Peter Thiel's Religion - <AUTHOR> https://www.perell.com/blog/peter-thiel <comment><AUTHOR> This article was recently submitted to Hacker News by a reader, I was interested, but other readers immediately flagged it to death. One reason was its confusing title and introduction, triggered reactions like "Peter Thiel is an entrepreneur, why should I care about his opinions of religion?!" and "As the disclamier said, the author had never met Peter Thiel, this article is useless!", the length of 15,000 words also made it even worse: a causal HN reader won't read it.

Today I finally found two hours to carefully read through this article, and I highly recommend you to read it when you have time. You don't have to know who is Peter Thiel nor his religion, and I think you'll find an interesting tangential topic even if you already have an opinion on Peter Thiel agenda. This article is NOT religious preaching, startup evangelism, or biography. The author offers a (3rd-party) character analysis of Peter Thiel, how various ideas influenced him and affected his desicions, and how the same ideas can provoke thoughts for the readers, and reviewing human culture, business strategy, economics, and history through its lens.

The following ideas are elaborated, ( _but my summary is incomplete, please read the original article_ ).

1\. A few simple concepts in Christianity, such as devoting one's life to God rather than idols or things in the world, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, the existence of a beginning and an end from the Genesis to the Revelation.

2\. From which, those lead to the three big ideas discussed in the article.

(a) Don't Copy Your Neighbors

The human brain is a gigantic imitation machine, and it plays a central role in human culture and civilization. A French philosopher, Rene Girard, who heavily influenced Thiel's worldview, is known for the theory of imitation - the Mimetic Theory.

From this perspective, our desires are learned by imitating other peers in a social group. Human conflicts arises from similarities, not differences. Same desires can bring people together, but since everyone is imitating other people, as soon as two people cannot share an item they both desired, they would become the worst enemy. Even worse, even when resources are diverse and abundance, people would still end up fighting for the same thing/status because they are affected by the same "meme", "We buy things we don't need with money we don't have to impress people we don't like".

Therefore, Mimetic Competition ensures great violence and turns everything to a destructive zero-sum game. Competition distracts us from things that are more important, meaningful, or valuable.

Good imitators copy a transcendent goal or figure.

The author also argues that Peter Thiel believes a business should focus on uniqueness, not outpacing your competitors due to the reasons above, and also seems to advocate the creation of large monopolies like Google, instead of a market with near-perfect competition. I don't know what to say about it... But interesting indeed, I'm curious about your thoughts when you finished reading it.

(b) Time Moves Forward

In premodern time, time is often viewed as cyclical. The world spins along an endless cycle: creation, rise, decline, destruction, and rebirth. Even if the cycle repeats for millions of years, it will continue to spin forever. The circle of time closes where it opened. The Ancients assumed that humanity was doomed to cycles of pessimism. A cyclical notion of time removes human's control from the world.

On the other hand, Christianity tells a story that begins from the Genesis, how the world went bad, the birth of Jesus, and how someday God will make all wrongs be right, hence the idea of a linear time, the idea that humanity can improve itself, step-by-step and stage-by-stage into an earthly paradise is introduced to the Western Civilization. Good imitators copy a transcendent goal or figure, and linear time helps forming the image of the transcendent goal. Linear time drives progress and long-term thinking.

Rene Girard also believes the Scapegoat Mechanism is the center of human civilization. Due to the destructiveness of Mimetic Competition, all tribes would be plagued by serious conflicts and violence, eventually, the communitiy will find someone/something to be responsible for all the evils, and killed the scapegoat in a social event, then peace is restored. It is both violence and a resolution of violence. This Scapegoat Mechanism can also be viewed from the perspective of cyclical time: peace, violence, sacrificial, and restorable of peace.

Nevertheless, in Christianity, a story of scapegoat is told, not from the point-of-view of the community, but the perspective from the victim. And according to Girard, this is the essence of biblical revelation. The Gospels classify Jesus as a scapegoat. The death of Jesus, like a scapegoat ritual, is a collective and community murder, and reveals the radical injustice of the scapegoat phenomenon. It avoids problems of cyclical time.

(c) The Future will Be Different From the Present

Technological progress has slowed down or became stagnate. The only major exceptions are semiconductors, DNA sequencing, and communications technology. Side effects of slow growth plague the economy. Real median wages haven't risen since 1973. Meanwhile, the costs of housing, healthcare, and education are rising faster than inflation.

As a result, people lowered their expectation, and shifted from an optimist view of the future of great public projects to pessimism. The Empire State Building was built in 15 months from 1931-1932. 80 years later, The Freedom Tower took more than 12 years to build. We've narrowed the definition of technology to Angry Birds and goofy SnapChat filters. That's why Thiel longs for the days when technology alluded to space, airplanes, and rockets that generated more energy than a small atomic bomb.

In everyday life, the speed of technology and the hyperconnectivity of society have placed us in a "never-ending now." Like hamsters running on a wheel, we live in an endless cycle of ephemeral content consumption — a merry-go-round that spins faster and faster but never goes anywhere.

People are also shifted from long-term great goals to short-term thinking and "pursue optionality". Rather than taking risks or working on important projects, students acquire options. In theory, these safety nets give them freedom. Bolstered by the confidence of security, they can jump head-first into ambitious projects. In practice, they become habitual acquirers of safety nets and never work on anything of substance.

In Christianity, the Book of Revelation paints two outcomes for the future of humanity: catastrophic apocalypse or a new heaven and a new earth. The probability of a civilization-ending apocalypse is increasing. Peter Thiel worries that the world is becoming more Mimetic. Worse, globalization is raising the threat of runaway Girardian violence and an apocalyptic world. That though, a lack of progress leads straight to a bleak, ravaged, and apocalyptic world, so we shouldn't stop innovating.

To offer solutions, Thiel turns to the Christian value of hope. Our beliefs about the future impact our thoughts about the present. The more we can turn our attention away from the ephemeral present and towards the eternal future, the more we can pursue grand visions and persist through the challenges of the day.</comment>


Ask HN: How is it living in SF/SV? - <AUTHOR> I looked at houses in these areas because I thought, well, if it's a million or two, I guess that's a mortgage that might be manageable someday. It's not a million or two. It's four or more in most places in the valley, and _sometimes_ around a million or so in SF.<p>How do people living in SF/SV save to buy a house? Is that even possible? <comment><USER2>
      It's four (million) or more

Not in the vast majority of SV, it isn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where should I be looking?</comment></comment>


Sergey Brin: I'm Worried About the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2012/04/16/sergey-brin-worried-internet/

<comment><USER2> I think I read the same thing from Ayatollah Khamenei, and I prefer his choice of eyewear instead.</comment>


Show HN: Llama or Alpaca? - <AUTHOR> https://llama.party <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! Made this as a fun side project in a couple hours. It is meant to be goofy.

One thing to note - we are collecting analytics on all players. It is interesting to see which pictures are proving to be a challenge and what the average score is for users.

If you have any comments, suggestions, or requests, please let me know!

</comment><comment><USER2> Got 1 out of 9. So difficult!

<comment><AUTHOR> That just means you need to practice :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> shame alpaca.party was already taken, rolls off the tongue better!

<comment><AUTHOR> We definitely looked at this one first - alpacas are arguably more popular as well (although, according to the data, llamas are much easier to identify).</comment></comment>


Talking Machines – Human Conversation About Machine Learning Podcast - <AUTHOR> http://www.thetalkingmachines.com/blog/

<comment><USER2> Can someone explain to me why they call out being a "nerd"?

 _...we meet our hosts, Katherine Gorman (nerd, journalist) and Ryan Adam (nerd, Harvard computer science professor)..._

Seems a bit misplaced.

Also, Yoshua gave a great, albeit slightly controversial for the crowd, talk at AGI 14 in Quebec this summer.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exhdfIPzj24](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exhdfIPzj24)

<comment><USER3> Good talk, but how was that controversial?

<comment><USER2> Not conventionally so, I think some of the AGI people think his un- supervised/supervised training thoughts do not lend themselves towards AGI/Strong AI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds interesting. Couldn't find an RSS feed on your site. Where can I subscribe?

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're into data science podcasts... this one has been going for a couple months and getting some attention. [http://www.partiallyderivative.com/](http://www.partiallyderivative.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Is there an rss feed to subscribe to or is it only for iTunes?

<comment><USER7> The rss feed is [http://www.thetalkingmachines.com/blog?format=RSS](http://www.thetalkingmachines.com/blog?format=RSS)

<comment><USER6> Cool. Works perfectly with Pocketcasts. Art and notes too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They recommend the book "Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective" by Kevin P. Murphy.

<comment><USER8> I've only read a few chapters from this, but I've heard it recommended highly by others as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really great idea - I'll definitely be listening.

</comment><comment><USER10> I submitted this around 9 hours ago.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8830057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8830057)

<comment><USER11> In that case the post did get some attention, but not enough to count the repost as a dupe, so we've moved the comments over from the previous thread.</comment></comment>


Remote work: an engineering leader's perspective - <AUTHOR> http://dec0de.me/2014/11/remote/

<comment><USER2> posted in article comments: </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>====

Quote: "Over time, we've encountered some remote candidates who want London rates whilst living in a lower-cost country. I don't mean them any harm, but can't think of any other term but "greedy"."

Julien, I'm sorry, but if I were considering your company as a potential employer, a statement like this would immediately make question your good faith. Ensuring that I can afford an "identical standard of living" as my colleagues is an extremely questionable principle, even if you were able to actually objectively determine that (which you can't).

What business of yours is it that I choose to live in Berlin vs. Zurich or Bratislava? You wouldn't pay more a person with a severely disabled dependent requiring round the clock care, would you, even though this circumstance will affect her happiness and productivity greatly. You wouldn't be able to pay less a person that lives in a London suburb an hour and a half away on a train. The choice of locale and cost of living is one of principal advantages of working remotely, and it's the employee's decision and not yours whether the net benefit of their arrangement (salary + cost of living + subjective locale benefits) is adequate.

You may think that your ability to hire doesn't suffer as a result of your beliefs on this point, but I suspect that you're (perhaps knowingly) giving up on a category of highly qualified senior candidates that are smart enough to not accept your self-proclaimed bullshit right to decide (conveniently) what compensation is fair based on their locale alone.

<comment><USER3> answer posted in article comments: ====

Hi Paul, thanks for taking the time to read this and for the comment. I faced similar reactions while setting this up, so I may be somewhat equipped to respond.

I'm not hoping to convince you here but I'll still try to provide a more complete picture.

From a team perspective, let's take a first example. Two senior engineers, Alice and Bob, work for company X. They have similar experience and roles. Alice lives in Central London, and Bob lives in Sofia, Bulgaria. In both cases that's because their respective families live there.

Say we chose to pay both the same exact amount: 75k£ gross per year, a fair senior wage in London.

In real terms, adjusting for difference in cost of living (for which hard data exists), Bob makes the equivalent of 150k£ per year; twice more than Alice, and also over twice what others in Sofia make for a similar job.

Such effective compensation discrepancies in a team can rapidly create extremely nasty jealousies.

In a word, balance in a team is important.

The principle we've tried to live by here is "fairness". To the point I _asked_ for my salary to be cut by 20% when I went remote myself. Perhaps this proves my "good faith".

We did try to provide identical standards of living, be we're of course not imposing lifestyles—the point of remote, as you point out, is in part that you can choose where and how you live.

For a practical example: living in the countryside in France, I have to spend money on a car but my rent is lower; I go to the restaurant less often but I spend more on food. In other words, I balance my lifestyle and budget differently but my "living standards" are similar.

To be coldly statistical about it, I was in the Xth percentile in terms in revenue or taxes in the UK, and I'm probably in the same percentile in France.

Let's consider your examples. I'll ignore the dependent person example, as that's not relevant to the discussion (not being locale dependent).

Regarding the example of the person living in the London suburbs, you're correct. We probably couldn't pay them less for a similar job in absolute terms. But the example makes my point: for various reasons that person balances their lifestyle differently: e.g. spend more money and time on transport, less on rent. In my experience, they probably still have the same "living standards" (again, not a very precise term).

Finally, regarding having a "right" to decide what compensation is fair… well, that's an employer's prerogative.

It is, indeed, the employee's decision whether their salary+costs+locale benefits is suitable, but as an employer it's also possible to use factual data to keep balance.

Note that given our math involved tax systems in various countries, which can be hairy, we'd openly discuss this with candidates and make sure we'd reach an understanding.

Perhaps you're correct and this kept us from hiring some of the talent out there. We still did hire several brilliant folks I enjoyed working with (and vice versa, from what they tell me), so it's still an improvement over the previous status quo.

We don't expect to have the ultimate answer to remote comp this or anything else — please remember, all I'm doing here is laying out what we attempted, how we reasoned on it, and what worked. I'm hoping others with similar experiences will come forward to complete the picture. Perhaps theirs will prove me completely wrong!

<comment><USER2> reposting again from article comments -- I guess I'm just trying to score HN points :)) </comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Hi Julien! Thanks for engaging in discussion :)

Your argument is certainly reasonable and logical! What I disagree with is the starting premise of "fair == same standard of living == same % of disposable income" and your characterization of candidates not subscribing to that reasoning as "greedy". ("Same standard of living" would make a lot of sense if your company was based in Bangalore and trying to hire in London -- e.g ensuring "minimum standard of living" \-- not that you'd be able to hire in London with Bangalore rates.).

You're absolutely right that ultimately it all boils down to what the market will bear, and you're happy with your ability to hire to your desired standard the way you're doing it -- which is great! I'm afraid however that it's a bit overly enthusiastic to say that this has anything to do with whether your compensation policy is fair.

As a candidate, I would expect to at least be told about this compensation policy before spending any time on the interview process -- I'm sure you'll agree, and perhaps start doing so if you're not doing so already :)

Cheers!

P

</comment><comment><USER4> You don't need to think of any other term - 'greedy' is correct. London rates are London rates because the work is in London, with all the baggage that involves. Take a look at the job listings for non-London work.

<comment><USER5> So if a remote working can get twice as much done as a London based office worker, is it greedy or value for money they are providing?

<comment><USER3> In my humble opinion, if a given remote worker can get twice as much done as a on-site worker, they're either:

\- more senior, so they'd get paid relatively more anyways;

\- exceptional, so they'd get paid relatively more anyways;

\- working too many hours, which is never a good idea for knowledge workers, and doesn't last long.

<comment><USER5> or get better working conditions, not being interrupted every 20 minutes. This is a major motivation for me to find remote work (as well as the fact that the pay is fairly poor where I am).

<comment><USER3> > not being interrupted every 20 minutes

Completely agree this is a major issue in many companies.

This said, I'd call it more a _problem_ with how a given company works on-site (open plan offices) than an inherent _advantage_ of remote work; in other words, it's incidental.

But then you can't easily convince anyone to abandon silly open spaces these days :)

[http://www.designcurial.com/news/survey-reveals-open- plan-44...](http://www.designcurial.com/news/survey-reveals-open- plan-4445881/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the best API documentation you've ever used? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Java API documentation. <http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/>

<comment><AUTHOR> the aesthetic certainly leaves something to be desired O_O

<comment><USER3> I guess it's just personal preference but Java has always been my favorite. I don't need a fancy design and word clouds etc. Furthermore, the Java documentation has a very high level of completeness, consistency, and all- around quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool one with readily usable code snippets & data, esp if you are logged in: [https://apidocs.chargebee.com/docs/api/subscriptions?lang=cu...](https://apidocs.chargebee.com/docs/api/subscriptions?lang=curl#create_a_subscription)

<comment><AUTHOR> ooo I like this. definitely going to be building usable code snippets customized for logged-in users! thanks!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stripe's is pretty clean and easy to follow: <https://stripe.com/docs>

Also I like Mailgun's: <http://documentation.mailgun.net/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Qt is the best: <http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-5.0/qtdoc/index.html>

<comment><USER7> Totally agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Github's is great: <http://developer.github.com/v3/>

</comment><comment><USER9> python official docs and flask docs

</comment><comment><USER10> Mathematica's documentation. It has live editable examples built in similar to the man pages.

</comment><comment><USER11> MSDN</comment>


Survey finds that 83% of Americans don't understand the concept of bandwidth  - <AUTHOR> http://www.inquisitr.com/4316/survey-finds-that-83-of-americans-dont-understand-the-concept-of-bandwidth/

<comment><USER2> Sample size (as pointed out in the article) is pretty small - approx 800 people.</comment>


4chan demands 4chan.com domain name - <AUTHOR> http://domainnamewire.com/2014/03/28/4chan-demands-4chan-com-domain-name/

<comment><USER2> Let's say I run a town with shopping centers. Both are called Main Street Shopping but one is located on Main St and 1st and the other is located at Main St and 120th. When you show up at Main St and 1st, is it a bussling shopping center filled with stores of all kinds. When you GPS Main Street Shopping Center and accidentally arrive at the other location, you just find a parking lot with an empty field with a "coming soon" sign that's been up for 5 years. The site is undeveloped, commercially zoned and represents essentially a burden for the community from both the unrealized tax revenue as well as eye sore and lower local property values. Plus the brand confusion, misdirected out-of-towners, etc.

So take this analogy to the internet, admittedly the 'real' costs may be lower --transmitting a few billion bytes is cheaper than road maintenance, fire and police protection to the unused property--but the societal cost is the same. The property should be fully realized and transfered to someone who will use it. This is the whole 'eminent domain' debate in a nutshell. Just because you own something DOESN'T give you impunity to 'waste' it as you see fit. There is a public interest that is ethically sound. But at its heart, the people who cybersquat are a nuisance. They have no bona fide interest in the domain name and likely acquired it just to 'own' a property that they think they'll be able to flip one day.... it's the same sh*t as the real estate bubble, heck... bubble of ANY KIND. Fact is, I am glad this system of arbitration is in place because if I was Bill Gates and some guy named Joe Smith bought my name.com and didn't have a fan page or other relevant property, but just intended to sell it to me for a 10,000% return on his 'investment,' I would be pretty pissed off. I really don't see the other side of this debate. These are greedy people just speculatively buying stuff without any real interest. It has created all kinds of negative effects like shotgun domain bidding, poaching, pricing bubble, artificial scarcity, ID theft, the 4chan.org issues mentioned in this article.... need I go on?

<comment><USER3> > Just because you own something DOESN'T give you impunity to 'waste' it as > you see fit

Under US law you sure do.

You also have to define "waste". The owners of 4chan.com are obviously holding onto their domain because they see it as a valuable asset. I doubt they'd see this as wasting their property. They're watching it grow in value.

Your argument would virtually have us outlaw anyone from holding onto an asset if it could immediately be used better by somebody else.

As a counter-example: Why should anyone be allowed to horde gold? There's a gold shortage and it would be of much more use in computer manufacturing.

That's obviously insane, and yet it's essentially the same scenario.

I understand that it would be better for the common good if 4chan.com was owned by 4chan.org, but if we're playing the game of Capitalism, then these are the rules.

<comment><USER4> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102)

<comment><USER3> Haha interesting side-case. Well, I will say that it certainly wasn't an example of Capitalism, and I don't condone something as silly as the illegality of owning a specific element like gold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It would be a very bad precedent if an owner of a domain name can gain rights to the same name in another tld just by his own site becoming popular.

US trademark law is limited to (a) commercial context and (b) possibility of confusion. If you aren't selling anything, or even if you are commercial but are in a different line of business, you should never be troubled by any trademark claims. This is how the old Beatles record label and the computer company can coexist with the 'Apple' name.

Probably many of us here are in similar situations - I have a domain name for example in .net and .org, but someone else has the .com. I don't want to take the .com from whoever it is (not without their consent, that is), and I shouldn't to have to pay for lawyers to fight them off if they make the name better known for their unrelated site.

<comment><USER2> It's not that it's 'more popular.' That's not the debate. The debate is that the .com site is being squatted. If it was some 4chan interior design company with even some legitimate business, then the debate would be over. Do you think it's a bad precedent if Google becomes popular and you can show that a person subsequently registered all the single permutation misspellings of Google and then tried to sell them back to Google? Or even worse, told them they would post porn redirects at all the sites if they didn't buy them at huge markup? Go read about the Whitehouse.com history.

<comment><USER6> Define squatted (or define legitimate use) - if the owner is using the domain for email and simply finds serving advertising provides some income, is that squatting; given there is no confusion issue. If they have a project in hand, or bought it to give to their child when they're 18, or ... are all those squatting?

How about, as for me, they renewed for a client and then the client didn't pay but now wants "their" domain back. Is me having that and serving ads to recoup costs (rather than wasting time on courts), is that squatting?

> _Or even worse, told them they would post porn redirects at all the sites if > they didn 't buy them at huge markup?_ //

Extortion and practices intended to affect the business of a RTM are already unlawful of course.

<comment><USER7> It's less about what you do with the domain and more about the method of choosing the domain. If your domain is blatantly copying a company name, and it's not your company name, you're not in a strong position. By copying I mean something like paypa1.com, not something like paypalsucks.com.

If you have a domain where you do nothing on it, but it's not copying anything either, that's squatting but nobody is going to care.

If you hold a client's site hostage for not paying, yeah that sounds like squatting. So what, that's not a value judgement.

<comment><USER6> > _If you hold a client 's site hostage for not paying, yeah that sounds like > squatting._ //

Am I supposed to give them product without receiving payment?

<comment><USER7> There's a reason I put the 'not a value judgement' comment. You have justification, but you are still _doing it_.

<comment><USER6> Alright but if the definition of squatting doesn't help with the value judgement, ie some squatting is justified, then that's no great help towards deciding how to delineate allowable behaviour wrt domain holding, is it? I considered the purpose of the definition of squatting was to define behaviour which was considered unhelpful and was to be discouraged in some way.

<comment><USER7> It's still ICANN's right and responsibility to get that domain back to the business the site is actually for.

You might have a moral justification in witholding the domain until you're paid, but it's not _yours_.

<comment><USER6> > _get that domain back to the business the site is actually for_ //

Surely, the domain is for the business - or other entity - who pays for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wouldn't want to be on the receiving side of this request. If its approved then it creates a bad precedent (as ds9 indicated). If its rejected then the person rejecting it is likely to piss of the 4chan crowd - and unlike many other 4chan attacks this is a cause the entire 4chan user base can get behind.

</comment><comment><USER9> The word "demands" is probably very unfitting. Moot doesn't seem like the person who would "demand" something. He would just do it and not take it very seriously and hope for the best. There is no reason to not at least try to obtain the name.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, I've never met a domain squatter that didn't have a price, but setting that aside for now, is the word '4chan' trademarked? Ahh I see it is [1] as of March 5th of this year. This will be interesting to see how it plays out.

[1] [http://trademarks.justia.com/858/67/4chan-85867485.html](http://trademarks.justia.com/858/67/4chan-85867485.html)

<comment><USER11> 4chan.com was created in 2003. Does 'prior art' exist for trademarks?

<comment><USER12> yes, trademarks do not need to be registered and can be used before filing for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is the name 4chan trademarked? It doesn't seem to be. Would it be easier to secure the .com if they trademarked the name first, then went after oversee?

<comment><USER14> Trademarks in the US don't need to be registered to be protected, like copyright (but unlike patents).

If you have established use of a mark before the registration (or use) of a competing/conflicting mark, you can defend it.

In fact, registration arguably provides no protection other than the fact that it makes it easier to search for your mark in the USPTO registry.

<comment><USER15> > In fact, registration arguably provides no protection other than the fact > that it makes it easier to search for your mark in the USPTO registry.

Isn't the trademark legally yours if you register and no one challenges for some period of time (I want to say 7 years)?

<comment><USER16> It is also legally yours if you use it and no one challenges for a long period of time. Trademarks are based on use.

Massive corporate behemoths have lost local TM use because some mom-and-pop store was using a trademark first.

<comment><USER17> My favorite example of this is the Waffle House (24-hour dive). In Indiana, "Waffle House" was already taken, so the national chain had to use "Waffle & Steak" instead. Of course, since we used to call the Waffle House "WaHo," this leads to the MUCH better name "WaSte"!

[0]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_house#Waffle_.26_Steak](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffle_house#Waffle_.26_Steak)

<comment><USER18> Another interesting example is the fact that Burger King is known ubiquitously as "Hungry Jack's" within Australia (but here in New Zealand we get the real BK branding).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Jack's#History_of_.22Bur...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_Jack's#History_of_.22Burger_King.22_in_Australia)

"When Burger King moved to expand its operations into Australia, it found that its business name was already trademarked by a takeaway food shop in Adelaide. As a result, Burger King provided the Australian franchisee, Jack Cowin, with a list of possible alternative names derived from pre-existing trademarks already registered by Burger King and its then corporate parent Pillsbury that could be used to name the Australian restaurants. Cowin selected the "Hungry Jack" brand name, one of Pillsbury's U.S. pancake mixture products..."

<comment><USER19> An important US trademark case (Burger King of Florida, Inc. v. Hoots (1968)) also involved Burger King: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burger_King_(Mattoon,_Illinois)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burger_King_\(Mattoon,_Illinois\))

The court ruled that federal trademark registration had priority over state law, and that the big chain Burger King had rights to the "Burger King" name everywhere except in Mattoon, Illinois. Since the Hoots family had prior actual use there, they retained the name for the Mattoon area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I bet all the traffic to 4chan.com is from people mistaking it for 4chan.org as all it says is 'inquire about this domain'

</comment><comment><USER21> Is this just to troll? Even if someone looking for 4chan.org enteres 4chan.com first, isn't close to 100% of the target audience able to figure out what went wrong and fix it within seconds? (either by trying .org and co, or by dropping the tld altogether to trigger a web search).

<comment><USER22> If I were to guess then I'd say that the chance to file a WIPO complaint is just too juicy to let it pass. For the lulz and all that.

<comment><USER23> Delete system32

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Domain squatting is so 1999 anyway.

</comment><comment><USER25> if 4chan.com is not cheating or bluffing with 4chan.org, it should not be handed over to 4chan.org.

</comment><comment><USER26> Quick 'hackernewschan.com' is still available. Someone here please buy it (seriously). It would be a troll-site for highly intelligent people that will bring forth a new age in humanity. Before you down-vote my comment brother... please consider the possibilities... they once thought that flying in the air impossible... what could be next?

</comment><comment><USER27> Guys, this is serious. .org is for non-profit organizations. .com is for commercial purposes. This is why moot had to beg for donations for years while helplessly watching everyone and their cat monetize "his" "content" on a .com domain.

<comment><USER28> Nope .org is for things that didn't fit into the big 5 one of the other bidders for .org tried to run this line and restrict .org to US style non profits freezing out charities an NGOs like Oxfam and the Red Cross - they got shot down in flames.

You going to tell JWZ (one of the early netscape developers) that hes going to have to give up jwz.org good luck with that .</comment></comment>


Apple uses spite to force planned obsolescence (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVAmnV65_zw <comment><USER2> The solder ball restoration video was the best. The patience of this here Rossmann is almost inhuman.</comment>


Borrow Checking for Nim - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/pull/15282 <comment><USER2> This is truly a big deal for Nim and is a major milestone for the language. Thanks to Araq and all others on the development team that made this possible.</comment>


Swift Finally Matches Objective-C in One Major Way - <AUTHOR> https://insights.dice.com/2019/06/05/swift-5-wwdc-2019-apple-objective-c/ <comment><USER2> ABI stability is that way.

The article is clickbait, and has no real content.</comment>


How Many People Are In Space Right Now? error - <AUTHOR>

http://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/ is wrong now. <comment><AUTHOR> fixed

<comment><AUTHOR> and again some lag</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any companies that invest in free products? - <AUTHOR>

I'm building a web app that helps unemployed people create attractive and professional Resumes for free and a job board that could boost their chances at finding a job. I know that i could make money from this in multiple ways even if i'm not gonna charge the users, but in case i want to make this completely free would there be any investors that could get interested in this sort of things? <comment><USER2> You're looking for benefactors, not investors. An investment assumes a way to recoup the money.

An approach would be an NGO. Advertise the service and your vision and ask for donations to keep it going. You can also look for government grants related to unemployment. You could even ask the job seekers for a donation after they find a job.

Other than that, "dirty" monetization techniques are pretty much the only way to go. Ads, data selling, spam etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes definitely. Investors (Tech. Angels, VCs etc.) are all open to the idea of 'free' products as long as there is a monetisation/revenue model in play.

You don't need to charge users to make money. Data for e.g. is a great avenue for revenue.

Why do you think all those investors invested in the likes of Google & FB anyway?

<comment><AUTHOR> As i mentioned there are multiple ways i can make money without charging the users, but i was wandering if i could get investors if i don't make any kind of revenue from it. And i find that selling users info to be unethical so it's very unlikely that i'd do that</comment></comment>


More with Less: Why Vroozi Develops with Angular js  - <AUTHOR> http://www.vroozi.com/blog/more-less-why-vroozi-develops-angular

<comment><AUTHOR> HTML is great for declaring static documents, but it falters when we try to use it for declaring dynamic views in web-applications. AngularJS lets you extend HTML vocabulary for your application. The resulting environment is extraordinarily expressive, readable, and quick to develop.</comment>


Ada to WASM Compilation Achieved - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.lang.ada/X-x1e-4w7dk <comment><USER2> Lovw this sort of news/work. I can see how the SPARK subset can be used here to make formally verified wasm.

</comment><comment><USER3> As someone who did Ada at university I genuinely have no idea what this would be used for on the web?

<comment><USER4> Safety critical wasm? I'm not sure either, but it doesn't seem that horrible an idea.

While ADA looks ugly (subjective, I know) it's a very well designed language.

<comment><USER5> Having been exposed to Pascal before C, I'd rather read Ada code than Rust code any day of the week.</comment></comment></comment>


The only time HN is this interested in Bitcoin is when there's a bubble forming - <AUTHOR> http://incoherency.co.uk/blog/stories/hacker-news-bitcoin.html <comment><USER2> Perhaps price spike is more of an apt description than bubble. A bubble implies a pop and as with the dot com bubble resulted in a lot of over priced companies imploding and becoming worthless. Bitcoin has never become worthless and has always gone on to beat the previous highest price.

Further when there is a price spike there is greater coverage and perhaps some underlying reason driving adoption, whether that is technology improvement or wider adoption etc this is what gets submitted to HN. These are the posts that gain traction, not the bitcoin = $2000 type posts, but positive or negative assessment s of the technology do well on HN because this is a tech site. Same thing happens with AR/VR, Tesla or any new tech, it's just that bitcoin is not like other tech.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd say that this time it is different. The reason for the increase of interest in Bitcoin this time is not its price, but the popcorn-worthy dispute between several factions, potentially leading to a hard fork this Tuesday. Or maybe November. The price swings are just a consequence.</comment>


Commodore SX-64 keyboard restoration - <AUTHOR> https://retrohax.net/commodore-sx-64-keyboard-restoration/ <comment><USER2> FYI that compelling marketing image at the top is from a "1983 commercial from Australia made for the Commodore SX-64, the portable version of the famous home computer Commodore 64". The full ad, which is quite the blast from the past with some delightful Aussie flavour, can be found at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95cGh9EeMIY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95cGh9EeMIY).

<comment><USER3> This is incredible. Thanks for sharing!

So I guess my question is...

...are you keeping up with the Commodore?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thank you everyone for warm words. Such feedback means a lot to me :) More of this kind of refurbs are on my blog already -> [https://retrohax.net/?s=extreme](https://retrohax.net/?s=extreme)

<comment><USER5> I was blown away and just shared it with my wife + kids who were equally impressed. How does one learn how to do this? Trial and error I presume?

<comment><USER4> Thank you for kind words. Regarding learning, basics are out there on the Internet but it all required a lot of testing, so yes, trial and error approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> amiga-workbench That metal scaffold is an excellent idea, usually epoxying shards of plastic back together isn't really viable on its own.

<comment><USER6> I've seen it done before, as reinforcement on large cracks, but the level this guy goes to, to perfectly restore this is _amazing_. I am truly open-jawed after looking at all the pictures. There aren't many working SX-64s out there, so the effort involved was totally worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I remember the SX-64. This was the computer I started coding (basic). Impressive graphics capabilities.

This "portable" computer was so heavy I couldn't lift it from the ground (I was 5 o 6 at that time).

</comment><comment><USER8> That's awesome! SX-64's are a rare beast. I remember seeing my first and only one at a user group meeting back in the 80s. We all came in with our duffel bags of C64s, 1541s, and then had to lug in our monitors or TVs. Then this one guy rolls in with his computer all in his hand and we were amazed. Of course most of us were there pirating games, but he was just running some demos and basking in the attention. That is until the guy with an Amiga 1000 came by. Those were the days...

</comment><comment><USER9> Just the other day over on YT the channel retro recipes also did a refurbish on a Commodore SX-64[1] for anyone who's interested.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlWsR5WN9e4&t=0s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlWsR5WN9e4&t=0s)

<comment><USER10> I was hoping to see this here...there is a modern remake of the poolside photo at the end of the video, too :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not gonna lie, that looked janky as fuck, until he showed the finished picture. Nice work.

C64 has a special place in my heart, and I will never forgive myself for selling mine. It was the mid 90's and I had just gotten a shiny new 486.

<comment><USER3> My dad sold mine when I was a kid, in order to get me a PC XT clone. It was a good decision -- the PC was a much more capable computer and I learned how to program with GW-BASIC -- but I really wish I still had my C64.

While working with emulators such as VICE is great, it's not the same as having the good ole breadbin :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am curious about the silicon oil. I assume this is a solution for places where there is not a lot of rubbing/use? Some searching did not turn up any indication this was a common use nor permanent.

<comment><USER4> It might be that I've used a wrong name for it. This is basically a kind of oil to fix squeaking car door rubber gaskets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reading the title I thought this was going to be repairing a failure of the keyboard itself and thought that maybe all keyboards on these "portable" computers. I've got a Compaq Portable 1 and and Osborne 1, both with bad keyboards when I got them. The Compaq was as simple as replacing the foam touch pads while the Osborne looks like it'll be a bit more work.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's a very recent SX-64 restoration on Retro Recipes: [https://youtu.be/MlWsR5WN9e4](https://youtu.be/MlWsR5WN9e4)

</comment><comment><USER15> Cool hack, SX 64 computers are expensive and they don't make parts for them anymore.

</comment><comment><USER16> Great blog there with many interesting retro projects. I enjoyed the one where he bought 32 Atari 65xe's in various states of decay and restored a number of them for resale. Truly a labor of love.

</comment><comment><USER17> A friend of mine had one of those, I remember that I was most in awe over the integrated disk station. Great job with the restoration!

</comment><comment><USER18> not all heroes wear capes

<comment><USER19> You don't actually know that. The restorer could have been wearing a cape through the whole process. I could be wearing a cape right now.</comment></comment>


White nationalist Richard Spencer, others lose Twitter verification - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/white-nationalist-richard-spencer-others-lose-twitter-verification-n821316 <comment><USER2> It's arbitrarily meaningless now. If someone proved their identity, they should be verified, why is it so complicated?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why didn't they ban him then, why just deny the blue checkmark ? This makes no sense.

</comment><comment><USER4> First, they came for the Nazis...</comment>


Compare career levels across companies - <AUTHOR> https://www.levels.fyi/SE/Google/Facebook/Microsoft <comment><USER2> Huge fan of this site, for two reasons:

\- It lets "outsiders" to the tech scene understand salary and levels at big companies. If you went to MIT you probably already have frat brothers/sorority sisters or an alumni network that consists of senior engineers at these big companies that know the promotion and compensation schemes well. But if you were an equally smart student who went to a non target school, many of these organizational "open secrets" are hidden and must be earned through work experience, which costs time and career opportunity.

\- Even if you do have some access to a network, these schemes evolve over time. Salary especially (levels not so much). Having up to date data is huge for assessing options during a job search or even planning for one.

The site isn't perfect— a lot of the leveling data is subjective AFAICT and not based on cross company moves, and the comp info seems a bit skewed for some companies and more senior roles. But its a huge step in the right direction towards empowering employees.

<comment><USER3> There are two problems with these:

1) If you aren't at one of these companies, it's not a fair comparison. It's _really_ difficult to find a pre-IPO company who is going to compensate you like these, if for no other reason than that options are just not something you can easily stick a dollar value on.

2) It's kind of depressing. It's very easy to find people at similar experience levels as you making FAR more money (perhaps 50%, or even double), because you aren't at a FAANG company (or whatever we're calling them now). It can really make you feel like you haven't learned/grown/accomplished anything in your career when you see people starting at a similar comp to what you get for a decade+ of experience.

Some people act as though these companies are an easy alternative for anyone, but the reality is that there are only a handful of them. For me, with a ruby background(+), I'm not particularly interesting to any of them, and I know I'm not the only one.

It's neat that between Facebook/Apple/Google you can compare apples to apples, but for a lot of people, it's really an apples to oranges comparison, and a frustrating one.

Also, I imagine it's that much worse for people outside the Bay Area.

(+: While I'm happy to learn new languages on the job and not tied to any stack, it's still not easy. For instance, a Google recruiter once told me to spend a few months becoming a Python expert, and then they'd interview me (in Python); another time a Microsoft recruiter insisted that I do the interview in Java and then got frustrated when I struggled with syntax I hadn't touched in 5 years.)

<comment><USER4> So what you're saying is that this tool is bad because it makes you sad ?. Information is empowering use it to make informed choices about your career. If you're taking less money, make sure there is some trade off you're happy with.

Also, most Google jobs are language agnostic. You can code in pretty much one of C/C++, Java, Python, Google hires for generalists. Your Ruby experience is not what's holding you back, so don't get bogged down.

<comment><USER5> Says google is code agnostic.

Provides list of the three languages you specifically need to code in.

Perhaps agnostic means something different in my language :p

<comment><USER6> I think code agnostic in this case means they don't hire based on a language, but they still work with a limited set.

It makes sense if you think about it. A small startup with 5 Python engineers can't afford to hire one with heavy experience in Ruby and who knows a thing or two about Python.

First, it may be the case that this person can actually transfer their knowledge and do a good job with Python, but there's also a chance they can't and that will disturb the entire operation for a team that small, that's a big risk.

Also, this person is not going to be paid as a Jr. Python because they have the options to be paid as a Sr. Ruby somewhere else, so the startup need to step up their pay game, now that's a big and expensive risk.

A big company like Google, on the other hand, can afford to have that risk. If everything goes right, they end up with a great Ruby and Python engineer, if things goes wrong, Google is so big they probably have some other projects somewhere that can use a good Rubyst, and in the worst case scenario, if the person really can't fit anywhere, a company like Google can still afford to let them go and eat the costs of a wrong hire.

<comment><USER7> Everything you said is not wrong. But it still seems to me that agnostic is the wrong word to use here, and code agnostic is the wrong phrase.

edit: mav3rick has clarified below, it does indeed seem code agnostic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maker here, posting this as a top-level comment for visibility. Lots of folks are interested in the salary information alone. We have a dedicated page for compensation information: [https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html](https://www.levels.fyi/comp.html)

There's also a short url: [http://www.comp.fyi](http://www.comp.fyi) :)

Edit: You can also contribute by adding your comp here: [https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html](https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html)

<comment><USER9> Very interesting, thanks for putting this together.

One thing that I'd like to see - on compensation, can you clarify whether the stock grants are valued at time of grant or at time of vesting?

If they are valued at time of vesting then the numbers will be much harder to (a) compare against one another, and (b) extrapolate into the future.

Right now the submission form is ambiguous, which I worry is muddying your dataset. I highly recommend picking one and clarifying that on the submission form.

<comment><USER8> The submission form [1] asks explicitly for what would appear on your W2 (ex. vested value). Part of the reason why comp packages have been so high in last 1-2 years is that stock grants that were given to employees 2-4 years ago have shot up in value via a bull run stock market. To attract these employees, companies have to outbid their current expected take-home pay. Thus the vested value is actually most relevant when you are comparing your current compensation and new offers.

[1] [https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html](https://www.levels.fyi/addcomp.html)

<comment><USER10> This is really true. A lot of people ask "what kind of a developer makes $300-400k per year?".

The answer is one working for a company with equity that is increasing in value rapidly.

Take that away and it's more typical to get $150-200k base plus another $50k in equity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's a slightly related open question: Are Engineers in the US just much richer than in the UK?

For perspective, I started my career with an MEng in Electronic and Electrical Engineering as a Hardware Design Engineer at £35k (I out-earned most of my fellow graduates). It seems like these salaries are just comically disjointed from my entire experience of life. Can anyone here speak to the differences? Everything I've seen points me to Californians just living an incredibly well- off lifestyle, but everything I read also indicates the people who have those lifestyles do _not_ feel well-off?

<comment><USER12> The UK is just very skewed, due to finance. I studied in the UK, and there was a 6 month placement internship programme.

Engineering firm (industrial measurement) wanted to pay me $11K to be an engineer. Marketing department at a major semiconductor said £15K. So I took it. My friend at Goldmans got £37K.

So guess what I did after uni. I even met loads of people in finance with engineering degrees who said they were now earning multiples of what their previous bosses in engineering were earning.

Anyway, if you do have tech skills, finance is after that. Particularly right now as all the trading is going full auto. Amazingly there are still places that don't have straight through processing in place, so plenty of work. At the fun end there's a lot of demand for people who can write trading algos, which I did for a long time.

This is after years of IT people in finance being second class citizens.

<comment><USER13> My understanding of finance as vaguely magical makes this easy to believe. Buy why does does engineering pay so low in UK?

<comment><USER12> Mystery to me as well. The only people I know from the course who do it live far from London. Even then I'm not sure how it makes sense when you could get a remote job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Either I was: 1) seriously underpaid at Google, 2) things have changed a lot in the past half year or 3) the stats do not reflect real averages.

<comment><USER8> Keep in mind that new hire salaries at the same level are typically higher than folks internally who have been at that level for some time. The market rate has actually gone up significantly in last 1-2 years.

<comment><USER15> I have 16 years of engineering experience and Google has made me two offers (original and revised) for a T4 position in NY that are well below the numbers reported on Levels (in fact, below the average on the site). So, either I am getting low balled like hell or there is skew in the numbers.

Edit: there is _skew_ in the numbers, not _some_ in the numbers.

<comment><USER16> My company is allegedly aligned with Google's levels here, and people routinely make Senior within 4 years. Spending more than 2 years at Eng I or Eng II is considered a cause for serious concern.

So T4 after 16 years is very surprising. Something is off.

<comment><USER17> It is not especially unusual for industry hires (even those with plenty of experience) to come in at T4 for Google. Being productive and effective within Google is an additional skill which is not identical to the outside, so it's a risk avoidance measure on both sides.

Assuming your experience translates well, people frequently go for promo within a year or two.

<comment><USER15> > Being productive and effective within Google is an additional skill which is > not identical to the outside

I don't buy that. I get that Google has a whole lot of proprietary stuff they have built their business on, but being in that situation is not unique to Google.

> Assuming your experience translates well, people frequently go for promo > within a year or two.

If that's the case, I'm not going to feel bad rejecting this offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi, I'm one the makers of Levels.fyi. Happy to answer any questions and would love to hear feedback! We have a lot of features in the coming months that we think folks will love!

<comment><USER18> Consider adding non-binary genders to the comp reporting. Something as simple as 'other' or 'non-binary' would be nice. The challenges that non-binary folks face can sometimes be different, and it might be nice to see that reflected in the comp tool.

Edit: I wouldn't ask, except that the tool already asks for gender. If you are already asking for a gender, you should consider include options beyond male/female.

Curious about the downvotes without responses. Tech has people who are non- binary, whose salary negotiations may be impacted by that, and who may struggle to find data that represents them.

<comment><USER8> Good feedback, we'll get this added shortly. We added gender recently based on feedback to highlight the gender wage gap. Agree that non-binary folks may experience another set of challenges and will be good to see the data.

<comment><USER18> Thanks, who knows if enough non-binary folks will report, but I appreciate you taking the feedback!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone know of similar data but for EU countries? As was already mentioned in this thread, salaries differ from the US quite a bit, but it would still be nice to know what the norm is.

I'm considering moving to Germany and have no idea what salary I should be asking for in interviews for a senior software engineer, nor do I know where to find out this information.

<comment> saiya-jin glassdoor? Or check expat forums in germany for the same question (I am sure they will be annoyed to hear it a millionth time, but you should find useful info)

<comment><USER19> Glassdoor is a good starting point but it would be nice to know of a community-gathered data source. Any pointers to specific expat forums?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sites like this are recruiter-bait. (Notice that Triplebyte is a recruiter). They purport to have real salary info from the richest companies in the world to unsettle employees. (With no claim to even be telling the truth). This inspires people to be job flippers when they are closer to the average salaries that pay well but don't compete at the high end.

Changing jobs every year might get you quick raises early but actually achieving meaningful results takes time and gets you bigger raises/satisfaction in the long run. Don't let recruiter-bait push you into someone who hops around out of envy and never really commits to anything.

<comment><USER21> > actually achieving meaningful results takes time and gets you bigger raises

Do you have evidence this is true? I agree with your point about satisfaction, but I've seen a lot of people who believed this about salary and got totally screwed as a result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Amazonian here. Can anyone else from Amazon speak to whether you think these numbers look accurate?

I'm sitting here in almost disbelief at how little I apparently make at AMZN. I don't think I have anyone to ask that would know and would be willing to give any kind of answer.

I've been fairly content at Amazon. I've done good work, and have been a resource to others on my team. But if these numbers are right, I don't think I can stay much longer.

<comment><USER23> I've been an L5, L6, L7 and L8 at Amazon over the last 10 years. My experience is that once you've been here a while the total comp is a rollercoaster that follows the stock price. I haven't had a salary increase since I was L6 (and don't want one!) ... so for me it all comes down to when I got stock and how it performed over the next few years. Personally I've done very well that way, as it's nearly always outperformed expectations. I think that tenured people like me skew the comp distribution because of that factor.

In general though, although it's human and natural, I wouldn't focus on what I make vs my colleagues or try to measure worth quite like that. It's simpler to think about it terms of "What would I make elsewhere and would I really be willing to leave and go through the disruption and risk of a change in jobs for that".

<comment><USER22> Is the reason you haven't received a salary increase since L6 because you reached the max base pay?

Why do you say you don't want a salary increase?

Regarding your last point, my focus is actually not on what I make vs my colleagues, but rather what I make vs what I could potentially be making elsewhere. You're of course right about the risk of a job change, but I wouldn't leave unless I felt confident that I found a good fit.

<comment><USER23> I'm not at the max base pay ... though I have gotten to the point where the majority of my comp is in stock anyway. It's always a gamble, but I have enough confidence in Amazon for the long term that given a certain total comp target, I'd prefer as much of the comp as possible be in RSUs. Then again, I have enough financial security that I can also afford to lose that bet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I ran into this site before from all the compensation discussions on [https://www.teamblind.com](https://www.teamblind.com)

<comment><USER25> I don't think I'd want an activation email sent to my work account.

<comment><USER26> You can always send activation emails to random people at your workplace as well.

<comment><USER27> or even everyone

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow, I'm 40 year old director at big fortune company... and I find this mildly depressing lol.

Why is this so different than Glassdoor?

<comment><USER29> Glassdoor doesn't look at stock grants as income.

<comment><USER21> They have started collecting that data.

The real issue is they don't seem to properly weight responses to get accurate current year numbers. The estimated total comp for my position is about 1/3 low on Glassdoor, it's about 1/30 low on levels

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've been in the software industry for idk, 9 or so years now and nowhere have I worked where there was like a level up system. You're judged - and paid for - by merit and personality (the last one is unfortunate, I'm a bit autistic and cynical so I'm nowhere near where I could be income-wise). We do have people with job titles from time to time beyond 'developer' but they seem like exceptions - like, having to invent a CTO title because the guy hit some income ceiling for the software development department.

</comment><comment><USER31> With anonymous submissions on sites like these (see also: Glassdoor), I wonder if there's any sabotage going on where companies submit fraudulent information about competitors.

Isn't it a potential downside to this open approach without any verification?

<comment><USER32> Anonymous, self-reported compensation data will likely skew higher than reality due to reporting bias.

In contrast: [https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer- salary](https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary) shows the actual width of the salary distribution, and the dataset includes all offers made to engineers on our hiring marketplace -- no reporting bias or fudging numbers upwards. (Disclosure: made that page. But also love Levels.fyi. Transparency is good for engineers.)

Edit: previously discussed [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15808549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15808549)

<comment><USER33> I actually think Triplebyte's numbers are low because they don't reflect RSUs and refresher grants. It's also hard to compare ISOs to RSUs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It's an interesting site, and it seems like a nice way to compare salary and the possibilities for advancement at the companies included.

However, am I the only one who kinda thought it'd give a bit of information about the responsibilities and required skillsets for each level? Personally, I've always found the hardest bit around shopping around for a job knowing exactly what they expect of a hire with X number of years of experience, or what they consider a junior/middleweight/expert engineer. It'd be interesting to see something like this which says say, Google expects a Senior Software Engineer to know these languages and have these skills, whereas Facebook expects them to know these languages and have these other skills or what not.

<comment><USER35> At a large company like Google or FB, responsibilities for the same role may vary widely between orgs or even teams within the same org. So I don't really think that you can define "responsibilities" in a way that allows you to compare between companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like how the sample question on Triplebyte tests API memorization instead of algorithms knowledge.

Of course, you can't win. At a whiteboarding session, there will always be applicants who give out the method from the library instead of providing an algorithmic solution.

<comment><USER37> I found it to be an ok question; not at all an API one. The answers differ quite a bit, and by choosing one and explaining why you can show that you understand what you're doing. For example, if you choose str.indexOf(' ') you clearly have no idea what you're doing, and if you pick str.count(' ') - 1 you look like you saw the actual solution somewhere and are picking something that looks similar without really thinking about it (why are you subtracting one from something that seems like it returns the number of spaces in a string?). The last one would require the knowledge that "words" is not a common API that any language vends.

<comment><USER38> I agree with you about A and C, but not your reason for discounting D.

In particular, [https://doc.rust- lang.org/1.0.0/unicode/str/trait.UnicodeStr...](https://doc.rust- lang.org/1.0.0/unicode/str/trait.UnicodeStr.html#tymethod.words) is an ancient counter-example (it was replaced by split_whitespace).

<comment><USER39> Counting words isnt strictly the same thing as counting spaces, so without knowing Javascript, you can still guess that it is wrong.

Most of their questions are like SAT questions. They require you have some knowledge about the field in general, then place the answer within the wording of the question itself, or allow logic to determine the right answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What is it like working at Google? I work at a startup, and these numbers are insanity to me. I have 10 years experience in mostly Haskell & FP (and that's what I enjoy doing). What would I do with my skills at one of the bigger tech companies?

<comment><USER41> With ten years under your belt, if you've been spending the time learning and growing your skills, you can do almost anything you want at Google. Except if you insist on doing it in Haskell. There are probably a handful of teams across the company that are using that language, but they might not have headcount to hire you at any given point in time.

Google is most definitely not a polyglot programming environment. There are five and a half blessed languages (C++, Java, Python, JS/TypeScript, and Go), and getting a new one added and approved is a major undertaking, and not guaranteed to succeed no matter how much effort you apply. And you'll still need to do your job. Even if your language of choice does get added, that doesn't mean you can use it on your project of choice. You code in what the rest of the code near you is written in. It's a sacrifice, but one I'm personally willing to make.

<comment><USER40> Thanks, this is some useful insight.

Can you perhaps talk a little about what your team and the teams around you are working on? What are the problems you are trying to solve? Happy to take this to another forum, if you don't want to talk publicly.

<comment><USER41> I work on the search systems that serve things like calendar, gmail, and other private data stores. In terms of the types of problems, some of the stuff I do is paying off technical debt (fixing mistakes that were made earlier in the system's design), and I'm also working on a big migration from one storage backend to another (sorry, can't go into detail). Earlier this year I spent time using a SAT solver to assist with query planning. There's a variety of different sorts of work, even within a single project, and you can often guide the sorts of problems you want to target by telling your manager what you're interested in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can you really make a million bucks with just 10 years experience as a T7 at Google? What does a "Senior Staff SWE" do? Are there a lot of them?

<comment><USER42> Most people won't reach T7 in 10 years.

The expectation for each level is: L3: you are expected to do projects assigned to you well L4: you are expected to lead a project in your team well L5: you are expected to lead a project across multiple teams in your organization well L6: you are expected to lead a project across multiple organizations well

I think the L6 engineer is basically a CTO role in many other companies. L7 is even beyond that.

<comment><USER43> Your L4+ levels seem pushed up by one to two. Levels should align to manager equivilent scopes.

Based on my own experience at peer company and [https://www.quora.com/What- are-all-the-job-levels-in-Googles...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-all-the- job-levels-in-Googles-technical-career-track)

L4: Capable of independent work on a project and coordinating with a small group (1-2 others). (note this is PhD starting level)

L5: Capable of leading your team (e.g. as a tech lead). Maps to entry-level manager

L6: Capable of leading a large team (e.g. large team TL). Maps to more seasoned manager.

L7: Lead project across multiple teams well. Maps to senior manager (manager of managers)

L8: Lead project across multiple orgs/large org. Maps to director (manager of managers of managers).

At a series B stage company (say 100 eng), on manager track, L7s might be called directors. L8 would be VP engineering.

<comment><USER44> To be clear, there are different levels for managers and engineers. An L7 engineer is a seriously dope engineer (like the kind of person you'd want to found a hard technical company with; think low-level problems like DMA). An L7 manager maps to a senior engineering manager.

I have talked to a couple L9 engineers and they're monstrous. L9 managers are directors or VPs.

<comment><USER45> Why is "hard tech" == "low-level"? There are plenty of interesting and challenging technical problems that are "higher level" but more difficult due to scale/latency/etc demands.

<comment><USER35> Besides, DMA isn't really a "hard" problem as far as I am aware...

<comment><USER46> [https://baus.net/you-cant-impress-developers/](https://baus.net/you-cant- impress-developers/)

<comment><USER35> Oh, so now we need to feign being impressed so no one gets their feelings hurt?

The fact of the matter is, were DMA indeed a hard problem, I would not have posted the comment.

So instead of posting a link to a blog post, perhaps you could try to disprove my claim?

<comment><USER46> In my experience, if you think that implementing from scratch a DMA solution is not hard, then you are an extraordinary talented engineer, far above the level you find at FAANG, so your opinion on this matter is not terribly relevant. It would be as if Jeff Dean came and said writing MapReduce is not a hard task. Nice, but not relevant for the 99.9999% of the talent pool.

I got a couple offers over the years for L5-L6 positions at FAANG (specifically Google and Facebook) to work on low level stuff, including system programming and kernel development, since I have a few dozens upstream Linux kernel contributions in some subsystems I dabbled with.

I also had to deal with writing a video4linux custom driver for an embedded industrial machine and a very custom acquisition card using DMA in the past, and it was significantly difficult even to just make it work playing with the well-defined kernel DMA APIs. I can easily see how the complexity required to write the entire kernel plumbing framework that makes DMA possible to leverage for normal developers like me would be a hard engineering task, definitely one that deserves an L7 architect/engineer capable of coming up with the right level of abstractions, incredibly important for a C kernel API. Just because one can explain on a whiteboard what DMA is and how it is supposed to work by remembering the OS college class (I'm not saying that's you), it doesn't make it an easy engineering task, engineering it's about making things work. I'm sure if you go back to the LKML mailing list and look at the time period where DMA support was initially introduced in the kernel, you'll be surprised at the sheer engineering complexity that was discussed when introducing such core kernel feature.

In conclusion, the fact that FB and GOOG wanted to hire me to work on stuff relatively close to what we're talking about, at a level that is considered senior, gives me some legitimacy to say that me thinking it's a hard problem isn't probably too far from the truth, otherwise we are somehow assuming that FAANG extends offers to incompetent people (multiple times), mistakenly considering them senior engineers.

I take your original comment as naive as the people who say "I could have built Instagram/Whatsapp tech in a week!", because you either are a super expert, or you simply don't know what you're talking about.

Perhaps you should consider getting an offer for $1M/y (or more! Since L7 tasks are easy for you maybe you can shoot for an L9 and ask $2M/y, I have a close friend at GOOG at that level who gets paid that much) there then, if you're not already in that elite band of compensation?

<comment><USER35> Perhaps we've understood the original comment differently.

I took it to mean writing a driver that uses an existing DMA API to talk to a controller.

But yes, I agree: implementing such a DMA interface from scratch — even with an existing controller — is not a trivial problem. Testing and verifying said implementation would also be difficult.

Well, I hope that one day I can make 1M/yr! For now, 3 months into my first job, I'm fairly satisfied with where I'm at :)

I'm considering shifting into kernel development next. Given your experience, would you advise going down that career route? Any tips for a career in low- level development?

<comment><USER46> In my opinion (which is not shared by many these days) understanding things at a reasonably low level is critical, I firmly believe that makes you a better programmer, even if you end up doing frontend development.

My experience with the kernel has always been mostly tangential, typically a byproduct of what I do day to day, which is working at a SaaS startup at scale and wearing many hats, from backend development (Java/C++) to infrastructure management. As I find performance problems, many times I find myself digging into the kernel code and exploring parts of the networking stack (e.g. finding out the specific behavior of a socket option), virtual memory management (e.g. finding out some quirks about the page fault management system), ...

Sometimes that leads to some small kernel patches and I've done several during the years, so that's typically my limit. The v4l driver I mentioned above was 6-7 years ago when I was in college and took a part time job working on that with a very talented team.

Apparently FAANG likes those kind of background, especially if you can get into a more SRE-type role where they are actually not looking to quiz you only on dynamic programming algorithms, but also on your ability to reason with system design, low level systems and performance, at least that's my experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> This makes salaries and compensation in Toronto seem outrageously low. Wow.

Maybe I should be moving? Crazy.

(Sadly, family is here, so moving is unlikely)

<comment><USER48> This is the usual reaction for those outside the Bay Area. Cost of living is very high in SF though, as are home prices.

<comment><USER47> True. But Toronto is pretty bad too. And we generally don't have the high levels of stock compensation. That looks like it could make a huge difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> As an average potential software engineer in the Midwest, it's at first exciting to see these salaries, but I also feel the need to check myself and realize that, in some ways, this is another universe to which I probably don't have access.

<comment><USER50> It seems getting access to this world requires either superlative ability, a network of people who can teach you the lingo, or university pedigree.

Probably a matter of time until programming is another power-law career like music or law is, where only the top hundred or thousand in the world can get by.

<comment><USER51> > where only the top hundred or thousand in the world can get by.

I don't think that's correct - music or law employs a ton of working professionals at all levels. If working at one of the big companies is the measure of "getting by" that means if you're a lawyer in a small town you're probably not getting by, which is absolutely not the case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I was an L66 at Microsoft six years ago; the numbers there line up pretty well with my own, and the other numbers I'm aware of there.

</comment><comment><USER53> Perhaps a stupid question, but are the comparable levels for equal seniority or impact of work, or equal compensation? If the latter, they definitely don't line up, especially FAANG vs. non-FAANG. If the former, it seems about right; wife and I are both staff-level at two different companies and the tiers are next to each other.

<comment><USER8> We take a holistic approach to level comparisons. The ultimate goal being to answer, "If I join X company, what level will I be placed at?". Compensation as you've pointed out, is not reflective of this because it varies wildly based on the size of company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> I left Amazon just 5 months after being employed there as an SDE, it was terrible. It's not all about the money. The levels have nothing to do with tech or experience. It's the ability of person to navigate his career through corporate bureaucracy and politics.

<comment><USER55> no offense but when i hear leaving after 5 months it just sounds like serious underperformance.

<comment><USER54> Why?

I left after 5 month voluntarily, I wasn't fired. I performed well and they wanted me to stay, 5 months was just enough to understand what kind of company is it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> The IBM ranks are inaccurate. Fellows are not above DEs. Both are the highest ranks indeed, but of two different tracks. DE is the highest rank of the engineering track, while Fellow is the highest rank of the research track. Fellowship have also be granted to non-research people over the past 20 years, diluting the merit of the title IMHO. Examples of fellows are: John Backus, Gene Amdahl, Ken Iverson, Benoit Mandelbrot, etc.

Both levels may reside in different pay bands, but they are both at the executive level. And DEs cannot become fellows, and vice versa (some exceptions to the rule may have existed).

<comment><USER57> I was at the IBM LTC from 2001--2009 as an STSM, and my understanding was that DE's could absolutely get promoted to Fellows. So assuming that Fellows are "just" the highest rank of the research rank is not really accurate. Perhaps that's what you mean by "diluting the merit of the title", but that sounds like you're coming from the Research side of IBM. :-)

Yes, it's rare for a DE to get promoted to be a Fellow, but that's because there are very few Fellows at IBM. And there's no reason why a Fellow would want to become a DE, since that would mean taking a pay cut. (See below)

From a salary band perspective, STSM is actually the highest rank of the engineering track (aka Band 10). A DE is paid on the bottom rung of the executive track (Band D), while a Fellow is paid as an Executive Band C. Which means a Fellow may be the highest rank of the "research track" but a Fellow is still going to rank below an SVP or GM from a salary perspective. :-)

<comment><USER56> You may be right about the DE -> Fellow promotion, although I only heard of it once, and that person was pretty spectacular. The Fellow -> DE path is unheard of. As is the RSM -> DE. All the DEs I know came from SWG and were STSM.

Re: my "dilution" comment, i was not thinking about DEs. I was thinking about non-technical people (management, law, accounting, ...) that have been creeping up the Fellowship lately. Also the bluewashed executive that were given a fellowship package to seeeten the pot.

<comment><USER57> Well I had the privilege of working with Paul McKenney who invented (and patented) Read-Copy-Update (RCU). He came to IBM as part of the Sequent acquisition, and was part of the Linux Technology Center, which was in the Systems and Technology group.

If you take a look at some of IBM's press releases, you'll see there are plenty of Fellows that come from the SWG and STG, and not just Research. For example:

[https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/7142.wss](https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/7142.wss)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Some companies have a higher technical level. Do you think a principal engineer at a non-descript company can find a job as a principal engineer at Google for example? I highly doubt so.

Do you think an engineer at working in v8, Blink, Skia, Chromium are at the same level as an engineer indirectly using those technologies?

Do you think an engineer working on internet-scale APIs is at the same level of a user of such APIs?

</comment><comment><USER59> FAANG companies have had huge stock increases in the last few years. A hiring bonus stockgrant 4 years ago for 50k is now delivering close to an extra 100k per year as it vests. It's not clear if folks are counting their stockgrant at the original value or the current value which could differ significantly.

</comment><comment><USER60> Is this an accurate representation of comp? For the equity portion, for example if the value is calculated at 2018 peak stock market levels (RSU are granted in # of shares, not value of shares) then shouldn't all the equity values be discounted by the 10-20% drop in FANG stock values?

<comment><USER33> Yes. Senior engineers at these companies are heavily compensated via equity. Total comp can fluctuate by tens of thousands each month. Its crazy hoe much picking a job has become an exercise in stock picking, and it's crazy how little our individual performance correlates with comp.

<comment><USER61> I have a saying that we didn't become all of a sudden better people, but that we are over priced like houses in the bay area, subject to similar dynamics because the demand is large and from the wealthiest companies in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I'm not super familiar with big companies, having worked mostly at startups with less structured "levels", but is there a separate scale or set of levels for managers? Or can you be "Senior SWE" _and_ a manager at Google for example?

<comment><USER55> It's essentially the same in internal levels just different title. For instance at Microsoft most managers are Principal level. And google most are atleast l5. (with some exceptions). But instead of being called principal engineer they are called principal engineering manager.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> these are obviously new hire figures (includes signing etc). does anyone know if one can expect similiar compensation if hired as l3 and move up to l4 versus if hired as l4 directly. wondering if it's better to switch jobs for promotions in that case.

<comment><USER4> It's always better if you come in new.

<comment><USER55> right but thinking for instance. would it make sense to leave to facebook just for the comp bump at l4 even if you really like your job at google? just because being a new hire would give you more comp?

<comment><USER4> I think this is where big companies get comp wrong. They should incentivize staying because after 4 yrs, you're right, there is a big comp fall. For me personally, I am happy with my work, comp, team and manager. That happiness > my willingness to practice for interviews again :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> when comparing msft/amzn with the rest keep in mind the state tax and CoL. that being said goog and fb also have seattle offices. but msft and amzn have bay area offices that pay more as well

</comment><comment><USER63> Netflix - Senior Software Engineer, only one level across the company

<comment><USER15> Similarly, Bloomberg only has two: Senior and not-Senior.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I remember seeing this site being posted by an indie hacker / startup guy(s?). The interface feels very familiar. Was this acquired by Triplebyte? Did Triplebyte acquire levels.io?

<comment><USER8> Yup we were featured on IndieHackers [1]! Triplebyte is our sponsor. We are independent.

[1] [https://indiehackers.com/interview/da7a4f5d63](https://indiehackers.com/interview/da7a4f5d63)

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> It seems equivalent levels at Microsoft are severely underpaid by the factor of 2 and sometimes even 3. How the levels considered equivalent across different companies on this website?

</comment><comment><USER66> This is surprisingly not as insane as I expected. I was expecting to feel underpaid in comparison and they do make a bit more at the same level, but this actually makes me feel better.

</comment><comment><USER67> I've never worked in a major tier locale or for a FAANG so these TCs are wild for me. We're hiring mid- to senior developers at probably half the big league Bay Area companies do.

</comment><comment><USER68> This is so clean!!!! Glassdoor is so messy compared to this!

</comment><comment><USER69> Would be nice to see data science in here as well.

<comment><USER8> We rely heavily on crowdsourcing. If you can send us levels for datascience roles at any companies you know that would help a lot! hello [at] levels [dot] fyi

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Why are sysadmins so ignored in things like this?

<comment><USER8> We'd love to add more roles but we don't have enough information yet. If you can help us with leveling information for sysadmins please email us at hello [at] levels [dot] fyi

Edit: Is DevOps the same as sysadmin? We have some salary data (click 'View Compensation' on main site) for sysadmins but it's marked as DevOps in our compensation form.

You can add your own here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18349421](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18349421)

<comment><USER70> Cool, thank you for the response, Ill try to at least add to the other thread to help out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Barclays - missing VP (between AVP and Director), and Capital One isn't an investment bank...

</comment><comment><USER72> Wow.... these salaries make salaries (including mine's) in Sydney really, really low.

<comment><USER73> I live in Thailand and mine looks -extremely- low.

<comment><USER74> Unfortunately for Sydneysiders their cost of living is just as high as Bay Area. At least Thailand is much cheaper.

<comment><USER72> True, Sydney is Soo expensive I have 3 years experience as a JavaScript developer and I haven't made six figures yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> BUG: Level 66 salary for Microsoft is more than level 67!

</comment><comment><USER75> Awesome. Could you add Big 4 accounting firms please?

</comment><comment><USER76> can you compare career level for [https://www.adc.com.au/](https://www.adc.com.au/)

</comment><comment><USER77> How does Netflix have one engineering level?

<comment><USER8> They have a fairly unique leveling system / culture and only have one level. Check out their culture: [https://jobs.netflix.com/culture](https://jobs.netflix.com/culture)

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> Those stock grants values are crazy high.

<comment><USER79> I believe based on comments here that they are reflecting current value, not initial grants. Many of these companies have performed insanely well over the last 10 years and anyone getting typical grants have done well by them. An AMZN grant from 4 years ago is worth over 5X from then, for instance. 6.5X 1 month ago for that matter but October was rough.

Being at the right company during the right 10 years is transformative and leads to early retirement.

<comment><USER80> This is not true of most of the numbers on levels.fyi that I can tell. I know for my own FAANG employer, the numbers seem right on the dot with numbers I have seen elsewhere and my own compensation (RSUs being at time given, not current value).</comment></comment></comment>


Larry Ellison's OpenWorld Keynote: Oracle Database 12c In-Memory Database - <AUTHOR> http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/2685494045001

<comment><USER2> Very interesting, column and row store in memory.</comment>


NordVPN Dominates VPN Market Share, and That Will Likely Continue - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcmag.com/news/366527/nordvpn-dominates-vpn-market-share-and-that-will-likely-con <comment><USER2> As a NordVPN user I can say that it's not only marketing that they are good at. For example not many VPNs I've tried were as good as Nord in regards to unblocking geo-restricted content. I found Nord quite consistent in that sense. They did have a strange issue with all the servers missing from the MacOS app, but it was literally sorted in 5mins when I reached out to their CS.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've noticed many YouTube channels promoting their brand heavily. Has anyone used their service? Thoughts/experiences?

</comment><comment><USER4> The article makes it sounds like NordVPN is best at marketing, but that's not a great reason to choose a VPN.</comment>


Bitcoin's 'First Felon' Faces More Legal Trouble - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/technology/bitcoin-charlie-shrem-winklevoss-twins.html <comment><USER2> Ahhhh, yes, I remember Mr. Shrem. He acquired my Bitcoin company in 2012, we signed an acquisition contract and everything, and then he just never paid me and threatened me when I tried to collect (it was a five-figure sum). And to think I'd even helped him with his college math homework.

<comment><USER3> I'm hoping the contract's execution was contingent on payment being received by you.

<comment><USER4> If only there was a currency that allowed that..

<comment><USER5> Good luck trying to code a few hundred years of common law into a smart contract.

<comment><USER6> Start with one step. Then take another. Step by step. Be not daunted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He wrote a "Geek in Prison" series that was interesting:

[https://medium.com/@cshrem](https://medium.com/@cshrem)

<comment><USER8> > Throughout the day I kept checking the computer to see if the funds she > added through Western Union were available yet.

This wait must have torn him apart.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Baffles me how Mr Shrem is held up as some Bitcoin martyr by those in the community even as late as yesterday.

Here's OpenBazaar's lead developer mentioning that Shrem went to jail because "Bitcoin is challenging the way money works in society". Shrem went to jail for laundering money for drug dealers. That's certainly one way of challenging how money works in society.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL9MkOGgVAQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL9MkOGgVAQ)

The Bitcoin community seems to have trouble choosing it's spokespeople. Remember Bruce Wagner?

[https://www.metafilter.com/107065/Bruce-Wagner-and-the- Bitco...](https://www.metafilter.com/107065/Bruce-Wagner-and-the-Bitcoin-Scam)

</comment><comment><USER10> I was invited to a house party at this guy's place when he was under house arrest. I said no thanks.

</comment><comment><USER11> The time line suggests this might actually be barred by the statute of limitations.

If so the case would be dismissed notwithstanding if the allegations are true.

</comment><comment><USER12> Fishing expedition. The money probably isn't theirs (there are plenty of places Charlie could have made that money since release, given what he does and what he's been involved in), but on the off-chance it is, they may win OR get uncomfortably close in discovery to stuff he doesn't want light on, and he'll settle.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why the hell would he be dumb enough to buy all this stuff in the US? At least go to a country where your assets won't get easily frozen, and where it's hard to extradite.

What an utter moron.

</comment><comment><USER14> "Over the last year, Charlie Shrem, a 28-year-old Bitcoin investor, has bought two Maseratis, two powerboats — one of them 32 feet long — and a $2 million house in Florida, along with smaller pieces of real estate.

...

Mr. Shrem...has said in recent interviews that he went to prison with almost no money."

What an idiot. Right out of jail, owes the feds hundreds of thousands of dollars, and can't help but conspicuously consume.

<comment><USER15> I'm somewhat disappointed that he didn't buy any Lambos...

<comment><USER16> Yeah, Maseratis are the Volkswagen/Chrysler/Fiat of the super-car world.

<comment><USER17> Well, Maserati is actually owned by Fiat/Chrysler Group. Plus, like all F/C vehicles, they're pieces of shit. Maserati used to be nice. Now, they're sport cars for people who want a sport car but don't know anything about said cars.

Volkswagen is actually, despite their scandals, a remarkably good quality group. They own VW, Audi, Porsche, Lamborghini, and Bugatti.

<comment><USER18> I own a 2013 Dodge Charger SRT (an FC brand). At $51k & 470hp out the door, it's the best performing and cheapest muscle car in its class. It can also seat my family of 4 comfortably. In 6 years and 42k miles, I've had zero drive train issues. Only problems I've had are suspension (I drive on pot hole ridden Chicago area roads) and tires worn prematurely due to bent suspension arms.

Dont know what your experience is with FC, but that's been mine.

Edit: math on years owned.

<comment><USER19> 42k miles / 6 years is a barely used car. I would expect a post year 2000 car to go 150k, even 200k miles with no drive train problems assuming normal conditions. Also, the stats show Fiat/Chrysler experiencing the most problems:

[https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/jd- power-201...](https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/jd- power-2018-us-vehicle-dependability-study)

[https://www.jdpower.com/business/press- releases/2017-vehicle...](https://www.jdpower.com/business/press- releases/2017-vehicle-dependability-study)

[https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2016-us- vehi...](https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2016-us-vehicle- dependability-study-vds)

[https://www.jdpower.com/business/press- releases/2015-vehicle...](https://www.jdpower.com/business/press- releases/2015-vehicle-dependability-study)

Pretty consistently at the bottom year after year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think it is a major flaw to assume someone's conspicuous consumption is from YOUR money.

This man has been in crypto for 8 years

Anyone that was there for the last 15 months could have made enough FROM SCRATCH to buy those things just trading. I've had hundreds of dollars of DUST in exchanges and wallets that I rediscovered were worth 6 figures, and at some points 7 figures if had checked. Even if the government had frozen some of my assets in connection with blah blah blah, I'd still have this stuff.

Add in advisory roles, salaries, the conference circuit, you might as well just fire your lawyer for coming up with that children's tale, and just stick to why someone might owe you money not "and here's proof they're the bad guy we must stop him NAO!"

<comment><USER21> His problem is that he said he was bankrupt when he went to prison. Not sure if he declared bankruptcy but...

<comment><USER20> Oh right, because saying "your are bankrupt" or actually declaring bankruptcy means permanently broke and living in public housing or under a bridge.

According to your story of events he would have had to say this in early 2015. He has been C-level at a hedge fund just a few months after getting out of prison in mid 2016.

And of course thats not how bankruptcy works at all.

This story is for extremely gullible and naive people, in order to try and get a summary judgement.

<comment><USER14> > _because saying "your are bankrupt" or actually declaring bankruptcy means > permanently broke and living in public housing or under a bridge_

Mr. Shrem has "not paid the government $950,000 in restitution that he agreed to as part of his 2014 guilty plea" [1]. It's reasonable to expect him to not be purchasing "two Maseratis, two powerboats — one of them 32 feet long — and a $2 million house in Florida" while simultaneously launching "various partnerships...that had to give money back to investors" just a year out of jail.

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/technology/bitcoin- charli...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/technology/bitcoin-charlie- shrem-winklevoss-twins.html)

<comment><USER20> oops, he should borrow against those and pay the government.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hacker steals $12,000 worth of bitcoins - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/08/hacker-steals-12000-worth-of-bitcoins-in-brazen-dns-based-attack/

<comment><USER2> How didn't this get more attention?</comment>


List of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS for devops/infradev with free plans - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ripienaar/free-for-dev <comment><USER3> Not able to push via git but you might want to add www.parkmycloud.com - <USER2> helps devs reduce by up to 65% your AWS bill.</comment>


Slack introduces a new search feature powered by artificial intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/3/15520006/slack-search-ai-machine-learning-people-channels <comment><USER2> Isn't all computing just basically artificial intelligence?</comment>