is dissolved or cancelled before the liability is encurred (Franchise Tax Due Date) if the LLC is dissocled after the Tax is still owed.[1]

>Thus, if you're in CA, your suggestion really just amounts to paying franchise taxes (or their equivalents) to two states instead of just one, and then committing tax fraud in two states instead of none.

Not remotely, _most_ states don't even have franchise taxes not all even have _annual_ report requirements.

>I strongly suggest you delete this post and your followup post, because it can be used against you in a court of law.

I think you are reading a lot of facts into my post that aren't there and ignoring the facts that are there, for starters I wasn't asked for advice and I didn't give advice. As one lawyer to another, if you are going to suggest I delete my comment due to liability going so far to expressly state criminal liability, I ask you show me a single case where the California Franchise Tax Board has gone after anyone for tax evasion for dissolving their LLC and creating a new one, because I can show you plenty of instances where the CA secretary of state disolves an LLC prior to 4/15 and then opens a new LLC with similar name (sometime exact same) immediately thereafter.

[1] [https://www.ftb.ca.gov/businesses/faq/ab2341faq.shtml](https://www.ftb.ca.gov/businesses/faq/ab2341faq.shtml)

Edit:

BTW the specific form for this type of action is Certificate of Cancellation Short Form (LLC-4/8) and it negates the Franchise Tax when:

1) being filed within twelve (12) months from the date the Articles of Organization were filed with the Secretary of State;

2) The domestic LLC has no debts or other liabilities (other than tax liability);

3) The known assets of the domestic LLC remaining after payment of, or adequately providing for, known debts and liabilities have been distributed to the persons entitled thereto or no known assets have been acquired;

4) The final tax return or a final annual tax return has been or will be filed with the Franchise Tax Board;

5) The domestic LLC has not conducted any business from the time of the filing of the Articles of Organization;

6) A majority of the managers or members, or if there are no managers or members, the person or a majority of the persons who signed the Articles of Organization, voted to dissolve the domestic LLC; and

7) If the domestic LLC received payments for interests from investors, those payments have been returned to those investors

To conclude I never advised anyone to do this, but acknowledged it is possible and LLCs for side projects that don't justify an $800 minimum franchise tax are a good example of when something like this _might_ be done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Obligatory disclaimers: not a lawyer, not an accountant, am employed by Stripe to write about these sorts of topics, writing here only in my personal capacity, none of the following is advice but rather just a pointer for your future Google searches and talks w/ qualified professionals:

I ran my businesses for the first ~6 years as unincorporated sole proprietorships. The exact mechanisms of doing this are different based on where you are (both at a national and local level). Japan and the US are fairly similar: a sole proprietorship exists as soon as you say it does. (In Japan, you should probably walk down to the local tax office and file a form announcing your intention to file 青色申告 next year if you plan on making more than $30k revenue. They'll know which form to file and you are capable of doing it write if you can read Japanese.) Some US localities will want you to file for an assumed name / "doing business as" (DBA) with your local county clerk or have a city business license -- you can usually find out about that with some quick Googling. I filed a one-page form with Lake County, IL saying that I was doing business as Kalzumeus Software (several years before I had that LLC) and then had to pay ~$50 or so to put an ad in the newspaper for a few weeks saying "Heads up Kalzumeus Software is actually Patrick."

You pay taxes on the _profits_ of the business, not on the _revenue_ of the business, which is a crucially important distinction that many HNers do not know when they start and which many do not properly operationalize even if they know it. I cannot underline this enough: no software entrepreneur I've ever met had a good handle on this when starting. If you sell $10k of software and think "Hmm my profits are maybe $9.5k -- the only expense was a DigitalOcean server" I think your profits are ~$0 after you spend a few hours with an accountant walking through credit card receipts. They're going to walk you through things like e.g. depreciation, apportioning business and personal use of your Internet/cell phone, conferences, business entertaining, (potentially!) home office use [+], etc etc. (A thing your accountant will probably tell you, in the US, is that if you want to decrease your tax burden for 2016 buying a Macbook for the business

You should ordinarily be listing income from a side business as business income, at least in the US and Japan, and not as any other type of income. This is both a) correct and b) gives you the ability to deduct expenses, which is not possible on all types of income reported on e.g. one's 1040 or 青色申告.

The US has you pay quarterly estimated taxes. There are safe harbors which are likely to cover you in the first year of running your side project. [https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch04.html#en_US_2015_pu...](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch04.html#en_US_2015_publink100032385) The calculation of these can occasionally be complicated; this is a great "ask an accountant" question because this is their bread-and-butter and that particularly calculation is something that most accountants would do for free, on spec, as part of soliciting your business for next year. The penalties for not paying estimated tax in a timely manner are very small -- many entrepreneurs of my acquaintance treat timely tax payment as a small discount to the "real" tax bill and elect to simplify their lives by paying taxes once a year rather than by calculating quarterly.

The chief reason to put a side project in an LLC is to reduce the risk of liability of the side project flowing to you. Most side projects have vanishingly little liability. Ask me for a citation some other time, but even software development freelancing is low-risk -- my insurance company calculates than ~0.5% of freelancers/consultants get sued in any given year. Downside: when they do get sued, win or lose, that averages $40k in costs. If you're doing something where you have non-trivial liability or if the prospect of $40k+ vanishing just makes you unable to sleep at night, incorporate and get an general liability / E&O policy. (Costs $1k or so per year as a floor; mine as a comparable is $3k and has the words "patient health information" and "HIPAA" on it, which contribute expense and underwriting fun times.)

If you have additional questions about this sort of thing, I'm writing about it this week (in my employed capacity) and would love to hear what you're thinking about.

[+] Home offices are historically a contentious deduction in the US, but one of the reasons you have an accountant is so that they tell you consequential things about the difference between the regs as written and the regs as customarily applied like "You don't have an office? Oh, in Japan, we just deduct 40% of your rent then. Substantiation requirement? Ah you Americans are such kidders. There's the law on the books which is $CALCULATION but the tax agency basically feels like you don't screw them too much on being aggressive and they won't screw you too much on bringing out a tape measure to your kitchen.")

<comment><USER7> Thanks. This is great advice. If I want to incorporate, do you think I should hire an CPA to do that and the filing later? Also, is there a particular type of CPAs I should search for (say, on Yelp), like "small IT business CPA", or is this simple enough that any CPA should be able to cover?

I look forward to reading your article. Would be great if you leave a link here when it's available.

<comment><USER6> If you want to speak to an accountant to sanity check your plans, literally any CPA should be able to help you do it, particularly those advertising a specialty in small businesses. I would caution you that this is far from the hardest question you'll have for your CPA over the next N years and that many people who are competent to tell you what an LLC is are not competent at giving meaningful advice about e.g. what sales tax filings are required for a SaaS business.

I would not recommend having an accountant _actually create_ your company for you, simply from a cost perspective. Making an LLC is as easy as buying a book on Amazon. You wouldn't hire your accountant to buy you a book on accounting from Amazon, because he'd charge you $200 extra to do so -- you'd just get the name of the book and then buy it yourself. Cookie-cutter solo-founder LLCs are roughly as simple as books or sweaters.

I don't make a habit of putting my own work on HN, but I express modestly high confidence that Atlas' guides on these and related subjects will end up here at some point.

<comment><USER7> Thanks a lot, Patrick. This is very helpful to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > 1\. Have you incorporated?

No I operate as a sole proprietor.

> 2\. Do you pay quarterly taxes?

Nope, I pay the penalty since my income and ability to shelter it vary from year to year. The penalty is something like 3% on the total taxes you owe. Not too bad given the flexibility holding your money provides. Maybe I can load up a i401K that year or need to save for some big purchase which is more valuable then just giving the IRS the money.

> 3\. Do you list it as other, unreported income on your returns?

I file a Schedule C

I do it all using TaxAct. Super easy and cheap. Helped me to understand taxes as well.

<comment><USER3> Can you share "how many zeroes" are in the income level of your sole proprietorship?

Also, would love to hear what accounting processes any small businesses like this are using.

<comment><USER8> Its a 4 zeros business. Decent side income from freelancing. Monthly invoicing using Freshbooks. End of year accounting using TaxAct.

If things got any bigger or I went at it fulltime I would prob setup an LLC. But keeping taxes simple at this point is preferable since its just me. I have owned plenty of LLC's previously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I run several side projects[1], with varying degrees of profitably.

I haven't incorporated any of them, I see that as an unnecessary hassle.

I'm in England, and (as far as I'm aware) quarterly taxes aren't a thing here. Until this year the income was negligible enough not to bother paying taxes, but this year I've been keeping track of finances with ledger[2] and I intend to pay taxes as "self-employed" for the first time at the end of this tax year.

And to make sure I'm going in the right direction (not going to run out of money) I add up my net worth, split by category (bank account, peer-to-peer lending, stocks and shares, Bitcoin) at the start of every month and keep track of it in a big text file.

[1] currently focusing on SMS Privacy, read my Indie Hackers interview at [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sms- privacy](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sms-privacy)

[2] [http://www.ledger-cli.org/](http://www.ledger-cli.org/)

<comment><USER10> Quarterly tax returns are a thing if you pay VAT.

Technically you should of been declaring that self employed income regardless of its total, it's not separate from your main income, in terms of tax liability - I believe it's combined with your main income.

<comment><USER11> Many file VAT only once per year, depending on various factors. Quarterly is not necessarily the default option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have been using Stripe Atlas for about 6-7 months now, for a small side project that I spend part of my weekends on.

I have to say that Atlas might be one of the easiest, and least expensive, ways to deal with the incorporation and the rest.

<comment><USER13> Is it just for those who live outside the U.S.?

Trying to figure out the easiest, cheapest way to setup an L.L.C.

<comment><USER6> Atlas works for folks in the US as well, but we don't support LLCs yet. You can register an LLC by yourself with the state of Nevada or Wyoming for a trivial amount of money. There exist hundreds of companies which will assist with form preparation (of which LegalZoom is probably best) but both states now have a web app which produces an adequate cookie cutter LLC for software professionals with very simple needs.

Nevada is more convenient and modestly more expensive IIRC; Wyoming is more privacy-conscious. I own 2 Nevada LLCs; as a consequence of this, my address is trivially available on the Internet. If that gives you pause, Wyoming a good option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I incorporated w/ a basic LLC pass-through back when I started freelancing just for the liability protection. I don't freelance (much) lately, but I've kept the LLC going in the meantime and run my very small side projects as part of that LLC. If you decide to do a side project w/ an LLC you might want to read up on "piercing the corporate veil" and be sure to keep your project's income and expenses separate from any personal stuff. I personally have a completely separate bank account, again from my freelancing days, and keep the two things separated paying myself w/ distributions occasionally. I'm no lawyer or accountant so I don't know if this is "enough," but I figure it can't hurt.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you're in the US I would consider forming an LLC in your home state and use that as a catch all entity for your projects. If any of the projects take off you can spin that project off into a different entity type (if you want). LLCs are mostly painless to create & file taxes for.

<comment><USER16> Would there by any advantage of a Delaware-based LLC (vs. home-state based LLC, e.g., in California) if it's just for liability protection?

<comment><USER17> I had this conversation with an attorney friend recently. Apparently most states have similar corporate laws, the difference is that Delaware has a huge history of legal precedent. If you found yourself in a legal battle, for any reason, you could probably defend yourself in a more easy and predictable manner in Delaware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Personally speaking, enough of my side projects never made a dime that I decided a while back to wait until I made $1 before incorporation. This has saved me quite a bit of hassle.

<comment><USER19> Agreed. I have an incorporated entity for my general business/freelancing, but keep side-projects informal until they get any serious traction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I make a small electronic gadget, non computer related.

I've got an LLC for basic liability protection.

PayPal is my business system. All sales come in through PP, and I use the PP credit card for my purchases. All documents are electronic. At tax time, I download the entire year's transactions into a spreadsheet, add things up, and enter the totals into a Schedule C.

Rather than filing quarterly taxes, I've simply bumped up the amount of withholding from my regular day job.

<comment><USER21> > Rather than filing quarterly taxes, I've simply bumped up the amount of > withholding from my regular day job.

So you overpay on the ~25% self-employment tax and balance everything out when you file your taxes?

<comment><USER20> Yes. My target is to put in enough so my refund / payment is as close to zero as practical, without the risk of having to pay a penalty. I've been able to nail it reasonably well, all things considered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Entrepreneur here, on my fourth company.

Lawyer and Accountant. Budget about $10k/yr

Start as LLC then move to C-Corp as it grows and takes investment money. Accountant files quarterly federal and state taxes. My wages are taken out on W2.

When smaller the project is an LLC. Accountant still files paper but under $100k only annual. Just take the money out as distribution.

Tax implications from either route. Encourage you to find a trusted advisor on those matters

<comment><USER23> Just to clarify one point; when a member of the LLC, you'll be taking "guaranteed payments" or allocations rather than W2 income (and paying quarterly estimated personal taxes out of that). You only do W2 income once it's a C-Corp.

Not a lawyer or an accountant, so use salt with the paragraph above.

(edited to clarify that post above is correct, but possibly ambiguous)

<comment><USER24> S-Corp also, since IRS will take a dim view of not paying payroll taxes. My accountant said use a rule of thumb of having at least 70% of pay be as W2.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> 99% of the time there's no reason to incorporate in Delaware for your side project. Just form an LLC in your state and it'll be considered a "disregarded entity" on your tax return and you'll report the income/expenses on schedule C of your 1040.

If you're making more than a few grand (net) then you might consider having your LLC taxed as a corporation and enjoy the 15% tax treatment. If Trump gets his way, corporate taxes might finally be reduced and you'll get even more favorable tax treatment.

However, if your intent is to enjoy the income but you expect a narrow net income or loss (lots of expenses can be attributed to your business), then stick with a single-member, disregarded entity, LLC.

</comment><comment><USER26> You mentioned "projects" (plural) and the way I have it setup is pretty similar to those recommending an LLC (or S-Corp) in CA.

While the annual cost of $800 minimum tax plus maybe another $500 in administrative fees (accountants, legal, etc.) is real money spent, you can make it back in tax deductions and potential liability. If you have a structure in place (another entity that is not you personally), it is much easier to deduct expenses (less red flags) IF you make an attempt to actually generate income -- the government cannot stop you from being a bad business person :)

If you are in a 50% tax bracket, this could easily be offset by $3000 in expenses such as hosting fees, domain names, costco membership, cell phone, even your car lease. If you are renting, you can possibly deduct some portion (~20%) of your rent (do not do this if you own a house). Get a separate bank account + debit card, a separate credit card (maybe a business one with rewards) and pay everything using that entity. You will end up making "owner contribution" from your personal bank account to your business account every month.

The extra wrinkle if you have multiple projects is that you can further separate your different projects into "DBA"s (Doing Business As) which costs an extra $100/yr (County Clerk Recorder, Publish in Magazine, separate bank account, credit card, domain name) 100% owned by your LLC (or S-Corp). If you shut down a DBA, it will cost maybe another $50. You will need a DBA to open a bank account under that name.

While this may look like overkill, this keeps everything clean and if your side project does take off, you will have some history with the business.

On a day-to-day basis, what I usually end up doing is setting aside a day to deal with all these entities. Most bills are on each "company" credit card and I call all the credit card companies to align the closing date. For example, all my credit cards close around the 22nd or 23rd of every month. On the 12th of every month, I pull up each account and pay them all using one screen of online billpay if you have all your business accounts tied together using your SSN.

Note: I have other companies that are their own entity as they are generating income & have other partners. The setup here is specifically just for my side projects.

<comment><USER27> If I recall correctly there are strict limitations on counting your car, cell phone and rent as business expenses and they require extensive amounts of documentation. I don't know how much they enforce these days since everyone and their brother is hustling a pyramid scheme business but I would research it first. Getting audited without reliable mileage logs, phone records in your favor and a measurable separation between your personal living space and your work area (like a door) could result in being stuck with a tax bill for back taxes.

<comment><USER26> You are correct, there are very strict rules so you do need to make an attempt at making money (the definition of a "business"). If you are actually making a profit (thereby paying taxes for your business entity "the LLC"), then it makes it much easier. Now that I think about it, I think I end up paying my accountant/tax firm about $30k/year mostly for tax returns (I do most of the accounting myself in Xero)

<comment><USER27> Wow, that's quite an accounting bill. If that's for a small-to-medium size business do you mind if I ask why it's so much?

I've heard good things about Xero, are you happy with it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> >have you incorporated?

My state LLC

>Do you pay quarterly taxes?

Absolutely, mail a check with the coupon based on income earned.

>Do you list it as other, unreported income on your returns?

Schedule C and income from business, you pay Self-Employment Tax, SEPs are nice to push off the income to retirement and see a tax benefit if it's supplementary.

I also carry worker's comp and liability insurance, pricey, annoying to setup and deal with but worth it from my perspective.

<comment><USER3> > I also carry worker's comp and liability insurance

Would love to hear ballpark figures on this stuff. I know it can easily be apples to oranges, but I don't even have a rough idea where it would be.

<comment><USER28> Sure, worker's comp is around $400 a year, the tech liability is <$2k. Honestly, the hardest part was the analysis paralysis of "Gee what do I do, I'm sure it's weird and complicated". Just called a local place, they are the agent and got me a policy, similar to healthcare prior to the exchanges or having a State Farm rep.

<comment><USER29> Hi, do you have any recommendations for a 'tech liability insurance' company? I was told by my accountant that I need 1 too, and since I am in CA, she advised me the same thing in these threads, i.e. Don't waste 800$ in single member LLC, just get Liability Insurance

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you start an iOS app under your own name, then decide to form an LLC after validating your idea, do your reviews and rankings get reset?

<comment><USER31> No, this is a rather common occurrence and the transition on the App Store is surprisingly smooth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Has anyone outside the US looked into the tax implications of Stripe Atlas? These articles urge caution:

[http://tech.eu/features/9060/stripe-atlas-european- startups/](http://tech.eu/features/9060/stripe-atlas-european-startups/)

[https://flagtheory.com/stripe-atlas/](https://flagtheory.com/stripe-atlas/)

</comment><comment><USER33> For those from EU, which country within EU is the best to incorporate? Estonia with their online residency seems interesting.

</comment><comment><USER34> I recommend that you do not form a company until you have validated the project. I wrote a blog about it that explains why:

[https://blog.nugget.one/2016/08/19/dont-form-a- company/](https://blog.nugget.one/2016/08/19/dont-form-a-company/)

<comment><USER21> > However, in the event your project is not working, this gives you a great > back-out clause. Simply refund everyone that you captured money from and > close the Stripe account or use it for your next test project.

Seems like an interesting loophole, but don't you have time limits associated with refunds?

<comment><USER34> Nope, not that I have seen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Unless you need the liability protection or have very high income, the overhead in Canada of having a corp is very costly. Hiring an accountant to file corp taxes is usually over $1500 a year alone, then you need payroll, etc. Then you're also paying double tax on that income with a corp. Corp receives income and pays corp tax, pays employee (you) you pay income tax.

If you have a small side project with low risk then I recommend sole proprietor for sure.

In any case, soon as you start generating income you need to track income/expenses, register your business, register for HST and setup a separate bank account. I think TD here charges $25/mo just for that privilege.

So yeah, sometimes a fun side project loses its excitement when your stuck doing paperwork and start adding up the expenses, it's not worth it.

<comment><USER36> > paying double tax

That's absolutely not true. In Canada, payroll is deducted as an expense against your corporation's earnings. The money left over in the corporation is taxed at corporate rates, but those are quite low for small businesses.

Also, more expenses are deductible as a corporation which balance out the much higher costs of accounting. And the corporation is one of the few ways of legally splitting income with a spouse in Canada.

For the rest of your comment, I agree that it's not ideal for someone starting out. I think that the bar for starting a personal corp is around $20k/year in side income.

I'm not an accountant, but I have been dealing with corporate taxes with one as a small business owner for ten years.

<comment><USER35> Corporate earnings are taxed. Your income is also taxed. That's double tax in my mind.

<comment><USER37> _> Corporate earnings are taxed. Your income is also taxed. That's double tax in my mind._

No, you are incorrect.

There are basically two ways to draw money from a corporation that you own in Canada: through payroll, or through dividends.

If you draw it through payroll, _that money never sees any taxes through the corporation_. The only tax burden in the payroll scenario is your personal income tax (same as any other employment income).

If you draw it through dividends, the corporation will pay some tax and you personally will also pay some. However, your personal tax on dividends is less than your personal tax on employment income--the total tax burden is quite similar to what you would pay in taxes if you drew it through payroll, but there can advantages/disadvantages depending on corporate/personal circumstances.

Source: Canadian business owner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I have not incorporated. It is expensive to incorporate in Delaware and to do it anywhere else is a big paperwork headache. (You'll need a board of directors, annual meetings, etc.) If you are making less than $20,000 a year it is probably not worth it, if you are making a lot more it probably is.

As for taxes, the penalties are not particularly punitive if you screw up and you have years to manage the situation before anything critical happens. In particular, if you go one year without making quarterly tax payments you will probably walk away with no penality.

<comment><USER39> First, IANAL and/or CPA. However, incorporating in DE is fairly straightforward, and compared to other states is inexpensive. You can incorporate for as little as $89 filing fee. Of course, if you are not located in DE you will need a registered agent, so that is an extra $50 a year.

As for board of directors, annual meetings, etc... no matter where you incorporate you will technically need these, even in DE. But it is nothing complex. As a single founder and sole shareholder, you simply elect yourself to the board and write up/record minutes. Max amount of time 30 minutes. You will have to also pay an annual fee for your corporation which is based on assets and total shares. Another simple filing. These requirements are fairly standard across the board in any state. Delaware is probably one of the least expensive out of all from what I understand.

You can also do an LLC which reduces the paperwork and also provides similar protections, while helping with taxes. Annual filing fees can be a little higher, but you can avoid double taxation.

It is best to discuss with an attorney/accountant on the proper structure based on your tax requirements though as each is taxed differently.

Finally, advising that penalties are minor so don't worry about it, is probably the worse advice you can give someone. As someone who missed a quarterly tax payment on a corporation several years ago, I can tell you the headache of getting the penalty reduced far outweighed the cost. While the penalty was not much, it was still costly and ended up costing more in legal/accounting fees to correct the matter.

<comment><USER40> Don't forget the DE annual report fee ($50) and the DE annual franchise tax ($175 - $180,000, depending on share count). Plus the registered agent ($50) I pay $275/year.

[[https://www.delawareinc.com/delaware-franchise- tax/](https://www.delawareinc.com/delaware-franchise-tax/)]

The bigger cost for me is the C-Corp tax returns, average cost $806/year, but I suppose that applies to C-Corps everywhere.

[[https://www.irs.com/articles/tax-preparation-costs-and- fees](https://www.irs.com/articles/tax-preparation-costs-and-fees)]

<comment><USER39> Yeah, the franchise tax is going to depend on assets and total shares. So varies by company. You can reduce by only issuing something like 100 shares at first if it is only you.

As for C-Corp, again IANAL or accountant, but I would never recommend a single founder go the C-Corp route. You are better off going as an LLC or taking the S-Corp election to take advantage of the tax benefits. Much simpler, and significantly cheaper, to do your annual returns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm finding that the book by Entrepreneur magazine called _Start Your Own Business: the only startup book you'll ever need_ is very helpful (no connection with me).

EDIT: specifically, in the index entry for "business structures" and the chapter on taxes. I also bought a few "personal MBA" books, & on marketing etc, but this seemed clearly the best one to start with; those others I think I'll come back to, later.

</comment><comment><USER42> If you're based in California, we wrote detailed steps when we incorporated earlier this year: [https://dixonandmoe.com/writing/how-to-form-an-llc-in- califo...](https://dixonandmoe.com/writing/how-to-form-an-llc-in-california/)

The $800/year is indeed painful but it's cost of doing business (and maintaining continuity).

</comment><comment><USER43> As someone based outside the US (Canada), would it be advisable to incorporate in Delaware?

If not, how would I go about the income from my side projects?

<comment><USER36> Unless you plan on stepping foot in the US to do a lot of physical work, or plan on holding US real estate, use a Canadian corporation. I've been dealing with world-wide customers for ~10 years and have never incorporated in the US.

You should speak to an accountant before making any decisions, however.

<comment><USER44> I've been doing the same for a while. SaaS with most customers in the US, but the corporation is in Canada. The only hassle is that 10% of credit card charges fail because banks may block international transactions. So we have to tell clients to call their banks, etc. Not perfect, but better than dealing with cross-border taxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Not incorporated, I operate as a sole trader.

As I'm an Aussie, I register an ABN (being a sole trader is free) and ensure I pay/charge GST. I'm only required to file taxes if the business is earning in excess of $10,000 annually. So most projects that go nowhere don't put any onnus on me to be hyper vigilant.

</comment><comment><USER46> Does anyone have experience with incorporating a UK Ltd for such a use case?

<comment><USER47> Yes. Unless you intend to spend a lot on equipment upfront, don't register for VAT. You don't have to unless the company's income hits a certain threshold (I forget exactly how much now). Just be careful about any VAT you think you might save (offsetting purchases against collections). The burden of quarterly returns is a pain.

Also, while the UK is still in the EU, consider starting a Limited company in another country with a different corporate tax structure. Perhaps somewhere like Ireland, Latvia or Malta might suit your requirements better.

<comment><USER46> > consider starting a Limited company in another country with a different > corporate tax structure.

Thanks and could you elaborate on this please.

<comment><USER47> The UK currently has a corporate tax rate of 20%. Ireland is a 12.5% on trading income, Malta is 35% but reducable to 5% in some circumstances, Lithuania is also 5% for small companies, Estonia is 0% on undistributed profits.[1]

Some research for a decent advisor in one of the countries you might consider and then ask them for advice. I found finding advice like this in the UK either difficult to obtain from a regular accountant, or the advisors I found were targetting the very wealthy. Ultimately I talked to three different people in the countries above and went with one of them to setup the Limited company for a small business.

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

<comment><USER48> Note re. LT, to form a Limited liability company in UK you don't need to have any shareholder capital; you do need the latter for forming an Ltd in Lithuania (" _UAB_ "). There are other corporation types available but if you want limited liability in LT, you'll need to put in 2500 EUR.

<comment><USER47> That's a good point. However, keep in mind other EU jurisdictions like Germany and Austria require even more initial share capital, and also have generally higher base corporation tax rates.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ancestors Knew Death in Ways You Never Will - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/sunday-review/coronavirus-history-pandemics.html <comment><USER2> From the article:

"Most of the [Covid-19] deaths are among the very elderly and nursing home residents, who no longer travel or dine out or contribute much to the economy, and who are a burden on the struggling Medicare and Social Security Trust Funds."

The depravity of this sentence is shocking and sad. This is as bad as the Tom Cotton opinion piece.</comment>


Knuth versus Email (1999) - <AUTHOR> https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html <comment><USER2> > Of course, "email" has been a familiar word in France, Germany, and the > Netherlands much longer than in England --- but for an entirely different > reason.

[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émail_(verre)](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Émail_\(verre\))

[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email)

[https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_(glazuur)](https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_\(glazuur\))

<comment><USER3> In UK: "How to send an 'E mail'" (1984): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szdbKz5CyhA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szdbKz5CyhA)

<comment><USER4> Thames TV transmitted programmes over TV audio?! What a wonderful watch, thank you pulse7.

Electronically yours,

<comment><USER5> There used to be a thing called 'Basicode' [1], one of the first attempts to create a cross-platform language for microcomputers. Basicode consisted of the programming language itself which was a rather limited dialect of BASIC, a number of transcoders from this basicode BASIC dialect to the native BASIC versions for several microcomputers and - which is what made me think of it - a universal audio data transmission standard which was used to transmit Basicode programs over the aether to users. Basicode was started in the Netherlands by the 'Hobbyscooop' radio show but gained popularity elsewhere as well, notably also in the former German Democratic Republic. I still have the original Basicode book somewhere in a box in the barn, along with the Commodore 64 which I used it with. To be honest I quickly got bored with Basicode since the programs received through the radio were rather underwhelming compared to what I could make the thing do myself by programming it in assembly (6502 might be limited but it is a good starting architecture for budding assembly programmers).

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My favorite Knuth quote is from his FAQ on being retired[1]

> Being a retired professor is a lot like being an ordinary professor, except > that you don't have to write research proposals, administer grants, or sit > in committee meetings. Also, you don't get paid.

[1] [https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/retd.html](https://www-cs- faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/retd.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's not true, obviously. I have been in DK's office, I have seen him read and write email.

<comment><USER8> Having refuted the central point of this entire essay, why do you think he wrote this in the first place?

<comment><USER9> Like most people who say they're going to quit something he probably just started using it again when he realised it was useful and maybe even essential, and didn't bother to update this webpage. It's been 30 years after all.

<comment><USER10> > Changed by: Ursula N. Owen, 8-Mar-1999

<comment><USER11> _I was curious about this "Ursula N. Owen", thinking perhaps she was an assistant of Knuth's back in the 90s. It turns out that it's a pseudonym sometimes used by Knuth himself, and is a reference to "U.N. Owen", a character from And Then There Were None, a best-selling Agatha Christie novel first published in 1939 and one of the best-selling books of all time. The name "UN Owen" itself is a play on "unknown", and I like to think of Donald chuckling to himself whenever he used that pseudonym._

From the postscript on [https://ryanwaggoner.substack.com/p/could-you-delete- your-em...](https://ryanwaggoner.substack.com/p/could-you-delete-your-email- account)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE1: Don has an email address: taocp (at) cs.stanford.edu

UPDATE2: How the World's Most Famous Computer Scientist Checks E-mail Only Once Every Three Months:

[https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2008/07/17/bonus-post-how- th...](https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2008/07/17/bonus-post-how-the-worlds- most-famous-computer-scientist-checks-e-mail-only-once-every-three-months/)

I find past discussion of this link: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11461077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11461077)

Neal Stephenson vs Email or Why I Am a Sociomediapath?

[https://www.nealstephenson.com/social- media.html](https://www.nealstephenson.com/social-media.html) [https://www.nealstephenson.com/contact.html](https://www.nealstephenson.com/contact.html)

Good Links to read more:

[https://www.chronicle.com/article/is-email-making- professors...](https://www.chronicle.com/article/is-email-making-professors- stupid/)

[https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2008/07/02/e-mail-zero- imagi...](https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2008/07/02/e-mail-zero-imagining- life-without-e-mail/)

[https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/was-e- ma...](https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/was-e-mail-a- mistake)

</comment><comment><USER12> I had a few exchanges with DEK back in the 80s. Even then he had his secretary filtering his e-mail and if a response was warranted, she would request a postal address so he could send his answer handwritten on a printout of the e-mail. I still have those answers in a box along with other correspondence from the era.

<comment><USER13> I also had a few such exchanges (mine would have been at the end of the 80s or early 90s, I think) -- by snail-mail in both directions. His replies came in envelopes addressed to me as "Dr. ..." or even once as "Prof. ...", which I found pleasantly amusing, as I hadn't actually graduated from anywhere, let alone reached such exalted heights.

(His usual form of reply, as I recall it, would be a note pencilled on a copy of my letter.)

<comment><USER12> I often got email addressed to Prof. Hosek or Dr. Hosek when I was in undergrad courtesy of my activity in the TeX world. I don't think I've gotten any such misattribution once after actually getting a degree, even when I was teaching college as an adjunct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For people not DEK tempted to try this approach, consider the implications of [http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1446](http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1446) .

On the other hand, I do have a friend who, while he was Dean, had his email on three day delay. The theory: only those problems which were still problems after 72 hours were worth addressing at a super-departmental level.

<comment><USER15> > while he was Dean, had his email on three day delay.

I'm a professor. I can't help but think that this is a _terrible_ idea.

As Dean, it is your job to enable the faculty members and department chairs who report to you. To figure out what obstacles they face, and remove them when possible. To figure out who is doing good work -- especially of the sort that goes unnoticed. To sort through requests for money and other resources, and to figure out who will put these resources to good use.

In other words, the same as any manager at any organization.

<comment><USER16> If it's important enough to not tolerate a 72-hour delay, email is a completely inappropriate medium through which it should be communicated. A competent worker would certainly be aware of that.

The medium is part of the message. Avoid sending the wrong message.

<comment><USER17> What would the proper way be?

<comment><USER18> If it's urgent, drop a call.

<comment><USER19> Of course, plenty of people here would toss a fit if someone were to call their phone. It's also worth noting that your perceived crisis may not be my crisis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The amount of connectedness is a spectrum. DK [1] is at one extreme end of the spectrum, the other end is getting a notification at any time of the day or night when you get an email and immediately reading it.

We all have different jobs, and all jobs require different amounts of connectedness. But if you want, you can move slowly towards DK's end of the spectrum. I don't have email on my phone, for instance. While inconvenient sometimes, the benefits outweigh the costs. And when I want to do deep work, I close Thunderbird.

[1] Such appropriate initials.

</comment><comment><USER21> Lex Fridman had an interesting interview with Don Knuth close to his 82nd birthday[0]. It's fascinating to learn how much energy he still spends at verifying and investigating each aspect of newly published algorithms. E-mail would probably cut away too much time from what he considers more important.

[0]: [https://youtu.be/2BdBfsXbST8](https://youtu.be/2BdBfsXbST8)

<comment><USER22> typo: "Email would probably..." ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This freedom seems directly tied to where you are on the totem pole..

<comment><USER24> The man has spent a lifetime getting there. You could, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting. I remember having written an email to Donald Knuth about 15 years ago. And, surprise surprise, I got a reply! In retrospect, my question was extremely naive. However, I am still thankful for a honest answer.

</comment><comment><USER26> I always found it hilarious that this guy was fed up with email 5 fucking years before the first machine was connected to Internet in my Central European country.

<comment><USER27> That sounds a little surprising to me. Are you sure that weren't even any government or university machines online before early 1995?

<comment><USER28> All I'm trying to say is that Internet (Both web and email and others) has gotten way more hostile since then.

<comment><USER28> why is this down voted? It is just a fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder what Knuth thinks of Slack and instant messaging then!

Emails feels pretty low pressure to me. I don't need to answer it today -- or, in some cases, ever -- whereas Slack and similar messaging systems come with the expectation that you must answer ASAP. Surely you've seen the message, why aren't you typing an answer yet? It's very high pressure.

I love email. Every attempt at replacing it with something "better" upsets me.

<comment><USER30> I honestly thought of doing a blog post where I take these words and replace email with Slack. I have issues with email that my PM is trying hard to get me to delegate more to her and others so I can focus on the higher value work. Slack I actually am on the verge of hating. Especially when every client wants to communicate via their private Slack instead of much saner email and GitHub issues. The worst thing about Slack is the non-federated nature of it. It is practically impossible when you work with more than a dozen startups and other organizations all who have their own.

<comment><USER31> I'm picturing you printing out Slack messages, jotting down your responses, and sending them back by snail mail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> For many open source contributors and maintainers, it's always not an option to "be on the bottom of things".

Patches (for some projects) flow via e-mail.

So there's some decent amount of "being on top of things". Not at the rate of "I need to feverishly refresh my Inbox every 2 minutes", but "I ought process these patches/designs/bug e-mails at some sane rate that doesn't drive me bonkers". (Which can be done effectively with venerable tools like Mutt, et al; refer to the recent thread on it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24173676](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24173676) – "Mutt email client 25 years old")

This is just saying the boring truth that there's different _kind_ of e-mail—the draining, unproductive long threads that don't go anywhere and the "get the work done"-style patches/designs/bug work e-mails.

<comment><USER33> Oh how I wish I sometimes had the choice to be on the bottom of things. :-)

Though I sometimes do get pretty close to disconnecting myself if I have some difficult or urgent task, and on vacation of course. If the world around us cannot survive with us leaving for a week or two, there's a problem on both sides!

<comment><USER32> I hear you. :-) I never cease to be amazed at how seasoned maintainers like you handle the sheer volume of public email, while continuing to stay effective over the years, healthy disconnection, _and_ setting an example to emulate on how to conduct oneself in public.

(On the problem you refer to, some of us here will recognise that well-meaning FOSS developer who starts getting anxious to take a two-week vacation with the family because "there's no one else who is able to process the core pull requests" for their project.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This approach certainly gets rid of a lot of unnecessary communication. It is like a special spam filter. Not many people will go through with writing a real letter. For most requests it's probably not worth it for them. Et voila... filtered.

If you don't need anyone reaching you this seems like a good strategy.

</comment><comment><USER35> Ok. Well, I guess 'social media' is a nonstarter for him.

OTOH, maybe his insight says something about our addiction to social media. He has a real life and the rest of us have less of it. Who knew that computer scientists could craft a tool that Could steal our lives.

</comment><comment><USER36> > `I don't even have an e-mail address. I have reached an age where my main > purpose is not to receive messages.' \--- Umberto Eco, quoted in the New > Yorker

Loved this quote from Umberto Eco. RIP. (died in 2016)

</comment><comment><USER37> Makes me question my own habits: compulsive checking of email/Slack has really become the norm. On the one hand, as a manager, I want to be available to my team if they have any questions. On the other hand, a barrage of notifications and interruptions makes it hard to get focused deep work done.

</comment><comment><USER38> There would be less spam if sending it had an actual cost.

Perhaps we should just add a (small) price to sending email?

<comment><USER39> There were attempts to introduce computing costs required to deliver a message.

Hashcash is a proof-of-work system used to limit email spam. Bitmessage uses proof of work to combat spam as well. Though those approaches do not seem to be popular.

My guess is that spammers can operate at scale, rent or buy GPUs, may be even build ASICs. So they'll have very cheap work. While ordinary person will use some cheap 5-year old Android phone which would spend a lot of time and battery to compute that kind of work.

It might reduce amount of extremely low-quality spam. But I guess that kind of spam is easily detectable by something like default spamassassin setup anyway.

<comment><USER38> I'm not a fan of solutions that require energy to be wasted. At least with normal payments, total value is conserved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Human curated email that sounds like the perfect startup.

</comment><comment><USER41> I wonder whether he owns a smartphone now and if is is using it for personal communication with his family.

<comment><USER19> Not everyone in tech has a smartphone. I know a fairly senior manager at a well-known Silicon Valley company who only got one when he joined that company and they gave him one he needed to use for work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Well, he only gets to do this because he's achieved some measure of success in his life, right? I dare others not so distinguished to try and reproduce his approach.

<comment><USER43> I've had decent success establishing in my workplace that I check email in batches a few times a day.

If you want me immediately, call me, message me, or walk over to me (well, pre-COVID, anyway).

I'm confident I'm not as distinguished or successful as Donald Knuth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's easy not to have email if you have a secretary who filters and prints out the incoming messages for you.

I guess he never orders anything on the net, doesn't use any online services, because those usually require an email address where the receipts and acknowledgements are sent.

<comment><USER45> I imagine one day we'll all have digital personal assistants who can do this, so having a secretary shouldn't be a barrier eventually.

My worry is that these personal assistants will all be provided "free" by giant companies and hosted in the cloud so I won't want to use them.

<comment><USER46> > _personal assistants will all be provided "free" by giant companies and > hosted in the cloud so I won't want to use them._

The more worrying fact to me, is not MegaCorp will be providing it, but that it's possible that self-hosting would be technologically infeasible. That is, even if MegaCorp gives you a free and open copy of personal assistant, it's still not practical run it on your own hardware - massive computing power and storage is required to operate it, and massive data is needed to train (and continue to train) the machine learning model. Only MegaCorp can afford to run it, and provide it as a service.

This has already happened in web search, content recommendation, speech recognition, machine translation, and many more applications. It's simply impossible to run your own speech recognition or machine translation package that has a comparable quality to Google's.

And these technologies will eventually become an integral part of life in a future society - e.g. When you must use machine translation or personal assistant in your daily life, and when only MegaCorp can provide a high- quality solution, it's a recipe of disaster. It's Ghost in the Shell.

Unfortunately, I'm definitely seeing it as a very likely outcome.

The only possible way to stop it, is to continue advancing computing power according to Moore's Law - which is, fortunately, not entirely impossible if alternative computing technologies are developed in the future. But still, there's still the ML training problem.

<comment><USER47> > This has already happened in web search, content recommendation, speech > recognition, machine translation, and many more applications. It's simply > impossible to run your own speech recognition or machine translation package > that has a comparable quality to Google's.

I don't really agree with that. All of these things can be done on your own machine, and generally comparably or even in a superior fashion to Google. Bear in mind that Google has to focus on a very long tail of "serving every single user", whereas your software has to serve you.

This means _your_ speech recognition needs to support your speech, not the speech of every accent and dialect on earth. Your content recommendation can be limited to types of content that are even peripherally of interest to you, and likely in a limited subset of languages.

Basically any amount of data and processing Google needs to do something for everyone, you can massively subset for just yourself. The biggest issue is that most of the data and code that companies like Google are using is proprietary, so good luck getting a copy to run.

<comment><USER12> Apple does their speech to text entirely on-device for phones (I just did a quick dictation test in airplane mode to verify. I think the watch offloads the process to the phone). It astonishes me just how much computing power is in my pocket.

<comment><USER48> And the next version supposedly is getting its own offline abilities now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> What's an email?

</comment><comment><USER50> An old-schooler printing out his emails... Why is this upvoted?

</comment><comment><USER51> "I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages.'"

This is my goal. Avoiding unnecessary stress and interruptions is a bigger goal for me than creating more wealth.

It's not an age thing though. I'm 37. I still happily communicate with other people, but ideally it's only when I make or take the time for it. That's why I worked from home, in a rural area, trying to get to 100% 'passive' income by the end of 2021.

<comment><USER52> "I have reached an age where my main purpose is not to receive messages."

An object unable to receive messages is soon marked for garbage collection.

<comment><USER51> Let's just say I prefer polling to pushing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> What a waste of trees.

<comment><USER54> I don't understand this, can't we just grow more trees? Reading emails is a huge waste of time and I don't see how we can produce much more of that, let alone produce more Donald Knuths.

<comment><USER55> > _I don 't understand this, can't we just grow more trees?_

Sure.

But you also have to transport people to the forests where they grow, operate machines to cut them down and trim them, transport them to pulp mills, use a lot of water to generate the pulp (often add bleach to whiten it), and then distribute the final product. There's also the create of printers and ink/toner.

And once DK has spent 30-60s reading the printout, it gets tossed into (hopefully) the blue pin where more energy is spent trying to recycle it.

And a lot of the energy used is generated from fossil fuels.

<comment><USER56> And the paper that's sent to landfills breaks down into global warming- worsening gases.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Disable Visited Links for Firefox - <AUTHOR> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/disable-visited-links-css/

<comment><USER2> I always like to see new ways to plug security holes. Thank you for making this</comment>


Show HN: My first tiny web service, a simple key/value store - <AUTHOR> https://tinycache.io

<comment><USER2> I am not sure I understand the pricing and/or the service. What are your guarantees about dropping or not dropping keys? Obviously you can't sell unlimited memcache space for 20$/mo and you must protect against customers exhausting all your available resources.

So since it's quite obvious that there must be some limit and/or expiration policy I think you should really just spell it out on the page.

<comment><AUTHOR> We never drop keys unless the expire time is set. As long as someone isn't abusing the service by flooding it with random data, it will scale for them.

<comment><USER2> How do you determine if I am flooding your service with random data?

My understanding is that one of your main ideas is to encrypt the data so I am honestly wondering where you would even start to check if a user was randomly flooding you or legitimately storing lots of keys.

Not trying to pick nits here... My original point was that -- in my opinion -- it comes across slightly dishonest if you insist that there is no limit even when it's obvious there must be one. (I mean seriously, how many machines is this running on right now? Even if it's running on amazon/google you can only scale my backend up so much with 20$/mo)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, I updated the pricing message to be clearly max-keys of 100,000 for gold plan. All feedback appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure there are very many potential use cases. Mostly, I can see using this client-side so that I don't need to set up a back end myself, but if I understand correctly, that's not really possible since you have to keep the API key private.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I remember there was a service like this around 2009 (that, like this, I thought was pretty nifty... I wish I could remember the name) - but it was anonymous and you didn't need auth: you could write to a url and have the hash of it as the "read" endpoint... I used that for a lot of quick mock-ups and things.

<comment><USER5> You're probably thinking about openkeyval.org which is now defunct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've used parse.com free account, created a class named 'cache' with columns 'key' & 'value'. The free plan's capacity is like 100k bigger than your highest paid plan. Sorry, I do not see the advantage of your service.

</comment><comment><USER7> >> curl [https://tinycache.io/api/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/mysecretkey?decrypt...](https://tinycache.io/api/v1/YOUR_API_KEY/mysecretkey?decrypt=supersecretkey)

Passing the key as a GET parameter is not super-secret, I would avoid doing that if possible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Technically it is secure over HTTPS. Is there a specific concern you have?

<comment><USER8> URLs have a tendency to end up in logs. Unless you are careful in your implementation (including what you inherit with your 'stack'), you may end up inadvertently persisting keys.

EDIT (btw, I love the concept of your product)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the idea of the pixel font, but find one that doesn't make the N look ugly. Silkscreen's usually a safe choice.

And I'd make the dev account more than 100 hits/day. I could easily go through that while actually coding, fixing bugs, repeat.

Since the use case is about quick, lightweight projects, I'd make creating an account optional until you need it. I'd want this to be as frictionless as possible, so that if I'm in the throes of coding and want the simplest possible key value store, I can just type in a URL like [https://email@example.com/CACHE_KEY](https://email@example.com/CACHE_KEY) and know it'll work without having to break out of my editor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. In regards to the "font", that was actually done in photoshop. It's meant to look a bit pixelated and "off". But I'll probably tweak it to clean it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd really caution against your pricing structure. Unlimited access to a million keys is no joke, I've run some rather large memcached servers and none of them were $20/month.

You should pricing should always reflect the true cost + your desired profit margin. I'd probably be charging hardware usage + 15% before even factoring in the value of the service itself.

Right now I'd say you're vastly too cheap; don't think about the costs solely as your servers but what's the value you've added to memcached/caching? Surely that's more than what you're charging?

Tldr; Keep the small plans cheap but make the big plans waaay more expensive. Those using the biggest plans are finding the most value.

<comment><USER11> well, if you consider that they're probably just deploying on $5 and $10 digitalocean droplets, the 'unlimited' nature of the requests just means 'as much as your instance can handle', and there's a built-in profit margin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently the service is in rackspace, and it's not cheap hosting. But yes, "unlimited" means as fast as the service can handle among all the other requests that are incoming too.

<comment><AUTHOR> This service isn't designed to compete with something that has dedicated VMs and that kind of thing. It's vastly cheaper than most other data stores for this reason. Granted, it will scale for very heavy use. Right now, it's essentially launch day, so how much people use it will determine how I optimize it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Who would pay for this ? I truelly wouldn't know

<comment><USER13> parse.com is essentially the same thing and it seems that it's popular enough. Of course it has a lot of polish and additional services on top of KV store but it's core value is key-value store with REST API.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, similar idea. Mostly focused on personal applications, and small apps. Will probably add additional features in the future for doing more advanced queries, message queues, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone, all feedback is appreciated. The main point of the service is speed, and ease-of-implementation. It's very easy to setup an account, and the API is very simple.

Always curious what fellow HNer's opinions are.

<comment><USER14> Congratulations on releasing something out there. I think above all, you will walk away with some gained wisdom in various areas of web services that'll make your next project even better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Awesome I (a human) love it. Trying to sign up but I'm having this problem: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/yd91j84bmrg4w0w/Screenshot%202015-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/yd91j84bmrg4w0w/Screenshot%202015-05-24%2014.49.33.jpg?dl=0)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, not sure what's going on with that. Try again, I changed the captcha type.

<comment><USER15> Worked now, thanks! By the way, with this many haters you know you must be onto something good...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For personal use, this page explains how to setup a local script to work with the API. Makes it super easy to access whatever data you want across different computers.

[https://tinycache.io/documentation/examples](https://tinycache.io/documentation/examples)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm having a hard time figuring out what this service could be used for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mostly for small scripts and apps that could store data without having to setup your own back-end.

<comment><USER17> I'd probably go with firebase for a simple app or proof of concept. It even includes authentication.

[https://www.firebase.com/pricing.html](https://www.firebase.com/pricing.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> My problem with a service like that is that once you jump out of the free plan, their prices jump way up. tinycache is a small service for small applications with small pricing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Key/value databases are simple enough to setup and run, even for small projects. I can't see myself paying for a service like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. Although setting up a central data server with an API takes a bit more work. However, if you're willing to do the work and set all of that up yourself, than yes, the service isn't for you. I see it more as a simple way for someone to integrate their script or app without having to do a lot of the cloud-setup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I actually like this, and am happy that you were able to release something... Most people don't!</comment>


Show HN: Console.save download objects as .json file from the console. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Decad/Console.save

<comment><AUTHOR> A simple script I needed while debugging an application this week, thought I would share.</comment>


Compiling MapD's Source Code - <AUTHOR> http://tech.marksblogg.com/compiling-mapd-ubuntu-16.html <comment><USER2> > "I was blown away when I recently heard MapD was going to make the source > code for their GPU-powered database freely available on GitHub."

When'd you have the time to write this, Mark?

They literally only open-sourced their product 15 hours ago, and sent out the press release an hour ago.

<comment><USER3> Can't comment on this specific instance, but there are many closed SDKs that I use daily that if they were to open access to I would be able to put together some getting started instructions within a few hours.

<comment><USER2> My point is it appears as though he writes on behalf of MapD, and I wish that was clearer in his articles which he submits to HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't work for MapD. I run my own consulting company in London and all of my clients are British firms and/or have a presence in the UK. MapD doesn't have a UK LTD setup or anything of that kind.

My Bio and CV are right at the side of every blog post, how hard is it to read them?

<comment><USER4> > , how hard is it to read them?

If you struck the above wording, the post would be stellar. Next time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a way to search old Hacker News post? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> there's a search function at the bottom of the page

<comment><AUTHOR> nice, never noticed that before. Thanks</comment></comment>


Continuous Delivery with Docker and Mesos - <AUTHOR> http://container-solutions.com/2014/12/continuous-delivery-docker-mesos/

<comment><USER2> This would be a great article if there was some technical content other than,"Continuous Delivery with Mesos and Docker is possible, but hard".</comment>


The Elusive Creator of the Most Terrifying Video Games - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-most-elusive-video-game-creator <comment><USER3> No offense to those who might be fans of Sato's games, but is it just me or did those games just come off as just plain weird and not at all terrifying?

<comment><USER4> I agree. Why does everybody call this game terrifying? I remember playing it on Playstation 2 (??) and thinking it was interesting and experimental - <USER2> way certainly not that creepy.

I think communites like Reddit tend to mythologize these kind of things into greater significance. So as soon as I read the bombastic headline I knew it would be LSD. No surprise, Shane Smith/Vice have built an empire on hyperbole. Vice News is has awesome scope though ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I fear I may never get a better chance to mention Garage:

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

[http://lostmedia.wikia.com/wiki/Garage:_Bad_Dream_Adventure_...](http://lostmedia.wikia.com/wiki/Garage:_Bad_Dream_Adventure_%28Limited_Release_1999_Japanese_Point- and-Click_Game%29)

<comment><USER6> Really glad you did! Thanks--what an interesting find.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> More _weird_ than _terrifying_ tbh.

I miss that oddity in video-games. Take for instance _Space Station Silicon Valley_ for N64, you don't see games like these anymore.

The indie scene saves the day when it comes for creativity in video-games, but there aren't really _odd_ games like before (AFAIK).

<comment><USER8> You haven't seen the work of thecatamites, have you?

[http://harmonyzone.org](http://harmonyzone.org)

Search on Rock Paper Shotgun for reviews. Or just dig in. If there's anyone else out there consistently cranking out this much weirdness in game form, I'm not aware of them.

Also Frog Fractions, which is... certainly surprising, anyway. Read nothing about it if you haven't played it already. Just GO.

[http://twinbeard.com/frog-fractions](http://twinbeard.com/frog-fractions)

My GOTY for the year for 2012. I'm not kidding. It's so meta though that I'm not sure it's quite what you mean by weird.

Lots of games in the "weird twist on X" category. Horse Master, Hatoful Boyfriend, Hotline Miami... huh, that's lots of words starting with H. Tons of others. Lots of games messing with classic concepts/mechanics in new ways.

[http://noncanon.com/HorseMaster.html](http://noncanon.com/HorseMaster.html)

[http://clione.halfmoon.jp/hatoful- boyfriend/english.html](http://clione.halfmoon.jp/hatoful- boyfriend/english.html)

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

Hammerfight's weird in the way you mean, I think. Steam link because the official site is _really_ bad. So's the game, really, though the art and concept carry it for quite a while.

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/41100/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/41100/)

Blendo Games' Thirty Flights of Loving, Atom Zombie Smasher, and Gravity Bone are all this sort of weird. I can't speak for their other games only because I haven't played them, but they're likely weird too.

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

There are more. Free stuff tends to be the weirdest. Poke around in Rock Paper Shotgun's archives for articles about free games and you'll find weirdness in abundance. Lots of weird-for-the-sake-of-weird but plenty of weird-due-to- experimentation-and-childlike-fancy too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Its amazing how little we recognize that people value personal privacy and space. If you do something worth recognition expect to have every unrelated facet of your life poured over to the extent that it's available. I feel bad for anyone under 25 right now as they've been using services with only the thinnest veneer of privacy since they were teens. Should make politics a lot more interesting as there will be very few people that can pretend to have the squeaky clean profiles of current politician.

<comment><USER10> Nobody is squeaky clean. Therein lies the problem.

On a devils advocate note. Maybe the erosion of privacy will lead to more informed voters and honest politicians. For this I don't hold much hope though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Watching the video, I was strongly reminded of the work of Chris Marker, a film-maker worth coming to know if you don't already. Marker loved Japan and the affection was reciprocated by many artists, including Akira Kurosawa. The possible path from Marker to LSD: Dream Emulator is more than I can clearly map here, but here are some points along the way:

[http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/15/thrilling- prophe...](http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/apr/15/thrilling-prophetic- chris-marker-experimental-films)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7_Hp33euEQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7_Hp33euEQ)

[http://artforum.com/film/id=47823](http://artforum.com/film/id=47823)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm definitely a fan of the LSD game for Playstation, but Sato is getting a little more credit for supposedly establishing a genre than he deserves.

Check out the game "Cosmology of Kyoto".</comment>


What is the best language to learn at this moment? - <AUTHOR>

I used to write html and was in a magazine way back in 1995.  After joining the service and doing other things for the last several years, I have forgotten most of what I learned during that time period.  However, I have constantly kept up to date with the user-facing side of technology.  I would like to learn a programming language.  What is the best language to learn, and in what way can I help and contribute in that language in 2013 and beyond?  I used to spend hours coding html back in the day when I was a kid, and those were the best times of my life...I seem to have lost it, but the fire still burns. <comment><USER2> You're mentioning HTML so it seems that you're more into web. I'd recommend: Python, Ruby and Javascript.

Some would say Python or Ruby. I suggest both. Once you learn one, it's very easy to pick up the other. As much as their similar, their library support and tools make them useful for different purposes as much as the same purposes. To go into a little detail, if you're building a website with some offline or non-web aspects, go with Python. If what you want to build is entirely on the web, go with Ruby on Rails / Sinatra. With these skills, you can build awesome web apps and tap into the huge library support of Python for non-web related issues.

Finally, you just have to learn Javascript if you want to dive into web. Start with pure Javascript, some jQuery and pick a library (Backbone, Ember etc...) and learn it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps unbeknownst to you, you suggested that languages can be ranked, and that one of them stands out on top as best.

You are almost right. There is one language that is the best, though it's so young it doesn't stand out yet. This might be the only time in history people still have the chance to contribute to the best language.

That is, Arc: <http://arclanguage.org>

</comment><comment><USER4> I guess PHP is easiest to start, Ruby and Python are more fun. Javascript is obvious if you consider web programming. I'm interested in Scala, GoLang nowadays, but I feel it's in too early stage still.

Anyway I would recommend just trying every language, so you can select the most suitable one depending on the project.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you are looking to do web, learn Javascript the future of the web is moving to platforms that expose themselves as JSON services and Javascript/HTML application consuming those services to create workflows ontop of a mixture of those platforms. Javascript has become an essential language to the future of the web.

</comment><comment><USER6> Python and Javascript will probably still be around with a healthy ecosystem long after the current (and next) trends die, so they'd be safe bets, in my opinion.

The other languages and frameworks are neat, but I can't help thinking the above will be around long after the current and next trends die.

<comment><USER7> Ruby has a big enough foothold that it should stay around for quite some time.

Though I do prefer python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you are looking at web languages, you can't really go wrong with PHP, Ruby or Python.

There are many tutorials and screencasts of the various frameworks for the different languages.

Main thing is to just try them all out and see which clicks for you.

Enjoy.

Edit: And Javascript!

</comment><comment><USER9> Python or Ruby. I know Go and Node.JS are trendy right now but still i would recommend Python or Ruby

</comment><comment><USER10> I was going to say "JavaScript" but upon reflection - you might find Go (v1.1 is out) a better choice for back-end heavy lifting - if it's good enough for Google ... (BTW you could say that for Python too).

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm surprised almost no one recommend php even though it powers almost all of the web, and is the easiest to setup. I strongly recommend php, javascript and css. And everything else will just follow.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm planning for a career in mobile development, so Objective-C and Java are my two main languages right now.

</comment><comment><USER13> Can't go wrong with C# and the Microsoft stack. I've been using it for 10 years.</comment>


How we fake 3D in 2D and save your RAM - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/gallery/h5i1Wxf <comment><AUTHOR> I'm the op so if you have any in-depth (or not) questions about our tech or anything else I will gladly try to answer!</comment>