Why Women Rule The Internet (by Aileen Lee of Kleiner Perkins) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/20/why-women-rule-the-internet/

<comment><USER2> Hmmm. If by "rule" we mean use/consume, then this seems accurate. However, in terms of creating/leading/shaping the internet that seems to be ignored here. I don't have particularly strong feelings one way or the other, but it seems like it would probably be a good thing if more women were actually driving usage and behaviour and services on the internet.

A better thing than this perhaps, which a cynic might label as "it's easier to monetize women users". But that would be very cynical.

<comment><USER3> I also found it to be a somewhat shortsighted analysis. Conventional opinion amongst U.S. elite is that it's a very bad thing when one group controls the means of production which is primarily utilized by another group (whether the grouping be along racial/gender/class/other lines). But here it's celebrated. I guess because it's an economic argument for getting more women into tech.

But we already "know" that men who go into tech are not representative of the general male population - why would women be any different?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Males and females attend college at an almost even rate."

This isn't true. In 2008 it was 57% female/43% male and steadily growing more lopsided. [1]

[1] [http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2010/section1/indicator07.as...](http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2010/section1/indicator07.asp)

</comment><comment><USER5> Presumably they rule the Internet because you'd be labelled sexist if you claimed men ruled the Internet.

<comment><USER6> > Presumably they rule the Internet because you'd be labelled sexist if you > claimed men ruled the Internet.

This is drivel. They rule the Internet because they love to shop and connect with their friends. ;-)

Seriously: That article had actual numbers. They may be right or wrong, but acknowledging numbers _matter_ in these discussions is an import step away from the handwavey pop-psychology bullshit this article might have been.

<comment><USER5> To use those interesting statistics and come to the authors ridiculous conclusion further reiterates my personal opinion that if women in tech had an issue with how they were perceived, they'd start companies rather than _roll of the eyes_ blog posts and _step out the room_ conference panels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a bit like saying cows rule the dairy industry.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought this part on Dunbar Numbers was particularly interesting:

 _"Perhaps none of this is surprising. Women are thought to be more social, more interested in relationships and connections, better at multi-tasking. There is also anthropological research to back this up. Dave Morin of Path introduced me to Dunbar's Number, proposed by the anthropologist Robin Dunbar. The number is the theoretical limit of how many people with whom one can maintain stable relationships (thought to be 150). But Dunbar's most recent research shows there are different numbers for women than men—that women are able to maintain quantitatively more relationships within every ring of closeness than men. Knowing that is an important factor if you want to build and stoke social network effects. More female users will likely help your company grow faster."_

<comment><USER8> I thought research showed that men were capable of maintaining more (as in quantity) "shallow" relationships, while women were able to keep a higher number of deeper relationships.

<comment><USER9> It is actually that women maintain slightly more relationships at every level of trust. The standard levels are: 5, 15, 50, and 150. Women tend to do around 8, 18, 80, 180. It is fairly fascinating research. Let me know if you guys have any other questions, love talking through this stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Point of order: Amazon Mom, despite the name, is open to single fathers and generally anyone caring for a child. I mention this because it's worth looking into if you are such a person, even if you aren't a "Mom".

The fact that they called it Amazon _Mom_ merely reinforces the article's point, so this isn't disagreement. I've found it useful and I don't want non- Moms to think it's not for them, that's all. (15% off diapers + 15% off subscribe & save items comes out to the lowest non-sale price for diapers I've found. That is, with a coupon and a sale we sometimes manage to beat the price of Amazon, but it's not something you can count on.)

<comment><USER11> In case it's not clear, Amazon Mom is very much available to married Fathers too (and the plan is working, I'm getting addicted to Prime and will likely find myself subscribing once my "Mom" status runs out).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think anyone truly rules the Internet. But if one were to be really honest and strict in trying to settle on which gender "rules" the Internet then the strongest argument would be made for males. Yes, women might shop more and/or converse more. But that's different from ruling. If most of the people who shop and converse in North Korea are female, does that mean North Korea is ruled by females? Clearly not: it is ruled by a man along with some other military men who are loyal to him.</comment>


DAZN has Crowd-DJs for adding Artificial/Augmented Sounds to soccer games - <AUTHOR> https://ottverse.com/fake-artificial-crowd-noise-bundesliga-dazn/ <comment><USER2> I think Fox Sports does something similar and people complained. I've gotten used to seeing cut-outs of people at ballgames now .. weird times that we live in!</comment>


Ask HN: How to promote a website, while keeping it a secret - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a website and I want to promote it to create buzzz before its ready to launch.
I printed business cards on vistaprint.com and handed them out to friends and strangers I meet to start up a conversation. On the business card I put a link to a Google Doc with a form for people to fill out their info so I can be in touch with them when the website is ready.
Maybe I put too many [required] fields on the 'sign-up' form, since I didn't get any response. How much info would you give? Just email or email name and city? (I want to know where people come from and Google doesn't give you Analytics on Docs)
Maybe people will not sign up for 'something-they-dont-know-about'. Would you?
Maybe I didn't offer something attractive enough?  Is 'Sign up to be a BETA user' not enough? (BETA users will have extra week or less before everyone else). Should I offer a sale for first 2K 'signer-uppers', such as 15-20% OFF first purchase?
Friend suggested I make a video to Youtube to spread a lot of buzz. Any other buzz ideas that are cheap? (I don't have a lot of money for advertising)
What would attract you to sign up for 'something-you-dont-know'? <comment><USER2> _What would attract you to sign up for 'something-you-dont-know'?_

Nothing.

Perhaps cold hard cash.

</comment><comment><USER3> set up an invite only system, give out 10 invites and only allow people to invite _one_ other person per day.

<comment><AUTHOR> What's an easy way to setup an invite only system?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just launch. Simply launch.</comment>


Silicon Valley faces Web startup glut - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/03/technology/business2_nextpanel0303/index.htm

<comment><USER2> Yeah, everthing's OK now. Nothing more to see here.

</comment><comment><USER3> in March 2006.

<comment><USER4> If anything it's even more glutted now.

Which brings this to mind: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38691>

_"Today, there is $230 billion of private financing around private equity backed companies."_</comment></comment>


Privacy group seeks last-minute Kavanaugh delay, citing extraordinary disclosure - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/courts/privacy-group-seeks-last-minute-brett-kavanaugh-delay-citing-extraordinary-new-disclosure <comment><USER2> Can someone flag this garbage?</comment>


Puerto Rico's Governor Says Island's Debts Are 'Not Payable' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/29/business/dealbook/puerto-ricos-governor-says-islands-debts-are-not-payable.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><USER2> _Hedge funds holding billions of dollars of the island's bonds at steep discounts are frustrated that the government has not seemed willing to reach a deal to borrow more money from them._

And one wonders how these things come to pass. :(</comment>


In China, alpha males carry designer purses - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-china-man-purse-20110207,0,5536207,full.story <comment><USER2> _The 20-year-old office clerk at a Beijing cosmetics manufacturer knows it could set him back more than $1,000. He'll have to save for months. But he said it would be money well spent. "As a man, you must have one of those bags," he said. "It will bring you status, dignity and boost your image."_

Petrifying though that may be, that's only months. We saddle ourselves with six years of payments for the status symbols _we_ can't afford.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is one of the big rifts between foreign born immigrant Asians and their children. (I'm such a child.) A lot of children of immigrants are embarrassed by their parent's obsession with material things and signaling. In actuality, this behavior is quite similar to the signaling through conspicuous consumption of other North Americans. However, culturally different practices stand out, while the local ways of doing things blend into the background.

<comment><USER4> Spending months of your salary on a designer handbag, or whatever it is they think the culture values, is not a way to signal anything other than "I'm an idiot."

<comment><USER3> How about 3 months of your salary on a small stone of no special rarity or particular utility, just because an international cartel succeeded in telling people they should? The entire industrialized world engages in this foolery.

This roundly shows the hypocrisy of those from the west making snide comments about Chinese engaging in signaling. It's a part of North American culture to engage in such signaling as a matter of course. The majority of all retail establishments would lose a big chunk of their profits without such tendencies. It's the same sort of thing as people criticizing ghetto kids for buying Nike shoes. I wonder how many of those critics save enough for their own retirement?

<comment><USER4> What makes you think that the same Chinese who base their self-worth on Coach handbags don't also aspire to DeBeers diamonds? I stand by my comment, but doubly so because China is far from an industrialized nation. The people buying these things can't even drink their houses' tap water.

<comment><USER5> As a Chinese person: fuck you.

What decade do you think this is, the 1940's? Can't afford tap water? This is the kind of racism that people have to worry about, not stuff like censoring Mark Twain. Notions of the lower class of another nation does more damage than directly addressing issues ever will. Much of the cities in china are just as industrialized, if not more so, than counterparts in the USA. The upper middle class is a growing section of the population that produces a demand for more flashy products such as diamond rings or handbags. Doubly so as for the diamonds; the western nations is not above signaling with SUVs and other gimmicks (well gas guzzlers are less of a concern in europe, but not my point here). Pointing out that people not in a western country will save for a few months to buy an expensive item smacks of hypocrisy, especially when such people often demonstrates that they don't know the concept of saving in the first place. (Living within their means, anyone?)

<comment><USER3> _Notions of the lower class of another nation does more damage than directly addressing issues ever will._

I think this is an important notion. The Chinese view themselves as the most sophisticated culture in the world. The Chinese view the currently dominant economic power of the West as having an unfortunate side effect. It hinders the rest of the world's understanding of the true value of Chinese culture.

How North Americans view the Chinese notion of cultural ascendancy is very instructive, because it's a mirrored by how the Chinese view a North American's notion of cultural ascendancy.

North Americans are well advised to consider this, as it's likely that China will soon have double the economic output of the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminded me of this article about Chinese women:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-13/chinese-women- milli...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-13/chinese-women-millionaires- enter-man-s-world-with-400-000-maseratis.html)

Seems in the West men buy sports cars and women buy luxury handbags, and it's the reverse in the East.

It probably doesn't come down to any significant cultural differences either. Buying expensive things is a way for some people to feel more confident about themselves, or to spoil themselves, or some area in between. Basically, it's a curious statistic, but ultimately a non-story for actually doing business.

<comment><USER7> maybe in China.. but definitely not in all of the East

<comment><USER6> Very true point, China has a good record of gender equality. Much better then it's neighbors and also the West.

<comment><USER8> They have over 30 million more males than females. The Chinese may have equality, but that's a lot of sexually frustrated men that's going to contribute to unrest.

<comment><USER9> You do realize that's less than a 3% difference, right?

<comment><USER10> Additionally, don't most countries have more men than women?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_ratio>

<comment><USER11> No, just the opposite. Most countries have more women than men.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sex_ratio_total_population...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sex_ratio_total_population_per_country_smooth.png)

Edit: check out that big red country on this one...: [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Sex_ratio...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b2/Sex_ratio_below_15_per_country_smooth.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The top businessmen in China all carry Pracla purses.

</comment><comment><USER13> My cousin recently visited home from China, and brought his designer purse along with him. I was kind of amused.

<comment><USER14> Was it really a purse, or more along the lines of a soft briefcase or messenger bag?

I ask because the image in the article showed what looked to me like a soft briefcase with a long shoulder strap.

Incidentally, here is a random link demonstrating that Indiana Jones carried a purse: <http://thesatchelpages.com/keeping-up-with-the-jones-bags/>

<comment><USER8> It's a satchel, not a purse. [0]

[0] [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Satchel_%28ba...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Satchel_%28bag%29)

<comment><USER15> I'm so disappointed that nobody's added Ford Prefect's satchel to the Satchels in Literature or Satchels in Popular Culture sections of this article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The USA variant of this is the briefcase or (more recently) the messenger/laptop bag. Not quite as expensive, but (arguably) still used as an indicator of social status.

<comment><USER17> Actually I would think the US version would be a nice watch. The article seems to stress that it is a status indicator for business purposes.

<comment><USER18> Except that watches are kind of going out of style, with all of the electronic devices people have. Perhaps the US version would be a nice smartphone, a nice MP3 player, and nice, non-Apple earbuds.

<comment><USER17> Really expensive timepieces should have gone out with the quartz watches that came in during the 80s. They haven't because some of the rich and powerful use an inferior technology (from a timekeeping perspective) to show how successful they are.

While hackers may just use their phones it is unusual to see a wealthy banker, talent agent or lawyer without a nice watch. I would assume it is more prevalent in jobs that require a lot of signaling for negotiation.

<comment><USER18> I guess I don't hobnob with the wealthy enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "That figure is just 7% in the U.S."

Should set off some bullshit flags on their methodology for classification.

<comment><USER20> Were you expecting higher or lower?

I was expecting closer to 0, unless they include things like messenger and laptop bags.

<comment><USER19> lower

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _"Your country has no need of charismatic leaders that can't be controlled. Docile consumers, that's the way to go."_

</comment><comment><USER22> A similar fad was popular in Eastern Europe when I lived there (may still be):

[http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=8264&...](http://www.exile.ru/articles/detail.php?ARTICLE_ID=8264&IBLOCK_ID=35)

</comment><comment><USER10> It's not a purse! It's a European men's carry-all.

Regarding the "7% of men in the U.S.", I wonder how many of that sample bought them as gifts for women? I mean, I've stepped into Coach once to buy a wristlet, but it was because my sister had it on her wish list as a gift.

Then again, Coach does make men's accessories. I have a belt from coach, which my sister gave me as a gift. To be entirely honest, it's held up far better than any other belt I've ever owned.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, Coach makes some very solid men's stuff - a wallet I bought from them was a tank, and looked great to boot. Their stuff costs more than average, but I think it also lasts longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've never been to China, so I was a little surprised to read that the largest bill denomination is equivalent to just US$15. I wonder why the payment card industry or contact-less payment systems like NFC have not taken off like they have been for decades in other Asian economies like Japan and Korea.

<comment><USER5> they have. google "octopus card" it's used EVERYWHERE. similar systems are in place in shanghai and beijing.

alternatively, you can also look up WHY the country is cash based. it's an interesting read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I know many Filipinos both in the USA and in the Philippines - as soon as the husband makes enough $$$, the first conspicuous purchase is Louis Vuitton, or for the more wealthy, Chanel (whose bags are truly beautiful, and I say that as a dude.)

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a very common sight in Toronto, which has a large asian population.

</comment><comment><USER27> Wait, other countries and cultures don't adhere to the United States finely ingrained, unforgiving gender stereotypes? Let's have a laugh, they have girly-men. Sigh.

<comment><USER28> It's amazing how often we take for granted that many cultural habits are nothing more than exactly that. Instead there's this tendency to assume they result from some sort of greater underlying truth.

The reversal of colour gender association in the mid 20th century is a great example which is often very surprising to people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Shouldn't it be "In China, alpha males are not Alpha Males" ?</comment>


Government Spyware Vendor Left Customer, Victim Data Online for Everyone to See - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbka8b/wolf-intelligence-leak-customer-victim-data-online <comment><AUTHOR> [https://youtu.be/mT7q3Qqzlos](https://youtu.be/mT7q3Qqzlos)

>Wolf Intelligence, a Germany-based spyware company that made headlines for sending a bodyguard to Mauritania and prompting an international incident after the local government detained the bodyguard as collateral for a deal went wrong, left a trove of its own data exposed online. The leak exposed 20 gigabytes of data, including recordings of meetings with customers, a scan of a passport belonging to the company's founder, scans of the founder's credit cards, and surveillance targets' data, according to researchers.

…

>"Maybe they were thinking that the server was secure, I don't know, but it was definitely stupid," Kruse said. "Everything was just floating around on the internet. That's why I thought this story was too good to be true."

…

>"It's very shitty and it's just copy paste from open source projects," …

<comment><USER2> > _detained the bodyguard as collateral for a deal went wrong_

As a non-native English speaker, I'm confused whether this should have been "deal gone wrong" or "deal that went wrong", or whether it's a garden path sentence that I'm just unable to parse correctly.

<comment><USER3> I'm a native speaker. I think it should be "deal gone wrong" (or "a deal that went wrong" would work too).

FWIW.

I will add that I think they were trying to make "deal gone wrong" past tense -- or even more past tense, since _gone_ is already past tense. I think they were trying to indicate it was a prior event within the story line, not just prior event in relation to people reading it now.

<comment><USER4> I see this kind of thing all the time, "even" in the NYT and similar first tier news sources.

I assume that everything these days is written in one pass, and no one pays for copy editors anymore. It also wouldn't surprise me if "words per month," based on how fast a professional is expect to be able to type, were part of annual reviews, in keeping with the general corporate trend of abandoning hard, personal, contextual reviews in favor of easy, no personal responsibility "metrics."

But that's all a guess, I'm not in the industry. All I can say for sure is I see it all the time.

"It passed spell check." ... "Ship it."

<comment><USER3> I'm actually a freelance writer and blogger. Everything I have read indicates that real wages are down industry-wide. Good writers used to get paid enough to spends weeks or months on a single article. Now, they need to shovel it out the door as fast as they can to keep themselves fed.

And, yeah, passing spell check leaves much to be desired. That isn't enough to insure it is excellent writing.

I'm still wondering if I can ever develop an internet presence and Patreon support (etc) with middle class or better pay for my brilliance. So far, I still make peanuts, though there are confounding factors as to why, so I haven't outright given up...yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _They also found data belonging to several victims in countries such as > Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. One of the victims, they said, is a human > rights defender._

How doesn't this violate any arms control regulations?

Is there really no law on the books in the U.S., U.K. or EU criminalizing this? (Alternatively, do we need to press for new legislation or tighter enforcement?)

<comment><USER6> They are presumably authorized to sell to foreign governments, and those are allies that we have no issue selling weaponry to. Humans rights abuses are only really a problem when you're and enemy to the US, we'd need a drastic shift in foreign policy to change this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Shaming a criminal is useless, the relevant German government officials have to take the blame and the consequences.</comment>


Ask HN: Email provider for your custom domains - <AUTHOR> Wondering who the HN crowd uses for email for their custom domains? <comment><USER2> Since GMail dropped their free tier I use Zoho mail for a few domains. It's not GMail but it's pretty good.</comment>


Real-Time Visualization of Joint Cavitation - <AUTHOR> http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0119470

<comment><AUTHOR> "[…] Our results offer direct experimental evidence that joint cracking is associated with cavity inception rather than collapse of a pre-existing bubble. These observations are consistent with tribonucleation, a known process where opposing surfaces resist separation until a critical point where they then separate rapidly creating sustained gas cavities. Observed previously in vitro, this is the first in-vivo macroscopic demonstration of tribonucleation and as such, provides a new theoretical framework to investigate health outcomes associated with joint cracking."</comment>


Lessons Learned: A non-designer's attempt at a redesign - <AUTHOR> http://noahlitvin.posterous.com/lessons-learned

<comment><USER2> Without question the number one thing novice designers don't understand is how long it takes to create a good design. Even great designers that have years of muscle-memory can spend hours upon hours on a design.

Novices generally don't appreciate this and just don't take enough time to produce good work.

<comment><USER3> Replace "novice designer" with "people in general".

I've been having an ongoing fight with a colleague who insists we should redo the design to a completely new theme before launch, with the rationale that it's "ten lines of CSS".

Part of the problem is that one of the qualities of good design is that it looks obvious and effortless. I have spent hours sometimes fine tuning micro- details to get just the right feel. The result of these hours of work is that it looks like it took less time rather than more - the longer I spend, the less time people assume it took :-)

(FWIW, I'm no designer, just a developer who has to put that hat on every now and then).

<comment><USER4> and replace "good design" with "anything good".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I actually think your 1st design is far better than your 2nd.

Applying a bunch of dribbble.com trends to a website is not design, nor will it do you any favours.

Here's a few examples: \- The image. The first one communicates your service. The 2nd just freaks me out a little bit, what does it communicate? \- I like how your original design was contained. It had a feeling of folders/filing which reminded me of files/libraries. Now you're using 960.gs it's all a bit scattered, particularly with the misaligned latin book and copy. -The only element that stands out to me on the 2nd design is the copy in the footer. This is useful to know and instantly communicates how effective your service might be.

Your first design could use some improvements in a number of area's, mainly the copy and UI. Yet you've focused the majority of your blogpost and redesign on aesthetics.

Unfortunately you've gone from a web service that looks as though it was put together by a developer, to a web service that looks like it was put together by a developer and a terrible designer.

Looking at other web app's designs is the wrong way to design. Going on dribbble will do you no favours. Look at your users and think, what will make their visit more enjoyable/desirable/effective etc etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> "Use gradients and drop shadows like salt and pepper."

This can work in some situations, but you should also be careful of over-using these accents. If you look at a site like amazon.com, for example, you'll see that they use solid colors and "flat" text more than gradients and drop shadows.

<comment><USER7> Gradients and drop-shadows require space to be effective.

Pages also need white space to help organize content and avoid crowding.

So, if you go with gradients or drop-shadows (or effects in that realm) know that you're doing so at the expensive of a resource that adds readability and overall usability.

That's not an argument against using these things, just an argument against gratuitous application. (Consider that Amazon, for example, manages to get a good deal of content on their pages while still being fairly easy to grok.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Developing design skills is a summer project of it's own."

Correction: "Learning how to use Photoshop is a summer project of it's own".

I appreciate the linkbait and all, but saying you've developed sufficient enough design skills after one site redesign is like saying you should be an engineering manager because you developed your blog in Frontpage.

<comment><USER9> "saying you've developed sufficient enough design skills after one site redesign"

He's developed sufficient enough design skills to make his site look better than plain jane HTML. He's not claiming anything more.

There's nothing wrong with developing design skills over a summer -- I can develop Python skills over a summer without claiming that I'll be correcting Guido at the end of it.

This is hardly linkbait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I recently put something very like BookShout on my idea list... basically just shareable, public, user-created lists of reference materials (books, websites, whatever).

Looks like I don't have to build it anymore. =P

(My personal pain point was finding _ordered_ lists of materials -- taking you from beginner to at least intermediate, produced by someone who knows what they're doing. Fingers crossed that BookShout will expand in that direction.)

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm at the point now where I'll never design for my projects again. I've found the talent available on odesk.com is amazing and for a negligible investment I can have an amazing site to show my work in the best light. The cost is easily justifiable as I'd rather spend the money on someone talented than waste time doing something I suck at (and have no intention of becoming better).

<comment><USER12> I'm curious, how did you trawl through odesk to find a designer worth a damn? The place is just overflowing with bodies, all of them (that I've seen) completely talentless.

<comment><USER11> The ones I used I searched for. I looked for keywords related to what I wanted, found people, looked at their portfolio, and asked a few of them to apply to my job posting.

I'm still new to it, but I've already worked with two designers, one psd conversion guy, and an audio engineer. My experience with all of them was positive enough that I plan to use the service again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Would the logo look nicer if it was a light colour? The logo and the main copy text seem to fight for attention.

<comment><USER13> or make the middle background lighter. Edit: Try #ffefd0

<comment><USER13> Super quick example of what I mean: <http://www.balloonagencies.com.au/bookshout.jpg> (typed browse too quick)</comment></comment></comment>


A Fan's Tesla Commercial (2 Minutes) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=116&v=AviBGkm3Bpg <comment><USER2> @Mods: The link seems to have a time reference set to right at the end of the video. Makes it load straight to the end by default. Should probably be changed to. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AviBGkm3Bpg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AviBGkm3Bpg)

</comment><comment><USER3> You, for sure, are doing something right, when you start getting fan-made videos

</comment><comment><USER4> The same as would work for Uber or Lyft and be real. Right now.

</comment><comment><USER5> As far as I know, Tesla is nowhere close to an autonomous vehicle. Waymo is way ahead of its competitions, the nearest being GM's cruise according to various reports.

<comment><USER6> I can't buy a Waymo vehicle. I have two Teslas with autopilot hardware in my garage. They _might_ be autonomous capable one day, which is still closer to "real" than I can get with a Waymo vehicle.

Regardless, have some suspense of disbelief and indulge your inner child with what the future could hold, Disney's Epcot style. This is not about today, but what we aspire to for tomorrow.

<comment><USER7> Wow, that was very moving. Who could not have a tear at the idea, what that kind of opportunity autonomous vehicles will present to people when they arrive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That is beautiful

</comment><comment><USER9> Totally awesome.</comment>


The Massachusetts Software Tax - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcolabs.com/3015446/why-were-so-frustrated-about-the-massachusetts-software-tax <comment><USER4> _And it's not just Massachusetts developers that have to deal with this. It's anyone who has clients who have "software" that is being "used" in Massachusetts._

Talk to your lawyer if you doubt me on this one, but Quill vs. North Dakota means that it is the well-settled law [+] of the United States that you cannot be liable for sales or use taxes enacted by a state which you don't have a "nexus" in. What exactly constitutes a "nexus" can be hazy, but the punchline for the overwhelming majority of HNers is that if you do not have an employee who performs work for you within Massachusetts you almost certainly do not have a nexus there.

Theoretically HN users who are also Massachusetts residents will have to start remitting use tax to the state to cover purchases of covered which they made from out-of-state merchants. It is an open secret that compliance in the US with use taxes is nearly zero.

\+ Well, until they pass that threatened Internet tax legislation.

<comment><USER5> > the punchline for the overwhelming majority of HNers is that if you do not > have an employee who performs work for you within Massachusetts you almost > certainly do not have a nexus there

If you're a consultant who does work on-site for an MA client, that may also establish a nexus. In some cases it can do so even if you don't physically travel to MA, since the services can be deemed to have been rendered in the client's location. But others are deemed to have been rendered in the consultant's remote location. It's a little conceptually (and legally) unclear where remote services "happen", and seems to depend on the state and the service and the precise consulting relationship.

<comment><USER6> Conventions that are work related and you work at a both promoting your work or products counts as well it seems. I had a client that went to Vegas several times a year for a convention and just running a booth made Vegas a nexus for him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unfortunately Mass. has unfunded pension liabilities exceeding $20 billion (not including municipalities), and unfunded health care liabilities exceeding $45 billion (including municipalities. At the same time, states will have to deal with the new normal, which is lower economic growth indefinitely and lower returns on invested assets.

As a result, states will ratchet up taxes to cover their increasingly untenable budgets, as we've seen in Illinois (which recently almost doubled its state income tax) and Mass.

My guess is that this process will accelerate the internal migratory trends that are already in place. E.g. Nebraska, which banned defined-benefit pensions in the 1960's is sitting pretty with $43 of unfunded liabilities per person. Relevant to tech, the following states have big research universities (and thus a supply of educated workers) and also relatively manageable unfunded liabilities: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Texas, and North Carolina: [http://www.nasra.org/resources/Moodys1101.pdf](http://www.nasra.org/resources/Moodys1101.pdf).

<comment><USER8> _Unfortunately Mass. has unfunded pension liabilities exceeding $20 billion (not including municipalities), and unfunded health care liabilities exceeding $45 billion (including municipalities. At the same time, states will have to deal with the new normal, which is lower economic growth indefinitely and lower returns on invested assets._

Is there any place where one can read about this/ any place where one can see data? Now that we are in the new normal and have seen cities like Detroit go bankrupt, maybe states are facing the chopping block as well (depending if they can still afford to make payments on their liabilities). It will be interesting to compare other places based on their financials as well.

<comment><USER9> Chicago is also boned in the future: [http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/us/chicago-sees- pension...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/us/chicago-sees-pension- crisis-drawing-near.html).

EDIT: Alternatively [http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/21642911-418/city- defi...](http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/21642911-418/city-deficit-to- hit-nearly-1-billion-soon-without-pension-reform.html).

Keep in mind that Detroit had loaned money from other states that aren't likely to get it back.

<comment><USER8> Do states and cities release data like this for the public to see (kind of like open gov api's in csv/json/xml)? I wonder how many more cities/states are taking loan money from other cities/states and are facing the gaping holes in their budgets? It would be pretty cool to throw something together and put it up on github.

<comment><USER10> These data are probably available buries somewhere in periodic financial reports that many cities publish, but as far as I know, there's no common format, many of these reports are not well readable by tools (best case - nicely formatted PDF with numbers buried somewhere within, worst case - <USER2> scan of some typed pages with numbers buried within) and as far as I know no site that actually aggregates these data into one database. Given the variety of funds, arrangements, regulations and other things, it would not be very easy to create such a database, probably would require a very large investment. And since it the initiative for local authorities to participate in it is next to zero (worst case, it will expose them for criticism, best case they're OK but not getting any benefit) it would probably very hard to pull off. I'd be glad to be mistaken on this.

<comment><USER8> I think you are spot on. I've been searching, and mostly coming up with PDF's (that do give the overall numbers) with very little break down for cities.

It's a pity that with all the hand waving over Open Gov initiatives that things like this are still buried, while I can easily find out all the different colors of street lamps implemented for the past 10 years for xyz neighborhoods…

<comment><USER10> Feds probably could use the power of federal grants (or withdrawal of such) to make much more order in this area, but I guess politicos are busy with more interesting things than getting some data in order.

<comment><USER8> Well it could help with getting a sense of spending budgets and allocating resources to states/cities more appropriately, but I guess we have the Federal Reserve for that.

Well I had an idea to convert the PDF's to text, so now i'm working on structuring it and filtering so maybe i can extract some values using some kind of financial dictionary/ statistics techniques.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is _insane_. Either add a sales tax (fixed %) to _all_ B2B transactions (like UK VAT, which you're exempt from if you're tiny) or just don't.

This minefield of regulations about what's taxable and what isn't will just make it much more expensive to sell things, as people pay for lawyers/accountants to figure out what "tax" to add to every outgoing invoice. Since this will decrease consumption, it will reduce other tax revenues, as well as making this pot smaller.

Mad. Stark Raving.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. I run a small business (thankfully not doing software) in Massachusetts. I don't mind collecting sales tax, but when they make it an overhead nightmare it's impossible to figure out. I'm just one person; when your revenues are in the $10k range, hiring someone to figure it out is impossible. If they just charged a fixed rate for everything it would at least not so heavily favor big business over small companies.

I'm also confused because it seems that most of the reasoning is that companies sell the software for cheap and then make the service contract expensive. I've seen this done by companies like Autodesk and National Instruments for sure, so I can see why they'd dislike it. I design custom equipment, and I'd be tempted to do the same (charge at close to cost for equipment and charge as a service for labor). But this seems like an incredibly poorly conceived way to fix the problem that will cause more issues than it will address, and it's surely not limited to software. I could pull the same trick in any kind of contract work.

<comment><USER13> > software for cheap and then make the service contract expensive

If the software is cheap, it _is_ expensive to service it.

<comment><USER14> I know what you're saying, but I think his point was if you spend $100k developing software, sell it for $100 and sell service contracts for $10k instead of selling it for $5k with a similarly priced service contract.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I ran a consulting business in Ontario Canada from 1999-2004 Today the provincial sales tax is included (harmonized) with the federal sales tax as the HST (8% + 5% = 13%) but back then they were charge separately as PST and GST. Each tax act treated software and software services differently.

When we started we were compatriots with many such contractors in the city. They said, confirmed by our accountant, that our services were not PST eligible so we collected and submitted only the federal GST. This we did for 5 years without any incident; like an audit from the province.

In 2004 our business failed and we were in the process of closing up shop when the feds audited our GST history and found that in 2001-2004 our GST submissions were off and we owed about 30k incl interest and files. We made arrangements to pay the bill. Painful but under control.

But, the federal audit triggered a provincial audit and that's when we discovered that the rules for PST regarding software/it services had changed during our run, making the work we did subject to the 8% PST. The rules for that are eerily similar to those described in the OP.

The provincial government determined that the changes to The Act were retroactive and covered all the business we ever did and that with interest and penalties we owed over 700k payable by the end of that week or they would take action. The company was broke so he action we were threatened with was that, as officers of the company, we were personally liable for the amount and that if not paid by the end of the week, our personal bank accounts would be frozen. This was not good.

Further we found out that at that time, these rules were only enforced when a PST audit occurred. So, when we told the many contractor pals in town that this could be a problem for them. a) they didn't believe it, and b) AFIK none of them changed their practice of collecting only the GST.

Anyways, there was a loophole where a customer could assume the liability for the PST by giving us a waiver form. Luckily the majority of our work was with one customer, a huge corp, who agreed to do this and we were off the hook.

It was a very stressful week.

PS. I have not done any consulting since 2004 so I am not aware of any subsequent changes to The Act. AFIK, none of the contractors I know were dinged the way we were. I figure that harmonization of the taxes means they are collecting tax for both govt entities now.

<comment><USER16> Your customer voluntarily offered to give away $700k out of the kindness of their hearts, to help the officers of a failed former vendor? Regardless of the size of the corporation, that's pretty incredible. Any idea why they agreed to do that?

<comment><USER15> Simple. Our former customer is a megacorp and their legal department was not worried about it.

[added] The definition of "taxable service" may or may not have applied in our case. We were without resources to challenge the fact so as far as we were concerned the ruling and payment demand would stand as presented. The mega corp was so large that they had a legal department devoted to minimizing tax and this was just one more thing that department dealt with. A very small thing in relation to the overall dealings of the customer.

<comment><USER16> For sure, it just seems like the megacorp's legal department would be more likely to decide that the easiest way to minimize the tax was to not voluntarily accept it in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> MA resident. The biggest problem with this is the timing: tell us in July that it goes into effect on January 1, we can deal. Tell us it goes into effect in a week? Hah.

<comment><USER18> That and the fact that the line between custom software and customizations of pre-written software isn't very clear (or if clear, draconian). The way they wrote it, a custom WordPress template sounds like a customization (therefore taxable), but a site not hosted in a CMS is custom (non-taxable).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is going to increasingly become common esp as governments try to cover budget gaps. We just went through a sales tax audit for our SaaS company and so are expecting a good size bill for taxes not paid + penalties. Yes - <USER3> stuff.

Honestly, the gov't folks are playing whack-a-mole here trying to keep up with fast-growing areas that don't fit the old "you sell this widget for $X" model they're used to. And so they're going to write overly broad rules as they don't understand technology and related industries. There is no intrinsic reason that SaaS should be free of tax and so the more worrying aspect of this legislation (NY has similar) is that it is so difficult to understand and open to interpretation and the mental tax it imposes on businesses who live in a cloud of of uncertainty about how they should treat their revenues.

That said, I think the idea that it will drive biz out of the state is naive. California is not a particularly biz friendly state in terms of taxes but the Valley and even LA seem to be doing just fine.

<comment><USER20> I stopped working with a client already over this. Simply put, cash-flow wise I can't currently risk taxes and penalties. It turned a customer into a liability because of the horrible wording and unclear guidance (seriously, they want us to pro-rate by the % of our software used in the state?).

I suspect many other small start-ups will make the same choice we did until this all gets sorted out.

<comment><USER21> Out of curiosity - what made you feel that burden was placed on your company? From what I saw if you didn't have a MA tax ID and didn't have a physical presence in the state that burden would be placed on the purchaser.

Personally I read that it's kind of like sales tax, and buying online. If the seller doesn't do business in the state you reside it's up to the purchaser to pay the tax.

<comment><USER20> My lawyer was unable to assure me of this -- the law is terribly written. Due to the nature of the data worked on, I have to travel to MA and do a major component of the work on site.

My understanding is "rewording and clarifications" are coming. I know my client (employes hundreds of people) has unleashed a bit of hell over this -- we will see what will happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't understand how they singled out software developers. Why not lawyers or landscapers or pool service.

Why not tax something that no one likes that can't move out of state - TV and radio ads?

<comment><USER23> What makes you think this only applies to software developers?

I provide editorial and publishing consulting - I don't write code to sell, but I do configure and patch other people's code. Am I covered by this law? Well, I guess I am.

Easiest solution for me: don't accept clients in Massachusetts.

<comment><USER24> Oh you can accept them alright. Just recharge the extra tax to the customer, if they're from MA. You don't even need to worry about if it applies to that particular invoice or not - Just add it in any case.

<comment><USER25> Assessing a fee under false color of law is a serious crime.

<comment><USER24> I wouldn't suggest that you keep the funds for your self. You could just pay it through in any case - I'm sure the MA tax department wouldn't mind. And I would also assume that to be a lawful practise.

The point is that you make it clear why your customers are being charged extra. It's then up to them to contact their local representatives and ask them to change the law. If you're not based in MA, it's not really your problem. Sucks for businesses in MA of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow, so if I run a SaaS from, say, the Netherlands, I'm going to have to pay Massachusetts some kind of extra income tax? What if I don't even know where my customers reside?

The US just became a little more EU. Congratulations!

EDIT: I meant 'import tax' where I wrote 'income tax'. Sorry for the confusion.

<comment><USER5> It's not an income tax, it doesn't apply to hosted services, and it doesn't apply to companies not doing any business in Massachusetts.

The people this impacts are those currently consulting for MA clients in a capacity that was not considered software sales previously, but now might be. For example, if you sold an analytics package in boxed software, that was always clearly a "sale" and is unchanged. But if your business is based around, for example, having a free SaaS analytics service, along with an offer that enterprise clients can pay you to get a self-hosted version installed on their own servers, that has typically been treated as consulting in MA, but is being reclassified as selling software. The theory is that you are basically selling software (a copy of the analytics package), not really consulting, and the fact that you didn't put it in a box with a bar code is irrelevant. The complaints are largely based around the vagueness of the definitions and the short notice of implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I can't find the link to the previous HN thread about this (and Google isn't helping), but someone had posted that the whole point of this tax was to essentially close a loophole where normal software sales are taxed, but a consulting firm who makes a tiny tweak and sells the software under "consulting services" because they "install a solution" for the client, doesn't charge sales tax.

So if that's accurate, it makes perfect sense. Of course, crafting a law that actually targets this and this only is extremely hard to do, and the short notice here is ridiculous.

But if that's the actual motivation behind the law, it's just a case of where do you draw the line between selling products (taxed) and selling services (not taxed)? Of course there's a gray area between them.

<comment><USER28> The motivation of the law is to raise revenue for transportation, not close a legal loophole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Until people realize that all taxes are theft, they're doomed to have new taxes imposed on the most productive of them. It's really a simple test to see whether taxes are theft or not: if there was no way for IRS to find out how much money anyone made, would people still be paying taxes? My guess is that 90% of people who preach about the social contract and helping the poor would keep the money.

<comment><USER27> If taxes are theft, then your use of roads, police, courts, eating at restaurants approved by health inspectors, and much more -- that's all theft of your own.

Sorry, but taxes are not theft in any general way, by any stretch of the imagination.

<comment><USER30> It takes some seriously deep-seeded, institutionalized indoctrination assaulting your mind through most of your life to believe taxation is not theft.

If you do not pay your tax, violence is threatened and will be brought upon you if you do not comply. This is theft. It does not matter if the thief uses it for altruism. It does not matter if the thief forces roads and other services upon you by outlawing competition.

The fact remains that the initiation or even the threat of violence against an otherwise peaceful person is wrong, and trying to argue otherwise is an indefensible position.

<comment><USER31> You are free to go off-grid and live in the woods, free from the shackles of taxed services like roads, police protection and tap water. If you still make enough money to pay tax, you'll still technically be breaking the law - but I doubt anyone is going to come into the forest to put you in jail. So in practice you'll be free and clear.

You could also go to a nation in sub-Saharan Africa where there is in effect no government. No taxes! Except for the armed bandits which will take away all your stuff. But surely you can pay out of pocket for a professional defense force to take care of that problem.

<comment><USER29> Surely no private company can ever come up with such technological marvel as taps and tubes and water in them.

<comment><USER32> Private companies are beholden to private interests. Government is beholden to the public at large. Sure, a private company could design the infrastructure behind the municipal water system, but are they going to design it and price it and service it in a way that serves everyone or are they going to design it so that they maximize profit even at the cost of, say, making it really hard for poor people to get running water? If Comcast ran the water system they'd make basic service very expensive for poor people, they'd constantly try to upcharge you (you'd pay the same price for hot and cold water taps as you would for the triple-play bundle of hot water, cold water, and carbonated water) and they'd return the profits back to the shareholders rather than investing them in improving their infrastructure.

<comment><USER29> You can only vote once in 4 years. I, on the other hand, can stop paying any private company at any point in time if I believe a company hurts me or other members of the society. I don't see how that situation makes a company less accountable.

In practice, private companies don't need to maximize profits at the expense of poor. In Russia, for example, ISPs are competing hard against each other and internet is dirt cheap, you could have a 30mbps connection for around $7/mo. No regulation.

But suppose you're right. Suppose companies would maximize profit and the way to do it would be by not providing service to poor people. It doesn't make it okay to steal money (in the form of taxes) from me. Ask me nicely and give me a REAL option to not pay, and I may as well pay even more than required. But IRS are not nice people. They make people's lives difficult at the slightest hint of tax evasion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Holy crap, everyone here needs to take a deep breath. And, preferably, look at the law itself (not just this article). Despite the author wringing his hands and clutching his pearls about how this law is soooooo hard to understand, it's really not that complicated. It's a sales tax. It works like sales taxes tend to work, with similar distinctions between industrial product (sold as a good) and bespoke construction (sold as a service), and with similar handling of inter-state purchases (if you have a nexus in MA and sell to someone there, you collect, and if you don't have a nexus in MA, they're responsible for use tax).

Let's not mistake the fact that people don't like taxes for some sort of deep, abiding flaw in the legal situation.

(Now, the complaint that implementation was too sudden, that's totally valid. They should have had a several-month gap between passing the law and the tax kicking in.)

<comment><USER18> I am generally sympathetic to this point of view -- I am not against sales taxes, and as someone who has been in shrink-wrapped software for most of my career, I've had to deal with sales tax pretty much forever (and it's not a big deal, unless you have to deal with WA's per county rules)

In this case, though, they are charging sales tax on _some_ services (that's what the law is about). It has to do with services tied to "goods" or pre- written software. So, integrating, customizing, installing, etc.

I believe that this is the area that might get amended or clarified soon (I have written the MA DOR about it, as I know many have). They need to clarify the line between bespoke and pre-written but customized a little better.

Also, I've heard a few time (but don't know if it's true) that this law is modeled on laws in 24 states. If true, then a lot of people on this list are probably supposed to be dealing with this already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I live in Mass, but my consulting company is in CT. My current client is in MA and I do some work for them on site.

I read the law and best I can tell, I don't qualify for this. It seems to be centered around "pre-written" packaged software. I'm writing it right now, so how can it be "pre-written"?

I won't pay this tax until I hear a valid argument that doesn't start with "Well, to be safe...". I'm not paying the state protection money to be safe from vagueness of their laws.

<comment><USER18> If you are writing totally custom software, you are exempt (IANL -- but, it's pretty clear in the FAQ). If you customize pre-written software, you might have to collect/report tax (that's where it's vague what customize exactly means).

Using a library isn't customizing, according to the FAQ -- as long as the work done to use it is < 10% of the total project. So, if you take 5 months to write an iPhone App, then you need some library, and you download it and add it to your project in 2 days, you are ok. If you were worried, you could line- item it out and charge tax on just that work.

<comment><USER35> iPhone development, and application development in general, essentially is near 100% interfacing with libraries though. Even if you can add a new library to your project in two days, that work most certainly will be to tie the new library to the existing libraries that you have been building upon from the start (the iOS SDK, in this instance), and thus that work would theoretically still not be exempt.

Sounds like a complicated mess.

<comment><USER18> Interfacing with iOS frameworks is exempt. It's the third-party (not you, not the OS), pre-written software that matters.

My experience is that that is no where near 10% of the work. If it is for your specific custom app, you should line-item the work out.

In this case, if you are audited, they said they are looking for a "good- faith" estimate -- your source-code repository and history of checkins are a journal of this that is much better than anyone would ever have. I would recommend keeping the integration somewhat isolated so that it can easily be compared to the whole.

If you are using PhoneGap or some other application framework, then as the law is written, I think the whole thing is taxable. I think there is a good chance that this part may be amended -- if you are in MA, please write the DOR about this case (I already have).

Email email@example.com -- just set up the situation and ask the question -- they will use it pretty much verbatim in their FAQ.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> As I said before when this came up, the only thing that will cause politicians to change the rules is money. As in abandon the state entirely so they don't get anything. Move away, change your business, whatever it takes and then let the politicians (and the public) know why you are giving up on them. Sure it's painful but that's the only thing that gets the attention of the idiots in charge.

</comment><comment><USER37> One of the extremely tough things about pension liabilities, is that they are costs with present benefit -- they a labor costs from labor performed decades ago. As a state, you cannot even expect that the pensions paid will be spent in your state. Since theses are typically states or municipalities they lack the sovereign ability to print money, and they face the problem that it is relatively easy (versus a nation state) to leave their taxing jurisdiction. This is especially true especially with income tax increases -- those most impacted are also those with the greatest mobility.

That is why the Federal government's response to the Detroit bankruptcy is so important. Are the rest of us going to be on the hook for the unfunded munis or not?

</comment><comment><USER38> For anyone trying to determine how they can help: make a phone call. Politicians care about phone calls infinitely more than tweets or Change.org signatures. If enough people call the DoR (617-887-MDOR) and their MA representative with complaints, it's very possible that something could change.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's a great way to drive that particular business out of the state.

If they apply this tax towards STEM education, then the benefit might be worth it.

<comment><USER20> You understand that if it drives the business out of state, there is no benefit, no upside. There is no money to go towards STEM, and if the states general economy goes down over it -- it is a net-negative on STEM.

<comment><USER40> Bull there will be a huge benefit - the lost business will no longer have to suffer under the idiocities of the Mass. government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> > [Mass. DOR FAQ] _It doesn't matter where you host the information. If the > business you're working for has offices in Massachusetts, you have to > collect tax._

Sounds like the solution is pretty obvious. And I doubt anyone will miss Boston winters.

</comment><comment><USER42> Although it's certainly obnoxious and poorly thought out, in the long run we development shops will get all the edge cases figured out, though dealing with the legislature is going to be like pulling teeth. Although it would increase startup costs and decrease ROI for us, let's not forget who actually pays this tax: our clients, the buyers of these services. If you are a Massachusetts company and you buy technical services, you now have a really strong incentive to head north to New Hampshire or south to Rhode Island. Massachusetts is also small enough that you might be able to pull that off without losing too many employees.

<comment><USER43> If you're looking to minimize your taxes, Rhode Island is a poor choice. Property tax in Providence is $33.75 per $1000 ($19.25 for owner-occupied property) levied on 100% of the assessed value. On top of this, the state has a huge unfunded pension liability and municipal benefits liability (~$2.3bn). State employees and teachers benefits add up to another $7bn.

When the other shoe drops, the money is going to come from somewhere or the state will go bankrupt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is surely one of the most irresponsible pieces of legslation nywhere this decade.

<comment><USER39> They should create a tax for lawyers. They are far less productive than engineers -- all they do is argue all day and not create anything of value.

<comment><USER45> Uh, you have a strange view of 1\. what the average engineer does all day 2\. What the average lawyer does all day

Most lawyers spend time working on client's problems, not "argue all day".

Lawyers bill their time often in 5 minute increments, and only charge for time they are actually doing something.

If the average engineer sat down and tracked what they did every 5 minutes of the day, i think you'd find they are a lot less productive than they think.

<comment><USER39> In California, lawyers bill hourly and in the $300-400/hr range.

But your right, we should look to Congress because they are actually quite productive. Majority of them have a background in political science and law.

[http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42365.pdf](http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42365.pdf)

[http://www.senate.gov/CRSReports/crs- publish.cfm?pid=%260BL%...](http://www.senate.gov/CRSReports/crs- publish.cfm?pid=%260BL%2BR%5CC%3F%0A)

<comment><USER45> All lawyers have an hourly rate, the question is the minimum time unit they charge for.

I'm not sure what congress has to do with any of this.

I could point out engineers doing plenty of evil unproductive and wasteful things too (malware, fart apps, NSA surveillance applications, whatever), but much like your original complaint, it's just character assassination

<comment><USER39> It is clear your a lawyer of some kind. I am not trying to demean your profession or others who practice law. I was using role reversal to make a point. I should have used "legislator" instead. So, I apologize for that.

The decision-makers are mostly comprised of people with a background in law. Why is it fair to pass a law for taxing software development but not taxing the act of practicing law?

I just think it is unfair for legislators to protect their professional occupation at the expense of others. There clearly needs to be more diversity among people who hold public office.

As for unproductive engineers - sure, there are plenty. The same applies to all other professions. However, it is hard to argue against the progress made by STEM fields over the last few centuries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is definitely going to backfire. Stuff will be outsourced. The state should provide incentives to the best of IT crowd.

</comment><comment><USER47> I like this translation of the FAQ into plumbing and carpentry services as an analogy that makes things easier to understand for non-software people (especially the one about RV plumbing that makes it clear that the buyer is liable for use tax for all use of the RV's plumbing within Massachusetts).

[http://repealtheitservicetax.com/2013/08/02/plumbing-and- car...](http://repealtheitservicetax.com/2013/08/02/plumbing-and-carpentry- service-tax-parody/)

</comment><comment><USER48> I wonder whether you can just 'give away' the free upgrades and the like and charge a standard consulting fee with the operation that folds the price into it.

</comment><comment><USER49> Is there a reason this article doesn't mention what the actual tax rate is? According to other articles, it's 6.25%, but that omission from this article seems glaring.

Is it because that number is perceived as low, and mentioning it undermines the argument of how dire opponents think it is?

(Genuinely asking, not trolling; my employer is almost certainly going to be hit by this tax.)

<comment><USER5> I think it's not mentioned because it's not a separate tax with its own rate, but a change in what categories of transactions sales tax applies to. Therefore the rate is just the regular sales-tax rate. The controversy is over what should be covered by sales tax more than the rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Another reason to license software not sell it.

</comment><comment><USER51> What a mess. At this point I'm not inclined to sell to anyone in the state.

<comment><USER17> It only applies to you, the seller, if you are located or have an office in Massachusetts.

<comment><USER52> > Anyone working in the IT industry who sells software or related services to > any business that has any office in Massachusetts.

So no, it applies if your client is located in the state.

<comment><USER5> It doesn't (and can't, unless Congress changes the law) override the basic requirement that Massachusetts can only require you to collect sales tax if you have a Massachusetts nexus establishing jurisdiction. However if you are 1099 consulting for an MA client, in many cases that will establish an MA nexus, so this will apply to many consultants who have MA clients. On the other hand if you purely operate a website where people can purchase software or hosted services with a credit-card, and you have no MA presence, merely having customers from MA won't establish an MA nexus.

<comment><USER53> What if you are a SquareUp.com and you send hardware to your customers that enables the out-of-state hosted service? Even if the hardware was free to the customer, as I read the new law in the context of real property that establishes nexus, simply having hardware in the state establishes nexus.

<comment><USER54> Square readers are tangible personal property, not real property; and they are tangible personal property o the customer once they are sent out, not of SquareUp. So, they have zero relevance to a rule that would make real property owned by SquareUp a nexus in the state, as they are neither real property nor owned by SquareUp.

<comment><USER53> Good point, that was a poor example I chose. This tax will hit service- delivered-as-an-appliance plays out there, if I am reading it right. Unless they give away the appliance server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Boston's own implementation of the Tea Act, only 240 years later...

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm trying an extreme version of "skate where the puck is headed, not where it's at" with respect to taxes. In my free time I've started designing a tax system which has the potential to be radically simpler, more fair and automated than the current kinds of systems in place. It's fairly obvious than the existing systems are overly complex, unfair, burdensome compliance-wise, confusing and rife for abuse.</comment>


Ask HN: Need feedback from my startup - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN, I would be very grateful if you could provide some feedback for my startup (skanr.com)! This is an iphone client that allows you to collect data and share it with web services, a video demo is available on the home screen. I'm hoping this can assist someone trying to make some cool mashups, thanks again for your feedback! <comment><USER2> I suggest you resubmit it as a link and post your description as a comment. You will get a lot more people to look at your app and give feedback.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll do that, thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> clickable <http://skanr.com/></comment>


You Can Make Video Games - <AUTHOR> http://youcanmakevideogames.com/ <comment><USER2> The problem with making video games is that it is _long_ not _hard_.

Designing your game is about 3-5% of the time spent making it. The rest is in tweaking animations, inverting arrays for better performance, refactoring, adjusting physics, fixing weird bugs, creating metaformats, and wishing desperately that floating point numbers did a bit less floating.

<comment><USER3> I would say the persistence needed to make something does make it hard. I understand what you're saying, but I don't think you can say it makes it any less difficult to ship something.

<comment><USER2> No, but it takes dedication and discipline, not necessarily brilliance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's interesting to note that the newly Kickstarter-funded Wasteland sequel is going with Unity for its development. A great post on why here: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/wasteland-2/posts/228226)

</comment><comment><USER5> I know that stealing content happens, but as a developer that wants to stay on the up-and-up (read:not steal the hard work of others), I don't wan't to rely on a resource that has this sort of attitude on stealing others content. From the 2D Art section[1]:

"If you really don't want to make your own art, steal it! There are a ton of sites with sprite rips of classic 2D games. You can't make a career on stolen game sprites but no one is going to be sending you legal threats for you making your first few simple games that way."

[1]:<http://youcanmakevideogames.com/resources/2dart>

<comment><USER6> They are placeholders, not final art. I've been working on a game, and I rip sprites from wherever I find them. Not because I am a callous thief, but because the art is temporary until I can get a prototype, and convince an artist to join.

<comment><USER5> You might use them as placeholders, which I have no problem with, but that quote clearly implies using them in shipped products.

<comment><USER7> "first few simple games" ≠ "shipped products"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> PDF link: <http://youcanmakevideogames.com/YouCanMakeVideoGames.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER9> I've been using Unity at work for almost 6 months now, and I can highly recommend it. Coming from a game development background it's incredible the amount of pain removed and productivity boosted by using it. If you know C# or JavaScript (or Python I guess, as Boo is some Python dialect I think) then you're halfway to learning how to use it already. Give it a try!

</comment><comment><USER10> For the total novice: <http://www.unity3dstudent.com/category/modules/> Start with Essentials, then do Beginner, then Intermediate.

I ran through these and it got me up to speed very quickly.

<comment><USER11> I'd wish people made normal tutorials (text + screenshots) instead of video ones. It's difficult to make a good one (that won't distract because of noise / recording quality / speaker without annoying voice), and at the same time you sacrifice low-bandwidth users and lots of time for the high-bandwidth ones - the important feature of a written document is that one can skim it, skipping the parts one doesn't need, focusing only on parts one doesn't know, while being able to see the entire context for the whole time.

<comment><USER3> It's also much quicker to parse through text than to wait for someone to say it, even if they are a fast speaker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Been working on a turn-based role playing game framework (the Ikosa Framework) for 7 years. Originally because I got sick of all the rote pencil pushing or being a game-master and wanted an optimized database of game-play mechanics and data, but eventually because I just enjoy the challenge of converting 960+ pages of RPG rules into code to automate the entire game system (senses, languages, lighting, initiative-based turn tracking, etc).

I've been working in WPF, WCF, and throwing in PLINQ and TPL (all .NET desktop/server-stuff) mainly because that's where I come from, but also because I've always thought of what I've been doing as a proof-of-concept.

</comment><comment><USER13> Unfortunately I have no wisdom to offer, but that guy's enthusiasm was inspiring.

<comment><USER14> And I think that was the point of the site. It will take that level of enthusiasm throughout the long dev cycle to make a game. Even if you can do an iPhone game in 3 months, to someone who is new that is LONG, not hard, as some else said earlier.

Can I do a plug? I wrote a book for new mobile devs: <http://ebook.greenlightevals.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have had a lot of fun working with Unity but not for making a game. I have actually been using it at work to use as the platform for an experiment which is being done in our Universities Geography department. what it truly taught me was how much scripting can save you a lot of time in the tweaking department. As this is my first real project that I'm doing on my own, it really helped in understanding how important making your scripting generic really is. It also has shown me the weakness of Unity's GUI library as there are some limitations with it.

</comment><comment><USER16> If anyone's interested, I'm working on a fully web-based game-making toolkit project, as well. Not public, but slowly opening up: <http://gt7k.com/>

The genesis of that project is a high school class I teach -- see <http://www.auscillate.com/post/300>. But it's proving attractive to a broader audience as well.

Anyway: End plug. Just thought I'd throw it out there!

<comment><USER17> Super interested! Just signed up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is also this huge list on PixelProspector: <http://www.pixelprospector.com/indie-resources/> and this article is good start for beginners (like me): <http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2011/09/atomic/>. The first question to answer is this: do you want to make games (go indie) or work on games (work for a big studio)?

</comment><comment><USER6> a few things that are worth checking out:

\- gamedev subreddit - <http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/>

\- python game engine - <http://www.pygame.org/news.html>

\- sprite builder so you don't have to worry about art - <http://charas- project.net/charas2/index.php>

<comment><USER19> It seems that pygame has last been updated in 2009, that killed my desire to work with python and game dev.

<comment> mkr-hn Where'd you get that idea?

<https://bitbucket.org/pygame/pygame/changesets>

11 changes in the last 30 days. And it looks like pygame has an active community: <http://www.pygame.org/wiki/info>

The site could be more coherent, but I didn't have to look hard to find those things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I had been doing my own research recently on 2d frameworks and engines to use, and while I don't have any experience with the following, they do seem to have a fair amount of respect within the game dev communities:

<https://love2d.org/> <http://www.sfml-dev.org/>

<comment><USER20> See also: <http://content.gpwiki.org/index.php/Game_Engines>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been thinking about this for a month now... I guess we never know until we try right?

<comment><USER22> I was just talking about this last night with my brother! He made a prototype for a puzzle game in PyGame. Since he has a full-time job now, I decided to continue it's development.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I enjoy my job? - <AUTHOR> I've been at three companies in just over a year and I'm already at the point where I don't like the third one. I don't know why this keeps happening, but I hope it's something I can fix.
The projects that I work on at these jobs aren't intellectually challenging to me. In addition to that, I seem to be stuck as a front end engineer. When I joined my current company, I made it clear that I want to do backend work, but I haven't done anything but frontend since I started.
There are certain problems that are definitely my fault; the least of which is my inability to deal with other people. Discussions about which design is better are pointless to me. Why don't we just try both and let the data decide? Meetings that are announced at the last second are irritating at best, because they distract me from my work, but I'm required to join anyways.
I want to work with people that are a lot better than me, but (at the risk of sounding arrogant) each time I move to a new company, my team seems to get worse. I'm looking for a place where there is a high level of rigour involved in the software development process.
How can I figure out why I can't enjoy any job that I take? How can I tell if I am the problem? How can I stop doing front end work? How can I identify a good team before accepting the job? Is it bad that I'm moving through jobs so quickly?
Any advice or thoughts are appreciated. <comment><USER2> I was in the same boat. Then I recallibrated myself a bit and everything changed. The tweak was what I thought "work" was. If you think going to this place called office and doing what you think you love to do (code, design, water plants etc.) is what it is about, then you will mostly find yourself in your current situation.

Now think of office as this place which is a set of problems. Mediocre talent, useless meeting, aimless projects, difficult managers etc. and you are captain-problem-crusher. You have one goal: make this place efficient and super productive. Impossible? Not for captain-problem-crusher. Track your progress. Keep score. 2 months, in were you able to eliminate 40% of meetings? Were you able to make middle managers play nice? Great.

People will start calling you leader, visionary and stupid stuff like that. Ignore them. You are captain-problem-crusher.

</comment><comment><USER3> You are not alone dude. I have had similar feelings when I graduated here in India and started my first job in corporate culture !

If you are skilled enough then start doing a "freelancing", don't need to waste your time in a "job" thing.

Act like a businessman and extract more value of your time !!

As far as " inability to deal with other people " problem is concerned, you will have to train yourself to deal with them.

This world is full of people who are dumbass and still they have better social and economical positions than the people who deserve one !

Life is a not fair game ! Be flexible, your time would come.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is always nice to hear that one is not alone. Thank you. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Your Problem: You don't have patience. Remember, life is long and you have a lot things to learn. I had same issue as yours in my last company. I hated the company, their coding style, their system...everything. But after working 1 year there, I realized things weren't too bad. I really feel happy I learned a lot there. Then I moved to my current job. I hated it for 6 months. I hated the code. So messy. I thought I deserved better. But now I'm in seventh month. I convinced my senior to move to new tools and new framework. I am already working on it. I learned so much here. Greatest thing: how to convince, how to tolerate, how to have patience and what NOT to DO. Now I know what type of attitude should a senior developer should have, what responsibility is. I am so glad I stayed till now. Have patience. Take every negative as well as positive as opportunity to learn. That's how you'll move forward. At last, be a good person. Be humble, respect others. Be a good listener. Problem with programming world is most of the developers talk more and listen very less. They search for quick answers and read very less. Don't go that way. Best of Luck !!!

</comment><comment><USER5> |Discussions about which design is better are pointless to me. Why don't we just try both and let the data decide?

This seems to indicate to me that you are stuck in the "expert beginner" phase of development. That's bad - but it's not necessarily your fault. And you're obviously making moves to try to escape this trap.

What you need - or at least what worked for me - was going out of my way to learn as much as I possibly can about the field I'm interested in, and even accepting that I might need to re-learn some things or reconsider some of my notions (for me, the biggest one was my low tolerance of messy code and extreme sense of organization - I worked on mastering refactoring tools to make it easier to fix messy code quickly if I need to, so I've given myself a higher tolerance for writing it).

I don't mean this badly. I'm still an expert beginner in plenty of things - it's just important to be humble and try to escape it so you can get some perspective. Perspective isn't something your environment will probably give you, you need to make it for yourself.

[http://www.daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise- of...](http://www.daedtech.com/how-developers-stop-learning-rise-of-the- expert-beginner)

</comment><comment><USER6> Next time you go into a discount retail store, take a look at the staff there. Now imagine that is the only job that you could get. How miserable do you think you would be working as a cashier at Walmart? Or a stock chaser at a grocery store? Yes, I making a fallacy of relative privation, but it is true that no matter how good any one person has it, they often feel that they are miserable and want better.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand where you're coming from, but I'm not convinced that I see this as a bad thing.

The same logic can be applied to those who (like myself) don't think they can ever learn enough. Perhaps I know more than I think I do, or perhaps I don't, but I will always have a deep, insatiable hunger for more knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you still not tired of changing your company, please change the company till you get tired.There is no wrong.

Job is same wherever you go, only tools can be changed that you can't decide.Start enjoying all the tools.

 _this life is temporary.you got only limited time.If you like doing wrong things that will not give hurt to others, just do the wrong things.enjoy the journey._

Because I am going to change the company next month from this company where i joined before 5 months only. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> Why don't you take your time doing outside backend projects ? Spend less time for the company you are working and more time for your own backend enjoyable projects. It's not like they fire you at the point, just take things slowly at work and try to focus your own projects which you enjoy.

<comment><AUTHOR> To the contrary, I am worried that if I work any less, they will fire me.

I get into work at 7:00 AM every morning to an empty office. Others join me around three hours later, but I understand that since nobody sees me come in there is a misconception about the hours that I work. I leave at 7:00 PM.

I would like to write a Python interpreter in Python, though. That sounds like a lot of fun. :)

<comment><USER9> Unless your work hours are being explicitly questioned, you perhaps are being a self conscious to the point of being unhappy. There is also a difference between being physically present for 12 hours and being productive. I don't think anybody would for a minute guess you are productive for 12 hours. If you actually are, you are way more valuable to the company than they are paying you and they would be damn fools to fire you. (And you shouldn't even try to be that productive).

Is your work tracked in any fashion, such as Jira?

<comment><AUTHOR> Understood. I did not mean to imply that I'm productive the entire time. In fact, I don't believe in working 12 hours days specifically because I agree that virtually no person can put in 12 hours of productive work in a single day.

I take time to eat breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner while at work. I also take off at 5:00 some days to exercise, not to mention the fact that I take a 20 minute nap every day directly after lunch.

We use a system similar to Jira called Phabricator. I'm also interested in how our team can use Phabricator better, because I don't think it paints an accurate picture of the amount of work anyone at the company puts in.

<comment><USER10> Do your check ins in the morning - 7, 8, 9 am. You will build a body of work that no one can dispute.

Though it doesn't sound like this place is for you, so perhaps that is just rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a very interesting (and kind of dark) metaphor. Haha. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for sharing this! I'm also having the similar problem despite having decent work-life balance. At this point I can only think of how to accept that this is how it works and keep doing side projects.

</comment><comment><USER12> Something for you to ponder: Maybe you are not the type that should be working for other people but should have other people working for you...

Design patterns are nice but choosing the right one can have a long term positive or negative effect on the project, I would recommend learning them more in detail and when a conversation comes up about them you provide constructive criticism if needed if you have found better use of another design pattern. Sometimes it is best to sit back and see things through the eyes of other members of the team to get a better view of why they have chosen what they have suggested. If something comes up don't treat them as pointless but possible improvements to the project. It is similar to using algorithms to solve problems, one that is chosen may work fine now but as your data set grows you may need to choose or create a new one to meet your needs and improve efficiency of your algorithm (Big example are the regular changes in the Google Search Algorithms).

If you are seeing the teams get worse start making a log of what you have noticed going down in quality in the teams you have been on. This will help you pinpoint anything that keeps happening. Somethings could be skill gaps, problems too advanced for the current teams, no senior developers on the team only juniors or intermediate developers, no out of the box type thinkers, etc. Make a log of it and analyze the reoccurring points to come up with a few hypothesis on resolving the reoccurring issues.

Meetings at the last minute should be rare but you should be prepared for them as they are a way of business life either internally at the company or externally with clients. Until you rise the ladder or start your own company there will be nothing you can do to change this as it would be the standard unfortunately. Yes, these unannounced required meeting do pull us out of the Matrix at critical points while fighting the agents and building our neural network but the secret to these is to learn to start back up and get going without taking it too personally. Use the meetings as mental time to solve the problem mentally that you were working on while taking notes of the meeting.

If you want to stop doing front end work apply for backend jobs but insure you meet the the desired qualifications for doing them and have some system administration qualifications. If you do not have any work experience doing backend work start created web applications and putting up code on GitHub. If you do but are not getting any bites back when applying for the backend jobs make your projects more advanced and solve real world problems. Eventually someone will reach out to you to help them solve their problems after seeing your methods of solving problems.

Main thing to remember is don't give up looking for the job you want, keep pushing forward and don't give up. Work on being more positive in team environments when at work, and when your at home work on strengthening your weaknesses and fine-tuning your strengths.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for taking the time to write that.

I have never seriously considered working for myself. Because I live in Silicon Valley, the thought has crossed my mind, but never for more than a few moments.

From what I can tell, this all sounds like very good advice. I'll be bookmarking your answer so I can return to it frequently. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been also struggling with the same sort of situation.

Initially I was working as the only developer at a small company. I spent a lot of time building better code and learning as much as I could. After about a year I noticed my forward momentum slowing and my overall happiness dropping. I felt I wasn't improving enough by myself.

I moved to another company with 5 other developers. I thought this company was going to be a great opportunity to improve my skills. However I quickly realized the company as a whole hired only mediocre developers with no will or skill to improve. I feel I provided a lot of value while at the company but as a whole I was extremely unhappy. The companies managers, if you can even call them that, had literally no experience. What they had in age they lacked in technical ability and skill.

I quickly moved to the my current company and I can say things have changed for the better. Although my company has hired some mediocre developers and cheap overseas labor we do have a fantastic CTO leading our technology department. I've been really able to improve my knowledge and skills considerably. I find I'm much happier and feel more accomplished.

What I've found to be most important for my happiness is company culture and leadership. Our culture is very open and playful. Although we joke a lot we work hard when it comes down to it. Our leadership is solid. It makes a world of difference coming from my previous employer who had 10x the money but lacked the leadership to do anything with it.

I still deal with the other mediocre developers and their poor attitudes but I've been able to look past them. Focusing on learning from our CTO as well as becoming the problem solver has has helped myself exponentially. Being the problem solver allows you to see the issues and work towards fixing them instead of allowing them to hinder your progress and growth.

To address some of your points: 1\. How can I figure out why I can't enjoy any job that I take? This takes a lot of self reflection. I had to consider why I was at my current company and what was keeping me there to really find my own answer. I don't think anyone but yourself can answer this question for you. Spend some personal reflection time on this.

2\. How can I tell if I am the problem? I would suggest looking at your behavior at work. Are you friendly? When someone needs help do you help them or turn them away? I don't think you're the problem but your unhappiness can exacerbate an existing problem.

3\. How can I stop doing front end work? You're going to just to have to start doing back end work. It's clear your not going to be assigned any so just start doing back end work and start forcing opportunities for you to do the back end work. The worst they can say is no, but it's unlikely.

4\. How can I identify a good team before accepting the job? I've struggled with this issue. The interview can be difficult to judge. I've been fooled multiple times into thinking the team I was joining was a strong development team. The number one question I would ask if given the chance was which framework was chosen and why it was chosen. If they don't have a good answer its a VERY CLEAR sign the development team is quite weak.

5\. Is it bad that I'm moving through jobs so quickly? No. Double no. Triple no. You're happiness is important. If you're current job isn't providing the right environment for personal growth move on until you find the right company. In the last year I've had 3 jobs. You're going to find a lot of duds before you find a winner. In my experience it's been financially more rewarding to switch jobs. If you find you only reason for staying is fear, then leave. Don't let yourself be afraid of trying something new.

I would also create a GitHub account. Consider it your public code resume. You need to fill it with interesting projects. So start filling it with code. This has helped jump start my own personal growth.

Seth Godin has a book called Linch Pin which I highly suggest reading. It's just the right kind of motivation you need in your situation.

To sum it up: Keep working hard. Keep growing. Keeping learning. Never let anyone get in your way. Don't ever settle for mediocre and most importantly be happy and share the art you create with the world.

</comment><comment><USER14> First of all you need to love your profession. Then take deep analysis why i'm working here. Then you will get the answer. Plan your day with Do's and dont Do's list. Then execute step by step. Take a nap and share your thoughts with your co workers boldly

<comment><USER15> nice thought</comment></comment>