Ask HN: How does marriage affect the creation of a (successful) startup? - <AUTHOR> Paul Graham said in his essay "How to start a startup" that the best age to start a startup is between 23 and 38. Among these people, some of them must be married, right? So I have been wondering how a married life (and possibly one with kids, ugh) affect the chances and the process of creating and running a startup. Now, assuming that marriage is supposed to be a very important part of life, I imagine that it is rather hellish because Paul Graham also said that "Startups Take Over Your Life".
How does a married hacker do it?
I am 28, I just got married in May and I am pondering the possibility of starting something with my hacker friends in Hong Kong.
Would any married startup founder enlighten me (and other prospective married hackers)? <comment><USER3> I'm currently on my second startup-- I cashed out of my first a couple years ago.

At the time I was starting my first, my eldest daughter, then 2 years old, was diagnosed with leukemia, and between that time and cashing out, my wife and I had three more children, and she lost her father to cancer.

My point is: life happens, often while you're busy making other plans.

Other people here have brought up the "late hours" issue. Obviously, you and your spouse ought to both be comfortable about the kind of hours you keep.

But another issue-- more important, in my book-- is how you and your spouse relate to risk. Startups are, by their nature, perceived as being riskier than a stable, nine-to-five job. (Whether they actually are or not is immaterial-- it's the perception that's relevant here.)

When I got started, it became clear to me that I had a much higher tolerance for financial risk than my wife. This was not a problem, as I was able to make it clear to her that if there was ever a problem providing security for the family, I'd give up the startup and get a "real job".

By the way: based on your "possibly one with kids, ugh" comment, I'd suggest you make sure that you and your spouse are on the same page as more fundamental things as well. If you view the possibility of children as warranting an "ugh", you should be working to remove that possibility, for the sake of the eventual kids, if nothing else.

<comment><USER4> For a while I had a partner with a small child; I'd get up at lunchtime, handle my email, go collect the small child from daycare, go back to programming, we'd eat together, then I'd work some more until it was small child bedtime. I did bedtime, then came back downstairs and spend an hour or so with my partner, then vanish and hack until 5am or so.

If the small child woke up in the night, I dealt with it, she got up at 7.30am or so when the small child woke up properly so I could sleep. At the weekend we'd make sure I found time to go take the kid to the playground or something so we could spend an hour or two being silly together, and every few weekends my parents would turn up and we'd go for a day trip.

Overall it worked pretty well - she and I eventually broke up but that was due to factors other than work/family balance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm 28, married with 3 kids, house, full-time job, etc., and doing a startup on the side. In my experience, having a supportive wife, not just someone who will "let" me work 2-3 hours a night, but someone who believes in what I'm trying to do, makes all the difference. There are enough stresses in family life as it is. Add to that the stress of a startup, and without someone who is on board and has bought into it, and willingly bears all the crazy stuff that goes along, I promise it will be a disaster.

Also, the sooner you make money off the start-up, the better. Having something tangible to show for the hours you're away from your S.O. helps the situation tremendously.

For me, I try to stay balanced as much as possible. If I need to take a night or two off of hacking a week to watch a movie with my wife, or take my kids out and stay up past their bedtime, or just grab some beers and do nothing, I do it. You're only hurting yourself (and, by extension, your startup) by burning the candle at both ends, so don't feel bad about taking a night off. I also play it by ear on Saturdays and don't do any work on Sundays.

The toughest thing, I have found, is to be mentally and emotionally "present" with my family when I am not working. Doing a startup is all-consuming. If you give 100% of yourself during your family time, it will make it easier for them to deal with you not being around.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's the best. The year I lived in with my fiancee was the most enjoyable. She is a gigging musician, so we pretty much see eye to eye.

Nothing motivates like a rock chick kicking through door in boots and telling you "we killed baby!" :-D

We both get up around noon and get on our laptops. Sometimes she walks around the apartment like a zombie, humming to herself, then grabs the guitars and goes into frantic improv and song writing. I walk around too, with a notepad, and run to Emacs to jot down ideas. It's hypnotic to code to the sound of the same chords being played over and over again. I could hear a song change from form to another, over the span of a few hours, just as my code migrates from a scratch buffer, to its own file, then to a full fledged directory with a page- long Changelog.

We both go through the hustle; we collect dimes from various paypal and CC accounts, drive to venues and get cash, chase invoices, and by the end of the week we have a fat little wallet that we're giddy over.

I love my girl.

<comment><USER7> Ever thought of going in to poetry?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Startups take over your life" is a social construct. It happens because we expect it to happen, because we model it as "success", because we demand it from ourselves, and because we look at anyone who it isn't happening to as a failure.

My business is, in many ways (such as measuring by hours), the easiest job I've ever had.

<comment><USER7> I respectfully disagree. Your business is not a start-up of the kind where that is likely to happen, but there is more than one kind of start-up.

The kind of start-up where you have a fairly large capital outlay, where you have to hire a bunch of people from day one and where there is significant pressure from windows of opportunity and a race to market can easily go out of control in this respect.

The other thing that can turn your world upside down is a real success, or a real setback when you're moving ahead full steam.

<comment><USER8> Forgive me for being all Toyota-y, but we have a specific definition of "out of control", and it is not "the specific anticipated consequence of a policy which is culturally celebrated and is considered one of the defining features of our industry."

I have some other issues with the assumption that any CRUD app can reasonably be said to be racing to market in 2010. Many "real" startups, for whatever definition of "real" one wants, have been technically viable for every single day of the last ten years. The race is also a social construct. The world will little note nor long remember the first mover in groupons (hint: not Groupon).

<comment><USER7> CRUD apps are only a very thin slice of the whole spectrum though.

When you have a few hundred K of your own hard earned cash and a few million of investors money, as well as the livelihood of a number of people riding on your start-up succeeding or tanking and you hit a significant road block there is a very big temptation to dig in and try to save the company at the expense of your private life. Even in situations not quite as dramatic the temptation is there.

It may work, it may fail, there may be private consequences, there may not be. But that all depends on the circumstances, and those are not specified.

<comment><USER9> Yes, and to go into a business like that, and shape it in such a way that you have to work it like that, is a choice - ergo a social construct. An accidental, not platonic, trait of startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm married (9 years) and have 2 kids (throw in house mortgage as well.) I've been working on start ups for the last 3 years. I left a very good, high paying, stable job to work with startups. The first key thing is getting your wife on board. There is a lot more risk and stress with startups. Make sure both of you understand this issue. Money is already a big stress on marriages and you are about to make that situation worse in the short term. The other big issue (at least in the states) is health insurance. It costs a lot more that I would like.

The startup I work at is a great fit. We are boot strapped and profitable. We are not trying to be the next google/twitter/facebook, so slow growth fits our lifestyle fine. There have been lean times over the last year which adds financial stress, but I have fall back plan of getting a real job at any time which provides a nice safety net. It pays to have a good network to leverage when you need it. I work from home, so that allows me to work mostly normal hours and still get to see my wife and kids a lot. I carve out a few evenings to put in extra hours. I also carve out date nights with my wife.

So I don't see any issue with being a startup and being married. There is never the perfect time to start a startup. The best time is now.

</comment><comment><USER11> One problem to consider if you are working on your startup from home is the danger of constant interruptions. It can be hard on your family, especially your wife, to "not be allowed" to interrupt you. You have to remember that your family interrupts you because they care about you and they want you involved in their lives, but at the same time you have to find a way to tactfully get them to stay away from your office during your workday.

Sitting almost perfectly still in front of a computer and concentrating for hours and hours at a stretch is not a natural act. Humans are wired to get involved with the social activities going on around them. Depending on the difficulty of what you are working on, a few family interruptions per day or a too-high noise level from elsewhere in the house can destroy the quality of your work for the entire day.

Interruptions are also a big problem in a traditional office environment, but there you have much less invested in your efficiency. If management isn't willing to pay for private offices where the staff can concentrate properly -- then they get what they pay for and its not really the programmer's job to question it. At least everybody in a shared office area is in the same boat and everybody suffers from the same distractions.

In a startup, however, interruptions can ruin you and must be dealt with.

<comment><USER12> This is so true. I have a really hard time getting my girl friend to understand that I can't carry a conversation while coding... I brought it on myself trying to work in the same room she does though. If I could I would 100% have a private area to work in. I dream of having a house with a PRIVATE study right now.

<comment><USER13> why not go to a cafe?

<comment><AUTHOR> It is possibly more difficult to concentrate in a cafe (if by "cafe" you mean something like Starbucks or Second Cup), what with all the people coming in and out and all the chatter.

I have not extensively tried to work or study in a cafe myself, so I don't know how well I cope with all the distraction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A couple of points to make here:

1) A start-up is just a business of your own design. It may be that you're in tech but the whole concept of running the business side of things is really no different from opening your own restaurant, dry cleaners, or becoming some sort of contractor or realtor. You are self employed and must rely on yourself to bring home the bacon. The vast majority of people in the world are in this position (and create the most jobs according to the latest surveys).

2) Work is not life if you also wish to have a family. If you prioritize work over family then you are bound to fail at one or both. Through proper time/resource management you can enjoy both immensely and successfully.

I have a wife and two kids. They do take up (I mean, deserve and I enjoy giving) a lot of time. Having a family is incredibly exciting and there ar joys to be found there that cannot be found anywhere else. If, however, you prioritize work over them you will quickly find yourself on the road to an unhappy household. I know far too many who ended up in divorce and have nothing but regrets for the opportunity they squandered there.

A very wise and successful entrepreneur once remarked to me when I asked them about balancing work and family that I would likely make as much money as I did even if I didn't work as long as I did. It's not about putting in all those hours. It's about putting in smarter hours, delegating and optimizing. Take your vacations, hire interns, and enjoy your life (not at the expense of the business or the family).

Oh, and one more VERY important point: Marry someone who knows your tendencies to be an entrepreneur (ie risk taker) and will support you through thick and thin (and when things get too thin have the sense to stop), The biggest problems always start when the partner does not support the rolling of the dice. Family must always come first. Always.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why would it be a problem? You don't _have_ to code through the night with your buddies every night. It is possible to start and run a successful business without giving over every waking moment to it - in fact, it's almost certainly better if you don't. And for when you have to, as long as your spouse is understanding there's no problem.

<comment><USER7> Not to hijack the thread but <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1620333> didn't start out as me coding through the night either, but it eventually did turn in to that and it caused me to break up with a very nice girl.

Start-ups are voracious when it comes to consuming your time and not everybody deals with that equally well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My strong suggestion: do the startup _before_ getting married, but while you live with your potential future spouse under marriage-like conditions.

My personal experience: I had a live-in gf (and possible future spouse), and I spent about a year in startup crunch mode on an academic research project (which I hoped to leverage into a future startup). It put a major strain on our relationship - she worked outside the home, I worked primarily at home, and she didn't get the concept of "physically at home but working and unavailable." We are no longer together, in part because of this.

Your SO may be incompatible with your startup - it's far better to discover things like this before getting married. You may choose the SO over the startup, but you should be aware you are making that choice.

Worst case scenario: an ex-wife who acted as a burden throughout the startup process walks away with 50% of your successful company.

(Note: a prenup won't help much - courts are in the habit of nullifying them if the judge doesn't like them. Witness the whole Elon Musk fiasco.)

<comment><USER17> I believe Elon Musk had a post-nuptial agreement

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As others have pointed out this is more about the person you marry than the act of marriage. But realistically if they like to cuddle on the sofa and watch 10 episodes of Ugly Betty with you and you want to code, you'll probably work that out a long time before you go as far getting married.

What does make a massive difference is kids. And more precisely sleep deprivation, especially in the early stages. Coding until 2am, going to bed and 5 minutes later a little person is crying and you are up again etc is hard. Also when you are just a couple your SO might not mind you rolling out of bed at 10am, but most aren't going to be too happy about having to get up at 7am 7 mornings a week to look after the kids whilst you are snoring quietly. And even if you do get away with that, don't discount the amount of noise etc that at least stops you from getting a great sleep. Some people get lucky, some people think they "trained" their kids, but for most people the first few years are tired years.

And as they get older your unsociable hours don't really work either. Most kids operate from around 7 to 7/8. They wake up in the morning they want to jump on your bed. They want you to tuck them in. You'll love it too - <USER2> family life is hard to balance with the typical lifestyle the average hacker on here probably lives.

Please note it is not all bad, I work from home in an office in my garden and see my kids for hours every day - something most people don't get. You probably also have more flexibility to go to sports days, plays etc. But never underestimate the tiredness in those first few years!

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't think being married would have too much of an effect on things, as long as your s.o. knows what he/she is in for and is committed to giving you the time you will need. I am married and we have a 2 year old, which does make things somewhat harder... but not impossible. This is the best article I ever read on the subject:

[http://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an- entrepreneur...](http://steveblank.com/2009/06/18/epitaph-for-an- entrepreneur/)

</comment><comment><USER7> It very much depends on your s.o. if it will work to your advantage, be a neutral thing or be a drag.

Some people really dig it, some people don't care and some will hate it, talk it over, communicate as much as you can about what is going on and make sure that if there are major decisions to be made that you're both on the same page.

Some people work together in the start-up, for some that's not an option. There are a thousand tiny things that matter, in the end doing this can place significant stress on your relationship, it may cause it to break, it may cause it to deepen.

There is no 'one size fits all' recipe here, you're going to have to feel your way, communication is the key.

</comment><comment><USER20> Holy Crap, You and I are the same person. I am 28 and got married 12 months ago. My marriage is still strong even with all the odds against us: 1st year living together, 3 year old, my wife moved to a new city, started a new job, started two startups (1 already failed not because of the marriage). It all depends on the people, if your wife/girlfriend/finance thinks that the work you are doing is a waste of time then it will greatly impact your relationship BUT as in my case my wife is a staunch supporter of my ambition to make something great, she pushes me to work harder and SMARTER not wasting time on irrelevant stuff. She has no technical experience or knowledge and is not interested in it, she is only interested in seeing me succeed which makes her a great sounding board when i have difficulties.

I think the key in our relationship is that each night around 11 we stop whatever we are doing and just spend the rest of the night with each other, talking about our days what was good and bad then we watch some tv and relax. Another important thing for us is to eat dinner together, especially since we have a daughter instilling family values is the most important thing to do as parents.

I think if you put your family first, then your partner will support you in your startups because they know that when you have time you will spend it togeather.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's a good question. There's a saying that behind all successful men is a good wife. But it depends entirely on your personal circumstances, and the demands of your wife/family.

A start-up can be HARD. And there's no guarantees, and often irregular cash flow. If you can handle this (ie have sufficient float to cover) then ok. If not, it could get stressful.

The one great thing about being married is it forces you to be "real". When you're in your early twenties, foot-loose and fancy-free, you can embark on just about any flight of fancy without too much in the way of repercussions. But conversely you are not being forced to think too critically (financially). When you're older, with responsibilities, you can't be dicking about. You _have_ to appraise what you're doing in the context of wider financial obligations. This can be a good thing: it might stop you taking stupid risks.

But, fundamentally, it comes down to this: does your wife support what you are doing? Is she prepared to accept a reduced income/life-style for a shot at the big time? Is she comfortable with the odds against this? Is she gonna be happy you spending all your time in front of a PC with often little to show for it? Only you can answer these questions.

</comment><comment><USER22> Any married women founders or anyone whose wife is doing a startup ? Would be good to get tips from you.

I multitask fairly well but have always feared juggling married life with a startup. I am getting married this october. My fiancee is supportive, an engineer & workaholic himself and to an extent understands startup. I have known him for many years and he stood by me even before when I almost went bankrupt being part of a startup. I think his support and the possibility that I could discuss things from work (which I can't do with my parents/siblings) gives a good feeling.

Only concern is I feel he doesn't "yet" get the stress part and the variable low morale issue at times. It is very weird to him if I say that I am feeling low today and by evening if I am excited that we got 20 more hits on the site.

edit: emphasis

</comment><comment><USER23> Just look at 37signals. They have families and free time and hobbies and all of those other things that startup people aren't supposed to have.

<comment><USER24> I wouldn't necessarily categorize them as a "start-up" before. They're a mature, growing, and very profitable business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The long hours issue is not unique to startups. I've seen happy couples where one partner works long hours and the other does not, and when both work long hours. But obviously it depends on the couple and what they both want out of life and the relationship.

The issue that is more specific to startups that can arise is money. Bootstrapping a startup can involve lower or no pay for an extended period. Both partners need to be on board with that, since money is apparently one of the main things most couples argue about!

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm one of the founders of <http://AdGrok.com> \-- we're in the current YC batch. I just turned 40 (one week before demo day!), have a wife (we just celebrated our 16th anniversary), and two kids (8 and 10).

I'd look carefully at your situation. Through this whole experience, my wife has been _amazingly_ supportive -- there were no hesitations on her part as to whether I should go for it or not. She's been just as important for me in keeping the AdGrok ball rolling forward as my co-founders have.

Make sure all parties involved know what they're going into. It's my fourth startup (the second I was a founder in), so she knew I was going to be "heads- down" for a decent duration, frequently coming home after she was asleep (or just sleeping at the office). Make sure she's expecting crazy-long work days. You don't want or need her surprised by anything in a month or two.

I've worked with hundreds of hackers through the years, and there's only one common regret voiced by the older of my hacker friends: it's the soul-tearing sadness of not spending enough time with your kids. Just try to keep that in the back of your mind -- you'll have to try to decide what "enough" means.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER27> The cool things about starting a startup is that you make the rules. I know most people think they need to take the "work-12-hours-a-day-approach" when they start a startup, but that's not mandatory. Not sure who came up with that one.

When you're starting your startup, you should think about what kind of time, energy, etc you want to put into it. I really enjoy what I do, but I also realized working all the time gets in the way of other things I want to do (i.e. spending lots time with people). When I started my business, one of the rules was to work only in the morning, and because I had this mindset from the beginning, everything has worked out great. Sure, sometimes I'll work a little more, and sure, I really enjoy what I do, but if spending time with your wife/husband is really important to you, you can dictate that as long as you do it early.

</comment><comment><USER28> I say it doesn't change your changes. Having seen my friends and colleagues grow up and settle down with people - it is apparent to me that people don't change. If you are motivated and serious about getting things done, you will continue to do that when married. If you prefer to veg out and watch TV after a hard day at work - that's what you're going to do when you settle down with your special someone. If you wake up one day and think you've changed and you want to turn off the tv and loose weight and be energetic and travel the world and do everything you always though of but never did... it'll probably pass after you get tired of working for it. Just speaking from the experiences I've had via people I know. I started my current company after I was married for 5 years with a bun in the oven.

</comment><comment><USER29> Don't you think this is kind of a ridiculous question?

"How does a relationship affect my business?"

As much as you let it. Each relationship is different. Different people. You are basically asking "How well am I doing?".

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm not married and a year older than you, but I've always been long term relationship man. I imagine that a healthy marriage or long term relationship would only benefit you if she's supportive. It's not much different than being a researcher or resident MD or fighter pilot or any other demanding job, except with a bigger upside.

Kids seem to change everybody's life and would align attitudes towards risk differently etc.

</comment><comment><USER31> Well, many say that a start-up is like getting married. Therefore, it would be a lot like polygamy...?

This said, so many jobs for 23-28 year olds who are high-achieving driven people (but maybe not entrepreneurs) have similarly crushing hours, so, it's not like start-ups are such an unfair choice.

I don't know from experience, but I think #1 would be talking with your spouse and making sure at least there is a baseline understanding.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've done numerous startups and marriages, and all I can really say is that if you love your idea and want it to work, you will find a way. Americans watch an average of 4 hours of tv per day, turn the tv off and spend the time sitting next to your wife while you work. We love listening to Pandora or iTunes and working on our respective businesses.

</comment><comment><USER33> A startup taking over your life is a good problem to have especially if you are following your passion. My advice is to go ahead and start something with the Hong Kong guys and let us know when the married life and the start-up starts conflicting. We can give more specific advice on a case per case basis. You can do it -- Just get started.

</comment><comment><USER34> Completely off topic but you mention that you will start something with people from Hong Kong. I'm looking for a merchant account with a payment gateway in Hong Kong but haven't had any luck... Do you or your partner know anything that could help me?

You can contact me at hn - squiggly sign - gom-jabbar.org Thanks

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't remember where I read it but if fits your situation:

Startups are like roller-casters, it always requires your attention no matter in what stage you are. And you need a life!

This means that you have to balance personal life with startup.

Otherwise you have to be like Steve Jobs for whom business is a lifestyle.

</comment><comment><USER36> There was a study that showed that a vast majority of (famous) mathematicians did most and best of their work before getting married. Not that it is indicative of how things are in 21st century, but still an interesting anecdote.

<comment><USER37> I'd be curious about what fraction of them did that work before they got tenure.

Also "famous mathematician" is a bit of an oxymoron. All fame is local, and fame in mathematics even more so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> depends on who you are married to. from my own observations, this is what i can gather: if the wife is supportive of what you're doing, then it can actually make the creation of a startup easier. if she is not and always demands your time at the expense of necessary business tasks, then it's going to be a lot harder than if you were single.

</comment><comment><USER39> Most of the posts written so far seem to be along the lines of "Startups, marriage and children can all be made to work together." Patio11 makes a good point about the truism 'Startups take over your life' being a somewhat artificial construction.

I will play contrarian and argue the opposite side of it.

No matter how well some people manage to integrate their work life with their family life, they would still be more free to compete if they had no family.

Maybe you have created enterprise software and a large company in Texas, USA, calls you and asks to come pitch to the CEO tomorrow. How free are you to get out of any personal obligations so you can be there in Texas tomorrow?

Maybe you are selling support for open source software, are you free to work 80 hours a week for the first 2 years, just to get things going?

Maybe you are focused on electronics in Asia and you are trying to learn about the various laws and electrical infrastructure requirements in each country. It would also be nice to know something about the culture of these countries, their customs and history - each week, do you put an extra 5 hours toward learning background information about these countries, or do you put that extra 5 hours toward your personal relationship?

My overall feeling is that you can start a personal relationship at any point between the age of 14 and 84, but the first 2 years you are trying to get a startup off the ground is unique, and I think during those 2 years, much of the rest of your life should be put on hold.

If you end up competing against my startup, and I'm putting in 10% more than time than you, then you better be 10% smarter than me to balance things out. In my case, that is not very difficult, I am fairly stupid so you might well be 10% smarter than me, but you might eventually face competition that is, in fact, smarter than you, and willing to put in a lot more time than you. What then?

At the risk of sounding like some kind of Zen guru, I do think you need to ask yourself what you truly want. While we are all subject to random chance, there is a large extent to which we can control our lives, and to that extent you will create the life that you strive for. What you think you want may be different from what you actually want, and you'd do well to think carefully about any discrepancy between your stated goals and your actual actions.

Possibly one way to figure out what you would be comfortable with would be to think about losing. If you end up competing in a particular niche, against someone just as smart as you, and your competitor wins because they work 100 hours a week, whereas you decide that your personal relationship, and mental health, are important, so you only work 40 hours a week, then will you be okay with losing? Will you go on to have a happy life, or will you look back later and have regrets? In the book The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People the author Stephen Covey suggests "Begin with the end in mind." That's applicable here. Think about what outcomes you'd be comfortable with, and let that shape your actions.

Since I'm playing the contrarian here, I will try to end on a negative note: you will have more chance of success the less energy you invest in your relationship. You might be much happier if you focus on your relationship, but we are not talking about happiness here, only the success of your startup. Being able to devote 100% of your energy to your startup might only give you a very slight edge compared to other startup entrepreneurs, but every little bit of an edge helps.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm married to my co-founder. Neither of us work through the night. Recently we quit working weekends.

We spend too much time at our computers lately, but that's more out of laziness and lack of originality than anything else.

Occasionally, we yell at each other about work, but then I hear married people do that about other things, like laundry.

We have one SaaS out in the wild, another under development, 1 ebook, and various live and your-own-pace training courses. I quit consulting in January (except for an ongoing contract I had to fulfill) and he has kept doing the consulting, but is about to quit himself.

There's no such thing as a startup truth. Some people will tell you you'll work through the night and get sucked up; some people will tell you, no way. (Like me.)

The fact is, what type of business you choose to pursue, and the choices you make every day, will determine what your life's going to be like.

Me, I'm happy knowing that 12 mos from now, our first SaaS will be grossing $40-50k/mo and our second one probably $10-15k/mo. :)

<comment><USER40> Amy, Freckle is great! I really love the UI and the attention to details that you guys put in. I'm glad that you guys are doing amazing. You are amongst my heroes/inspiring list of people :)

<comment><USER9> Hey, thanks! :) Best of luck with Marrily, it looks quite nice. Go you for creating a product you can charge for!</comment></comment></comment>


The Unbreakable Laura Hillenbrand - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/21/magazine/the-unbreakable-laura-hillenbrand.html

<comment><USER2> She had written an account of the onset of her illness in The New Yorker back in 2003. [1] Full text. [2]

I had never heard of her before but found it one of the stranger, more haunting pieces I'd read. If you enjoy OPs piece you may also like this other one written by Hillenbrand herself.

[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/07/07/a-sudden- illnes...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/07/07/a-sudden-illness)

[2] [http://cfsresearchcenter.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=it...](http://cfsresearchcenter.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=79:a-sudden- illness-how-my-life-changed-by-laura-hillenbrand&Itemid=435)

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone give me a very short summary of whether or not to read this article? 30 seconds of skimming and I'm still clueless.

<comment><USER4> Its worth reading. It talks about her writing style and history given her chronic fatigue. It also does a nice job of bringing in other voices to give short passages about aspects of her writing process and how she influenced others. It is more bittersweet than a "success" story and is written by a book author.</comment></comment>


Snow Leopard UI roundup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.cocoia.com/2009/snow-leopard-ui-roundup/

<comment><USER2> _The 'scrubber' knob of the player actually crawls along 'between the pixels'. In other words, it's being drawn in code and shows progression even when the allotted amount of pixels that make up the progress bar doesn't allow moving the playhead as far as one pixel. This is something you see pretty frequently with longer videos. The playhead would just sort of 'stick' to a spot until it could progress a pixel further to the right. Instead, it intelligently draws the knob in a way that shows progression without moving the entire thing one pixel._

Not seeing this. Checked on a long video, moved one pixel at a time. :-/

<comment><USER3> That's only happening in Quicktime's Plugin for browsers, not in Quicktime Player. It's a pretty smooth effect, it hopefully trickles up to the Player soon :)

<comment><USER4> Is it anything that you could post a video of?

<comment><USER2> Sure: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V73UQ6iD9bc>

Still being processed by YouTube, should be visible in a sec. It's pretty nice, seems to be updated every 0.75 seconds or so...

<comment><USER5> Looks like it's being redrawn each time with sub-pixel vectors. Quartz handles the hard stuff. Kind of cool.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Responsive Pixel Art - <AUTHOR> http://essenmitsosse.de/pixel/ <comment><USER2> Hello this is Marcus, the guy who did the resolution independent illustrations. I just uploaded the current version of the site, so it will no longer freeze, when the image gets to small. I also updated the Tantalos image.

I am currently a bit blown away by the reaction to this. I finished this over a year ago but didn't manage to make it public till now. I presented this at a meetup in Berlin yesterday and someone asked for an online version, which I postet to Twitter — then things escalated quickly.

So because a lot of people are asking: I am currently redoing my completely outdated homepage. The new one will include an in-depth explanation of what is actually happening there, what's the idea behind it and how I want to apply this to actual web design to make resolution-independent work more easy and less restrictive for both designers and developers.

Until then I will try to answer some questions here …

Scalable Greetings Marcus

<comment><USER3> Those were amazing!

      the resolution independent illustrations.

Aren't those images kinda exact opposite of that? Because output image depends entirely on the resolution.

<comment><USER2> A lot of people refer to them as "responsive" illustrations. But responsive basically means resolution-dependent. You do different versions of your design for different resolutions — and in between you just stretch or compress them.

These images work differently, there is no source image or something like that, the whole image is described that everything depends on the final resolution, so that the image is independent of its output size. There is no fixed, static sized image anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is incredible stuff. Zeus in particular is amazing. It all seems to be done with weighted objects and a clever way of rendering them, but it's indistinguishable from magic from where I'm sitting.

<comment><USER5> Every image is made of JS. It's multiple ways of rendering put into single files.

It's not an algorithm, it's just well-designed art. The design is entirely different for every image. But it's still very, very cool.

<comment><USER6> "Isn't all code well-designed art?" says my co-worker sitting next to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is really cool! If you look at the source, it appears that the images themselves are defined as JS code, almost like a vector image. For example, Zeus: [http://essenmitsosse.de/pixel/scripts/zeus.px](http://essenmitsosse.de/pixel/scripts/zeus.px)

The author then has a renderer to turn these into pixel data. It seems to render them down to an actual pixel image on the fly.

</comment><comment><USER8> The amazing part about the Tantalos slide was that its responsive implementation actually captured the ethos of the myth itself - no matter how far he reached, the fruit moved ever farther away. outstanding work.

<comment><USER9> I think there's a lot of thought that went into these. The "Teresias" one has the character's bald head and beard morphing into longer hair, I think suggesting that the gender changes as in the myth of Tiresias [1].

I think he (Marcus Blättermann) presented at a meetup in Berlin [2] in a talk called "Resolution-Independent Illustrations in Pure JavaScript". Does anyone have more information on how this was created?

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

[2] [http://up.front.ug/2016/03/08/meetup/](http://up.front.ug/2016/03/08/meetup/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Besides moving your mouse around, zooming in and out also works beautifully (might put a bit of a strain on your system though).

Given the sheer amount of work for one piece, with The Three Graeae appearing to be around 1000 lines of code, I'm also quite amazed he managed to produce seven. Brilliant, and Art indeed.

<comment><USER11> Zooming just decreases the resolution for me. I'm on Windows+Chrome. What does it do for you?

<comment><USER10> Very much the same (also as daodedickinson wrote), and I hope I didn't send you on a (short) wild-goose chase with this. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the author took resizing / zooming the window into account and I thought it gave some nice insight on how the features of the pixel art change with scale (without the canvas actually visually shrinking).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Reminds me of the following different project for content aware image resizing or retargeting:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qadw0BRKeMk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qadw0BRKeMk)

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

<comment><USER13> I thought the same, and also about the Structured Image Editing [1] that was linked from the Image Analogies thread [2] two days ago:

[1] [https://vimeo.com/5024379](https://vimeo.com/5024379)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11234793](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11234793)

<comment><USER14> 7 years old demo.... are there any paint tools (commercial, open source) available in the market nowadays implementing these algorithms?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So freaking awesome, this just rules!

My faves are 1- Zeus, and 2- Teiresias

Those two look like they took the most work, and are most technically challenging. The Man-Eagle-Bull-Snake morph especially.

Halfway random tangent, and halfway related, but I'm really super looking forward to wider adoption of SVG 1.2 precisely because it adds absolute unit constraints in addition to the relative constraints, so you can do some of the same kind of stuff in an SVG image, and have authoring tools to support it. Not the pixel art side of it, and nowhere near as crazy as this project, but it will still be really useful.

</comment><comment><USER16> Awesome. I didn't really _get it_ until I looked at the Brother picture, but that is brilliant.

<comment><USER17> Brother shows off a good use case.

Zeus is just fun

<comment><USER18> I wonder if this can be applied to high quality pixel images as well or if the distortion would look weird.

<comment><USER19> Check out Seam Carving:

[http://perso.crans.org/frenoy/matlab2012/seamcarving.pdf](http://perso.crans.org/frenoy/matlab2012/seamcarving.pdf)

It's pretty cool at altering images to fit an aspect ratio.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are you some kind of wizard? This may be the coolest tech demo I've seen all year.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is the kind of stuff I come to HN for! MORE OF THESE KINDS OF POSTS PLEASE!

</comment><comment><USER22> I got a good chuckle out of the Sphinx one -- the guy is standing in front of it saying "look, a sphinx!", and then if you make it vertical he's all "oh shit! a sphinx!". At least that's how I saw it.

Pretty awesome!

</comment><comment><USER23> Would love to read some explanation on how this is made. Very impressive!

<comment><USER24> I encourage the author to do a write-up about the design of this. Fascinating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does this work on anyone else's phone? I just get a heavily pixelated virtually unrecognisable picture. (iPhone 6 - same for both Chrome and Safari)

<comment><USER26> IPhone 6s, the image dragging works, but only the first picture is displayed. The selector doesn't appear.

IPad Air, works perfectly. Image selector appears and you can switch images. Dragging works as expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'm a jaded, cynical, cranky, old curmudgeon. Still I say that was pretty flippin awesome. Especially Zeus!

</comment><comment><USER28> It breaks if you position the mouse to the top or the left edge of the canvas.

<comment><USER29> same here (Chrome 48 on Win 10)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I kept resizing the window until I realized that there was a simpler way already implemented. Thought that was a bug first. Really nice!

</comment><comment><USER31> Holy crap, very cool! At first glance I thought it was just a neat little resizing trick, but then Zeus morphed right before my eyes and I did a double take. The way it responds to your movement makes it really effective in a way that would be extremely hard (impossible?) to reproduce in a static image or even a video.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is amazing!

I really like that in "Teiresias", if you make the canvas narrow enough, the man jumping (presumably Teiresias) changes position and gets a white beard instead of white long hair. Just to still give the impression that it's an old sage, in small vertical space.

<comment><USER33> No, it's showing the sex change. He goes from long hair with breasts to losing his hair but getting a long beard.

"In Greek mythology, Tiresias... was a blind prophet of Apollo in Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years."

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> That's amazing. What scaling algorithm does it use?

<comment><USER35> I don't think it's scaling. Go on the Zeus example and play with it. You'd be surprised. This is beautiful.

<comment><USER36> There's certainly more than just scaling involved, but there's definitely scaling in there.

<comment><USER37> I have the feeling is that the algorithm involves different pictures that superficially look the same but represent different things, and the code decides which picture to show according to the coordinates of the mouse, and them rescale it.

I tried briefly to read the code to see if I was right but failed so - I'm not good at reading other people's code :( - so someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER38> If you look at the "image" description files (e.g. [http://essenmitsosse.de/pixel/scripts/zeus.px](http://essenmitsosse.de/pixel/scripts/zeus.px), linked by another comment), then it looks like the files define a set of constraints on the "components" in an image such as Zeus's arm , the bird beak, the cow's leg, etc. When the mouse moves, my guess is those constraints determine which components are rendered and where they appear on screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So is this some kind of specialized constraint solver? I'm looking at the JS source for the various art and it seems to be defining relationships alongside the shapes and styles.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is absolutely bloody amazing. The cleverness with the `Zeus` artwork was equally entertaining as it was _bloody amazing_ ².

I'd love to hear about the inspiration behind the project.

</comment><comment><USER41> Very well done! Just a small QA note for the creator, it's possible to hit the "next" arrow until you reach a broken page [1].

[1] [http://essenmitsosse.de/pixel/?showcase=true&slide=7](http://essenmitsosse.de/pixel/?showcase=true&slide=7)

</comment><comment><USER42> This is really awesome. At first I was going to write a comment about how this completely ruins pixel art by changing the pixels which are hand placed by the artists. But then after viewing a few images I realized that this is hand tooled changed, not just compression. Bravo.

</comment><comment><USER43> This reminds me of those flip-books you made when you were younger (or of current age, whatever).

</comment><comment><USER44> How do you get to the other images? Or is it broken on mobile (Android Chrome)

</comment><comment><USER45> I agree with the many comments here. This is stunningly good work down with such a simple canvass. I'll be taking it to show my kids (who enjoy Greek mythology) this evening.

</comment><comment><USER46> >That's right, I'm tracking this side

Do you mean you're tracking visits that hit "view page source"? Does that work? I can't find any info about that on Google.

<comment><USER47> I think he meant "site". It's just regular Google Analytics.

<comment><USER48> The author is a German speaker. German 'Seite' can translate to both 'side' and 'page', so it is a kind of false friend with English 'side'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I like how you can save the image as png! Pretty awesome stuff!

</comment><comment> mh-cx The style reminds me of Sword and Sworcery...

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

</comment><comment><USER50> It reminds me of: [http://xkcd.com/1037/](http://xkcd.com/1037/) "Umwelt"

</comment><comment><USER51> Try hitting _Cmd -_ a bunch of times.

<comment><USER52> What happens? I can't notice anything, on Safari..

<comment><USER53> He meant 'Zoom Out'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> By the beard of Zeus! Bravo, loved this.

</comment><comment><USER29> That's how image resizing should behave. But I guess this will only happen when AIs take over ^^

</comment><comment><USER55> Just like responsive web design, only those who "resize" will enjoy it. _blink_

</comment><comment><USER56> I wonder if this could be extended beyond pixel art by rendering it with webgl.

<comment><USER57> It's rendering to a <canvas> so no reason why not...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Now we just need neural networks to do this in the style of Jan van Eyck.

</comment><comment><USER58> Some pretty awesome stuff!

</comment><comment><USER59> pretty cool stuff! but is anyone else not able to resize the drawing after the cursor is moved out of the window when either the drawing width or height is at 1 pixel?

</comment><comment><USER60> Grab the lower right corner of the image frame and drag it.

<comment><USER60> Just realized on desktop you don't have to grab, sorry. On MOBILE devices, you can touch a corner and drag it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> There appear to be a resize bug... for example with The Sphinx, if you go wide and short, the guy is pointing left with his arms, but if you go tall and skinny, the guy is pointing up with his arms...

<comment><USER62> I think that's intentional. The images change a lot depending on the aspect ratio. Just try Zeus. Magical!

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> This is absolutely nuts... extraordinary.

</comment><comment><USER64> Can you upload source code for Brothers?

</comment><comment><USER65> Why do people find this interesting? Is there more to it than the insight that one can define a function that maps image-dimensions to an image?

<comment><USER66> Make the Zeus image tall and skinny. Then make it short and wide. Then make it square.

<comment><USER65> So this has over 1000 upvotes because it's good art, not because it's an interesting algorithm?

<comment><USER67> I think it's because it invokes the "Oh, that's so cool" feeling in people. It's a good feeling, even if it isn't due to learning about an interesting algorithm. Hackers and Painters I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Only Zeus becomes a serpent in 16:9.

</comment><comment><USER69> Two-parameter morphing, cool :-)

</comment><comment><USER70> That's great work.

</comment><comment><USER71> Zeus is the winner! ;)

</comment><comment><USER72> This is stellar.

</comment><comment><USER73> A joke right?

</comment><comment><USER74> this is incredibly impressive!

</comment><comment><USER75> Wow, epic!

</comment><comment><USER76> As others have stated, this is an amazing demo! I've played around in the past with designing responsive web comics with no real luck, but could you imagine creating a web comic using the techniques used in this demo?

The potential!

</comment><comment><USER77> I like this. A little bug has snuck into the code somewhere: If you move your mouse pointer directly into a corner, the script fails with "Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property '0' of undefined". I presume it is a division by zero when the image height or width becomes zero.

<comment><USER78> A likely related buglet, if you resize down to a single horizontal pixel line the pic gets stuck at one line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Should've been tagged <NSFW>

<comment><USER80> I'm not sure about others, but I also had a NSFW picture load up. Are the pictures random, some of which are NSFW? (Maybe in some places it is different, but even classical art can be considered NSFW in parts of the US.)

<comment><USER81> are we referring to "the three graces"?

at what point along the spectrum of "abstract" does a boob become SFW?

it's a rectangle with a rectangle inside of it, for fucks sake.

<comment><USER80> Where I live, if it can be recognized as anything similar to something NSFW, then it is NSFW. Yes, the culture is extra prudish and I wish it wasn't, but I don't have any control over it.

<comment><USER82> Saying "this should be tagged NSFW" is taking personal control over it and directly contributing to that prudish culture.

<comment><USER80> It is labeling what it is given the current culture.

Saying 'smoking pot is a crime' is only a statement of what something is given the current law. It in no way implies that it should be a crime, only that to that person in that jurisdiction, it is currently a crime. The same logic for laws holds for mores.

<comment><USER82> If nobody is saying it _should_ be labelled NSFW, then I fail to see why it was brought up at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google's Page: 'Android Is On Fire' - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/news/hardware/handheld/232800413

<comment><USER2> Direct link: <http://investor.google.com/corporate/2012/ceo-letter.html>

[https://plus.google.com/106189723444098348646/posts/12aVWvcG...](https://plus.google.com/106189723444098348646/posts/12aVWvcGWZg)

</comment><comment><USER3> Android is definitely on fire. And not in a good way.

Fragmentation is a massive issue with less than 3% of Android users on Ice Cream Sandwich and carriers taking zero interest in pushing updates to customers.

I fail to see how Android is going to sustain itself going forward without changes from Google.

<comment><USER4> Isn't this the same argument that's been made since 2009? Why are things different now?</comment></comment>


FreeDOS 1.2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.freedos.org/jhall/ <comment><USER2> FreeDOS saved my bacon some years ago. I was working at a college and one day a chemistry prof came in and said their spectrometer (IIRC) was dying. I took a look and found an old 386-based machine with a hard drive on the fritz. It ran some odd version of DOS from a company that no longer existed, there was no budget for a replacement, and classes relying on it were starting soon.

My memory is hazy but I was able to get a compactflash card with FreeDOS on it and used it to boot the system. The special programs that operated the device over the serial or parallel port took a little work to keep from crashing, but eventually all was working as before.

<comment><USER3> It amazes me that people on HN have anecdotes for everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Merry Christmas to the FreeDOS project, and congratulations. It's great to see you lot keeping on.

Does anyone here know the plans for the future, now that UEFI is on most new consumer PCs? Will it be considered "done" at some point or will it get adapted into something else?

<comment><USER5> I'm interested in this too. I'm tempted to install it just to remember old times - play around FreePascal and real mode programming, inline assembly and so on - and I guess supporting UEFI would make it easier to coexist with modern Windows/Linux installs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Used to like working on DOS. Many of the apps on it were very fast to use, as others have said.

And TSRs (Terminate and Stay Resident programs) [1] were fun to use. I particularly liked Borland Sidekick (a multi-utility tool that could be popped up via a hot-key on top of whatever program you were running). [2] Sidekick sold tons of copies, I read.

Edit: According to the Wikipedia article below, "Sidekick sold more than 1 million copies in its first three years".

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

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

</comment><comment><USER7> DOS + Win 3.11 was very fast compared to Windows (9x, XP, 7 and 10), OSX or Linux nowadays and there were lots of good games written for the platform (MOO1, CIV1, Duke Nukem 3D).

I read about the problems with Windows 3.11 protected mode, does FreeDOS 1.2 allow you to run Windows 3.11 in 386enh and protected mode? A certain Jeremy David wrote support for it, and I read that a windows 3 compatible kernel was available in FreeDOS 1.0 under the name Winkernel. It should be used without EMM386 but with Japheth's versions of HIMEMX and SHARE, allocating at most 256 MB of RAM to HIMEMEX. With some tweaking of the Windows config, it is possible to use 1 GB, but not more. Do not use protected mode disk drivers. There is SVGAPatch: a tool to patch svga256.drv to make it VESA compliant so Win 3.11 can be used within Virtualbox. [http://web.archive.org/web/20140202233045/http://www.japheth...](http://web.archive.org/web/20140202233045/http://www.japheth.de/dwnload1.html) [http://stephan.win31.de/w31mm_en.htm](http://stephan.win31.de/w31mm_en.htm) [https://www.kirsle.net/blog/entry/nostalgia-for- windows-3-1](https://www.kirsle.net/blog/entry/nostalgia-for-windows-3-1)

Conceivably it could be used to access the internet somewhat with Win32s in combination with Dillo of D+ browser. [http://dillo- win.osdn.jp/index.en.html](http://dillo-win.osdn.jp/index.en.html) [https://sourceforge.net/projects/dplus- browser/](https://sourceforge.net/projects/dplus-browser/)

I remember that for DOS semi-multitasking you could use DESQview, does that work with FreeDOS and are there better (more efficient or open source) alternatives?

I am asking as you could make a very lean and fast OS, booting form USB, extracting itself to a ramdisk, allocating 500M (with tools, editors and games) and 500M for windows.

Perhaps HaikuOS, NT 3.51, Windows ME with KernelEx or the new OS/2 5 (ArcaOS), or Win7PE or Win10PE are more capable and similarly faster compared to Ubuntu, Windows7/10 or OSX. [https://www.arcanoae.com/current-release-timetable- arcaos-5-...](https://www.arcanoae.com/current-release-timetable- arcaos-5-0-blue-lion/) [http://theoven.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=4883b8169b752f637e361...](http://theoven.org/index.php?PHPSESSID=4883b8169b752f637e3611673a7ce3ea&topic=1336.0)

<comment><USER8> "DOS + Win 3.11 was very fast compared to Windows (9x, XP, 7 and 10), OSX or Linux nowadays"

You either have some seriously rose-colored glasses on, or you need to put an SSD in your current computer because a lot of the slowness of modern machines lies in the increasingly-obsolete hard drive. (Due to the increasing prevalence of cheap SMR [1] drives in consumer-grade gear, I'm not just saying "increasingly-obsolete" for rhetorical purposes; cheap hard drives are actually regressing in performance lately.) I remember multi-minute boot times and multi-minute load times for things like office suites and such, which are now entirely foreign to me.

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

<comment><USER9> > You either have some seriously rose-colored glasses on, or you need to put > an SSD in your current computer because a lot of the slowness of modern > machines lies in the increasingly-obsolete hard drive.

I have Windows installed on an SSD. I have 16 GB of RAM.

Yet Windows still wants to use a page file, or programs run out of RAM. It's crazy. Programs don't actually USE this much, they just request more than they use.

A page file slows things down compared to doing everything in RAM. Even on an SSD, it's way slower.

<comment><USER10> While a page file is definitively slower than RAM, it's not a given that simply using one will make the whole system slower. As long as the kernel only sends rarely used pages to the file, the slowdown in writing/reading them can be made up by having more RAM available for the filesystem cache.

<comment><USER11> I don't know if this was improved in W8 or W10, but in W7 and before the paging algorithm in the NT kernel was definitely subpar, having a pagefile _always_ reduced performance, because applications in the background would be swapped out even if plenty of RAM was available, so going back to an application meant that it was unresponsive until the kernel swapped it back in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If anybody is interested in some 'current' open source MS-DOS software, I put up my old undergraduate thesis sources from 1997 recently:

        https://github.com/burtonsamograd/xp32

Te repo has a full DJGPP (GCC for DOS) toolchain environment included to build the included sources of the project, so you can just clone and build.

Probably a lot easier to understand and build than the Doom sources.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does it run in DOSBox? If so, capture a video and upload to YouTube, that's the popular thing to do with demos these days, the higher-res the better.

Need that crisp 2048x1080 Second Reality by Future Crew: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFv7mHTf0nA)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ahh, an OS which never had vendor lock-in, and had multiple independent vendors.

That dream died with Windows.

<comment><USER14> >"multiple independent vendors"

Unless I'm missing something, there weren't multiple vendors for MS-DOS pre- Windows.

<comment><USER15> There was MS-DOS, and also Digital Research, later Novell, then Caldera, etc DOS which tended to have features that wouldn't be around until a version or two of MS DOS later. There were also nasty power plays involving the two -- early betas of Windows 3.1 would refuse to run on DR-DOS.

<comment><USER16> Don't forget 4DOS. I loved that OS:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4DOS](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4DOS)

<comment><USER17> Actually, I looked that up because that's what I remembered using as a "DOS alternative". Seems like it was actually just a shell replacement, leaving the actual OS stuff (such as handling INT 21h requests) to the underlaying OS, whether DOS, Windows or OS/2.

I guess wee me back in the day didn't know the difference :)

<comment><USER16> Well son of a gun. I assumed it was a full DOS implementation but you're right. Well TIL... 20 years later...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> 1.2 ships with 4 year old and broken CDRom driver, CD audio and CD detection doesnt work in a bunch of old games(for example Need For Speed).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGmCVeAKR4w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGmCVeAKR4w)

</comment><comment><USER19> How is this useful in 2016? I'm genuinely curious.

<comment><USER20> install onto a stick or disc for server firmware upgrades.

"but the cloud..."

someone maintains that cloud, every day.

<comment><USER21> But why not Linux in that situation?

(Not to talk the project down, it's great. But I don't think anyone wants to depend on it for system recovery)

<comment><USER22> Because shockingly the vendors still ship driver updates in dos compatible form and not linux in my experience. Last time I did BOIS/RAID driver updates, I was glad I could boot to DOS using a USB stick and not have to revert to a USB-to-floppy converter + floppy.

<comment><USER23> this.. I wanted to upgrade an old bios recently and intel only provided an exe

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> An operating system hosted on SourceForge, whose "drivers" directory includes support for a grand total of two devices -- the IBM PC floppy and the PC/AT clock [1]. DOS thinks different!

(Of course counting drivers in DOS is highly misleading, as the BIOS [2] directly offers all the useful calls like "turn on cassette drive motor" and "read joystick" that you will need to build modern microcomputer software.)

[1] [https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/svn/HEAD/tree/kernel/trunk...](https://sourceforge.net/p/freedos/svn/HEAD/tree/kernel/trunk/drivers/)

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

<comment><USER25> This doesn't seem to be a particularly kind or constructive comment.

The linked article opens with:

 _DOS isn 't exactly a moving target anymore, so we don't have to chase new features or shifting compatibility._

Are you making a commentary on the usefulness of DOS or of FreeDOS as a project?

<comment><USER26> I think they're just making an ironic comment about how times have changed.

<comment><USER24> Yes, that was it. I was trying to express positive astonishment that a 36-year-old operating system is being maintained largely in its original form.

No disrespect towards FreeDOS intended at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If anyone is interested in doing TCP/IP networking on DOS (and it may work on FreeDOS [1]), read on:

Reading this thread, I just remembered that I used to have an old IBM PC Jr that ran DOS (years earlier), a great machine hardware-wise (though it was not a marketing success, I've read). And some time back I had written this post about it:

Lissajous hippo, retrocomputing and the IBM PC Jr.:

[https://jugad2.blogspot.in/2012/09/lissajous- hippo.html](https://jugad2.blogspot.in/2012/09/lissajous-hippo.html)

While looking up info about the PC Jr. for that post, I came across Mike Brutman's PC Jr. page (mentioned in my blog post):

[http://www.brutman.com/PCjr/](http://www.brutman.com/PCjr/)

He was an IBM employee for a long time and so had access to good info about the PC Jr. - both hardware and software, and his page above is one he maintains about that machine - a sort of retrocomputing site about the Jr.

We then talked some on email, and he told me he had built a TCP stack for DOS and was running it on his Jr. That page is here:

[http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html](http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP.html)

He says others are also using mTCP, for fun, work and even business.

Here's an excerpt from his overview section about mTCP:

[1]:

[ mTCP should run on all variants of DOS including IBM PC-DOS, Microsoft MS- DOS, DR-DOS and _FreeDOS_. All of these applications will run well on the oldest, slowest PC that you can find - I routinely use them on an IBM PCjr made in 1983 because nothing beats the fun of putting a 30+ year old computer on the Internet.

People are using mTCP for goofing off and for real work. If you have a DOS machine that needs to send data across the network mTCP can help you get that done. Besides its utility to vintage computers I have heard of people using it to transfer lab data from dedicated industrial PCs, allowing backups to be run on old machines, and sending sales reports from the branch offices of a retail store to a central server.

Don't have a vintage computer laying around? No problem! mTCP applications will run in a variety of virtual and emulated environments. It has been tested with DOSBox, SwsVpkt, VirtualBox and VMWare. See the documentation for the details. ]

<comment><USER27> mTCP is pretty sweet; I once ran it (IIRC) to set up an FTP server so I could transfer some files from the base system to a vbox VM running FreeDOS (I think it was to play around with some old QB4.5 code of mine from over a decade ago). To be honest, there was probably an easier way to do it, but I may have been hindered by the "draconian" rules we had on these machines (Win8 boxes, and we didn't have admin access) - or maybe I just wanted to see if it could be done. I don't really recall...

<comment><USER6> Cool!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I love the FreeDOS project. While my first computer (a Kaypro II luggable - [http://oldcomputers.net/kayproii.html](http://oldcomputers.net/kayproii.html)) ran CP/M, my career in software began with PC-DOS on an IBM 5150. Every now and then, I like to run some of my old apps on FreeDOS, just to how far we've come (and how far we haven't, in some respects).

</comment><comment><USER29> I still keep a FreeDOS install on most of my usb keys I carry around.

Just tried out the new version... nice updated installer. The old one would write out the install really slow. Gratz and thank you.

<comment><USER6> >I still keep a FreeDOS install on most of my usb keys I carry around.

Ha ha, at one time, as a system engineer, I used to carry many essential free DOS / Windows / Unix software apps (including some small utilities that I wrote - for both DOS and Unix, in Turbo C / Unix C and shell) around with me, burned onto a few CDs, on the theory that you never know when you may need it, on some client's PC (I used to go to solve clients' software problems). And it often did turn out that one of those apps was needed and I used it to solve some of their computer problems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The "why this exists" part of the home page is pure hacker. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER31> I am curious to see functionality development in FreeDOS, for example, in include a capability to run SSH with X11 forwarding. It will be very interesting and useful.

</comment><comment><USER32> Is there a changelog somewhere ?

</comment><comment><USER33> It would be tempting to try a DOS web browser in this day and age.

<comment><USER34> Your best bet is probably Arachne: [http://www.glennmcc.org/](http://www.glennmcc.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> GlaDOS, where are you?

</comment><comment><USER36> Who use DOS this days?

<comment> amiga-workbench I do, my IBM 5170 is running MS-DOS 5 and I use it for IRC, BBS and the odd bit of distraction free programming.

Multitasking is a distraction.

<comment><USER13> You use physical manuals?</comment></comment></comment>


Reusable Code is Bad [or at least overrated] - <AUTHOR> http://mooneyblog.mmdbsolutions.com/index.php/2010/07/30/reusable-code-is-bad/

<comment><USER2> "At this point, you started out trying to improve your code-hygiene a little bit, and all you've done is spend the whole day creating a monstrosity that is almost impossible to understand."

At which point, your code is not reusable. I feel like this article is kind of knocking down a straw-man. Of course you shouldn't refactor your code into a snarled tangle of functions. Code should convey ideas.

Refactor your code into ideas that make sense and combine well with the other ideas in the rest of your code. Then you can check the ideas for correctness, as well as the ideas and code that implements those ideas. If it is all correct, the code is correct. If the ideas are implemented well, they can be reused.</comment>


The Zinc API and pivoting before demo day - <AUTHOR> https://getputpost.co/the-zinc-api-and-pivoting-before-demo-day-5265d8493c59 <comment><USER2> It would be nice if they mentioned something about getting some sort of agreements from the sellers they were aggregating. This just smells of the classic sort of pitfall that the things you are standing on could pull out the rug and leave you with nothing.

<comment><USER3> Doug from Zinc here. We have agreements with some (but not all) of the retailers that we work with.

Reliability should be a huge concern for any developer choosing what services to build atop. The Zinc API has been operating without a significant service interruption for several years now, and we consider our ability to provide uninterrupted service to be one of our primary competitive advantages.

We have very long term plans for Zinc which is why we've earned the trust of several big institutions. Please reach out if you are thinking of using the Zinc API and would like to discuss reliability.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I hadn't heard of Zinc. Looks like a cool service.

Is it possible to collect Amazon affiliate commissions when "selling" a third party Amazon item?

I can't imagine Amazon would be okay with that, since every "sale" would come from the same IP of Zinc servers.

<comment><USER3> A good rule of thumb here: if the orders are being placed on the end consumers' accounts, retailers are okay with using affiliate. If you're placing the orders on your own account, they're not okay with it. Exact policies vary from retailer to retailer.

<comment><USER4> Right. So does your API support "making a purchase" on behalf of the consumer (through the consumer's account) and then collecting affiliate revenue?

If so, how do you manage the mechanics of that? Does Amazon have an OAuth feature or do you need to request the consumer's credentials?

<comment><USER3> We do this for a couple niche API users. We need the consumer's credentials-- none of the retailers support OAuth with ordering permission.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As many as similar service: easync.io, hydralister. Why is this service better?

</comment><comment><USER6> I wish this was a podcast, it would be a great weekly.</comment>