Switch to OpenStreetMap - <AUTHOR> https://switch2osm.org/ <comment><USER2> Ok.. i want to serve tiles... ok, I go here: [https://switch2osm.org/serving- tiles/](https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/)

First option (Build a tile server using packages) ... i click on it.. ubuntu packages... i don't have ubuntu here, let's go back.

Second option (Build a tile server from source), takes me here: [https://switch2osm.org/?page_id=76](https://switch2osm.org/?page_id=76) ... where is the documentation? How do i build it from source?

Ok fsck it, let's try the "all in one solution"... [https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/using-an-all-in-one- sol...](https://switch2osm.org/serving-tiles/using-an-all-in-one-solution/) ... "Page not found"

So.. either install ubuntu, or figure it out by myself?

<comment><USER3> I tried to build my own OSM server a couple months back. I quickly abandoned when I discovered that the amount of processing to import their world map data file in Postgres would require several months (desktop Core i7 3770k / 16 GB ram but a 7200 rpm hard drive since there wasn't enough space on my SSD).

For a world map server you would need a beefy machine to make it less painful, something like 64 GB ram, multi nvme ssd and countless cores.

I wish they offered a Postgres dump of it.

<comment><USER4> Hmm, I run a handleful of OSM servers with similar specs and it takes a little a day or 2 to import the world to a HDD. Here's some benchmarks. It definitely helps to have a beefy server: [https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osm2pgsql/benchmarks](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osm2pgsql/benchmarks)

A Postgres dump would be massive.

<comment><USER5> > A Postgres dump would be massive.

Indeed - it inflates to hundreds of GB during my import process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Has bug-correcting editing improved over the years? We use OSM quite a bit in the public sector because they aren't snooping. Three years ago one of our internal routing systems broke because someone had reported the street leading up to our administration center as a one-way street in the wrong direction.

This meant our 7000 employees couldn't get compensation for any work related driving, and we couldn't submit the correct tax-records.

When I submitted my correct edit, I was banned because my account was new and I had submitted a evidence from our internal street planning system, where we mapped the direction of the street, which is proprietary to us. Heh, it took two weeks to get it fixed after that because every subsequent edit got denied. Which felt kind of silly, considering it was my department who decided the street should become a one way street in the first place. Really needed a "verified" account system.

Considering I haven't needed to correct anything since is a testament to its quality though.

<comment><USER7> Puzzled by this. It's really really unlikely that you got a ban for one editing error. You can see the list of blocks at [https://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks](https://www.openstreetmap.org/user_blocks) and actual bans are only imposed for _repeated_ vandalism, edit-warring or copyright infringement. Short-term user blocks are generally imposed if the user isn't responding to attempts to contact them.

Do you have a link for your changeset and what happened?

<comment><USER8> Wow, the documents for the user blocks are very thorough. Here is a fun snippet that (blocked) user sorein sent to the OSM Data Working Group:

"YOU MORON WHO PROMISED T INTERMEDIATE BETWEEN ME AND THE GYPSIES TAKING OVER IN THE ROMANIAN NEWSLETTER, AND THEN YOU JUST RUDELY FORGOT NEED TO STOP!!! GO DO A JOB FOR WHICH YOU ARTE QUALIFIED"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Timely. Just started a project to document Bosnia and Hercegovina's remaining minefields on OSM. The build system consumes PDFs from the European Union Force as they are updated, georeferences them and pushes the features to OSM. Many tile sets on live maps are updated within the week!

<comment><USER9> > Just started a project to document Bosnia and Hercegovina's remaining > minefields on OSM.

That's brave - one bug and you could have people walking into a minefield that you've told them was somewhere else.

<comment><USER10> Arguably better than nothing—kudos to nathancahill for doing something genuinely meaningful.

<comment><USER11> Also arguably worse than nothing as it could make people living in the area more complacent.

In this case, I think it really depends on the use-cases and whether proper warnings are displayed.

<comment><USER4> I mean, you wouldn't just drive in to a lake if it wasn't on your map.. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOW_kPzY_JY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOW_kPzY_JY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For anyone that doesn't know, it's trivial to load OSM onto a Garmin GPS and use is for turn-by-turn navigation, for free.

I've used it in over 40 countries (including Africa, Europe, North America) and it is _staggeringly_ complete and accurate. From the mega capital cities to the tiniest village, it has every single dirt track, school, hospital, gas station, roundabout, intersection, etc. etc.

I can count on one hand the number of times it hasn't been utterly perfect in 4 years of driving around 90,000 miles through 40 countries.

I have no idea how the maps can be so shockingly good in rural Ivory Coast or Burundi, but they are.

<comment><USER13> Some countries are mapped poorly in OSM. Examples are: Mongolia and Cambodia. Many roads and buildings are missing.

<comment><USER12> Interesting, like I said I've never seen a country that isn't shockingly good.

I travelled extensively in 35 African countries - including a bunch you wouldn't expect to get good data for like The DRC, Burundi, Sudan, Mali, Gambia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, etc. As well as Belgium, France, Spain, Canada, USA

<comment><USER14> It's pretty bad in my city in the U.S., or at least was a few years ago when I last tried to volunteer some editing time. Guess I should look again.

<comment><USER12> I just drove 35,000 miles around the US this summer through about 30 states, and OSM had absolutely every single road, intersection and detail I could ever hope for perfectly mapped. I used it solely for navigation in a ton of places I've never been before, and it was brilliant.

What do you see lacking in your city?

<comment><USER14> Things may have changed, but two notable omissions at the time: a restaurant that had been there for 30+ years, and the post office closest to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've tried over and over again to switch to OSM but everytime I've reverted back to Google Maps and Citymapper. I've even contributed to OSM to fix bits I'm around but it's hard.

I don't drive so I rely heavily on public transport, and so for me that's the biggest selling point for any such tool. Unfortunately I've yet to find an OSM app that can do this in a useful manner as Citmapper and Google do. Unfortunately the data is just not there, and when looking through the issues of AndOSM, it feels there is a lot the developers just don't want to bother implementing (and in one scenario, someone had raised a PR but they refused to merge it). Granted, some issues are due to licensing, but many are quite important from a usability point of view.

It's been a while since I last time tried AndOSM, or OSM on it's own for that matter, so unfortunately I can't remember the specific cases.

<comment><USER16> Maps.me is what finally has allowed me to mostly switch with offline maps, good routing, and support for all modes of transit I use consistently.

[https://maps.me/](https://maps.me/)

<comment><USER17> OSMand+~ is a much faster smartphone client, that cares about your privacy and doesn't spam you with ads.

You can find it on osmand.net, the F-Droid repository and the Play/ios store.

<comment><USER18> There is an ad-free version of Maps.me. It is on F-Droid under the name of simply "Maps". I would recommend it to ordinary users who might be daunted by OSMAnd's somewhat arcane interface.

<comment><USER19> I find the interface to be really powerful once I got accustomed it, took some time though. I use it for hiking, motorcycling, measuring distance, searching places and public transport, etc. Its easily one of my most used apps on my mobile

<comment><USER20> It's very powerful, but, as a result, very stuffed and overwhelming. It's a significant barrier to entry. I've seen it several times.

There is definitely a place for a much simpler app, that focuses on the most important features and ease of entry.

<comment><USER19> I agree, i also saw it happen even with technically minded persons - but I really hope they don't take away that powerful interface from me. I find it invaluable since I got the hang of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been using OSM data for a side project I've been working on (an app to find "green" running routes, avoiding busy roads and preferring trails/rivers/parks, and optionally meeting some minimum target distance).

It just would not have been possible without OSM's data, full stop. The tag data associated with each road ("way" in OSM parlance) is invaluable, as is the ability to work with all of this information on a planet-scale in a single database (I use osm2pgsql to import the whole planet into a single box with 256GB RAM, and have plenty of headroom to run my app on top of that too).

The APIs provided by Google Maps and Apple Maps do not provide the functionality I want, even if I could pay their massive fees. Additionally, Google Maps' mapping of trails is much worse in my experience.

Whilst the data is far from perfect in some areas, I am still extremely grateful that OSM exists, and will now make a donation via [https://donate.openstreetmap.org/](https://donate.openstreetmap.org/)

<comment><USER22> Not sure if you already know this, but you could also use data on whether the streets are lit or not. OSMAnd uses this for example

<comment><USER21> Funnily enough, that is one of the features it already supports (avoiding unlit streets). Another one is avoiding especially hilly routes.

<comment><USER23> Is "hilly" a simple binary indicator on each street (or section of road) or is there an entire layer of elevation data included in the world data?

<comment><USER21> In my app, yes, it's a binary flag. But in the underlying data you can get detailed elevation data for every section of road worldwide that is readily usable in open source routing engines. GraphHopper supports STRM and CGIAR (two different data elevation data sources, available globally and free to use).

<comment><USER24> SRTM is pretty bad, but good enough until height data is easier to work with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There are also some nice services using OSM data. E.g. one of my friends runs the opencage geocoder which uses open data. Also there's at least one good navigation product out there (graphhopper) that I know about. There are several companies providing map tiles. And depending on what country you are in, OSM data may actually be superior. E.g. OSM data in Germany is ridiculously detailed compared to just about everything else. Lots of slums have detailed OSM maps when most other provider just show a blank space.

If you stare a lot at maps for the Bay area, this is about as good as it gets for e.g. Google and Apple maps. Don't assume you get the same level of detail everywhere. Making maps is complicated and expensive. OSM is pretty competitive in many places and the best there is in quite a few other places. And if that's not the case, the locals can fix it, if they want to.

</comment><comment><USER26> I evaluated OSM for an AR real-world strategy game (like pokemon go) I was building years ago (terramango.com), as implementing it would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars. Problem with it in the US is that so many places don't have parcel boundaries, and if they do, they are often pretty far off from reality. We ended up using Google Maps (cost wasn't an issue yet because we were only in a private beta stage) and negotiated a limited free trial for parcel data from a private supplier. The private supplier scrapes county records (some of which are only available in person, and other countries charge a fee for access) and their records almost always lined up with Google's parcel boundaries, OSM did not.

Other countries I randomly spot checked did seem to have great OSM records though.

<comment><USER23> OSM should be big enough to scrape their own parcels / subscribe to someone who does at this point.

I wonder if this is still an issue... AR RTS is my use case as well, and the mapping is obviously a huge component.

I think Pokemon Go switched to OSM a couple years ago, didn't they?

<comment><USER27> > OSM should be big enough to scrape their own parcels / subscribe to someone > who does at this point.

You do realise OSM runs on like £50,000 per year, and has basically sorta one employee? it's not that big!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I love using OSM, but when pointing non-geeks towards it the experience of openstreetmap.org is not the best.

Myself I am a happy user of maps.me as an app (even paying user before they were acquired) and have built tons of toy tools around it (basically whenever I need to do a tech demo I use osm data queried from overpass etc.) and there are cool things one can do ... but the shiny user-friendly thing is missing and "don't give Google your data" for many doesn't work.

Edit/p.s. I know that openstreetmap.org is supposed to be the "developer site" and others are supposed to build the "nice" products, but it's the entry to the project, where the brand leads.

</comment><comment><USER29> Very recent relaunch. Their github repo if you want to contribute [https://github.com/switch2osm/switch2osm.github.io](https://github.com/switch2osm/switch2osm.github.io)

</comment><comment><USER16> Tangentially, I've been trying to get my company on the list of providers for upwards of 6 months to a year, and my MR and Issue in GitHub have not had any movement.

Anyone here know someone who could help resolve that? We pretty clearly fit the guidelines for inclusion.

<comment><USER7> The github-hosted site has only just gone live and the issue backlog hasn't been addressed yet. It'll be looked at in due course I'm sure. (Have to admit I wouldn't have chosen to submit s2o to HN until stuff's been ironed out, but there you go!)

<comment><USER16> Thanks!

I certainly appreciate the work that's gone into it and the new design/strategy is an excellent improvement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I recently looked into using OSM for a side project and after going down a rabbit hole of researching 3rd party tools for generating (vector) tile sets and how to setup a tile server I eventually gave up (my mapping knowledge is limited to using Google Maps through their JS API). Can anyone point me in the direction of a more complete resource/tutorial that would help? Eager to get back on it at some point.

I clicked "Use an all-in-one solution" on the Serving Tiles page but it 404'd.

<comment><USER31> If you do not want to go down the rabbit hole, then Mapbox.com is the best to start, and you can slowly learn the difference between layers, tiles, vectorial, and their JS API is one of the best in the market.

Then once you are comfortable, move to Leaflet, while keeping Mapbox tile service, and then build your own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Highly upvoted article about drawbacks of OSM. I think it's worth mentioning here to give another perspective [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16394604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16394604)

</comment><comment><USER33> I just switched my non-profit to OSM (and the route-enabled OSRM). We are loving the ability to host our own servers internally, a requirement from our data providers.

</comment><comment><USER34> With all due respect to OSM, isn't "the world's best map data" an exaggeration? Especially if we count satellite images as map data.

<comment><USER35> Satellite images are not map data in the same way that a photo of a machine is not a blueprint.

<comment><USER36> I think if the machine was two dimensional and the photo had a measurement scale then it would be as good as a blueprint.

<comment><USER35> The machine is not, and neither is the world. Even if it were, it would still not be as good. It would not tell you about materials, tolerances, or many other important things.

<comment><USER36> It isn't a requirement for a map to capture all characteristics of an area to be considered a map.

<comment><USER35> That does not mean you can just leave out anything you want, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> "Do your maps look like everyone else's?"

This is the theme of an advertisement I'm putting together for next week.

We've built a 3D API which is used by RedBull, Microsoft, ViewRanger, Polaris, and more to better engage their users than 2D Maps.

All the sports tracking apps look the same, so if you want to differentiate your product, 3D maps can help tell the story. People use 3D maps for transportation, wildlife research, commercial drone operations and more.

Check it out at [https://ayvri.com](https://ayvri.com) API at [https://ayvri.com/pages/api](https://ayvri.com/pages/api)

</comment><comment><USER38> How can I, as sole map user, can help Open Street Map to thrive?

<comment><USER39> I find StreetComplete to be a handy tool on the phone that lets you enrich OSM data

[https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/StreetComplete)

<comment><USER40> StreetComplete is fantastic, alas there's no iOS version.

And after a while getting used to it you may want to configure the "questions" StreetComplete asks you.

Better not answer every type of question than get discouraged or fed up with the umpteenth "is there street lighting?".

Of course, if you can stomach being bombarded with questions every few meters, more power to you!

<comment><USER41> One category of questions I have turned off in StreetComplete is questions about wheelchair accessibility. Since I am not a wheelchair user, I have low confidence that I can identify potential problems for them. Like, obviously stairs are not accessible, but e.g. are the doorways wide enough?

I also turned off speed limits since it has a warning that you need to check the entire road, not just the highlighted spot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The OSM initiative is fantastic, but only the data is good. The software around it is low-quality, and the documentation is not good enough.

I once managed to import data exports I found on geofabrik and load it into a spatialite database. It was not very complicated but it was difficult to find help to understand what I was doing. But doing it felt pretty good. I still have to test if what I loaded actually works though.

Other experience I had, trying to load vector tiles from mapbox, with the PBF (google protocol buffers) format, in C++. I swiftly gave up. The C++ header generated was gigantic, apparently those .mbtiles were zipped PBF in a sqlite or something like that. It was horrendous. Mapbox seems like good software (and we need alternative to google maps) but I don't think they help OSM at all, at least not with the OSM model.

So in short, OSM needs some skilled engineers to work on the formats they can encourage. GIS is not a simple subject, and I wish there was more good FOSS for it.

Cheers to the OSMand team who can let me browse my region on my 70 euros android without a data plan, for free! That's a lot of money saved.

No doubt I will use OSM data to generate a 3D view of the world, so I can make a game with it. Outerra did it (they also made incredible city renders I think), but they are not planning to release a game, what a shame!

<comment><USER43> Do you have any recommendation for displaying vector maps in C++ (native program, not web)? The whole field seems very confusing.

<comment><USER42> Not at all, I don't. I tried rendering those mbtiles myself, and I failed.

You can do as I as I did, import data from exports available on geofabrik into spatialite. And then progressively render data from spatialite (I did not try that step).

ogr2ogr allows you to do this:

        ogr2ogr -f "SQLite" db.sqlite roads.shp -dsco  SPATIALITE=YES

You can find those .shp here [http://download.geofabrik.de/](http://download.geofabrik.de/)

Then the query in spatialite, here with python:

        where2 = lambda lng, lat, dist: " where PtDistWithin(geom, GeomFromText('POINT(%f %f)', 4326), %f, 0)"%(lng, lat, dist)
        select2 = lambda lng, lat, dist: "select id, AsText(geom) from points "+where2(lng, lat, dist)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It's very unfortunate the site does not have a clear path for caching pre- rendered tiles (from OSM.org for example). The only real choices you have are either the ones from leaflet-provider or rolling your own render server.

For something like having a single country at couple decent zoom-levels, I would rather not go through the trouble of setting up a complete render pipeline when pre-rendered tiles that are cached and hosted locally would suffice.

<comment><USER45> As someone who went that route previously: "there are two hard things in computer science: cache invalidation and whatever." That one will bite you - at best, if your tile provider allows you to "scrape" their tiles, you'll get inconsistent data. It only goes downhill from there :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> A few years ago I did make my own tiles for Paris from OSM; it's pretty exciting to be able to design everything.

But it's a lot of work that has to be redone constantly to keep up with map changes... Not realistic for a small organization (or an individual!) unfortunately.

<comment><USER45> Oh, it's fairly realistic for an individual with `cron`, no worries. But the up-front setup is still nontrivial, and running a server costs at least power, if not system administration time.

<comment><USER46> In theory you could automate generating the tiles, but you can't really automate downloading the dataset; it's enormous (hundreds of Go IIRC) and most of the time has to be checked by hand.

<comment><USER45> Depends on the coverage. If you wish to serve the entire world, it is indeed massive (~100 GB indeed); but from my experience, the updates are 1.automated and, more importantly, 2.incremental. Perhaps the technology has advanced since you tried it... (How do you even check 100 GB of data by hand? That seems impossible.)

That said, I am using the dataset for generating a map, but I'm only using a country extract - which only goes up to some hundreds of MB, and updates on the order of tens of kilobytes. Far more manageable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I love the idea of OpenStreetMap, and I tried really hard to use it on Android when I purged Google from my life, but the client itself was just atrociously awful (OsmAnd). The data wasn't the main problem; most of the time it couldn't figure out my location at all. It constantly made my device hot. It was nearly useless as a mapping daily-driver. Now that I've switched to iOS, Apple Maps is leaps and bounds better, which should tell you something.

It seems like a great dataset, and maybe the editing tools are better than the consumer clients, but if they really want it to gain traction they desperately need to put some effort into the end-user experience.

</comment><comment><USER48> As a consumer, I was just looking for mobile apps. I couldn't find any on this page.

Are there any?

<comment><USER49> Osmand for Android is pretty good, they should promote it.

<comment><USER50> Is there anything that renders the mapps prettier? The difference between osmand and Google maps is jarring.

<comment><USER51> What do you find ugly about them? I actually prefer them to google maps! Also, the naming of the streets is often clearer (in google maps, there are too many streets without name, even if you zoom on them). The overall user interface, however, is often much clearer in the google app.

<comment><USER52> It looks like a satnav from the early '00s... No subtlety in the colors at all.

Mapbox Streets is an example of good map design: [https://www.mapbox.com/maps/streets/](https://www.mapbox.com/maps/streets/)

<comment><USER4> Mapbox is built on OSM data and has pretty nice styling. Gaia GPS is one app that provides (among many other things) Mapbox layers on iOS and Android.

<comment><USER52> Hehe, I had just edited my comment to mention Mapbox, then I noticed your reply. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> While I managed to set up a tile server in the past, I found it nearly impossible to find concise information on how to setup all the rest.

Especially the geocoding part to convert addresses to points on the map/geo coordinates, or something like the search box on openstreetmap.org.

Holding the map information up to date was another topic...

</comment><comment><USER54> Hadn't looked at OSM in a while - wow the maps are gorgeous. Remind me of the topo maps I grew up with in Germany, which are basically pieces of art.

</comment><comment><USER55> Is Apache really an integral part of the recommended toolchain because of the custom module or are there decent alternatives based on modern stacks?

</comment><comment><USER56> Does anyone know of a OSM tileserver running on IPFS?

</comment><comment><USER57> I wish you could just download a big bunch of pre-rendered tiles for each country.

<comment><USER58> a) there are more than enough companies that would be willing to provide that as a service. Any larger country will simply be very big depending on the maximum zoom level (there is a reason why most tile service providers don't pre-render high zoom levels),

b) the more sensible approach would be to use pre-generated vector tiles, for example from [https://openmaptiles.org/](https://openmaptiles.org/)

<comment><USER59> We switched last year from the Google Maps API to hosting our own pre- generated vector tiles from Open Map Tiles in a docker image (using the mapbox api, and we're hosted somewhere in aws (not my expertise there - I get lost in the acronyms)). It seems to strike a good balance of managing costs + controlling our own stuff while relieving us of the burden of generating our own vector tiles. I could not find great docs on generating them ourselves, and as a newbie to that world I quickly gave up.

Now we just have to periodically take a fresh pull of the tile package, so our tiles aren't too out of date.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Ok how do I use OSM to calculate routes?

<comment><USER21> You need a routing engine on top of the OSM data. Common projects that do this are GraphHopper, Openrouteservice, OSRM and pgRouting.

I use Graphhopper and Openrouteservice - both are very actively maintained.</comment></comment>


The history of NSA spying, from telegrams to email - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/politics/nsa-prism-shamrock-history-spying-telegraphs/

<comment><USER2> Anyone interested in the history of the NSA should read Matthew Aid's _The Secret Sentry_. It's very, very good.

<comment><USER3> Another good option is Body of Secrets by bramford.

Whatever you do make sure to skip <2000 word "history of NSA" posts by Joe Blogger if you want to learn something. If you don't have the extra time or money for a book check out the wikipedia page about NSA.

<comment><USER4> I just started Bamford's _The Puzzle Palace_ a couple of days ago. I'm only about 1/4 of the way through, but it's extremely interesting already. From what I've already seen, I'd have no problem recommending it to other HN readers who are interested in the history behind the NSA.

I'm guessing his other books ( _Body of Secrets_ and _The Shadow Factory_ ) are also going to be great reads.</comment></comment></comment>


Software Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@thallukrish/software-architecture-f3c1b1186ed2 <comment><USER2> You have no idea what you are writing about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Explain your point.</comment></comment>


How Agility Allows Us to Build One Of the World's Biggest Rails Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/presentations/ford-large-rails;jsessionid=AB8C0DA109E2B6C9976F9A292E2E4FFF

<comment><USER2> Here's this talk as a PDF:

[http://github.com/nealford/presentations/blob/master/Rails%2...](http://github.com/nealford/presentations/blob/master/Rails%20in%20the%20Large- Building%20the%20Biggest%20Rails%20App%20%28Neal%20Ford%20and%20Paul%20Gross%29.pdf)

... from this collection of Neal Ford's presentation slides on github:

<http://github.com/nealford/presentations>

</comment><comment><USER3> 32k lines of code is one of the world's biggest Rails apps?

We clock in over double that, and still beat that number _without_ counting auto-generated code (Ragel and Racc output), _without_ counting views and templates, and _without_ counting tests.

(We are, for the record, not proud of this number. "How did agility allow us to scale to such heights? Well, whenever we run into a problem, we fling more f'ing code at it, like a monkey with a handful of poop.")

There is no way either of these two apps --- ours or theirs --- can really be among the largest Rails codebases.

<comment><USER4> For comparison, rake stats reports BCC is about 6k these days -- not counting the Java client application.

When they reported 30kloc in the app the Enterprise developer in me immediately started thinking of "Where is the rest of the iceberg hiding?"

<comment><USER3> On the one hand, you know what's really happening here. Most of the internal enterprise Java apps we look at crush these Rails apps by LOC; intuitively, even though Java inflates the LOC metric, it's no contest even by any reasonable scale factor you'd assign. What's happening is that Rails nibbles at the edges of the market and gets relatively small problems to work on. Apps like ours are big --- _for Rails apps_. Not a hugely meaningful metric.

On the other hand: how many developers does Thoughtworks have on this project again?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wish this wasn't an hour long, or had a text Table of Contents. Can anyone please give a breakdown of when are interesting spots in the video to watch?

</comment><comment> brown9-2 the InfoQ article is missing the "(Enterprise)" qualifier from the original presentation's title.</comment>


What are the best practices for releasing code from a development to production server? - <AUTHOR>

We are currently using Ant, and were wondering if there is a different way of doing things. <comment><USER2> <http://www.developer.com/open/article.php/998241> gives a decent overview.

My tip is to also track versions of all prod deployments so you know which one was active in production when.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was using ant, and hated it. What I do now is check in all code into subversion, then if it's ready for release, tag it, then check out the tag directly onto the production server.

</comment><comment><USER4> Capistrano is very shiny and nice.</comment>


What are your pain points? - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to start a business. What pain-points do you feel in your business or personal life? <comment><USER2> I have a poor sleep schedule I've been trying hard to fix, to no avail.

I procrastinate to the extreme of often doing nothing for an entire work day (I'm a contractor and I just don't bill it!)--but because I won't let myself do the things I truly want, I end up on HN or similar for a large part of my day and accomplish nothing at work and much less than I could in other endeavors.

I'm interested in learning how to repair engines but it's hard to find approachable material online when I have a problem. Typically you end up reading tons of forums and deciphering lingo. (I know very little in the first place)

I have too many half-built projects.

My posture is suffering from sitting in a chair all day. That chair is a recliner (I work at home). I think I'm also experiencing poor circulation in my legs, perhaps from the recliner or the laptop sitting on my legs (it's a large, ~8lb laptop). I want to get back to the gym but my aforementioned terrible sleep schedule really gets in the way of that--just an excuse, perhaps.

Cricket just switched their cellular service to GSM from CDMA after AT&T bought them. Now I have a $600 brick, as none of the other CDMA services will take cricket phones for reasons they won't disclose to me.

I can't find enough time for all of my hobbies.

A business started with family members has caused strain and conflict, and the issues are going largely unresolved, with one person seemingly reaping the entirety of the benefit.

I could go on, if I thought harder!

</comment><comment><USER3> I farmed out some tasks out to people on fiverr, but I find that writing sufficient specifications takes almost as long as doing the task itself. It would be nice to have a better workflow system to minimize time spent doing each step or at the junction of a context switch in the process.

</comment><comment><USER4> Information overload.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you elaborate? Too many Tweets, Facebook posts and news articles to sift through?

<comment><USER4> Maybe it's me. I have an accumulation issue where I bookmark articles and never get to reading them. New, exciting pursuits happen too quickly to effectively address all the things I'd like to.

<comment><USER5> It is not only you...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


AI Researchers Fight Over Four Letters: NIPS - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/ai-researchers-fight-over-four-letters-nips/ <comment><USER2> Discussion on r/ML from six months ago: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/8d72cu/d_p...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/8d72cu/d_propose_new_names_for_nips_conference_in/)

One humorous point was someone complaining about the acronym GAN in ML because it sounds offensive in Chinese (Mandarin), see [https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/12354/why-%E5%B9...](https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/12354/why-%E5%B9%B2%E8%8F%9C%E7%B1%BB- was-mistakenly-translated-to-fuck-vegetables)</comment>


Ask YC: Which YC companies are currently active? - <AUTHOR>

YC Faq states -- The ones that are currently launched are: Reddit, Loopt, ClickFacts, TextPayMe, Snipshot, Inkling, Flagr, Wufoo, YouOS, LikeBetter, Thinkature, JamGlue, Shoutfit, Scribd, Weebly, Virtualmin, Buxfer, Octopart, Heysan, Justin.TV, I'm In Like With You, SocialMoth, Xobni, Versionate, Adpinion, Anywhere.FM, Fuzzwich, Bountii, Auctomatic, Disqus, Draftmix, Webmynd, RescueTime, Reble, Heroku, Tipjoy, AddHer, and 8AWeek.<p>-- Some of these don't seem active (e.g YouOS blog was updated sometime in 2006). Is there a list of the active ones? Wikipedia seems dated too ... <comment><USER2> Wikipedia is dead... killed by the corruption of Jimbo Whales.</comment>


Deep brain stimulation good for depression - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblog.com/49362/deep-brain-stimulation-good-for-severe-depression/ <comment><USER2> For some reason, Google Scholar doesn't have the link (sometimes it misses preprints for a while).

That being said, there are substantial placebo effects related to deep brain stimulation. See: psych.umb.edu/faculty/adams/Psypharm%202009/annurev.pharmtox.48.113006%20Benedetti%202008.pdf Thats not the original paper, but a review of the subject (and lots more, if you're interested) which is freely available.

Depression is also known to be highly placebo responsive, so in essence unless this trial was double blind, then it doesn't really tell us anything.

<comment><USER3> Furthermore, DBS is very invasive, and complications, when they occur (hemorrhage) are dramatic.

Assuming it's effective, the procedure is best left to severe and otherwise intractable cases.</comment></comment>


Startups- Why a business plan is important - <AUTHOR> https://businessmellow.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/4-reasons-why-a-business-plan-is-important/ <comment><USER2> Yes it's important but the widespread rejection from startup founders (especially successful ones) refers to sticking to one preset plan and never adjusting to customer demand or market conditions. Writing a 30+ page business plan makes you reluctant to change it except for when it may be too late.</comment>


Take the world from another point of view - Richard. P. Feynman - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PsgBtOVzHKI

<comment><USER2> And here I was thinking I had already seen every Feynman video on youtube, thank you for posting this!</comment>


How do I become a self-sufficient old man in a shack? - <AUTHOR> Let's say i have $10000. Is it possible to build the following existence (for one person's lifetime)?<p>- Food/water (or equivalent), shelter from elements and predators, comfortable temperature, ability to stay clean and free from disease.<p>- Upper limit for time spent on daily involuntary tasks (say 1hr/day) with definite certainty on ability to maintain existence. Assuming no outstanding terrestrial occurences, there should never be any stress from fluctuation of shelter or resource availability<p>- Visibility at night; fire/candles ok, i guess<p>- Bed, chair/desk, say 10 sheets of paper a day, writing utensil to fill 10 sheets a day<p>- Internet access, say 100 hours lifetime total, accessable at some definite rate, say at least once a month for an hour at a time max (Richard Stallman style is ok)<p>- Ability to receive shipment of goods whose requirement cannot be predetermined (such as books), with finite extra funds set aside for purchasing of said goods<p>- Ability to escape the system as i see fit <comment><USER3> More parameters are needed, in my opinion. What you want is possible, but not with only $10k. That, or give up some requirements (internet, unless you want to walk to a public library) and be prepared to squat on someone else's property.

I live close to your desired existence. I own my humble hermit's cabin outright, have no debt at all, and a few grand in savings. I grow some of my own food, hunt some more, but I still need supplies. I could conceivably coast through a few years without any external income, but it would be a very Thoreau-like existence (which isn't a _bad_ thing, just too primitive for me). I own my car and home, but still forced to pay insurance and yearly registration/taxes (cheap, as the car and home are old and of _very_ low value, but they're non-negotiable and will surely rise over the years and are unavoidable). I still pay for power and internet, which could be trimmed (but what's the fun in that?).

If someone mailed me a check for $100k today, I'd never need to work again, and I'm under 40. I'm that set up and frugal. As it stands, I pimp myself out as a remote admin and local PC support dude, with minor hopes that I can realize a small web site that will bring in a few kilobucks a year.

For $10k you can buy an acre on Hawaii ("the big island" -- subdivisions near the lava flows), fly out there, and start gardening year-round while you live in a tent. Water falls from the sky daily and you can raise some meat to supplement the fruit and veggies you can grow. You'd have enough cash to pay for a few years of taxes, too.

Property taxes will get you every time, though, unless you squat. There's some dude who lives in a cave in southern Utah on public land. He eats bugs and scavenges food from nearby towns. Interesting experiment, but he'd be hosed (likely) if the majority of people weren't wasteful and he lacked stuff to scavenge.

Anyway, it's possible, but you'd either need more money up front, to have everything owned outright when you begin, or have enough passive income/savings to cover taxes and minimal supplies. Like I said before, more information on your current situation and your goals/plans are required for a more realistic analysis.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, it looks like property taxes are amazing in louisiana. Does anyone know the net cost of getting set up with a crappy katrina cottage?

<comment><USER4> there are vaguely habitable houses available in my neighborhood (seventh ward new orleans) for 50k or even less

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Where you will run into problems is food. B/c you only want to spend 1 hour a day on involuntary tasks, you'll have to buy food. Regardless of how efficiently you buy, your 10k wont last very long that way.

If you are a little skilled and live in the right area, you can get food from hunting/trapping but you're still looking at significantly more than 1 hour a day. Farming is right out.

To live that life you really have to be willing to work a little harder or spend a little more. No Minority Report ending, sorry.

<comment><USER6> If you are willing to live on rice it's about $200 a year for 2000 kcal per day. This is at supermarket prices, if you were willing to buy by the tonne I'm sure it's much less, just buy a futures contract and bring your truck to the delivery point.

<comment><USER7> Serious question, not joking - wouldn't you die, literally die, without any protein, fat, or micronutrients?

<comment><USER3> Yes, he would suffer serious malnutrition. However, he could supplement with one or two other cheap bulk crops (whole wheat, corn, and/or beans). Still, it would be efficient to raise small grass-eating animals for food, such as rabbit or even guinea pigs. Grass and weeds are abundant and free, far cheaper than meat.

Trace elements and minerals are fairly easy to get. Many of those same weeds you can feed to rabbits are chock-full of all kinds of good nutrition. A book on edible plants is recommended reading. Lichens and wild mushrooms (tread carefully!) are great sources of such nutrients.

For $10, you can buy a 50-pound bag of mineral supplement for livestock (chelated, highly bioavailble raw minerals -- pretty much mined from old lake/ocean beds and ground to a powder) that should last one person most of a lifetime. Much cheaper than a case of One A Day or Centrum tablets.

<comment><USER8> using animal mineral supplement is interesting , But what about minimal and maximal concentrations needed for humans , vs animals ? do you of an animal mineral product, with mineral levels that are proportionate to human minerals ? do you know someone who uses this idea ?

<comment><USER3> [http://www.redmondnatural.com/redmond-natural- conditioner.ht...](http://www.redmondnatural.com/redmond-natural- conditioner.html)

We use this stuff for our animals. On occasion, I will fill a couple of gel caps with the stuff and take some myself.

I take the glowing testimonials with a grain of salt (ha!), but the stuff seems to have a good reputation. Most ranchers tend to neglect their herds (likely more out of ignorance than malice), so I'm not surprised to hear that adding this supplement would yield huge improvement. Anecdotal accounts on various forums have been positive.

For all I know, this stuff could kill me in the long run, so don't come blaming me if it kills you should you try it. Consult your physician, dietitian, lawyer and all that standard disclaimer stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A thought - you might want to try this out for a month in a dry run before spending time building it. I spent about two months learning how to track, trap, and otherwise survive in the Southern Utah desert, which was an amazing experience that taught me a lot, but not as romantic as you might imagine. Before investing time, dreams, and resources learning about and trying to build this, why not go rent a remote cabin for a month and see how it suits you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Again, I'm sorry as the title is a little misleading. I don't really care about being isolated or roughing it in the wilderness. I'd rather not spend time learning any survival skills whatsoever, or even how to farm. I want to minimize involuntary tasks. It could be in the middle of NYC for all i care. But no roaches or bedbugs are allowed.

<comment><USER7> Okay, I understand better now.

Why not do a kind of work you find really enjoyable, and sell/trade that work with people whose company you enjoy? This is generally my philosophy to entrepreneurship anyways - there's a bit of involuntary time involved (taxes, accounting, errands), but I think you could get it down to less than one hour per day. If you didn't care about having extremely nice material comforts/status symbols, I bet you could make a decent life doing a skill/craft you like and enjoy being immersed in with minimum admin/involuntary time. Some kind of focused writing, craft, skill, or technology work maybe?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, this all stems from realizing the only reason i want to "get rich" is basically so i can live the life described. I want to do only the things that i want to do all the time. And the things that i want to do are extremely simple. But i am willing to give up some time to do other things. Yes, I would consider trading and selling involuntary activities.

The only voluntary activities are reading, writing, thinking, and communicating. I guess eating, sex, and shitting can all go in the voluntary slot, too.

<comment><USER9> If you've figured out a way to make eating and shitting voluntary, you should just write about that. The sales will be enough to ensure you never have to work again.

<comment><USER10> I had to +1 your comment, made me 'ROFL'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great question. I think more passive income is required for food etc. eg. my rule of thumb $1,000 invested will bring in about $1-2 per week; or, some businesses you own can (theoretically) provide passive income, but in practice it's not totally passive (1 hour per day is quite reasonable though.) But both sources will require more work to setup in the first place, to create the "asset". Another option is part-time consulting work; if you charge $100 per hour, that's $500 per week. Of course, you probably can't get that literally one hour per day; it would be bursty: (say) full-time for a few weeks, then don't work for a year. That's a popular hacker route. But again, you'd have some setup cost, in having the technical skills (and keeping them up to date) + (more importantly) having the business skills to keep _getting_ the work, year after year (and the social temperament.) It's sounding more reliable to work for a whole year, and invest _that_.

Though my personal experience is that I really missed being productive for other people, and have decided to expend effort doing useful things for others (create the value that _I_ want to create, on my own timetable and terms - largely an intersection of benefiting both others and myself.) It took me 2-3 years of not working to come to that decision, and it seems typical of people who retire. But even knowing that, I still had to see for myself. I expect you too. Of course, it's quite possible to just do that in the first place (I didn't.)

<comment><AUTHOR> My contribution would be my research, if it ends up being any good. But i don't want to be a slave to researching just so i can receive funding and continue my studies, I want to be self-sufficient and research exactly what i feel like, independent of others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Commit a felony and go to jail. That will meet most of your requirements. You will probably be paroled early, so commit additional felonies as required.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, by "escape the system" i meant escape the system we create here, as in keep my freedom, not be incarcerated, not be prevented from having sex or children for the rest of my life, etc.

<comment><USER13> This lifestyle will almost assuredly prevent you from having sex. Your budget will not buy you much of it either.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just mean that i can't be a celibate monk unless i can also stop being a celibate monk when i feel like it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> People laugh when I tell them that my dream job is to tend a lighthouse (which are all largely automated now), but it's for reasons very similar to what you've outlined here: lots of free time for me to read and study what I'm interested in. So another possible solution is to identify a job that's based predominantly on the criteria of having a human present. A fire lookout comes to mind. The one hour of work/day would probably need relaxed to two to three hours per day, but you'd also be supplied room & board. The Internet access might be possible via cell technology.

Please let us know how this works out for you.

<comment><USER15> Jack Kerouac did this in the fifties

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Pilom is right. Your life would become revolved around food.

You should check out the following three things:

Emergency by Neil Strauss in which Neil detail his experiences in trying to become more self sufficient and gaining the abilities to escape from the system

Island to Oneself by Tom Neale for a first hand account of trying to survive on a deserted island for 16 years.

And Survivalistboards.com, which is full of conspiracy nuts but has lots of information about becoming more self sufficient.

</comment><comment><USER17> I did this, years ago:

[http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programmi...](http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programming.php)

I started this phase out wanting to be left alone and live on $40/month, but reality interfered and it turned out to be a way to completely change my life.

I think it can still be done. There is a steep learning curve.

<comment><USER11> Welcome, cool to have you! Did you know you've been featured here? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=905377>

If you don't mind, I wanted to ask you: did you own the land for your shack, or rent it? The latter is cheaper, but not independent. I recall Thoreau didn't own his shack.

<comment><USER17> I owned the land outright. During my previous time with a NASA subcontractor in Silicon Valley, I realized that rent was a key problem and if I didn't own the land, the entire idea would collapse.

Then I bought materials in cash and built a little cabin, which meant it was also paid for. I was entirely debt-free, which I regarded as essential (and still do).

I started a little garden and had lots of free time to think. The rest, as they say, is history. :)

<comment><USER11> Thanks! It makes such a difference speaking to someone who's actually done it. Not theoretical.

I guess you must have been relatively near civilization - at least a town. Can I ask how much money it took... and how much you think it would take today?

I think it depends a lot on the land, which seems relatively expensive here in Australia; if you want water, electricity and sewage utilities. I get the impression there's very cheap land in some places in the States.

<comment><USER18> I want to start by saying this was 35 years ago. I chose a part of the country where land was relatively cheap (Oregon), and bought 5 acres for about $3000.

I built a small cabin at first -- 12x24 feet -- and this is where I wrote Apple Writer (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Writer>), while relying on a very long extension cord for power.

Later on I bought more land and built a larger house, but still with the idea of living cheaply firmly guiding my actions. Then my income went over a million dollars a year and I decided to do something completely different -- so I bought a sailboat and sailed solo around the world (<http://arachnoid.com/sailbook>).

> if you want water, electricity and sewage utilities ...

I chose Oregon because it rains a bit, and I had previously built a cabin in Colorado where it is very dry -- I decided that was a mistake. In Oregon, for water I walked up the hill behind my cabin and dropped a hose in a creek. If you choose the right altitude difference, you can duplicate normal household water pressure. For sewage, I built an outhouse.

It really was quite primitive. But it freed me from having to pay rent or needing much money, which meant I could think about anything I wanted. Then I acquired an Apple II, which ironically enough I probably wouldn't have done while working for NASA a few years before. I had this fantasy that I would write some cool programs and people would buy them, and I could just live in the country and people would mail me money.

The weird thing is that this is exactly what happened.

<comment><USER11> Oh man, it's such an awesome story. Thanks so much for replying. Good to hear the shack wasn't the first iteration (nor the last). Did it take some experience to be able to build a stable, long-lasting shack (perhaps just woodwork in general?)

How far were you from a town, for food, construction materials, etc and a PO (I guess biking distance)? I guess you had a friendly nearby neighbour for the extension lead? [I've been thinking solar, which I actually used for a hp200lx, using 4 rechargeable AAs, but today's netbooks need a gruntier, more elaborate setup: large solar panel, lead-acid battery, transformer etc. Seems error-prone. Maybe a kindle-like ARM+OLED/e-ink/LCD will change this.]

I'd like internet - either wired or mobile (we have rural mobile coverage, and the govt just reelected campaigned for more) - instead of a PO, but I'd still need a local town for food etc. It scares me a bit to be too far away - <USER2> that's where the peace/silence is that I want/need.

Just to collect figures and conversions for reference: <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%243000+1975>

        $3,000 for 5 acres = $12,000 today
        $40 per month      = $   160 today
          @ 10%            = $20,000 invested
        1200' ext lead = 365m
        Oregon 44N; Tasmania 42S

If these figures are applicable today, here in Australia, I could do this... now.

<comment><USER11> I checked online real estate; the cheapest land I saw was $45,000 for 2 acres - with services available, but not connected, and with road access. I expect an unserviced, with no road, on the "edge of wilderness" bush block would be cheaper, esp if a private sale and if not online. I've tried looking in the past, with no luck; don't know how to find out about it.

Another conversion:

        5 acres = 20,234 m^s

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I also have aspirations of independence and have concluded that "getting rich" is not The Answer. Some things that are working for me:

For health reasons, I have given up all furniture. I sleep on the floor with zero bedding. I had to get healthier in order to be able to do that. Being cold was really about being sick. It was a gradual process of using less bedding, getting healthier, and generally changing our lifestyle to need fewer things to meet our basic needs.

I have a netbook and a small folding shelf it sits on to keep it off the floor. The little shelf has folding legs, so I can change its position. I also have a prepaid cell phone as the cheapest phone access and have cancelled my landline. No furniture means less housework. It also means fewer bugs in the house. When we first moved to this apartment, there were a lot of bugs. I thought it was just that without furniture they were visible. Over time, with getting healthier and getting the apartment cleaner and reducing our possessions further, we have fewer bugs.

At the moment, we own one deep frying pan. We cook a lot from scratch, but they are simple one dish meals. The medical condition I and my oldest son have is high maintenance. So rearranging our lives so we have less to do in terms of cooking, cleaning, etc is essential in order for us to be healthy and still have time and energy to get a life (which we are basically working on now, after having spent about a decade working on getting well).

We live without a car. That substantially cut our expenses and has turned out to not be as challenging as I expected. Since we don't own furniture, we don't need to haul that much crap home. We regularly buy food and clothes (because clothes gets thrown out routinely around here....long story) and we bought a netbook earlier this summer. But I just don't need the kind of hauling capacity I needed when I lived more conventionally.

I have internet access via my netbook and could also have it via cellphone if I wanted it. I guess the internet access my cell phone would offer would be more limited. I'm reasonably content with the situation at the moment, though there are three people sharing one netbook and the plan is to buy one or two more netbooks when there is money for that and eventually add some (probably handheld) gaming systems.

Anyway, that's all that comes to mind at the moment. Just start reducing your needs now. Have a yard sale. Start living with less stuff. Step by step, you can move towards this and as you make changes it will make other changes possible that you wouldn't have imagined.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's an interesting question. but if you are an old hacker in the US or probably anywhere else in the developed world you qualify for a retirement income. At age 70 it would be something on the order of $2500/month. If you had an unmarried old lady, you would have something on the order of $60K per year plus reasonable health benefits in a few years.

The real problem is shelter. It is probably very difficult to build your shack anywhere near civilization, because of building code restrictions. The minimum, cost is probably some kind of used RV. You could theoretically avoid the code restrictions, because you could drive to a waste pumping station, etc. However if you blend in to a rural community sufficiently to be considered an asset rather than a nuisance, say by continually improving you property, you might get along quite nicely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, there is a catch: I'm not actually an old man, i just want to live the life of an old man in a shack. What i really want is to maximize the hours per day dedicated to sleep and whatever else i want to do, which currently is only reading and writing. I had a relatively bad undergrad GPA and basically want to live the life of a professor without having to worry about grad school, then phd, tenure, teaching if i don't want to, meeting with people i don't like, etc.

<comment><USER21> If I remember correctly, Joseph Campbell waited out the Depression this way. I don't know how he supported himself (probably borrowed the cabin from family), but he basically read books for 5 years.

<comment><USER22> And what he discovered during those 5 years was really grand. Do you have a reference for his auto/biography ? I know he ran track at Columbia, manage to visit Europe and learned sanskrit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Yes, but the $10000 or whatever amount of money becomes redundant. And, I do not recommend this path, as it is not for everyone because dropping out is instant "boot camp" rewarding in ways only you know, but boot camp. It's difficult work. Let go of one thing that you intuit you no longer need in your life, and watch what happens. Be gentle with yourself.

</comment><comment><USER24> I learned long ago that effort should be expended on expanding one's ability to produce and create, rather than on trying to reduce one's burn rate down to nothing.

But its a great idea to have a very simple place you can spend some time at when you desire. I want one too.

Consider <http://tinyhouseblog.com>. It has some great information.

</comment><comment><USER22> Doug Fine has partially done this. He moved to New Mexico. Installed solar panels for electricity. Shepherd 2 goats for milk. Grow his own vegetables. Converted his car to run on cooking oil.

<http://www.dougfine.com/farewell-my-subaru/>

<comment><USER25> His prior book, Not Really An Alaskan Mountain Man, which coincidentally I just finished last night, is about working toward a subsistence lifestyle in Alaska. He never even gets close, but it's an entertaining read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> That is possum living there is a book for you <http://www.possumliving.net/> There are video about it on youTube <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvn79E40VSc>

</comment><comment><USER27> > Internet access, say 100 hours lifetime total, accessable at some definite > rate, say at least once a month for an hour at a time max (Richard Stallman > style is ok)

So, what- you've got less than 10 years left? If you want to restrict yourself to 100 hours of internet, that's more like 2 hours per year for the rest of your life, or 10 minutes a month.

> Upper limit for time spent on daily involuntary tasks (say 1hr/day) with > definite certainty on ability to maintain existence. Assuming no outstanding > terrestrial occurences, there should never be any stress from fluctuation of > shelter or resource availability

You fundamentally misunderstand what being a self-sufficient old man in a shack means, don't you.

</comment><comment><USER28> Read about Tom Neale: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Neale>

"spent much of his life in the Cook Islands and 16 years in three sessions living alone on the island of Anchorage in the Suwarrow atoll, which was the basis of his popular autobiography."

Very long but totally worth it to read the whole thing: <http://www.janesoceania.com/suvarov_tom_neale/>

Makes me want to go to Cook Islands at the least.

</comment><comment><USER29> Go to India/China/anywhere. A change in culture can be refreshing and living there is really cheap. English is the second official language in India, so there shouldn't be a barrier. I also heard that the people are really really friendly (USA/Europe seem a bit resentful to foreigners).

</comment><comment><USER30> What about living in a different country?

One of my friends lived on $100 a month in China. Out there your 10k should get you 8 years and 4 months of living in Beijing. You certainly could last much longer in the countryside.

You can supplement your money by teaching English.

<comment><USER30> also, if you teach English in China, you typically get 16 hours a week of classes. This will typically net you an apartment and between 3500-6000 Yuan per month (about $450 to $800). You may be able to negotiate to work fewer hours in exchange for less pay and achieve your 1 hour a day or so dedicated to "other activities", i.e teaching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> A mentor of mine did this, with $300,000.00 for four years. He bought a plot of land in Wyoming, built and underground cabin, and bought a Backhoe to help himself build it. He lived there for four years before moving on with his life...

<comment><USER3> I read about this kind of failure all the time in homesteading and survivalist circles. It takes a certain mindset to succeed, which involves adopting a bit of minimalism and humility.

One thing people have trouble wrapping their mind around is this: the more "toys" (tractors, machinery, etc.) that require consumables and maintenance, the _less_ self-sufficient you will be. To be honest, even today's Amish are a far cry from true self-sufficiency.

<comment><USER27> Is your comment about "toys" exclusive to those that require consumables?

What about, for example, good knives and other various man-made tools?

I've thought about doing this sort of thing, but I'd really miss quality tools if I had to give them up. That, and buzzing around on a motorcycle! But I imagine even if I had a good supply of money for fuel and tires, the high risk of injury when you're alone in the wilderness is unacceptable.

<comment><USER3> The value of quality, useful tools cannot be overstated. Just be wise in your choices and understand the expenses involved other the life of the tool.

Don't buy cookware with teflon, as it will eventually wear off (nevermind the toxicity), but buy quality heavy duty stuff. I have a set of decent stainless steel cookware and a fair bit of cast iron, where the "non-stick" coating can be renewed (if not maitained) for the life of the item.

Good knives (cookware or otherwise) are a very valuable asset. Invest in a quality set of water stones to maintain them (I prefer Shapton "glass" stones), and you'll have a useful tool for life. I'm still packing a Swiss Army knife and fillet knife I've had since I was a kid.

Tractors and horses can be valuable, if put to good use. However, both require maintenance and fuel. Hand tools and other human-powered devices can accomplish quite a bit and are much cheaper to maintain in the long run.

<comment><USER31> On a commune I lived on in Kentucky we had a Backhoe and tractor with an assortment of tools and power tools; we had a solar array to meet our electricity needs.

It was well worth having the Backhoe and tractor - for three people, some jobs are much easier when you have a machine to help (such as digging a wide long trench).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> All those who venture in caves: return to the world, or go mad from loneliness. Some may seem interesting, but there is a thin line between insane and interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Although i said old man in a shack, being isolated is not a requirement. But for the sake of argument, let's not prohibit it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> You can run some easy calculations that show that candles are vastly more inefficient than electric light. Not surprisingly, they are more expensive too.

</comment><comment><USER34> Bad news for you buddy:

There is no escaping the system. :)

A relative escape may be possible, but definitely not an absolute and complete escape from 'all' systems.

You go live in a jungle, you have to adapt yourself to the 'system' there.

You may be able to escape the laws of a more civilized country by living with some tribes in Papua New Gunea or the Amazon, but you would have to start living by their laws (formal or informal).

</comment><comment><USER35> I suggest that you think over opting in for a dentistry/vision/emergency plan. Old man in a shack is definitely going to need it. Probably this should constitute the largest part of your suggested spending whatever your motivation is.

</comment><comment><USER36> Look at it from a start-up perspective, either you bootstrap with $0 invested or you raise money (more than $10k).

The same project can be had with no money or a lot of money. Once you burn through $10k you will only want more money.

</comment><comment><USER37> Just go live in a shack and don't deal with other people unless you really need to. No need for $10k.

</comment><comment><USER38> No. <http://www.survivalblog.com>

</comment><comment><USER39> Respect if you do it because you're harmful to society, childish if its because society is harmful to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it is neither of these. Well, i am somewhat of an asshole, i guess, but I want to study math and physics.

<comment><USER39> For that, what are the advantages of a cave, comparing to a silent library?

Also, toilets instead of holes and toilet paper instead of leaves.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have to sleep somewhere that is legal and that doesn't annoy people, and also to not be dependent on others. This means no panhandling, etc.

<comment><USER39> You just recalled me of a documentary that showed chinese (IIRC) folks sleeping in LAN houses because it was the cheapest thing for them. A nice idea I must say.

<comment><USER40> Probably Japanese: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_cafe_refugee></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Will You Measure Your Life? - <AUTHOR> http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/1

<comment><USER2> This is by Clayton M. Christensen (The Innovator's Dilemma)

single page: <http://hbr.org/2010/07/how-will-you-measure-your-life/ar/pr></comment>


Show HN: Portainer – A lightweight management UI for Docker - <AUTHOR> http://portainer.io <comment><AUTHOR> Main developer here, feel free to ask any questions ! We'd love your feedback :)</comment>


Free images for your startup / website - <AUTHOR> https://www.ImageFree.com <comment><USER2> What the about page [0] giveth "You gain access to many high-quality stock graphics and photos and that's all for free!", the terms of use [1] seem to taketh away "Images, other than comp images, may only be used commercially once you have entered into a license agreement and paid the relevant fee".

[0] [https://www.imagefree.com/home/about](https://www.imagefree.com/home/about)

[1] [https://www.imagefree.com/home/termsofuse](https://www.imagefree.com/home/termsofuse)

<comment><USER3> If you try to download an image, you're greeted with "Get access to the best collection of member generated royalty-free images, at the world's best prices. It's free and only takes a minute."

I'm not quite sure what's free. :|

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a bug and will be corrected. The site is free but a link to the site would be appreciated. The reason for this bug is that the site was built as part of another website [http://www.ImageRee.com](http://www.ImageRee.com) that is a normal stock photo website. The termOfUse from that site has for some reason been published on this site.

<comment><USER3> Just try to download an image, and read the text on the right side. You'll see what I posted. :) Good luck with the new project!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "..201 free images".

are you planning to add more? Your competitor sites unsplash,pexel etc have many,many more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes we will add many photos each week. unsplash started with 10 :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What other free image sites do you use?

<comment><USER3> Unsplash, pexels, both have a good collection of royalty free images that can be used without attribution, commercially.</comment></comment>


Dan Abramov makes £100K/year base at Facebook London - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/benlesh/status/1228492948377083904 <comment><USER2> Who is Dan Abramov? This is linking to a tweet by Ben Lesh. Did you mean [https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1228454264915271683](https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1228454264915271683) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Ooh yes. Can't change it now but there's a discussion on Twitter on sharing tech salaries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> He should make way more based on what FB pays their average Engineers(and Dan is not average by any means), I know people that knows/does half of what he knows and make 200+. That said, I think salaries in tech are crazy!

</comment><comment><USER4> I would have assumed he made way more than that for who he is.</comment>


Steve Jobs' Master Plan - <AUTHOR> http://fishtrain.com/2007/08/15/steve-jobs-master-plan/ <comment><USER2> Here's my guess for Sept 5th: An iPod with combined features of iPhone: Flash memory, touchscreen, it's an iChat/Skype phone that uses wifi networking for $379.

However, I'm waiting for the home entertainment center: An Apple LCD HDTV perfectly-mounted screen, wirelessly streaming data from other Apple devices. DVD, TV tuner, rent movies from iTunes like a Netflix.</comment>


a collection of startup stories - <AUTHOR> http://www.startupflames.com/ Hi all,
  I just built this site to store and collect people's experiences and stories of doing startups.  Could you guys critique the site and maybe add some stories? Thanks. <comment><AUTHOR> hi all, I just made this site, could you critique it and maybe submit some stories to share with everyone.</comment>


Unlicensed signal boosters get a boost from Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/unlicensed-signal-boosters-get-a-boost-from-amazon/ <comment><USER2> Why is it that the FCC and FTC don't provide any protection here. Can't they buy products from Amazon and other sellers and fine them?</comment>


GrubHub CEO Matthew M. Maloney Sells 14,491 Shares of Stock - <AUTHOR> https://baseballnewssource.com/markets/grubhub-inc-grub-ceo-matthew-m-maloney-sells-14491-shares-of-stock/212741.html <comment><AUTHOR> He sells a lot of his stock the day before elections, then sends out that horrible email, and plummets the value of the stock.

The SEC is going to crucify this guy.

<comment><USER2> What horrible email?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12930300](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12930300)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm pretty sure this is a machine generated article.

</comment><comment><USER4> Price manipulation aside (from his election comments), why is this news?

The amounts are peanuts. The article references $113K stakes owned by financial firms as if they mean something. That small scale of money doesn't even qualify as a rounding error.

<comment><USER5> It's not news. It's algorithmically generated spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just found it online. Still the content is real, the CEO did in fact sell off his stock before dropping the price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://4.1m.yt/q_sMwBB.png](http://4.1m.yt/q_sMwBB.png)

another image of maloney's ownership

</comment><comment><USER7> Why is this article on a baseball news site? I'm so confused.

<comment><USER8> Not only that, the only submissions from this site (this is the second) are about tech stock sales by founders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A NN must have written this.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my Code - My_Favorite_HN_Submitters - <AUTHOR>

The Python script is available at:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1395097/MyFavoriteSubmitters.py
This script will:
1. Ask you for your credentials 2. Login to HN 3. Download your list of saved links 4. Use that list to generate a sorted list of your favorite submitters 5. Output that list as a simple HTML file with appropriate links. You can now easily browse the saved links of each of your favorite submitters.
Please use this responsibly! The idea is not to bring down the HN server with a flood of automated traffic. You'll notice that there is a delay built into the script that slows down the HTTP requests. Don't comment that out! :-)
While writing this script, I noticed a few interesting things:
The first is that HN doesn't keep a permanent record of your saved links. After 210, it starts discarding the oldest ones. Perhaps this could be changed?
The second is that the top-ranked submitters tend to be people who submit more links. Makes sense. One way to improve this script would be to design a formula for submitter quality. For example, take the number of submissions that you voted up and divide it by the user's total number of submissions in that period of time. This involves even more scraping of the site, though, which I'm hesitant to do before pg gives this a thumbs up or thumbs down.
The third thing is the extent to which the "new" page can be a no man's land where good links go to die. Many of my favorite submitters have excellent submissions with only one karma point, which is a result of the "now or never" voting phenomenon. If a new link isn't given one or two upvotes within a few minutes of being submitted (so that it appears on the front page), it has forever lost any hope of getting the votes it deserves. Perhaps this could be fixed? One idea might be to give links a "second chance" at the new page if they receive an upvote after being completely dormant for more than a week.
I hope you enjoy the script! I've been teaching myself programming over the past year (mostly by reading SICP and Hacker News), and I would love to receive feedback. Is there anything I could have done better? Could I have written something in a more elegant way? Is there something I did really well?
Thank you to everyone for making this site so amazing. I owe this community a debt of gratitude. <comment><USER2> > If a new link isn't given one or two upvotes within a few minutes of being > submitted (so that it appears on the front page), it has forever lost any > hope of getting the votes it deserves.

This has been a real problem, and the last two weeks it has gotten very bad indeed.

The 'new' page doesn't scale.

A good indicator of how big the problem is at the moment is the 'age' of the oldest item on the new page. That used to be 2 to 4 hours, now even on a 'quiet' time of the day it is only 1 hour.

The reason why there is a cut-off at 210 elements for the 'new', 'saved' and 'news' pages is that this will reduce some performance bottlenecks. They're slowly getting shorter.

It's a real pity, especially for the 'saved' page because that is one use of HN, as a bookmarking service.

</comment><comment><USER2> Ok, a review of the code:

I increased the sleep to 10 seconds, 1 second is pushing it.

Double return of the same value in the tail of GetFavoriteSubmitters so you can drop two lines there.

Maybe add a linefeed at the end of every row of users so you can still make sense of it in a text editor ?

Missing 'close' at the end of the writing of the file. Sure, the file will be closed by the script that exits but that's sloppy.

That's about it.

The results:

      edw519	5
      yarapavan	4
      fogus	4
      amichail	4
      zjj	2
      prabodh	2
      nopassrecover	2
      dreemteem	2
      boundlessdreamz	2

All the rest of them are 'one-offs'. I guess I'm not much of a groupie :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback, Jacque! I'll change the script accordingly.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link:

<http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/1395097/MyFavoriteSubmitters.py></comment>


Sublime Text Package Control Outage - <AUTHOR> https://packagecontrol.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> [https://twitter.com/Package_Control/status/10837381368475729...](https://twitter.com/Package_Control/status/1083738136847572992)</comment>


Using Google keyword planner to estimate your market size (and more) - <AUTHOR> https://www.myproductlaunch.com/using-google-keyword-planner-to-estimate-your-market-size/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just as an for some extra context:

Google's keyword planner tool can be used to quickly gather the following useful data: -Relevant keywords for your product or niche -Market size (using Google search volume as a rough estimate) -Market share (how many clicks you'll actually get using adwords)

All useful stuff for validating a product or business idea BEFORE launching. This is also known as a "bottom-up" market size analysis.

</comment><comment><USER2> Link broken for me :(</comment>


8tracks is an awesome music startup you've probably never heard of - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/02/27/8tracks-is-an-awesome-and-profitable-music-startup-youve-probably-never-heard-of/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter

<comment><USER2> They seem to have gotten away from the porn-ish images problem they had. Years ago when using 8tracks, a recurring problem with myself and people I knew was that the image chosen for mixes by the person creating the mix would _often_ be nsfw. So you would accidentally flip tabs or something with a boss or coworkers around and there would be a lot of double and triple takes until they realized it was a music site.</comment>