Owning Your Own Home Is Even More Stupid Than Running Your Own Servers - <AUTHOR> https://joelx.com/owning-your-own-home-is-even-more-stupid-than-owning-servers/15328/ <comment><USER2> This article illustrates a cultural problem that is emerging especially with the 20-30s generation.

You can try blaming it on baby boomers, high living costs, lifestyle choices, avocados etc.

They don't care about ownership or property and instead want to consume everything as a service right away for convenience. This might be a one off service or something they are tied into with some contract.

I'm 31 and my peers either can't or won't buy property, cars, phones, kitchen utensils or other assets.

It's like feudalism 2.0, there's a whole bunch of people who own nothing now and are tied into contracts which can be quite onerous. Serfdom 2.0 for the middle classes. Ready to be milked by the people who own these services.

Another example is the music market. It's become intangible with Spotify etc. I still keep digital copies of music and host a Plex server which I control. Noone can deny me access that way. I still have CDs if something really goes wrong.

It's almost like it's cool to be a consumer of Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Deliveroo, Lime, DriveNow instead of painstakingly saving for that second hand car or holiday at that hotel resort.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's far more efficient to share resources then to buy. That is why Uber makes sense. If you own your own car, it might get used on average 40 minutes per day. With Uber that resource is used at least 10 hours each day.

By the way, I think baby boomers are the worst generation in history. They're incredibly selfish and have caused huge externalities (climate change, national debt, global destabilization). The greed of the baby boomers has meant that the average standard of living and income has dropped for those coming behind them. We should eliminate benefits these people voted for themselves including Social Security and Medicare. No one else will get them later.

<comment><USER3> "It's far more efficient to share resources then to buy"

If it was more efficient, it wouldn't be more expensive. If it wasn't more expensive, there wouldn't be all these huge startups.

<comment><USER4> You've got that exactly backwards:

If it was more expensive, the startups couldn't afford to exist. It costs me more to pay for parking where I live than to pay for rideshares multiple times a week.

Thats just parking, not to mention insurance or, you know, the actual vehicle.

<comment><USER5> Not necessarily.

Taxis don't only exist due to cost. It's more convenient to take a cab across London because even if you have unlimited money, finding parking is a pain in the arse, you have to think about it, etc.

Or you might just be tipsy after a night out.

I've never taken a cab to save money; I'm not sure I've ever been in a situation where it would be cheaper than just taking public transport or driving.

It's just a different option with different pros and cons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As millennial and house owner in Berlin, I totally disagree with those statements. If you try to rent an apartment as a family of 4 (say, min. 85-90 m²), you have to pay at least something not less than 900€, excluding annual costs review, electricity, internet and so on. On top of that, there's the "incremental-steps", set usually on 3%. Sure, owning a house is not easy and requires efforts, but in the era of 0% interests or negative interests, buying a house in a Big City IMHO represents a far better investment than keeping money in a bank account or giving away for rental.

A House can also work as insurance: if for some reasons you are facing economic difficulties, you can think of selling it and moving in a smaller apartment. As renter, what happens if you're already in difficulty and can't afford to pay the actual rent?

I hate much everything of the "rental" services: you can access something but you can't own it. What happens if in 10 years I want exactly access that thing again? Will it be there? I'm sure it won't and there are tons of examples already (See: Disney content flying away from Netflix, Music disappearing from Spotify due to copyright/labels, Games not available anymore on Steam due geolocalization, etc. etc.)

<comment><USER7> >I hate much everything of the "rental" services: you can access something but you can't own it.

Universities in the US are doing this with course material now. I had to pay for a subscription service to access my assignments, so that my professors didn't have to review anything. I had to pay for the service to get credit for that portion of the class, and then all my work in that service vanished after the semester ended. No more access to the work I had done despite having classes the next semester that I would need that work to reference. The professor didn't pay a dime, and 100 students had to pay the cost so that the professor didn't have to review our work. Involuntary consumerism at its finest.

I started a petition, and tried arguing with the admins of the school to see if we could have these services banned or at least paid for by the professor.

They asked "How is this different than buying a book you need?" Answer is obvious, books don't disappear after the semester, they can be found in the library if you can't afford them, and they don't do the professors' job.

They asked "Well you can afford tuition, can't you afford the subscription?" No, I can't afford tuition, now you want more?

At the end of the day, I went back and forth with them, and they wouldn't budge. And I could tell it was really tearing their moral fabric, but no one in power wanted to budge because $$$$$

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm paying less for my 240m² house that I own than I did when I when I was renting a 70m² apartment a year ago. I live in a better neighborhood with three times the space and with every monthly payment I'm building my net worth. I take ownership of my home and learn skills to maintain and repair it. I run around naked with really loud music at night and it's nobody's business but mine. Feels great. Also free parking and I'm growing food that I eat. Neat. There is no doubt that owning my home is a lot better for me than renting, both economically and living standard wise.

As for the server: excluding third party physical access is a major security feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> I should have clarified that this applies to the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi Joel.

I'm your landlord, and I'm selling the house. You know, cause like, it's mine. I want you out next month.

Yeah, I'll take the stability of buying, thanks.

The server comparison is disingenuous because migrating data is essentially trivial and has almost no emotional impact compared to moving home.

I mean, it'd be brilliant if I could rsync my cabinets.

</comment><comment><USER9> So, some ants, a money pit, and the HVAC acting up. Sounds like the author just doesn't like regular maintenance of a house? I wonder if they also get angry with their car. You have to change the oil twice a year! What an inconvenience

<comment><USER10> You can also make the same argument for owning a car as well. After registration, mandatory insurance, petrol and maintenance, it's not clear that owning a car is a financially sound decision for me, personally.

I've run the numbers before and the cost of owning is pretty close to just catching an Uber every time I would otherwise drive, given I live an hour's walk from my city's center.

The only big benefit I get out of it is that I can drop everything and go on a camping / skiing trip several times a year. I certainly wouldn't buy a car now if I didn't own one, and if I could easily rent a car for outdoor trips, then I wouldn't have a reason to own one at all.

<comment><USER5> The problem with reducing everything to whether it's a 'financially sound' decision is that the ultimate endpoint of that is that you live in 5sqm in SF/NYC/London/wherever, or a van in the Google car park, and stash it all away until you're 40 or whatever, because that's the Paperclip Maximizer optimal- strategy.

Ultimately it doesn't matter _that much_. You're going to get old, you're going to lose your health eventually, and then you're gonna die.

I used to think that way, the effects were long-term great (I have a good amount of savings now), but I recognise that there really was no need to be quite so extreme about it.

<comment><USER3> "Ultimately it doesn't matter _that much_. You're going to get old, you're going to lose your health eventually, and then you're gonna die."

Sure, but probably not at 40, so you've kind of refuted yourself. Speaking as someone who flipped from renter to homeowner at 42.

Saving up for 20 years in an index fund and then buying as much house as you can pay for in cash seems like a reasonable plan to me, if you make the sort of money people on HN claim to.

<comment><USER5> If that's what you want, that's excellent!

But perhaps it doesn't make 'financial sense' to buy the house after those 20 years, right, because you'd be better off just holding the money in index funds (or at least you'd be better off treating the home as an investment and not actually developing an emotional attachment because then you'll never sell it).

What I'm saying is - you have to spend money eventually. Very few people are in a situation in which they can just stash away 10M, spend 1M of it, and have the majority of their funds exist as investment money, and thus act in this sort of 'financially optimal' way.

Unless they want to live an austere life - which again, is fine! But it's not literally the only way to live.

<comment><USER3> I'm talking about saving, say, $150K over 20 years. Not $10M.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This person has owned a home for a year. Ve has experience and obviously an authority on this subject.

Seriously though, servers do not appreciate in value. If they did and were scarce it would make a lot more sense to run than cloud out.

There are downsides to home ownership and significant risks, but I think it's the most tangible path to wealth for the middle class. Not everyone is fit for home ownership as they move or value flexibility, but for those who can plan and own a home in thirty years it zeros out for the costs of maintenance, taxes, etc. It's not quite like getting a refund check back for thirty years of rent, but it's similar.

<comment><AUTHOR> The fact that homes appreciate and value is a bug in our system. If we allowed homes to be built freely and with less regulation, then old homes that actually decline in value compared to new homes.

<comment><USER12> I agreed with your article and other comments here, but this is a bad take. There's no need for senseless tearing down and rebuilding, old homes are perfectly fine and often better-built than modern ones. Take a look at the mid-rise apartment building, I'm sure you have several wherever you live: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why- ameri...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-13/why-america-s- new-apartment-buildings-all-look-the-same)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, I didn't think this comment through as well as I should have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not buying it. I'm on the backend. My house is paid off in 18 months. Even with my average 5-7k per year of maintenance I'm paying a lot less than a crappy two bedroom rental in my top20 metro area on the US and my property is already worth triple+ my initial cost for a reasonable 1800 sq ft plus basement. I did get a place that was waaaay less than banks wanted to qualify me for because I understand the cost of maintenance. A pool would be an albatross around my neck for instance - never would buy a place with one bc of the maintenance.

</comment><comment><USER14> While owning is always combined with upkeep, renting is always taking money out of your pocket and putting it into somebody else's. At least in this economy (Western Europe) it's not exactly considered wise to never buy property, and makes sense in the long term for very few.

And to further the analogy of server's, pay a worker to do the upkeep if you can and would rather spend your time otherwise. There are people who'll take care of your bugs, crumbling infrastructure and beautification needs for a small token.

This really reads a rather petty complaint.

<comment><USER3> "renting is always taking money out of your pocket and putting it into somebody else's."

If you're paying for a mortgage, then what difference does it make if it's _your_ mortgage or your _landlord 's_ mortgage? The obvious difference it makes is whether you're on the hook if the value of the property goes down, which is an argument against owning.

Owning makes sense if you can avoid borrowing, but that means saving for many years and spending a fraction of what most people do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> 10 stories apartments.

Instead of visiting Tokyo go visit Moscow or any capital from the previous eastern european communist countries. See how that worked out for the rich and poor.

You compare housing with data. Devaluation of humans to the point where you believe they can be compared to just 0s and 1s is whats wrong with your article. But i guess you still think this is just a statistic. Someone else did too.

</comment><comment><USER16> I recognise the problems with home ownership, and agree that affordable rent may even be the answer for some people that don't want that responsibility, but the solution of "10 storey buildings" just isn't the answer.

Case in point: the Sydney apartment building disaster. Multiple apartment buildings with problems, losing tons of money by having to move out of cracking/leaking/structurally unsound buildings. And almost no support or compensation coming their way.

Unfortunately, strata based housing many times results in developers extorting "owners" with fees, little to no maintenance (or just the bare minimum), cutting corners on building, and so on. At least with home ownership you know exactly what you need to do, and if it doesn't get done then it's your own fault. Even renting a house is better, because you can very clearly see if things are wrong. An apartment building is harder to get a clear overall picture of. Walls sinking? Foundations cracking? Ceilings dipping? Roof leaking? You can usually only see some of these issues in any given apartment depending on what floor you're on, how big your apartment is, etc.

<comment><USER17> If you you want "affordable rents," you have two options; high density or long commutes. And high density means large buildings. There's just geometrically no way to supply a SF/NYC/Boston level city primarily through detached homes.

It's on cities to solve the problems you describe, usually through housing inspection and tenant rights law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Owning your home is an long term insurance. If your source of income dries up, you'll still have a home.

<comment><USER19> How's that going to work? You still have to pay your mortgage and property tax.

<comment><USER3> Well, if your mortgage is paid off or you saved for 20 or 30 years in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> my big issue is that it ties you to somewhere, if i want to leave where i am i can just give my landlord the appropriate notice and leave, if i owned where i live i then have to find someone to buy my house before i can leave, which could take weeks or even months

the problem with your "build more homes to crash the price 80%" is its a great idea for those who dont have houses already, but for those that do it means enormous losses on their original investments, now do you think the people making the decisions on those sorts of things rent or own? something tells me they own and wouldnt be too keen on losing 80% of their investment

thats also why it does work in japan, unlike here property is not an investment its something to live/work in for as long as it lasts, as such prices only go one way, down, over the course of 20-30 years the value of most japanese houses falls to zero and they are knocked down and rebuilt

<comment><USER21> > my big issue is that it ties you to somewhere

This is also a benefit depending on your perspective. It makes you more a part of the community because your long term best interests align. It's easier to keep long term friends when seeing each other doesn't become an inconvenience. I know some retired people that have lived in my (gentrifying) area most of their lives but are now struggling to keep up with ever increasing rents, to them being tied somewhere by owning property would be a godsend.

> the problem with your "build more homes to crash the price 80%" is its a > great idea for those who dont have houses already, but for those that do it > means enormous losses on their original investments

Most home owners treat their property as a home first and an investment second, if at all. Even if it's used as an investment it will usually be invested in their next home. Getting rid of property speculators would be great though.

> thats also why it does work in japan

Japan seems to have some issues (Hikikomori) that may be exasperated by this lack of permanence. Paying ever increasing rent and/or moving when I'm retired instead of $0 to live out my days in peace doesn't sound appealing.

<comment><USER20> its all personal preference at the end of the day, i can honestly say ive never been part of a "community" hell its rare ive even known my next door neighbours names nor do i have a desire to. as for long term friend ive known most of mine for upwards of 2 decades, we havent lost touch so far and i dont see it happening in future

i also have no plans to retire, if i stop working ill become incredibly bored incredibly fast, im sure its a goal for those with partners etc or things theyve held off doing but not me, if ive wanted to do something i generally do it there and then and my emotional and social issues mean that i have no interest in having a family or partner, i have my hobbies and my work which is pretty much all i need

while not to the extremes of japans hikikomori we have a significant number of people in their 20s and 30s still living with their parents here, but these arent jobless shut-ins theyre just regular people, the reasons for it are many, some simply cant afford to live alone and why rent a room in a shared house with a bunch of strangers when you can rent one with people you know? i suspect another reason is that single accommodation like one bed flats etc is not that common here so if you do rent alone youre likely renting a 2 bed house, which can feel rather dull and empty if youre living alone

im also aware that i have a serious lack of responsibility, were i to own a place id have access to significant lines of credit and id end up doing something stupid and get it repossessed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The essential difference is that the location of your server matters a lot less than where you are located.

Maybe you have a job that you can work remotely and never have to travel but there is more to life than work. Your neighbours, friends, kids, schools and your favourite coffee shop are part of who you are.</comment>


Henry Ford study found hydroxychloroquine helps lower Covid-19 death rate - <AUTHOR> https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/henry-ford-says-their-study-found-hydroxychloroquine-helps-lower-covid-19-death-rate <comment><USER2> Relatively low on details, and most of the page has ads.

Here's the original study [1], and this is the announcement from Henry Ford[2].

[1] [https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(20)30534-8/ful...](https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712\(20\)30534-8/fulltext)

[2] [https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment- study](https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study)

<comment><AUTHOR> Even better! Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't think anyone is debating the possibility of it being beneficial. Rather, we just wanted to go through the scientific procedure before announcing to the world that this drug can help, and not to self medicate, have a doctor help you, because of the significant side effects the drugs can help.

Two of my family in brazil had covid, and their doctors prescribed hydroxy and because it came from a doctor, we were fine with it.

<comment><USER4> > I don't think anyone is debating the possibility of it being beneficial.

There definitely were people actively hoping that it wouldn't work.

A couple months ago, there was a post about HCQ where I commented that the evidence I'd seen so far led me to the opinion that if I personally caught Coronavirus, I would be seeking out HCQ.

That post was met with a downvote brigade and multiple comments about how the drug was actively harmful and anyone thinking otherwise was an idiot.

I agree that we should let doctors do the studies and figure things out, but especially at the height of the media / political press against HCQ, even the idea that someone might personally be willing to bet on the drug's efficacy was met with a lot of disdain.

<comment><USER5> I'm still surprised it was so politicized on places like Twitter. Colbert, Trevor Noah, Seth Meyers, and others all roasted him for it and called the drug dangerous[0]. Meanwhile some center-left leaning places like the Hill were actually defending trump for it[1].

Drugs should not be politicized. The right should not have been so blindly faithful in HCQ, and the left should not have been so pessimistic about it. I'm sure both sides have done this in the past and I'm sure both sides will do it again in the future - but we need to work on this, because _wanting_ a drug to be ineffective for political reasons is dangerous for society.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpSK_IKm4eM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpSK_IKm4eM)

[1]: [https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/491665-if-only- hydrox...](https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/491665-if-only- hydroxychloroquine-could-cure-trump-derangement-syndrome)

<comment><USER6> As someone with a PhD in pharmacology and worked in the pharmaceutical industry: pessimism and skepticism are the right attitudes in drug discovery, most things don't work.

<comment><USER7> I have dim memories of alternative medicine hippy types pushing hydroxychloroquine and zinc as cures or prophylactics for flu and colds. Which set off my bullshit detector big time. The other thing is for a drug to be a game changer it'd need to reduce mortality by 90% and if that were the case with hydroxychloroquine the Chinese would have seen that in January. But that's exactly what people were claiming. Yeah no dice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What are the references used in this study? Have any of them been retracted? How many are from the Henry Ford Hospital itself?

[https://retractionwatch.com/2020/04/06/hydroxychlorine- covid...](https://retractionwatch.com/2020/04/06/hydroxychlorine- covid-19-study-did-not-meet-publishing-societys-expected-standard/)</comment>


How to nail the URL shortener interview question - <AUTHOR> http://www.doesnotcompute.biz/programming-interview-code-a-url-shortener-on-a-whiteboard-in-5-steps

<comment><USER2> IMO, asking people to write not-pseudocode on a whiteboard is a giant "RUN VERY FAST" signal.

If you want code, give me a computer to code with. I'm happy to express my ideas on a whiteboard, but doing a syntax test with a marker means you suck.</comment>


I'm so impressed I want to pay you less - <AUTHOR> http://buffered.io/2010/03/02/im-so-impressed-i-want-to-pay-you-less/ <comment><USER2> I'm on the other side of the fence. Yes, I could be making more money as a contractor, but that 'job security' that he doesn't see is one of the main things I like. It's -possible- that I won't have a job tomorrow, but it's not really likely. On the other hand, if I were contracting, I'd be in the situation very, very often, and have to find new clients constantly. No thanks.

Of course, it also helps that I like the company I work for, and I enjoy the work. It's got just enough variety that I don't get bored, and it's just challenging enough, too. Every time that challenge has started to disappear, the company has upped their game and the challenge came back. I joined the company at just the right time for me and them both, apparently.

<comment><USER3> Job security is a myth. You can get fired/laid off at any time, whether you're full time or not. In a few states they don't even need a reason to get rid of you (at-will employment).

I have seen this happen at least twice in the last 5 years. Company runs out of money, a bunch of people get cut. I've seen pretty high level people cut for political reasons. Of course, officially they would never admit that, but they _don't need to_. As a full time employee you might get a severance package, if the company doesn't feel like dealing with you, but it's completely optional. The only real advantage of being full time is COBRA when you get laid off. Still, it's not worth the salary difference.

I completely agree with the author of the article, being a contractor is totally worth it. I'm in a position right now where my contract is running out, and the company offered me a full time position. I will not take it. I'd rather be unemployed (and motivated to find a better deal) than working for less. Never take a pay cut. Always ask for promotions. (That's if you want your salary to grow consistently).

A word of advice to contractors: DO NOT fall for the daily rate. Hourly is the only fair game. Everything else will land you long unpaid hours. I absolutely love my hourly rate, and if you can get increased overtime rate, even better.

<comment><USER4> Assuming of course that you live in the US. In the UK it's relatively difficult to get rid of people - sacking is very difficult and likely to end up in court (you need a bulletproof reason for doing it) and the redundancy process is quite complex (with guaranteed payments if you've been there more than 2 years, etc).

Looks like the blog article was written by an Australian - their level of job security falls somewhere between the UK and the US.

EDIT: Also, I believe, in the UK you can't make permanent staff redundant if you've got temporary staff - so the contractors are first out of the door.

<comment><USER5> Correct mate, I am an Australian. I would say that our job security level is closer to that of the USA than the UK, but I don't think it's exactly the same.

On the whole I've seen way too many good people let go from permy positions while other plebs are retained. In same cases there doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason to who gets culled and when. To me that's a real sign that the "important" differences between permy and contractor are well in favour of the latter.

Cheers!

<comment><USER6> Actually, the Australian redundancy route is closer to the UK than to the US (we usually have 4 week notice period etc etc).

But Australia has such low unemployment at the moment that it doesn't really matter - forced redundancies are pretty uncommon at the moment.

I agree about the contractor thing regardless though - the difference in rates make permanent employment a pretty hard sell.

(I'm Australian if it matters)

<comment><USER5> Conditions aren't the important bit imho mate. The important bit is that you can still be got rid of fairly easily (unless you work in the public service, which seems almost impossible to be fired from). In that regard we are quite diff to the UK and more like the USA.

Forced redundancies are indeed uncommon at the moment, but I think that'll change. They weren't too uncommon just a few short years ago either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I went from contractor to "real employee" at a big company and it was no problem keeping the same take-home pay, while also getting paid vacation, cheaper insurance, 401k matching, etc., etc. I feel a little burned for not asking for more money, but nobody would actually take _less_ money, right?

<comment><USER8> _nobody would actually take less money, right?_

Often it appears that you take a hit to your pay, but when you do the benefits math (paid holidays, vacation, health insurance, sick days) it's at least a wash.

<comment><USER5> Yes, for the right job, or for something they love, they would do it. I know because I have done it.

I went to the UK in 2004 to do some travelling and working for a couple of years. Initially I was contracting in London at pretty good rates (between GBP 400 and 600 per day -- as I said, in 2004). The first year of contracting I earned just over GBP 120K. That's approx. USD $190k on the current exchange rate.

Part of the reason I went there was because I wanted to take a stab at the games industry. It was something that I had always wanted to do, and the industry here in Australia was awful. So I took at job at one of EA's studios.

That year I earned GBP 27k, approx. GBP 90k less than the year before.

Do I regret it? Not at all. I had a blast. It was a great experience and I met some amazing people.

So no, it's not all about the money. For the right gig in the right place with the right level of passion, earning enough to survive is exactly that: enough. <USER5>
</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I made a good living as a contractor for about 2 decades, although the aftermath of the .com implosion almost did me in, even though I had nothning to do with it. But I recovered and soldiered on. I finished a lucrative contract Sept 15, 2008. Then it was a year and a half of nothing or jobs tha paid way less than I was used to getting. I could make ends meet if I didnt pay taxes, but you know how that goes.

Then I got a job with a kind of Internet conglomerate. It isnt half bad. The pay plus the bonuses plus paid health care give me an income that's within 10% of a typical good consulting year. The health insurance was a biggie, because I couldnt get it any more. The people are talented and the corporate BS is less than I expected. I cant quite get my workweek down to the 40 hrs that is expected, but no more death marches.

</comment><comment><USER5> Apologies to anyone who has struggled to hit the site. It's not used to this level of traffic!

I'm enjoying the discussion too, thanks for the insights! <USER5>
</comment><comment><USER10> Slightly offtopic, but do you have in America casual employees?

In Australia, many non-professional jobs have award wages. These are the minimum rate you're allowed to pay someone in that position, eg a Pharmacy Assistant may earn a minimum (and I'm making these figures up) of $18.50/hr full time. I _think_ this figure may vary by state, but I'm not sure. These rates are for full time employees; 37.5hrs/week, 10 sick days, 4 weeks holiday, 10 public holidays all of which you're paid for.

Anyway, there's also Casual employees who aren't paid for any of the above (no sick pay, holiday pay etc), and they usually only work <20 hrs/week, but in return their award pay is 17.5% higher than that of a fulltime employee

[Disclaimer: I actually know very little about this, it being 10 years or more since I needed to know, and there's a high likelihood things have changed and the above info is all wrong]

<comment><USER11> Yes we do have casual employees, the term is "part time" in America. They generally work less than 20 hours a week, no benefits like time off or holidays, but they usually don't make more money than full time employees though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The site is getting an nginx error for me, but this cache works: [http://buffered.io.nyud.net/2010/03/02/im-so-impressed-i- wan...](http://buffered.io.nyud.net/2010/03/02/im-so-impressed-i-want-to-pay- you-less/)

</comment><comment><USER13> How does someone start to get into the contractor side of things? Are you generally working connections initially? Or are you going via a headhunter/craigslist for contract only gigs?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just look for 3 months contracts with a hourly rate on jobs listing site (I used seek.com.au)

This current one has been extended twice, 9 months down now.

It does take more responsibility, you have to do your own billing, your timesheet, and be 'more' presentable.

But all that is cheap compared to the price of working longer hours and not getting paid. At least if I work 10 hour day, I bill 10 hours. Also I get to claim so much more at tax time.

PS: to be a successful contractor, you should be good at what you do. As in 'Good' directly linked to your hourly rate requirement.

I should also clarify that it's not all glam. It's not for everybody. You have to be able to make quick and good decisions, code straight from 8am to 5pm with a half hour lunch and deliver. If you're the kind that likes to sit back and "R&D" all afternoon, or take a day to fix a bug, it might not be for you. You have to be productive and make every hour count for your employer and leave the R&D for the evening at home.

All that said, I still love it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I took one of these offers and am glad I did. I took an hourly pay cut of like 36% assuming 40 hour weeks which is about accurate, though I generally go slightly over.

However, I wasn't/am not a well known hot shot. I didn't graduate college (dropped out of a comp sci program 7 years prior), and all my 'experience' was a hand full of projects for local businesses and organizations. I was not even close to being able to simply pick my work or expect to bill 30+ hours a week regularly.

Now, 6 months into working full time in an understaffed department and taking on unexpected responsibilities I feel an order of magnitude more able to potentially sell myself or an idea to a _business_ as I had always thought in terms of people before.

I've learned a ton, I make more money, and I don't think about work 120+days a year. There are definite downsides too..

</comment><comment><USER15> This happened to me with Apple. The pay cut was huge; I declined. End of story.

</comment><comment><USER16> Job security is/is not a myth. It depends on the company. However what it all comes down to is when the money runs out, you are out. If you are a mission- critical contractor or a mission-critical employee you have more job security than a non-mission-critical contractor/employee. If people feel that you truly overcharge to hell and your services are not worth it, there you go, no job security.

What is better about employee? You have a regular paycheck. Economy is shitty? You still get it, or get fired. Economy is booming? Still get it. Didn't make a sale this month? Still get it. Contractor is not so consistent.</comment>


$10,000 algorithm competition: predict commute times on a Sydney freeway - <AUTHOR> http://kaggle.com/RTA

<comment><USER2> I would suggest that anyone considering entering a kaggle.com competition take a look at their Terms and Conditions : <http://kaggle.com/Legals/terms> Note section 9 which appears to require the winner to assign copyright on the submission to the organizer.

Giving up all rights to your code has never seemed to me to be a good strategy for a developer (except possibly in the case of full time employment).

<comment><USER3> Submissions do not consist of code, merely predictions (at least for the competitions I'm familiar with). I don't think there is anyway they could compel you to give up your code, but I'm no lawyer.

<comment><USER4> Actually:

 _The winning entry has to be a general algorithm that can be implemented by the RTA. That means that it takes a timestamp as an input and can generate predictions for the next 15 mins, 30 mins, 45 mins, 60 mins etc. Results must also be replicated by the RTA before any prize money is awarded._

So it sounds like they are expecting your code.

<comment><USER5> pseudocode will do as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A tollbooth was taken off this road about 3-4 months ago that was a major congestion point - 2 years of historical data is largely useless I think.

<comment><USER7> As a little aside, being from Melbourne I was amazed how many toll roads their are driving around Sydney.

<comment><USER6> Being from Sydney, I was amazed to see you guys have solved this particular problem on your motorways (time to destination based on traffic).

Is it good? I was just roadtripping through.

<comment><USER7> I have no idea how accurate those times are, I always assumed they would just be basic approximations but you may well be right that they could be more in depth.

<comment><USER8> When I lived there up to a couple of years ago, they were surprisingly accurate, even during fairly heavy traffic.

I can't recall the exact details, but from memory they use road counters at entries and exits to measure traffic numbers within sectors and, based on theoretical maximum number of cars per sector, predict whether traffic is capable of flowing at the speed limit or at some calculated reduced speed for each sector. The speed calculations, along with each sectors' distance, give you predicted trip time to the various exits on the display.

As I said, don't quote me, but that was my understanding.

<comment><USER6> Here is your $10,000

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> ryan-allen Would you consider this kind of action as 'scraping the bottom of the barrel'? In the design community so-called 'competitions' are considered rorts and shunned by anyone worth their weight.

What is ironic is that the NSW govt. probably have spent 50 times the figure working with private companies attempting to develop an acceptable solution, and this stinks of a last ditch effort.

<comment><USER9> I wonder why they only offer $10k. It seems cheap, particularly, as you say, they probably spent WAY more than that trying to do this in-house.

$10k is honestly hardly worth my time. I guess they're hoping for that one bright high school kid... good luck!

<comment><USER10> I'll say. There is a lot of work in this, and $10k is not going to attract many professionals. They're obviously out for the talented hobbyist or beginner.

Considering how much the RTA budget would be, it's almost insulting. Just having a policeman sit in a car by some roadworks (so-called 'specials') would cost them about $1000/shift.

The last time a new road project got opened near me the launch party would have cost nearly $10,000 by the time it was done.

The prize should be at least 50 or 100,000. It would be a tiny spec in the budget but that would motivate people to spend some real time on the problem.

<comment><USER11> Take a look at some of the other projects on Kaggle - a lot of them have no money or roughly similar amounts. One of the main crowds Kaggle attracts is University students and staff, and they do these projects because they're interesting and fun. It's similar to a shared task at an academic conference, which is the sort of thing most of the active ML/KD&DM community are interested in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm little bit sad to see that HN'ers are discussing the prize and money/time ratio instead of the challenge itself. What happened to the "hacker" in "Hacker News"?

I agree, money is a factor - but it doesn't have to decide your every move. This is an interesting challenge whether the prize offered is worth your time or not. The entrepreneurs are supposed to bunch of people who likes solving interesting challenges - not a bunch of people who likes solving interesting problems if only it makes you money.

<comment><USER13> I've fired up R and am doing some exploratory data analysis. I think its an interesting problem and will definitely submit something if I can get decent predictions with the downloaded data.

I've looked at the literature and research has tackled such problems using computer science(neural nets) and statistics (linear regression, Kalman filters). In my opinion, its easier to approach it as a statistics problem than a computer science one and this may explain why there is some hostility on HN. For instance, getting $10000 for a linear regression is easy money (although I would be surprised if the winning entry used this).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've never looked at commute time data before, so I'm just an armchair analyst.

It seems to me though, as a driver, that commute times are dominated by accidents. And certainly while you could estimate the mean probability of an accident based on the number of travelers, the daily variance seems insanely high and its unlikely that any amount of training data is going to decrease that much. I wonder how good these results are going to be.

<comment><USER15> Still, something could be done - for example, I know that the M4 heads west out of the city, and so is subject to poor visibility during afternoon peak due to sunset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Something more interesting is the company hosting the competition: <http://kaggle.com/>

"a platform for data prediction competitions that allows organizations to post their data and have it scrutinized by the world's best data scientists"

They have several up it looks like

</comment><comment> c-oreills This is slightly susceptible to result intervention - algorithm not doing too well? Drive a tractor slowly down the inside lane until reality matches your prediction!

</comment><comment><USER17> The competition seems artificially restricted based on what it's trying to accomplish. Why limit yourself to past data? We have immense sources of data for events months before they actually happen. Why wouldn't you account for a cricket match/product release/concert that's scheduled to happen a month in the future?

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't seem to be anything stopping ppl from including other data.

<comment><USER18> _You're welcome to bring additional data as long as it's publicly available._

[http://kaggle.com/view-postlist/forum-29-rta-freeway- travel-...](http://kaggle.com/view-postlist/forum-29-rta-freeway-travel-time- prediction/topic-195-using-additional-datasets-eg-rain-fog-etc/task_id-2467)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Not worth it. A better way to host a public contest is the way NYC is doing it with NYCBigApps. Take a look at their ToS, <http://nycbigapps.com/rules>, note section D. Those terms look fair to me.

</comment><comment><USER20> Problem is you can't predict the speed limit on the M4.</comment>


Show HN: CyberStyle.css – CSS Stylesheet Inspired by Tesla CyberTruck - <AUTHOR> https://mhasbini.com/blog/introducing-cyberstyle.css.html <comment><USER2> Like the CSS but when I think of CyberTruck dark themes don't come to mind. I think of either vaporware style aesthetics or how futuristic computers were portrayed in late 90's early 00's.

<comment><USER3> I think this was based on the styling of the order page rather than the aesthetics of the truck itself

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like this and surprisingly clean CSS.

It makes you realise how far the web has come on building beautiful components</comment>


Bitcoin value falls from above $33 to below $3 - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/10/17/price-of-bitcoin-still-dropping-falls-below-the-price-of-mining/ <comment><USER2> > It now appears the $3 to $33 prices for Bitcoin were due to speculation.

Come on. Was it ever attributed to anything but speculation.

<comment><USER3> yeah, I don't understand all the attention given to bitcoin. It's not like it's a system that's immune to systematic manipulation. Anyone operating under the assumption that bitcoin is a stable system is naive.

I'm open to being wrong about my assumptions.

<comment><USER4> > Anyone operating under the assumption that bitcoin is a stable system is > naive.

"Stable" as in exchange rate, no. But the bitcoin technology in itself is really solid, and will continue to work well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is this really a bad thing? Now people can stop hoarding them and start really using them as currency. It never really mattered what they were worth unless you were holding onto them. If you use bitcoins to enable transactions only and keep your money in real dollars then it can be pretty useful.

<comment><USER6> It is if the only reason that they have value in the first place was the hoarding and speculating, which seems a reasonable interpretation of events to date. A currency of no value is not useful for trade.

I mean that "if" as a true logical statement, not an implied assertion that it must be true. (I do believe that, but I'm not asserting it right now, because I'm not defending it.)

<comment><USER5> Its apparent that people are finding value in them aside from their speculated worth. They are using them to facilitate anonymous transaction and more easily transact internationally. Whether those use cases are valuable enough to keep people using bitcoins, I can't say.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every bitcoin opposer repeats, that the money will artificially start going up and that is why it will crash.

Right now, it is going down, for a long time. So that is not why it will fail.

It will fail because noone actually needs it. It has no real value over other means of electronically exchanging money - paypal, for example, is much faster, easier to use and, dwhile it is not free, thanks to the wild exchange rate of bitcoin, one will probably still have more money from paypal than bitcoin money exchange.

There is no place to spend bitcoin, because most of the people don't CARE that it's centralized and someone can watch it, because it is infinitely easier to use paypal to just PAY STUFF, instead of going through the pains to exchange bitcoins through shady sites, wait DAYS to get it on your wallet, then wait hours until the blockchain is downloaded, then wait another hours since the block is 6 times confirmed.

Maybe it will work in the end, it's nicely designed and all. But I don't see anyone using it right now. There is no real reason to do so.

<comment><USER8> Value is arbitrary. None of the major world fiat currencies have any inherent value. They are backed by nothing.

Reminds me of an episode of This American Life. Brazil's currency was down the toilet, so they invented a new currency and tricked the populace into thinking it had value.

[http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/423/t...](http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio- archives/episode/423/the-invention-of-money)

<comment><USER9> The price level is more or less arbitrary, but the value of fiat money is not just a shared hallucination. It ultimately comes from taxes. MMTers say that Taxes Drive Money: [http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2011/07/mmp- blog...](http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2011/07/mmp-blog-8-taxes- drive-money.html)

Some anthropologists say that this is how money got started in the first place around the palaces in ancient Egypt. In more modern history, there are stark examples of how "taxes drive money" really does work to monetize an economy; search for "Hut taxes".

<comment><USER10> Even non-MMTers. If you are from the US, you have to pay your taxes in US dollars, and judgments in court against you are payable in USD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One of these things will happen: (1) A successful attack on Tor, (2) A successful attack on Bitcoin, (3) The Silk Road's (or similar site's) share of the black market will continue to grow rapidly.

<comment><USER4> It seems pretty inevitable in the longer term. If current technologies break up, new technologies will be popping up. I guess law enforcement has already lost this battle (in the long term), similarly as RIAA/MPAA has lost to piracy.

It should also be noted that criminal use doesn't raise the price of bitcoins, since criminals don't necessarily hold their bitcoins. For them bitcoin is just an another money laundering system.

<comment><USER11> _It should also be noted that criminal use doesn't raise the price of bitcoins, since criminals don't necessarily hold their bitcoins. For them bitcoin is just an another money laundering system._

Disagree. There's a "float" period between when the order is placed and when it's completed (service/goods verifiably delivered). The dollar-value volume in this float period sets a floor on the market cap of Bitcoin.

I'm clearly fascinated by all this, and a little surprised that more people aren't. The Bitcoin protocol is one of the great recent innovations in distributed systems, and this particular application of it is the culmination of a lot of crypto work into a cypherpunk fantasy.

<comment><USER12> >a cypherpunk fantasy

yep. All your transactions are recorded for posterity and law enforcement can access them at anytime. The moment i first time heard about bitcoin i immediately read their paper and this was the instant end between me and BT - it is either a honeypot or an NSA's distributed "calculate these hashes@HOME" project. Most probably it started as the latter and once NSA had gotten enough results and withdrew the funding (which supported the currency valuations stable growth before speculation rushed in), the BT now is only the former.

<comment><USER13> Satoshi's white paper disproves everything you just said. Either your comment is out of ignorance or out of malice. Go read the white paper.

<comment><USER12> our reading of the same paper seems different (i mean if you did really read it). Well, don't believe me, check this out:

[http://gawker.com/5805928/the-underground-website-where- you-...](http://gawker.com/5805928/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy- any-drug-imaginable)

"Jeff Garzik, a member of the Bitcoin core development team, says in an email that bitcoin is not as anonymous as the denizens of Silk Road would like to believe. He explains that because all Bitcoin transactions are recorded in a public log, though the identities of all the parties are anonymous, law enforcement could use sophisticated network analysis techniques to parse the transaction flow and track down individual Bitcoin users."

<comment><USER14> You don't even need "sophisticated techniques", you can follow the transactions in <http://blockexplorer.com/>

ALL transactions, including the receiver and sender addresses are public. They _have_ to be, since the global bitcoin network has to verify and add them to the blockchain.

 _A full copy of a currency's block chain contains every transaction ever executed in the currency. With this information, one can find out how much value belonged to each address at any point in history._

<https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_chain>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Can someone give a concrete example of themselves using Bitcoins for something other than speculative trade ?

<comment><USER16> I sold my motorcycle for coins.

I was buying a lot of article writing service (0% payment fees is nice!)

I shipped several orders from international customers in my <http://store.gifti.us> and accepted payments in bitcoins (0% foreign transaction fees is nice too!).

I bough steam codes.

I built somewhat profitable for short period of time site - <http://betco.in> and used some profit in bitcoins to pay for development work on open source project.

EDIT:

Bought, just like few other visitors, articles in PDF at <http://ubitio.us>. This is also project of mine and I am going to contribute it to open source soon, so just another bit into bitconomy.

And I am working on two other projects involving products/services and bitcoin :)

This is just what came in to my head right away...

<comment><USER17> I'm curious, how have you found the currency value volatility for buying and selling goods and services?

I envision a bitcoin meme: 0% fees, 1000% volatility :)

<comment><USER16> It is stable enough to be able to convert bitcoins to usd at predicted rate (marked is liquid enough - and this is where speculators are good evil).

I am converting to usd only part needed to pay suppliers and rest leave in coins for now. Agree, income is fluctuating. But I am ok with it since so far I did not see technical issues with bitcoins itself.

But you are right - as I said below, huge fluctuation (although, what time period you used for 1000% fluctuation claim?) is a problem. And I will welcome stabilization at any level. Although market is too small to be stabilized soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone know what the conversion rate between bitcoins and Dutch tulips is right now?

<comment><USER19> Today the joke-explainer duty falls upon me:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania>

Even if you are familiar with the expression, the full article is well worth reading.

<comment><USER20> Indeed, those who deal with web 2.0 startups would be well advised to read that article.

<comment><USER16> These who advise to read this article better read it in full themselves. Especially part where it is explaining jumps from futures contract to options and back. And how this affect price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It is essential to remember that there is massive inflation of the money supply going on (by design), and that this is the key driver of the price downwards. ~35% increase in the money supply over the next 12 months; proportionately higher over the last 12 (as the same in absolute terms).

Its rise to $30 was driven by hype and speculation. The falling prices stop any speculators jumping on board, and there is no significant 'economy' yet. The rate of money supply increase will be halved in 2013, so don't expect any recovery before then.

<comment><USER4> > The rate of money supply increase will be halved in 2013, so don't expect > any recovery before then.

The value is mostly driven by mass psychology, the inflation caused by miners is only one factor.

If some goverment-issued currency would start hyperinflating, bitcoin or similar cryptocurrency would be pretty good choice for people to move to.

<comment><USER22> So they should jump out of a highly liquid, government-backed security that's proving untrustworthy to go into an experimental currency that's relatively illiquid? I'd think they'd go towards gold, which seems like the opposite direction.

If people are jumping out of a printed currency to avoid inflation, they're going to want something where they know it's easy to convert back into something you can buy things with. Jumping into a cryptocurrency for their cash holdings would require they believe that they can easily jump back out.

<comment><USER4> Of course it would require more infrastructure around bitcoin. There is already an impressive amount of exchanges, and it would be pretty easy to exchange bitcoins with software like android bitcoin wallet. excellent app btw: <https://market.android.com/details?id=de.schildbach.wallet>

Gold isn't really a good instrument of exchange. Gold-backed currencies are, but the central issuer has proved problematic historically.

Of course cryptocurrency used widespreadly is just a nerd fantasy right now, but I believe in it more than to a new gold standard :)

<comment><USER22> It's not a matter of infrastructure. It's a matter of belief: people who are looking for safety and refuge from inflation aren't going to move their money into a less-liquid, less-tangible asset with no track record (relative to alternatives.)

Moving cash into bitcoin would make sense if there were some inherent advantages: better returns, more liquidity, better privacy, more stable values, faster transactions. So far, I don't really see any of those being offered; it's essentially an experiment, and folks who are using it are either doing to speculatively or for curiosity value, not economic reasons.

<comment><USER23> > people who are looking for safety and refuge from inflation aren't going to > move their money into a less-liquid, less-tangible asset with no track > record (relative to alternatives.)

I will. The point is, _at the margin_ , some people will. All and at once? Never! The more adventurous and tentatively? Yes.

Now it all depends on relative outcome of different strategies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As much as bitcoin's gotten some bad press recently, this kind of market volatility will severely hamper bitcoin's efficacy as a stable unit of currency. It _needs_ a consistent and stable rate of growth (even if negative).

<comment><USER10> I think more that it needs some utility over other currencies within some context. That utility margin will bring stability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Bitcoin is essentially a giant pyramid scam. The early adopters have cashed out long ago. As mining gets more and more difficult, less people will cling to the liquid currency. Why trade with a deprecating currency, anonymous or not? The fact that the exchange rate is below the cost of mining should be alarming for many reasons.

I'd assume the creator/first adopters do not care, either way.

<comment><USER4> It's free market, everyone is free to buy and sell as they wish. It's not a scam since there is the same information to everyone.

I'm pretty sure that the early adopters couldn't guess this year's rise in value, and couldn't guess the price drop either.

While I believe in bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in the longterm, I'm still pretty sure that bitcoin value will stay very volatile in the coming years. The stability will take time, and widespread adoption for this kind of innovation will take years if not tens of years.

<comment><USER21> Your reply missed his point as bitcoin is 'mined' not just bought and sold. The difficulty of that mining is set based upon the computing power of the miners. Add to this the fact that the number of coins available to be mined each day is designed to be reduced over time, and you end up with early adopters (formost of which being the creators) controlling a massive proportion of the total worth of bitcoins.

<comment><USER4> Well, I guess that most startups are pyramid scams, since the founders (early adopters) end up controlling massive proportion of the total worth of the company.

<comment><USER26> If the startup founders create the company specifically to sell a worthless product to investors, then yeah, it's a scam.

Also Bitcoin is not a company, any more than US Dollar is.

<comment><USER14> Only if they say they aren't worthless. Which in this case they don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bitcoin is something completely new and different. It is like open source software. Until people really understand it, it will be toy for geeks with similar market coverage and price. (or someone find design bug and we can forget about it)

Biggest hurdle when using bitcoins is not it's high/low price, but rather fluctuation.

Fluctuation happens because too many speculate it and not trade with it (well.. currency trading is also trading..) And I would say this is totally expect-able and acceptable.

With time if this technology will prove itself, it become major online payment method. And believe me - work on this project is very active right now. All this investing mumbo-jumbo is just a random noise...

<comment><USER27> No I think it's because bitcoin's reputation had been thoroughly trashed due how much the early adopters made off with. Any mention of bitcoin now just leaves a sour aftertaste.

<comment><USER16> another one...

who cares? Do you care federal reserve guys can print as many dollars for themselves? Does it prevent you from using dollars to buy stuff in walmart?

Difference from FED is that it happens to bitcoin only once - during initial distribution. After all coins "printed" - no more coins will be thrown into circulation.

Initial distribution have to be made somehow. And I believe people who invested their time and money earlier have to be paid accordingly.

Read paper. This is not money question. This is technology question.

<comment><USER27> Well what I'm saying is that people will avoid bitcoin out of spite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I like bitcoin.

It bought me an iPad 2 when I cashed out my 3 weeks worth of mining at the height of the bubble.

</comment><comment><USER29> Here was Jason Calacanis's take on May 15: "Bitcoin P2P Currency: The Most Dangerous Project We've Ever Seen" -- "We are 100% certain that governments will start banning bitcoins in the next 12 to 18 months. Additionally, we're certain bitcoins will soar in value and a crush of folks will flood the system and start using them." [http://www.launch.is/blog/l019-bitcoin-p2p-currency- the-most...](http://www.launch.is/blog/l019-bitcoin-p2p-currency-the-most- dangerous-project-weve-ev.html)

<comment><USER30> Who gives a shit what some famous spammer says about crypto-currency?

Plus, how do you ban something like this?

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure what you mean, you ban it exactly the same as you ban copyright infringement or child porn or any of a dozen other crimes that are committed on a computer that simply involve a transfer of information between a few parties.

<comment><USER32> So, in other news - governments everywhere ban bitcoin. Bitcoin use soars wildly.

<comment><USER24> Not sure where you make that assumption from. If bitcoin never gets adopted as legal tender for real world goods its value gets severely limited. If Government's explicitly state that bitcoin is not legal tender, and I can't buy a latte at Starbucks with it then its not very useful.

<comment><USER30> But if you can buy things privately or online with bitcoins, bitcoins will be used without government permission, and will have value.

SilkRoad works.

<http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/silkroad/>

[http://gawker.com/5805928/the-underground-website-where- you-...](http://gawker.com/5805928/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy- any-drug-imaginable)

<comment><USER24> I'm not saying that Bitcoin won't have value, my response is to the grandparent that makes the argument that bitcoin usage would explode if it were made illegal. It seems to me bitcoin would be further marginalized in that case, hardly a catalyst for growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> To everyone mentioning the great Dutch tulip debacle: Tulips are a commodity, the coin is a currency. Bubbles can be analogous, but they aren't tautological. Just a thought.

</comment><comment><USER34> good thing I made a bunch of money by trading BC intra-day when it hit mainstream.

seriously, did anyone expect this to be a "new paradigm"? it was a fun toy for financially-minded engineers and traders, but I can't say I'm surprised to hear that it's in free-fall.

i wonder where the bottom is? Once it drops well below USD1.00, I think I'll buy a bunch on a cheap bet :)

<comment><USER35> I thought it'd be the new paradigm, but closed my bitcoin blog when I saw how terrible the client was and couldn't see it improving that much. Just waiting on bitcoin 2.0 from lessons learned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> this reminds me about the quora post about bitcoin. In a world of where there is no regulation in currency, you dont have a FED, this money will crash. We dont have liquidity in this currency, as so, nobody can 'inject' money in the market.

<comment><USER37> Gold also has no fed to 'inject' money. It does have miners though. It has not crashed and appears to be more stable that fiat currencies, not less. (not a bit coin or gold standard fan here, just confused.)

<comment><USER38> [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/US_Histor...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/US_Historical_Inflation_Ancient.svg)

If you look at this, you can see that gold is _more_ volatile and spiky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Bittulips?

</comment><comment><USER40> All I have to say is "wow". The commenters here are atrocious. If you're going to rage against BitCoin, (and I'm no huge fan), at least bother yourself to have half a clue what they are instead of spouting lies here in some vicious attack on them.

</comment><comment><USER41> Porn is to the Internet as selling drugs is to Bitcoin.</comment>


Jenova Chen: How Journey's creator went bankrupt and won game of the year - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/08/an-interview-with-jenova-chen-how-journeys-creator-went-bankrupt-and-won-game-of-the-year/

<comment><USER2> >Journey went on to become the best-selling PlayStation Network game of all time. Chen doesn't know for sure, but presumably it will earn royalties.

I'm sorry. I can't parse this statement. It's the best-selling PSN game of all time, but they don't know if they'll even make royalties _for sure_?

<comment><USER3> Thatgamecompany was under contract with Sony to produce three titles, of which Journey was the last. One can only assume that they had already been paid according to the terms of the contract. Perhaps there weren't any provisions for royalties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Single platform games suck... I really want to play this game and yet I probably never will.

Same story with Fez on Xbox...

<comment><USER5> Actually, Fez is being ported to other (yet unnamed, but probably Steam) platforms: <http://polytroncorporation.com/state-of-the-polytron>

<comment><USER4> Awesome!

But for Journey there's little hope. ([https://getsatisfaction.com/thatgamecompany/topics/will_jour...](https://getsatisfaction.com/thatgamecompany/topics/will_journey_be_available_on_other_platforms))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Now that I have a startup that make games, it became shockingly clear on how easy is to create products that attract praise and still don't make any money, specially without marketing budget leverage or unethical tactics.

<comment><USER7> Praise from whom? I assume critics, not users, because paying for a full version of Journey was an _absolute_ no brainer.

<comment><USER6> Both.

My games for example frequently hit 4/5 or 5/5 with critics.

And my average score with users is about 4.8, also I receive lots of positive message and so on.

But people are happy to settle with free versions and not pay anything, also we have some bizarre amount of piracy even for free versions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Journey is worth buying a used PS3 for.

</comment><comment><USER9> I came here thinking this was about the 80's band of the same name. I am disappointed.</comment>


OpenDiablo2 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/OpenDiablo2/OpenDiablo2 <comment><USER2> I played Diablo2 for almost 19 years. Then the Blitzchung controversy happened. Now Diablo2, and all Blizzard products are dead to me, and imo they should be dead to you all as well.

<comment> jean- For those who are wondering what the parent is referring to: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy) They banned a player who voiced support for the Hong Kong protests.

<comment><USER3> This is serious concern for me regarding the rise of China. Access to their market is already so valuable that they are able to impose their censorship program internationally via implicit threat against corporate proxies abroad. See the similar NBA Hong Kong controversy[0] and the YouTube 'communist bandit' ordeal[1].

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Basketball_Associatio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Basketball_Association_criticisms_and_controversies#2019_Hong_Kong_protests) [1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/27/youtube-china-communisty- par...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/27/youtube-china-communisty-party- comments.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey, just gonna take this opportunity to plug my very similar project for Diablo 1: [https://github.com/wheybags/freeablo](https://github.com/wheybags/freeablo)

<comment><USER5> Nice!

Since it's written in C++, does it compile to WebAssembly?

<comment><USER4> I guess it could, but I haven't tried yet. It uses SDL and opengl, which I gather are well supported. You'd still need to load the original assets though, so it would maybe be more useful as a demo with some new assets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unfortunately Blizzard has a history of shutting down open source projects of implementations of their IP, I would be surprised if they don't go after this.

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

<comment><USER7> I've thrown in the towel on some of my favorite games, anything from Blizzard, Nintendo (Zelda), and obviously EA.

I think it "Clicked" when someone said 'none of the programmers that made Old_Game even work there anymore'

These companies are selling IP, not a sequel. When you buy modern Zelda, you don't get Majora's Mask, you get a 2015 action game skinned with Link.

Blizzard is a corporation that owns the characters and names. However you can play Diablo clones that are significantly better in 2020. You just need to be okay without Cain.

Nolstagia is a hella drug.

<comment><USER8> Flare RPG and Nethack are both better than Diablo.

When I discovered libre games thanks to Linux/BSD and some source ports with total conversions, I was sold.

There was 2000 times better quality on a lot IF and now called "indies" than most games since 2002.

<comment><USER9> Isn't Nethack a completely different game though?

Nethack is a turn-based roguelike. Diablo is an action-oriented dungeon crawl (the original at least; I never played Diablo 2 or 3). To me they don't "feel" the same enough to compare which one is better.

I'm a fan of roguelikes too, by the way. If you want to try a somewhat different roguelike for Linux, I recommend Teleglitch (commercial, scifi, quirky graphics, real-time, brutal gameplay).

edit: and Duskers! How could I forget Duskers! For a really different scifi roguelike: [http://duskers.misfits-attic.com/](http://duskers.misfits- attic.com/)

<comment><USER8> Sorry, to me a roguelike must be top down and turn based.

I have a good list here. Nethack, DCSS, the old TOME 2.x releases, SCrap...

I avoid CDDA because I hate games with no clear ending or objectives ingame.

<comment><USER9> I respect your purism! But do try Duskers, regardless of classification. It's a cool game and shares some traits with roguelikes: autogenerated world, stuff to find and equip, permadeath, and high difficulty as the game progresses (though it's deceptively easy when starting).

Teleglitch is punishingly difficult from the start, and pretty fast paced too, so maybe give that one a pass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool! I would love to play this natively on Linux.

I would also really like to easily read somewhere, website or github, what the status of the project is. Is Diablo II (with or without LoD) entirely playable?

Do they actually also target other games as well? Their choice of words seem to indicate so: "OpenDiablo2 is an ARPG game engine in the same vein of the 2000's games, and supports playing Diablo 2." If so, which?

<comment><USER11> I only joined the project just this week, but I can tell you that the game isn't playable yet. It launches and runs, allowing you to create a character and walk around in town. Most functionality isn't wired up yet. There are a lot of opportunities to contribute.

There are no plans to support any other games, but it sounds like they expect to be able to use it to create new games.

<comment><USER12> is it cross-platform, since it's built in Go? runs on macOS?

<comment><USER13> I'm the lead and I use OSX Catalina :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For anyone interested in this sort of thing, ReGoth (Gothic 1 & 2) comes to mind and is still in active development: [https://github.com/REGoth- project/REGoth-bs](https://github.com/REGoth-project/REGoth-bs)

<comment><USER9> Wow.

Gothic 1 was one of my favorite RPGs of that era. The setting was intriguing (it was devised to limit the world, but it was an interesting way of doing so), the world felt "alive", with night-day cycles and NPCs going their way, working, etc. I still have the box lying somewhere, because I keep the boxes of my favorites games.

(Unfortunately, I don't think I have any way to read the original game discs anymore, so I have the game and at the same time I don't have access to its assets...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In an ideal world, Blizzard would get on board and help complete this, then sell an HD asset pack for a few bucks to make a quick million.

<comment><USER16> Why help complete this? If they would be willing to have an open source D2 out there, they can just release the original source code. It would seem even more "ideal" to me.

<comment><USER17> Fun (or sad) fact: they apparently lost a lot of the source code and assets. Looks like they were able to recover most of the code, but not the assets [1]

[1] [https://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-diablo-2-was-almost- lo...](https://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-diablo-2-was-almost-lost-and-why- a-remaster-is/1100-6471517/)

<comment><USER18> They said they lost the source code pre-release, but managed to reconstruct most of it. Given that it was released and that there have been many patches, I think the source code is fine.

I think the only thing they really lost are the hi-def assets from which the lower-def ingame assets were created.

<comment><USER19> Are you sure the in-game assets were created from hi-def versions rather than just being pixel art?

<comment><USER20> That's exactly what the article says.

<comment><USER19> Can you point to where? I can't find it, and a quick search for "resolution", "high", "quality", "def" turned up nothing. They say they lost the art assets but a bunch of pixel art tilemaps would fit that description, especially if they were composited down during the build process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For anyone interested in this sort of thing, OpenMW (Morrowind) comes to mind and is still in active development: [https://openmw.org/en/](https://openmw.org/en/)

<comment><USER22> This is great.

I wanted to try it on macOS Catalina but was too lazy to copy my GOG game files over from Windows. I noticed the top Morrowind torrent already comes with the "Data Files" folder unpacked from the installation.

Download OpenMW, run the wizard, point it at the Morrowind.esm file (from the torrent or your own installation), and click play. We now have a Morrowind that works on all OS.

Amazing stuff. Even detects mods dragged into the directory and lets you click and drag their load order.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone know why they switched from C# to Go?

<comment><USER24> Does anyone know why would you try to develop an opensource game in C# in the first place?

<comment><USER25> Presumably due to the wealth of C# code/libraries available to game devs. It's an incredibly popular language in that area, certainly more popular than Go.

There are plenty of good reasons not to use C#, but we shouldn't pretend that there aren't plenty of good reasons _to_ use it for specific problem spaces.

<comment><USER24> It works in frameworks like Unity Engine, but otherwise it ends up like Space Engineers Windows-only which is a shame.

<comment><USER26> A lot of indy devs are using Unity. Hell, a lot of non-indy devs use it. So that's not a big deal.

There are some other frameworks that use C# and are cross-platform. Monogame is the cross-platform replacement for MS's XNA, which targets most of the major game systems out there.

<comment><USER24> As the OpenDiablo2 developer has confirmed: cross-platform C# is a pain.

Yes, I understand that Windows is big and there are a lot of C# developers/fans here who immediately scream "What? C# can do anything!!!", but in practice MS doesn't support opensource where it matters and when it matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Sadly, this kind of engine rewrites need original data files. Alternative art content would be awesome (a la OpenTTD). Could donations help this?

<comment><USER28> I don't think this would be of interest for anyone surrounding this project. Requiring you to buy the original game keeps the publisher happy (to a certain level) and also gives you an argument for legality regarding the non-graphical content which might also be copyright protected.

<comment><USER29> If you are not using any of their content you are not violating their copyright.

<comment><USER30> But then you need to replace dialogues and storyline as well ? Also items/spells/mechanics can't be a straight clone ? So you would end up with a completely different game ?

<comment><USER31> Stat blocks aren't protected by copyright. Most game mechanics aren't patentable in the first place and Diablo patents would have expired.

Names fall under trademark law and even names that they've bothered to apply for (let alone all those rejected for various reasons) aren't difficult to change.

Story is a different question. The core story is incredible thin and derivative. Creating a new story wouldn't be very hard. That said, most players today would probably be much more interested in multiplayer anyway.

<comment><USER30> I'm thinking more along the lines of names + stats, and game rules in general, if that wasn't copyrightable I'd imagine nobody would have to license D&D to create a video game based on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Very exciting. Diablo 2 is one of the best games for me. Lore and universe is extremely interesting too

<comment><USER33> If you want a modern incarnation, Path of Exile is basically a homage to Diablo 2 with it's own universe and story but same complex and enjoyable mechanics.

<comment><USER34> I would hate being a newbie in PoE now a days. The game has gotten so bloated and ridiculously complex that it would take months to sort of grasp all the different league mechanics.

I honestly can't wait for Diablo 4 as a PoE veteran since beta, I just don't agree with most of the recent design decisions. Lack of visual clarity, mechanical clunkiness with movement skills, rng on rng on rng mechanics (just progressing through maps can be incredibly frustrating if you're on a dry spell and can't even get maps to drop).

It's almost as if the devs are intentionally creating frustrating mechanics, in a game...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Earlier this year I read "Stay a while and listen" by David Craddock and it made me reinstall diablo 2 after not touching it for 15 years. After disabling d3d11 in wine, it has been running with no issues on ubuntu 20.4

</comment><comment><USER36> Excellent work. I think it is long overdue that many of our childhood cherished games, books, cartoons etc are paralleled in open source. Stuff from 20 - 30 years ago was supposed to be public domain once upon a time, Blizzard already made billions then got paid billions again when they sold to Activision and it's never going to reach public domain. Instead of public domain we have each generation paying $100b to continue enjoying pokemon, Harry Potter, Barbie, super heroes, cartoons etc.

</comment><comment><USER37> For anybody interested in this, you should also check out Path of Diablo [https://pathofdiablo.com/](https://pathofdiablo.com/). It's a popular mod with a lot of QoL improvements and which borrows Path of Exile's robust endgame mapping system for replayability.

</comment><comment><USER38> Interestingly this is written in Golang. I wonder what the main considerations for choosing it were.

<comment><USER39> On top of the hat: Safe, fast compile times, takes care of memory management for you, powerful stdlib, fast and lean execution, straightforward readable code, portability, static compilation, swiss army knife tooling.

Potential downsides: Golang/libs maybe a bit immature for non- system/microservices projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is going to go poof to lawyers the moment they release their remasters.

<comment><USER41> I don't think so, I believe the worst case scenario is they might have to rename the project to not have 'Diablo' in its title.

Only project that I know Blizzard shut down was a Starcraft server re- implementation, presumably because it would allow you to play without having a legitimate cd-key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wish to get just one pence in whatever currency for every time one writes Golang instead of Go.

<comment><USER43> How about a brass razoo? [0]

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I actually don't understand the motivation behind these projects. Usually the games for which an open source engine is written for are quite old. Old enough that emulation should be more than sufficient to play these games on something like a Mac with an ARM based SoC. It is also not possible to exactly replicate the game without straight up reverse engineering the game's binary which will open you up for lawsuits. The end result is a very similar game that is merely sharing the same assets but it just isn't the same. If the project was created with the intention of allowing a new experience that is different from the original game then it will be harder than expected because you still need artists, musicians and so on to create more content. Ultimately I think people should focus on making a very good and very faithful clone instead of replicating an old game that still requires you to own the original and proprietary assets.

Of course everything I'm talking about could miss the point of the project and the contributors are just doing this for fun because they like writing code for games but can't create game art on their own.

<comment><USER45> OpenRA states in the about section

> This means that OpenRA is not restricted by the technical limitations of the > original closed-source games: it includes native support for modern > operating systems and screen resolutions...

I think this is the most compelling reason - it opens up features that would be way harder to realize in the original engine.

noteworthy

\- OpenXcom [https://openxcom.org/about/](https://openxcom.org/about/)

\- OpenRA [https://www.openra.net/about/](https://www.openra.net/about/)

\- OpenTTD [https://www.openttd.org/about.html](https://www.openttd.org/about.html)

<comment><USER46> > not restricted by technical limitations

Yup, if you play Sacred Gold or Disciples II using open frameworks you get a game that looks much newer. But more importantly, perpetually playable.

Disciples II has an edit that uses OpenGL that makes the game much faster and more playable, and gives widescreen.

Sacred has numerous mods, such as giving 1080p HD (and more).

The next question is going to be: "But why do you play those games?" To this I will ask, honestly, what is Fortnight anyway?

<comment><USER47> Do you by any chance have a link to the "open framework Sacred Gold" you mentioned?

It's been a while, but I sure would go look for my old disks to give it a try in FHD!

<comment><USER48> Hey heyens, here are my tips for you.

1) I used this [1] guide to get it working on Windows 10.

2) This [2] is a more detailed version with a lot of comments.

The bugs don't bother me that much to be honest, unless you want to complete all quests in a city, then you should have a look at them.

The tools one uses for configuration like dgVoodoo generally work, but I guess anyone could slip in malicious code if they really wanted to.

One final tip, the Hero Editor is a great way to edit your characters if you want to turn a fire mage into a wind one or stuff like that. Since multiplayer is not common these days, I reckon it's not cheating as you've lost all the benefits of multiplayer anyway. (I think the tool is just in German, not sure.) [3]

In terms of the open frameworks, it's not my area of specialty, but there is Sacred ReBorn, and there is even a Diablo 2 mod to Sacred. I believe even dgVoodoo does edit some files to use newer (open) frameworks.

[1] [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=84319...](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=843192504)

[2] [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=20187...](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2018712992)

[3] [http://www.sacredvault.org/forum/index.php?action=tpmod;dl=i...](http://www.sacredvault.org/forum/index.php?action=tpmod;dl=item45)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Serving websites from svn checkout considered harmful - <AUTHOR> http://scottbarnham.com/blog/2008/04/22/serving-websites-from-svn-checkout-considered-harmful/ <comment><USER2> svn export is also better than svn checkout whenever you just want to examine the code for something which you have no intention to use or modify.</comment>


The Guide to Cuba, a Ruby Micro Framework - <AUTHOR> http://theguidetocuba.io/online.html <comment><USER2> Micro-frameworks are a great way to get into web development if Rails is too intimidating. I cut my teeth on Sinatra. As I got more comfortable I started using Rails.

I now use Sinatra only if I'm absolutely sure that the project is not going to need anything more than a single page of code. I've re-implemented Rails functionality, poorly, way too many times.

Cuba looks much leaner and meaner than even Sinatra. Can't see many use cases for it, maybe if I were implementing a non-standard API for, say, a game engine. But who wants to use Ruby for a game? Pure HTTP applications, I can definitely see the appeal. But the second you need to serve HTML, you're gonna want Rails.

<comment><USER3> > I've re-implemented Rails functionality, poorly, way too many times.

It's been a looooong time since I last touched Rails, but I never really missed it when using Sinatra, mainly because of plugins/gems... I even wrote a few. (Currently I'm mostly using Go and C#, though).

Honest question, just so I know what I'm missing: what kind of functionality did you have to reimplement yourself?

<comment><USER2> The biggest thing I missed was separation between routes and controllers. In Sinatra they're combined, it takes a lot of hackery to implement Rails-style routes. But you're gonna need them more and more as your web app increases in complexity.

Rails takes everything involved in web applications, breaks it apart, and figures out how to best implement it, then writes a nice guide to help you navigate the convention. If you learn how Rails does it, you're pretty much learning how to 'best' do it. So you can, for sure, re-implement it in Sinatra, but why? Rails already has a one-liner that will do exactly what you wanted it to do.

Generators is another big win. Once you learn how that system works, and granted, right now it's really hairy and not nice at all, but when you wrap your head around it, you can really turbocharge your webdev workflow, giving you Lisp-like superpowers without having to suffer the pain of debugging your own tools.

The sheer amount of knowledge embedded into StackOverflow is another huge plus. Something not working? Chances are someone has figured it out, and has documented it on SO.

I take pragmatism very seriously as a coder. I don't want to spend hours trying to figure out weird little things. I've got better things I could be doing. Rails gives me superpowers I never even knew I needed. If you've used Sinatra to build anything more complex than a dead-simple API, which is the only thing I would use it for these days, then you've probably worked hard to implement something Rails has already figured out and turned into a one-liner.

I get this spidey-sense when I'm developing in Rails, I'll be like, "surely somebody has done this already" and I'll search around on Google. Sure enough, most times I find the exact code I needed. Rails is the Rome of webdev. All roads lead to it. Just swallow your pride and use it, and you'll have the might of its legions at your back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does this compare to grape ? Interested in mainly REST API's for things like mobile API

</comment><comment><USER5> Skimming over the headlines the name Marco Rubio jumped out at me. Cuba, Ruby, Micro...

Eh, Too much politics in the news lately....</comment>


Show HN: ManageYum A unified control panel to manage all your services. - <AUTHOR> http://manageyum.com/

<comment><USER2> So how deep does it get when you say, unified control panel? The challenge with myriad tools and unifying them all in one place would mean too much of context overlaps. How do you handhold the users?

<comment><USER3> I am David founder at ManageYum! Well will bring the data in, which needs their attention on day to day basis. We would be using the same technical jargons related to the services so they don't have anything new to learn.</comment></comment>


In a backyard in Erie, Pa., an unusual cardinal may be a gynandromorph - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/09/science/cardinal-sex-gender.html <comment><USER2> "The cardinal's right side appears to be male...while the left side seems to be female."

As a cardinal lover, what an interesting looking bird!

</comment><comment><USER3> The idea of a man spending 2 years visiting a retired lady's suburban backyard bird feeder to study a bird, which then had to end because another bird showed up and took over the territory, is amusing to me.

Some people have unusual/interesting jobs.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wasn't this just submitted... yesterday? Under the original title?

This text lifted from the subhed is oddly understated. "A cardinal that's half male, half female" is the piece's actual headline, easier to understand, and completely accurate.

<comment><USER5> Yes, but the word cardinal was triggering a bunch of lame responses, so we changed it to make it less baity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It seems on chrome you can refresh the page then immediately hit stop to read the article fine without subscription overlay.

</comment><comment><USER7> An avian Berg Katse! (Bird Katse?)

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought this was going to be a story about a very unusual catholic priest.

<comment><USER5> Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.</comment></comment>