Ulam spiral - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulam_spiral <comment><USER2> Stanislav Ulam is an incredible man. Mathematician (Ulam Spiral, Monte Carlo Method), Manhattan Project participant, and part-time astronomer who devised a method for nuclear-explosive-powered space travel [0].

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

<comment><USER3> It's Stanislaw, since he was Polish, Stanislav would be a Russian name. He is most importantly the co-inventor of the hydrogen bomb:

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

There is a great autobiography by him called "Adventures of Mathematician".

<comment><USER4> > There is a great autobiography by him called "Adventures of Mathematician".

A terrific book, still available but pricey (ca. $30 for a paperback). I have a dog-eared copy acquired 40 years ago in my library.

The closest Ulam comes to revealing atomic secrets in his book is to say the method he and Teller chose to produce a thermonuclear reaction requires the "repetition of certain arrangements." I always thought that was the perfection of obscurity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's an interactive Ulam spiral with adjustable parameters.

[http://bl.ocks.org/syntagmatic/5070320](http://bl.ocks.org/syntagmatic/5070320)

Open it fullscreen, lower the size and increase the "max" variable to render more numbers. If you've got a Retina display, the size goes down to 0.5 to take advantage of that. You'll see the long diagonal lines mentioned in the article.

</comment><comment><USER6> Another perhaps surprising aspect, to me at least, is the apparent uniformity of the density of prime numbers in the plane. It's my understanding that the density of the prime numbers decreases as you go higher [1], so why does the plane look so uniformly covered?

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

<comment><USER7> The density of primes is 1/log(n), so it does drop off, but not so fast that it would be obvious for small numbers.

I tried creating giant Ulam spirals one time, and I did correct for this, which made it look a lot more uniform.

I had initially hoped to find new patterns this way, but nothing turned up. While numerical experiments are fun, there are a huge number of potential avenues that could be explored. Finding the interesting ones is basically what mathematics is.

<comment><USER8> How did you correct for it? Did you just nonlinearly scale the final picture or did you scale the axis on the spiral itself and then sampled the result?

<comment><USER7> I was producing grey scale images where each pixel represented a block of numbers. The count in each block was divided by the density of primes (1/log(n)) at the center of the block.

However, this actually made the middle turn grey, because even though the mean value of each pixel was the same, the variance wasn't. So then I corrected for this by calculating a "z-score" instead.

But like I mentioned before, it didn't turn up any interesting patterns.

<comment><USER8> Very interesting!

I guess it specifically didn't turn up interesting patterns because a) you correct for density b) the distribution of primes is "noisy" (which is why they're so puzzling) and by averaging out the noise you get a fairly flat distribution

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I did a visualization of Ulam spiral a while ago with JS canvas when it was posted here on HN before:

[http://alteredqualia.com/visualization/ulam- spiral.html](http://alteredqualia.com/visualization/ulam-spiral.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1452301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1452301)

</comment><comment><USER10> Basic explanataion: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFuR97YcSLM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFuR97YcSLM)

BTW, these guys really love numbers and math, it's fun to watch their enjoyment while explaining things like an Ulam spiral. And I think he's on crack or something.

</comment><comment><USER11> Here's a visualizer for the Ulam Spiral, Triangular, Pentagonal, Hilbert Curve, and many more.

You can also visualize {2-5}-factor primes, superperfect numbers, smooth numbers...

[http://www.bigblueboo.com/prime/](http://www.bigblueboo.com/prime/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I wrote a Java application to generate and save variations of the Ulam Spiral a while back. The code is here: [https://github.com/PatrickYevsukov/Ulam- Spiral-Explorer](https://github.com/PatrickYevsukov/Ulam-Spiral-Explorer) An example of the output is here: [https://twitter.com/PatrickYevsukov/status/35502312719085977...](https://twitter.com/PatrickYevsukov/status/355023127190859776)

</comment><comment><USER13> If you like this then you'll probably enjoy the visualizations on this site[0].

[0] [http://www.numberspiral.com](http://www.numberspiral.com)

<comment><USER14> Wow, those are pretty cool. Page 8 with the factor curves look really interesting.

[http://www.numberspiral.com/art/19.gif](http://www.numberspiral.com/art/19.gif)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Patterns related to Primes are difficult - outside present technology.

On MathOverflow, Joseph O'Rourke and Terence Tao offer more pretty pictures and discussions on patterns related to the spiral [http://mathoverflow.net/questions/102075/prime-spiral- distri...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/102075/prime-spiral-distribution- into-quadrants)

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's a colorization based on compositeness:

      http://blog.morphism.com/2010/05/building-numbers.html

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder how this generalizes to higher dimensions.

<comment><USER15> [http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/59369/prime- spirals-...](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/59369/prime-spirals-on- surfaces-of-revolution)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> vihart talks about Ulam spiral, Pascal's Triangle, cellular automata:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhlv5Aeuo_k](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhlv5Aeuo_k)

</comment><comment><USER19> I tried 9.3 / 1 and it looks like a photograph record.</comment>


1000 True Fans? Try 100 - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2020/02/06/100-true-fans/ <comment><USER2> 1\. The article shows a pyramid and it's important. In order to get a few "true fans" (people prepared to pay dearly for what you produce), you need a large amount of "distant fans" (people who like what you do, as long as it's free). The key word is _conversion_ , and, regrettably, it's not present once in the post [0]. It's probably in the 1 to 0.1% range.

[0] Edit: In fact it is (convert). However in the next paragraph the concept is somehow replaced with "whaling", which means that a few paying customers help support a large group of free riders, or conversion in reverse. This is misleading. The large group needs to be there first.

2\. At the $1000/year price point, it's not an artistic production anymore. Most examples are about "courses", about teaching something to a specific audience. Some of the topics are questionable and sound a little scammy (physiotherapy?), may be preying on people's vulnerabilities (private coding classes for kids?) or playing on vanity (having a celebrity streamer play along with you). This is Goop territory. Is this the future we want?

<comment><USER3> Interesting point with the pyramid, a podcaster (Sam Harris) recently turned his free podcast into a "freemium" model where you get half of each episode for free. I imagine this is going to completely kill his following, as it did for me.

Freemium is actually being charitable, it's more like shareware.

<comment><USER4> It's going to kill his following among people who want to follow him for free, but by definition they don't bring him any money. If you have enough paying users, meaning your business gained momentum, you don't really care about free users anymore.

<comment><USER5> Some of the free users might pay. Small percentage "conversion" into paying users. But this can be done only once a large following was built and that model seems a bit disingenuous to me, free to paid, and I like the model where the content creator gives some extra to paying users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> IIRC the 1k true fans idea was walked back by its original author after they got feedback from industry folks describing how the model was basically impossible to implement in the real world.

This holds 100% true to my experience in influencer marketing and esports. Monetizing fans is _really hard_ on passion alone. You need to create valuable calls to action and continuously produce content in order to maintain their attention. Once you 'lose' a fan (which only means losing their emotional focus, even temporarily) you often can't monetize them _at all_ without significant re-activation effort. [0]Demonstrating this, large influencers lose _extraordinary_ sums of money if they stop producing content for short windows of time.

This is why using influencers in marketing requires genuine strategy, and is the likely culprit behind so much 'hate' for influencer marketing.

[0] [https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/ninja-reveals- shocking...](https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/ninja-reveals-shocking- number-of-subscribers-he-lost-by-missing-two-days-of-streaming-100449)

<comment><USER7> Isn't this largely what Patreon is, though? And there's a lot of people who are doing surprisingly well off of Patreon despite low subscriber counts.

I'd think the trick is to find the right niche- if you're too generic, you're up against the big personalities.

<comment><USER6> Patreon is quite a bit of work and requires constant upkeep to maintain a steady income flow. It's really no different from Twitch subscriptions in that regard. It does a better job of monetizing primarily because of the easily customized tiers, and secondarily because the platform specifically caters to paid content rather than free.

That said, many of patreon's most financially successful users are producing content that isn't suitable for platforms like Twitch and Youtube.

<comment><USER8> I commented in detail on this a few months ago ...

What Proziam wrote is a little off, at least as far as music goes.

Hundreds of musicians/music vloggers are working full-time from Patreon/Adsense once they exceed 100,000 Youtube subscribers and upload weekly/biweekly and have 100+ Patrons.

Patreon produces a reliable income stream (for rent, etc.) while Adsense fluctuates but adds up ($1,000 - $5,000/million views typically.)

What I have heard with Twitch is that you need to be online continuously or the audience moves on.

> IIRC the 1k true fans idea was walked back by its original author

That was from a time decades ago when customer acquisition was expensive. With Youtube/Adsense it's not that hard, and one could experiment with Facebook targeting.

And any time somebody uses the phrase "walked back", I've found the author didn't have a nuanced understanding of the subject.

<comment><USER6> 100 Patrons, even if they contribute _well above average_ , say $25 ( _after_ platform fees/expenses/taxes), is still only $2,500 per month. There are some places in the US where that wouldn't be liveable, let alone offer enough stability for a person to enjoy a stable lifestyle. Of course, if you live in a low cost of living area you can make things fly that otherwise wouldn't. But even with that consideration in mind, how many places could you live a 'normal' life on 30k?

I've worked with musicians as well, including some with global recognition and (many) millions of views and song plays. From what I've seen, turning 100k Youtube subscribers into 100k income per year is far from the norm. Plenty of creators in that size bracket quit, suggesting it's not particularly sustainable.

That said, if you can, I'd love to get some more insight into the creators you feel are getting the most out of their effort, and how they're achieving their results!

<comment><USER8> I'll go into some more detail so people can picture how it works in 2020 better.

100k subscribers is the gateway to really making it on YT.

Above that you start going self-viral, so some artists have snowballed very fast (in months) from 100k to 300k+. It's like they're on YT, but their channel is "their own private island" and takes on a life of its own.

1) US artists will need to live at home (or in a van) or be very frugal to make it with the numbers I provided - but it's doable, and they will get a lot of free gear.

And they'll be full-time musicians, which is living the dream for most.

However, low-COL artists can (and do) earn the average local salary, plus free gear. So they have it all figured out.

2) US (and European) musicians will have a hard time touring as the bandleader on that income, since it's pay-to-play now for non-headliners in the US, typically $500 per show, and often T-shirt sales are restricted (see Sarah Longfield's interviews for the details.)

So that means keep uploading on Patreon/YT, or have your sponsors/fans in each city put you up.

3) "Be your own label.", "Own your publishing.", etc.

The important thing to realize is that there is no label deal available for new musicians (the exception would be super-strong writers) in 2020, and even if you signed one, advances have to be repaid. And oh ya, "360 deals" go after your Patreon and YT/Adsense, publishing and show revenue now - just say no.

So go whole hog on Patreon/YT/Adsense (ie. be your own label) because it's not like there is another funding option for most people, aside from a few guys making it as contract performers (ie. paying their dues) for regional touring bands.

See Rhett Shull's YT channel to learn more about that - he's a road dog contract hired gun guitarist with a knack for YT vlogging. Hats off, man, and congrats on the 100+k subs!

Also see Yvette Young's (from San Jose) meteoric rise - she just got an Ibanez signature guitar in her 20's!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm having trouble envisioning very many markets where a "fan" is going to consistently spend $1k/year.

The article mentions professional training and education, which makes sense.

I can also see certain people spending that kind of money on physical goods (mechanical keyboards, audiophile equipment, one-of-a-kind art pieces) but $1k of _revenue_ from physical goods is very different from $1k of _income_.

Other than that, the only things I can think of would be direct access to a celebrity or some form of conspicuous consumption. ("That game you play all day? I personally cover 40% of its operating costs.")

I don't see how the average webcomic artist or food blogger can achieve anything like what is described here.

<comment><USER10> The incredibly annoying thing about this is that there's a really obvious case - software tools. There _should_ be so many cases of people who have written a useful tool and have 100 businesses who pay $1000/year because that tool is the backbone of their $1000 * xxx profit.

The fact this doesn't happen very often is a significant failure of the tech industry.

<comment><USER11> This seems to me like it does happen fairly often. It's the entire model of JetBrains, RedGate, Sublime, Atlassian, etc.

<comment> frosted-flakes Adobe is a big one. The Creative Cloud suite is over $600 annually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Who in the hell is going to pay another individual $1000 a year to make content? That's more than a year's subscriptions to Disney+, Amazon Prime, and Netflix!

One of the root ideas in the True Fans essay was a fan would be willing to spend a day's wage for a year's worth of content from a creator. A large portion of the population at large _can_ pay a day's wage for say 52 hours (a creator spitting out and hour of content a week) of entertainment. Out of that population, argues the essay, a creator needs to only find a thousand True Fans out of the population that _can_ afford the $100 in order to make a living.

That's not only workable math but something that's doable. The market can support the model, it won't always and in every situation but it can. At the reasonable "day's wage" level many people can afford to support multiple creators. Spending $200 a year for content is still in the affordability range of a large portion of the populace.

A far far smaller portion of the population at large _can_ afford $1k for 52 hours of entertainment. It's definitely not a tenth of the $100 population, it's more likely a fraction of a percent. So any given creator isn't likely to find 100 True _Rich_ Fans, they're going to find maybe one if they're lucky. The market isn't going to support a model where a few dozen hours of entertainment costs a thousand dollars. A thousand dollars will get you a game console, a TV, subscriptions to a bunch of streaming services, and a ton of games. Even fewer of these whales could support multiple creators so very few creators could ever possibly survive of the whale model.

<comment><USER13> But you know, $1000 a year is only $84/mo, which is less than $4 per day. It's the price of a fancy starbucks coffee probably.

<comment><USER14> $84 is more than I pay monthly for Spotify, Netflix, the local newspaper, my broadband connection and occasional magazine buys combined. $1000 is more than I spend yearly on my biggest hobby - and that includes air travel and hotel fares. I have a really hard time coming up with any kind of content that'd be worth that much money.

<comment><USER15> I think the point is that Netflix and your local newspaper don't interact with _you, personally_ in a one-on-one, honest, direct interaction. At an $84/mo subscription level, that's what you're buying.

Now this may be because the buyer is a true-believer or whatever, but equally likely because they're now able to drop a name around the dinner table, tell their friends that they're in direct dialogue with a 'name',... Status signalling, in a phrase. Tell me why some (rich!) people are willing to pay millions of dollars for a painting that looks like a couple of wet blobs on a half-plastered wall. Same forces at work, I suspect.

<comment><USER14> Not denying your point, but the wet blob painting is probably considered an investment that is expected to increase in value over time, unlike a Youtube video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Guys what if... You had 200 fans each paying 500 a year?

Amazing right? 500 is less than 1000 and 200 isn't that much more than 100.

Feel free to take down the OP and put this comment up instead

<comment><USER17> Have you considered 123.5 fans? ;) The 0.5 is a half-broke student only paying attention sometimes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The problem with the "passion economy", which was alluded to in another comment, is that it strengthens the already too-prevalent assumption that everything can and should be monetizable. Markets are useful but they don't need to be involved in every aspect of existence.

Sure, you don't need to participate in Patreon to make stuff, but the trend seems to be toward relying on consumer market forces to fund culture. Tying the livelihoods of creators to the approval of their fans will lead them to censor themselves and consequently you aren't going to get anything that really pisses people off or challenges them in a countercultural way, at least enough to stop buying your stuff.

The idea of basic income seems like a better path forward, in terms of preserving artistic integrity (i.e. not "make money" or "please your fans" as the motive for making things). Everyone will get enough money to survive, no matter how much your ideas go against the zeitgeist.

<comment><USER19> I cannot think of a more trivial reason to fundamentally restructure the economy.

<comment><USER18> To allow people to focus on meaningful pursuits rather than work largely superfluous jobs to survive?

Yeah, sounds really trivial.

<comment><USER19> That's an argument, but not the one you made above.

> The idea of basic income seems like a better path forward, in terms of > preserving artistic integrity (i.e. not "make money" or "please your fans" > as the motive for making things). Everyone will get enough money to survive, > no matter how much your ideas go against the zeitgeist.

As in, the Patreon model isn't the best for artists, a better model is a complete rework of the economy, which would remove the need for artists to please their fans.

Extraordinarily trivial.

<comment><USER18> Again, I think redesigning the economy to allow people to explore the human experience and create all forms of art without the need to make a living or be a crowd-pleaser is an extraordinarily noble goal.

<comment><USER19> Are we talking about a Star-Trek era future, once we've achieved something akin to full automation? Or do you think that this is something that is worth pursuing in the short term? Specifically, I'm curious as to who keeps the lights on in this new economy, and why they are working when work is unnecessary.

<comment><USER18> Eh, I don't think we need full automation. There are plenty of superfluous jobs today and the number of people to "keep the lights" on is probably 5% of the population or less.

<comment><USER19> Currently ~60% of the adult population is employed. How do you knock that down to 5%, while taxing that 5% enough to support the other 95%, without taxing so much that working isn't worth the effort? It sounds like you're advocating for a planned economy with 5% participation, which seems odd given that planned economies haven't worked in the past with 10X the workforce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think there's a bit of confusion here in the way the author frames these 100 people. At this level they are not fans. They're not supporting you out of some sort of emotional attachment. They are giving you $1000 a year because they believe that the service or product you provide is worth that much. They're customers and that's all.

The "whale" archetype is just a modern version of what has always existed with MLM and self-help gurus where they pray on rich and emotionally vulnerable people. It's an absolutely tiny group of people that will never translate to a widespread economy.

Conflating the 1000 true fans concept with this is a mistake in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER21> > On Patreon, the average initial pledge amount has increased 22 percent over > the past two years.

22% is not the same as 10,000%. Nowhere near it.

> Since 2017, the share of new patrons paying more than $100 per month—or > $1,200 per year—has grown 21 percent.

Is this a statistics fail? My bet is that this is either $100 over all subscriptions (I pay about $30/mo for 7 or 8 creators on patreon, most in the $1 to $5 range), or the _increase_ is from a number previously so small as to be almost inconsequential, meaning it's still almost inconsequential.

Twitch, on the other hand, I can believe. There's a much more immediate feedback loop there, and creators responding to your pledges directly.

</comment><comment><USER22> The 1000 fans concept is mostly about gratitude - 'thanks, keep doing what you're doing'.

The 100 fans idea seems to be mostly about expectation - 'I gave you money, now deliver this'.

The article describes customers not fans. The _VC 'ing_ of 1000 true fans.

Nevertheless it's great to see an Internet where growing numbers of people are willing to pay individuals for value and have the means to do so.

</comment><comment><USER23> The fewer _" fans"_ you have and the more they pay the more power they will have over you and the more demanding they will become. In other words: Your fans turn into patrons and will have a major influence on your work.

Also their demand might drive you in a corner you may not be able to easily escape. As with everything, focus is good but too much focus can be a risk as well.

</comment><comment><USER24> > As the Passion Economy grows, more people are monetizing what they love.

As a sentence this just fills me with dread. And it's hard to say why because I know, for example, that a writer making a living from selling their books could be said to be "monetizing what they love" OR engaging in the "Passion Economy".

But if I was to try and get to the heart of it it's simply that I don't want to monetize what I love. I want it to be the one part of my existence not dominated by money. And I don't want an actual passion (awful word really) to form part of an economy.

<comment><USER25> An economy is just a group of people all making resource allocation decisions. I have no idea why you'd want to exclude passion from the decision making process of the worlds billions of economic actors.

<comment><USER26> That is the definition of an economy _in abstract_ \- it is ignorant of the historical factors which have created this particular global economy, and it is ignorant of the large and small scale social dynamics influencing the economy and influenced by it. It is ignorant of the necessary rights, as they are formed today, to sustain the economy. It is ignorant of commodity fetishism and alienation, and the fact that an economy must reproduce itself daily, hourly.

There are many criticisms of this economy that we currently have, and the creeping monetization of the last vestige of private life in which we don't need to currently sell, those hours after work and before sleep.

"Why exclude this?", as you ask, simply shows you think that there is no space to resist the totality (I would sometimes go as far as to say tolatitarianism) of "the economy". No space is free, because we have given up resisting it.

<comment><USER27> Then don't monetize. No one is _coercing_ anyone to do anything they themselves don't wish to. Those creators that don't want to monetize their own labor...can still choose to not monetize. There is no coercion here.

<comment><USER26> You're correct, but that's not a reason against trying to change the system. There were many economic phenomena through history people have consented to, and not all of them good for society as a whole - sometimes with disastrous consequences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The "passion economy" is flooding the Internet with low SNR material and making it harder and harder to get to high quality information.

Creators create not to meet some sort of quota or "monetize" but because they need to create. It's the same for artists. True art exists because it has to come out no matter what. Monetization doesn't come into it at all. This is an important point that the passion economy vultures don't seem to grasp. What we see today is monetization becoming THE purpose and overriding everything else.

<comment><USER29> Monetisation is a cult in its own right.

The idea that everything has to be about the hustle is toxic and entirely insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I call bullshit on this 'passion economy' thing. Masses of people never in history could make a living from what they love, and unfortunatelly there is no sign that it will happen now. Musicans, writers, indie-game creators: most of them do their passion besides a day-job. Long-tail never made much money and with globalisation it is worse than ever. The unfortunate truth is the opposite: not only long tail does not really work, but as Peter Thiel said: money is in monopolies. Non-monopolies 'compete-away' the profit.

As a developer, you are better off to go work for a monopoly: they pay well. (Google, Facebook, etc).

(This does not mean I do not have a passion project ('indie game'), I just know that the chance that it can replace my day-job is quite low.)

<comment><USER31> Maybe the passion project can make an impact within the monopoly? E.g. use indie game dev knowledge to improve costumer engagement with the product?

<comment><USER32> Is that a good thing? "Engagement" is usually toxic Skinner boxing.

<comment><USER31> Most things can be used for good or ill. A well defined and engaging UI can certainly be a good thing, if designed appropriately. Most business software is a boring slog to use. Why not design it so the user feels uplifted during the workday? Work could potentially benefit the person as well as the company bottom line, and become a virtuous whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> While this is well written, I would urge people to NOT to follow this advice. Subscriber churn is a real thing and losing $1000/yr subscriber hurts way more than losing $100/yr subscriber. Additionally, it takes an order of magnitude more effort for conversion and your product has to almost match the utility of a smartphone produced by $1T company to even demand that kind of automated recurring payments. The vast majority of fun creative content won't qualify for this anyway.

However, my bigger beef is with the subscriber model itself which somehow every person wants to impose for their next product. The fact is that it is _much easier_ to convince me to pay $10 to get a new release instead of forcing on me $10/yr subscription. The subscription should be _optional_ merely provided as a convenience to the customers who find themselves paying you again and again, not as _requirement_ to use your product. This is a true customer-obsessed point of view. If you have something good to sell, make at least part of it _free_ so people know the value to expect. Rest make it one- time fee and create your upgrades/releases appealing enough so people buy them recurringly!

<comment><USER34> Do both instead. Do something where you can offer tiers. Group lessons (100/yr subscribers) vs Individualized (1000/yr).

<comment><USER33> I'd suggest not doing tiers. Segmentation is repulsive. Why do I ever want to be a bronze-level customer in your product world? It perhaps makes sense for products that have monopolized or established firmly or where costs are truely substantial as feature/utilization is increased. However, most likely is often the side effect of throwing in the MBA part of your brain to squeeze in that last bit of revenue juice without you having to improve the tech. In essence, just luring in customers with "low starting from..." prices and then telling them they are fools to expect those prices. I tend to distrust products that rely on segmentation to inflate revenues and I think they are often ripe for disruption. At least, for creative/educational products please don't tell your customers that they are 3rd class citizens in your world unless they allow you to completely squeeze them out.

<comment><USER35> Different price tiers are a completely normal thing. Put another way, why would I have to buy the premium package when all I want is much more simple?

Trying to make all your customers fit just one single pricing model is bad for business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's of course easy to prove if you define the nebulous 'true fans' as 'fan enough so that $X from each of them support me financially'.

I'm not against the idea but I know some creatives who operate in spaces where asking $1k a year is a tough sell. I don't think many people are paying that for knitting or gardening lessons even from the best but hey, maybe I'm wrong.

It makes sense for skills that can be monetised into a career. A cake decorator I know said the risk is that you're training your replacements (but she also said you might as well, or someone else will).

</comment><comment><USER37> The logical conclusion of this trend has already been reached: Adam Neumann only needed 1 true fan.

</comment><comment><USER38> But finding those 100 people who care enough to pay for whatever it is you're producing must have a cost.

There are more ways to reach people now but considering the amount of noise out there it's like finding a needle in a haystack or perhaps worse as it's more likely, at least for an artistic project that they would need to find you.

That's without considering the fragility of a business that depends on 100 people. I just find something hokey and fake about this idea of having 100 or 1000 true fans to support you. It's especially grating coming from a VC firm whose basis for existence is growth, growth and more growth and then capitalising on that growth in the most ruthless and efficient way possible.

<comment><USER39> the cost is immense. Look at how much money Jeb Bush spent in 2015 to get fans. Like finding a needle in a silo. Some people can do it much easier, but it's random. there is no rule or strategy to reliably get fans quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Apart from the practicality of the business process, I would say if your content is in any way "edgy" or skirts close to the edge of the Overton Window [1] I would try and self-host as much as possible. It would be all too easy for a twitter-storm to get you kicked off social media, twitch, patreon, cloudflare, stripe, paypal etc and then your business disappears overnight.

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

</comment><comment><USER41> What I got from this post:

Network economy matches userland economy.

We should henceforth refer to billionaires as "whales".

<comment><USER42> Is this what _trickle down to economy_ looks like?

<comment><USER41> I'd like to see what a ring based economy would look like

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Next up: 1 true fan.

<comment><USER44> Also called: your employer

<comment><USER45> LOL yes, and in return you have to produce exactly what they ask for

<comment><USER46> Sugar baby

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> The No Agenda podcast from Adam Curry and John C Dvorak have seemingly successfully worked this model. No adverts, but donation only. Of course many listen to free, but creating producers out of those who donate and giving them credits and shout outs has built an interesting community.

What doesn't work is to cut your prime value out just to those who pay. Then you can't build momentum and the large fan base.

</comment><comment><USER48> Is it just me or Passion Economy is a totally empty marketing BS term that doesn't really mean anything?

</comment><comment><USER49> > Here's how it works: A creator can cultivate a large, free audience on > horizontal social platforms or through an email list. He or she can then > convert some of those users to patrons and subscribers. The creator can then > leverage some of those buyers to higher-value purchases, such as extra > content, exclusive access, or direct interaction with the creator.

having a couple blogs/influencer pages with 20k+ followers are actually most useful (IMO) when starting new brands on new platforms and slowly monetizing (ala gary v's Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook as corny as he is it works)

> As the Passion Economy grows, more people are monetizing what they love

it's simply fun growing a brand/discovering new communities/creating one/watching the engagement and metrics

</comment><comment><USER50> Maybe for a kid paying for school or saving it could be OK, but 100-fans- income is quite _volatile_. And the end of the day these people are living out from _tips_ , _pity_ and the _grace_ of 1st world country donors (I am saying this while trying not to be controversial).

Most fans may be kids (under 25?) and thus _volatile_ , in the way that the creator is off for 1 day and they'll replace him/her with whatever else is out there, and that's 1 percent per lost fan. Or PayPal can decide that your niche is not convenient to them and cut you out, or a fan loses interest, or... countless reasons.

Very risky for making a living, IMO.

</comment><comment><USER51> We actually see a similar pattern on [https://www.anim8.io](https://www.anim8.io)

A couple animators on our platform have extremely dedicated fans making up the majority of the donation revenue.

</comment><comment><USER52> It looks to me what a16z has just discovered is a service business. A plumber or an SAT tutor or an upholstery shop or whatever basically just needs 100 customers a year paying around $1000.

<comment><USER53> Call me cynical, but to me the entire post just reads like an advertisment for the companies in the $1000 column that they've invested in...

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> s/fan/customer

I feel like the comments here cover the main issues with this article. I kept flip-flopping between appreciating the article and disagreeing with it. The two main issues I have with it are:

1\. $1000/year to provide value is a business, not a "passion" in the true sense. 2\. Highlighting the outliers of a given platform discredits the concept as something that many people can achieve.

"These fans expect to derive meaningful value and purpose from the product." \- yes, that would be a business transaction.

This article could be rewritten to say that if you want to create a life-style business, make sure to generate enough value for someone (or a business) that they would be willing to pay $1000/year for your product. This will make profitability/success much easier.

Yes, the original author of 1,000 True Fans retracted his original views after hearing from musicians, but the general concept/framework doesn't seem to be broken even if the numbers have to be adjusted. The main idea is that you don't need millions of people paying you $1 to have success.

<comment><USER55> I understand what you're getting at but I think the relationship with a 'creator' or artist feels much more personal than that of a business. There's more to this than a simple repeating customer/business transaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> > This strategy is closely related to the concept of "whales" in gaming, in > which 1 to 2 percent of users drive 80 percent of gaming companies' revenue

Last time I heard of that term - `whale` - it was a reference to a mom whose child was making in-app purchase without her mother's consent and/or knowing. Unethical behavior cursor to the max.

<comment><USER57> Everybody should think deeply about ethics and act morally. Exploiting human beings is not okay.

But the idea of "whales" is nearly universal in all lines of business, and there's nothing unethical about it unless your business is _already_ operating in some kind of ethical gray area.

If you are lucky enough to have customers at all, you will have some that spend 10x or 100x as others.

The most obvious example would be a neighborhood restaurant or food truck. Most people in your town might visit once or twice per year, if at all. But then you have your regular customers that you see a few times per week. Somebody who stops by twice a week is spending 100x as somebody who visits once a year.

Same with a department store. Most people buy nothing, some just want a pair of socks, and some will drop $2,000 on a new business wardrobe.

Something worth considering: if your business is one that inspires passionate fans, do you have any options for these folks to spend more? If not, are you kinda leaving a bunch of money on the table and hamstringing your fledgling business? Probably. Of course, this is something that takes ethical consideration and good judgement.

<comment><USER58> Your examples aren't really of whales, because there's an upper limit on how much food/clothes you can get.

The whale term was invented by casinos wasn't it? Where there's no upper limit to how much you can lose.

<comment><USER59> There's an upper limit to the amount that you can consume.

There is no upper limit on the amount you can pay.

<comment><USER60> Sure there is, unless you consider incurring infinite debt a positive thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> The real business that A16Z wants is aggregating millions of passion projects. Must have been pitched by something like that

</comment><comment><USER62> I feel like these numbers are skewed by the sex workers on Patreon offering subscription pornography. It'd be interesting to see if there's a difference between the numbers adult content creators see vs. everyone else.

<comment><USER63> I don't think people who create adult content should be excluded. It's a valid job which — like streaming, painting, or any other online content creation — just isn't for everyone.

<comment><USER62> Yeah I agree. I wasn't suggesting that it is or should be illegal and banned. I'm just saying that the economics for that business are so different than every other creative and performing art that it really distorts what non-adult content creators can expect to make from their patrons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> This talk from MicroConf discusses a similar idea and the origins of the 1000 true fans allegory: [https://youtu.be/otbnC2zE2rw?t=273](https://youtu.be/otbnC2zE2rw?t=273)

</comment><comment><USER65> I would like to see some stats from youtube and other platforms actually auditing those sub counts. I really have a hard time believing some youtube channels actually have 10,000 subs, let alone a million. While I agree with the article and the tier system, patreon is basically an e-begging platform. I understand that probably isn't popular to say but that is how I see it.

<comment><USER66> >patreon is basically an e-begging platform

This is more true for some people than others. A decent number of YouTubers I know have their patreons set up to only charge customers after they put out a video, so if several months go by without any new content they aren't just pulling a salary from patrons. This model is only really relevant to YouTubers who put effort into fewer videos released farther apart, rather than those with weekly or even daily releases of vlog content, but still it feels like a fair way of doing things where they are essentially being paid for releasing something and not like begging.

Contrast this with some people I see on twitter who have a patreon... just for tweeting? Occasionally there is a spin put on it about being a minority or disabled and taking donations, but this definitely feels much more like e-begging, even though I guess you could try and make the argument that tweets are just as valid "content" as youtube videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I do now think 1K/year is something that will sustain in time. Passion wears out.

</comment><comment><USER68> Just watched a MicroConf talk mentioned "1000 fan" theory.

<comment><USER64> This talk covers the origin & debunks the premise of 1000 fans: [https://youtu.be/otbnC2zE2rw?t=273](https://youtu.be/otbnC2zE2rw?t=273)

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> This thesis seems like 1000 True Fans hired patio11.

<comment><USER70> I was wondering if it was written by patio11. It's just like his writing style.

<comment><USER71> What? Not at all imho. He writes very different. He likes to construct more complex sentences. This reads like your average journalist, which is okay, but not particular distinguishable.

<comment><USER69> Yea I don't think the writing style is patio11 at all. The thesis of, effectively, "charge more", however, is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> I've seen this work before.

</comment><comment><USER73> Tl;dr: "Sell your customers what they want, make them pay what you say, be sure they're rich enough."

Best paradigm busting advice in business after "If you can secure just 0.1% of the chinese market, you'll have 5 milion customers" and "Always remember: profit is revenue _minus_ expense".

</comment><comment><USER74> $ whois a1.6z.com

</comment><comment><USER75> Taking this to extreme :) 100 True Fans ? try 1 Internet has enabled visibility so you need to only find one true fan who is willing to sponsor you 100,000 per year.

<comment><USER76> Aka your employer.

<comment><USER77> Funny, but this is not wrong either. It turns out anyone who has a good job is already building something one entity really wants -- themselves. The only difference is that they pay with their time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> In my mind the article reduces to: Paywalls are cool, we need moar of them.

</comment><comment><USER79> Brilliant!

</comment><comment><USER17> TLDR: Sell what your customers want to buy.

But let's call the customers fans and rebrand the whole thing not as Capitalism but as "Passion Economy", which sounds a lot more noble than "overcharging random strangers on the internet".

I'm also surprised that "whales" went from a mean joke to mock those with more money than friends into an actual description that they use as a positive term here.

<comment><USER80> TL;DR (1000 * 100) == (100 * 1000)

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> The _Future_ of the _Internet_ , a post-scarce good, is not going to be a Profit Model Powered by The Extraction Economy.

It needs a fundamentally different economic model, that measures the _gain_ in value added to the network, not the transaction (rebalance, distribution, etc.) of it: [http://free.eco](http://free.eco) .

<comment><USER82> > a post-scarce good

There is no such thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> God these guys live in a bubble

<comment><USER84> " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"

" _Don 't be snarky._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER58> Well it is a good critical comment but the HN readers are part of the same bubble and don't realize it :)

<comment><USER85> It is not, it's far too short for that. The way it is now it isn't even a decent invitation to discuss.

dav43 could probably expand it into one easily though. What kind of bubble? Who's in it? Why do they think so? What are the consequences and what could be done about it? etc.

<comment><USER58> Well let me expand it again (i have another comment saying the same thing):

HN readers are for the most part highly paid tech workers. Even in the US, tell someone who makes 30k/year that you spend 1K/year on someone's Patreon and he'll think you're crazy... or spit in your face.

<comment><USER84> > HN readers are for the most part highly paid tech workers

That's a false assumption. HN is much larger than you think, with people all over the US and all over the world. It has highly paid workers, lowly paid workers, people who don't need to work, and people who need to but can't find any.

We tend to make assumptions like "for the most part" based on the internal image when our pre-existing conditions meet a handful of striking data points—say the first 3 or so. And then we don't change it. But which data points happen to strike us are actually a function of our pre-existing conditions also. There are many other data points.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER86> Here is a model for the author:

give money to things not to people, people should have enough to live. Food, safe place to stay etc.

i dont want to pay for people to become rich just necause he/she produced a thing I enjoyed.. I dont have to be responsible for artists, creaters being alive, safe etc. I am just a person expects same comfort as creater... creater might have a chance to accomplish his/her passion position in life but most of us should/must do the ugly things... that doesnt mean that people create something are always good at what they do... actually they are not most of the time...

prize tag is for goods not for people...</comment>


Oculus Rift - Dev Kit Review - <AUTHOR> http://devmaster.net/posts/23835/oculus-rift-dev-kit-review <comment><USER2> > You cannot play first person games.

As an Oculus Rift owner I've been able to play HL2 for three hours straight with zero breaks. It was hands down the best gaming experience of my life and this is coming from someone who really doesn't appreciate single player games.

People don't believe it but you DO have to gain your 'vr legs' before diving into fast paced games like FPS.

You have to gradually work your way through games that are just at your limit until you find yourself able to handle something fast paced like FPS. For me it went roughly Blue Marble,Alone in the Dark,VR Helicopter,War Thunder (for 2 weeks), DoD:Source, HL2.

I think what may have been key to my transition was when I played DoD:Source, I just treated the Rift like a big screen in front of my face and used my mouse to look around the world rather than my head (DoD currently does not have separate head look/mouse look so where your head moves your cursor moves and vise versa). When I finally got around to playing HL2 (which has separate mouse look/head look so you can look up a flight of stairs, and than bring your cursor up to shoot) it was a small enough jump from DoD that I was able to play a half hour my first night, an hour my second and 3rd nights, and 3 straight hours on my last when I beat the game.

I think the greater issue Oculus Rift faces is that, even if you are careful to slowly acclimate yourself as I did, over time you will build a slight aversion to the Oculus Rift as your brain associates the odd glitch of nausea that are inevitable in any game with the Rift. So while I did say that HL2 was the best gaming experience of my life, I do admit that I haven't been back to it since. I don't know if thats a function of me beating the game or nausea, but I'd probably put it at 80/20 respectively.

I think that it will just be a matter of how compelling a game is to overcome the nausea/aversion. I suspect that if GTAV releases for the PC that I'll find myself logging multiple hour session in the Rift again.

<comment><USER3> My first time with Oculus demos I got very nauseated. The next day I tried playing HL2, I got a little queasy for sure. The next day it was totally fine. I'm sure that your mileage will vary, but it is entirely possible to feel sick the first couple times you use it and then get used to it over a couple days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I think the tech will shine if they ever manage to fit 4K resolution in > there.

That's probably going to take a few generations, and they might do it faster and with better results if they used this technology instead, which apparently doesn't give eye-strain like LCD's do, too:

[http://reviews.cnet.com/wearable-tech/avegant-virtual- retina...](http://reviews.cnet.com/wearable-tech/avegant-virtual-retinal- display/4505-34900_7-35828603.html)

By the way, check out this Redditor's crazy story about falling asleep with the Oculus Rift, and waking up feeling like he was actually in there for the first couple of minutes:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1oe33h/so_i_fell_asl...](http://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/1oe33h/so_i_fell_asleep_wearing_the_riftand_woke_up_to_a/)

Sounds like we'll be on one hell of a ride in the next 10 years, if Oculus Rift gets so immersive, and hundred of millions of people have them, all preferring to be in their high quality virtual realities over real life, most of the time, and feeling "disconnected" when they aren't there, just like we feel now without the Internet.

<comment><USER5> > if Oculus Rift gets so immersive, and hundred of millions of people have > them, all preferring to be in their high quality virtual realities over real > life, most of the time

Much as dislike this outlook, it might actually make a lot of currently somewhat "overpopulated" physical real places (with traffic jams etc.) a lot more pleasant, so yeah, let's see :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. I had a very similar initial experience [1]. I got sick from Half Life 2 the first two times playing it, but the third time I managed to do a 40-minute session without feeling any serious nausea. It's definitely something you can train yourself to tolerate.

But srsly, 4K resolution is an absolute must.

[1] [http://www.colorfulwolf.com/blog/2013/10/02/oculus-rift- dev-...](http://www.colorfulwolf.com/blog/2013/10/02/oculus-rift-dev-kit- first-impressions/)

<comment> FLUX-YOU I wonder if you can take some Dramamine and still get used to it without having to endure the initial nausea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _You cannot play first person games. As cool as they are for the first minute, beyond that motion sickness kicks in._

It's only one data point but I've not had any nausea with extensive playing of Minecraft and HL2. Indeed, the biggest problems by far are the lenses steaming up and the gigantic pixels/low resolution (I'm not even sure 1080 would improve this significantly since it's already 720, isn't it? It feels like it needs a doubling, at a minimum.) However, every other (adult) person I've tried it on _has_ indeed felt quite nauseous very quickly.

Like others though, I think the big initial wins won't be in FPS games since they also encourage you to run around and interact with an environment that doesn't exist. Flight sims, space sims, underwater sims, racing sims.. this could be a huge deal.

<comment><USER8> It 100% will be a huge deal with flight sims. The Rift is ideal for that. In a few years, playing a sim without some kind of high immersion device like the Rift will be like playing a flight sim without a joystick today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if, for those who experience it, the motion sickness would be as bad if running around on an omni-directional treadmill. While your body would be moving to match your avatar, your inner ear might still sense that you are stationary and cause you to feel nauseous.

<comment><USER10> My experience:

5 minutes with Occulus and a game pad resulted in about 10 minutes of mild nausea.

5 minutes with Occulus and Omni resulted in about 30 minutes of moderate but not debilitating nausea.

Complicating factors: tried the Omni test first, perhaps increasing my tolerance for the next test. Also used the lower resolution Occulus devkit with the Omni.

<comment><USER11> How does the omni control the game? Just curious.

<comment><USER10> It detects your forward walking motion and translates it to pressing forward on the keyboard (roughly).

<comment><USER11> How does turning work? I've been curious if I could build my own omni?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I never really felt much motion sickness from it, even in TF2. I didn't really enjoy playing that way, as I felt like I lost some of the control mouse+kb gives, but it's certainly immersive.

petercooper hit on the big problems: the lenses fog up quickly and the low resolution in the dev kit is distracting.

Also, in some games like surgeon simulator 2013, there is drift which means you're spinning slowly in a circle to keep looking at the same spot. It's horribly frustrating, and ruined the (already frustrating) experience for me.

Unreal works very well with it, however. I think any game which doesn't rely on fast transformations to the perspective will benefit greatly from the immersion the retail Rift brings.

</comment><comment><USER13> I agree with the points about FPS games. I played a couple of the demos without any nausea and then tried HL2 and my stomach was almost instantly in my throat. On reflection, there was something about the first two demos that made the difference, I think. In one, you're underwater in a pod, which means even though you're in first-person, there remains the concept that it's not _you_ moving, but the pod, and you therefore have a relatively static near- plane environment which moves subtly, whilst the 'outside world' moves more freely. In the second demo, a sky-diving simulator, you're free falling, so there's very little rotation involved.

</comment><comment><USER14> I did not get sick at all.

I would definitely try the demos which were written with the Rift in mind, not general games. RiftCoaster for example is superb (be even better if I could get it to work under Wine ...).

</comment><comment><USER15> So far the main problem I had with the demo system is that I can't set it up to my very myopic sight; none of the sets of lenses did it, and you can't wear glasses with it.

<comment><USER16> It depends on your frame. I can wear glasses with mine no problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If anyone in Adelaide, South Australia wants to check out the rift, I have a dev kit I'm willing to lend out.

</comment><comment><USER18> When I played around with the Rift I got sick. But taking pills against travel sickness helped.</comment>


You can't strategize your way past the hard stuff - on getting that first sale - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thestartuptoolkit.com/2011/10/you-cant-strategise-your-way-past-hard-work/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me a lot of Steve Blanks Peter Pan syndrome he writes about here:

[http://steveblank.com/2010/09/20/the-peter-pan- syndrome-%E2%...](http://steveblank.com/2010/09/20/the-peter-pan- syndrome-%E2%80%93-the-startup-to-company-transition/)

Basically, a lot of us just don't know what we don't know when we're first starting out. We've got to get out and learn our space, become domain experts, and fail a ton.

Unfortunately, there isn't any shortcut in sales. If you find one let me know.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm learning this now. You might have a great strategy to get between 2 points but if you dint actually walk, the strategy is useless.

</comment><comment><USER4> "It's 10%. You want a dollar, you ask ten people. You want ten dollars, you ask a hundred people. 10%"

Given the ten people are mostly independent events (unless they perceive the previous responses), this would fall under the Montecarlo fallacy.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just like you can't learn how to surf by just reading books. But reading about it, and getting a coach/mentor (someone who has done it for years) can help you get there a lot faster.</comment>


Ask HN: Euro English vs. US keyboard – Is there a difference? - <AUTHOR> The new X1 carbon is out in the UK today. I'm used to US American keyboard layout but Lenovo cannot supply this in the UK. They recommended I go for Euro English. I'm told its very similar but how similar is it? (Keyboard layout is very important to me as someone who writes code). It's not easy to find Euro English photos online. Especially not on Carbons.<p>Is it just a difference with the extra Euro label on the "5" key and the right Alt labelled as "Alt gr"? Or are there more layout-specific differences? <comment><USER2> This page has a good list [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_and_American_keyboards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_and_American_keyboards)

For software development the biggest difference is the position of the @, #, |, \ and ~ keys.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm well aware of the British and American layouts (I cannot use UK keyboards as a coder). But what about the "Euro English" keyboard? Is that an equivalent of the American one? Or something else completely?</comment></comment>


Ideas for Rails Rumble 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://rumblestiltskin.heroku.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I love Kangaroo Court and definitively Internet Pie

<comment><AUTHOR> And of course Clairvoyance:

You are able to collect real time information in Google Reader, Delicious and Netvibes.

You can even add semantics and see all the links of a subject in one page.

That's the input. As output you can copy and paste snippets, ideas from the aggregated articles into a separate application, blog post, wiki, mindmapper.

And that's all. It's far from providing you clairvoyance to your subject of interests -- business.

Create your personal news agency! All inputs and your outputs in one application.

. Aggregate news using existing tools (GReader).

. Add filters / semantics based on source, content, category using cascading tags and meta-tags

. Add one-paragraph summaries / distilled knowledge to your semantic tags, subject of interests

. Visualize your subjects as trends, predictions, overviews, know-how

. Monetize the final output</comment></comment>


Remote Workers Make the World Your Office - <AUTHOR> http://www.yonderwork.com/ <comment><USER2> I am not sure I see the value here. I guess it is the interaction with others that are on the trip too.

If I wanted to work remotely from around the world, can't I do this myself for less than $16,450? ($5,200 deposit + $2,250/mo * 5). [As described by the site: The experience requires a down payment of $5,200 USD to hold your spot, plus $2,250 USD a month for the first five months. This is comparable to the cost of living in many major metropolitan cities and covers premium lodging, dedicated workspace, social and professional events, and flights between locations. ]

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A 6-month international community experience for 35 remote workers interested in living in new places and learning new skills.</comment>


Everything I wish someone had told me (about freelancing) - <AUTHOR> http://megrobichaud.tumblr.com/post/22147155867/everything-i-wish-someone-had-told-me-about <comment><USER2> This is a pretty good post; the latter half, I think, probably applies well to all solo consulting practices.

I particularly liked how flexible her thinking was on billing. "Hourly, with a cap" is one good way to do it; we tend to do "flat rate, fixed schedule" to similar effect. My only critique is with using "hourly" as your time quantum. Hourly sucks. It's probably some kind of standard in design, but even if you're a designer, I recommend pushing it at least to "daily".

Has anyone else here obtained a "line of credit" (say from a bank)? Do we think she just means "get an Amex card"?

Two other points I'd add:

* Incorporate: LLCs are (very) cheap and absorb most of the risks that are most likely to bankrupt you or take your house away.

* Get an accountant. Less cheap, but almost certainly cheaper than doing your taxes yourself; in several of the last 7 years, my accountant has made me money.

<comment><USER3> While I generally agree with and recommend getting an accountant, I've found a personal satisfaction over the past 8 years of doing my own taxes (10 years of freelance development). It can be tedious and confusing, but it forces me to stay in tune with the laws as well as my own income / expenses.

It doesn't hurt that it costs far less than an accountant, although that time can be considered lost considering the billable time lost gathering information, adding it all up and entering it properly (Mint.com has shaven days off of this process for me).

Every year I tell myself I'll go back to having an accountant, but then I feel I'll miss that couple days of better understanding where my money came from and where it's gone. I also appreciate understanding the details behind the chunk I send to Uncle Sam.

<comment><USER2> Some people are like you. I suspect more people are like me. If you're not sure whether you're going to enjoy / be good at doing your own taxes, screwing them up is not a good way to find out. I managed to get myself into quite an annoying hole by not delegating this particular business problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The biggest mistake I made when I started freelancing is I had NO plan on how to take care of maintenance after I closed up shop.

Websites are living business cards that are almost always changing. So when you take on 5 projects over a year. You're never really going to get away from them. They are perpetual. You will always get calls later on about "fixing this" and "changing that". And if you think you can simply give the client all the code so they can go on to someone else, it's not that easy. Especially if you're hosting everything for them (which I now understand is a big mistake). Clients don't understand code well enough to be able to do that, and the changes they need are sometimes so vital to their business, you'd feel like an asshole for not giving in. Sure you can charge them for the changes but again: If you get busy later on in life you'll always be haunted by your former clients. It's hard to let go.

Learn from my stupid mistake. Before you even create index.php create a plan on what you're going to do when you get sick of freelancing. Set everything up around the idea that one day you will need to pass this all onto someone else.

<comment><USER5> How _do_ you handle that sort of thing? Is there a cut-off or something? I've never done any web development, but I can see how this would be a hairy situation.

<comment><USER6> You put it in your contract - it should be crystal clear. If at some point, you don't want to continue (i.e. extend your contract), just refer them to another developer. It's not that big a deal.

<comment><USER4> Oh it's quiet a big deal when you're not set up for it from the beginning, and it costs you time and money to transfer your client to another developer.

When you handled everything for your client from domain registration to hosting to ftp and email accounts and some of the scripts require relative URLs (relative to your hosting account's directory on your hosting company's server) and their mysql databases are with you. Surprise! You've got a few hours to a few days of work ahead of you. Sure you can charge the client. But again, if you're sick of that shit you can't just ditch them. If the other developer wants to do it, they can't because there's no way you'd give them admin access to your server. And since you're on a shared hosting server you don't have the privileges to create a temporary admin account that only allows access to the things that need to be transferred. You're stuck doing all this work.

If you want to get rid of the client you now have to oversee that all these things are successfully transferred. And no one can do this but YOU. The more complex the client's site the more of a pain in the ass things become. Things add up quickly.

Oh, Just a few things you need to do. :)

\- make backups of absolutely everything

\- Transfer the domain (up to 7 days)

\- Setup and reteach the client their ftp details

\- transfer email accounts and if they have an IMAP account, have fun backing up all their emails and attachments and transferring them to the new IMAP acount. Same applies to an archiving POP3 email account.

\- Go into all 3rd party scripts and reinstall everything

\- change all relative paths on all of those 3rd party scripts as well as changing the mysql details (some scripts aren't simple "drag and drop then reinstall" scripts) they are instead a pain in the ass to migrate because certain options aren't stored in the mysql database that you just backed up. Instead they're in the filesystem and you have to back that up and drag and drop everything over, and if you re-install it you lose all those settings so you have to spend a whole day planning out what exactly needs to be dragged and dropped over.

\- transfer all backups little by little to their new destination

\- transfer over all the mysql databases

\- RE-train your client to understand ALL of these new changes and answer any support emails when they have problems or something is wrong. (NO they won't send emails to the new developer, they'll send them to you)

\- Answer emails from the new developer who doesn't understand exactly how everything was done.

And a lot of this requires everything at the other host to be somewhat setup, which requires a bit of cooperation between you and the new developer. And when it takes most people 5 days to respond to an email because they're overloaded with work (something I'm guilty of right now). A complete transfer after ironing out all the kinks could take over a month.

If you were smart and planned ahead you would have just created a whole self contained account with a host and had everything wrapped up together so when you transfer your client to a new developer you just hand the new developer the admin username and password to the control panel and leave. But you didn't. You're Chris Norstrom and you're new to this crap and so you did things the wrong and long way. ;)

<comment><USER6> Ouch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Learning to say no is one of the most important things IMHO.

In the Discworld books, there's a bit where the Best Smith In The World shoes Death's horse. It's a thing he HAS to do now and then, because otherwise, well, he's just not the Best Smith In The World anymore, is he? It's a little weird and unsettling, but he does it, and he does it well.

Every now and then a job comes along that makes me feel like that. It's something that the client is coming specifically to ME for, not just because they like my style but because I am one of about three people in the world who could do justice to this idea. And when one of those comes along, I make room in my schedule for it. I warn the client that it may take a while - but it'll be worth the wait.

But most of the time? Most of the time, I politely say "no". Once you've gotten your head above water, this is not a luxury; keeping your workload under control and not having twenty unfinished projects hanging over your head makes you AND your clients happy.

(Underpricing yourself is also a terrible idea, and one this piece doesn't address. Most of the stories of nightmare art commissions my friends tell are of a too-cheap piece where the client demands endless re-dos for free.)

</comment><comment><USER8> Steve Friedl's _So you want to be a consultant...?_ ( <http://www.unixwiz.net/techtips/be-consultant.html> ) is also a must-read. Not only is Steve a Unix expert (and the brother of Jeff Friedl, regex legend), he's an excellent writer as well.

<comment><USER9> That's the link that I needed most in this world right now. Thanks for posting it.

<comment><USER8> My pleasure! Glad to hear you found it helpful. It played a large part in shaping my course (and later success) as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're freelancing, you need to read Design Is a Job by Mike Monteiro. It's an absolutely brilliant overview of the entire client/contractor relationship, and how to operate in a way that protects both you and your client from any potentially hairy situations. Can't recommend it enough.

<http://www.abookapart.com/products/design-is-a-job>

<comment><USER2> Every time I read about this book I really want to buy it, but I hesitate because I'm not a designer; how designer-specific is it? Like, the drama involved in getting clients to accept a creative brief is interesting, but it's not very relevant to what I do.

<comment><USER11> It's not designer specific. It feels more like the word 'designer' is being used in terms of being a creative, rather than specifically a graphic specialist. So it applies to freelancers who invent, but doesn't touch developers issues either, so its weighted to professionals who need taste to acomplish their job. It's a good book, I like Monteiro's no-BS approach to things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One additional note:

Automate wherever possible. Especially if you're a developer there are no excuses. Automatically log your time using something like Time Sink ( <http://manytricks.com/timesink/> ). Adopt a convention for your git commits so that you can use some of your git messages as line items for your invoice (e.g. anything with "Feature: " in the front)

I wrote a gem called "Big Bucks No Whammies" ( <https://github.com/aantix/big_bucks_no_whammies> ) specifically for my billing purposes.

<comment><USER2> I'm a little confused by web developers' fascination with time tracking. In my practice, if I'm working for you for a significant chunk of a day, that's the day, gone. I am more likely to just do work for you for free than to bill in less than 8-hour increments.

Do you really invoice clients for "11 hours, 3 minutes"?

I think I'd go so far as to say that the "N minutes" part of that invoice actually looks a little unprofessional. (I'm sure you're a consummate professional, though!)

<comment><USER13> I think time-tracking has fascination for a certain bracket of freelancers because it is an easy, low-stress way to rescue waste from the business: you are actually doing more work then you are invoicing, so if you actually tracked it better your billings go up _and_ your client will be happy _and_ it doesn't hurt any shadow beliefs about the evilness of making money.

There are better ways to accomplish these goals, like switching to daily rates (or weekly rates). No client worth having cares what your work structure looks like if you're capable of producing -- just move to a day rate, give them your honest best effort, and deliver results.

e.g. Most of my clients are pretty happy with me. None of them would perceive value from me slicing out 7 minutes from an invoice because, e.g., I wrote a post on HN. (They just profoundly don't care about that, they care about the deliverables, the feeling of happiness they get working with me, and -- ideally -- measurable results as a result of the engagement.)

<comment><USER14> "No client worth having cares what your work structure looks like if you're capable of producing"

That is very easy to say when you are an established freelancer with work being thrown at you. Just starting out though, there is a fine balance between what's ideal and staying afloat.

<comment><USER2> If you want to run your business suboptimally in the hopes that it will attract your first clients, that's fine, but you shouldn't do so while pretending that it's the right way to run a business. I have a hard time thinking of clients who are particularly well-served by, say, 3-hour billings. Customers that need sporadic work like this are probably far better served by retainer arrangements. If you find yourself doing lots of 1, 2, and 3-hour projects, you should consider a staff augmentation arrangement instead of project billing.

For the most part, I think all consultants kid themselves about how productive they are juggling multiple projects in a day. It's not as if this is some great insight on my part. I'm a developer; I've read all the same stuff as you. I just paid close attention to the stuff about getting "in flow". Re-read Joel Spolsky's "Fire and Motion" essay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > You're not your own boss, you've got about 30 different bosses

As a freelancer, you get to choose those bosses. Much harder to do at a regular job.

> If you're not on twitter, it reflects poorly on you. The design community is > strongly linked to the start-up and web-dev communities.

Minor nitpick: _Our_ design community is strongly linked to the start-up and web-dev community. But other design communities exist outside of the software world :)

Good information in the article. Shared it with friends who are getting started with freelancing. I'm sure they're in a better position now than me, when I was starting out.

</comment><comment><USER16> Post seems pretty enlightening, makes me wish I could find something similar regarding software development specifically.

</comment><comment><USER17> One not so minor point: you can't just "write off unpaid invoices" \- if you're on an accrual basis (i.e., you record income when you bill), then you can "write off unpaid invoices", but what you're doing is simply subtracting the unpaid invoice from the income you earlier recorded; \- otoh, if you're on a cash basis (i.e., you record income when you receive it), which is far more common for small biz, then you never recorded the income for that unpaid invoice, so attempting to write it off will get you in big trouble with the IRS (or the equivalent in the Great White North).

</comment><comment><USER18> wow. thank you for that helpful post!

</comment><comment><USER19> real gem, in the mix. Oh, the definites, very. Thanks for the Joey Tribbiani strictness.

<comment><USER20> Of course we are not supposed to reply to spam, but this has me curious and amused. Why is there a markov bot posting on HN? In hopes that it will be coherent enough to get enough upvotes to be useful to someone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The "Fuck You. Pay Me." slide aggravates me. No matter how you dress it up with asterisks, you're still swearing and showing a lack of class. I agree that a large part of freelancing is making money (getting paid), but there are nicer ways to say it. The rest of the presentation is really well put together, but this particular slide seems out of place.

<comment><USER22> This is a reference to an infamous talk given by Mike Monteiro who's infamous in the design community.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZGra65Nob4>

<comment><USER23> Which in turn was a reference to Goodfellas:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ydqjqZ_3oc></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Graphics Cards supply - <AUTHOR> Wanted to get a simple 1050 4GB looks like 1050, 1060 etc. are out of stock everywhere. Can't Nvidia ramp up production I understand there is demand from crypto but (1050?). <comment><USER2> "ramp up production" is often difficult and expensive and takes time to kick in. You've got a certain number of production lines, the factory usually also has other customers that they've promised lines to, more people to train. Ramping up your production equates to every one of your parts suppliers (hundreds of suppliers for the case of a video card) also ramping up _their_ production, without exception.

I'm sure they are indeed ramping up production in response to crypto prices going crazy expensive unexpectedly, but it doesn't result in more cards on the market quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point :) Just feels a bit like USSR although obviously purely market driven situation</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay for an ad free Facebook account? - <AUTHOR> Would you? Maybe free services financed by by products (like ads) are not so cool... <comment><USER2> I think someday in the future I'd be willing to pay for an ad-free social media platform. I wouldn't do this for facebook though, they just aren't trustworthy as a company.

Whether or not Facebook is paid or free or not, it would still be a place populated by a list of friends/family you either barely know or don't see IRL, spouting unsolicited opinions or posting uninteresting baby pictures, etc. And I think ads would probably still sneak in, via fake accounts that just spam and share products. Maybe some of the noise would be cut down via people quitting the platform, but the worst offenders are addicted to facebook, so I think they'd stay.

I quit facebook probably two years ago and there's really not one thing about it I miss, so I certainly wouldn't pay for it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in it for the single sign in, but I am working my way out of it. But otherwise I would pay to use Google with no ads.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I would, but I probably wouldn't pay enough for it to be worthwhile for Facebook. I guess they earn way more a year from me than I'd be willing to pay.

<comment><USER4> They make like $6 per user per year

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't, since Ublock offers the same functionality for free.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't use FB.

However I paying for WSJ app.

Generally i'd pay for quality content without being pestered by ads.

If I'd religiously use FB or do business on FB - I'd probably do having a choice.

</comment><comment><USER7> No matter what you answer to this question, you viewing FB ads is worth more to FB than what you're willing to pay.

<comment><USER6> Actually that's questionable.

Your connections and social media activities carrying lots of value and allow FB to serve better ads to connections.

Paying for no ads does not eliminate that important element.

Certainly - tricking someone to click on ad and charging advertiser for worthless click is a source of revenue - but it doesn't bring $500/mo or something.

(incidentally i just got email from FB for fraud analytics position, lol)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> No. I have had ads that were relevant to me plenty of times. In fact some ads have help me further my career.

</comment><comment><USER9> Personally no. I don't use Facebook though which is probably why.

</comment><comment> a-fried-egg Why bother? FB is too much of a mess.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can abstract Facebook away and consider any other social media or product that you "pay" by viewing ads</comment></comment>


Thiel Fellowship Application Goes Live - <AUTHOR> https://apply.thielfellowship.org/submissions/new.user <comment><USER2> Separate any questions about whether or not this fellowship is a good idea, I resent that it's only people under 20... does being one or two years out from that, but still in school, really change you in such a way?

Look forward to seeing what kind of people get chosen for this and how their work turns out.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder why the birthday dropdown in the personal information section goes earlier than 1990, since they're only looking for under 20's

</comment><comment><USER4> Is this just a new layout? There was an older version of the form that has been up for a while (beginning of Nov)

<comment><AUTHOR> I just got the email to apply 3 hours ago. I would be surprised if they put out the application without notifying their own mailing list.

<comment><USER5> They put out an initial application a few weeks ago. The current version is a replica of the old form's questions, with a nicer looking interface.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah. Sorry for the misleading title then.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


New Class: Building a search Engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.udacity.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks interesting. Also, check out the link to "CS 373: PROGRAMMING A ROBOTIC CAR".

By the way, in that video, Sergey Brin looks older and really tired!

<comment><USER3> Indeed, he does look REALLY tired!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do none of these classes ever seem to provide enough information about the actual content? For example what programming language will be used in this class?

<comment><USER5> The course will use Python. There will be more detailed information posted about the course soon, but I'll try to answer any questions you have here.

<comment><USER6> "but I'll try to answer any questions you have here."

ok so here is a question.

How do you plan to let people online actually program a robotic car? (More likely) Do you plan to have some kind of simulated environment? Make hardware accessible through the web? actually run student programs on hardware (and send results back to students)? Make datasets from actual car sensors available?

I am just wondering about the scope of the course here. More information would be great.

Tangential: Does anyone actually write Robotics code in Python? All real life examples I've seen (that actually drive robots vs teach an algorithm) uses C/C++.

<comment><USER5> The robotic car class is a separate class, so I'm not able to answer all the questions about that one. (I am pretty sure, though, we won't be able to actually send people physical robotic cars! There will be a simulated environment, but it will use real data.)

<comment><USER6> "The robotic car class is a separate class, so I'm not able to answer all the questions about that one"

Oops. Sorry about that. My mistake :). Hopefully someone from the "robotic car" class will pop in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Week 3 is "Crawling the web" (the whole Web??!?) and Week 4 is "Responding to search queries"; shouldn't "Building an index" be somewhere in Week 3.5?

Do people need to learn how to build a search engine for the Web, complete with crawling and PageRank, etc., or do they rather need to know how to build a search engine for a specific corpus of documents that they have sitting around somewhere...?

<comment><USER5> Week 4 is mostly about building an index.

The point of the class isn't for people to build their own personal search engine to actually use, but to use the experience of building and understanding a search engine as a vehicle for introducing computer science and programming.</comment></comment>


Facebook To Build New Server Farm Near Arctic Circle - <AUTHOR> http://www.techiespider.com/2011/10/27/facebook-build-server-farm-northern-sweden-arctic-circle/

<comment><USER2> And for some reason the swedish government is helping facebook in funding this project. <http://www.dn.se/ekonomi/regeringen-ger-stod-till-facebook>, 15M USD out of estimated total of 700M. Sure it's a small fraction and it will probably bring many jobs to the city but it's not like facebook can't afford it themselves and that this extra grant was critical for the project.

<comment><USER3> I bet they get at least half of that back through taxes. (Assuming $6k per month, with 300 workers mentioned in the article and 14 month completion rate, 30% one-time tax on it all, comes to 7,560,000.) It does seem kind of peculiar though, makes me wonder if Facebook offered anything in exchange. Maybe some sort of data flow/monitoring of Swedish users?

<comment><USER4> It's almost certainly for the jobs. Sweden can market itself (to it's populace) as a tech centre. Same reason the low Irish Corporate Tax rate

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> According to Wikipedia, Lulea has a few other claims to fame, such as being where the first GSM call was made in 1989.

Its year-long average temperature is 5C (41 Farenheit), ranging from -8C (18F) to 19C (66F):

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luleå>

<comment><USER6> I used to live in Luleå. It is also tied for most sunlight in a year in Sweden.

Fun fact: Durung the winter they put sign posts into the ice and drive right over the Lule river. It makes for a great shortcut across town.

The article makes it sound completely remote, but it isn't. Google had an office there for a few years. There's a decent university there. Though the population is only 50k, it attracts everyone within 200km, so the city has a disproportionate amount of entertainment and other industries.

<comment><USER7> Pretty amazing. On average, How many days of sunlight did you have a year?

<comment><USER6> I only lived up there during a winter, but even during the winter it was either snowing or perfectly clear. Very rarely did we have cloudy overcast days.

It's not just the number of days though. It's the fact that for half the year you get 20+ hours of sunlight a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A better article on the same subject: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/27/us-facebook- sweden...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/27/us-facebook-sweden- idUSTRE79Q2HR20111027)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not usually one to get into eco debates, but can anyone who's knowledgeable in the field tell me whether it's a good idea to build heat plants in places where they shouldn't be - I mean long term?

The way I see it now is that placing a structure which releases hundreds (thousands?) of kilowatts of heat in the ocean, rivers or arctic ice (as an example) is bad for the ecology - once the place heats up (and it will), it's not going to cool down by itself. This has the potential to rise overall global temperature if enough companies do this. Am I right or way off?

<comment><USER10> Given that the energy is coming from hydro power, there's no increase in heat output: The gravitational potential energy of the water was going to be converted into heating the water as it speeds up from flowing downhill and then slows down from friction anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This has as much to do with using "stranded" hydropower up in the north as it does with taking advantage of low ambient temperatures for free air cooling.

</comment><comment><USER12> Isn't Iceland trying to encourage companies to build datacenters there? Geothermal energy and plenty of cooling to go round.

<comment><USER13> And some volcanoes and earthquakes as well. Not the most stable environment for mission-critical servers. :-(

<comment><USER12> Fair point... One could argue that a company as large as Facebook (or Blackberry) should be able to cope with a whole datacenter being taken offline.

<comment><USER14> Why when they can save this particular headache by going elsewhere? Island would have to _really_ make it worth anyone's while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is how it's done. Compare that to building a new mega-datacenter in Texas. (HP, I'm looking at you!)

<comment><USER15> Facebook's smart for taking advantage of the cold and such, but there are a lot of factors that go into choosing a location. Tax incentives, proximity to users, and a million other things I'm not aware of.

And while they will probably save massively on the electricity bill and carbon emissions for this, it's not like energy is prohibitively expensive here in Texas...

<comment><USER16> > it's not like energy is prohibitively expensive here in Texas...

This kind of wilful inefficiency is killing US businesses.

<comment><USER17> Businesses aim to maximise profits, not Carnot efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 'build there server farm'

<comment><USER19> I actually like "keep its hardwares cold". Point taken, that this is not the most rigorously edited article.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to structure coaching/mentoring for best results - <AUTHOR> I've been asked to provide some coaching to a junior developer to increase their proficiency in a couple of languages (I am external to the developer's company). While we could just sit down once a fortnight and pair program solutions to tasks they are assigned at work, I'm not convinced that is always going to make the best use of the limited time we have available.<p>Are there any well thought out learning plans for things like this? Or any other resources that would assist? <comment><USER2> This is 100% the way to go. (from experience) Pick a task off the backlog, pair program, rinse and repeat.

I recently streamed a session like this @ my company (Trip.com) with one of the junior developers

Part1: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYsuclajEBc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYsuclajEBc) Part2: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-z7M4h3EzQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-z7M4h3EzQ)

This was his task and we just built it together while I am teaching/asking questions/explaining.

Important things to focus on

1\. Thought process - cannot stress this enough, it is the most important thing to explain. Why are you doing X and just talk out what you think in your head 2\. Explain everything 3\. Leave a lot of time for questions and make sure you aren't impatient when a question is "basic". Make sure the engineer knows he/she can ask anything, nothing is too stupid or too basic.

Worst thing to do IMHO is just do "something cool". Just do the work inside the context of the environment you/him/she knows.

My 2 cents

</comment><comment><USER3> Picking the language and then the specifics of what you want to improve knowledge of is next. specific e.g in Python use OOP to build a x using (flask or bottle and JavaScript flavor of the month here).

Phase things as well, don't try build a monolith in 4 weeks using 50 different stacks. They'll lose the plot and end up trying 3 different JavaScript frameworks and 6 different ways of nearly anything.

measure what it means to have achieved the goal, example a flask backend using a user and customer model connected to a postgres db by Date.

Have courses, books and websites available for learning. Checkin on progress and help them bring it back into order when they go off the path.

Then using the goal, the date and the measure of success, evaluate the knowledge gained with them</comment>


Emily Riehl's Favorite Theorem - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/emily-riehls-favorite-theorem/ <comment><AUTHOR> "the purview of category theory is mathematical analogy."</comment>


Hacking Water - <AUTHOR> http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hacking_water/ <comment><USER2> Definitely a +1 for the image descriptions. This is a pleasure to read with a screen reader. I haven't seen a website doing such a great job in ages. No one, except the BBC (which sucks at accessibility in other ways) and accessibility focused websites really does that. This guy deserves so much respect for this.

<comment><USER3> Take note, UI designers: In same crucial areas, you are far behind people writing HTML by hand.

<comment><USER4> I don't know where you get the idea there's a significant difference between these groups with respect to their attention to accessibility.

<comment><USER3> My experience is that accessibility to a site is inversely proportional to the amount of JS it contains.

And UI designers love having a lot of JS...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ah, I've been doing a lot of plumbing with PEX lately as well. It's really a pretty nice material to work with. As a total amateur I've done hundreds of crimps with zero leaks. The 3/4" stuff is much tougher on the arms than 1/2". Heartily recommend if you have any interest in DIY home plumbing, or, say, legos.

Another link on the subject: [https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/11/23/how- to-become-a-k...](https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/11/23/how-to-become-a- kickass-plumber-with-pex/)

<comment><USER6> Those sharkbite connectors are the bee's knees. So easy to bridge copper to pex if you have piping that will evolve a bit. They are expensive, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Joey is one of the oldest (and still active) Debian contributors. Patreon page: [https://www.patreon.com/joeyh](https://www.patreon.com/joeyh)

<comment><USER8> Joey was very active in Debian, but has retired from it in 2015. [http://zgrimshell.github.io/posts/interviews-with-floss- deve...](http://zgrimshell.github.io/posts/interviews-with-floss-developers- joey-hess.html)

<comment><USER9> I never understood clearly why Joey left the Debian Project. It was right after the SystemD Wars, but I didn't get the impression it was over the switch to systemd itself. Maybe, the level of acrimony displayed by people he used to, or would like to continue to, respect?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really enjoyed the read. I'd love to do something similar in the future. Thanks Joey!

</comment><comment><USER11> Not likely the audience for this, but since I spent an hour hunting it down, the spade tool is called Wilton Thinline spade tool, just ordered the 10 inch.

</comment><comment><USER12> Water filtered? Or assume water is safe?

<comment><USER5> There's probably a macro level filter (dirt and maybe silt) sitting in front of the pump. (Something like that would not filter microbial pests, which I assume is your concern.) I hope the water is filtered or treated in some way.

<comment><USER13> With acid rain and other hard-to-control phenomena affecting water quality, I would imagine that something pretty powerful would be required.

<comment><USER14> The real thing to worry about is giardia parasites, spread by feces contamination uphill (human or wildlife). It's the reason I wouldn't drink wanter in the backcountry unless it's directly from high snowpack.

<comment><USER15> > It's the reason I wouldn't drink wanter in the backcountry unless it's > directly from high snowpack.

If you are at a certain elevation, and it is known that there are no villages above you or mining going on, any flow coming down the slopes is likely safe to drink, regardless of whether you know for sure that it comes from a snowpack. It has been argued that filtering water in the backcountry is often unnecessary, in spite of what companies like MSR suggest with their marketing.[0] Certainly, if you visit mountain ranges like the Carpathians, the Chilean side of the Andes, or the Pamirs, you can see that travelers and locals alike fill their bottles from the waterfalls without incident.

[0][https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/filtering-stream- water-...](https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/filtering-stream-water-or- fresh-water-is-medically-unnecessary.html)

<comment><USER14> Yeah, that's what I've read. I was mostly handling water in well-travelled wilderness in the Appalachians and Rockies, though. And from what I understand there's enough of a disease load in say, the deer population in the Sierras, that you might not want to be doing it even if you don't think there's humans upstream. _shrug_ Wasn't a huge amount of trouble, my brother has a pretty high-end pump filter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why bury that manifold?

<comment><USER17> Don't want the fittings to burst in freeze.

Also while PEX can survive being frozen, I have not seen much about total number of cycles it might sustain before weakening.

Edit: Also I want to be able to drink water in winter.

<comment><USER5> I'd be curious to know how much water expands under freeze vs how much PEX is compressed at a crimp fitting. It's not the same kind of force but the relative magnitude might be interesting.

<comment><USER18> Matt Risinger (austin-based homebuilder) did a freeze comparison between copper, pex, and sharkbite fittings some time back. It was pretty interesting.

At this point, I'd probably go for PEX-A (compression band) over PEX-B (the crimp style) because of the risk of getting the crimp not completely correct.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOeBJ8mDr8Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOeBJ8mDr8Q)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Created an new meme generator. How do you guys like it? - <AUTHOR> URL is: https://www.ps2pdf.com/meme-generator
Let us know any feedback or suggestions to improve it.
Thanks <comment><USER2> We don't need more unfunny jokes on the internet.

Give it a rest!</comment>


Target: Names, Emails, Phone Numbers on Up To 70 Million Customers Stolen  - <AUTHOR> http://krebsonsecurity.com/2014/01/target-names-emails-phone-numbers-on-up-to-70-million-customers-stolen/ <comment><USER2> Target is not being a very good citizen, unless there were some seriously unique aspects to these thefts:

" _[T]he company still has not disclosed any details about how the attackers broke in. This lack of communication appears to have spooked many folks responsible for defending other retailers from such attacks, according to numerous interviews conducted by this reporter over the past few weeks._ "</comment>