Ask HN: Could you tell me about your coworking space experiences? - <AUTHOR>

A lot of us on HN, as we've discussed in the past, use coworking spaces to find communities of fellow entrepreneurs and hackers with whom to work, swap ideas, or just to sort of be around whilst working. If it would be so kind, I want to know about the HN community's experiences and preferences to compare with my own and get an idea of what people expect. Specifically, if anybody can provide details about as many of the following as you feel like providing:
1. Experiences at coworking spaces have you really disliked
2. Experiences you really enjoyed
3. What kind of facilities you expect to have available? (kitchen? showers? printers? laser tag??)
4. Do you expect any events to be run?
5. Do you expect dedicated staff for food/drinks/support?
6. Do you like to book space in advance?
If you don't feel like commenting, please email me directly: dan+coworking[at]danhough.com
Any amount of feedback is useful. Thank you very much. <comment><USER2> I worked at one in Edinburgh for a while.

1) It was difficult to balance productive and social. As soon as the room hit a critical number and no one was talking, all assumed that this was the status quo and that talking was inappropriate. They almost needed a quiet area and a social area to clearly separate the two.

2) Proximity to more established startups (lived in upstair offices), who were happy to chat through technologies on the off chance meetings.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great feedback thank you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Been working at one in Ottawa for a few months, though only once or twice a week.

1\. Can't think of anything I strongly dislike, other than lack of snacks and good coffee (no espresso machine?!)

2\. Variety of events that aren't strictly about networking, diverse background amongst members, many chances throughout the day to talk over the water cooler (even if you lack said water cooler)

3\. Kitchen and printer at the very least. If I biked a shower would be appreciated, but don't think it's mandator. Also quiet spaces that aren't meeting rooms, so I can crack open a book or just take a nap.

4\. Definitely, wouldn't join a coworking space if it was strictly about working

5\. I don't expect a staff but _healthy_ snacks and drinks would be great. Right now members bring their own and share them with others for donations.

6\. You mean booking space for my own events? I don't do that since I don't host events. I pay my dues at the beginning of each month.

Feel free to hit me up through email or twitter if you want to pick my brain further; the stuff I wrote is just what comes to mind given the questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's awesome feedback, thank you very much eswat :) I may well take you up on that offer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just today there was this programme on Radio4 about co-working spaces in London. It was relevant, even if not an exact answer to your questions. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03yn66h](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03yn66h)

<comment><AUTHOR> Finally listened this morning. Pretty great summary of a few of the different options available, though the presenter was a little bit sceptical :)

Anyway, great listen. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is a nice group in St. Catharines Ontario called Cowork Niagara @CoworkNiagara the meetup is currently at the local cafe @MahtayCafe which is amazing.

My personal experiences so far have been. 1) getting actual work through fellow members 2) Getting solid advice 3) enjoying the relaxed atmosphere and having persons to collaborate with.

The cafe has all the amenities necessary. However the group is expanding to its own location.

There are certainly events; podcast hosting and start-up meetings.

No need to book the space but Friday all day is usually overrun with coworkers.

The cafe has beer too so things get interesting every once in a while.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea of podcast hosting. Was it like a dedicated booth, or some room which could also be used as a podcast booth?

Thanks for sharing, anyway. I appreciate it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 4) I expect events to be run. I think it is a big part of creating the community feeling in the coworking space. And that community feel is what is one of the ways cowering differs from traditional shared space like a Regis office.

5) Not expected.

6) Definitely. Especially if #4 is present.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. I agree, incidentally, and I like that you see that as one of the differences between 'shared office space' and 'co-working space'. It is _so_ about communities.

If you don't mind me asking a couple of follow-up questions, how far in advance do you tend to book, and is it daily or weekly, or does it kinda just vary?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> 2\. Espresso machine was fun and delicious!

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, so espresso machine = must-have! Thanks :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How did you got your job recently? - <AUTHOR>

I kept reading all these threads that seems to imply that there are plenty of developer jobs available? Is this really the case? <comment><USER2> I did not make three grammatical mistakes in three sentences.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, it is the case. If you have established skills, a lot of places will hire you in a heartbeat.

Note, though, that that if is a big if. It is always difficult to get your foot in the door because everyone knows that it takes a lot of energy to get a new programmer up to speed on programming and your environment, and there is a high possibility of it not working out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Getting a visa is still poses a big problem?

<comment><USER3> Possibly. Depends where you are coming from and where you want to go to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If anyone has gone through a recruiter, can you comment here on your experience with them? Was it a cold call (you or them) or did you already know that particular recruiter?

<comment><USER5> I have never been placed through a recruiter, but I just had a fun experience with one that bears sharing. A while back, a woman named Gina Storey from EdgeLink called me about a job that involved an AJAX library I have fairly strong experience with (Ext-JS). It was a short-term contract without health insurance, and as I have a child on the way, I wasn't particularly interested in giving up the insurance from my current job. I told her that I'd be much more interested in it as a side-gig in addition to my day job, but she said that none of her clients have ever been interested in such an arrangement and asked how much money it would take for me to give up my insurance. I gave her an "f off" figure and we left it at that.

Soon after, I got an invitation to complete a survey regarding my experience and what they could do better. I haven't had that much fun filling out a survey in years. I told them that, in the 3 months since that conversation, I had started checking craigslist ads once a week for additional side work and had found 4 clients who paid me for exactly the sort of after-hours work that Gina said "nobody was intersted in." With an average of 30 minutes searching a week, I found a paying client every 3 weeks and they were getting 0% of the money I was making just because she was unwilling to pursue the work arrangement I was interested in. I cc'ed her manager (he had contacted me previously) on the e-mail and made it clear I couldn't recommend them to anyone I knew largely because of her unwillingness to compromise on what she thought her customers wanted.

In general, I don't mind recruiters in the same way that I don't mind garbagemen, stevedores and pharmaceutical reps - they're easily ignored and have little impact on my professional life. However, this was an opportunity that I couldn't pass up on. I still smile to think about it.

<comment><USER6> Honestly, you came off much worse in that story than Gina.

According to your story, she said "none of her clients have ever been interested in such an arrangement" - not that NOBODY IN THE WORLD was interested.

Going to her manager was VERY low, I actually feel bad for the recruiter for the way you handled this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I make it a point not to lie or exaggerate on my resume. This puts the burden on me to do things that are actually worth telling the truth about.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nepotism and word of mouth

</comment><comment><USER8> Highly personalised cold email</comment>


First chapter of new Bitcoin book - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@yoshimiller/introduction-to-bitcoin-304e0118ee21 <comment><AUTHOR> Conclusion of the first chapter:

Right now it is not easier to buy things for bitcoin than government dollars, but many people are collecting it because bitcoin will be much more valuable when it becomes money.</comment>


Conv library for convolutional loops: no, you won't code this from scratch again - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/guillaume-chevalier/python-conv-lib <comment><USER2> Why did you make this?</comment>


Tim Cook on Donald Trump, the HomePod, and the Legacy of Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-06-15/apple-s-tim-cook-on-donald-trump-the-homepod-and-the-legacy-of-steve-jobs <comment><USER2> _" Apple's created 2 million jobs in the United States. A million and a half of those are app developers."_

Does anyone know if there are 1.5 million full time app developers?</comment>


Intermediate Vim tips - <AUTHOR> https://kinbiko.com/vim/my-shiniest-vim-gems/ <comment><USER2> Whenever a Vim post mentions grep, ack or ag — especially in conjunction with fzf/fzy — I'll make sure to mention the even faster rg (ripgrep): [https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep](https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep) BurntSushi's write-up about the internal workings of ripgrep is also super interesting: [http://blog.burntsushi.net/ripgrep/](http://blog.burntsushi.net/ripgrep/))

It's a really amazing piece of software. It has also recently been included in Visual Studio Code to search in files.

<comment><USER3> I use ripgrep and it's pretty great, but I don't know why Visual Studio Code would be using it. Why not just use Rust's Regex library instead?

<comment><USER4> Is it? Funny because I have tmux open in the side pane, and execute my searches that way.

<comment><USER2> Yup: [https://users.rust-lang.org/t/ripgrep-is-now-the-standard- te...](https://users.rust-lang.org/t/ripgrep-is-now-the-standard-text-search- provider-in-vs-code/10285)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm probably the minority here but I don't like to customize my Vim too much. 1 - it takes time. 2 - half the reason I like Vim is because I can use it anywhere. If I'm so used to a highly customized setup, then I am going to feel out of place when I log on somewhere else.

<comment><USER6> It depends what you use Vim for. If Vim is your only code editor, it's crazy that you'd leave tons of productivity enhancements on the table because you want that standardized, bottom-of-the-barrel experience. Nice things are nice!

I have tons of customizations in my Vim, and have very little trouble using vi or vanilla Vim when I log into production machines. It is frustrating to not have my magic this and that, but no less frustrating than it would be going from IntelliJ on my own box to Vim on someone else's.

<comment><USER7> I wish I could upvote your comment many times. I wish the parent comment pointed out what use case they have for Vim, as this really dictates the "right" approach.

I wrote about this previously in the context of Vim vs Emacs, though it's similar to customized vimrc/plugins vs vanilla vimrc:

"One can reduce part of the [editor] debate down to a single question: how fully featured do you want your text editor out of the box? If you're a DevOps engineer who spins up new environments constantly you'll have different ideas about the best choice compared to a full stack engineer working in a single development environment that can be painstakingly setup. For the DevOps engineer, a light text editor that is installed by default is likely ideal, while for a developer with a single computer, a full-featured IDE (auto- completion, plug-ins, custom keys) is worth the high setup cost."

[https://www.nemil.com/musings/betterdebates.html](https://www.nemil.com/musings/betterdebates.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > I don't like excessively long lines of code (120+ in most languages)

Quick straw poll on this... How many people like a line length limit?

My personal preference is a fairly strict 80 (barring silly things like URLs), but I've always been met with resistance to ANY line length limit. Is it really that imposing?

<comment><USER9> I break lines if it looks like they're getting too long, where it feels right to do so. Setting a fixed number of columns causes people to align hanging lines to the right in my experience:

      some_example_code = LongTypeName(argument_one=1,
                                       argument_two=2,
                                       argument_three=3)

(pretend that's 80 columns), resulting in this mess when I try to look at it in a narrower view:

      some_example_code = LongTypeName(argument_on
      ↳ e=1,
                                       argument_tw
      ↳ o=2,
                                       argument_th
      ↳ ree=3)

Turning off word wrap doesn't help, because then it's an equally painful constant two-character scroll. What does help is creating indented blocks where it feels right, and letting other lines just naturally be long.

      some_example_code = LongTypeName(
          argument_one=1,
          argument_two=2,
          argument_three=3,
      )

      some_example_code = LongTypeName(
          "just a string that happens to be long; some people introduce acceptable percentages of string literals for long lines, but it's really not necessary. let word wrap take care of it!")

(Plus: specific column counts depend on the size of your indentation.)

<comment><USER10> > What does help is creating indented blocks where it feels right

Over the years, I've come to believe that using a hanging indent for alignment is actually better in terms of readability as opposed to aligning at a column after the opening parenthesis, brace, or bracket. It's also easier to type as well even if the editor doesn't provide an auto-indent facility (or if it's not configured correctly for some reason) since you only have to press TAB the same number of times to correctly position each formal parameter in the function definition.

As a side benefit, it also takes care of any alignment issues regardless of whether one uses tabs or spaces.

> and letting other lines just naturally be long.

Using the language's feature for string concatenation still makes it as easy to read:

      some_example_code = LongTypeName(
            "just a string that happens to be long; some people introduce " +
            "acceptable percentages of string literals for long lines, but it's " +
            "really not necessary. let word wrap take care of it!")

Another benefit of doing this is that it makes a unified diff and side-by-side diffs easier to read. Contrast the wrapped version when I add another sentence to the end of your example:

      diff --git a/tmp/wrapped b/tmp/wrapped
      index 972537b..27e3e31 100644
      --- a/tmp/wrapped
      +++ b/tmp/wrapped
      @@ -1,4 +1,5 @@
         some_example_code = LongTypeName(
               "just a string that happens to be long; some people introduce " +
               "acceptable percentages of string literals for long lines, but it's " +
      -        "really not necessary. let word wrap take care of it!")
      +        "really not necessary. let word wrap take care of it! Though unified " +
      +        "and side-by-side diffs may be more difficult to read")

versus the unwrapped one:

      diff --git a/tmp/unwrapped b/tmp/unwrapped
      index 284ef1e..db47f46 100644
      --- a/tmp/unwrapped
      +++ b/tmp/unwrapped
      @@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
         some_example_code = LongTypeName(
      -      "just a string that happens to be long; some people introduce acceptable percentages of string literals for long lines, but it's really not necessary.  let word wrap take care of it!")
      +      "just a string that happens to be long; some people introduce acceptable percentages of string literals for long lines, but it's really not necessary.  let word wrap take care of it! Though unified and side-by-side diffs may be more difficult to read")

With the wrapped version, you can more easily see what I added to the end of the line in your example. In the unwrapped example, I most likely would have to either scroll horizontally to read the entire line. If the line is soft- wrapped, then I would have to realize that the second line is part of the previous line and not a different context line (soft-wrapping is simulated by hard-wrapping right after the "for long lines," comma and the space after "difficult to " based on how blockquoted text appears a rendered comment):

      diff --git a/tmp/unwrapped b/tmp/unwrapped
      index 284ef1e..db47f46 100644
      --- a/tmp/unwrapped
      +++ b/tmp/unwrapped_more
      @@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
         some_example_code = LongTypeName(
      -      "just a string that happens to be long; some people introduce acceptable percentages of string literals for long lines,
      but it's really not necessary.  let word wrap take care of it!")
      +      "just a string that happens to be long; some people introduce acceptable percentages of string literals for long lines,
      but it's really not necessary.  let word wrap take care of it! Though unified and side-by-side diffs may be more difficult to
      read")

<comment><USER9> > Over the years, I've come to believe that using a hanging indent for > alignment is actually better in terms of readability as opposed to aligning > at a column after the opening parenthesis, brace, or bracket. It's also > easier to type as well even if the editor doesn't provide an auto-indent > facility (or if it's not configured correctly for some reason) since you > only have to press TAB the same number of times to correctly position each > formal parameter in the function definition.

> As a side benefit, it also takes care of any alignment issues regardless of > whether one uses tabs or spaces.

That's exactly what I said.

> Another benefit of doing this is that it makes a unified diff and side-by- > side diffs easier to read.

Until you rewrap and it adds noise to the diff. I recommend a combined word/line diff instead.

Concatenation also hides whitespace problems. Not a serious error, but a very common one.

      "This ends with a period." +
      "But this doesn't start with a space."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've done a similar thing with my whitespace, but prefer characters that I'm less likely to have typed myself (like a small arrow for tab).

      set listchars=tab:→\ ,nbsp:␣,trail:·

</comment><comment><USER12> I am so glad that I can live without these tips. As I grow older, every year I feel the need to cut down on my essentials. My .vimrc gets shorter every year. Earlier, I was so annoyed by the default parentheses highlighting yet so dislike the solutions of adding more lines to my .vimrc, I was forced to do some research and found out that all I need to do is to delete the plugin from /usr/share/.... I deleted the entire plugins folder there. I felt like Picaaso.

</comment><comment><USER13> Where have you been all my life, "set cursorcolumn"?

<comment><USER14> LOL that was my exact thought. Added to .vimrc. But will never get back all the time lost trying to make sure I was at proper indent level.

<comment> brian-armstrong I highly highly recommend always using a linter/formatter that just fixes this for you

<comment><USER14> Python. Indention matters. Unless there is a linter that can tell intent (and maybe there is on that offers an option?) indention can be the difference between once and forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Having a free day, it's cold and rainy, but this actually made me come out of bed to crank up vim :-)

</comment><comment><USER16> I use vim bindings in visual studio and do a lot of custom binding to resharper functionality. It's quite magic, the only thing I really miss from Vim is easy motion and the vim emulation is not complete so for some editing tasks I have to open a file in Vim.

</comment><comment><USER17> For anyone wanting to peruse another large vim setup (mostly C++ and Clojure): [https://github.com/jeaye/vimrc](https://github.com/jeaye/vimrc)

</comment><comment><USER18> I dont use fzf but CtrlP for vim is also very good at fuzzy search.

<comment><USER19> CtrlP is much slower when indexing large directories.

<comment><USER18> When you say large, how large is that?

<comment><USER19> I have a directory with about 40,000 java files. It takes 11 seconds for ctrlp to finish indexing (without using cache). Fzf finished it before I start counting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Do you even emacs bro?

<comment><USER21> We've banned this account for repeatedly posting unsubstantive and uncivil comments to HN.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email firstname.lastname@example.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.</comment></comment>


Faster async functions and promises - <AUTHOR> https://v8.dev/blog/fast-async <comment><USER2> Kudos to the work that Google continues to put into optimizing v8. For me async/await is makes a huge difference in terms of the developer experience with Node,js and addressing the remaining performance and debugability issues is a huge win.

The benefits of the v8 engineering efforts continue to multiply beyond just Chrome and Node.js with new uses cases like Cloudflare workers springing up. Even more so when you add WebAssembly to the mix.</comment>


Google Drive SDK - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/drive/index

<comment><USER2> This is somewhat off topic but I have found it mildly humourous lately that Google is building self driving cars but they chose "Google Drive" as the name for a completely unrelated product.

<comment><USER3> Especially given that there was a link about the self-driving cars right following that link on Google Drive.

My brain just cognitively squished the two of them together and went "whoaa ... they're opening the SDK for the car stuff already !"

<comment><USER4> I'm disappointed. I thought the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They've had "DrEdit," a plain text editor, as their example Drive app for a while now. Kind of ironic, since you _still_ can't edit plain text files in the vanilla Google Drive web app.

<comment><USER6> By the Google Drive web app I assume you mean the Google Docs editor? In which case, yeah, you can only edit Google Docs type files in their editor. That's the point of this SDK - if you want to edit other types of files, you can build an app to do so.

<comment><USER5> Well, 1) It clearly wouldn't be difficult for them to do this, or even to integrate it with the existing Docs editor. The Docs editor can already view them, in fact, so it's kind of baffling why they stopped short of editing. 2) It would be preferable for both usability and performance to have it integrated with Drive rather than as an external app. 3) The Android Drive app can already edit text files.

<comment><USER6> 1) It might not be difficult, but that doesn't mean they should do it. I don't really think it's "baffling" why they wouldn't build a bunch of extra functionality that probably wouldn't be used by many people. Most people editing documents want a wysiwyg editor like Google Docs, from which they can always download the file in the plain text format. People who actually edit plain text files regularly (programmers and such) probably have a preferred editor that they use, and wouldn't really want to edit in a little <textarea>, unless you are proposing they build a more advanced text editor (I assume that's not what you mean though, you said it wouldn't be difficult).

2) Sure, but again, just because they can add a feature doesn't mean they should.

3) Interesting, I didn't know that. Maybe they are planning to add the feature after all.

Another option of course is to use the Google Drive desktop program, and edit your plain text files locally, which will be synced to your Drive.

<comment><USER5> > Another option of course is to use the Google Drive desktop program, and > edit your plain text files locally, which will be synced to your Drive.

As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the Google Drive desktop syncers leave quite a bit to be desired. I've used both the Mac and the Windows version. The Windows version crashes regularly, and the Mac version racks up sizable memory leaks after a few days of use. They both use more disk and CPU resources than it seems like they should need, too. At least they aren't as bad as the Google Music desktop client, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> (Slightly off-topic) What I feel gives Google Drive a leverage over Dropbox is the fact that it works within email. There isn't another place I need to go to share something. I just go to the place I am at and share. The people who I want to share with are already there. This works for well for both, Google's general audience as well as those SMBs that use Google mail for their work mail (read: with a domain, so it even layers a "group thing" there).

</comment><comment><USER8> They should have released this immediately after they released Google Drive.

<comment><USER9> They did...

Google Drive Release: [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/introducing- google-dr...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/04/introducing-google-drive- yes-really.html)

Google Drive SDK release: [http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2012/04/introducing- goo...](http://googledevelopers.blogspot.com/2012/04/introducing-google-drive- and-google.html)

<comment><USER10> The thing that they made available back then was for web applications only. This isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why no "C" api?

</comment><comment><USER12> What has bothered me most about Google Drive lately, is that when I try to open an epub file from Drive, even if I make it available offline, it doesn't want to open the file in the selected book reader. Is that Google's fault or the book reader app's fault (it supports epub, obviously). This is on Android.

<comment><USER13> Was it working before it was set in offline mode?

<comment><USER12> No, it never worked. Normally when you try to open something you get that Android dialog that asks you to choose an app. And I would assume it's supposed to work like that with the stuff from inside Google Drive since it's downloading them to the phone anyway, but it doesn't work like that. It tries to open it with the app, but doesn't.

<comment><USER13> Just wondering why you specified offline mode. That is definitely the third party app problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sorry but Google Drive is by far the worst out of all online storage/sync providers.

Crashes constantly for Mac users and has awful upload/download speeds. And they have made zero effort to do anything about it for over a year. You only have to look through the forum to see their commitment in general is pretty lax.

<comment><USER15> Really I have used it since it came out and I can not remember it crashing once. Are the crashes caused perhaps by use cases I have not run into, large file, rapid updating or something else?

<comment><USER14> Nothing out of the ordinary. And crashing is one thing but how on earth does Google have such bad download/upload speeds.

[http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!categories/drive/rep...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!categories/drive/report- a-problem)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Login Image Changer for Linux Mint - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/primaryobjects/loginimagechanger

<comment><USER2> Nice job and cool idea! Not using Mint anymore otherwise I'd give this a spin.</comment>


Why So Many People Are Named Nguyen - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/nguyen-name-common-vietnam <comment><USER2> Interesting article, but that pie chart is one of the worst I've ever seen. The keys aren't ordered by number and two different but significant slices have colors nearly/practically indistinguishable. After some interpretation it looks as though the keys follow the chart around clockwise.

Pie Charts: Just say NO!

</comment><comment><USER3> tl;dr; They took the name of the ruling family of the last dynasty out of respect.

</comment><comment><USER4> Applies to Koreans as well</comment>


Ask HN: Remote Headhunters - <AUTHOR> Searching for remote job using publicly available web resources appears to be a very ineffective.<p>Are there proven headhunters agencies that specialize in remote placement? <comment><USER2> I'm interested too.</comment>


ESPN: Yes Were Having World Cup Streaming Problems - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/06/26/espn-yes-were-having-world-cup-streaming-problems/

<comment><USER2> There's always univision

</comment><comment><USER3> Web video is killing television...oh wait.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't Ooyala do video for ESPN?</comment>


Styldod: World's first automated interior designer - <AUTHOR> We are world's first automated interior design platform which gives you beautiful functional designs customised according to your floor plan and tastes in no time.  It reduces the manual job of creating interior design(42 hours) to a few minutes <comment><AUTHOR> Website : www.styldod.com

Free 3D Design Docket(For Brigade Apartment): [https://styldod.in/newup/?id=brigade_sft_12d_v2](https://styldod.in/newup/?id=brigade_sft_12d_v2)

360 degree view : [http://styldod.com/360greenage](http://styldod.com/360greenage)

</comment><comment><USER2> It is a very helpful tool. One can customize each design, replace/add furniture from a catalog more than 5000 items, change their colour, move/rotate them, photorealistic images of their designs and much more.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's fabulous!! My one stop solution to get validation from the entire redesign of my house to being sure which sofa will suit best in my house!! It's just awesome. I saved ₹50,000!!</comment>


The Secret of Great Bread - Let Time Do the Work - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/08mini.html <comment><USER2> I've used this technique and works great (article is from 2006). There's a video of it somewhere too, which is helpful for seeing how "wet" the dough is.

If you want to make bread on a regular basis check out "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day": <http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I made this a few weeks ago, it was very easy, and tasted fantastic.</comment>


Ask HN: How to bootstrap my own business? - <AUTHOR> I desperately want to start my own company, but I am not sure how to best go about it without gambling my families finances. I'm hoping for some advice or relavent anecdotes that might help me.  My situation in a nutshell:
I am building a B2C website after work and on weekends, however it is very slow going and at this speed I think it's going to take at a minimum 12 months before I have something to launch with.  This is frustrating on it's own, since I want quit my job and build something that I can pour myself into, but I'm never able to make any meaningful progress between work and family. I really beleive in this idea, however I am trying to be realistic.
I have a wife and 2 young children, and my wife is getting upset that I spend all my free time working on my side project instead of hanging out with the family.  So it's getting to the point where something has got to give.  My initial thought is to quit my steady decently paying full time job, and move to contract work.  The idea being that since that generally pays more (at the cost of dependable income), in the down time between contracts I could focus on getting my MVP ready.
I'm not having a lot of luck finding contracts though, since I am a generalist and the contract roles I've seen want you to be a specialist (usually in some web technology I haven't used much).  I've also looked into places like Upwork, however they don't look like they pay enough to be worth the time and effort it would require to put in.
Am I just being naive?  Is it a requirement to risk my families savings on my business idea?  Do I just need to suck it up until my kids are not dependant on us anymore?  What am I missing?
* I understand there will be some financial risk no matter what, I'm just very much trying to avoid the situation where in 6 months time, I have to say "Welp, that didn't work.  Oh yeah, we are also broke."
* I am based in Melbourne, Australia, if that makes any difference to my options. <comment><USER3> Prioritize family time, work on your side project when your family is sleeping. Maybe work out where you can spend part of the weekend on it. But prioritize family time when it's family time.

Don't risk your families savings on a business idea.

I would look at B2B vs B2C.

Check out Rob's stair step approach at StartUpsfortheRestofUs.com.

Basically start with a product or simple app to start generating revenue and use that to fund your next larger project. Do this till you can quit your day job. Having revenue will make it easier to justify the time you spend on side projects too. And get you familiar with running projects, doing support etc.

I would keep your secure full time job so you don't have to focus on the next contract.

Start small and build things up. You can never get back family time so enjoy that while you can. The kids grow up fast.

</comment><comment><USER4> I feel your pain. I also have a wife and two kids and have been through this. With poor web dev skills going into it, I tried to build a doctor appointment booking marketplace. I eventually got my MVP done, but the practice I trialled it at didn't really buy into it and I didn't have the time to spend with them to get them up and running properly. Plus, there were some intermittent sync issues with their system. Meanwhile, Healthengine pivoted into the space and took off.

By the end of it, I was a much better web dev and I'm doing quite well in the contracting market in Sydney. I'm still tinkering with side projects, but deliberatley avoiding unrealistic ones.

Trying to bootstrap a startup when you're supporting a whole family and you're one or two paydays away from financial destruction is virtually impossible.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't risk your family savings.

Feel out if you might be able to go part time at your current company. Half days or a day off a week may be more appealing to them than you leaving. If not the current company, then exercise your network - put out there you are looking for something part time.

Even if you are a generalist, you can look like an expert at something. I wear many hats personally.

</comment><comment><USER6> First piece of advice is to get it in front of potential users ASAP (if you haven't yet). Just to make sure you're going in the right direction. Even just mockups or wireframes is good enough (we started off showing hand-drawn designs at the very beginning).

And secondly, if you want to speed things up I'd look into hiring a developer in Eastern Europe through Upwork. That's what I did and I wish I'd done it a lot sooner.

Happy to talk more. I built my startup on the side and now it support me full- time. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER7> Either you risk you're own money and get the product done fast. Or risk your time and spend 12 months building it and working part time. Either way you forfeit time and money.

Or you forget bootstrapping and seek out investment. It sounds like a small startup incubator would be perfect for your needs, they take some equity, you get funding $$ and the chance to build your product!

</comment><comment><USER8> As echoed by everyone else, don't risk your family and family finances.

Look for B2B ideas not B2C.

Don't focus on big ideas, I read a dry old book a long time ago, called the 'wealth of nations'. The key bit that stood out for me was an observation that the workers in the looms and mills built machines to improct things for them, and then capitialsed on it (where their landowners/lords etc supported them)

With that in mind, the best comment I ever read was 'every spreadsheet tool you see in a business is an app crying out to be made'. Look around the company and business area you already work for/in. You have an advantage in knowledge of their business and where the shortcomings are.

You will need to tread carefully as you don't want to loose your idea to a byline in your employment contract.

</comment><comment> a-saleh I would like to go on a similar path one day, with following differences:

* not quitting a job, change job, negotiate higher pay, long weekends (done ;)

* figure out what side project I actually want to pour myself into

Based on what I hear, B2B is easier than B2C, and info-products (book/course/e.t.c.) are easier than SaaS. Bonus points if the problem solved by the course could be turned into a SaaS later on.

After I would have my bright idea, I would start reaching some potential customers, (blog? mailing-list? cold-emails? conference talks? this is the biggest problem for me probably?) to get some confirmation somebody would actually buy the product. I know there is a cottage industry just for creating landing pages and getting emails of potential customers.

After I would see the idea has traction, I would have time (due to my 4-day/week job) to write/record the damn thing, and sell it, to the people that presumably wanted it enough to be on my damn mailing list :D

My big inspirations in this regard are Amy Hoy [0] with her methaphorical brick-stacking course and Nate Berkopec [1] with his book on ruby.

My biggest set-backs are that I am mostly too tired to actually execute on the plan, so I mostly use my extended weekends for more recovery/family time :)

Second, I am not sure I have enough expertise on a anything that would warrant writing such book/make course?

I.e. I was thinking about writing about Jenkins, but I am not sure my expertise is enough, and I work with it much less than a year ago when I was thinking about that most :-)

I wish you luck!

[0] [https://stackingthebricks.com/](https://stackingthebricks.com/) [1] [https://www.nateberkopec.com/blog/2017/03/10/how-i-made- self...](https://www.nateberkopec.com/blog/2017/03/10/how-i-made-self- publishing-about-ruby-on-rails.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> While each situation is always different and you haven't provided many details about your business, here are some things to think of:

\- As someone said already - if your MVP takes 12months to build, it's probably too big, especially if it's a B2C Website. Think of the very essentials your service/product will need and launch it as fast as possible. Then go to get as much feedback as possible from your target audience. You'll be surprised how what you think people need, might be the opposite of what they actually need.

\- Are you using all of the off-the-shelf solutions already available to speed the website development? In my previous startup, our CTO has insisted in building a marketplace website from scratch, which ended up being a very lengthy process and it was always buggy because he needed to code even such basics like responsiveness from scratch. I later found a WordPress template for a marketplace that would have done 90% of what we need and we would have had it done in 1 month, instead of 6. So really look at platforms like Wordpress - they are a lot more powerful than you think and are really good for prototyping at least.

\- If that website is something so huge and no-way can be stripped down - <USER2> to think from a different perspective. What is the purpose of the website? Is it to get you leads? Provide a service? Sell something? Maybe it can be already done by existing platforms like Instagram, Facebook Marketplace, Facebook Messenger Bots, Course using thinkify etc. etc. Is the website the only way to reach that goal?

These are the tips on how to make things faster than 12 months. By doing it - you will be able to test it quickly and will know if your idea is even worth changing your lifestyle or risking your financials and family love (probably nothing is really worth risking losing family support).

If you talked to your users, build an mvp, and it seems to be clicking with your target audience - then start thinking how to bootstrap most effectively. One of the best ways - to launch any sort of paid product and try to get a small income stream from your business already, this might help you to reduce your workload at the day job and then focus more on the main idea. Also, think of getting an intern. There are tons of great people out there who are willing to trade their time for nothing but real life experience (ofc, check your local laws are you required to pay your interns or not).

Anyway - wishing you all the best in your entrepreneurial journey. It's not possible to lose, because even if you fail - you learn.

<comment><USER4> > if your MVP takes 12months to build, it's probably too big

This piece of conventional wisdom keeps getting trotted out as gospel. 12 months doesn't get you much when you have a wife and kids to support and they make demands of what little time you have between working and sleeping.

<comment><USER9> Agree and I am not stating otherwise. If it takes 52 hours to build and you have 1h a week, that's a year.

The sole purpose of sharing this 'conventional wisdom' was to give perspective because I always appreciate when somebody shares theirs with me. More often than not we get so focused on our own initial plan that we fail to see shortcuts that actually makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Talk this with your wife. Explain her what you want to do and why. I'm sure she will support you. I did it without telling my SO and without kids, and I didn't pay attention to our relationship and it went bad, really bad.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm a developer who does part-time contract work to support bootstrapping (so far) a business. Here's my advice to you.

> I am building a B2C website after work and on weekends, however it is very > slow going and at this speed I think it's going to take at a minimum 12 > months before I have something to launch with. This is frustrating on it's > own, since I want quit my job and build something that I can pour myself > into, but I'm never able to make any meaningful progress between work and > family. I really beleive in this idea, however I am trying to be realistic.

Don't spend 12 months building something. Please. Unless you mean 12 months of building something while showing and selling it to people along the way every week or so. Whether you believe in your idea or not, it's the opinions of your customers (and more importantly, their wallets) that will decide whether you've got a business here.

> I am building a B2C website

Understand that the #1 challenge in B2C will be marketing. It doesn't matter if you build the best version of something, or a completely new something that people find amazing. They will not know it exists or find you, unless you put a ton of effort into marketing. More than development.

I learned this the hard way. I've built a B2C product that users love, but getting users to it is challenging, even though the product has some built-in virality. I'm actually pivoting the core technology to a B2B use-case that I can sell to companies for recurring revenue. To be honest, I wish I had done this from the start.

> I have a wife and 2 young children, and my wife is getting upset that I > spend all my free time working on my side project instead of hanging out > with the family. So it's getting to the point where something has got to > give. My initial thought is to quit my steady decently paying full time job, > and move to contract work.

Yes, this is a good idea. I didn't even start getting seriously into entrepreneurship until I had established a successful consulting business. Your family, especially your spouse, are going to be your number one support through the tough times. Do not take them for granted - they need to be on your side.

> Am I just being naive? Is it a requirement to risk my families savings on my > business idea?

The naive aspect that I see is that you haven't really presented any real validation or traction for your "idea". Pre-sell it, build a fake MVP, etc. there are tons of ways to get out there and validate an idea before building it. Just please, don't spend 12 months where you're primarily developing software, because it's such a small part of a successful business. Find out whether your idea is something you can sell and people will pay for first.

</comment><comment><USER12> My best advice is to post this over at [https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/). It's a great community of people who have bootstrapped businesses (and/or are in the process of doing so).

You sound pretty stressed, which is understandable with the kind of pressure you are experiencing both from within and from without. This is purely anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt, but entrepreneurship is very stressful. It's unlikely you will find a soft landing making a sudden jump from a paid gig to supporting yourself fulltime with a new business (freelancing), while trying to build another business on the side which might not work out (your B2C project). That's not to discourage you, but a dose of reality which can help you look at things differently. For example, whatever you have now, just launch it. Launch it and ask people to pay for it. It will never be "good enough", and 12 months is way too long to work on an MVP before launching, because it never survives first contact with customers.

None of what I've said above is new, particularly wise, or even true in all cases. It's just the basic boring truth about entrepreneurship, it's hard, you're likely to fail, and you should've launched yesterday. That's why I like the indiehackers community, acknowledging the challenges above is an important part of working around them, which is a big theme in that community. Most are destined to fail, but not everyone does. So what smart things can you do to try and get yourself into the percentage that don't fail?

If you jump straight from having a stable income, to having absolutely none but with a family to support and without the ability to live off savings, you're not giving yourself a very good head start into an endeavor you're already most likely to fail at (statistically). Focus on what you can do now while you're still employed that will actually get you closer to making money from your product. The only real way to tell if you're getting closer to being able to make money from a product, is to start charging for it. ASAP. In whatever form you are able at the current moment, to people who really want to use your product.

Basically, I'm saying validate demand for your product, start selling it to people, market market market, sell it to more people, etc., and then think about quitting your job. Honestly writing lines of code correlates very poorly to making money in most businesses. Finding more customers for your product (and first finding out if they exist at all!) is far more important than building the product (until it's not, but at that point you should be selling said product whether it exists yet or not).

To your specific questions: You quite likely shouldn't risk your family's savings on your business idea. What I think you're missing is that there are so very many options out there. Bootstrapping only means that you fund the business out of pocket. But making the assumption that you need to go broke to build a business is, I think, a mistake. Don't pursue a business idea which demands more of you monetarily, or in time, than you can afford to risk. Because as you acknowledged, there is always some risk. It's up to you to mitigate that risk by both approaching the business in a smart and focused way, and by picking the right opportunities to pursue. If you're not a billionaire, don't bootstrap a Rocket company.

It sounds in general like you're frustrated with where you are, and want to work on something yourself. Scratch that itch, 100%, just realize there are options to scratch that itch where you don't have to upend your life. Maybe pursue a job that gives you more freedom, so you can have both more time for family and your side projects.

Best of luck to you, there's a million people out there who feel just like you do.

Source: Im a fulltime freelance dev and wantrapreneur

Edit: See also this related thread on HN [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18438118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18438118)

</comment><comment><USER13> \- Strip away 80% of the B2C website and launch an MVP in 2 months (if you can't, maybe create a B2B solution instead?)

\- Try lining up contract work before taking the plunge. It's a new skillset and you may find that you can't sell yourself (or, don't like selling)

\- You can always find more time. Spend family time and then code into the late hours?

\- Honestly, you sound like you're just making a lot of excuses. Either do or don't. It's up to you.</comment>


Is there any interest in a "hardware" DCPU-16? - <AUTHOR>

First post, so please bear with me...
I've been intently watching the development of Notch's 0x10^c, and more specifically the CPU that's emulated within the game. I suspect a number of other people feel similarly but it seems  like this could be an "antidote" to what another poster described a few days ago, the apparent lack of "casual," "for-fun" programming as of late.
I work with FPGAs for a living, so of course when I saw the DCPU spec I thought "I wonder how many LUTs it would take to synthesize this." Unsurprisingly, in its present incarnation it really does not take too many and could easily be burnt into a tiny FPGA and deployed in a 48-pin DIP package (with necessary voltage regulators, caps, buffers etc on the same board).
So I'm curious - would this sort of thing be interesting to anyone except me? I'm thinking I would want to do the CPU, make sure it's user-updateable, then also develop a PPU/APU and memory mappers for a real "retro-computing" experience (I would want the PPU to output HDMI signals though... I'm not retro enough to want to feed it to a TV through an RF modulator^^)
What do you all think? Is this something that interests anyone else? <comment><USER2> There's already one! <https://github.com/sybreon/dcpu16>

The core is written entirely in synthesisable Verilog RTL. Synthesises to about 700+ Slices at around 150MHz on a Spartan6. (minus h/w division and modulo)

Feel free to extend/expand/contribute.

I posted it on HN yesterday. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3821400>

<comment><AUTHOR> Neat! I'll check it out tonight. HW division and mod are going to be difficult-ish: I was thinking that either I could use a DSP block or, failing that, bump up the clock frequency of the LUTs used for div/mod until the 16div16 operation can appear to occur in 3 main CPU cycles. I'd love to contribute whatever I can to the project - I mostly work with Lattice stuff but I guess it couldn't hurt to give Xilinx's tools a try^^ Thanks!

<comment><USER2> Multi-cycle operations can actually be inserted into the pipeline. The `ena` signal would just need to be held low during that time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> What would you interface to? I thought the idea of DCPU is that it runs the "ship" in 0x10c.

Why not learn real assembly on a living microprocessor and hook it up to real things? There are some instruction sets, like 6809/68000 or 8051, that are very easy to learn and are a good stepping stone to larger architectures.

I'm a big 6809 fan, and you can synthesize a whole '09 system from opencores.org: <http://opencores.org/project,system09>

<comment><AUTHOR> There's also been an instruction set/specification released for it (<http://www.0x10c.com/doc/dcpu-16.txt>). And while yes, within the game the DCPU's main function is to run the ship, you'll note that Notch makes reference to playing games "while you're waiting for X to finish" any number of times. People are already getting interested in the possibility, and it seemed like a fun project for me. More than anything, I was curious whether anyone else was thinking along these lines.

<comment><USER2> Already done. <https://github.com/sybreon/dcpu16>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who loves working with uC's, yes, as long as the cost is around the price of Arduino/Cortex M3 board. I've never done a FPGA project, and this is the kind of thing that would get me started working with them.

I'm not sure if HDMI would be on my must-have list though, a serial-USB and console/terminal would be more than adequate for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would want to have it cost much less than an Arduino in a "DIP package." The basic logic can be implemented in a $10 FPGA, add on cost of boards and connectors and a voltage regulator and it should still be less than $20. The advantage here would be that the user would be completely free to create her own "computer mainboard" with whatever peripherals she chooses. I might also consider doing an all-in-one with common peripherals, and if I did, a CDC/UART type thing would be high on the list. HDMI is easy to implement in recent FPGAs (easier than composite/S-Video/RGB out) which is why I'd want to display video using HDMI.

<comment><USER4> Very cool, that's something I'd definitely be interested in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would be interested if it had a bunch of toggle switches and a few pushbuttons and some LEDs for programming; input and output.

I don't know if that loses compatibility with Notch's DCPU-16.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's been no "official" memory map released (I don't know if Notch has even thought that out yet), but people on the forums are working on that. There will be various peripheral controllers, add-ons, etc., and as time goes on a "standard deployment" of the computer system (not just the CPU) will likely fall into place.

tl;dr: It doesn't break compatibility 'cos there's no compatibility to be broken yet ^^</comment></comment>


Here come Ads on Google Maps (API) - <AUTHOR> http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2011/04/updates-to-google-maps-apigoogle-earth.html

<comment><USER2> I looked at the Google Maps API for adding a simple map display to my web application. Since it's a commercial app I'd need the Premier API which starts at $10,000 per year. Waaaay out of reach for me right now. Does anyone know of a good, affordable alternative?

It would be fairly low-volume geocoding from addresses, movable/zoomable map display and maybe some distance/area calculations in the future. I'd rather not need to maintain my own geodatabase and the API must support SSL.

<comment><USER3> There are two free alternatives that come to mind. Cloudmade.com and Yahoo Maps!</comment></comment>


Texting While Driving More Dangerous than Drugs or Alcohol - <AUTHOR> http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080918100933.qj8ms49l&show_article=1

<comment><AUTHOR> As startup developers, if we're developing technology, we're going to be competing with other technology in the user's environment. I don't think the politicians know what to do with all of these gadgets and such that are part of our everyday lives.

As a pilot, I'm used to working in a highly complex and interruptive envioronment. But even then, you have to forcefully prioritize those gadgets and interactions that are vital and those that are not. And even then it's just a stop-gap measure. For years, cockpit designers have been aware that pilots can easily get lost in the gadgetry. I remember reading one story of a small corporate jet, (I think a Lear) that took off on a beautiful clear sunny day and flew directly into the side of a mountain -- the pilots were busy programming the flight computers and weren't looking out the windows.

Not sure how this one is going to play out.</comment>


Books on Ancient Greece Recommended by Christopher Pelling - <AUTHOR> https://fivebooks.com/best-books/ancient-greece/ <comment><USER2> I would also recommend any ancient history written by Tom Holland - "Persian Fire" about the Persian invasion of Greece is a good introduction to the era. Also, Adam Nicholson's "The Might Dead: Why Homer Matters" is a brilliant read, linking such disparate topics as Albanian and Scottish bardic traditions, and LA gang culture.

<comment><USER3> I'll second Tom Holland. I read "Rubicon" not too long ago. I would recommend pairing it with Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast series on the era for an extremely cohesive and engaging account of the Roman republic's decline.

<comment><USER4> Loved Persian Fire, in the middle of Rubicon right now as well. Excellent call on the Hardcore History - King of Kings three part (13 hour!) podcast. Listened to this falling asleep in my hammock on a backpacking trip for a week, amazing.

[https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-56-kings-of- kings...](https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-56-kings-of-kings/)

[https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-57-kings-kings- ii...](https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-57-kings-kings-ii/)

[https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-58-kings-kings- ii...](https://www.dancarlin.com/hardcore-history-58-kings-kings-iii/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides)

</comment><comment><USER6> The ancient Greeks and Romans are fascinating histories. I've always thought of the Greeks as philosophers and the Romans as engineers. In fact I learned to love both taking Latin for 4 years in high school because the teacher loved to take a whole week to teach us history whenever someone asked him a question about something in old Rome.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would definitely suggest reading something about Plato or Socrates.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am looking for such a list on Russia.

<comment><USER9> That's the website's stock in trade! [https://fivebooks.com/?s=russia&post_type=interview](https://fivebooks.com/?s=russia&post_type=interview)</comment></comment>


The punk rock internet How DIY rebels are working to replace the tech giants - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/feb/01/punk-rock-internet-diy-rebels-working-replace-tech-giants-snoopers-charter <comment><USER2> wow. The guardian promoting a cryptocurrency scam. I am speechless.

tl;dr: some oddball folks promoting a token for storing your social networking in a distributed ledger. they already have investors, but are still rebels, somehow.</comment>


Bernie's Army of Coders - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/02/bernie-sanders-army-of-coders-2016-213647 <comment><USER3> Interesting! This part got me thinking though:

>And last summer a map compiling all the Sanders campaign happenings across the country, built by volunteer Rapi Castillo, a Philippine immigrant living in Queens who isn't an American citizen and can't vote this November, became the official "eventslink on Sanders' website.

So a foreigner is effectively giving an in-kind campaign contribution to a candidate? How come people (and the law) lash back at monetary contributions but not this kind?

<comment><USER4> Hi! I'm the immigrant in the story. For what it's worth I'm permanent resident, not allowed to vote. Furthermore, it's seen as an in-kind contribution, just like when you help building a stage for the campaign, only in online-terms. It's explained more in [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/us/politics/bernie- sanders...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/us/politics/bernie-sanders- presidential-campaign-tech-supporters.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for joining the discussion!

I understand that it's a non-monetary contribution; my confusion is just on why we _should_ treat them differently from monetary and why people think of them differently, even when they accomplish the same thing (deliver $X worth of value to a campaign), especially given that, for a foreigner to contribute money is a serious crime.

(Less of an issue in your case since you're not some random Chinese government official but an actual US resident with legal status who can stay.)

<comment><USER4> That's a great thing to think about. IMHO, it's about worth and intent - <USER2> with any. And as with any software development, it's all relative. For me - personally - coding the map was a way for me to practice leaflet, which I've always been interested in learning, and at the same time D3. I never really thought about or even expected the campaign reaching out to me. The original map which is in bernie2016events.org used to take events from meetup.com and facebook.com, which I have scraped and manually curated. The campaign's open API for the events happened later.

So for me, the map was a practice exercise, which is essentially like a more convoluted Hello World. The value was perceived by others, and the campaign. The value for me was, "Ok, there's cluttered events all around the wild, I'd like to make sense of it and help out while I practice D3 and Leaflet."

The value as perceived by others was beyond me, and I was really just happy that it had bigger value that I originally intended.

This is different with foreign governments contributing online assets or money to the campaign, because the intent is different, and the worth is different. The intent is influence/leverage, and worth is tools/dollars. And as you have predicated below as well, corporate money is very different if you look deeper, compared to an individual who's just practicing.

<comment><USER5> Rapi, as a permanent resident, you are legally American enough to donate money to a campaign.

[http://www.fec.gov/ans/answers_general.shtml#Can_nonUS_citiz...](http://www.fec.gov/ans/answers_general.shtml#Can_nonUS_citizens_contribute)

<comment><USER4> Yes, I understand. But I thought I'd put my 2cents on the difference between what I did if I didn't have a green card. And how it differs with a corporation/big donors/super PACs or a foreign gov't giving assistance to a campaign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Their site, not linked off in the article: [https://coders.forsanders.com/](https://coders.forsanders.com/)

<comment><USER7> And Slack group if you're interested in joining: [https://cfs- slack.forsanders.com/](https://cfs-slack.forsanders.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article reminded me of a feature about Obama campaign from 2012:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-t...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when- the-nerds-go-marching-in/265325/?single_page=true)

HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4794720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4794720)

</comment><comment><USER9> The exact same folks who Bernie is going to raise taxes for, mind you. He won't really be able to do anything against the 1% (since they own the Congress, and will continue to own it), but upper middle class represents an attractive target for a cash grab to pay for all those nice free rides he's promising to the poor.

<comment><USER10> > but upper middle class represents an attractive target for a cash grab to > pay for all those nice free rides he's promising to the poor.

TIL first world social services are "nice free rides promised to the poor."

<comment><USER11> The free-market capitalism that you are espousing, requires a 'cash grab' —or distribution- to function or else it is completely incompatible with technological advancement. Looping structures allow programs to increase output and efficiency on the supply side, enabling startups to undercut company's reliant on manual labor. Advancements in tech allow a single person to run an automated script that does the work of thousands of manual workers (while greatly reducing the risk of human error). However, increased efficiency on the supply side decreases the value of human labor, which consequently decreases purchasing power across the board in every industry where a manual process is replaced. The more industry's that are efficient, the fewer customers capitalists can offer their products and services too. Capitalism can't work unless there is some degree of a 'free ride to the poor', because the wealthy cant generate revenue if there isn't a middle class to sell their products to. Its in capitalists best interests to have the poor become the middle class—i.e., because no one can create marginal revenue if there is no one to sell things too (or the value of the good being sold deflates). Without a strong consumer market there is no incentive for anyone to do anything in free market capitalism, because there is no incentive to do something that cannot create enough marginal value to meet ones material need, and because we are all finite beings reliant on external goods to persist, one cannot create value without meeting their material needs. Would it not be a more preferable for a centralized structure to provide everyone with the basics, so everyone could study what interested them and add value to society as a whole. If the govt invested say 60k in each individual, a greater # of people be able to work on advancing the quality of life for our species, finding new worlds to inhabit, and generally speaking — adding marginal value to the way we spend our time. Instead of minds thinking about physics, and how to improve things, minds are thinking about how to survive. Is this state of affairs not a huge deadweight loss of humanity's time? A Sanders administration would hopefully be a small, necessary, and peaceful step in the logical direction.

<comment><USER9>
        Would it not be a more preferable for a centralized
        structure to provide everyone with the basics, so
        everyone could study what interested them and add
        value to society as a whole.

"From each according to their ability, to each according to his need." (c) Karl Marx. We all know how well that worked out in the Soviet Union and elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So far: 51 comments and so far _zero_ comments about the technical aspects of this article - only political bickering.

Yet another thinly veiled political story that somehow make it to the front page because it has the word "coders" in the title.

</comment><comment><USER13> Before we start admiring things, let's see what happens on Super Tuesday (12 days away).

Nothing of what Sanders is doing is going to survive past a left primary. Absolutely nothing he is promising can be done without Congress.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>

reply to below since I can only answer two replies on HN anymore before being blocked:

Wrong comparison.

That's like wanting to be manager when you have only worked at a company for a couple years.

Come on now.

If Sanders ideas can work so well, why don't all these eager people first implement them at a local level where they have more immediate power? Nope, they want to go directly to the executive because it is a figurehead.

Sanders comes from a 96% WHITE state - they are ridiculously homogeneous and are nothing like the rest of the United States. Only Maine is whiter. Why is his state like that in the 21st century? Why does everyone else feel unwelcome to live there?

Sanders will never attract the 3-4% of undecided voters and we will end up with Trump picking the next few supreme court judges.

Why are you okay with losing the presidency for the next eight years based on theoretical ideas that are not proven to work anywhere and won't get voted for by the masses?

<comment><USER14> Ideas are powerful. What Sanders' rise (and to some extent, Trump's) symbolize political system whose representatives that are woefully out of touch with its constituents. I think congress and the Senate is next, we are going to see a huge shake up in each party from the top down. Don't be surprised if we start seeing more Sanders-like-citizens running for Congress. We live in interesting times.

<comment><USER15> I think you mean candidates. The electorate is the subset of constituents that can vote.

<comment><USER14> yes...will edit, and thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Crafted - Minecraft clone for the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/crafted/id473009432?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D2

<comment><USER2> That's pretty shameful. I wouldn't really consider this a clone so much as a shameless ripoff with no attribution whatsoever. How does this kind of stuff make it through the approval process? I suppose the process is more to cover Apple's own ass than to protect developers.</comment>


SoftBank's debt obsession - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/11/06/softbanks-debt-obsession/ <comment><USER3> Note that Masayoshi Son has the distinction of losing the most money in history when he lost approximately $70 billion during the dotcom crash. He still has a net worth of $23 billion.

Win big. Lose big.

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

<comment><USER4> Here's an ArsTechnica article with more specifics:

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2012/10/how-s...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2012/10/how-sprints-new-boss-lost-70-billion-of-his-own-cash-and- still-stayed-rich/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article plays on the cultural anathema to the word debt in the following ways:

It mentions specific interest rates only once, which are paid to a subset of investors in the vision fund. It briefly clarifies how none of this is an insane level of debt, just a large number.

It then spends the rest of the article talking the existence of bonds and interest bearing securities, with no distinction of what they are except "hey look, a DEBT security"

It mentions how it is as large as the public debt of a nation state, after qualifying the alarm with subsets of a subset of one of the entity's balance sheets.

By this part of the article, we are actually talking about the Softbank entity's "operating basis", which was a big pivot away from what 2/3rd of the article was talking about which was the Vision Fund doing all the cool investments.

Just.... be discerning.

The general counterpoint would be that it is great that a fund structured this way is trying to back illiquid private equity. It is nice that investors get the opportunity to have exposure to the hottest deal flow on the planet, with an entity that can push for liquidity.

<comment><USER6> > The general counterpoint would be that it is great that a fund structured > this way is trying to back illiquid private equity.

Sorry, I don't understand your point at all. Why would the fund's structure affect its investment mandate?

<comment><USER5> They aren't mutually inclusive aside from the fact that nobody does it, for several good reasons.

The investment mandate is written on paper and has nothing to do with the fund's structure. Nobody makes investment mandates with funds that are structured that way, except Softbank. Shrug emoji.

Typically an investment into a fund is done with shares which bear no interest. This means that no money is being pulled away from the fund while it invests in things which cannot be liquidated.

Softbank is investing in things which cannot be liquidated, all while money is flowing out of the fund to a large portion of shareholders at 7% a year.

<comment><USER7> It's a risky structure but Softbank continues to hit it out of the park with bets at a size that nobody else can match. Also the positions can be liquidated it just takes time

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There has been a lot of talk (and speculation) in the past regarding Softbank being 1. the avenue for Saudi Investment of their (est.) $Trillion++ as the hedge against oil's future and 2. The apac version of HSBC/DeutscheBank laundering schemes.

Anyone have any speculation on the veracity of these rumors?

Basically, WRT the debt risks that Softbank is taking, it suggests that they don't care about the risks, because they need to launder+invest the monies they can regardless as quickly and with as much volume as possible to legitimize and profit...

<comment><USER9> I'd like to learn more about this and their motives. It'd be a little alarming if the US government was the top investor in the top vc firm buying up massive stakes of top SV companies. But maybe im unaware of how much investments America and other countries make like this.

<comment><USER10> I don't know if the government does, but plenty of individual states have investment funds or pension funds that do VC work. Apprenda, my old employer, was partially backed by the a New York State pension fund

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does anyone know if any of the term sheets for these $1 billion+ deals have ever been made public? I'm really curious what the ins and outs are.

Alternatively, any accurate data on what market terms are for these humongous rounds?

</comment><comment><USER12> Plainly and simple: Vision Fund is a giant LBO scheme for Saudi money. Any other interpretation does not make any sense financially.

Vision fund is knee deep in _SHORT TERM_ debt – thus, they have to make money fast. They look for stuff they can flip quickly, and "Pets.com style" companies are ideal targets for that.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, the Saudis have so much money it's hard to place, and therefore have to accept riskier terms. So maybe this is realistically the best they could do. And so Softbank can get away with better terms.

<comment><USER14> I've never understood that argument. Can't they just sink more money into the stock market?

<comment><USER13> Supply and Demand. More demand is better terms for stock sellers, i.e. companies. And their investing would probably completely skew the market. So it's hard. Investing directly might put them at risk of some kind of oversight as well.

And they already have a lot tied up in those kinds of investments anyhow. They own a lot of real estate around the world as well.

It's hard to find places to park that amount of money esp. if there are political considerations. Nobody is worried about taking money from the Norwegians ...

<comment><USER14> But there's more than one stock market - there are so many around the world, surely them buying couldn't make that much of an impact?

<comment><USER13> " there are so many around the world"

Not really. Or rather, they are smaller in terms of market cap. Also - <USER2> basically have US and EU, the rest are very high risk, and subject to all sorts of shenanigans.

That's how much money the Saudis have.

We need to go clean nuclear, it would solve so many problems ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> // Oversimplified napkin math for fun, stop taking this seriously //

> Around 60% of the money promised to the Vision Fund by investors other than > SoftBank takes the form of debtlike securities that earn a 7% fixed return > annually.

They get $70B and have to pay 7% fixed annually. S&P rate of return on average is 9.7%. Softbank could pocket 2.7% of $70B ($1.89B a year) by just investing in an index. With $70B you could stay solvent longer than the market can remain irrational, so you're operating with very little risk. (Ignoring all the difficulties in investing that much, etc)

Maybe SoftBank likes debt because even if they have no where to invest they'd still make $2B/year.

EDIT: This isn't a serious comment, literally just throwing numbers in the air for fun. I know very little about investing.

<comment><USER16> Is there a strong reason as to why a 9.7% annualized return on the S&P is a correct assumption we should make about the future?

I feel like in the 21st century, a lot of folks have come to put a lot of faith in the "stocks in the long run" mantra.

But any stationary effect in the markets can be arbitraged away. If 9.7% long- term returns were guaranteed, wouldn't everyone just borrow 30-year loans on margin at 5% interest rate and invest it in S&P?

Edit: agree with sibling comment. If one loses 27% in the first year and makes 9.7% annually after that, they would be operating at net loss. So even if long-term gains were assured, volatility can still make investing on borrowed money unprofitable.

<comment><USER15> 9.7% (or maybe 0.8%) is the average over the last 90 years and I don't think there is any other data points you could reasonably use to say it won't continue like that over a long enough time frame.

<comment><USER17> Well, over the last 90 years the USA moved from important regional power to the economic and military hegemon of the world. That's quite the wave to be riding as a US stock market investor. It's also quite a hard act to repeat.

To maintain the historical growth rate, you have to believe one of the following two things, or some combination of them:

1\. The US will continue to amass a larger share of the world's wealth, indefinitely.

2\. The economy of the world at large will begin to _also_ grow ~10% a year, a number far in excess of the historical average or any well-informed estimate.

Personally, I wouldn't make that bet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how are the downside-protecting elements and that unusual debt based financing structure affecting Uber and other large companies that SoftBank invests in. Is it possible that Uber collapses because of the 7% yearly coupon that SoftBank fund must produce ?

<comment><USER19> There is no risk of SoftBank's financial situation causing a collapse at one of the companies in which they hold a minority stake. The worst that could happen is they don't fund Uber the next time they need funding.

<comment><USER18> That would depend on the term sheet, wouldn't it? 7% guaranteed yearly return may require unusual conditions on the investment side.

<comment><USER20> Sure, that's possible but then you're just dealing with relatively blind speculation. I would assume there's no issues on the investment side unless there's strong reason to believe there is.

<comment><USER21> The article offers one reason to wonder:

> [...] its term sheets — from what I hear — are heavily laden with economic > terms that give SoftBank huge downside protection.

How much weight you want to give that, well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Virtually all companies including GOOG, MSFT, FB take on same amount of debt as their cash on hand. The thing is that even at 5-7% interest rate, it is fairly easy to find use of money that easily pays off interest and leaves money in hand. So if you have X dollars, you borrow again it to get another $X. Your net revenue would typically increases by billion or two dollars.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there any public, comprehensive list of SoftBank-funded startups available?

<comment><USER24> [https://www.recode.net/2018/2/5/16974032/this-is-where- chart...](https://www.recode.net/2018/2/5/16974032/this-is-where-chart- softbank-vision-fund-masayoshi-son-venture-capital)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you hate someone, take their money and run, I guess?</comment>


Ask HN: Negotiation platform idea. Would appreciate your feedback - <AUTHOR> A quick little survey to back an idea: a negotiation platform to be used in commercial support for software.
I'd really appreciate the input. Thanks!
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Sz4lgMMNtmkhEYJtC_qTPWyzF1Mp9wq-uej56LVk5AA/viewform <comment><AUTHOR> [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Sz4lgMMNtmkhEYJtC_qTPWyzF1M...](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Sz4lgMMNtmkhEYJtC_qTPWyzF1Mp9wq- uej56LVk5AA/viewform)

</comment><comment><USER2> A prototype might be a better way of getting feedback and interest.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, I should look into it. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Adam Draper: Investors Don't Want to Hear the Word Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://www.coindesk.com/adam-draper-investors-bitcoin-blockchain/ <comment><USER2> Because, of course, all applications of the solution used in bitcoin are inherently invalid when applied to anything else.

 _rolleyes_</comment>


Apple's New Privacy Page - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/privacy/ <comment><USER2> Don't get me wrong, I'm impressed with the progress Apple has made in spearheading consumer privacy practices — but unfortunately, half of the benefits listed here are negated by the fact that my iCloud backups are fully unencrypted (or "encrypted" with a common key that Apple holds; same thing in my view).

So, if I want convenient nightly backups (without plugging my phone in and using the "new" Catalina apps, which I'm still convinced are just new iTunes skins), Apple — and adversaries — will still have unfettered access to all my iMessages, Maps history, photos, health records, almost everything listed here and more [0][1].

Tim Cook has claimed a fix is coming for a while now [2], but meanwhile using iCloud for its intended purpose is a _huge_ , and largely unadvertised, gaping hole in Apple's otherwise impressive privacy promises. :(

[0] [https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/2/11144588/walt-mossberg- app...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/3/2/11144588/walt-mossberg-apple-vs-fbi- iphone-icloud-loophole)

[1] [https://www.cellebrite.com/en/productupdates/move-your- inves...](https://www.cellebrite.com/en/productupdates/move-your- investigations-forward-with-data-from-icloud-and-samsung-backups/)

[2] [https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/28/eff-user-encrypted- iclo...](https://www.macrumors.com/2019/02/28/eff-user-encrypted-icloud- backups-apple/)

<comment><USER3> It's largely only a hole against state level adversaries, which may not be a realistic element of many people's threat model.

<comment><USER4> Or an insider at Apple.

Please refer to the recent issue regarding Saudis and Twitter.

You can argue that that was a _state level adversary_ , but the people who accessed data could as well may have done that of their own volition.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Apple cares more about privacy than, e.g., Google, for sure, but it is extremely complicated to use an iOS device without an Apple ID, and Apple employs "know your customer" logic that caused me to give up after a few hours trying to create an Apple ID not connected with my real name and credit card.

<comment><USER6> Not sure what you tried and from which location, but Apple doesn't need the real name or a valid payment method for creating an account to be used for purchases. Such an account can be used to get all the free apps and content on its stores.

On the other side, does stock Android allow one to use a phone without creating a Play Store account and associating it for other services from Google? I'm just curious how that works. I'd presume that Google doesn't need a payment method or one's real name either.

<comment><USER7> I rejected buying an iPhone because I could not find reliable information saying how to use one without an account. By contrast it's easy on Android. Follow the "skip" path. Of course then you can't get access to the play store for apps, but there are other sources for apps.

<comment><USER8> You don't need an Apple ID, you can "set up later" aka "the skip path".

If you do need an Apple ID, say, for free apps, you can make one without real name or ID and yes, you can get set up for free downloads from the app store without a credit card.

The UI is no longer the same, but the approach still works from when I wrote about this in 2011:

[https://www.engadget.com/2011/01/07/get-an-itunes-or-mac- app...](https://www.engadget.com/2011/01/07/get-an-itunes-or-mac-app-store- account-without-a-credit-card/)

The latest UI looks like this:

[https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204034](https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT204034)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Those animations videos are so well done, very pleasing to the eye to watch

<comment><USER10> I was in the desktop site on Chrome and I didn't see any animations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > What you share from those experiences, and who you share it with, should be > up to you.

They should have added this: ultimately it's up to you to trust us, you don't control Apple devices, we do :-) and we make decisions that are best for you - just give us money.

</comment><comment><USER12> Privacy coming from Apple is laughable. If you have an iPhone and have location services on ( which most of us do) go to location settings and check "system services".

Google what those services do. They're all for sending unnecessary location data to Apple for analytics, which is all enabled by default.

They claim to respect your privacy, but under the hood it's a different story.

</comment><comment><USER13> Privacy my ass. Allow me to setup MY phone without a ping back to the mothership, and allow us to side-load apps or download free apps from the store without an apple ID.

<comment><USER14> > allow us to side-load apps

It's a _feature_ to me that I can't accidentally download an (potentially hostile) app from a (potentially hostile) app store, but a bug.

<comment><USER15> > It's a feature to me that I can't accidentally download an (potentially > hostile) app from a (potentially hostile) app store, but a bug.

I don't really understand this point. It is not like Android implementation of side load is insecure.

As a user, you need to explicitly enable it in settings. After Android 8 I think, each application that tries to install a application is blocked first and need an explicitly permission too. Even with all that, you still need to explicitly consent installation and upgrade of any sideloaded application. Nothing is automatic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Privacy coming from Apple is laughable. If you have an iPhone and have location services on ( which most of us do) go to location settings and check "system services".

Google what those services actually do. They're all for sending unnecessary location data to Apple for analytics, which is all enabled by default.

They claim to respect your privacy, but under the hood it's a different story.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Messages are only seen by who you send them to." \- Unless that person shares an Apple ID with someone else.

I recently sent an iMessage and got a "who is this?" response. Turns out the message went to one of their family members.

I guess they shouldn't be sharing an Apple ID, but I don't think it's a super crazy thing to do among family members (e.g. a parent who provides a phone for their child), and having private text messages go to the wrong person seems like a pretty bad failure mode.

<comment><USER17> Are you saying that 2 people logged into iMessages on 2 devices with the same Apple ID and you want only one of those people to see an iMessage? How would that work?

I either don't understand the scenario you are describing or I don't understand the failure mode you mention?

<comment><USER16> My intended recipient doesn't actually have an iPhone (but I didn't know that at the time). In my contacts I have both their phone number and their email address, and I'm assuming that email is what's associated with their Apple ID.

I normally don't pay much attention to whether a message is being sent out over iMessage or SMS, and less technical folks probably pay even less, so it's a bad situation when those two methods end up going to different people.

That said, I'm actually not sure what the best behavior for iOS would be here - I get that they want to use the "best" transport and send over iMessage rather than SMS if it's available. Ideally there would be some kind of warning if the phone number I have in my contacts doesn't match the one on the device that's going to receive the message, but that seems finicky as well (what if I only have their land-line?).

<comment><USER18> How recent was this? Years ago I remember hearing the scenario where people who switched from iPhone -> Android (keeping the same number) would continue to have iMessages go to their old phone. Or the messages would just get lost in the ether if their old phone was off or sold.

For awhile, at least at the Apple store, they were very deliberate about disabling "Find my iPhone" and iMessage when handing off or wiping a phone. I don't remember them doing this recently, so I figured it was built into the process now.

I do think we need some basic awareness about digital devices, just like people do when they let someone borrow the keys to their house (although, many people are terrible at managing that). I recently sold a house with a Nest and a few other IoT things. I wiped them and reset them to factory settings. The realtor and new owner were asking me for my login/password (I'm sure this happens often for them) because they figured it was still tied to my old account.

<comment><USER16> This was last week. It seems like the same mechanism though, if the phone is still tied to their Apple ID.

<comment><USER18> I wonder if the only part that changed is now the have a user-facing way to deactivate: [https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister- imessage/](https://selfsolve.apple.com/deregister-imessage/)

iMessage was launched in 2011 and archive.org shows that page first showing up in late 2014. I remember hearing very few options for removing your old phone early on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't think privacy works when I don't trust Apple period. They have done shady anti consumer things like decreasing battery life. This feels like lip service till I see implementation details(and even then I want to see the code).

<comment><USER20> When you say "implementation details", do you mean things like their Safari Privacy White Paper[0], their Photos Tech Brief[1], their Location Services White Paper[2], or their Apple Sign On White Paper[3]?

[0]: [https://www.apple.com/safari/docs/Safari_White_Paper_Nov_201...](https://www.apple.com/safari/docs/Safari_White_Paper_Nov_2019.pdf)

[1]: [https://www.apple.com/ios/photos/pdf/Photos_Tech_Brief_Sept_...](https://www.apple.com/ios/photos/pdf/Photos_Tech_Brief_Sept_2019.pdf)

[2]: [https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Location_Services_White_P...](https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Location_Services_White_Paper_Nov_2019.pdf)

[3]: [https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Sign_in_with_Apple_White_...](https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Sign_in_with_Apple_White_Paper_Nov_2019.pdf)

<comment><USER21> No no no, they mean things that confirm their biases.</comment></comment></comment>


Does Y Combinator have a financial connection to Flattr? My link was deleted... - <AUTHOR> http://chirpstory.com/li/917

<comment><USER2> I have no idea why it was deleted, but that wasn't a very good article- lots of tweets, a bit of text and two YouTube videos. A nice detailed writeup would have been more useful to me.</comment>


Apple hires Burberry CEO to spruce up its retail operation - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/15/apple-hires-burberry-ceo/

<comment><USER2> Where is Ron Johnson? Earlier this year, he was ousted from JC Penney ...</comment>


5.6 Mag Earthquake knocks San Jose - <AUTHOR> http://quake.usgs.gov/recenteqs/Maps/San_Francisco.html <comment><USER2> That was awesome! Seriously, it was absolutely the coolest thing. Not really as intense as I would have expected a 5.6 quake to be, though. Still, my business partner and I were impressed and excited.

Sorry for the breathless report, folks, but it was my first and I have been unluckily missing earthquakes for years: Seattle's quake of 2001, a spate of microquakes in Spokane later... so I am thrilled to finally get one.

We're in San Jose BTW.

<comment><USER3> In my first and only Bay Area earthquake (a smaller one than the one you just had) I had much the same reaction. It was just large enough for me to know it was a quake, and I kind of enjoyed the experience.

Then I went to work the next day at the fab and discovered that everyone there was distressed and nervous. Post-traumatic stress: They had all lived through the quake of '89, when some of the freeways and bridges had collapsed.

So, keep in mind that while it's okay to be secretly impressed by the awesome power of plate tectonics, doing so publicly is the sign of a Bay Area newb. :)

Now might be a good time to revisit this USGS earthquake safety page: <http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/2005/15/>

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the tip! I'll be quieter about my delight.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm in San Jose and WOW very nerve wracking. I'm getting too old for this.

</comment><comment><USER5> So weird. Friend and I were jogging down at the marina and didn't feel it one bit.

I'm so disappointed.

<comment><USER6> You were jogging. That's why you didn't feel it. If you were sitting still looking a computer screen, then you probably would have.

<comment><USER7> Wow, he must jog with precision then to have the motion of his legs perfectly counterbalance the motion of the earth, let alone the motion of his surroundings produced by a 5.6 quake!

Any tips on anti-quake jogging?

ps: I hope everyone is ok up there.

<comment><USER8> Usually if you are driving you mistake an earthquake with the car normal vibrations. I suppose the same happens when jogging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Felt it all the way in my office ~ 80 miles away. Amazing. Never felt anything this powerful before.

</comment><comment><USER10> That was the biggest one I've been here for so far.

<comment><USER11> Keep in mind tonight's quake was 20-30x smaller than the one in 89.

Now THAT was an earthquake ;)

<comment><USER12> Yeah, '89 was something else. OTOH, it was centered off in the boonies (modulo Los Gatos), whereas this one looks to have been right outside of S.J., so a good ride even at less energy.

I'll still take quakes over tornadoes and hurricanes. They're usually harmless fun. Once in a while they're tremendously devastating, but what is life without adventure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> i was listening to loud music and felt vibrations on the floor. at first, i thought some dude was going around with a very very loud bass! however, i soon realized everything else was shaking as well and ran downstairs scared shit!

</comment><comment><USER14> We were at the preview screening of "Lions for Lambs" at Stanford. The audience definitely felt it and some of them got up to leave. For a while, I thought it was a really impressive subwoofer :)

</comment><comment><USER15> (In SF) That was one of the longest I've felt - though is was low intensity here but definitely unsettling. It was really a different kind of quake then I've felt in the past.

</comment><comment><USER16> We're in SJ, about 8 miles from the epicenter. It was a good shimmy.

Time to by the pack of 100 MRE's to prepare for "The Big One" (TM).

</comment><comment><USER17> One of my favorite earthquakes was around 1999 in the central valley, CA. It wasn't too harsh, but it lasted for a good 30 seconds. 30 seconds is long enough to realize that you're in an earthquake, and to enjoy it.

The waving of the ground was surreal.

</comment><comment><USER18> Our dorm in Stanford definitely felt it. Most everyone was excited about it.

<comment><USER19> which dorm are you in? definitely felt it in sae, i was worried the house was going to fall in to the parking lot.

<comment><USER18> I'm in Branner. Is SAE on the row?

<comment><USER19> It's technically a "row house" but it's not really on the row. It's up on the hill next to 680, kappa sig, and theta delt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I did not feel anything either..but wait, I'm in New York :) Never thought I woudl hear anyone describe an earthquake as cool..Last I heard an earthquake was something that killed people.

</comment><comment><USER21> I felt nothing, as I was driving at the time :( Too bad, I missed the fun.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm from Sacramento. Didn't feel a thing. I wasn't jogging either.

</comment><comment><USER23> Felt it in oakland, but I figured it was a 3.0 or so...

</comment><comment><USER24> Felt it in sunnyvale. Pretty intense.

</comment><comment><USER25> isn't it what makes milk more creamier ?

</comment><comment><USER26> Not an intense quake -- at least up here in Redwood Shores (the land of Oracle) -- but what impressed me was how long it seemed to last. The long ones are potentially more dangerous, if they're also intense.</comment>