Ask HN: How should I pursue my passion? - <AUTHOR>

Dear HN,
As a community of creative, passionate, and ambitious people, I have a question for HN.
I am at an interesting point in life.  I am 25 yrs. old, and I am a programmer.  I know what I want to pursue, but I don't know how to do it.  I have tried.  I saved up money and quit my job 2 months ago to pursue my passion.  I am going to move to a different city in a few months anyway, so that decision was low risk and easy to make.
My "passion" has many sides.  I love 2d/3d real-time graphics.  I also love programming language design.  I am deeply devoted to the Scheme programming language, and I love using it to construct 2d/3d worlds which I can interact with.  I like games, and obviously I should be working with games, but I definitely don't enjoy game programming (game logic, AI, etc.).
My love for programming language design leads me to compilers, syntactual abstraction, macro transformers, etc.  I believe that graphics programming is currently bulky and complicated, and I would like to see more languages compiling itself into vertex/geometry/fragment shaders, scene graphs, etc.
It's been 2 months.  I have found that I haven't even been able to work on the things I'm interested in - I have to make products that sell, right?  I've been developing an iPhone game, and 95% of the work has been making 3d models, putting graphics together, marketing, integrating audio, developing a menu system, integrating fonts, and building the actual game logic.
It's a struggle.  I want to do research, and I think I'd be good at it.  But I have to make money.  It's either one or the other, I can't possibly do both at the same time, unless I get paid to do the research I want to do.  I'm going to finish my iPhone game, but I doubt I'll make much off it.  From here, my options are, in order of preference:
* Work on a graphics engine and do the interesting work.  License it and sell it for something like $100/license.
* Find contracting work to do graphics programming for games.
* Look for part-time contracting work and work on the interesting stuff on the side.
* Get a normal full-time programming job and try to be satisfied.
These are in order of "passion <=> practicality".  The problem is that there's a linear correspondence to "lack of money <=> money".
With all that said, I truly do believe that if I was somehow funded for a few years, my passionate work would truly pay off and I could start making money off of it.  It's a bootstrapping problem.
I would also love to meet people with my interests and/or passion.  I know you are out there, those who can either supplement or complement me with the same or different talents, and I want to be shaped and inspired by you.
I hope this doesn't sound like I'm whining.  I think it's extremely important that you figure out how to do what you LOVE in life, even if it takes a long time to build up to it.  I'm not looking for quick solutions, I just want to know how I can build up to it.  Any advice?
You can see the work that I've been doing here: http://jlongster.com/blog/ <comment><USER2> IMO, your passion is far too broad. You like graphics, programming language design, research, and three other things.

To be brutal, it sounds like what you're in love with is noodling around, with no particular deliverable.

As Jobs said "real artists ship".

My two pieces of advice:

1) keep honing your ideas until you've got something that is: * bounded * achievable * of interest to someone else ...then try to develop and productize that

2) in the mean time, keep the lights on and Ramen cooking by doing some contract work. It's a challenge to keep booked up 40 hrs/week, even if you're trying, so you shouldn't have trouble keeping it down to 20 hrs/week, and working on your passion in the other 20-40.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I completely agree. I have downplayed the option of part-time contract work for some reason. That's probably the best fit fore my life right now.

Thanks to everyone else as well, it's great to get feedback. I won't respond to everyone's post, but it's all good ideas. I mainly want to contribute valuable work to the field of CS, so doing either part-time work or graduate school is good for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As an artist, I can offer a third option: don't try to make money doing what you love.

I laid out a budget that would keep me alive --- food, shelter, etc. Essentially, what it would take to be personally ramen-profitable.

Then I made a budget of what it would take, minimally, to keep me doing what I think is important.

I added them together, then looked for a job that wouldn't exhaust me, and would leave me with that much money. For me, that amount is below the poverty line --- so it's not that hard to find a fast-food job that will keep me above my personal happiness line without wasting too much of my energy. And when I sell some of my art, that money is bonus.

I think that if you've discovered the contribution you _want_ to make to society, and if society isn't willing to pay you for it, then don't, for the love of god, cave in! Just give society something that it wants (burgers flipped) and leave your mind and body available for what you know is important.

And if something better comes along, you have no reason to regret leaving your job. You can always get another just like it.

[edit] If tjic is right, and he might be, then I am wrong. If you're going to do what I just said, be sure that the product of your passion will be worth removing your talents from the market.

</comment><comment><USER4> It sounds like we have similar interests; I've been working on a library for Clojure which wraps OpenGL and allows for shader programming in an idiomatic DSL. It's been a lot of fun to develop, and I agree that graphics programming has a tremendous amount of incidental complexity. Trimming away the fat is a deeply satisfying experience.

I don't really have the same commercial ambitions as you, but a few things to consider w.r.t. your first option (developing a graphics engine):

* Lots of people have a vague ambition to create a game. The number of those who will spend money towards that end is much, much smaller.

* Any graphics engine worth purchasing will need to implement a lot of "boring" stuff. You can probably punt on AI, but fonts, audio, and menu systems are non-negotiable.

* It will be pretty hard to sell a graphics engine if there's not a prominent success story to go along with it. That means you'll have to create a popular-ish game, or convince someone else to.

If you can support yourself on part-time consulting, go for it. But make sure any work you do on your own time is worthwhile in and of itself, rather than with respect to some future payoff that may never happen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, is your Clojure code released?

You are right about the boring stuff. It's overwhelming, of course, but if I truly went down the route of developing a graphics engine, I would take the risk of investing lots of money and time for implementing both the "interesting" and the "boring" parts. Fonts, menus, etc. aren't that hard, but it just sucks to be doing it _instead_ of the interesting stuff. Doing both would be alright.

But in the end, you're right. For now, I'll probably start implementing my ideas purely by themselves. It'll be great fun doing so, and if I think any of them are worth pursuing, I can flesh it out with the boring stuff.

<comment><USER4> <http://github.com/ztellman/penumbra/>

It's very much a work in progress, but there some interesting stuff in there. Especially of note is the GPU-driven Mandelbrot viewer ([http://github.com/ztellman/penumbra/blob/master/src/example/...](http://github.com/ztellman/penumbra/blob/master/src/example/gpgpu/mandelbrot.clj)), where the shaders are syntactically and idiomatically indistinguishable from the rest of the code.

Every graphics engine I've seen focuses on performance rather than expressiveness. With current trends in graphics cards, that seems more a matter of custom than necessity. It's an exciting time to be working on this stuff; there's huge swaths of unexplored territory out there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting, thanks. I'll be thinking about this more. I was thinking of building a compiler which compiles sexprs down to something like GLSL or possibly even lower (GPU assembly).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, if you're interested in programming 2d running games like Mario or Canabalt with cocos2d, I'd be interested in a partnership. I have a powerful cross-promotion network to push any game. Also have some funds for purchasing graphics, and have hands for manual labour.

I think the side-scroller market is a good area to be in in games.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would definitely be interested. Sending you an email now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Having passion is not enough, you should work something.

I love philosophy and wants to do some free mind thinking, but I couldn't do it all the time. I just take few hours each month, I like playing with Dog, it takes few other hours also.

So do whatever thing you like, there's no problem with it. If you don't want to get a 9-5 job, that's Okay, work as a freelance.

You can make a lot building apps for iphone, software for windows and services for the web. This will make you busy and you'll work on things you love since it's you who decide which thing to build/code and you are taking %100 profit from it (and it's yours!! yay)

In your free time (will depend on your earnings), you can either build the next big thing (startup) if your dream is to become a millionaire, or just spend time studying gravity and other things you may love.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm a big believer that passion can translate into making money on the Internet. Passionately working on something is inherently valuable - that is, it's at least valuable to the designer and others possibly as well. The trick is merging passion with something either highly valuable, or having value to many people. For example, being passionate about how bacteria forms on pennies may not yield much future by itself, but tweaking that passion to possibly an area of study for solutions to handling germ ridden objects like money could be quite profitable. You already have one of the best things I can suggest: a blog. This enables your potential value to be found. (one note: try having at least one picture for every entry) Next, think of how you might fit your passion in with existing lucrative areas. Last, continue to network/reach out to others, including those that might back your passion financially. It may take months, or years to cash in, but chances are you'd work on your passion anyway, and I believe that's a great precursor to success.

</comment><comment><USER8> There might also be the option of going to graduate school and working on graphics. A language for geometry/scene graphs sounds like a plausible research project.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd keep shaving at the one thing that draws your interest the most with every spare moment until it's super sharp. Whether it's redesigning a graphics engine with Scheme or otherwise.

In the meantime, work with a friendly startup and start building up your skills/network, or consult to pay the bills. I'd avoid a big company job unless the culture is super.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is a classic dilema: what you love doesn't pay well.

The solution is to try to AUTOMATE your income so you can spend time doing what you love, whether it pays or not.

You can automate it by putting in the grunt work up front to build something passive or save enough money to live off your net worth (rental properties, investment income, etc).

I've explored this topic in depth on my blog, <http://www.StartBreakingFree.com> if you're interested. Sounds like you're off to a great start though, you're not alone!

</comment><comment><USER11> random probably impractical suggestion, but if you like scheme, maybe you'd like smalltalk (they're both "purist" languages). and, if so, maybe research at wherever alan kay is these days. at one point that's what he was doing (interactive 3d worlds etc).

[edit: ps, also, if you don't have kids and are experienced you can actually do pretty well at a day job _plus_ your own projects. i do it, and as far as i know the people i work for are happy. my day job is contracting, but on long projects and it's typically a mix of "the usual" and stuff that requires fairly serious thought (typically numerical). at the same time i have worked on side projects pretty much constantly - on the python parser "lepl" for over a year, most recently. obviously if you have a partner they have to be understanding (and/or equally obsessed with their own thing). i think one helps the other - when work is tedious, side projects stop me from going crazy; when work requires effort side projects get work on web design... i enjoy both. i may be the very lucky expception, of course.]

</comment><comment><USER12> I was lucky enough to find a job doing something that I love. Have you given much thought to finding a full-time job where you could do 2D/3D real time graphics? At the very least, you could be satisfied with the work you're doing AND have money to live on. You could even go to grad school part-time and get started on that research you are so passionate about. In any case, best of luck.

<comment><USER13> The problem with this is that his "research" work may be directly applicable to his paid work. This might make things difficult depending on the employer.</comment></comment>


Pharma's Bad Boy Exec Paid $2M for Wu-Tang Clan's New Record - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-martin-shkreli-wu-tang-clan-album/ <comment><USER2> He's not a "bad boy". He's a ruthless sociopath who will focus on maximizing his profits no matter the cost to others.

<comment><USER3> Sociopath sure gets casually tossed around a lot these days.

<comment><USER2> Access to reasonably affordable healthcare is one of the foundational pillars of any society. If you actively undermine that pillar for your own personal gain, you are dissolving the bonds that hold society fast. You are killing society.

Perhaps sociopath is the wrong word because it has a very specific meaning in the medical lexicon. The word I am looking for is one who actively and directly kills the society around him, seemingly with no remorse. Parasite doesn't work because a parasite kills an organism external to itself. Intensely greedy comes close, but also falls short. Any ideas?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Welp, guess that album won't be heard by anyone unless it's used to try to improve his PR situation.

<comment><USER5> Don't forget, he will also play it for you if you are Taylor Swift and you are interested in having a date with his slimy ass.

<comment><USER6> I think for a lot of people, if they could afford to spend two million dollars to get a date with Taylor Swift, they probably would, even at the risk of becoming the subject of one of her songs.</comment></comment></comment>


Rubio Seeks Legislation to Invalidate Huawei Patents in the United States - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1TI2T3 <comment><USER2> Finally, a tiny slap in the arm for a company that siphoned all our trade secrets. To little to late

<comment><USER3> "...siphoned off all our trade secrets.. " And you know that because...???</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do these startups need so much money for? - <AUTHOR>

Every day there is a post about some startup getting funding, and these aren't trivial amounts either, millions of dollars are being passed around.
What could they possibly need /so/ much money for? Is it for hardware, developers, running costs, marketing?
Can someone please enlighten me? <comment><USER2> 10 people making 80k per year, that's a million dollars already. Now add taxes.

If you think VCs are interested in companies that won't need 10 people to run their business, ever... you're thinking to small :) And not only there are your employees, but imagine hiring accountants, lawyers, cleaning staff... the list, only with actual human beings, is already huge!

Now add costs like transportation, hotels, food, all the furniture, the stuff you need just to have the office open, like electricity and water and... fumigation? Ad on Techcrunch? 20k for 2 months. NY Times front page on Sundays? 100k. And let's not even mention prime-time TV... It just costs a lot of money to have a big business running.

Open a spreadsheet anyday and do some calculations. I've only skimmed some of the costs with my examples here (even though I am sure someone will comment how NY Times ads don't apply to your question).

<comment><USER3> That outlay is fine if you're a year into trading and are showing signs of being top 1% successful. However, many of these huge sums that are raised pre- launch or pre-build just seem like madness and I can't see it continuing.

The yc vision seems more sustainable: $5k+$5kpf = you build something. If it's good you get to raise a couple hundred k to turn it into a company. If at that point it looks like you might be google, then raise the millions that you need.

<comment><USER2> I can't figure out if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me :)

The OP asked why VC funded companies need millions, and you've said yourself, they do need.

You don't need to be on the top 1% to have 10 employees. If you do have ~10 people working, then your operating expenses are in the million range.

But let's use your Google example. We know that the search market is dominated by Google, followed by Yahoo and MSN. Who are the others? I've searched and all I could come up in 10 seconds in this:

<http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=4>

Let's go with Lycos. 0.01% market share. They have 500-1000 employees. Huge costs there. I am ignoring Terra, and Daum.

I guess what I am trying to say is that even a 0.01% market share can make you profitable, or attractive enough to get bought. And depending on the market (I did "cheat" a little by picking the largest internet market possible, search), even a 0.01% share might cost you millions to get there.

These huge sums are raised pre-launch/build because they're essentially, bets. Educated bets at best, but still, bets. The thing is that the payoff (for the VCs) can be huge, so they gamble on dozens hoping that 3 or 4 will provide return.

It's not my cup of tea, btw. I am currently building my Micro-ISV and I am quite happy, aspiring at most a nice boat, perhaps a bigger house. But the VC world is a reality :)

It's like complaining about software patents. They SUCK. But the system is set up in a way that you need them. It's part of the rules. You can complain about it, but they're there. So what makes most sense in the _business_ sense of things is to get them. Just like VCs when you're trying to dominate a market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1) Salaries. Many engineers, salesmen, etc who have been out of college for a year or two don't want to go back to making basically nothing. Yes, you can find talented people who will work for you for little, but it's going to take a long time to do so. It's lovely to think that every company should be able to bootstrap off ramen indefinitely, but it turns out that often times you find that in order to do all the things that need to be done you need to expand beyond the founding team, and, so sorry, those new mouths want to get fed.

2) Capital expenditures. It's nice to run on EC2 for awhile, but it might not be the best hardware fit for your product. Similarly, it's nice to use Cisco switches and not crappy switches when you want your network to work at high volumes.

3) Marginal costs. When you have millions of people using your site all the time, bandwidth, power, free tshirts you give new signups, etc all cost more and more money.

For many companies that are pre-product/market fit, raising millions of VC might not make sense. But for many rapidly growing companies where there is a lag time between user acquisition and user monetization, something needs to fill in the gap. Guess what that is.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your first hand experience input.

Your first two points I can agree with, but it's the 3rd that troubles me.

Shouldn't a company that means to stay in business want to have slow but steady growth, a gradual climb, giving the them time to adapt.

Doesn't a company want to put its money making plan in action before it goes big time?

I know justin.tv has major bandwidth requirements, and from what I can see there is no revenue model apart from adverts in place, which probably can't cover the cost of the bandwidth alone let alone everything else.

Please take no offence but if a company has a cash gap it's usually a bad sign, and throwing money at the problem will only work for so long.

<comment><USER5> If you want a "slow but steady growth, a gradual climb, giving them time to adapt" then you shouldn't be financing with VC money. That's not what they do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For a VC backed startup that's at 15-25 employees with a successful product I can make up some numbers that aren't totally unrealistic:

Advertising: $30k/mo

PR firm: $10k/mo

Rent: $12k/mo

Salaries: $100k/mo

Servers/bandwidth: $20k/mo

That's a $2 million/year run rate and I don't think this is even particularly on the high side and doesn't include upfront investments in servers, desktops, furniture, software, etc. I'm leaving out lots of stuff, really.

Taking VC means you're aiming high. Spending $2 million/year to take a shot at becoming a huge business is not that extravagant.

<comment><USER7> (note: my other account posts stuff marked [DEAD], no doubt because I called one of PG's articles retarded. It was the one where he said the history of unions could completely understood by looking at web startups. It was retarded.)

15 people for 100k/month would mean you are paying an average of 74k/year. Who would willingly work for a startup for that, without lots and lots of equity (answer: the exact people that you would never actually want to hire)? And you can't give lots of equity to 15 people, and even if you give them 8% each you would be left with nothing yourself.

$12k per month on rent? You would have to be retarded to pay that as a startup. Rent an old house and get lots of card tables.

Servers/bandwidth at 20k/month? What kind of site is this? That's $240k per year of bandwidth. If you are serving up that much content and aren't making a profit already, you are either going to get bought out in a few months or go under in a few months after that.

My hypothetical startup budget:

Salary: Pay myself enough to pay bills and live on, as well as 2 or 3 talented confederates (if I happen to have 2 or 3 talented people, with skills I need, on tap. Otherwise, wait until some are located before hiring anyone. Nobody is getting my equity unless they totally rock.) Estimate: 6k-25k per month.

Rent: $0, I happen to have an office large enough for 4 people to comfortably work in at my home. If I didn't, I would charge a one time expense of $2000 to put some carpet in the garage, install an AC out there, and run some wiring and so on.

Furniture, equipment, etc: $500. Find your nearest very large public university. They probably have a depot that just sells old furniture and equipment. You can drive up with a truck and get enough furniture to outfit a small army for under $500 (one time fee). [http://www.purchase.umd.edu/ttrader/items/showroom/index.htm...](http://www.purchase.umd.edu/ttrader/items/showroom/index.htm..).

Servers/bandwidth: This obviously depends on what site you are making. A Youtube needs way way more bandwidth/servers/rackspace than a yelp for the same size audience. Using EC2 as a guide, a small instance is $70 per month if used constantly. If you used say 100 instances constantly, and transfered 1TB a day, you would be paying around $12000 per month. That is a metric assload of servers and bandwidth, so the $20k number is probably retarded also.

PR/Advertising: I'm not sure. 10k per month buys a fuckload of adwords. At a CPC of .40, you are talking 40k * 2.5 = 100k impressions a month with that advertising budget. In reality you can get clicks for .20, and lately even less, unless you are selling asbestos litigation.

So my point is you can get a hell of a site out there for like $300k per year or way way way less, unless you are an idiot.

<comment><USER6> These are just different stages and kinds of companies. There are many angel or self-funded companies that operate exactly as you describe. There's nothing novel about it. The question from the submission was how startups typically spend VC money.

<comment><USER7> You said 'spend' when I think you meant 'squander and waste'.

<comment><USER6> Even the "real" Lt. Barclay has better social skills than you :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Because VCs don't invest anything less than a crapload of money?

<comment><USER9> This is actually true. Bad/mediocre VC's only make money on management fees and not on actual returns. So in order to maximize profit, they raise large funds (the bigger the better), and then pump valuations up.

They're only interested in 10x home runs so valuations are almost irrelevant. Since a finite number of partners can only sit on a finite number of boards, they can't have 50 or 100 investments at lower valuation / smaller sums.

High valuations also pump up expectations on the startup -- which is bad for the entrepreneur because if you fail to hit your goals, it means a down round and a ton more dilution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For many startups, the short answer is: they don't right now. Everyone involved is betting on them needing it later.

But I understand your confusion. VCs are always knocking at our door and we still haven't answered the question, "What the hell would we do with 2 million dollars?" This is precisely why we haven't taken it.

Well, we've answered it, but it involves the words "hookers" and "blow".

</comment><comment><USER11> Big ticket items:

* Carrying inventory, if you sell hardware.

* A 6-10 region direct sales force.

* A full time customer service operation.

* The reconstituted powdered startup marketing packets they sell you when you buy your CEO.

* The pro-forma engineering staff-up you do almost subconsciously to end up with a 50/50 b-team/engineering split.

</comment><comment><USER3> The barrier to entry has toppled by an order of magnitude and the market is slow to adapt to such changes.

</comment><comment><USER12> Payroll and office space. Occasionally Aeron chairs.

</comment><comment><USER13> Depends on your game plan I think. If you want to look all big and important so you'll hopefully get acquired, you need to spend tons of money on things that impress potential acquirers.

If however you just want to make money, profit, things like that, you don't need to spend much money for a web based startup at all.

</comment><comment><USER14> As so many others have said: yes, good people are expensive. And if you expect to grow to a non-trivial size, hosting/servers/bandwidth are going to cost you.

There is also the issue of leverage. If you need $500k, you don't raise $500k, because when you run out and start looking for more money, your negotiating position is very poor. Instead you raise $2M, then start to talk to investors again when you have spent half of it.

In my experience marketing is not a significant portion of expenses for a startup.

</comment><comment><USER15> 7 man years per million, all costs considered.

</comment><comment><USER16> I suspect there's a heavy amount of marketing, as most startups that receive millions of VC money tend to have enormous 'growth' - in parenthesis because im sure there's an artificial part of it - I suspect that some of them increase their traffic by paying for fake traffic, so they can say 'look at how our service is popular'.

</comment><comment><USER17> plentyoffish: top 10 site on 8 servers -- admined, designed, developed (in asp, no less) -- by one guy, and profitable

can yc/angel/vc backed startup be plentyoffish killer? i doubt money will help _shrug_

<comment><USER18> Top 10 site? Maybe in the free dating site category…

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> To impress potential investors and acquirers.

</comment><comment><USER20> I heard that Vista advertising budget was $2 billion.</comment>


":-!!" what is it in c code? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9229601/what-is-it-in-c-code

<comment><USER2> The actual line is _#define BUILD_BUG_ON_ZERO(e) (sizeof(struct { int:-!!(e); }))_

The guy asking the question just misread the code, the colon is part of the struct definition and the key part is -!! which coerces an integer to 0 if the value is zero, or -1 if the value is anything other than 0.

<comment><USER3> They're all key parts. Note that the sizeof is there to avoid polluting the namespace. Otherwise you'd have to declare something that used that anonymous struct. And likewise the parentheses so it can be used in all contexts in an expression. Every byte of that macro is needed. It's pretty elegant, honestly.

<comment><USER4> The sizeof is there so it returns a value so it can be used as an expression. See the comment above the code (reproduced in the original question).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> These machinations were always necessary to get compile-time asserts. Luckily C++11 and C11 are both providing static_assert so there will be _real_ compiler support instead of having to trick it into dumping an error.

edit: Another common one is using __LINE__ or __COUNTER__ in an array symbol name and having the test value result in an array size of -1.

</comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me of the 'goes to' operator:

      for (int i = 42; i --> 0;) { foo(); }

<comment><USER7> That's really cute, but it's also buggy. The loop will start at i == 41.

<comment><USER8> You are right about it starting on 41, but chances are that that is its intended behavior, with a bit of context that is more clear:

      #define ARRAYSIZE 42

      int array[ARRAYSIZE];

      void f() {
         for (i=ARRAYSIZE; i --> 0;) {
           printf("%d\n", array[i]);
         }
      }

If it were to start at 42 you'd be referencing the array outside of its bounds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This has been posted before during the past 2 months.

<comment><USER10> For those wondering <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3577205> (29 days ago)

Didn't get much attention back then. (+8 at time of writing)

<comment><USER11> I know I didn't notice it back then but did notice it now (and it's a neat trick which I didn't encounter before), so for me reposting worked.</comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk: In less than 20 years, owning a car will be like owning a horse - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-owning-a-car-in-20-years-like-owning-a-horse-2015-11 <comment><USER2> "We'll have flying cars any day now..."

<comment><USER3> At this point I'd settle for a flying horse even.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just as long as I'm still allowed to own a car, much as I'm still allowed to own a horse, I'm okay with this.

<comment><USER5> You would probably be "restricted" to roads with little traffic.

Just like horses are forbidden from highways, most of the high traffic road network will probably be allowed only to driverless connected cars. Not at first, but eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Okay, but I seem to recall being told that entire cities were going to be designed around the Segway too.</comment>


DataRank Haskell SDK - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/datarank/datarank-haskell

<comment><USER2> Awesome! What a great memorial :)

Maybe consider making the api more strongly typed?

Instead of:

        response <- findTopic "tide-pods" [("gender", "male")] config

You could have:

        response <- findTopic "tide-pods" [(Gender, Male)] config

Maybe make the common operations available in a strongly typed api, but allow users to use strings like this as a fallback. Then you can better guarantee "correct if it compiles".

<comment><USER2> Actually using type classes and sum types, the Gender is superfluous if you define:

        data Gender = Male | Female

Would type more, but on a tablet ATM.

Not sure if this is a good idea or not, but interesting to think about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input! I was considering using stronger types for the search parameters but wasn't familiar enough with Haskell's type system to make much progress. :)

I'll keep exploring options!

<comment><USER2> Maybe I can submit a pull request later :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't completely sure if I wanted to post this or not, I'm also not a Haskell Guru, just dabble as a hobby. But today to honor Paul Hudak, I decided to dabble some more. :)

Haskell was my gateway functional programming language and for that I sincerely thank the creators.</comment>


Scripting the Vim editor, Part 1 (by Damian Conway) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-vim-script-1/index.html

<comment><USER2> This is a really great set of articles, top notch overview along with practical advice on idiomatic VimScript and examples that you're not likely to find anywhere else. I find something new almost every time I refer back to these. Just now in scanning through the article on Vim dictionaries I noticed the section on using dictionaries to pass optional arguments. I hadn't written much code using optional arguments last time I read it and probably didn't even notice this section. But lately I've been using optional arguments, wasted time dealing with exactly the problems the author points out, and see the appropriateness of his advice to use dictionaries to pass optional args. This is one example among several where these articles provide excellent advice about good coding practices in VimScript that I haven't seen anywhere else.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's a recent post about scripting in Vim using Ruby, but as one commenter says there, it's more portable to use Vimscript itself. I don't do a lot of Vimscripting, but I found this tutorial helpful. Here are the other links as well:

[http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-vim- script...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-vim- script-2/index.html)

[http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-vim- script...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-vim- script-3/index.html)

[http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-vim- script...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-vim- script-4/index.html)

[http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-vim- script...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-vim- script-5/index.html)</comment>


Ten Productivity Books You Won't Regret Reading - <AUTHOR> https://www.mokacoding.com/blog/top-10-productivity-books/ <comment><USER2> Is it odd that 30% of these books are by one author whose made a living peddling self-help books?

<comment><USER3> Cal Newport is not "peddling" anything. He's a respected academic in computer science and has written 3 books a lot of people find immensely helpful. The beauty of a free economy is that you (and everyone else) has the choice to buy/read anything, or not. Cal's superbly insightful books are not forced or "pedalled" upon anyone.

<comment><USER2> There are lots of respected academics in computer science. Apparently he chose to spend his time writing 3 versions of the same book for money: How to Win at College (2005), How to Become a Straight-A Student (2006), and How to Be a High-School Superstar (2010). And he's by definition peddling. Not sure why you took offense to that and not sure where the "free" economy has any relevance to what I said. The irony is I could sum up in one page what all those books combined contain.

<comment><USER3> Dr. Calvin Newport is a tenured professor of computer science and has written/published over a hundred well-cited academic papers. [https://scholar.google.pt/citations?user=EhodjeAAAAAJ](https://scholar.google.pt/citations?user=EhodjeAAAAAJ)

In his _spare_ time he has written several highly rated books which a lot of people find helpful/useful: [https://www.amazon.com/Cal- Newport/e/B001IGNR0U](https://www.amazon.com/Cal-Newport/e/B001IGNR0U)

In his first 3 books Cal wrote about what he knew, "being a great student". His PhD from MIT is a pretty good indication that he "won" at academia. You _clearly_ haven't _read_ the books because they cover different topics. Sure their is overlap but they are _definitely_ not "the same book", else his publisher would not have released it. You wouldn't say the 7 Harry Potter books are "all the same book" even though they are _similar_. It's the same with Cal's books, similar but _definitely_ not the same.

For the record: I'm not "offended" by people hating on Cal, just disappointed that haters are not _making_ anything better.

If you _can_ indeed sum up _all_ that is contained in Cal's 6 books in _one_ page, do it! I will _gladly_ read that page pay you $1000 for the condensed wisdom. 100% seriously, do it!

The "free market" is _highly_ relevant because it means anyone can make/sell/buy good/services as they choose. If you don't _want_ to buy/read a book you are _free_ not to. But unless you _produce_ something better or offer an alternative recommendation, don't be a hater on Cal's content.

How many New York Times bestsellers have you written in your spare time? ;-)

<comment><USER2> That's nice. Here's a list of a ton of highly cited computer scientists, many of them of which didn't spin a self-help career: [http://www.guide2research.com/scientists/](http://www.guide2research.com/scientists/)

There's really no such thing as _spare_ time. He could've spent all that time writing self-help by doing more research. Since there's a huge supply of self- help and everyone being begged to be told what to do and it requires no real sense of expertise other than anecdotes, its an easy, albeit time consuming, income. There's not a huge supply of good research.

Highly rated books, especially on Amazon are a dime-a-dozen. For example, Jordan Peterson's 12 rules for life has been on the amazon best-seller list for 61 weeks and that book is poorly edited and contains incredibly bad advice. If you'd like me to elaborate, I can but that would have to be in another post.

The books may cover different topics, but the theme remains the same. In order to be a great student, you have to do what your told, engage with the lessons, do the assignments and study to pass the tests. It's that simple. It's all about finding the time to do the work and doing it in the best way you can. A plethora of strategies to achieve this can be found online from note taking strategies, to reading papers, to reading books on specific topics, etc. with most of it being free. However, the easiest way is to simply ignore all the extra brain power needed to adhere to the systems and engage with the work.

You also have to come to the realization that even if you do the work, you may reach limitations that you cannot overcome and you may need to accept some hard truths about things you may not be able to achieve. For example, you may not get into MIT, you may not build a successful, huge company, you may not complete a degree. However, its the experiences that make you successful, not the prestige. You also have to understand that certain socio-economic factors that are completely out of your control can cause you not to reach these goals as well.

Now that I've condensed half the contents of those 3 books into 2 paragraphs, care to pay me $500 and call it good? You also mis-characterized my original claim that I could sum all 6 books into 1 page, when I meant the 3 books about being a great student.

 _The "free market" is highly relevant because it means anyone can make/sell/buy good/services as they choose. If you don't want to buy/read a book you are free not to. But unless you produce something better or offer an alternative recommendation, don't be a hater on Cal's content._

It's not highly relevant, because you aren't required to produce anything better or offer an alternative recommendation. One can simply critique the current iteration and cause people to give pause for thought and look elsewhere. Also, what if there is nothing better? What if its all crap and people don't know it? What if people just read my two paragraphs, started applying their own minds and didn't need a 224 page book to tell them some truisms?

I could give a crap about what some arbitrary newspaper claims is a great book via sales numbers and some "secret formula". How many people bought the book and never read it? What if the book simply gamed the formula to get on the list?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Having read all ten of these books I can _agree_ with the sentiment that i didn't "regret" reading them, however describing them as "productivity" is a poor classification. Personal Effectiveness is a much better description. People often use "productive" and "effective" interchangeably but they _really_ aren't remotely the same thing. Productivity is related to quantity of output, whereas Effectivness is the act of using ones creative energy for the highest value. If in the same amount of time/effort you can make 100 worthless "widgets" or 1 excellently made product which should you pursue? One sounds "productive" whereas the other is "effective".

</comment><comment><USER4> Can anyone pick the best from the list? I read getting things done and its a good pamphlet stretched into a book.

<comment><USER5> Thinking Fast and Slow is a good book that is not at all a cheesy self-help pamphlet. It's a review of some of the more surprising findings of behavioral economics, and a discussion of how we should and shouldn't rely on heuristics in our decision making. It does suffer a little bit in that some of the topics have failed replication, and it could be about half as long as it actually is.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is so special about Lua? - <AUTHOR> I've heard about Lua in a couple of places but I'd like to hear from people who actually do real stuff in the language. What is is better in than other languages? For what purposes? <comment><USER2> Lua makes for an ideal language to embed in a larger project. Structurally, it's like python, but it's smaller and more internally consistent (without the large standard library), faster, and has a nicer C API.

Because Lua is an academic project, it has different pressures than a primarily practical project like python or perl. The Lua source code fits on a floppy disk, is pure C, and is clear and well-written.

As for what's (arguably) bad about Lua:

1) it doesn't have nearly as large a community as other similar languages, and what community it does have is in many cases split up between software packages that use it as an extension language or a configuration language. The config files for awesome and for ion are written in Lua, but that doesn't mean you can take the configuration for one and port it to the other. Likewise, WoW and photoshop both make use of Lua for scripting. I get the impression that a lot of people who use Lua don't realize that it's a general purpose language and an independent project.

2) It lacks a strong standard library, and many really common things (like sockets) aren't built in. Until version 5.1, importing installed packages wasn't even a completely standard part of the language. More complicated packages often exist but are fairly obscure, and there's no gem/npm/pip style system for pulling packages down automatically or managing their dependencies.

3) There are some odd limitations here and there. In 2007 I was working on a project in Lua that took advantage of a single very large table -- and learned that there was at that time a limit of 2^13 string keys. I think that limit has since grown, but it's unusual for a scripting language to have such a low limit for anything (aside from recursion depth).

<comment><USER3> The fourth complaint is that it is developed largely without any public discussion - new releases land, and suddenly there are API changes you must include.

I've written a mail-client which is both configured and scripted with Lua. For ease of embedding it works really really well, and coding it was a pleasure. But I'm still disappointed when I have to update for new Lua releases (e.g. 5.1 -> 5.2 required some changes I wasn't expecting.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> LuaJIT makes Lua stand out from Tcl, Python and others. But you really need to ask yourself if you need that performance. If you just need something to glue various components together I would suggest Tcl. Tcl's syntax makes it really easy to use for simple things, and the C API is really nice to work with. Though Tcl is not a good idea for larger code bases IMHO, or code that needs to run fast.

</comment><comment><USER5> Off the top of my head what makes Lua an excellent tool for the modern developer:

1\. You can put it anywhere you've got a C compiler. Any collection of C libraries can be glommed into the Lua VM and made into a framework - with a modern scripting environment - with relative ease.

2\. The language is very easy to learn, and easy to teach. Its simplicity yields a lot of power, too.

3\. App logic in Lua, App engine in C. Enough said. ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> Lua is a fun language with okay performance. My understanding is it's a lot like scripting C, as it's implemented directly atop C.

Data structures in Lua are based off hash tables, basically everything is a hash table.

Lua has first class functions, garbage collection, closures, and a bunch of other neat stuff.

It's certainly worth looking at if you've got spare time.

</comment><comment><USER7> Lua is a language that is designed to be embedded, which is rare in this world, thus it lacks the arrogance that it has to do everything. This allows Lua to focus on specific things so it can excel in those areas like the scripting domain, and knows you can and should do the low level things in the host language (e.g. C).

Lua is small, lightweight, fast, and elegant. It is one of the few languages that tries to remove features instead of add them. It likes to give you mechanisms to build more powerful features (like metamethods), instead of making the language bigger and more complicated and redundant. These mechanisms feed back into the notion that it is a terrific language for embedding, to allow you to make a Domain Specific Language for your specific needs.

Because the language is so small and clean, it is also the reason it is fast. Then something brilliant like LuaJIT gets created, and can realize the dream of outperforming optimized C code.

Also because the language is small and clean, it is a much easier language to secure and use in secure environments. Wikipedia uses it now for their multimedia scripting engine because it was small, fast, and easy to audit for security. Lua is also sandboxed/secure by default. It was also easy to modify for their specific needs (like embedding in PHP). And Verisign uses it for their high reliability transaction servers because they had the bold idea of using a foundation that was auditable for reliability instead of spending lots of money to build redundancy expecting the platform to constantly crash.

Lua's original popularity was in embedded devices because it is so small, it is one of the few languages you can get on a embedded device. It is also written in 100% clean/ANSI C (no platform #ifdefs needed) so it ports everywhere there is a C compiler (which is everywhere).

Lua caught on in video game development in the late 90s and became the dominant game scripting language in the industry. It is a great language to embed and interoperate with the C/C++ engines. The high performance stuff would still be done in C/C++, but the higher level content could now be done by artists as Lua is one of the cleanest and simplest languages to learn. And on the performance front, another thought exercise told to me recently was that Lua is about 100KB; that means it can now fit entirely within a modern desktop CPU's L2 cache which is a huge performance advantage.

If you want a kitchen sink language that has every library included from the start, there are languages better suited for that than Lua. But if you have specific needs like being embedded in a native app, or small footprints (memory constrained, CPU limited), and specific libraries you want to bind, or want security and sandboxing, Lua shines above all in this domain.

</comment><comment><USER8> See also time & space - a Lua interpreter starts about 3-10x as fast as Python, and takes 1100k of RAM to Python's 4M. This matters on a small machine like a Raspberry Pi.

</comment><comment><USER9> embedded in nginx it adds an extra layer of customization for say doing server side includes or security checking sessions. You can even use it in nginx to assist in caching around your application. Embedded in redis you can do transactional things over multiple data structures, making redis even more powerful/flexible... the language itself is super simple so it doesn't take long to get familiar with it..</comment>


Ask HN: How do you start learning Go? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
I come from a ruby background, and am recently getting a little tired of rails/sinatra being not as quick as I would like them to be.
I'd like to start learning Go, but I'm not quite sure where to start.
Are there any books or videos I could get my hands on to get me up to speed?
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I just finished tour.golang.org - I recommend it!

<comment><USER3> I second that, it's definitely a great resource.

Also, check out:

1\. <http://talks.golang.org/2012/concurrency.slide#1> for concurrency ideas with Go 2\. [http://cplus.about.com/od/google-go/a/Learn-To-Program-Go- Tu...](http://cplus.about.com/od/google-go/a/Learn-To-Program-Go-Tutorial- One.htm): A great intro

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone!

I've tried doing it(amidst my school exams) but I think it doesn't quite drill into me best practices.

I don't want to explore go and hack up something; I want to learn it once and learn it right. Any recommendation for this? (:</comment></comment></comment>


Early Retirement in the N.F.L. and at Google, and the Paradox of Success - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/upshot/early-retirement-in-the-nfl-and-at-google-and-the-paradox-of-success.html <comment><USER2> "At the same time, there is a depressing message for the rest of us: Maybe the fact that you would even consider retiring to a life of luxury at a young age is a sign you aren't going to succeed at a high enough level to make that an option."

Now wait a second... didn't the author just finish talking about diminishing utility? This sounds like the mindset of someone who really doesn't understand just how little it takes to work and/or retire comfortably. The vast majority of people don't need to travel the world in a private jet to enjoy retiring luxuriously in their 50's (or in most cases even earlier).

<comment><USER3> Most 'professionals' quickly reach the point where money is really more about status than anything else. Sure, there are a few toy's, but the gap between a 25k car and a 250k car is not actually that big for most day to day driving. Often a 50$ watch is more useful than a 50,000$ watch.

Rent a 35' boat for a weekend and it's a fun experience, own a 35' boat and it's a long term hassle.

Not that status is useless. Being able to afford a high status area has plenty of knock on benefits. But, where the benefits of a middle class vs poor are might be huge past that there are significant diminishing returns.

So, IMO it's really a question of how much you care about status vs. any thing else. 50 year old with 90 million in the bank are a dime a dozen in some circles, where a CFO at Google get's a long list of people paid to do what they say.

<comment><USER4> "Most 'professionals' quickly reach the point where money is really more about status than anything else."

This sounds like something a young person would say. It's certainly not what most successful "professionals" would say. Most professionals feel like they're on a work treadmill same as everyone else, except they're doing it to support a more expensive house, more expensive cars, more expensive clothes, more expensive food, more expensive education for their kids, more expensive frills than people who make less money.

The consumer society we live in encourages/creates spending patterns that almost unavoidably rise right along with our salaries. These patterns of high spending then feel like they're "necessary" and they raise the bar for what feels like a safe retirement nest egg. It is possible to avoid this consumer- society treadmill, but it's not easy -- it requires swimming against the stream -- and a relatively small percentage of people do it. Avoiding it is basically what the Mr. Money Mustache website (referred to in other posts in this thread) is about, and it's interesting to note that the people who seem to gravitate to that plan often retire with a fraction of what "professionals" would consider a safe retirement nest egg.

<comment><USER5> > * Most professionals feel like they're on a work treadmill same as everyone > else, except they're doing it to support a more expensive house, more > expensive cars, more expensive clothes, more expensive food, more expensive > education for their kids, more expensive frills than people who make less > money.*

I'm confused as to why you think this is not about status.

<comment><USER6> Not OP, but I can tell you what I've been experiencing. It's not about status, I don't care about impressing anyone else.

After leaving at&t to work in trendy-SF-startup tech scene, my salary sky- rocketed. So I get married and have 2 kids. You'd think I'd just be relaxed and happy right? I was; and I am still really, but that relaxing time gave me more time to read stuff like HN, etc.

\--- I read a ton about poor public education in USA... and now I need a private school. Or, I need to move into a neighborhood with million dollar houses to gain access to their super-amazing public schools.

\--- I read about horrible quality of food and watch "Food, Inc.". Now I've restricted my whole family's diet to USDA Organic, non-GMO from WholeFoods and my monthly grocery bills easily exceed $1,000.

\--- Today I'm still driving my first car, Honda Civic LX 2002. It's great right? For me yes, all I do is drive 20mins to BART station and back. But I have a wife & 2 kids; time for a family vehicle. I could just get something cheap & used, right? Then the thought of my wife being stuck in a broken-down vehicle somewhere with our 2 kids hits me and I'm like... _" Nah, I better make sure I get a nice, new & reliable, many airbags vehicle with GPS and everything to keep my family safe"_ It's kinda FUD really, but when it's my own family and I have the money, YOLO.

\--- Clothes? Today I have a standing desk, but I use to sit a bunch. I started noticing that cheap jeans do feel less comfortable. Before I know it, all my jeans are near $200 from GUESS. They don't look fancy, you can't tell they're from GUESS. But they feel great.

I didn't do any of this to impress anyone. I just want the best for my family. And I've learned that the definition of "best" keeps moving higher and higher the more I read about stuff & experience things.

<comment><USER7> The pursuit of the "best" is the problem. How about "adequate"?

<comment><USER2> Agreed. There's also a huge red flag in the mindset that I saw as I was reading that lifestyle choice. We're all going to die some day, which throws another huge strike against pursuing the best above enjoying life. Add in the pipe dream of living forever that is being sold these days (just as it has been many times before), and it only makes "living well" seem more and more difficult. Assuming we can even somehow define living well...

tldr: Find what makes you feel content. Be willing to stop doing other things.

<comment><USER6> If you, and the person you replied to, are troubled by me seeking the best that I can provide for my family.... I won't lose any sleep over it.

I only comment to state that it isn't about status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am more like Mr. Money Mustache. When I was 47 my wife and I sold a nice house just north of the Del Mar Race Track, and moved into a tiny but really nice house in Sedona Arizona. Major downsizing.

As it turned out, I got bored in retirement and in the last 15 years I have written a bunch of books, consulted for some great companies like Google, but the difference is that I have had a lot of freedom now, and probably averaged less than 10 hours per week, not including writing, in the last 15 years.

I have to admit to a lot of curiousity about how Google's CFO will do after a few years of leasure - I hope he enjoys his travels!

<comment><USER9> Just out of curiosity, how has your income from these more, I assume, passion- based writing projects and consulting jobs compared to the income from your original profession that allowed you to initially retire in the first place?

<comment><USER8> I made much more money when working for large companies, on site or as an employee. I don't charge much when working remotely unless a customer wants me to be always available during working hours in which case I charge onsite rates. Working onsite at Google in 2013 paid well but cost of living in Silicon Valley is very expensive. Where I live in Arizona, life is much less expensive than in California. BTW, I just came back from a 2 1/2 hour hike in the local mountains with five friends. Having this freedom is worth so much more to me than extra income.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> """The real question is not why these four men are all retiring"""

I disagree. NFL players on average retire for very different reasons than Google execs. It may not be the case for the recent retirees but even if you are fully healthy it's really risky to keep playing in the NFL (concussions alone, check health premiums of NFL players etc.). Many players should probably retire earlier. It's a lot better to enjoy less money than to have more money and Alzheimers or the like at age 50.

+it's more likely that NFL players that retire early kind of have a good feeling for how many more high level seasons they could have played. At least I'd think it's easier to judge the capabilities of your body than the capabilities of your mind. (QB's are the exception, I guess Locker could have stayed around as a journeyman for a couple of years and made relatively safe money holding a clipboard). I don't have any evidence but I also suspect some of the surprise early retirements may be ralted to PED use and/or uncertainty if that can be kept up "undetected". At least it's reasonable to think this is the case for a higher %age than in other fields.

tl;dr: apples, oranges. NFL retirement is extremly different from most other forms of retirement. The high level abstraction of "retired but didn't have to" is at least somewhat questionable.

<comment><USER11> I remember when Tiki Barber, a running back, retired early. He was on a talk show and when they asked him why he retired, he said that being a running back in the NFL was like running full-speed into a brick wall over and over again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wow, Shocking news!! People want to enjoy the money they have earned ...

I have a company and have rich friends, this is completely normal, people do what they always wanted to do when they get money. It is called "financial independence".

I read and write on HN(for other people a waste of time) because I like it, and because I can. I travel just because I can. I work on projects that probably will not make money(and end making the most money of all because nobody risks doing it) just because I can.

What is really a Paradox is that when you start doing what you really want to do,instead of what others tells you to do, you could start making more money than ever.

You are not a slave of money. It is a common belief of people living in NY. People earning a million dollars a year but spending half of that in a condo.

</comment><comment><USER13> Personally, I am trying to work as hard as I can so I can start a company. Even if I had $5 million I would probably keep pushing myself to ensure I had what I felt I needed to achieve my goals.

Money lets you purchase other peoples time, it's boosts your productivity, and if you can hire someone to build you something you can do ever greater things.

Although this is just my motivation, I am sure most of the highly productive or motivated people feel the same way. They want to do something great, and they know they have to work to get there.

<comment><USER14> Well there's work and then there's "work," and I think this is the big part of what the article misses.

Put it this way - if someone asked me if I wanted to be making $250K/yr at CorpTech or $250K/yr hitting baseballs, the choice is pretty clear (at least for me, you may hate baseball). When a job is fun or emotionally rewarding, it changes the way you perceive "work."

I bring this up in response to your comment because owning and running your own company is an emotionally gratifying experience. Granted, there are moments that tear your heart out, moments that leave you awake at night, but if you're wired for this kind stimulus, you enjoy it. It stops being about (just) the money.

<comment><USER15> > if someone asked me if I wanted to be making $250K/yr at CorpTech or > $250K/yr hitting baseballs, the choice is pretty clear (at least for me, you > may hate baseball)

Well, of course. But that doesn't make the choice unclear ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Presumably America's companies are better run when the most talented executives put in a 50-year career than if they put in only 20 or 30."

Are we talking about the executives most talented at increasing shareholder profits, or executives most talented at improving people's lives? To put it another way, there's a lot of good reasons we put term limits on politicians, why are business executives different?

<comment><USER17> I am not sure if you are kidding, but the serious answer is that politicians who can stay in power without limits (witness Putin now) tend to rearrange the political process of their country with sole purpose of never leaving their post. Then they lose all accountability and do as they please without worry of being voted out.

Companies, on the other hand, exist in the ecosystem of the market (so a single CEO can not rearrange the playing field). If the company is doing poorly, its shares will drop and forces will gather to remove the CEO (note how Balmer or recent CSFB CEO were removed).

<comment><USER18> Of course it can: monopolies, collusion, corruption at the highest level, lobbying.

<comment><USER19> 2 / 4 of those items you mention are actually problems caused by having a corruptible state, not by the market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Jason Worilds is retiring so he can devote more time to his religion, the Jehova's Witnesses.

I don't necessarily disagree with the author, but another reasonable explanation is that successful people like their jobs, and in the absence of larger pursuits, like religion, they see no reason to move on. Retirement in and of itself isn't the "prize" for every single person.

</comment><comment><USER21> I actually wonder how common it is to retire early? First of all what is "early"? If it is before 65 then a good number of people do.

Getting to the spirit of the article though, a good chunk of the people that I know who don't "have to work" anymore, don't, or do so infrequently. I think it is rare indeed for someone to become a billionaire or hundred-millionaire without the manic drive that this article speaks of, but I do know plenty of millionaires who either don't work or take it very easy.

It actually would make sense that a lot of millionaires wouldn't work anymore. Presumably they make most of their money in a one-time deal (i.e. their company gets sold), if they were a solid software engineer, etc at said company it might not seem worth it to go back and work another company doing CRUD. Maybe the right opportunity comes along, maybe it doesn't, but why pressure yourself if you don't "have to work".

</comment><comment><USER22> It's strange to see the author come to this conclusion (fierce drive is necessary for high income, and as a result prevents early retirement) without trying it out on anyone. Why not just ask executives who are still at Google why they do it, and mention what the most common responses were?

<comment><USER23> The responses would be a pretty boring "because I love what I do and I want to keep doing it".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I dont understand all this "retirement" anxiety. Anyone with half a brain can find a job/lifestyle they'd love doing forever and save enough money not to have to worry about it. Why fritter away you life on activities you hate?

<comment><USER25> This is not true in my experience. There are a lot of people who want to do a job that doesn't pay well (like teaching elementary school) or there aren't any jobs in their area other than physical labor (much of the midwest US outside of the cities).

Saying "anyone with half a brain can find a job they love" is really dismissing quite a lot of people that are not in the same privileged situation as you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How am I supposed to take a person writing about the NFL seriously when he or she puts periods in between the letters?

This is a mediocre article, at best.

<comment><USER27> The spelling of 'NFL' vs. 'N.F.L.' isn't up to the individual NYT writer. Whatever his preference, his editor will make sure it complies with the New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, which in its 2015 edition still calls for 'N.F.L.'

<comment><USER26> Ah, that's interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Money isn't about money. It's about status and power for many people.

That's different from being ambitious in general. I probably wouldn't stop working if I made $20 million, but I'd work differently. I'd take more risks, play less politics, and be able to focus more due to fearlessness. I, however, don't view work for work's sake as being valuable. When I'm 55, I might decide that it's time to do more traveling and less working.

There are, however, a lot of people who see money as "life's scorecard" and that leads them astray, because ultimately optimizing for that one factor is (beyond a certain point) astronomically stupid. If you enjoy your work, keep at it. But a lot of these people don't. When you look at why they keep going, though, it turns out that they're not really into the work or the money themselves but the status that come with them. A surprising percentage of people don't really care what it is they do, so long as they can use a private jet to do it.</comment>


The Jerrycan: Astonishingly Beautiful Industrial Design From The 1930s - <AUTHOR> http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/the_wehrmachtkanister_aka_jerrycan_astonishingly_good_industrial_design_from_the_1930s_17788.asp

<comment><USER2> As an application developer this story makes me wish I had taken a few industrial design courses back in college.

</comment><comment><USER3> Effective design! I need to go see if they make anything like this still with a real nozzle. The plastic 'no drip' nozzles you find in the bulk hardware stores are completely worthless.

<comment><USER4> There is a spout which attaches to the same holes as the cap and latches on very securely. You don't need a funnel.

For example: [http://www.mowdirect.co.uk/acatalog/5-LITRE-RED-STEEL- JERRY-...](http://www.mowdirect.co.uk/acatalog/5-LITRE-RED-STEEL-JERRY-CAN-- F-5200-----RED-FLEXIBLE-POURING-SPOUT--3210-.html)

<comment><USER3> That rocks. Too bad we can no longer buy plain ol' flexi spouts in the US due to EPA regulations.</comment></comment></comment>


Anyone get Google I/O tickets? - <AUTHOR>

I was about 3 seconds late and coming up empty. :( <comment><AUTHOR> I have a lot of practice buying first come first serve tickets as a sometimes occasional scalper, and I'm good at it. In the industry, scalpers would have labeled this onsale as "suspicious", as in a lot of tickets were likely held back and there probably were far fewer than 5000 tickets onsale.

I've hit no available tickets 4 times now. My advice to everyone reading this is to keep trying until 8AM in case they are releasing the tickets in batches.

EDIT: Definitely batches, got 1 at exactly 7:15.

</comment><comment><USER2> Yes, I managed to claim an academic ticket and then the payment page was timing out and I wasn't sure why. Turns out it was Ghostery, but once I disabled it, it worked. I wonder what happens for all the people who have claimed a ticket but not paid. Will Google release their tickets and sell them? Call them and tell them they owe 300/900 dollars?

It's pretty clear that Google needs to restructure this event if they want it to continue to have meaning as a developer conference. This sort of waste of people's time, only to have tickets sell out in 30 seconds or whatever ridiculous number is just not valuable.

What would Google have to do to maintain the substance of the conference? Simply promise that there won't be any free toys given away? I missed out on I/O 2011 after having attended in 2009 and 2010 because bad people went simply for the hundreds of dollars worth of free and early-release hardware Google hands out.

I would have paid 300 dollars for the conference regardless of whether Google gave me the latest gadget.

<comment><AUTHOR> >Call them and tell them they owe 300/900 dollars?

We were using Google Checkout to do registration for the Singularity Summit and ran into this problem, and the answer is basically yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Has to be batches. Nothing else explains why it would say "no tickets available AT THIS TIME" several times in a row, then suddenly open up and let a few people get a ticket.

That said, I don't have one. Waiting for an academic ticket too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Academic tickets are always tougher to get, if it's really important to you to go to the conference you might consider putting the full price one on your credit card and selling your swag.

<comment><USER3> That is a tempting idea, but I'm on the east coast, so I really can't handle the cost of a ticket plus airfare there and back, even if I got reimbursed a little by the swag. I'll probably just end up taking a few days off and watching the live streams like the rest of the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh well, I was wrong. Official page says that it is sold out! <https://developers.google.com/events/io/register>

</comment><comment><USER5> This is ridiculous, the sell out time has gone from days to 10mins (last year) to 30 seconds this year, even at $900! At this rate, next year they'll be gone in microseconds.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm assuming others get to a "There are no tickets available at this time" alert and then you have to start over. At least, that is what is happening to me.

</comment><comment><USER6> I finally got through and registered as of 7:16

Edit: I got "no tickets available at this time" several times before getting through so don't give up.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been trying since 7:00.00001 and still got nothing.

Edit: All tickets sold out. There goes my plans to visit the US!

</comment><comment><USER8> I've hit the 'no available tickets page' twice so far, 10:03 and 10:07est. Are they really already sold out?

</comment><comment><USER4> Yeah I managed to grab a ticket at 7:00:34 PST, Looks like it's only academic tickets that are sold out.

</comment><comment><USER3> All tickets sold out as of 7:29 AM.

</comment><comment><USER9> both ticket types are all sold out now... can't even try again.

</comment><comment><USER10> No. ARG!</comment>


What Apple should tell you when you lose your iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@joonaski/this-is-what-apple-should-tell-you-when-you-lose-your-iphone-8f07cf73cf82#.t3ss245xk <comment><USER2> Find My IPhone should allow the owner of a stolen phone to make it so that the phone cannot be turned off by the power switch on the device itself. For non-4G/non-LTE devices, It should also aggressively look for open access points and attempt to associate with them and phone home to Apple servers with location info. Activating stolen mode should also put the phone into a power conservation mode to keep it alive and phoning home as long as possible.

<comment><USER3> What a great idea - make an iPhone as adversarial towards thieves as possible, so stealing one becomes a huge personal risk. Maybe even add a stealth version of Lost Mode, so the phone works in a sort of guest mode (without access to your data) but is furiously spying on the user in the background.

<comment><USER4> Throw it into low power mode, but with loud alarm noises at random intervals... Annoy the thieves into giving it back...

<comment><USER5> or more likely annoy the thieves until they launch it into a river.

<comment><USER6> That's still a net benefit. If theives learn that stolen iPhones are both annoying and unprofitable then they'll stop stealing them. Especially if they know the iPhones are being tracked and that they are at risk of being caught.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had the same thing happen when my phone was stolen. To my knowledge, it was never powered on after it was stolen (because iCloud never registered a ping).

I received a variety of phishing attempts over email, but most surprisingly - I received phishing iMessages too. They were all eerily good.

My assumption was that police reports were being scraped. I wonder if this data is available unencrypted on the phone or sim card

Edit: Here are some of the messages I received - I forgot that they had my name too: [http://imgur.com/a/NmIt4](http://imgur.com/a/NmIt4)

<comment><USER8> Or they could just pop the sim card out and power it on. Without wifi, iCloud will never hit it.

<comment><USER9> And then what? Not use the iPhone ever again, because if you want to restore it, you have to logout of iTunes, which requires an internet connection?

<comment><USER10> scrap it for parts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The sad thing is it really shouldn't be this hard to identify spoofed email addresses.

I feel like we've gone backwards in UX with Inbox app and mobile email clients that hide the email by default.

<comment><USER12> "Friendly" email headers are the new "hide known file extensions" :(

<comment><USER13> Why does it display the name of anyone not in your contacts? Seems trivial to abuse. Hi, I'm Barack Obama, and I'm looking for a donation to prevent terrorism and child porn.

<comment><USER14> You completely changed your comment, so I'm responding to the original text:

 _> I keep my file extensions hidden because if that's all between me and a virus I'm already fucked. It's also a sign I need to move operating systems._

Showing extensions doesn't just guard against viruses, it also allows you to know what file type a file is, without having to memorize every icon on your system. You can also rename files to a different extension if you need to.

<comment><USER15> You can also use your favorite terminal emulator, and stop worrying about icons, file extensions, and "clicking on the wrong one".

<comment><USER16> Except that on systems that have the concept of "file extension", those extensions are used to determine how to open a file by default. If you're using Linux you don't care either way, but on Windows, even if on a terminal emulator, you have to care _anyway_.

<comment><USER13> I don't know what to say other than The Windows brand was permanently damaged from the ability to install a virus by double clicking a .jpeg. For years. UAC should have arrived with NT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> From article comments: "If your phone is locked, how did they get your iCloud email address? " "As said, I'm guessing they googled my name (available via the Medical ID functionality) and found an email address for me."

How does phishing like this scale? I would think the vast majority of the time the thief is going to have no idea what the email or phone number of the victim is. Seems like a pretty elaborate scam for something that relies on stealing phones where Medical ID is enabled.

Is there some other way that the thief would be able to easily contact the victim by email or text?

Even with Medical ID enabled, that only shows name, DOB, medications.. I would think for most people that still isn't going to be enough info to get an email and phone number from by googling.

Not saying it isn't possible, I just think that it seems odd that the difficulty of making the scam work seems out of balance with the polish of it.

<comment><USER18> If you have a contact card set up, ask Siri "What is my name", then click on the mail icon. It will present all of your email addresses. (This works for me when I activate siri with my pinkie finger, which isn't a registered fingerprint.)

<comment><USER19> This is the reason why I disable Siri from being used on the locked screen. It's barely inconvenient to have to unlock with fingerprint before being able to activate Siri, and the amount of information you can grab from a "locked" phone via Siri is scary.

<comment> squeaky-clean Is there no way to disable sensitive requests from the lock screen? My Android phone has an option under voice settings to disable "Personal results" when the phone is locked.

<comment><USER19> With Siri, it's all or nothing. Either it is enabled on the lock screen, or completely inaccessible. It does have limits when enabled, where it will force you to unlock before inquiring deeper into the system. I can't remember exactly what kind of tasks I was able to accomplish with it enabled, but it was too much for me were it to land into a thief's hands. In any case, with the Touch ID it's barely an inconvenience to unlock before holding the home button to activate Siri. It's like 1.5 presses of the home button rather than a full 2. I'm not sure why they haven't put in the effort to allow you to hold down the home button once to activate Siri with a read of the fingerprint. They prioritized that action for Apple Pay. _shrug_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't see why Apple should have to tell you anything though. They can't preemptively warn you of all possible scams post-stolen hardware.

That said I've had an iPad stolen from the seat pocket when I was asleep on a long haul flight so I can sympathise and this scam particularly hits home.

<comment><USER21> It would be a nice thing to warn consumers about when marking the phone lost and setting up the alerts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This should also serve as a reminder to use a password vault (like 1Password or LastPass or your browser's built-in functionality). If you use a password vault, it's immediately obvious when you're at a phishing site because the vault won't fill it in.

<comment><USER23> Unless your password vault uses regular expressions for matching URLs [0].

[0] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12171547](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12171547)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Recently my laptop was stolen out of my car, so I engaged "Find My Mac" and told it to wipe the disk.

A few days later I got an email "Cesar's Macbook Pro Has Been Found." My name isn't Cesar -- that must be the thief or the guy who bought it from him. I assume he re-formatted the disk and re-installed the OS and changed the computer name before connecting to WiFi whereupon the call-home feature told the machine to wipe itself.

It's a weird user experience to tell me the name of the new owner but nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER25> On a side note, if you are travelling in Italy never leave anything valuable, or anything that it looks like it could contain something valuable, in plain view in a vehicle.

A few years ago I was on holiday in Italy and someone broke in to my car and stole a suitcase which contained my laptop, passport and camera. Earlier this year I was living in Rome for a few months and the amount of cars with smashed windows I saw (to grab whatever was left on the seat) was staggering.

Even if you have insurance, it may not cover theft from an unattended motor vehicle (at least mine didn't).

<comment><USER26> What does this have to do with Italy? The same advice would be applicable in any city. San Francisco experiences large amounts of car thefts. Broken glass decorates the sidewalks of most streets > 4th in SoMa and in Nob Hill and westward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Another clue is that the map in the email is provided by Google Maps. I have a feeling Apple might prefer to use their own!

</comment><comment><USER28> "Also, wherever possible, use 2-factor authentication (usually password + a code in an _SMS_ message)" \-- how's that gonna help when your _phone_ is stolen?

<comment><USER29> There's a setting for iOS that hides the contents of SMS messages on the lock screen. With that, they'd at least need your pin. Hopefully you'd have some printed out backup codes.

<comment><USER30> You're not sending the message to the phone, you're sending it to the sim, in the clear. Si I pop this some in my flip phone and receive the code.

<comment><USER31> Hmm, but you do need to know the PIN code for the SIM card in order to register on the GSM network and receive the SMS? Or am I missing something?

I've changed my PIN to something quite long, so hopefully an attacker cannot just pop the SIM card out of my iPhone and use it on another device.

<comment><USER32> SIM PIN codes seem to have gone out of fashion. Neither my UK SIM nor my US SIM, both bought within the last two years, had a PIN code out of the box. Of course it's possible to set one but that's buried somewhere deep in the phone's settings, so most people probably don't set one.

<comment><USER31> I didn't even know it's possible to have no PIN code on a SIM card!

Operators in Finland always give you PIN cards with a preset code like 0000 or 1234, and tell you to switch it in their quick start instructions. I'm sure many people leave it as it is, though. Almost no-one seems to know you can actually set it to be more than 4 digits.

This looks like an area that phone operating systems could fix – by making it easy to change your PIN, and encourage using more than 4 digits for it.

<comment><USER33> Is there anything to stop one from brute-forcing the PIN? It's just numbers, what's the upper limit for length.

Ah, [http://www.techrepublic.com/article/pro-tip-protect-your- and...](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/pro-tip-protect-your-android-sim- card-with-sim-pin-lock/) suggests that you have 3 attempts, then there's a separate system (PIN Unlock Key, PUK) which a comment notes gives 10 attempts.

I'm wondering if you can read the data straight off the card via some physical means, attack that to get the PIN?

<comment><USER31> I'm guessing in most cases it's much easier to socially engineer the service provider customer support, rather than attack the SIM hardware.

<comment><USER33> You're probably right depending on the scale you're trying to crack the cards at - went digging and found [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/06/researchers_crack_si...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08/06/researchers_crack_sim_card_aes128_encryption_in_10_minutes_for_cloning/) which was pertinent and interesting to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> If your iphone is locked, how about a log of the thumbprints that attempt to open the phone sent to an escrow account that only Apple and you can open with shared passwords?

The existence of the feature would hopefully act as one more trivial inconvenience to deter more thieves.

<comment><USER35> I don't think the TouchID sensor captures or stores actual images of fingerprints in a way that is accessible to applications.

<comment><USER34> On the one hand, that is somewhat reassuring for happy paths. For this particular use-case, that's a bummer.

<comment><USER36> It would probably be a significant security flaw.

Imagine you press it but for whatever reason it doesn't register. Now your "incorrect" fingerprint is flying over the internet. With a bit of retouching or guessing your original fingerprint can now be recovered.

...not that your fingerprints aren't all over your phone anyways...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> show-iphone-location.com is one of the most obvious phishing URLs I've ever seen.

<comment><USER38> In New Zealand when you pay for something using a Visa card, you get redirected to a "Verified by Visa" page which the domain is "securesuite.co.uk".

That always looks incredibly dodgy to me, not sure why they don't use a visa.com subdomain so it doesn't look like a phishing scam.

<comment><USER39> These pages are authorization page of an Access Control Server (ACS) in the 3-D Secure flow. Visa/MasterCard designed the scheme, but the spec is open (in a somewhat limited sense), so anyone can implement the ACS as long as you're qualified to see the spec and can get it certified. Banks are free to choose the ACS vendor as long as it's certified. Many banks do provide ACS authorization page at their own domain name, although a many of them just use a third party service just like in your case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Wonder if he would have caught it if the attacker had gotten a real SSL/TLS certificate.

</comment><comment><USER41> The exact same thing happened to me, except it was a taxi in China. They kept trying different scams on me (but similar to this one) for nearly a year before it seems they gave up.

I reported most of it to Apple but (unsurprisingly I guess) it took forever to actually convince the support representative that no, it was not actually Apple trying to contact me. Finally they gave me an email address to forward the evidence to, and I never heard about it again.

</comment><comment><USER42> I think the bigger takeaway from this is that there is just so much going on with modern technology that we now have to consider the security risks of every little helpful "feature".

For example...

      - Lock screen notifications..
      - Medical info feature.
      - Emergency numbers feature.
      - Lock screen wallpapers that might give something away.
      - Email clients with poor security and where they do have security each one works differently.

All this increases the attack surface giving attackers a few more opportunities to exploit.

<comment><USER43> IMO the medical info feature isn't worth the risk. You can always just carry a little card in your wallet. It would eliminate a huge attack surface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> [https://preyproject.com/](https://preyproject.com/)

<comment><USER45> +1 - I use Prey on all my laptops, desktops, tablets and phones (alongside FindMyiPhone etc.).

<comment><USER46> Are you paying for the service or have you set up your own server?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> That's a pretty scary story. Kudos to Kiminki for recognising it in time. For once, I have to admit this is one I might have fallen for (if I had an iPhone, that is).

</comment><comment><USER48> This gets into semi-philosophical territory.

Fifteen years ago, if my phone was stolen, that sucked, but that was basically the end of that. I buy a new phone, and move on with my life.

Nowadays if a phone is stolen, they have to have access to my email, passwords, and effectively my entire identity, and it appears that that is exactly what's happening.

Phones are awesome, but I think I'd rather lose an eight-hundred-dollar phone than have someone get access to my email.

<comment><USER49> >Nowadays if a phone is stolen, they have to have access to my email, passwords, and effectively my entire identity

Not if you use the simple passcode or TouchID.

<comment><USER48> You misread my comment. I said that they _have to have_ , because apparently I like ambiguous wording.

Regardless, I'm not disagreeing with you, I was just stating that the problem stated in the article wouldn't have happened fifteen years ago

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Are u having doubt that your partner is cheat on you on facebook, whatsapp, pinger, viber, hangout and more, and you want to get a proof of all is cheating activities, i will strongly recommend email@example.com is a fast and reliable hacker you can count on for the job. he help me hack my wife iphone now i can read all her messages. if you need such service send email to email@example.com you all should contact email@example.com for all your hacking jobs, I'm recommending him he his fast reliable less expensive and truthful have done alot of works with him and he his just perfect

</comment><comment><USER51> I think it's conceivable that these phishing attempts are not targeted, in order to unlock stolen/found iPhones, but scattered widely, in order to obtain iCloud passwords.

FWIW, I've also received these phishy "Find My iPhone" notifications that my phone was found, via SMS [1], and nearly fell for it (as I had lost a phone months ago).

Apple Support did not seem to be surprised, and just explained how to report spam.

Agree that these are potentially very effective, as users will be eager to log in to retrieve their phones. As such, it is arguably incumbent on Apple to explicit warn about them.

URL was www.apple.com.in1.at (Austria?), redirecting to iCloud.com.sign- inc1.pw (Palau??).

[1] [https://twitter.com/FabianLischka/status/758543021130457088](https://twitter.com/FabianLischka/status/758543021130457088)

</comment><comment><USER52> Those are some impressively ballsy thieves. Obviously the street level guys have kicked them up to an organization of some sort.

<comment><USER11> Most likely they just buy iCloud locked iphones off eBay and then try to unlock them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The 2fa that has finally been pushed out by Apple is a great security precaution, however there will still be a large percentage that will not use it. Due to the fact of not knowing what it is. I repair phones and customers are just starting to cotton onto what find my iPhone is. There are even those who have it activated and don't even know how to use it.

Finally from a precaution avoid inputting your email address in the lock message. Also register an iCloud email. There is a better chance of apples servers detecting this as a fraud email than any other email sever thus (hoping) it will trash the bait like this.

</comment><comment><USER54> Can someone explain what the MedicalID element in the story was and how it was exploited on an iPhone. I am not familiar with this and it sounds like this was the inflection point for the potential identity theft.

<comment><USER5> On an iPhone you can set up a record with your medical information (Your name, blood type, allergies, next of kin, etc) which can be accessed without unlocking the phone, presumably the idea behind it is if you've been in an accident the attending medic can use that information to help treat you and let people know what's happened

<comment><USER54> I see, thanks, how unfortunate that this was exploited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> _i hate cheating Do you suspect your partner (husband /wife/girlfriend/boyfriend) might be sneaking behind your back and having an affair? _Do you want to hack; _Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Instagram or any Social Media?_ Phone, Whatsapp, BBM _Any Email_ Do you have an examination you want and you want the questions hacked and leaked to you before the examination? _Do you want to hack into you university or college portal to change your grades /GPA? _Do you need the service of a PI to help investigate someone online? *Do you want to hack-proof yourself and protect your online accounts from being hacked? CONTACT: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER55> Is it not possible to flash the OS on lost phones anymore? Or were the thieves after some data on the phone?

<comment><USER12> Nope. Activation lock is supposed to prevent that.

<comment><USER13> What's the reasoning behind that? Kind of defeats the entire purpose of remote wipe.

<comment><USER56> > Kind of defeats the entire purpose of remote wipe.

Hardly. The remote wipe will clear all of your private data. Seems like the purpose is well met to me.

Activation Lock is there to prevent resale of stolen devices, which simultaneously increases odds of return to you, and decreases odds of iOS theft overall.

<comment><USER13> Ahh, I've never heard the term before. I assumed it was the screen lock and the activation prevention was in apple's servers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> How does this work exactly? In my country people who break into cars are usually drug addicts who in no way are capable of doing something like this.

<comment><USER58> They sell the phone cheap to someone, who then sell it almost as cheap to an organization, which then have people who are capable of doing this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> How did the thief obtain the owner's email address and phone number?

<comment><USER60> >As far as I can guess (and if the phone doesn't reveal the iCloud email when you turn it on), they used the "Medical ID" feature on the phone to see who it belongs to and thanks to my strange name found me on wunderkraut.com along with my email address and phone number (for sending the messages to) — in fact, I did check the site analytics and found that my profile had one hit from Google the next day the phone was stolen.

From the article</comment></comment>