Things to know before starting a Patreon page - <AUTHOR> http://pencerw.com/feed/2020/6/24/three-things-all-creators-should-know-about-patreon?mc_cid=cb178f4bd4&mc_eid=5ac3a20371 <comment><USER2> I would add - as a patron, the UI is horrible.

The one thing I'd like, when I subscribe to someone, is a list of patron-only content so that I can slowly go back and watch/listen to/read past material. Instead the only option is an infinite-scroll style blog roll, which makes it extremely hard to go back and pick up where you left off. It's also impossible to navigate in anything other than inverse chronological order. Atrocious.

<comment><USER3> I don't follow what you mean by wanting a list of this content, then you go onto describe the list that they give you.

If it was just paginated and let you sort forward or reverse chronologically, is that all you're asking for?

<comment><USER2> Ok, I'll go into detail.

I recently subscribed to (patronized?) Hand Tool Rescue. His patron-only content is narrated versions of his restoration videos, which typically run 20+ minutes long. I have time to watch one maybe every few days.

To go back and watch all of his old stuff:

1) Visit patreon.com. I'm logged in, so it takes me to /creator-home. It looks like this: [https://monosnap.com/file/PtG4Robbscnt7fns0omVO9a2D3IQul](https://monosnap.com/file/PtG4Robbscnt7fns0omVO9a2D3IQul) There are no links to who I'm following or content to consume.

2) After scratching my head a few minutes, click on my tiny persona icon top right, then click on "Posts from my creators". Now I'm looking at a blog roll of all my creators. There's a tantalizing "Patron Only Content" filter here, but that's for "all creators". There's a list of my creators on the left though, so...

3) Click on "Hand Tool Rescue" on the left side. Finally I'm looking at posts from HTR. But now there's no filter for Patron Only Content! WTF?

4) Let's see, where what was the last video I watched? Scroll down. And scroll. And scroll. Click the "More..." button. Scroll more. And scroll. "More..." again. Oh, here's where I left off. I think.

5) Oh, this is a 3-part series. Scroll down some more to the first part.

6) Open video in a new tab, watch the first couple minutes. Oh wait, I did already watch this part. Thankfully I didn't close the tab in #4 (learned that the hard way). Scroll back to the next part and watch it.

This is a trainwreck of UX. It's also pretty nearly my only interaction with patreon.com. I discover content on youtube and through friends, and rarely add/remove creators anyway.

All I want is to see is a dense easily navigable list of patron only content! Youtube is excellent for this - just a list of thumbnails. I really wish I could just pay HTR through Youtube.

BTW - before someone posts "You can sort inverse chronologically" \- yes, I now see that you can do that. It still doesn't reduce the total scrolling. It actually makes it somewhat worse, because HTR's first couple years of videos weren't narrated. Ugh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Works fine for me, when I'm not struggling to make progress on my work due to _waves vaguely at 2020_ , Patreon lets me pay my rent by drawing comics about robot ladies with reality problems and cartoon animal space operas.

YMMV obviously. I don't use any of its integrations, I just go to the web UI and upload a new page and type some stuff about it now and then, and also hit up my gloriously-unfashionable Wordpress-based site and add the same file to the secret-patrons-only whole-chapter-WIP page. Which does not bother doing any authentication because it's all ultimately gonna be free on the public pages of my site anyway.

I might get a bigger percentage if I fucked around with some other way to create recurring payments, sure. But my experience is that people now know what is up with Patreon, and are _much_ more likely to say "okay sure I'm in, I'll give you a few bucks per page of your weird-ass comics for a while" than to sign up for anything else I've ever done. Like I think I got all of fifty bucks, once, out of the Paypal donation button I used to have on my old comics. I've gotten several years of paying my rent out of Patreon and that lower signup friction is _well_ worth their cut IMHO.

(I will note that I do kinda feel like Patreon's sort of abandoned the per- creation model, it's not uncommon to see them roll out new features that only work on the monthly model. Which _really_ doesn't work for someone like me who can go silent for months at a time due to depression.)

<comment><USER5> You're completely right that the paypal "Donate" button was a complete dead end. I suspect though, that Patreon has actually just changed the audience expectations around how they're going to support creators, and if you went to the trouble of throwing up a simple patreon style page on your own using one of those cheap template websites, that's probably much closer to the success of Patreon than the paypal button. I'm not actually saying you should do that - obviously for most small creators a small percentage of a small amount is totally reasonable. But Patreon have a real problem if anyone successful naturally grows out of their platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> PSA: If you are in the USA (and 32 other locales), setup a github page and use github's sponsor functionality. They take no cut.

[https://github.com/sponsors](https://github.com/sponsors)

<comment><USER7> Patreon is recurring so you can get income from sleeper subscriptions.

<comment><USER8> GitHub sponsorship can also do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm currently using Patreon and GitHub Sponsors to accept donations. If you are doing anything software related, I would definitely encourage you to set up GitHub Sponsors right away.

GitHub Sponsors: \- Zero fees (compared to the ~10% Patreon takes) (!) \- They match all donations (up to a limit of $5000) for the first year (!!) \- Great exposure. Tons of people have found me through GitHub. (I don't think anyone ever found me through Patreon.)

It's still worth it for me to use both services, as some people have strong feelings about one or the other. And in fact, I also have a PayPal for people who don't trust either one. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not really sure what Patreon is to be honest. It's not payment processing - they're literally passing those costs to you. It's not a community, there's no cross-patron promotion or discoverability. It seems like it's essentially just a bad version of square space that wants to charge you a percentage of your revenue instead of $20 a month. It had this exciting opportunity to build a platform, but I think that time has passed, they've chosen not to do it, so all they have left is some rather poor CMS with an exploitative pricing model.

<comment><USER10> It's a centralised (not great) publishing platform where the main feature is that it supports "micro" payments.

As a user (rather than a creator) I like it because I don't have to faff around with separate payments across multiple sites, just once a month my credit card is billed the sum of all the sponsorships I want to make and I get an email to tell me where it all went to. I will tend to think twice before setting up a recurring donation to something that's not on patreon, simply because it's something new for me to keep track of.

TBH I almost never use it to get to the actual content, it's usually for sponsoring podcasts etc. that I was already listening to.

<comment><USER5> What throws me off about it being a platform is that ther'es basically no discoverability - you search for what you want, but it's never going to say "Hey, yo liked X, what do you think of Y"

<comment><USER10> Yeah. Kickstarter, for example, is good at that. I've backed a number of things because their recommendation system thought they might be interesting, and they were.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd love to know what the other options are out there, as mentioned in the article.

Right now, patreon is well known, and I'd be concerned with an unknown site turning supporters off.

<comment><USER12> Here's a thorough summary: [https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other- crowdfundi...](https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/other-crowdfunding)

(at the wiki of still-not-launched different type of patronage platform that is sharing its own research)

<comment><USER13> Looking through that, I see some Bitcoin-driven services. What I don't see are any that accept payments and pay out via a wide range of channels, from PayPal to Bitcoin. And for Bitcoin, I don't mean Coinbase or exchange accounts that enforce KYC rules. Stripe used to work with Bitcoin, but no longer.

<comment><USER14> We don't proactively search for new services or re-review those listed to make sure the information is still up to date[1].. but we do update the page if we hear about new ot changed services through other channels. So, if you or anyone else are aware of particular services that are notable for their flexibility in payment providers, please let me know and I'll add them to the page.

That said, I would not be surprised if none exist. The more payment processors you support, the harder it is to avoid handling the money directly, which means more legal hurdles (regulations, liability); the simpler alternative (that snowdrift.coop is currently pursuing, for those practical reasons, although it is limiting in some respects) is to coordinate donations though other platforms.

[1]: Aside, I was trying to write this sentence in the form "re-review the information for [up-to-date-ness]", but couldn't think of the right word. "Accuracy" is close, but doesn't capture the element of time. Any ideas?

<comment><USER13> up-to-date-ness = currency

It's not the usual meaning, and so confusing, although arguably the meanings are fundamentally consistent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm curious about the fee structure. I was under the impression that the vast majority of patronships were $1/mo. Maybe it's varies among media, since I only subscribe to YouTubers.

I pay $1/mo to like 15 different YouTubers. This adds up to $15/mo which to me is a reasonable price for entertainment. With patreon, I get billed once a month and their fees end up being like the article writes around 12%. If all these YouTubers switched to something like PayPal, now they'd be paying 30% fees on $1 payments instead.

</comment><comment><USER16> I would add that Patreon is not built for creators from India. The most important thing for a creator like me is that money gets directly transferred to my bank account; not my credit card or my paypal account. It's a psychological thing. And I think it is a significant thing because that is our middle class culture. Here a significant portion of the population don't spend money on their credit cards like people in other countries do.

The only two options on patreon are a credit card and paypal. The latter is also not that much in vogue.

These are just my thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER17> Patreon does not seem very spectacular but I don't exactly see what the reason _not_ to have a patreon page is. I have one and it is one of several different income sources for my open source work. it's 100 bucks a month I wouldn't have otherwise.

<comment><USER18> (Author of the post here)

I actually kind of agree with this: Patreon is indeed a good way to earn enough money to buy dinner once a week or whatever. I guess it's also good for big time influencer types who are in growth mode and not worrying about their overhead. I just think it's a mediocre solution if what you want is to create a stable, predictable, and mature small business out of your work.

I totally appreciated Patreon when I was starting out; it just really sucked to scale on, and switching to a more legit system was somewhat painful.

<comment><USER19> Which system did you switch to?

<comment><USER20> It's mentioned in the middle of the post:

> I moved to a combination of Quickbooks Online ($645/year; note that Intuit > is a terrible company) and Squarespace's ($480/year) recurring products > feature.

But the squarespace's recurring products feature seems focused more toward physical products than digital creative artifacts which I mainly associate Patreon with.

<comment><USER21> It's always hilarious how broken the American banking system is that you need to pay over $1000/year worth of tooling to receive recurring payments from patrons.

In the EU, you would just open a deposit-only checking account and paste its IBAN (International Bank Account Number) on your website, telling people to setup a recurring payment through their online banking and put their e-mail address or some other ID number in the message field so you can link it back to their account. All that for the price of a checking account, which wouldn't be much more than 10€/month. It's a bit of a barebones system; you wouldn't use it to handle 1000+ subscribers because the linking-back-to-their-account step would be manual. If you're on the scale of 10-100 subscribers with monthly or yearly payments, it works great. Several podcasts I listen to take donations like this.

<comment><USER22> Are you sure the bank would accept something like this? Wouldn't they change the account to a business account, to deal with things like taxes?

<comment><USER23> A business account is 10 euros a month. They don't have anything to do with taxes.

You can have as many deposits as you want as an actual person. Banks do not "change your account" without your intervention and definitely not to a business account, which (legally) needs different information than a personal account would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a detailed analysis. I was thinking to start Patreon but I tried Buymeacoffee page and turns out, it is slowly becoming like Patreon only. But better.

</comment><comment><USER25> Regarding most of this: I think this is why they built (bought?) Memberful.

<comment><USER26> Memberful was indeed an acquisition: [https://memberful.com/blog/joining- patreon/](https://memberful.com/blog/joining-patreon/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> > If your intention is to build a meaningful income, there are much better > options out there than Patreon.

Naming at least one in the article wouldn't been helpful.

</comment><comment><USER28> Didn't they also have a large data breach?

</comment><comment><USER29> 4\. If you are slightly more right wing than Mitt Romney, you will get banned.

<comment><USER30> I must have missed a story or two. Can you point me in the right direction for further research?

<comment><USER29> [https://unherd.com/2019/01/the-politics-of-the-patreon- purge...](https://unherd.com/2019/01/the-politics-of-the-patreon-purge/)

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvqeev/crowdfunding- site-...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvqeev/crowdfunding-site-patreon- is-purging-far-right-figures)

[https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/blakemontgomery/the- alt...](https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/blakemontgomery/the-alt-right- has-a-payment-processor-problem)

<comment><USER30> Thank you. That's helpful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > If your intention is to build a meaningful income, there are much better > options out there than Patreon.

I would have liked the author to expand on that (bolded) sentence. If he knows better options, please tell us!

</comment><comment><USER32> The article is complaining that Patreon is not a full banking app.

Well, duh.

Patrons and small-time creators are very happy with what it does, and don't care about what it doesn't do - Patreon pays the monthly rent of a lot of artists who have no other short-term options until their career is in full- swing. By contrast, Youtube is notorious for being unreliable as a revenue source.

My only complaints about Patreon are:

\- the app is one of the slowest web apps today. Actually, I lied - it's the slowest. Shame on the programming team behind this. Get your shit together.

\- they just started charging sales tax on donations if the creator offers rewards content (almost all do so.) That doesn't make sense for posting a video link a day early, foreign artists, etc.

\- I think a VC bought Patreon. We know how that always ends.

My suggestions are:

\- profile the app performance and fix it.

\- maybe ask the article author what he's expecting for discoverability on a payment app. Perhaps adding a couple pieces of metadata alone might help?

Source: I used it daily as a Patron from July, 2019 through June, 2020 while providing feedback to a creator.

<comment><USER18> (Author of the blog post here)

Point taken, though I'm not sure that's _exactly_ what I said. My complaint re: accounting is that Patreon integrates _horribly_ with QBO. If they cared, they would have a webhook that rolled up all collected pledges, payment processing fees, sales taxes and platform fees into a single sales receipt so that QBO et al could ingest and record it as a sale (or a list of sales).

Also, the thing about "revenue" vs "earnings" on their creator side analytics is just straight up deceptive. They don't need to be accounting software, but that doesn't mean that they can throw around accounting terms however they want.

<comment><USER32> I don't know any artists who use QuickBooks, so I'm not sure where you're coming from. You're in some kind of parallel universe to the people happily using Patreon to collect from their followers.

And they don't care about "revenue" vs "earnings" since they went to Berklee College of Music, and just want to pay their rent this month.

To be constructive:

\- explain your use case in your blog. Perhaps you have an advanced use case that would be a good roadmap for future features

\- or go use Stripe or Paypal payments for payment processing. Patreon is community funding software.

<comment><USER33> I work with many freelance photographers who use QBO, so it is common in some industries.

BTW, your example sounds a bit like those people have a complete disregard for tax law. That sounds like the end of the year is going to be very shocking when they figure out that the patreon money which they used for rent wasn't actually theirs to use.

<comment><USER34> it's been my experience that if you have to pay rent or keep the money for taxes you will pay rent and then later get punished for not paying the taxes, because if you don't pay the rent now later is going to suck anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> you know that feeling when you worked at a company, and you tried to push it in a certain direction, but the powers that be made it impossible to really get to the core issues? yeah.

</comment><comment><USER36> If you send money with the expectation of a perk or reward, (other than the continued production of the video/podcast/etc) than you're not really a patron any more. You're a customer.</comment>


Ask HN: Need Help Finding a Laptop, or Perhaps Motivation - <AUTHOR>

Hello there.
So currently I am a statistician but I also have a part time job doing data analysis for a non-profit.  I enjoy both jobs however I'm getting more interested in programming.  Not just to automate some of the more boring tasks I do at my main job but because it interests me.  I have a decent amount of experience with HTML and CSS and luckily at work I'm able to take some classes even if it only intertwines with my work occasionally.
So in my free time (after the kids and wife go to bed) I like to work on either learning more about Python or working on some web projects.  However I find it hard to really focus in my office at home possibly because it's where I do my work when I work at home. I also have a Mac Mini setup I occasionally set up in the other room but that becomes a hassle to put it away or set it up.
Therefore I've come to the conclusion that a laptop might cure what ails me.  I could set up anywhere in the house or even outside on the deck when it's nice out.  Ideally I would love a Retina Macbook Pro or even an Air but price is definitely an issue.  I've also looked into used Thinkpads (thanks to the guide I occasionally see posted on HN) but eBay doesn't seem to be working in my favor.  I've honestly been hoping a friend or family member has their laptop break so I can fix it and keep it, just because it would be cheap (and I enjoy that type of thing). Perhaps it's all just because I like having all kinds of toys around.
So all of that to really ask if someone can point me in the right direction for a laptop, or do I really just need to work with what I have?
Trying to stay around or less than $200 USD, and would like something ok, just not too big and clunky. <comment><USER2> I think getting away from the office with a laptop is a great idea.

A few thoughts:

If you're not really using the Mac Mini, why not sell it to subsidize your laptop?

If you're running Linux {or OSX} you can SSH into your work computer and actually work in other parts of the house using the laptop. This highlights the fact that you don't necessarily need a lot of power in the laptop if you're willing to configure your other hardware to provide some services...and configuring computers to work together is some quality tinkering.

Anyway, I bought a Thinkpad X201 Tablet for less than $200 off ebay including a replacement battery. It's mostly just a matter of patience and willingness to accept that it will be used instead of new. I'm usually booting into the Ubuntu partition with Grub but have the included Windows 7 as an option [that looks like it will be upgraded to 10 at the end of the summer].

It's a bit like the pleasure [and pain] of owning an old car.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> While not a bad idea to sell the mac mini, I kind of like having it plus eventually will probably use it as a server (it's basically a media center downstairs). I suppose I can just be patient and look around for an Thinkpad X series.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You could get something like a chromebook, and if you need more performance remote into one of the other computers?

But first try to figure out how to fix that you can't focus in your office. Do you get distracted? Maybe the issue there can be fixed, or is something that would translate to other places. If you get distracted browsing reddit or HN a laptop won't help you ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly I just don't feel comfortable in my office. Although my chair is comfortable and ergonomic and my desk setup is very comfortable. The room isn't small but it makes me feel confined. However if I go to a more open area I feel like I can focus more.

</comment></comment><comment> andrew-lucker $200 is definitely viable to find a laptop, check Amazon for example. The question now is what development environment do you want? Windows, Mac, or Linux?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd really like OSX but I suppose I wouldn't be really upset with Linux because of my price range. I haven't looked at Mac prices in a while but I'm assuming it would probably be a core 2 duo MacBook at best for around 200.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I do my work on a MacPro. My eleven year old daughter wants a computer, so I took her to Computer World and built the exact same "specs" from a no brand company (so for example HardDrive is the same, but it doesn't look like a mac).

Total Cost $288 last november maybe.

Hope that helps.</comment>


Residents of Colorado Springs undertook a radical experiment in government - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-springs-libertarian-experiment-america-215313 <comment><USER2> It makes for a rare look into what happens when you finally elect the "just run government like a business" candidate. Whoops, turns out there's a reason we have different words for those two things. OTOH, that hospital deal, man, someone on the city council better have been getting some kickbacks if only to excuse such poor negotiating.

<comment><USER3> The politicians spend other people's money poorly so the people elect a businessman to stop spending money. The businessman stops spending most of the money but what he has he spends poorly. The people elect a politician who now only has the small amount of money left by the businessman and is forced to spend it wisely.

I think that is a resounding success.

<comment><USER2> The problem is that the populous cannot elect the "run it like a business" candidate _twice_. Your analysis says it was a success (and I'm not disagreeing), but they needed a different kind of candidate to come in and clean up. So though it might work once in a while, you couldn't make a "run it like a business" party/platform with any degree of success.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Colorado Springs resident here. I think the article provided a pretty fair assessment of things, considering it addressed how [previous Mayor] Bach identified bad deals such as the Memorial Hospital deal and the power plant scrubber. This town's leadership in general has been dysfunctional for a long time; Bach wasn't the cure-all that many had hoped he would be.

Couple of additional thoughts:

Regarding the (new) Mayor's success in getting $250M for roads: what isn't mentioned is that the roads in this town are _abysmal_. When I lived in Northern Virginia many moons ago, I joked that I could always tell when I drove into DC by the effect on my car's handling. Having just come back from a vacation to that area, I can affirm that Colorado Springs has surpassed DC in this respect.

The neglect of the roads was another petulant move by the City towards voters, just like the streetlights.

Secondly, despite so often being painted as an arch-conservative western extension to the bible belt, Colorado Springs is a pretty tolerant, open- minded city. I'd suggest checking out the /r/ColoradoSprings section on Reddit, especially where people ask about how LGBT-friendly, etc the place is, and read the answers from some of the other locals. It isn't the town out of "Footloose".

</comment><comment><USER5> A good read despite the ridiculous headline.

Colorado is an amazing place.

The article quotes a journalist:

>> "This town is so easily scammed," says John Hazlehurst, himself a former councilmember and now a columnist with the Colorado Springs Business Journal. "Why? Because we're hicks. It's really that simple."

No, I don't think that's fair. The people are nice, that's all.

<comment><USER6> Being nice doesn't mean you need to be vulnerable.

Being uneducated or otherwise deficient is how you become vulnerable. That council members choice of words was a self portrayal and a critical one at that.

Honest and hard self-critique is incredibly valuable and likely earned that person a few votes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Usually I down-vote political articles on HN but this one I like. It's balanced, good analysis, and really discusses government theory and management, as opposed to the usual partisan stuff we see.

</comment><comment><USER8> While the article was kind of inconclusive, I found the pictures of 'notable people' inside quite amusing. I guess 'a guy in a business suit standing on the side of the road' is a good image for small town mayor.

<comment><USER6> How could it be conclusive? It is really hard to make objective declarations when messy things, like people, are involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How bizarre that this article is flagged.</comment>


Bitcoin Is Evil (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/bitcoin-is-evil/ <comment><USER2> Bitcoin as unit of account (measure of value) does not exist. Products sold in bitcoin are priced in local conventional currencies and bitcoin price is altered frequently to match the changes in Bitcoin valuations.

Now somebody may say "That's now but wait until Bitcoin takes over the world." That's a another problem. Global currency or fixing exchange rates is not a good idea (Bretton Woods was a failure). There is thing called optimum currency area. Euroarea is in trouble because it misses many criteria for optimum currency area. They are fixing them now. Without global fiscal union, world government and free movement of labour, global currency and single global unit of account is not a good thing.

As a payment system it's already choking and can't easily move value form one person to another. You need intermediaries and intermediaries between intermediaries to fix the system. If you end up using Visa or Mastercard payment system to pay in BTC what's the point?

I think cryptocurrencies and have a place in the future, but Bitcoin is not it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think it takes a Nobel prize to realize that BitCoin, given its recent extreme volatility, currently makes for a poor medium of exchange.

EDIT: This article is actually from 2013. Around the time Bitcoin went from ~10 to ~1000 USD. I suppose the same was true at that time. Bitcoin was relatively stable hovering around ~500USD from 2014 to 2017.

<comment><USER4> This reminds me of a quote it once read on a board. Someone claimed that his gold "became much much more". The other guy replied: "Lucky you. I checked mine. It did not become more at all, it is the same amount of gold that was there before. Only the dollar declined."

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions._

"evil"

<comment><USER6> Why wouldn't it be evil? Without the ability to collect tax the first ones to suffer are the poor who get increasingly deprived of social welfare programs or rejected for loans and fair interest rates by banks who have to increasingly tighten their credit standards. Without the ability to monitor financial transactions black markets run wild and facilitate the exchange of money for illegal goods and services.

<comment><USER7> I think you could equally say it allows bypassing oppressive taxes and allows citizens to bypass draconian snooping, it is all a matter of perspective.

<comment><USER8> Something high-net-worth-individuals had access to since forever, not more- and-more available to the common man.

Disruption?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can we add "2013" to the title?

</comment><comment><USER10> I began working in the late 90's as a web developer. Then adoption of the "consumer" internet was growing rapidly. I recall there was much excitement, naysaying, thoughtful analysis by very smart people, and pure FUD.

There seemed to be a set of fundamentals or values borrowed from existing phonomena and applied to the internet, internet companies, and their potential (for great or evil). These of course lacked the benefit of hindsight and today much of what was said (although well intentioned) turned out to be frankly ridiculous.

I have a gut feeling that in 10 or 20 years we will look back and realize that this new thing has a set of fundamentals all its own. Once those emerge we will be able to have wonderful arguments. Until then I just try to focus on the technology. It's the only thing I can make reasonable sense of. Let the talking people talk. Let the builders build and let's just see where this goes.

Crypto currencies like we see now are a new phonomena. We won't know who the brilliant minds and the fools are until this all shakes out.

</comment><comment><USER11> From his writing it is clear that he hasn't invested time researching the cryptocoin ecosystem. Who cares if bitcoin is evil it was just a start, and there 's now an entire new financial system being built.

He's too hung up on this:

 _BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions._

 _Stross doesn't like that agenda, and neither do I_

pity

<comment><USER12> >BitCoin looks like it was designed as a weapon intended to damage central banking and money issuing banks, with a Libertarian political agenda in mind—to damage states ability to collect tax and monitor their citizens financial transactions.

That's exactly why I (and most people) like it so much..

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This whole thing is a reference to the argument presented in another article from 2013:

[https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why- i-w...](https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/12/why-i-want- bitcoin-to-die-in-a.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> "To be successful, money must be both a medium of exchange and a reasonably stable store of value." \- BitCoin isn't 'money' though.

As for the Charlie Stross link and the claim that BitCoin is 'designed to damage central bankers' \- that depends. It certainly is likely to have the effect of making central bankers more honest. Up until recently there were real consequences to printing free-money but after the 2007 financial crisis it seems central bankers banded together to collectively print money from nothing - it became ok as long as others were doing it too. Well the reality is that printing money does have repercussions and one could well argue that the rise of BitCoin is one such repercussion.

Same with the global attempt to eliminate physical cash - it's all great to go digital but when the central bankers decide they want to force everyone to spend more with negative interest rates it can indiscriminately hurt an average worker trying to save money to buy a home! Same goes for taxation - governments think its easy to raise money by increasing taxation, the offshore finance industry used to keep a lid on that until they were cracked down on - digital currencies can fill that gap.

Now there's no doubt that governments and central bankers might dislike control being taken away from them but to claim BitCoin hurts them is a bit like claiming jails hurt convicted felons... IMO.

<comment><USER15> > control being taken away from them

To whom is this control being handed? It's not going to be the ordinary citizen; it's going to be the global wealthy plus a few early adopters.

> force everyone to spend more with negative interest rates it can > indiscriminately hurt an average worker trying to save money to buy a home

Buying a home on a negative interest rate mortgage could be an interesting experience.

<comment><USER14> \- Being a finite resource, control would seemingly belong to whoever holds the largest amount. The point isn't that the ordinary citizen is going to control it, it is that whatever quantity you have is fixed and can't be debased.

\- Negative interest rates are horrible because they tend to impact savers whilst borrowers are typically now subject to a minimum interest rate on their loans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In general, "X is evil" sounds like a troll (even though I don't own any BitCoin, etc.)

This author is well known for incorrect predictions, and for not particularly caring about the truth of what he writes:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to- inte...](http://www.businessinsider.com/paul-krugman-responds-to-internet- quote-2013-12)

 _By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet 's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's._

His defense was essentially that he writes things to attract attention:

 _It was a thing for the Times magazine 's 100th anniversary, written as if by someone looking back from 2098, so the point was to be fun and provocative, not to engage in careful forecasting;_

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/elec...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/opinion/election- night-2016/paul-krugman-the-economic-fallout)

On election night:

 _It really does now look like President Donald J. Trump, and markets are plunging. When might we expect them to recover? ... Still, I guess people want an answer: If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer is never._

Regardless of what you think of Trump, this statement is hilariously inaccurate.

<comment><USER17> You're attacking the author rather than the argument. What aspect of _this particular article_ do you have a problem with?

<comment><AUTHOR> He fails to understand the fact that it's not necessarily Bitcoin _per-se_ that will bring change to world economy and the banking structure; it's the underlying technology that has value and perhaps even for Bitcoin itself it's where the store of value lies.

<comment><USER13> And what exactly is the value proposition of the underlying technology?

<comment><USER18> Getting closer to frictionless payments.

Getting access to a number of services that we currently use banks for - without using banks.

Note: my reply is about blockchains, not about bitcoin.

I've more or less given up on bitcoin and think other crypto tokens have a far better chance in the long run.

<comment><USER19> > Getting closer to frictionless payments.

Pardon my ignorance. I see this mentioned a lot. What do you mean by _frictionless payments_?

> Getting access to a number of services that we currently use banks for - > without using banks

What services in particular? And what's preferable about using blockchain technology for these services?

<comment><USER18> > What do you mean by frictionless payments?

I mean in the same way as email is frictionless compared to mail: you can send all day, it arrives halfway around the globe in seconds, fees are significantly lower.

> What services in particular?

For most people? Money transfer.

> And what's preferable about using blockchain technology for these services?

AFAIK because it is a way to make this happen without having to trust a number of institutions that are rich because of the current setup and might have a huge conflict of interest.

Again: IMO this is about the technology, not about Bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Totally agree that the goal is to smash central banking. I also think that the cryptoanarchist community must h8 central banking. How could anyone blame them with where our economy has gone. That being said, i think central banking is a great tool, it is just the fed is too conservative.

<comment><USER21> >How could anyone blame them with where our economy has gone.

We're like the richest we've ever been as a society. Even poor Americans are pretty damn rich compared to the past. Even if you want to make an argument about wealth inequality, crypto doesn't really solve that.

The Federal Reserve is actually an extremely responsible body, despite what people claim or what banks that they have no real control over do.

<comment><USER22> whether or not it's extremely responsible is irrelevant; while I don't think they intend it that way, their mission is to extract the wealth from the poor and give it to the rich in the name of 'growth' and 'stability'.

You do not see folks wandering around the tenderloin getting negative real interest rate loans or their businesses bailed out. The economic value to fund the fed's operations comes out of the spending power of the rest of us.

<comment><USER23> > their mission is to extract the wealth from the poor and give it to the rich > in the name of 'growth' and 'stability'.

Citation needed. Even if you mean it as obvious hyperbole, I'd like to hear some evidence for how central banks "extract money from the poor."

<comment><USER22> I never said extract money, I said extract wealth.

Increasing the cost of living by targetting positive inflation. If you're poor and the cost of living goes up the relative margin of survival decreases faster than for the wealthy.

Let's say you spend 98% and there's 1% inflation. Your margin of survival goes down 50%, whereas someone spending 20% barely feels it.

If you have more questions, my contact is in the profile. This is only scratching the surface.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "This author is well known for incorrect predictions, and for not particularly caring about the truth of what he writes"

ROTFL. This really describes Krugman well. Of cause bitcoin is "evil" since it limits his ideas of how to "experiment" with money.</comment>


'ch' : Cheat Sheet Utility for Bash - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/visionmedia/ch <comment><USER2> What's the difference between a "cheat sheet" and a man page?

<comment><USER3> Man pages rarely contain many examples. Man pages always bury examples on the last of many long pages.

I think a few really good examples beat eight pages of definitions.

A cheat sheet is nothing but good examples. Awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is similar to <http://github.com/defunkt/cheat> but is based on Bash instead of Ruby.</comment>


Donald Trump Wants Peter Thiel on the Supreme Court, Sources Say - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-peter-thiel-supreme-court_us_57d80d57e4b09d7a687f9b03?section=& <comment><USER2> No scent of bias against either Trump or Thiel in this article ;-)</comment>


Ask HN: Which Vim plugins do you use? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/text-editors/vim/vim- plugins](https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/text-editors/vim/vim-plugins)

I stopped using Vim though besides quick terminal edits and now use VS Code.

VS Code extensions: [https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/text-editors/vs-code/vs- code...](https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz/text-editors/vs-code/vs-code- extensions)

</comment><comment><USER3> EverVim</comment>