I Just Hit $100k/year On GitHub Sponsors - <AUTHOR> https://calebporzio.com/i-just-hit-dollar-100000yr-on-github-sponsors-heres-how-i-did-it <comment><USER2> Reading these makes me sad about the law in my country, Finland. The lowest tier of OP ($7 for no reward) would be illegal here.

We have a law called "Money Collection act", which states that to gather donations (i.e. payments with nothing in return), you have to get a permit. This permit costs money, is not given to individuals, and is given only for non-profit activities.

So this means that if you see a donation/sponsorship button on a software project where the money goes to a Finnish person, it is illegal (unless they have obtained a permit, which is highly unlikely). If you see a patreon/sponsorship with rewards, it's a grey area. The only clearly legal way is by selling actual things, and of course then you quickly need to set up a business.

I host a free project myself and I've had to set up a business (sole proprietorship) and sell things in order to get money for server costs. Even though people have been interested in donating, I can't do that legally.

<comment><USER3> "For each donated dollar, I will create and send you 100 random bytes that you can use in your cryptographic applications."

$7 = 700 random bytes

$15 = 1500 random bytes + 500 bytes free!

$99 = lifetime* subscription for 25k random bytes per year

* your lifetime or my lifetime, whichever terminates earlier

<comment><USER4> Do you have any collectible limited edition bytes?

<comment><USER5> Those would be the special one-of-a-kind bytes that we log to ensure no two people get the same bytes twice. Bonus: the logs are numbered, so we can validate those bytes. Downside: we'll have to ask for a monthly donation to cover storing the bytes and bandwidth ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The more individual developer stories I look into on Sponsors or Patreon or wherever, the more I see a recurring pattern. The vast majority of developers don't make any significant money. The outliers that do use the platform as a general-purpose payment processor. They take donations, but they also sell things. The line between isn't terribly clear.

The platforms help style all the payments as "donations" or "sponsorships" or "patronage". That avoids harshing the project vibe with overtly commercial overtones that turn off the financially immature and preternaturally entitled. But in reality, they're often really payments for products, services, access, and so on. Some people do simply donate, usually small dollars, and don't receive or care about "perks". Others buy the perks on offer specifically, as a simple exchange. Somewhere in between, people and companies may be inspired by donation-like feelings, but use the benefits to get their payments approved and expensed.

It's hard to draw any broad conclusion from outliers. But it all points to there being strange value in muddying the concept of paying developers with a lot of ambiguity, on both the buy side and the sell side. It's like one of those statues that looks like one thing from one angle, and something completely different from another.

<comment><USER7> In class and race struggles it's not uncommon to see someone worry aloud about token individuals who are "allowed" to succeed out of proportion to their peers. It gives the rabble hope, which keeps them sedate. But the success rate barely exceeds attrition at the top of the pyramid.

I don't think I personally will ever know if this is just an accident of the system (being happily exploited), planned, or a little bit from column A and a little bit from column B.

Enough notable success stories satisfies the Availability heuristic in your brain, but that often tricks you into thinking things are quite different than they actually are.

<comment><USER8> We see power-law distributions everywhere, notably the 80-20 Pareto rule. They are the rule with uniform distributions being the rare exceptions. The claim of a hidden puppeteer running this gigantic con that occasionally allows success and precisely mixes column A with column B such that the rabble attack one another only and never the mastermind pulling the strings is truly extraordinary.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >Now, people watching the screencasts will naturally encounter these "private" screencasts and if they like the free ones, they will sponsor me (at $14/mo.) to get access.

Why are we calling this 'sponsoring'? It just factually is selling a product to people for a specific amount. Sponsoring/donating is more like people giving money for something that would otherwise be free. Otherwise Microsoft could also require a 500 usd 'sponsorship or donation' for a Surface Go. And requiring it monthly is just plain subscription service payment.

<comment><USER10> It is collecting money with an expectation of additional content in the future. So it isn't just a purchase. A subscription is closer, but sponsor adds the implication that your sponsorship is what allows the content creator to keep doing it.

Also, one of the dictionary definitions for sponsor is: "provide funds for (a project or activity or the person carrying it out)."

So it seems accurate enough of a term to me.

<comment><USER11> "provide funds for (a project or activity or the person carrying it out)."

So does a subscription or purchase. So not sure what you are trying to imply with this.

He gives access to stuff if you pay him money, with a promise of more stuff in the future. This just sounds like an subscription to me.

While I do agree there is a disconnect between open source dev payment and business, I don't think mislabeling a subscription as a donation does anyone any good.

<comment><USER12> we can argue about semantics but it's not really productive, imo.

He implies nothing, he states that sponsor definition covers the OP use case. Having more than one word to describe the same thing is not surprising.

You imply that _your_ definition of sponsor exclude OP use case and there is mislabeling.

The interesting point is the revenue issue in open-source business. This guy solved it for him and present for all how he did it, with no lies and no hypocrisy.

That someone got hung up on a __correct __word usage shed an interesting light on where this disconnect between open source dev payment and money really lies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Joel Spolsky does a good job of explaining what's actually happening here in his old "Strategy Letter V" from 2002 [1].

Caleb hasn't discovered some secret means of convincing people to pay for OSS they can download for free. What he's done is create a commodity (the open source package) and then once it's popular, make a tidy profit off its complimentary product (training videos).

Unfortunately it's still true that people generally won't pay for software they can download for free, but if you're willing to dip into some other types of work (e.g. consulting, creating training videos) then you can make more than enough profit top keep going indefinitely.

[1] [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy- letter-v/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/)

<comment><USER14> I wonder if you could just pick a big open source product with a large community and sell complimentary product products for it... Or that you first must be a celebrity? Or at least have enough social proof.

<comment><USER15> Risk with that approach is that your complimentary products could become irrelevant or redundant as the open source project evolves e.g. training material could become outdated as functionality changes, a product that relies on some API could get broken by API changes etc. By owning both the open source project & the complimentary product, you can avoid nasty surprises (and be ahead of any competitors in the "complimentary product" space when you make changes in the open source project)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hate sponsorware concept OP is proposing. It seems to work for him but it's opposite to the spirit of open source. His idea is that keep code secret until you find N sponsors. Further, he will hide important tutorials if you are not sponsor. I would hate to use this kind of open source project.

Here is more viable freelancing:

\- create framework/library that everyone needs

\- for feature requests/bug fixes, prioritize sponsors

\- do office hours for sponsors

\- invite sponsors/allow them to vote for future road map

\- offer consulting credit to sponsors

<comment><USER17> What you're proposing requires him to sell his time instead of his work (which was already a portion of his time). It is impossible to scale that type of consulting work to multiple clients because you'll always be limited by your available time.

The spirit of open source isn't so sacred. In most cases it is hundreds or thousands of businesses benefiting financially from the work you've done.

<comment><AUTHOR> This exactly

<comment><AUTHOR> I started the journey out (sorta) this way. It's a hard life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Comparing $90k as a W2 employee doesn't really compare to making $112k as a LLC or contractor. Taxes, health insurance, retirement...

On the other hand, his amounts are going up, so I'm interested to see how high they will go, and what it will consistently level out at.

<comment><USER19> If you set the entity up correctly and work with a decent accountant, your $112k turns into more like $40k taxable, and if you are married, that $40k drops to $20k @ 10% + $20k @ 12% or ~ $4500 in taxes.

<comment><USER20> Aha. And now you understand why we don't have universal healthcare, crumbling infrastructure, and so much cash in the hands of the wealthy that interest rates are near zero.

<comment><USER21> I would like to point out that Universal Healthcare would be funded by a separate tax and probably would not come out of Income Taxes.

<comment><USER19> I believe this is how the UK does it as well. You pay income tax, then you pay your NHS fee.

<comment><USER22> We pay a "national insurance" tax in addition to income tax, but this is mainly to cover the state pension from what I understand and maternity allowance etc.

As I understand it, NHS comes from general taxation.

Obviously there is no actual "fee" to use the NHS at the point of use - it is all free apart from prescriptions which are the same price regardless of what you get (and you might get it for free anyway depending on your circumstances)

<comment><USER23> Prescriptions are also completely free in Scotland. Same for Wales and Northern Ireland, as far as I know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I hit $500/yr on Patreon this week for my open source work! :)

Nice work, I should think about having paid only videos as well, I believe I can do that pretty easily on Patreon. Good tips in here.

<comment><USER25> I for myself, coming from a privileged situation wonder if 500$/yr would be worth it for me.

Do calling it "work" it is too little. Won't pay the time spent on a job.

At the same time it is an amount of money, causing responsibility. Giving the feeling that one has to return something for it ...

So how does at affect your fun-level?

<comment><USER24> I don't have the feeling that I have to give something in return. It's a voluntary donation, people can donate, or not. They can cancel at any time. I don't feel any pressure to 'deliver' anything. They're paying because they want to reward the value I have provided, and likely will continue to provide. If I stop providing it, I assume people will slowly cancel their donations, which is how things should work.

If anything the fun-level has gone way up because a community has formed around one of my projects, which has been great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Here's how Sponsorware works:

> Create a cool piece of software

> Make it exclusive to people who sponsor you until you reach a certain number > of sponsors

> Then open source the project to the world

This is how ICOs worked, for the teams that actually delivered anything. Without any other monetization path they resorted to taking presales of tokens shoehorned in convulated ways into products that didn't need them, but frequently involved open source code for a community. This resulted in many misaligned interests for people that eseentially were sponsors.

It's nice to see the same sentiment reflected in other parts of the tech industry in a way that more people respect and can relate to.

<comment><USER27> Or Kickstarter or any other kind of fundraising effort I guess. It's a pretty cool adaptation of a fairly established practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> His data clearly shows most "sponsors" only sponsor him to view his webcasts. Is it really right to call that a sponsorship, as opposed to a subscription? What are the legal implications? (and yes, I'm aware that this is how most of patreon works too)

<comment><USER6> I'm a lawyer, but I can't give legal advice here. See [https://notlegaladvice.law/](https://notlegaladvice.law/).

If you're interested in the issue, however, you might start by reading a little about "money transmitter" regulations. An early payments platform for open projects shut down at least partly on account of it. I suspect the concept of "perks" became widespread in part to differentiate fundraising platforms from money transmitters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The sponsorware idea was something we also want to do;

\- add sponsors as collaborators in the project

\- give sponsors access to all versions from the get-go

\- set a $ limit, when reached, will trigger full open-sourcing of the project

\- have public sponsor income page where people can follow the progress

</comment><comment><USER30> Sponsoring the official screencasts/educational content for an open source project is a great idea. I run a company[1] that provides a service targeted at software engineers and I'd pay several hundred to several thousand a month to have a 30 second promo at the start of a video, depending on the size of the project.

Is there a website out there where I can find content I can sponsor?

Also, keep in mind that when you are self employed you need to make 20-30% more than your salary as an employee if you want the same take home pay. That covers the extra self-employment tax you have to pay, health insurance, business insurance, etc. If you charge by the hour, you might find this article on how to calculate an hourly rate helpful: [https://help.facetdev.com/docs/how-do-i-calculate-my- hourly-...](https://help.facetdev.com/docs/how-do-i-calculate-my-hourly-rate)

[1] Shameless plug: www.facetdev.com

<comment><USER31> Although that doesn't sound like a bad idea, that is unfortunately not what he was talking about. By sponsors he meant patrons that get a perk of accessing screencasts when they subscribe (sponsor him).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Props. Well done.

The thing that struck me most was the podcast appearance. I was distantly affiliated with the music industry at one point and I saw over and over the value of being in the right place at the right time. Great bands languish because they just weren't seen.

I don't mean to diminish the work, either the technological or the effort of finding sponsors. I just want to caution about extrapolating success stories to utopianism. Success is more random than we'd like to believe, and there is a risk when failure leads to victim blaming.

<comment><USER33> _Success is more random than we 'd like to believe_

Perhaps, but I think a lot of people tend to say that, then conclude that they should just wait around for luck (not saying you're doing this, though).

Another approach is to do everything you can (podcast appearances, for example!) to increase your "luck surface area".

<comment><USER34> > Perhaps, but I think a lot of people tend to say that, then conclude that > they should just wait around for luck (not saying you're doing this, > though).

I'm curious as to why you think that? It could be cultural differences but I have never seen that behaviour except from those that are already depressed and have given up.

IMO the simplest analogy for success is poker. You make the best decisions you can given the information you have. You adjust as new information is revealed. Ultimately, success or failure is less relevant than the process.

<comment><USER8> Yet the same faces seem to show up over and over at the final table because some are better than others at executing the process, maintaining control of emotions, bankroll management, and so on.

<comment><USER34> Of course given a large enough sample size process wins out! People's capabilities and knowledge differ. The issue is in determining _what_ good process _is_ given the vast environment that is a globalized economy.

That is why socioeconomic status is so important with respect to success. There's a difference when you can play a thousand hands vs. ten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> The IRS website sometimes uses exact dollar amounts of reported tax information as identity verification. Author _probably_ should replace screenshots of tax forms with rough figures.

</comment><comment><USER36> For those wondering here is the repo in question and it has 4.5k stars [https://github.com/livewire/livewire](https://github.com/livewire/livewire)

<comment><USER37> Did Github just undergo a design update? The buttons are flatter and it looks more like Gitlab to me now.

<comment><USER38> Yep, unfortunatley.

I left feedback the moment it entered "feature preview", left feedback on all the accessibility it lacked (mainly reducing contrast everywhere), and well, looks like they just rolled it out anyways.

Really wish they would take things like people being able to see their product without difficulty seriously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Wow there's so much negativity here.

I just want to say congratulations. I think the sponsorware concept is very cool and could be good for the community. I'm glad someone has found a way to make money in open source.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm not sure I fully understand the sponsorware model. Hopefully someone will educate me.

If my costs for writing a piece of software are initially X, I'd hope to make at least X back before I open source it. (Ignore loss-leaders for now)

If I'm counting number of sponsors, do I calculate them as if they will stick around for a year? 100% retention seems unlikely. Do I only open source after I've had Y sponsors for Z time such that sum(Y.donations) * Z == X?

Then after I open source it I have ongoing costs. His experience seems to imply that educational content (paid) then _also_ pays for ongoing maintenance costs. Is that correct?

What if I later decide to stop supporting a project? Is there any mechanism to stop a stream of income from a group of sponsors, or will I have to assume they will "naturally" stop sponsoring when I kill new education content and updates to the project? This seems problematic as inertia will cause some people to keep paying despite not getting further value, which will cause some of them to be angry and demand "refunds."

What if my project really takes off? What would be a possible path to scale from say 1-5 paid collaborators?

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm not sure what is more impressive, the thought of 100k in 5 months from sponsorship or that the author ported a solution to another environment and got 100k sponsorship out of it?

Wow, Good job!

Not really understanding the comparison to SV salaries. This opens up many doors for the author, something that money wouldn't be able to do.

</comment><comment><USER42> If Github sponsors proves to be a viable and scalable solution for OSS developers, this could spike a huge boost in quantity and quality of OSS.

We've seen a similar effect with YouTube - by providing a monetization path for creators, it attracts talent, and allows them to finance a lifestyle around it. And it's a self-accelerating cycle - the growth in quality and quantity increases demand for the content which increases the quality and quantity.

<comment><USER43> I absolutely never heard anything about "Github sponsors" until now, which is actually what I always wished that somebody would create... .

I thought as well (and still keep thinking) that if I'll ever manage to create something successful which generates $, then I'll share a part of the revenue with the (open-source) parts that my <whatever: app/website/etc...> uses/needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Coil and Mozilla are working on something very similar to sponsorship but instead with micropayments that are streamed to content creator's wallets via a new open Web Monetization standard. [https://webmonetization.org/docs/getting- started.html](https://webmonetization.org/docs/getting-started.html)

Would be neat to see more sites adopt the web monetization standard via coil or other sites like it that enable content creators to offer paid content and get paid passively as more people discovered their content.

</comment><comment><USER45> "All of this works because I spent years and years honing my craft and producing software that is truly useful. I've poured everything I have into that work, and there are no shortcuts there."

This reminds me of Steve Martin's, "You Can Be a Millionaire ... and Never Pay Taxes":

"You say, 'Steve, how can I be a millionaire and never pay taxes?'"

"OK first," he explains, "get a million dollars."

</comment><comment><USER46> That's phenomenal! Hitting $100k in 5 months.

Here is OP's repo - [https://github.com/livewire/livewire](https://github.com/livewire/livewire)

</comment><comment><USER47> $100k is still not even close to how much you can make in SV as an engineer. Specially an engineer at this caliber. But working on OSS full time is probably 100x more fulfilling than building CRUD for a boring ad company.

<comment><USER48> > _$100k is still not even close to how much you can make in SV as an > engineer_

Oh, well then fuck this idiot, right? What a dumbass loser - doesn't even realize they can be a s i l i c o n v a l l e y e n g i n e e r and make a lot of money.

Jesus it's so exhausting reading the knee-jerk "SV engineers make more money" reaction to everything. You know what this person has that 99.999% of all SV engineers will never have? Complete freedom. You know what else this person has that 99% of all SV engineers will never have? The option not to have live in San Francisco, a dismal place that very few people want to actually be in anymore.

<comment><USER49> I actually really want to live in San Francisco, but I don't want to and am not smart enough to work for a FAANG-type company. It's one of the few American cities where you can be a first-class citizen without owning a car and comfortably bike/walk everywhere year-round. SF has a really fascinating history and cool culture. I wish it was possible to work in academia there without already being wealthy.

<comment><USER50> I've lived in many US cities, including SF, and your characterization rings hollow for me. Unless you're focusing exclusively on climate, SF without a car isn't all that much better than dozens of other cities. Notably, unless you live near a BART stop, most transit commutes are going to involve some bus, switching to a separate system, 30+ minutes daily commute, $12+ round trip, etc. Or paying for rideshares. Dozens of cities in the US have the equivalent or better, without all the other associated baggage of SF. Here are a few examples I've lived or spent significant time in:

\- Chicago, IL: The L reaches a lot more neighborhoods, is a single integrated transit system. \- Columbus, OH: Great bike lanes and dedicated paths, bus system that covers the entire city. \- New York, NY: By far the most walkable city in the US. \- Philadelphia, PA: Decent subway system, good connection to NJ and NY via NJ Transit. Very walkable core and neighborhoods. \- Washington, DC: Far superior version of BART with a lot more coverage.

Unless I've just happened across a half dozen of the best cities in the US, SF isn't all that remarkable.

<comment><USER49> I do love NYC, Chicago, and Philly, but I've always wanted to avoid winter entirely as I get pretty severe SAD. San Francisco seems like the only walkable city where that's possible.

<comment><USER50> That's fair. I imagine that there are parts of LA that are similarly walkable, but it's not like LA is immune to the problems SF has, and it has unique problems of its own.

There are bound to be some pretty cool places in AZ, NM, TX, and the southeast. I've been casually researching this topic for a while, and I've found it to be incredibly difficult to find a useful, non-biased index of walkable and interesting neighborhoods from all corners of the US.

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Since people are showing interest in GitHub Sponsors, I just wanted to mention: The types of services listed in the article likely falls under VAT in specific regions which can be a pain to calculate. That's one of the reasons I'm sticking with Patreon; they handle tax and chargebacks so the fee isn't a big deal. GitHub Sponsors explicitly says the tax is all on you. They don't mention chargebacks in their docs so it's hard to say, if they're processing the payment on their end, I'd guess they handle it.

[https://help.github.com/en/github/supporting-the-open- source...](https://help.github.com/en/github/supporting-the-open-source- community-with-github-sponsors/tax-information-for-github-sponsors)

</comment><comment><USER52> I honestly think that platforms like Github and Patreon is the future of universal basic income. I think as labor becomes deprecated due to globalization and automation, more and more people are going to quit their jobs and pursue more creative and meaningful endeavors.

Obviously in the beginning, power law will take into effect where a few people will have enough income to thrive in these platforms. I do think that these platforms will eventually have more features like pooled donation, say you could donate to a collective of creators that you care about, will lead to significant portion of the economy to more meaningful work.

<comment><USER53> Proprietary rent seekers injecting themselves into paying for services so they can creme 5-20% off the top of all the money movement.

Its basically the same thing credit cards do, but are more egregious because they also try to platform the creators. So you integrate them into one proprietary space you wholly control and can thus dominate industries by managing the purse.

Its what almost every successful business nowadays does. Capture an audience and then shake down whatever they are coming to your platform for while holding the market ransom. Facebook and Google do this with advertisers, app / game stores with their 30% cuts, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> It's always great to read of someone making a living from what they love and a community supporting each other.

</comment><comment><USER55> Google should hire people like this.

Wouldn't it be awesome if developer talent was judged on the impact of one's open source projects / contributions versus leetcode competency?

Yeah, I know - it'll never happen.

<comment><USER56> Ignoring the fact that the majority of the source code is not open sourced and that "impact" biggest variable is going to be chance.

Impact of one open source project measure slightly more than developer talent. It is a combination of a lot of skills, development skill just one among other like marketing, business sense, ability to make video, ... Extreme example would be Zuckerberg: is he the best developer in the world and wouldn't you waste a bit his potential if you hired him as a PHP dev?

And in any case, impact is always going to be a star system. You are going to have a tiny percentage of developers (like a few thousands in the world) that have impact and all the other that have 0. You are back to square one at trying to find a way to differentiate between a loser that can code and another loser that cannot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Wow, that's a huge inspiration.

I've been sitting on GitHub sponsorship setup for htmx, but this motivates me to get that done. It would be amazing to work on a passion project and get paid for it.

<comment><USER58> I have a bunch of projects which seem to be popular, and a lot of followers. Income received via sponsorship? €0.

I think a lot depends on luck, and the kind of repositories you manage/create. Some projects are obviously more commercially useful than others, and those are the easier ones to receive income from.

[https://github.com/skx/](https://github.com/skx/)

<comment><USER57> yeah, like most technical stuff it seems like a lottery ticket, but if it's a lottery ticket that costs almost $0 it's worth at least setting it up...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> wow kudos, I also find it generous that github takes no cut on this giving that they offer the service. Some people here are comparing with the pay at FAANG, you'll have to factor in the satisfaction of seeing your own ideas coming to fruition and the fact that you are free to do whatever the hell you want, anytime, anywhere. Is that worth the 200k+ difference? maybe, maybe not, it's up to you.

</comment><comment><USER60> > A few weeks later I added a new "private" group of screencasts for GitHub > sponsors only. THIS is the secret sauce.

The secret sauce is selling a product (in this case courses/training), and using GitHub sponsors as a payment gateway.

It's great, but it's not really sponsorship.

If you're a dev with a popular open source project, you can profit by selling related training/courses. A lot of devs are probably leaving money on the table.

</comment><comment><USER61> This is a success story for GitHub sponsors and I hope it will eventually become the norm and not a unicorn example. We are nowhere near this level with OpenFaaS and with a high level of churn.

I also have a slight concern about the author's sales tax liability in territories such as the US and the EU. Economic nexus is real, take a look at paddle.com if you want to know more. GitHub doesn't collect sales tax - so you shouldn't be selling any taxable benefits FWIW.

My strategy so far has to turn the program into a weekly Insiders Update on the OSS projects I maintain along with regular feature length content on the industry and software.

There's around 130-140 individuals, I'd like to see that get to double the number. As for companies that use OpenFaaS in production, they do not pay any form of sponsorship or support.

[https://github.com/sponsors/alexellis](https://github.com/sponsors/alexellis)

</comment><comment><USER62> Step 1: create a repo with 4K stars...

<comment><USER63> Did a quick Google, looks like that comes to $2800. A small investment for 100k a year.

[https://gimhub.com/shop/buy-github-stars/](https://gimhub.com/shop/buy- github-stars/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> The payment scheme of the future will be something where a digital product is created and then kept locked up until it's unlocked by Kickstarter style fundraising. Each individual person gets something they want (the digital product) in exchange for their money, just like before. But under this model, everything might be open source by default, the product only costs society what it is worth (unlike current digital products like movies and songs) and the convoluted nightmare of drm and each-tv-network-has-their-own- subscription-service can finally die.

</comment><comment><USER65> I have a few NPM packages that get millions of downloads per week. I collect about $5.50 US per month from Patreon and exactly $0 US from Github sponsors. I still consider that $5.50 a win.

</comment><comment><USER66> Stallman was right story once again, huh?

He argued that the best way to monetize libre software is to sell training/education and 80% of OP's income come from the educational screen- casts.

Maybe the lesson here is that if you want to earn money from libre software you have to learn how to create and sell training. I think this model is really beautiful — everyone wins: good software, good training material, strong communities and respect everyone's freedoms!

</comment><comment><USER67> Congratulations. Nicely done.

Also you've mentioned github sponsors. Did not know about that program. It is severely restricted by small list of countries. Seems unfair as so many people contribute through github but looks like large chunk is unable to apply for this type of sponsorship because of location. Frankly I am quite disappointed with such policy.

</comment><comment><USER68> This is great, for a couple of reasons. One is that it works! I'm delighted for you.

Second is that I haven't heard of livewire because I work in a different area. This suggests that more folks will be able to do the same (admittedly livewire is in a popular space — which makes meeting this threshold harder, so congrats again)

</comment><comment><USER69> It's inspiring to see that oss can provide a comparable income to the more traditional software engineering career path. It looks like some salesmanship is required, I wonder if there's some service out there that takes care of that aspect to help oss projects to find sponsors?

</comment><comment><USER70> Happy for you. Real talent deserves recognition. Thank you for everything you do. Keep up the good work.

</comment><comment><USER71> Kudos!

I've been doing OSS for twenty years, and never made a dime.

 _Qualifier: Never wanted to. It 's always been a labor of love._

Even when I have done a bit of commercial work (outside of what I did as a 9-5), I open-source that work, as well.

I like doing OSS. I take pride in my craft, and like having it out there.

</comment><comment><USER72> I love his idea, the problem I have is that I hate github. Would it work outside of Github?

</comment><comment><USER73> This feels like a good place to mention the [https://bytepack.io/](https://bytepack.io/) service that Jose Valim created. It's goal is to help with this type of thing.

</comment><comment><USER74> >"A few weeks later I added a new "private" group of screencasts for GitHub sponsors only.

[ screenshot of a video being restricted to sponsors only ]

THIS is the secret sauce."

</comment><comment><USER75> The next thing he could do was make a book out of his various projects and get some passive income. This is a really great and uplifting story!

</comment><comment><USER76> Fascinating story.

About the project: is it basically a PHP library?

</comment><comment><USER77> What I'm confused about is how the Sponsorware is operationalized for people on the paid tier.

How do you only release to people on your sponsor list?

</comment><comment><USER78> Off-topic question: Is Livewire comparable with RShiny, and is there anything that would let me do what Livewire does in python?

</comment><comment><USER79> Nice! I'm also already at 2$/month.

</comment><comment><USER80> numpy was the first project that I came across that used a similar technique to fund the development. The numpy book was available exclusively to funders until the early development was paid for. Travis Oliphant, the author of numpy and of the guide, went on to found Anaconda (Continuum Analytics).

</comment><comment><USER81> Congrats! Inspiring to see that you can make a living on your own without coding within a corporate structure.

</comment><comment><USER82> This is a really exciting project, can't wait to try it out. I love Laravel. Amazing job.

</comment><comment><USER83> Congrats dude! Living the dream!

Been following you and your progress on twitter for a while

</comment><comment><USER84> How much would this person make if working at a big tech company?

</comment><comment><USER85> "Sponsorware" \- it feel like open sourced shareware

</comment><comment><USER86> Congratulations :)

This is really inspiring and motivating for doing OSS work.

</comment><comment><USER87> Good work :). That's awesome.

</comment><comment><USER88> That was a nice reading experience

</comment><comment><USER89> Any advise for a developer with disabilities who failed hard getting most of her projects out of 1-10 users phase if any?

</comment><comment><USER90> anyone tried running ads on their open source repos?

</comment><comment><USER91> Congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER92> Nice, awesome achievement!

</comment><comment><USER93> since there's no such thing as a small advice - I'd appreciate a review of my sponsor page :-) [https://github.com/sponsors/jcelerier](https://github.com/sponsors/jcelerier)

<comment><USER94> Hi Jean,

I'm trying not to make this sound as a generic LinkedIn business advice, but get a better profile picture. Maybe a picture of you in front of one of the art pieces. Something that gives me an impression of who you are and what kind of art you collaborate in.

It may sound stupid, but first impressions do really matter, even on Github. A dark, blurry picture of you drinking beer does not give a good impression.

<comment><USER93> > It may sound stupid,

it definitely does not haha, I put a better pic. Thanks !

<comment><USER94> Perfect! This gives a _much_ better impression on who you are (in a professional environment)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> these tend to come off like humble brags a bit considering working on the right thing at the right time is a big factor

<comment><USER96> Believing that everything is just luck is a great way to make sure you never encounter any.

<comment><USER97> oooh good one. saving it for future use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Gee, it sounds like using the proper channels works way better than trying to push trashy ads in an NPM postinstall script.

Hopefully this story will help tone deaf people to make the right decision next time.

</comment><comment><USER99> Sigh, GitHub is still promoting the "open source gig economy"

[https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the- open-...](https://www.aniszczyk.org/2019/03/25/troubles-with-the-open-source- gig-economy-and-sustainability-tip-jar/)

It's been about 2 years of GitHub sponsors and they haven't shared any data on how well people are doing.

<comment><USER100> That was an insightful link. But is it really the gig economy ? This seems more like the crowdfunding model, which is more applicable to arts and crafts. I remember first reading about radiohead or someone else using pre-order sales to get money and then release the album.

There really needs to be an open data for business otherwise GDPR is pointless. Code is somehow not where the money is.

What is peculiar about software is maintenance cost which puts it somewhere between crowdfunding and subscriptions.

The gig economy makes sense if the person doing the gig is able to set the price otherwise it's not really fair.</comment></comment>


Citizen driven website in Argentina reports when the lights go out - <AUTHOR> http://acanohayluz.com.ar/

<comment><USER2> Background, Argentina is having a record hot summer right now and the electricity companies have been unable to keep up with demand. I have heard speculation that this is due varyingly to mismanagement/incompetence and rent- seeking behavior on the part of the electric companies (some of which are foreign)

<comment><USER3> While I can't speak for mismanagement and incompetence, for years the broader Argentine economy and specific Argentine government price-controls on electricity has simply removed the incentive or ability on the electricity companies to invest in production and the grid.

This piece is from a year ago, but it goes back much further: [http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21569705-half- hearted...](http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21569705-half-hearted- policy-retreat-sparks-dark)</comment></comment>


Programmers are poorly disguised zombies - <AUTHOR> http://it-jobs.fins.com/Articles/SB128804929840750595/Programmers-Revealed-to-Be-Poorly-Disguised-Zombies

<comment><USER2> Dammit, I thought the bloodlust was just the stress of upcoming exams.</comment>


Language Usage Indicators - <AUTHOR> http://lui.arbingersys.com/index.html

<comment><USER2> The stats are interesting, but still dangerous to draw direct conclusions from. (What the graphs suggest may be accurate, you just can't assume it from the article alone.)

For example, suppose a language's standard library is already powerful, or its 3rd party libraries are very reliable. If one language has one Really Good library to do X, and another language has 7 mediocre libraries because no one does X well, which language is more useful? Do you count the 7 projects required in the 2nd language as evidence of higher popularity, when they're all just picking up the slack?

Yet another example is projects that use multiple languages. For instance, I can combine scripting languages and lower-level languages easily. This may technically be evidence of the "popularity" of the lower-level language, but my hybrid could be using the scripting language much more.</comment>


ATM Hackers Have Picked Up Some Clever New Tricks - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/atm-hackers-jackpotting-remote-malware/ <comment><USER2> I wonder how they get access to a communication line or access port or whatever to load their malware onto the ATM. I would think that's the tough part - once you get that, it's probably easy to compromise.

<comment> non-entity I'm now genuinely curious if it's possible to purchase an old atm to hack around with (solely educationally of course)

Was shocked to recently find semi-modern (mid-2000s) gas-pumps for sale cheap on eBay so who knows.

<comment><USER3> Just keep in mind that it's very heavy. Very. Like your building's construction code may not allow that much weight per floor area. Shipping or mooving it around would be similarly "fun".

<comment><USER4> They make motorized hand carts ("dollies") that make it easy for a single person to move large safes. Either with motorized wheels, or a motorized actuator that lifts a second set of wheels up and down which makes it possible to go over curbs and other obstacles.

It would still probably be "fun" (not easy) for someone who hasn't done it before, but not impossible.

<comment><USER5> Whilst that's true... It doesn't change that the floor you're moving it to is probably not rated for the weight.

Picking it up only solves half the problem, and the easier half.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In German the go-to method of "hacking" ATMs is blowing them up. I think they use some kind of gas to funnel inside the chassis and then ignite it. That seems to work exceedingly well, the numbers of that happening are insane. Is that not a thing in the US?

<comment><USER7> In Ireland, they just use a backhoe to cart the whole thing off:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTe0cdxdSEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTe0cdxdSEo)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTyON6gPTFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTyON6gPTFI)

Ah, and here was a failed attempt to do the same in Virginia:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2TSGyXejls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2TSGyXejls)

How much cash does an ATM hold anyway?

<comment><USER8> Happens in England too

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/23/ram- raiders-...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/23/ram-raiders-use- digger-to-steal-atms-from-tesco-extra-in-kent)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is no surprise here. The ATM companies making the machines and their software are so old school and simply outdated in terms of cybersecurity.

<comment><USER10> _so old school_

I'd go further than that. These companies are, demonstrably, run by total idiots.

I knew someone who worked for an ATM company back in the mid 1980s. Coordinated attacks exploiting weaknesses were routine even then!

That's right. People have been finding hacks to steal cash from ATMs for at least 35 years!

That's 35 freaking calendar years. How much is that in Internet years? :)

<comment><USER11> If game consoles are any indication, even if the security gets better over time it will never be "hack proof"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > INJX_Pure .. runs a self-crafted HTTP server web interface for its purpose > ..

Don't run your ATM under Windows and connected to the Internet. I recall reading an instructional manual that required the visit of two technicians, that installed and configured a black-box that required the entry of two unique codes to be activated. Communication to the back-end being done on private leased-lines. Then they upgraded the ATMs to Windows running over the Internet :o ..

</comment><comment><USER13> I remember when Bluetooth skimmers started to be used on gas station pumps in my country. The attacker would wait inside a car in the signals range and siphon off cc numbers in bulk. Management then put up signs to make sure to jiggle the reader before inserting your card, to ensure that it was real.

</comment><comment><USER14> I guess I'm out of sync with the times. For some reason, my first thought on seeing the title was that it would be about some clever new tricks with the ANSI ATM standard.</comment>


Why Abraham Lincoln Loved Infographics - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/why-abraham-lincoln-loved-infographics.html

<comment><USER2> An article, relevant to the map, that gets posted now & then:

[http://deepseanews.com/2012/06/how-presidential-elections- ar...](http://deepseanews.com/2012/06/how-presidential-elections-are-impacted- by-a-100-million-year-old-coastline/)</comment>


Ask HN: What would you want in a Makerspace? - <AUTHOR> Imagine 18 year old you (for those of us that are older), what would you want in a Makerspace?<p>What would you want in a Makerspace now, after time in your current career? <comment><USER2> Friendly people working on interesting projects and a good variety of tools and expertise.

<comment><AUTHOR> What tools/machines would most interest you? More along the electronics/robotics side or fabrication like 3d printing, or more traditional tools like lathes/mills/presses/English wheels?</comment></comment>


Green Tea Is Inversely Associated with the Incidence of Influenza Infection - <AUTHOR> https://academic.oup.com/jn/article/141/10/1862/4630528 <comment> pcj-github I'm not sure I'd bank much confidence on a study that used two different surveys of kids and their parents on self-reported tea consumption and possible influenza symptoms. Also, while drinking 1-5 cups per/day was associated in their statistical significance, >5 cups did not.

</comment><comment><USER2> "among Schoolchildren in a Tea Plantation Area"

Perhaps in a tea plantation area, consumption of tea is correlated with occupations of the parents, which in turn is correlated with flu risks?

<comment> blaser-waffle If it's a tea planting area its probably more rural. Just having fewer people around is going to lower infection risks -- density is one of the reasons it's spreading fast in China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It may be also correlated with the habit of drinking "hot" water.

<comment><USER4> Someone I used to work with and who was usually worth listening to said this:

when he was out traveling, felt something brewing and yet had to soldier on then he'd drink as much hot water as possible.

Not coffee, not tea, but just hot water. According to him this could keep it at bay (IIRC) for a couple of days.

Based on your post this seems to be common knowledge, but it would be the first time I heard about except for that.

Edit, had to ask the Internet. Got an answer worthy of a modern day oracle: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=does+hot+water+help+against+influe...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=does+hot+water+help+against+influenza&t=h_&ia=web)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hm. Should have tried [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideritis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideritis) [https://en.sideritis.info/](https://en.sideritis.info/)

Get it while you can!1!!

[https://kliotea.com/greek-mountain-tea/](https://kliotea.com/greek-mountain- tea/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised 6-13 year olds are drinking several cups of tea a day in Japan. Isn't that a fair amount of caffeine for a kid?

<comment><USER7> Green tea is about on a par with Mountain Dew for caffeine per ounce, but closer to Coke for caffeine per serving.

The fermentation process for black tea is longer than green tea, and more of the caffeine becomes solluble, but it's still less that coffee.

<comment><USER7> correction: it's not fermentation, it's an enzymatic process referred to as "oxydation", as I was reminded while fact-checking for another reply.

There is fermented tea, but the tea you drink is probably not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So, green tea is good for health...

</comment><comment><USER9> Great, now all the stores are going to sell out of green tea, too :(

<comment><USER10> Don't worry, proper Shizuoka Green tea can cost $20-$30 per 100g, so only the rich can afford to get anti-influenza tea for their children.

<comment><USER11> That seems wildly cheaper per-serving than going to Starbucks. Plenty of people go to Starbucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would matcha work or no?

<comment><USER13> And would Matcha ice cream work?</comment></comment>


Sup app – see friends nearby without stalking - <AUTHOR> http://www.supme.co <comment><USER2> It's still "stalking", sort of.</comment>


Electronics-recycling innovator faces prison for printing Windows restore discs - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-microsoft-restore-disc-20180215-story.html <comment><USER2> This guys' actions merit a cease and desist letter and nothing more. Maybe if it didn't work they could then press charges.

But irrespective of his actions Microsoft should be embarrassed by their overblown testimony in attempt to put this guy out of business and/or behind bars-he's devoted his life to solving a societal problem for which they are partially responsible! And instead of thanking him or working with him they're treating him like he's no more than a bootlegger.

<comment><USER3> To me, this type of injustice exemplifies late-stage capitalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >The discs work if computers still have their license and product keys available, and the license transfers with the computer, no matter who owns it.

>The discs had labels nearly identical to the discs provided by Dell for its computers and had the Windows and Dell logos.

At first I thought this was about license infringement.

He admitted he was wrong in making the discs look like they were official releases from Dell/Microsoft.

</comment><comment><USER5> Annoying clickbait title - and yes, I know it's the original title. (Flagged so a moderator will hopefully change it.)

Change it to: "Electronics-recycling innovator faces prison for printing 28,000 windows restore discs".

Anyway,

Why would he print the disks with full Windows logos and everything? That doesn't sit right with me. Sure, you can say the machines had a license and everything, and that's a good argument.

But printing the discs that way? That seems much more fishy.

The article isn't really clear, but it seemed like he was planning on selling those CDs? But only for computers with the Windows certificate sticker?

<comment><USER6> What happened to the word burning? We don't use it anymore?

<comment><USER7> Printing disc labels, not discs themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When even the judge is too stupid to understand the case, of course something like this will happen. I'd say this is pretty much the norm with any trial involving any technology. I can't say I've read any case where the judge had any real grasp of the underlying technology. And a jury of peers ... oh please, don't make me laugh. Yet this system of charades is what we're supposed to be satisfied as carrying out justice? It's a penal system not a justice system. There's nothing just about having a judge too stupid to understand the case and the technology behind it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why Windows?

<comment><USER10> Well it's orders of magnitude better, in just about every way, than any other desktop OS.

So, why don't you tell us: Why _not_ Windows?

<comment><USER11> [https://www.howtogeek.com/342871/hey-microsoft-stop- installi...](https://www.howtogeek.com/342871/hey-microsoft-stop-installing- apps-on-my-pc-without-asking/)

<comment><USER10> Yeah compare the two seconds that I'd have to take to remove those apps with all the bullshit and lack of quality and configuration and fragmentation of your favorite OS.

<comment><USER11> > bullshit and lack of quality and configuration and fragmentation

did you just summarize the last 15 years of windows?

<comment><USER10> Pfffft. While you're hunting down drivers to patch together your little desktop kit, I'm playing AAA games that you can't even get. I'm using first- rate software that you can't get. And my OS is actually supported by a commercial entity, unlike yours.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Article extraction benchmark: open-source libraries and commercial services - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/scrapinghub/article-extraction-benchmark/blob/master/README.rst <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, ready to answer any questions.

This is an evaluation of article body extraction for AutoExtract (ours), Diffbot, newspaper3k, readability-lxml, dragnet, boilerpipe and html-text. Since we're evaluating the quality of our system as well, we tried to be extra careful to be fair and transparent, releasing dataset, evaluation scripts and all details in the technical report.

<comment><USER2> Thanks, as an avid reader who saves a lot of articles from the web, this is quite interesting. (I'm a Pocket subscriber btw)

How do these compare with popular services like Pocket, Instapaper, Firefox & Safari extractors, etc — or do those services use these libraries/algorithms in the backend?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question! I'm an active Pocket user myself, would love to know what they use on the backend. From seeing their failures - when they think something is not an article or excluding some relevant stuff, I would guess they use something working on pure html and more similar to current open source solutions - wheres for example Diffbot failures looked quite similar to ours as we seem to use a similar approach (and it's quite rare to miss a large chunk of the article). I imagine Pocket margins must be quite slim so they can't throw a headless browser + neural network on every page. Maybe they can use higher quality and more expensive extractors for popular articles.

Browser extensions are in an interesting position here as they can probably have access to much richer features from the browser context (element size, position, CSS properties), but still want to be low overhead. I think I saw such an implementation, maybe even from Mozilla, but can't find it right now.

<comment><USER2> Hmm, that's interesting. BTW, are there known/standard ways to "ensemble" these different algorithms to build more robust solutions (at the price of some extra computation)? It's not obvious to me how one would combine different extraction results, but maybe one could use some more heuristics to pick the best result for each example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I don't think it's trivial. If an algorithm made predictions on the level of html elements - whether an element should be a part of article body or not, it would be possible to combine probabilities or at least vote. But (a) it's probably a non-trivial modification (b) a lot of methods would also use some heuristics/postprocessing/have other quirks which make combining results difficult.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you plan to release this? If not, can you discuss your approach?

<comment><AUTHOR> The service itself is already released, you can play with the demo without registration at [https://www.scrapinghub.com/data-api- news](https://www.scrapinghub.com/data-api-news) (scroll to "Try it out here for yourself"), and we also have a free API trial. Would be curious to know how you plan to use it.

In terms of the approach, the whole page is rendered in a headless browser, we extract the whole page screenshot, text and other features, and feed them into one neural network where all modalities are joined and which handles the extraction.

<comment><USER3> Did you base it off Dragnet? Can you comment on the other important parameter, the extraction speed?

<comment><USER4> The approach is very different from Dragnet. AutoExtract uses neural networks. CSS and HTML can only get you so far; we actually process screenshots as pixels (like humans do), it is not just shallow features like in Dragnet.

Speed of the AutoExtract ML part is not a concern (many pages per second on GPU) - the bottleneck is in the browser rendering.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: what to do with shitty keyword rich domains? - <AUTHOR>

Sitting on a bunch of these from when I was a starry eyed youth.  I've had a few offers on them, but blah. Nothing to write home about.<p>A good market place? A decent way to monetize? <comment><USER2> The quote the very quotable Jason Calacanis "There is no such thing as set-it and forget-it with a website". In other words Jason's thinking was that there are no shortcuts to making money. Of course you can put ads on a parked domain, but that will never make you real money. So you can either:

1\. Hold on to them until you get a killer idea

2\. Sell them at the right time to the right party to make the most money

<comment><AUTHOR> very good points</comment></comment>


Google Fuschia's repositories have been emptied - <AUTHOR> https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/zircon <comment><USER2> Not quite, copies still exist in the fuschia repo itself, eg. [https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/master...](https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/fuchsia/+/refs/heads/master/zircon/)

Could this just be a move to a monorepo organizational scheme?

</comment><comment><USER3> So much for the next "open source" miracle.

</comment><comment><USER4> Link just directs to a sign in page</comment>


What % of a startup should i offer to technical co-founder? - <AUTHOR>

After paying for the building of an application with a solid business model, I realized that i need a technical co-founder going forward--The application needs some polishing and fine tuning.<p>I have approach a developer who is just finishing graduate school. I told him about my intention of having an arrangement whereas i can pay some cash but also have a potential developer also work for some equity. He has told me how much it would cost to do the fix the bugs and little chinks in the application. He's also indicated that he's open to other offers. How much equity should i offer at this point? Should the equity share be contingent upon performance? Finding a co-founder is really tough... I want to do the right thing. <comment><USER2> Start small. As in, hand him small assignments to do in exchange for cash.

Working with him, you'll quickly learn whether or not you want him on your team. If not, it's better to make a clean break (rather than him owning 1.2% of your company, etc.) than keep equity-based ties.

If you have the cash now, work on a contracting basis. Pay him his asking rate; do not promise "future equity" in exchange for a lower rate. (Hint: that's a HUGE warning sign to good programmers to RUN... everyone wants to promise future value for coding, and few good coders are willing to do so).

After a month or two of working with him, you'll get a feel for how he operates. Is he getting the work done? On time? Of high quality? Is his communication excellent? Do you feel like you can work with him?

Those evaluations will be clear to you after a month or so, working with him on a regular basis. I'm a firm believer in having a trial period before hiring.

<comment><USER3> Very nice advice. I do think its good to test out a person before you offer any thing considerable big, especially when you don't have a lot of history with him.

Moreover, you also have to consider his ability to keep contributing to the company in the long run too, especially if he is going to be a co-founder.

If you are not sure, a minority stake with a slightly discounted (or not) rate should do.

If he shows himself to be very capable for the long run too and you guys hit it off, you can always offer more later.

<comment><USER2> Agreed 100%. I was more suggesting that the first month or two be a more trial-like basis; thus the exclusion of equity from that period.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are you seeking a contractor, employee, or co-founder? Be clear, both with yourself and your prospective co-founder. You say co-founder, but it sounds like you may want a contractor or employee (i.e. you're getting a quote from this developer for the cost to fix bugs, etc).

What does "solid business model" mean? You have stable, ongoing revenue? I would suspect you mean that you have researched your target market and believe you have a solid business model, but not much real revenue yet.

If that's the case, and you are sincerely looking for a co-founder, I would suggest 25-33% equity at a salary of 65-75% of market rate as being reasonable.

</comment><comment><USER5> It sounds like you are hiring a technical employee, not a co-founder, to be honest.

</comment><comment><USER6> " _Should the equity share be contingent upon performance?_ "

Absolutely; it's hard enough for us experienced programmers to have much confidence that a technical hire will work out, you are presumably in much worse shape. That said, don't torture him about estimates and deadlines until he's really gotten his teeth into the project, who knows what monsters might hiding in an innocent corner of the code, especially as you stress it with the diverse demands of the real world.

As for how much equity: if he really works out it should be quite a bit. You need _someone_ you really trust to make the technical side of things work and that's harder than it appears to most non-technical people (and the less drama you experience, the better he's doing his job).

As you note, finding a technical co-founder of any quality is indeed really tough; plan for compensation based on that.

</comment><comment><USER7> As a developer finishing grad school, I was approached by someone with some business ideas, for which he generously offered me an equity in the range of 10%.. He had some real business experience, but still... he never received a call back. Its a bit different from your situation, as you have a product already available.. but, first offers do mean something. Just my 2 cents...</comment>


Analysis of architectural features in 4 generations of Intel server processors - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.07554 <comment><USER2> The article is very interesting but I find it disappointing that there is not even a single mention of Opterons, eventhough some HPC papers show that they outperform Xeons.</comment>


Ask HN: Two co-founders meet in a bar.. what next? Seriously - <AUTHOR> Hi Guys
So I posted a question on a more local business forum about how to go about partnering with a stranger who approached me for a startup.
I have been saying that we go 50/50. I do the engineer and he does the business. I was asking about how to practically go about forming a relationship that protects us both etc but I got completely flamed about being naive and getting abused by the "biz guy with the idea". Their argument was that I would put in all the work, my time was valuable and I should get paid for it thus not build his app for free.
I'm having a hard time agreeing with that to be honest and I just ditched the conversation. Am I being totally naive?
I think the non engineer has plenty to bring to the table with regards business development, sales, domain knowledge etc. I personally feel we are perfectly paired and I would much rather partner up with a stranger than friend/family member.
The way I see it is that we will both go out and take a punt on the concept and see what happens. I am really stressing a "LEAN" approach with short feedback loops so I don't get burned building out a product that nobody wants.
What is the take of engineers on here who get approached to co-found with engineers? I am sure that insisting on getting market rate for your efforts is a non runner if you are ending up with 50% equity in the company holding the revenue/profits/IP. <comment><USER2> Well, I can see the concern if he's not going to be devoting the time and resources that you would be. If you will both be devoted equally, 50-50 (or something similar) might be sense.

But you can solve your concerns without varying the equity division. The company you form only owns the IP you create if your agreement with the company says so. You could agree that, for example, the IP you develop only gets assigned to the company if certain business milestones are met. Or, conversely, you can immediately assign the IP, but have a right to buy it back for a nominal amount if certain milestones are not met by your co-founder.

</comment><comment><USER3> Build a sign up page and have if get X many people to signup for the beta testing.

1\. track your hours

2\. he shouldn't get a commission until you start getting paid back for your hours.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting.. I was thinking about that but what if he argues his time is worth money also. As part of that argument, partner then wishes to clock his hours and get paid back also. Does that put us back to square one.

I often come across, what I would often describe as an arrogance (for want of a better term) as some people that originated the idea. They often think they are the brains and the engineer is the brawn..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Another alternative is to find a client and let them pay for 80% of it through some kind of consulting</comment>


Ask HN: How do you think of some Chinese call HTML5 'H5' - <AUTHOR>

Many people in China call HTML5 'H5' and it had cause some heated discussion. Some people (developer) think H5 is non-professional, the other think it just a short name for HTML5.<p>How do you think of it? <comment><USER2> I've been calling it "Susan". I didn't realize there were rules about these things.

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, saying "H5" makes it sound like you don't know what you're talking about.

It's like calling HTML a programming language.

<comment><USER4> I see no problem in that. People call JavaEE, J2EE or JavaME J2ME, all the time (yes even teachers) and get away with it just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For some people it would be confusing with the current html tag <h5>. There's no name conflict in the case of JS (javascript). I think this is all about preferences. Human languages, as programming languages, are evolving. I don't see any problem with the case of calling html5 H5.

</comment><comment><USER4> This names makes me think of an "old" social network that trended once Hi5[0].

[0] [http://www.hi5.com](http://www.hi5.com)</comment>


EBay to sell Skype to investment group including Andreesen Horowitz - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/technology/companies/01ebay.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> Ouch. Sorry to kick a dead horse, but I'm not sure what exactly EBay was thinking when they bought it... solving fraud by letting people talk to each other? Really? I suppose it's something which might have seemed good in a meeting of people none of whom cared much about thinking it through.

<comment><USER3> Part of the drivers for eBay was that Skype was at the time (apparently) responsible for something like 90% of paypal signups (especially outside of established markets like the US).

I think they were worried that if Skype had been purchased by Google, and they switched to using Google Checkout rather than paypal, that they would have lost a lot of market share.

<comment><USER2> Wow, 90% seems like a lot... although I can't seem to find a source for that. According to an answer on Amazon's askville [1], the total ended up being ~1.7% around Oct 2006.

At one time, the life cycles of the companies might have aligned (as Skype was taking off, and Paypal was plateauing) to show ridiculous numbers like that. Still, it seems hardly justifiable to pay billions to buy a company just because they use your service for checking out.

[http://askville.amazon.com/users-Paypal- Skype/AnswerViewer.d...](http://askville.amazon.com/users-Paypal- Skype/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=124573)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why do they they say it was such a bad deal? $900 million yearly on $3 billion seems quite good to me.

Edit: Er, $600, $900 was the writedown.

<comment><USER5> 900m revenue or profit?

The article only mentioned Skype "is on track to take in more than $600 million in revenue this year."

If Skype is a low margin business than the profits might be very low. Given that they have such competitive pricing I can't imagine they have that high a margin.

<comment><USER6> wasn't it designed to be low overheads? eg: the P2P system for bandwidth, over having to pay their own server infrastructure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> EBay wants $2B for a company they bought at $3.1B four years ago? They might as well have taken the "billions" that the NSA was rumored to have offered in return for being able to eavesdrop on skype calls ;)

See <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=522092>

</comment><comment><USER8> Skype is a dead end technology anyways. Go open or go away.

edit: and just to give some 'meat' for the downvoters, Jingle is being built as a true open p2p voice and video signalling, without being restricted to a proprietary protocol or walled-garden service: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jingle_(protocol)>

And then there's SIP.

<comment><USER9> What alternative do you suggest? It should work flawlessly on Windows, Linux and OS X, and work well even on 128kbps connections. It should work from behind routers and firewalls, and not turn my Mac into a flaming piece of plastic.

Well?

<comment><USER8> your mac has ichat.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but I regularly need to talk to people who use Windows or Linux.

<comment><USER8> good thing ichat supports a cross platform protocol like SIP then!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I see this as a step in the direction for Skype to move towards IPO, otherwise it doesn't make sense that any VCs would be willing to invest in it.

As I see it, take a profitable company, with 600M in revenue, spend some time destructing and reworking it internally while private (possibly launching new features), then make it public so the VCs get their money back.</comment>


The growing importance of monopoly rents (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/opinion/krugman-profits-without-production.html <comment><AUTHOR> There's also a meta-summary of this and related articles by others, here: [http://bruegel.org/2014/02/blogs-review-profits-without- inve...](http://bruegel.org/2014/02/blogs-review-profits-without-investment- in-the-recovery)</comment>


How American Homeschoolers Measure Up - <AUTHOR> http://www.topmastersineducation.com/homeschooled/ <comment><USER3> _the average homeschooling family spends $500 per child and year, the average public school spends $9953 per child and year_

When you see this kind of statistics you immediately ask yourself who wants what from you and why. Of course the school district is more expensive, they have to maintain their buildings, transportation, and have to offer up remedial services by law. Most of all, they have to pay the teachers' wages, and the opportunity cost for the parent not taking work outside the home isn't counted.

<comment><USER4> There is also the opportunity cost of homeschooling. By homeschooling, the parent is reducing their ability to work full-time or part-time so they are losing money. So the true cost for the parent would be something like $20/hour * 5 hours a day * 200 days a year ~= $20k. (Adjust the numbers as you see fit)

<comment><USER5> Are you saying that this opportunity cost somehow offsets the difference between the $500 and $9,963 It really does not make up much of a difference. An average homeschooling parent does is homeschooling two kids. Average class size it 24. Divide your $20k by 12 = 1,600. There is still a large deficit difference.

If you want more of a comparison of how wasteful (non efficient) and ineffective public schools are - just compare them to equivalent private schools. They turn out better test scores and spend around 25% that of public schools per student.

<comment><USER6> _compare them to equivalent private schools_

Which ones do you consider "equivalent"? Private schools that are the default choice of school for their area and aren't allowed to be selective about what students they admit/retain?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Individual instruction should increase test scores by about 2 standard deviations[1] but the linked results are only about 1 standard deviation above normal.

1: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_Sigma_Problem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom's_2_Sigma_Problem)

<comment><USER8> Interesting link!

I think the explanation is that homeschool parents are not providing "tutorial instruction" to their children most of the time (that's the 2 sigma effect). I don't know of good statistics of actual parent behavior but from my homeschool readings it seems like parents often provide something like "reinforcement", "cues and explanations", and "student time on task". Those are 1 to 1.2 sigma effects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a lot of sympathy for where homeschoolers are coming from, but some of the data points here seem poorly thought out. For example, the "[average] homeschool family spends $500/child/year". What about the lost opportunity cost when parents forego paid work for homeschooling? Naturally it's not as simple as that (think of all the time you get to spend with your kids), but still.

<comment><USER10> You raise a good point. I did some research to see the general percentage of public education costs are dedicated to payroll. According to [0], payroll + capital + debt service accounts for 84.2% of education costs in Texas, which are costs that homeschoolers cover in foregone salary, home costs, and mortgage interest.

[0] [http://www.fastexas.org/study/exec/exhibits/ex7.php](http://www.fastexas.org/study/exec/exhibits/ex7.php)

<comment><USER11> The home costs and mortgage interest need to be paid anyway, so it's really only the opportunity cost of the parent. On top of that there are employment costs the homeschooling parent will avoid by not holding down a job - <USER2> like transportation and wardrobe.

That said, most homeschoolers I know spend a lot of time and money making sure their children have opportunities to socialize with other kids, which is something you get for free with public schooling.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> They surveyed homeschooled students about their experience when they were grown up, but they neglected to ask the same of public school students, so it's hard to compare. And as someone already mentioned, the price of $500 doesn't include the money lost when both parents aren't working.

That said, I'd homeschool my kid if i had any. But not everyone can afford to do so (single parents, the poor). So instead of applying band-aids like homeschooling to our national education problem, lets fix public education once and for all.

<comment><USER11> If we knew how to fix education, we would have done it years ago.

<comment><USER3> We know what works, a look at Finland is sufficient. The subject has been studied.

Here's what's worrying: instead we got No Child Left Behind, we got the attendant testing, and no one has drawn any conclusions from all the testing that would have made an improvement to public education. If there were any you'd see them by now.

The only hypothesis that's left is that there is no political will to improve public education.

<comment><USER11> >We know what works, a look at Finland is sufficient. The subject has been studied.

You're right, the subject has been studied. All we need to do now is replace our children with Finns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice - although I have to wonder. It says "96% understand politics, vs 60% of non-homeschoolers". What would be the corresponding quotas for evolution theory?

Also it would be good to have a comparison of pupils from similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Otherwise "homeschooler" might just be a proxy for well-off parents?

<comment><USER6> _It says "96% understand politics, vs 60% of non-homeschoolers". What would be the corresponding quotas for evolution theory?_

Further down, the text version says, "Consider politics and government too complicated to understand (4.2% / 35%)." I'm not sure how much to trust self- assessment here, and that phrasing makes it sound like this isn't even as strong a result as the infographic claims ("that isn't too complicated to understand" does not imply "I myself understand it well").

<comment><USER14> I agree. Self-report is fairly consistently a horrible measure in terms of accuracy across the board (this is a known problem in psychological testing). Even worse, any estimation of one's own competency is suspect considering how the Dunning Kruger effect would bias self-assessment estimates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd like to see the data correlated against religious adherence.

In my experience there is a strong bimodal distribution: one group does it because they don't want their kids exposed to the secular world until they are adults, and the other group is dissatisfied with the quality of the educational facilities available in their area.

<comment><USER16> Me too. I certainly know far more people that home school their kids to comfortably raise them either without religion or non-traditional spirituality. That probably has more to do with where I live and my circle of friends though than I'd think is representative of the country and I fully suspect plenty of parents are home schooling to raise their children with strong religious dogma. This seems weird to me though since so many parochial schools exist in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm surprised they failed to measure students up taking into account household income, or parental education, or any of a number of other important factors. This seems like the most obvious statistic to look at, and they don't even mention it.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'd like to see these data normalized against parental income, education level, etc. My hypothesis is that there wouldn't be much difference in academic performance for homeschooled vs. non-homeschooled students. In other words, my guess is that having parents with some financial means who place on emphasis on education is what drives academic performance, not whether the child spends their day in a classroom or their house.

</comment><comment><USER19> Could someone add "[infographic]" to the title?

<comment><USER20> The statistics details are listed below the image.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Interesting statistics! I was homeschooled by my mother and feel that it was instrumental in shaping my path into both computing and entrepreneurship.

<comment><USER21> Now that I am back at my computer (I posted the parent from my phone), let me add a bit about my personal experience being homeschooled.

For me personally, being homeschooled was excellent and I am thankful that my mother made the sacrifices that she did for my sisters and me.

My perception of regular school is that a pupil's daily schedule as a student is very much dictated and regimented with little freedom for self-direction.

As a homeschooler, this was not so for me. After my mother had taught me to read and write, I had a good deal of freedom to do my work when I wanted to do it as long as it got done. This is very similar to the results-only work environments that work so well in the software industry. I was in such an environment by the time I was 9 or 10 years old.

As for politics, from the time I was 11 or so I was a bit of an A.M. talk radio junky - much to my dad's dislike. I was able to listen to the radio throughout the day while working on my school. This most certainly shaped my verbal debate skills and made the political science classes in college way more fun.

The flexible schedule is also what enabled me to start teaching myself computer programing starting at 14 years. I devoured every computer book that I could find at the county library. I wrote lots of code, including a full invoicing and accounting system for my lawn care business using nothing but QBASIC in DOS 5. By my junior year in high school I was already doing web development for corporate clients and I started a web hosting business before graduating high school. The first contract that I ever signed, on the day after my 18th birthday, was a merchant agreement so that I could accept credit card payments for the business.

My education was not entirely directly from my mother either. The homeschooler community where I grew up was quite strong. There are schools designed around homeschoolers where the student is enrolled for various classes - math, science, classical logic, foreign languages, etc. I took all of these classes. The best part was that I had class all day, but only two days per week. This freedom is what let me market and build the Internet business that I had then.

There are many paths that education can take. My experience was that of being homeschooled within a Christian community and then going on to study computer science at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In my personal experience, the whole homeschool process was a highly effective educational environment. It was not until my freshman year at Georgia Tech that I felt constrained by class schedules and having to show up everyday at certain times. However, I adapted well enough even to that and went on to earn both a bachelor and a master degree.

It worked out wonderfully for me and despite being a less common path, it made all of the difference!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> That "pie chart" in the middle is horribly confusing. A pie chart is to show proportions of a whole, yet the slices are an arbitrary amount of equal-sized descriptors. Even more confusing is the word "percentile" stamped on top of it, causing some confusing about the numbers, making it seem like "87th" should take up 87% of the pie.

It should be a bar graph instead.

</comment><comment><USER23> Even $500 is too much for a homeschooled child. In today's world a superior education costs probably around $0.

<comment><USER24> Does that superior education involve a computer? There's your $500.

<comment><USER23> it is convenient to own a computer, but if you really can't afford it, you can get an old computer for pretty cheap nowadays or even a new one shouldn't cost you 500. Or, if you are broke, you can try the library or try to get a free computer somehow. A lot of people at my church donate their used computers to people who need them. Homeless people go to the library and use the computers all the time. It's not as convenient, but definitely possible.

That's if you use a computer. My opinion is that you do not need a computer, just a library card to a decent library. Or access to a local college library. I feel that the library is still the best place to get a free education.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is a tiny piece of information from a very large and interesting graphic, but it scares me that ~1% of homeschool teachers didn't graduate high school. I'm not saying a high school dropout can't be very intelligent, I'm just not sure they're the best substitute for a public education.

<comment><USER26> It could also be that they are from low income family group.</comment></comment>


Here's how Apple assaulted Microsoft today — in three crushing quotes - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/10/22/heres-how-apple-assaulted-microsoft-today-in-three-crushing-quotes/

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't get the big deal with free OS X updates. Apple sells hardware at a premium and you get the software with it. You can't buy Apple software, so why should you be able to buy software upgrades? It should have always been free, just like iOS upgrades are free.

<comment><USER2> The comparison isn't germane anyway. Apple charges $20-30 for something Microsoft calls a "service pack", which they've always given away for free. I just downloaded Windows 8.1 -- no cost. Amazing how these guys spin stuff and people just eat it up.

<comment><USER3> Yup - making it sound like paying for software is bad. Considering how long Windows 7 is lasting me, it was worth every penny since I can transfer it between devices!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Now you can create a document on an iPad, edit it on a Mac, and even share it with a friend who's stuck on a PC._

Yeah, cause google docs has completely destroyed Office.

<comment><USER5> In a lot of places it has. I can't even remember the last time I opened anything in Office. At work people share links to google docs instead of sending docs.

<comment><USER6> Excel is still king of its domain, though.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely.

From experience, the global Oil & Gas industry is completely reliant on Excel, and that will not change any time soon. They use it for nearly _everything_... It's the common UI to bigger, complex systems, and it's the data storage/manipulation tool for more specialized, or "simpler" needs.

Many of the non-Excel applications in this space started out and grew from a monster Excel workbook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apple will say that tablet/laptop hybrids are dumb right up until they announce their own. In fact, I would bet money that the Macbook/iPad convergence is already in the works.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps.

But then, as it occasionally happens, they might also deliver something overwhelmingly superior to anything around.

As Gruber recently commented on the Galaxy Gear: "About the best you could expect from Samsung without having anything to copy from Apple: overpriced, ugly, laggy UI, terrible battery life, dubious utility." (Come to think of it, that seems to fit the Surface quite well.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Tim Cook describing the Surface as a "sorta-tablet, sorta-PC" thing, reminds my Steve Ballmer mocking the iPhone few yrs ago. In both cases I find it immature and short-sighted.

<comment><USER11> From a hardware perspective being half and half is fine, I think the criticism of the surface is that the interface and software is optimised for neither paradigm and the device suffers as a result. Apple may well release a Mac Air with a touchscreen, but I doubt it will run in IOS mode and in OSX mode, it will more likely pick one and stick with it.

</comment></comment><comment> jack-r-abbit > _other companies aren 't quite ready to completely embrace the post-PC > world, where people are typing on virtual screens rather than physical > keyboards_

I don't see Apple completely dropping all their various Mac lines. So technically, they have not completely embraced it either. Why do they keep claiming they have?

I can't be the only that cannot efficiently do their job (programming) without a keyboard. Maybe "people as consumers" are typing only on virtual screens but I think there is way too many "people as producers" that need an actual keyboard. Yes, I'm sure there are some people that can make it work for some types of jobs. But I don't think that is a very large segment. So I don't want... we don't need... companies to completely embrace a non-keyboard world. We need companies that can make a good product that can live in both worlds. While what has been offered so far keeps missing the mark a bit... in a way they are closer to this than what Apple has (that we know of).

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting how Apple is now acknowledging MSFT. Not classy and shows they consider them a threat enough to 'assault' them.

And the love affair between the press and Apple continues...

</comment><comment><USER13> Its funny how old rivalries never die. Meanwhile, Google and Amazon are bringing better hardware to market faster and cheaper than Apple.

</comment><comment><USER14> I thought one of the crushing quotes would be able how much more _magical_ the ipad is when compared to a surface device.

<comment><USER12> And it comes in pink, purple and gold!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's good marketing and I don't blame them for hitting MS where it hurts, but on the other hand this is the same company that wants customers to pay $3000 for a desktop model.

EDIT well a tower model, but you get the point. The Mac Tube reminds me of the G4 Cube.

</comment><comment><USER16> Should we encourage that as users, this quote war between Apple, Google, Microsoft and co? They just play the game of Apple fanboys in this particular case, and I find that immature and totally useless.

</comment><comment><USER17> Apple is after consumers with their new set of never ending, shiny, made in china toys.

That's all cool.

With Ballmer and his me-too copycatting and being always late to the party strategy gone soon, Microsoft better (and likely) will stop playing gadget and widget games and refocus on enterprise software and services department as well as cloud strategy.

<comment><USER2> Remember when "cool new government technology" was a thing (in movies)? I do.

There's a huge debate going on in Redmond right now (ex-MS employee here) on whether to focus on big, rich, slower-moving enterprises, or faster-moving consumer tech.

Microsoft has rightly realized that consumer tech (not big companies/government) is setting the agenda for the path of technology, and they're going to fight tooth and nail to remain relevant to consumers. I think they have the right idea commercially.

<comment><USER18> As far am I'm concerned, there isn't even a contest. The industry should have learned from the iPhone's success and the subsequent BYOD movement: enterprises are composed of people who go home and buy consumer products. The consumer space drives the market and picks the winners.

<comment><USER17> There are way more profits to be made in selling enterprise services to mid- size company vs. selling to their employees razor-thin margin gadgets.

And competing in consumer market business (with millions of way faster moving, smaller companies) takes too much resources and focusing.

Apple won because they're all-in into that. Ballmer tried to play too many games at once and proved that his "compete everywhere!" stupid ego was wrong.

Google will be biting pieces from Apple, not Microsoft. Microsoft's salvation is in cloud and enterprise software and services. Once Ballmer announced his departure MSFT stock suddenly became way more attractive first time in decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> the segmentation of consumers makes the whole debate boil down to who will you make the most cash. I think apple has a solid hold and doesn't really need to worry in regards to the consumer market. but developers are going linux meaning more sales for PC vendors (plus Microsoft since they have default license sales on that hardware). Both camps have a solid consumer base and at this point I wouldn't bet against either.

</comment><comment><USER20> Do we expect Apple execs to praise its competition? Google Docs competes both with Office and iWork, its also free! PR quotes for the perfect linkbait articles.</comment>


Half Of All Clicks On Display Ads Are Worthless - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/13/half-of-all-clicks-on-display-ads-are-worthless/ <comment><USER2> The initial article said that 50% of clicks were generated by 6% of users. That's really a statement about the median click, but it was spun to make it sound as if it meant something more definite and interesting. And now this TC article has taken up the spin as if it were what the study discovered-- as if those 6% of users were some separate, distinctive group, idly generating half the clicks.</comment>


Foldy Quad 2.0 Quadcopter Drone - <AUTHOR> http://sdbr.net/post/Foldy-2/

<comment><USER2> Not that small... All of the horizontal baggage was just moved into vertical tiers. Perhaps this is better for the OP, but there are plenty of FPV racers out there with folding arms.

[http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__1407__1406__Multi...](http://www.hobbyking.com/hobbyking/store/__1407__1406__Multi_Rotors_Parts- Frames.html)

<comment><USER3> Yeah, trading stackup for footprint. A smaller footprint is better for storage, but this is worse for flying by adding another point of failure to each arm.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I actually updated the blog to add another picture of the Foldy Quad vs. H Quad at 45 degree angle[1]. At 45 degree+ it does have a nice aerodynamic advantage. Of course, even cooler would be to encase the entire midsection into a ball, it could be like a tiny Death Star quad :)

As for the additional point of failure, I do agree, in a crash, the plastic bolts holding on the arms snap, but I think that adds a little more protection to the motors, the arms, and the ESCs. I never had the screws come off mid flight. It does take longer to recover from a crash though, but plastic screws are cheep.

[1] [http://sdbr.net/img/foldy-2/fodly-v- hquad.jpg](http://sdbr.net/img/foldy-2/fodly-v-hquad.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Love it! lol, unfortunately even though it's small and foldy, it does nothing to reduce the size of a huge taranis that you need to use to control it ;)</comment>


Ask HN: Is this being done? Project idea up for grabs - <AUTHOR>

I thought it would be cool if sites where users share algorithms had a special entry box that accepted code in a variety of languages, but only accepted constructs that could be translated succinctly into any of the supported languages.
Users would see sample code automatically converted and rendered in their chosen language.
Of course, this would not apply to code written for specific APIs, because the APIs may be unavailable or organized differently in different languages. Most Stack Overflow code samples are ineligible. Unless someone would take all this a step further, and allow code samples to make use of any APIs that could be accessed and translated among any of the supported languages.
Does anyone know about this being done (in a simple sense, not including API translation)? Would this be useful? – or are most modern languages similar enough that code written in any language can be understood easily by anyone (not including pointer syntax, as not everyone completely understands that)? – or is the sum state of APIs and features so fragmented between languages and competing libraries that the technical and communal feasibility of such a project is too steep?
Whether there's any merit in the idea, I'll leave up to you. To take it even one step further, I think it would be amazing if such a project could guide the convergence of languages into a common API and fundamental set of features, identical in behaviour regardless of the language code were written in. Imagine if you could write new libraries in every language simultaneously.
There wouldn't be need for a single language, that's not what I'm proposing. New languages would be developed only to provide a new way of expressing the same algorithms. Different people may find it easier or more rewarding to work in different styles. Some languages may be tuned for elegance, others for density and other particular aesthetics, like fonts.
You're absolutely free to continue the thought. <comment><USER2> I'm not sure, this website looks similar to what your saying, but not exact. [http://helperific.com/](http://helperific.com/)

It's definitely a good idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> For sure, Helperific is in the same general spirit.

Their mailing list page is so minimal, and no Twitter posts yet except this one in 2013: [https://twitter.com/gabehollombe/status/390062486210088960](https://twitter.com/gabehollombe/status/390062486210088960)

Do you know whether their work is stalled, or approximately when it may be publicly announced? Though I know maybe that's top secret

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Rosetacode.com

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://rosettacode.io/](http://rosettacode.io/) is available for $99 on Name.com

I'm not getting it though, I have too many bills already. lol who can afford to camp on this stuff I just don't know. It seems like gambling.</comment></comment>


Show HN: The mobile companion for The Oakland Post's website, written in Swift - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aclissold/The-Oakland-Post <comment><USER2> I'm gathering Swift resources on my site.

[http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html](http://www.h4labs.com/dev/ios/swift.html)

If other people have blogs, source, etc maybe they can add them to this post and I'll go through them next week.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought Swift still wasn't well supported enough to use in production (especially frameworks/libraries)?

<comment><AUTHOR> I found Swift to a lot like my favorite programming language, Go, (maybe more in overall feel than in its features). But instead of being a language with a couple of years under its belt, it works outstandingly well with the decades- worth of frameworks built in Objective-C!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow surprising to see OU on HN. Looks very nice.</comment>


Diffr: Difference between two strings. Online. Beta - <AUTHOR> http://diffr.heroku.com/

<comment><USER2> Er. It's diff. In a web page.

What am I missing?</comment>


What's it like to be in a community of remote self-managing teams? - <AUTHOR> https://pinqconsult.com/squads-a-community-of-remote-self-managing-teams/ <comment><USER2> I particularly like the idea of using the Squads.com model in existing organisations. I'd love to run an experiment with that.</comment>