Is it OK to Want to Make Money? - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2010/12/7/ok-to-want-to-make-money <comment><USER2> 2 quick stories:

1\. My fraternity brother's father (a successful doctor) took the two of us out to dinner. He asked what I was studying. I told him computers. He said, "Good. As you know, I want John to study medicine. But if he didn't want to, I would want him to pursue computers. But definitely not law. I don't want my son spending the rest of his life chasing dollars." Strange remark. But somehow, it really left an impression on me. I've always wanted to have fun and make a difference, but never wanted to be like so many business people I've encountered whose sole purpose seems to be the pursuit of money for its own sake.

2\. My mentor and first co-founder on the subject of money: "It's never about the money. And it's certainly not about us. Our first, second, and third responsibilities are making sure our customers get what they need. That being said, it we earn a lot of money in the process, what's so bad about that?"

<comment><USER3> _> But definitely not law. I don't want my son spending the rest of his life chasing dollars." Strange remark._

That is a strange remark indeed, but I suppose I could understand that sentiment coming from a doctor whose main interaction with lawyers involves "ambulance chasers" trying to squeeze money out of his practice.

 _Most_ lawyers don't do that kind of work and aren't in it for the money, although a law degree will mostly guarantee you a comfortable middle class life. I know quite a few who work for the government in tiny crappy offices and who will tell you that going to law school was the biggest mistake of their lives. Law is a surprisingly misunderstood profession.

<comment><USER4> I don't think he meant chasing dollars as in "make as much money as possible", but as in the fact that many (most?) non-criminal lawyers spend their time starting, defending or trying to prevent disputes that are ultimately just about money.

Not that it's a bad thing, but it's foreseeable that people go into it seeking to advance justice and other noble causes and realize 20 or 30 years down the line that it's really all about protecting your clients' bank accounts. Perhaps there's something to be said about the ambulance chasers being at peace with that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It always grates me when people with lot's of money tell people who don't have lot's of money, that it's not about the money.

Money my not equal happiness, but a lack of money certainly equals stress and misery. And while people are being stressed and miserable, they're not at their best.

I think people would find it hard to be so nonchalant about the importance of money and the benefits it can bring if they were worried about how they were going to pay the rent, or if they had a sick kid they couldn't afford to treat properly.

<comment><USER6> In Silicon Valley with a tech background it's rarely a very stark choice, though. If you have good tech skills, a the default/fallback option is a pretty nice one, materially speaking: a low 6-figure programming job at a big company. There is very little chance of ending up unemployed-and-homeless, given how much companies are scrambling to hire technical people.

In that context, it makes more sense to me to encourage people to think about something other than money as their main/only goal. It is indeed something you can only afford to do if you're privileged enough to have the option, but being a tech person in Silicon Valley means there's a high probability that you do have the option, because if you "fail", you can always fail back to the 6-figure corporate job, which is a pretty soft landing. So given that you can live a materially comfortable life just taking the default route, what _else_ do you want to do?

<comment><USER7> _There is very little chance of ending up unemployed-and-homeless, given how much companies are scrambling to hire technical people._

For now. See how it goes in 20 years.

<comment><USER8> I think the 6 figure salaries will definitely still exist. The interesting thing is that developers cannot let their skills stagnate. If we stop learning at 30, the 20 year olds will steal our jobs. Going the management route can be dangerous, but going the consultant route, I think it's a pretty safe career.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps it's wrong place to ask, but ...

Does anyone have an idea how to get this "hunger for money"?

I get no pleasure from earning money and almost no pleasure from things I can buy. I find it hard to motivate myself to get rich despite the fact that I consciously know that it could make my life bit easier.

<comment><USER3> Money == Freedom

Don't you want freedom?

<comment><USER9> [http://dreamflesh.com/blog/2007/06/the-millionaire-and- the-f...](http://dreamflesh.com/blog/2007/06/the-millionaire-and-the- fisherman/)

<comment><USER3> I like this story a lot. But which of these men has more true freedom?

Sure we may all want to "sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siestas with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos". But life isn't always this kind.

Eventually most people will get sick, or have a sick kid or family member. Or be victims of crime. Or need to make repairs or suffer a natural disaster. Or be involved in a dispute with neighbors or the local government.

Money isn't important for the easy times in your life - it's important for the difficult times.

<comment><USER9> > Eventually most people will get sick, or have a sick kid or family member.

Thanks to cheap state health insurance I don't have to pay most of such expenses out of my pocket.

> Or be victims of crime.

This is actually much worse when you are rich. At least in my country. Rich seal themselves in closed enclaves out of fear for their property.

> Or need to make repairs

If you own thing that you can't afford to repair or replace and can't manage without, you are doing it wrong.

> suffer a natural disaster

I'm not sure about this one. It's easier to get away from some natural disasters when you can buy your place on any mode of transportation but you have to leave so much more behind you. It could make you more hesitant to leave.

> Or be involved in a dispute with neighbors or the local government.

It might be easier to buy your way out but having money makes you a target for your neighbours and for the government.

But we went from "money == freedom" to "future will bite you so better stack up a pile"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think what swombat's calling out here is the difference between the social nature of startups, where everybody wants to look cool and do and say the right thing, and the _actual_ nature of startups, where if you're not growing eyeballs exponentially or making something somebody actually pays you for then you're dead.

The startup world is a social community just like any other guild or clan. We have leaders, common dreams, mantras, and so on. It's become quite popular for really rich guys to tell us how it's not about the money. When I first heard this I took it at face value. Then I realized what they were really saying was _you can't just focus on the money_. That's a big difference!

Part of the danger in hanging out in places like HN is that it's easy to pick up on all the social cues of the startup world and miss out on the practical nuts and bolts of it. So we'll get our nerd on and discuss esoteric programming concepts. Or we'll rant at company X and praise company Y for basically doing the same thing. Or we'll vote up an essay by famous startup icon even if it's not that worthwhile. More to the point we'll praise one startup idea because it's "cool", then we'll shun another because it's unpopular _in our social group_.

I love making things people want. People show me they want them by paying me. I need the money, so this works well for everybody. Once I don't need the money, I'll still love making things people want. At that point, however, I need to be really damn sure I'm actually doing something that has value aside from just a bunch of people in my peer group telling me how awesome my idea is. And before I get there, the last thing I want to do is use their opinions as any sort of useful metric at all on what I should be doing. Money is a much better temporary proxy.

</comment><comment><USER11> Money making is fine, but wanting billions is kind of weird imho. The goal of 'being the biggest search engine' is great, being a search engine and having the goal to make 10 billion $/month is not. Again, in my opinion.

He mentions 'feed the family'; no matter what your 'family' is here, with honest hard work you can do that without having too much money focus in your company. But yes, the bottom line needs to be solid and you are insane if you don't watch that like a hawk.

<comment><USER7> _But yes, the bottom line needs to be solid and you are insane if you don't watch that like a hawk._

Looking at the average startup, it seems like insanity is the rule rather than the exception...

<comment><USER11> Yeah that's what worries me when reading all the stories here; it seems that we shouldn't care about the bottomline in startup mode. In my, maybe old, mindset, I try to break even as fast as we can and THEN start growing.

I see a lot of exceptions where this way of company startup would not work, but a lot of them should do it this way imho. The funding => jumping too high method is too much slot machine for me. Especially if you are not doing consumer services/products, it is almost always possible, if your idea has merit, to run a profit even before you built anything. Then funding is a much safer bet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A better question is: Should you live your life through the morality of others?

If the answer is yes, then simply read what someone else says about making money and do that.

If the answer is no, then you're free and can do what you want.

<comment><USER6> That seems a bit simplistic as a binary choice. I'll ultimately choose for myself what I think is ethical to do, but that doesn't mean I should ignore everything anyone has ever written. Reading intelligent things other people have written is a good way to improve my own thinking on a subject! In fact I'd say a pure "do whatever you want" approach is somewhat intellectually lazy, because it actively avoids engaging with and working through ideas that might be challenging to my own preconceptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't trust people who start businesses and say they're not interested in money. Money is one of your best gauges of whether you're doing things right. Not being interested in money when you're working on a for-profit enterprise makes me worry you're either unserious or disingenuous. That said, hardly anybody _only_ cares about money. We all trade off money against other things -- free time, independence, and so on. I care about money, but I'd rather make a little less working on a project that'll genuinely make the world better than a little more working on something unimportant.

</comment><comment><USER14> I am trying hard to get of out of the "don't need to make money" mindset. It served me very well for years: the decision that money was less important than time allowed me to travel the world for 10 years while having a small online business.

But now that I want my business to grow, I am really struggling with the fact that I can live with little money. This is fine with me, but the people who joined my project deserve better: they deserve a strong and stable company.

I am trying to find a way to "go for the money" even though my nature is not to. It's not easy. Thanks for the article.

</comment><comment><USER15> TL;DR: Yes. Get that money. Get lots of it. Poverty sucks.

I left rural Jamaica to come to Kingston, the capital, in 2005. After my first year in college, I got a summer job with a telecom startup run by an American. My student loan was not renewed for the 2nd year, so I had to drop out, and got a permanent position as a sysadmin at the company. The pay sucked, but I didn't care: The family member I was living with wasn't charging me rent, and I was having tons of fun setting up IPSec VPNs with other telecom providers, configuring pfSense firewalls, creating SIP trunks, etc. I'd sometimes stay at work till midnight, just exploring and learning, and be back at work at 8:30 the next morning.

I was transferred to another arm of the company 6 months later, but wasn't getting along with the management there, and was fired. But it was ok (I thought): I had no living expenses. I spent the next two years pottering about, trying my hand at a few different freelance initiatives, none of which really stuck. That was also when I discovered that I was very creative, at least design-wise. After those 2 years, my father died. No life insurance.

This, dear reader, is when reality started to set in. This is when I got the slap upside the head that said, "Hey! Fool! You need to start making money."

I'd applied for a job a few weeks before his death, and I got the job, doing a mixture of bizdev, system administration, and graphic design (perhaps I'm one of those fabled 'designgineermarketers' :) ).

Immediately, I began getting strange brown envelopes in the mail, containing sheets with tabulated data on them, and a strange claim that somehow, I owed them money.

I was later to find out that they were called 'bills.'

The family member also started charging rent. About time.

The student loan people called. Time to pay the piper.

I'd been bitch-slapped. By reality. It hurt.

I was 23.

I looked back at all the time I'd wasted. All the money I'd wasted. How I'd been a burden to family.

I'd been a typical HN-reading, Ayn Rand-quoting, John Galt aspiring- libertarian. Slowly, I began to realize the role of luck and circumstance. I used to look down on the poor, writing them all off as lazy and not willing to work. "How _dare_ they be poor and have a TV!", I used to think.

I changed my tune. A bitch-slap will do that to you.

I knew what real wealth looked like. The startup I had worked for had tanked, but the founder and I were good friends, and he was independently wealthy. He owned 4 Mercedes, and lived in a house so far up in the hills that the road wasn't even paved. We would drive around and he would tell me about his life, how he had been rich as a teen pop star in Britain, but squandered it all and was broke by 20. He went to America with nothing, but built himself up through determination and cleverness. He built a telecom switch for the cost of a PC, and loaded Asterisk (open source telecom software) on it. Re-sold it for US$6,000. It felt 'wrong' to me, but he taught me that it doesn't matter what you think it's worth, it only matters what _they_ think it's worth.

He died 4 months after my father. His family didn't know where all the money was. To this day, he has not been buried. That was over 2 years ago.

Money.

Money affects our lives in so many ways that it's difficult to overstate. Wanna help out that friend? It's gonna cost ya. Wanna take care of your parents? Ditto. How many great relationships have been ruined because one party had to leave due to work? How many marital squabbles are about money? How many friendships are ruined? And don't gimme that crap that if they were good relationships, they would last. If you have a friend that is down on his luck for an extended period (say a year or more), that gets old real fast. He'll expect you to pay for dinner. And movies. And gas. And liquor at parties. Soon you're gonna start resenting him. If he had money, it wouldn't be a problem. It's just circumstances.

How many _lives_ are wasted in poverty?

Is it any surprise that I want money? Is it any surprise that I have dedicated the next few years to the getting of money?

Whew. I need to stop. Or this will happen again: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2025537>

Edit: grammar

<comment><USER16> > I'd been a typical HN-reading, Ayn Rand-quoting, John Galt aspiring- > libertarian. Slowly, I began to realize the role of luck and circumstance. I > used to look down on the poor, writing them all off as lazy and not willing > to work. "How dare they be poor and have a TV!", I used to think.

Wow. I've come to expect a certain level of hypocrisy from a lot of libertarians, but this is a pretty stark example of it. By all rights, you qualified as one of the "moochers," yet you were perfectly happy to denounce those like you.

Thanks for sharing your story.

<comment><USER17> I've come to expect hypocrisy from anyone with a strongly held value set. Progressives touting 'diversity' while living in the suburbs and paying exorbitant amounts to send their kids to all-white private schools, conservatives railing about government overreach while trying to enact 'morality' laws, libertarians looking down on moochers while living under a different safety net.

This happens because we hold values. The easiest way not to be a hypocrite is not to have any. I find it's better to have values, get called out on violating them, and try to improve, than it is to have none. YMMV.

<comment><USER18> >> I've come to expect hypocrisy from anyone with a strongly held value set.

I think that succinctly sums it up.

The problem with "values" is that they are an excuse to never have to think critically. Something comes up, you just tag it with a "value" and act accordingly. It simple, it works, and you never have to think!

I don't understand what part of thinking is so taxing that you can't take a couple minutes to make up your mind on each issue vs using big blanket statements to run your life.

<comment><USER19> I get where you are coming from on this, but honestly sometimes things are just subclasses (in the programming sense) of something that you have thought a lot about and ultimately completely rejected.

For example: "The government should sometimes run things that private industry can run and compete upon" is the super class of "the government should run envelope delivery" so why should I not just dismiss the second statement immediately if I firmly dismiss the first?

Sometimes edge cases pop up, but why waste the time to go through the cycles of reiterating all the same points?

<comment><USER18> I think if you take the time to see if something is actually an edge case or not, you'll see that we are arguing the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Relevant (and fun): F*ck You, Pay me. <http://vimeo.com/22053820>

Making money is difficult enough. Don't leave all that money on the table.

</comment><comment><USER21> After seeing many responses which contain many paragraphs, I tried to condense this one down as short as possible:

Readers may find it interesting to reflect that this question, "is it okay to want to make money?", is not really much of a question in other religions, and ultimately stems from the Christian background of the Western cultures. In Indian religions, for example, doing well in business and earning a bunch of money are considered good actions, good _karma_ , and will bring you a better rebirth. Being good at what you do is just part of being good. Now, it won't allow you to _end_ the cycle of rebirth to achieve moksha/mukti/nirvana, because all karma binds you to the cycle of rebirth, but it will let you "climb the ladder" to a life where you are better suited to pursue these ultimate goals of self-annihilation.

So if you're a Christian the answer is probably "no" -- "harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle" and all that. But the linked post is trying to utter something more Confucian or Hindu; it's your _duty_ to make money to support your family, _go and do your duty_.

</comment><comment><USER22> An essay that helped me a lot in coming to my views on wealth is PG's essay "Mind the Gap".

If you haven't read it, I recommend you check it out.

<http://paulgraham.com/gap.html>

Also good:

<http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>

</comment><comment><USER23> To quote someone who said it better than me:

"If you don't make at least a little money in the process, how can you be sure that you're creating value?"

<http://lesswrong.com/lw/ux/traditional_capitalist_values/>

</comment><comment><USER24> I find there are three types of people who will try to make you feel guilty about wanting money. The first are people who have chosen non-lucrative careers and will want you to feel that your work is shallow. The second are people who have an invested interest in paying workers lower wages in order to make their money. The third are people who are young, in school and not yet working full time and paying bills.

Living your life based on money is probably not the way to find happiness. But it's good to know the motivations of people who would judge you for wanting money.

</comment><comment><USER25> "When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is." - Oscar Wilde

Like it or not money matters. It matters more than you think, even if you take into account this statement.

While you are young you can go sleep anywhere, eat two minute noodles and go from hand to mouth without getting much into the rougher side of life. As you age, you get a family, you get kids, you fall sick, you need to tend to a thousand responsibilities and bills.

Want to put a dent in the universe? good! Sure do it. But before that ensure you have enough cash before you are 40-45 to not worry about getting up every morning and run to make ends meet.

Life can be a lot more rewarding if you have a financial comfort pillow to rest on and not to worry about getting fired, or loosing a job, or a market crash or you kids leaving you to stay away from you.

Just have enough cash in you pocket, you will be a lot more happier. Even if you are not, you can be comfortable sad with money than without.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is one of our main points in a presentation my co founder and I give when asked to speak at events.

Our product has useful features for people who struggle to heat their home (our product isn't software, its made of plastic) and our VC sat us down (before they invested) and said that we needed to focus more on the making money side of things and not helping poor people - helping poor people would come as a result of being successful, staying in business and delivering on customer demand. His main point was that without aiming to make money then we wouldn't stay in business very long as no one would invest in us and ultimately no one would benefit from our product.

How you make that money on the other hand, well that's up for discussion, there are a multitude of unethical business practices that make the desire to make money seem unpleasant. Avoid those and wanting to make money is fine.

</comment><comment><USER27> Making money almost always goes with creating value, but in some cases the optimal strategy to make money does not involve creating value.

If a business that treats money as its primary objective encounters one of these cases, it will defeat its value-creating competition and become a parasite to society.

</comment><comment><USER28> Money is a means, not an end (unless of course you're a rare coins collector.) I don't consider myself a Silicon Valley insider by any measure, but from the outside it doesn't seem like there's an "It's not about the money" culture. Billion dollar acquisitions and multi-billion dollar IPOs certainly reflect Silicon Valley's acknowledgement that money is fundamental in any business process. Which brings me back to my first point: to reach any meaningful scale, anyone who wants to solve a problem or make the world more interconnected needs a myriad of resources. It would seem that making money is not only OK, but up to a certain point necessary; not to splurge on yachts and mansions, but rather to acquire the best tools and talent said money can procure.

</comment><comment><USER29> Money is not inherently evil. What really matters is how you make it, and where you spend it. If you make money making people better off, and spend it making people better off, there is nothing wrong at all. Unfortunately some people make money making people worse off, which is where money might get it's bad reputation. This might happen if the people think maximising income is more important than anything else (which might or might not lead them onto a path detrimental to other people, but immoral practices are often so profitable). The people who make a lot of money making people happy on the other hand probably care about their income, but also care strongly enough about other things for it to influence their decisions.

</comment><comment><USER30> The Economist had a very good column on this subject a little while ago:

> _In living memory, some middle-class Britons would not allow delivery boys > to come to their front door; the tradesmen's entrance was at the side. > [....] And their modern descendants, the middle-class intelligentsia who > populate the continent's universities and staff its public sector, have a > tendency to despise the businesspeople who generate the wealth needed to > fund their way of living. There is great distaste at the idea that political > choices should be dictated by "the markets"; investors should just hand over > their money and not ask whether it will be paid back._

<http://www.economist.com/node/21541857>

</comment><comment><USER31> I believe this question is relative to an individual's current position in life. Let's face it, if you have been living in a really challenged position always hiding from creditors and living meagerly for some time the pressure to just get "Family Money" is at the forefront of every venture. There is nothing wrong with that. I am working 7 days a week on my startup and I have yet to get the family money. I want to make a difference in the world with all my heart and soul, and I would really love to get the family money out of the way so I can focus on making that difference. It is ok to want a little bit of comfort, that will give you the physical presence you need to make a difference.

</comment><comment><USER32> Building something smaller to feed the family increases your longevity in the startup game. You can play longer with new ideas, let them develop as they mature, and lots more. Pay attention to whether people who look down on lifestyle businesses already have that lifestyle of not worrying about money.. easier said when that's the case.

Initially having something that pays the bills for you can be an important step learning the first business and marketing skills of ones life. Having these makes you more valuable and capable of not only fetching funding should it be something you want, but a lot more of it because you preemptively make business considerations as you go.

</comment><comment><USER33> My dad has a great poster on his wall in his home office.

It says: SUCCESS - I've managed to eat and not be eaten and find a place to sleep every night.

Success is a personal measure, we often externalize it and try to measure it against other's perceptions. If you choose to measure yourself against people who think "Money is Evil" or "Greed is Good" then that is just a choice. No different then choosing to put sugar in your coffee or not drinking coffee at all.

I've always considered myself a passionate pragmatist. I've started many companies, sold some, bought some, crashed some and put some in mothballs. I love the creation process. It's my hook. At the same time I try and estimate the financial impact of those decisions and balance my passion with a pragmatic review of the risks. Sometimes I make boat loads of money and other times I am lucky to get out with my life. But always it's a balance of rewards and money can be one of those rewards. The reality is that the most rewarding parts are the people I meet along the way, the things I've learned and the passion I felt for those projects as I executed on them. If you look at money as just a game token like many other tokens in life then you might be ok if you don't obsess about it. I personally think often about how many people would be willing to take time out of of their busy lives to visit me when I die. It sounds morbid but it's also another interesting measure of your impact on the world. Don't focus on the money, focus on the tools you need and goals you have for yourself in your life. But know that money is just another tool that might help you meet your overall goals. That said you can become a monk and let go of all possessions and I know some people who have done that and they say it's the most rewarding thing they've ever done. But clearly its not compatible with the goals I currently hold in my life. Maybe when I get a bit older I'll change my mind. Because again, the power to change your mind is still yours!

I have managed for 30 years to follow my passion and the whole time I've managed to eat and not be eaten and find a place to sleep each night. I've done amazing things, met amazing people and learned more then I could have ever imagined was available to me. What more can you ask for in life?

</comment><comment><USER34> The mistake people make is to toss any thoughts of making money to the side. As pg says, get ramen profitable as quickly as you can. That really changes your attitude, and allows for the long term thinking.

</comment><comment><USER35> The article does not say _want to make money at any cost_. It just says _want to make money_. I want to make money doing things I love. For any job I am willing to do, I want to make sure my pay is as high as possible, _for that job_.

Lots of people saying how many jobs does not add value to society, and so people who want to make money are evil. That's not what the article is talking about! If you want to make money and don't want to do those jobs, then make money through other means!

</comment><comment><USER36> It's ok to want to be rich, but wanting something you won't get is unplesant, so people often rationalize they are there just for fun.

Certainly for me it works that way - if it's hobby project, I can't fail at it. If it's business I do to be rich, and I'm not rich in 5 years, I've failed.

Having fun seems to be easier to achieve than commercial success, and for some people (like me) it's easier to do sth, if it seems achievable.

</comment><comment><USER37> A lot of people here have said that their is nothing wrong with wanting to make money, but I have the opposite opinion: I do not think it is ok to WANT to make money.

I recognize that making money is required in order to live in a capitalist society, since that is the primary way you will acquire food, shelter, clothing, etc. I make money personally and recognize that it is necessary. How could I create software or volunteer if I can't even feed or clothe myself?

However, I do not WANT to make money. I recognize that capitalism is a system that depends on the exploitation of others, usually people I do not see or interact with unless I go out of my way to find them. We live in a world where there are many people who cannot feed or clothe themselves, cannot afford shelter, cannot have determination in what they do or the work they must take on. This is a world that I want to sincerely change to no longer require money. Isn't this the great future promise of sci-fi like Star Trek, that humanity will give up capitalism and exploitation and provide for every human?

The primary many readers here engage in software development is in a commercial context (myself included). However, I would much prefer to gather with like minded individuals to create software because I love to create software, not because there is a promise of a payout. Many others here feel the same way, but never forget that we benefit from capitalism while others suffer from it. I would rather remove money altogether than worry about acquiring more of it.

</comment><comment><USER38> Amen!

Whenever I ask "startup" people - "how does it make money?" - I often get odd looks. The same people are usually on the look out for funding.

Yes, it is honourable to run a business for love and passion of the idea. However money pays the bills and keeps you in the game longer.

It is not so honourable to ask for money from investors when you haven't considered how your idea will generate revenue.

</comment><comment><USER39> Don't strive to make money for money sake alone. There doesn't appear to be any correlation between money and happiness.

But I, like most hackers, enjoy building things of value. And people are used to paying for what they value (there are exceptions of course). I use making money, especially early on, as a validator and indicator of progress.

</comment><comment><USER40> It depends on what you want to make that money for. To live a stress-free, comfortable, happy life and help your community/world in return with that money? Or to just spend all of that money on yourself in expensive cars, big houses and drugs. It all depends on what you use the money for...

<comment><USER20> No it doesn't really matter. Let them buy expensive cars, big houses and what not. If they've earned it, they get to spend it. (And I'm sure the local business owners, car sales man, builders... won't disagree). Besides, they'll pay taxes on everything they spend. Would it be nice for others if they were to invest in their own community? Sure! But they're not required to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> I can't find the quote, but I think it was Dave Ramsey who said (says?) something like "You can't help others from a position of weakness". Broadly true, although even moreso from a financial point of view, and one which guides much of my views on money/work/business.

</comment><comment><USER42> A simple and straight to the point thought. Nothing wrong about it for sure. After all, how long can you be creative and bold if you ain't got enough to "feed your family"?

</comment><comment><USER43> There is nothing wrong with making money as long as in the process you do not hurt anyone directly or indirectly.

The latter is hard if not impossible which is where the system breaks.

</comment><comment><USER44> > you need the opposite temperament: a hunger for money.

Wrong. It's easily leads one to make money a self goal, which a grave pitfall.

</comment><comment><USER45> Asking if its ok to want to make money is analogous to asking if its ok to marry someone because they look beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER46> > Some people have an aversion to making money.

Those people have culture. Obviously 99.95% of the Silicon valley have no culture.

</comment><comment><USER47> Of course it's OK to want to make money. Your desires don't require the approval of other people.

</comment><comment><USER48> You need to make a lot of money to finance your spaceship startup.

</comment><comment><USER49> Good article, let money enrich your life and not define it.

</comment><comment><USER50> Money is not an end, it is the means

</comment><comment><USER51> Is it okay to want food?

Then you have your answer.

</comment><comment><USER52> There's a false dichotomy in a lot of these discussions. There isn't a contradiction between helping society and making money. Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society.

The money you make comes from somewhere- generally customers who are parting with it. Why are they parting with it? Because they prefer what you're buying to the alternative.

People spend, in the aggregate, because it makes their lives better. Even hoarders drowning in needless stuff are spending the money to assuage the pain they would feel if they didn't.

The vast majority of software has a serious positive impact on the customers lives. We may wonder about Instagram, but instagram made a LOT of people happy. Making people happy is a positive benefit to society.

Plus, lets remember what money is. Money is a medium of exchange, its not the thing itself. It is a medium for trading your labor or your intellect. A ditch digger rents his body out at work in exchange for money. When he buys shoes, the money is simply they conveyance of the value from digging the ditch to the person selling the shoes.

When a software developer uses his brilliance to come up with a new program, he's trading his brainpower for whatever he ends up being with that money. Money is the medium that enables efficient transactions where barter failed. That's all.

Money is really another way of saying life.

People don't trade their life away, generally, except where it is profitable.

You make a billion bucks by making something people want? You've improved their lives probably by 7-9 billion dollars worth.

$7 for a movie? Worth more than $7 in entertainment to the person buying it... or they wouldn't buy it.

You don't get to be a millionaire by making people miserable.

(and I need to get a blog going, I think my comment is longer than the original article.)

<comment><USER53> >Virtually every legal way I know of making money helps society.

HFT and Domain squatting are legal.

<comment><USER54> The people who make money doing this will spend the money on goods and services, which in turn benefits the people involved in providing them.

<comment><USER55> Actually, the HFT people are more likely to sock their winnings away. Anyway, "I take money from people so that I can increase the national GDP by spending it" is not much of an argument for a socially valuable way of life.

<comment><USER56> Sock money away where, in their mattress? No, in the bank, money market, investments, etc. thereby increases the available funds for others to start businesses, take out loans, provide liquidity to the market. "Take money from people", you mean engage in a mutually beneficial and agreed upon transaction where you take money and give a product or service... yea not the same as theft.

<comment><USER55> I don't agree with "mutually beneficial" in either case, and "agreed upon" is murky in the case of HFT and at least somewhat misleading in the case of domain squatting.

And "I take money from people to increase available funds for others' business purposes" is not much of an ethical argument, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Alternative questions: Is it OK to want to make money at zero sum games where your windfall causes other people's losses? For example roulette, poker, and trading cards?

Is it OK to want to make money at win-win games? For example restoring a vehicle, Writing a book or solving a new problem?

The problem here is that very powerful organizations in this country are daily trying to brainwash people into thinking that somehow the green slip contracts in our pockets are evil. Having money, or wanting money is morally suspect. These powerful organizations control media narratives, political talking points, church services, and pretty much every company in America who is interested in turning a profit from the masses.

Is it OK to get an education for yourself and your children? Yes. Is it OK to go to the hospital when you are sick? Yes. Is it OK to want to make money? No. Your money is morally suspect, take some out, and give it to me, there will be a net gain in righteousness in the universe when the money flows from your pocket to mine.

<comment><USER58> Good point. After you make the distinction between making money at another person's expense, and making money in a way that makes the world as a whole wealthier, the whole question kind of dissolves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Answer: yes, sure. It's far more honorable to want to be wealthy than, for example, to vie for social status or power over other people. I want to be wealthy; I wish everyone were.

I feel like I'm an old (28) knight, having learned the hard way that people are not honorable. For the record, I've seen more disgusting behavior in supposedly "world-changing" startups than many people see in their lives, and far more than I saw in finance, which is supposed to be unethical and full of greed but (quite honestly) doesn't look very different from anywhere else. The most ethical of the 5 companies where I've worked was in finance.

First, it's not about what you _want_ , it's about what you _do_. There's nothing wrong with wanting to have money. You _should_ want to have money if you're smart. Why? Because money is a vote and the World's First Problem is that most decisions aren't being made my smart or competent people. So get out there, do great work, and see if you can make a mark. You're only doing wrong if you start making moral compromises to get money or influence. If you turn unethical, then you become part of the more severe World's Second Problem, which is that the few genuinely smart people in positions of power and influence are generally unethical.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to have financial freedom and autonomy. If you don't have these things, chances are that your life will amount to very little. That's not the same thing as wanting to be a billionaire, though. If your net worth is $3 billion and you're trying to get to $6B to show up that other guy, then your motives are probably not good.

Social climbers I find pretty revolting, but the desire to do good work and be well paid for it is, I've come to realize, honorable.

Now, bad people do slimy things for all kinds of reasons, and often those reasons have little to do with material gain. Sometimes it's status or vengeance, and sometimes it's just a desire "to see what happens". Malevolent curiosity is a powerful motivator having nothing to do with money or measurable personal benefit. Again, it's not peoples' motivations that make them bad or good. It's what they actually do.

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I encountered far more sleaze in VC-funded startups than in finance, and I think I figured it out. _False poverty._ Now, I'd he hard-pressed to call a startup CEO making $150,000 per year "poor", but a lot of these people feel poor, given that a 27-year-old venture capitalist with no accomplishments to his name is making twice that, just because his daddy got him into Harvard Business School. When people get a sense that they "should" be doing so much better (being VCs instead of being founders with their hands out) they feel poor, they feel desperate, and they act desperate.

Finance has its share of slime, for sure, but the false poverty is less prevalent. Bankers know they _aren't_ poor and that they're not allowed to act that way.

This might also explain why the politics and in-fighting in low-paying but "glamorous" industries like fashion and UES nonprofitistan are so much worse. Because these people are paid poorly, they have a sense of living on a precipice and will do _anything_ to avoid falling off. Although this is also a false poverty (because most of these people could change industries and do OK) it has the same effect.

The conclusion of all this should be the obvious one. Greed isn't good, but hunger is worse.

<comment><USER60> "Because these people are paid poorly, they have a sense of living on a precipice and will do anything to avoid falling off."

This is actually a positive externality (well, depending on how you look at it) of providing some sort of social security net. You get to live in a society where people are less incentivized to stab each other in the back. Of course, they are also less incentivized to work themselves out of being-close- to-the-cliff.

On the other hand, in societies where, if you don't have any money, you are starving on the street as well as ostracized, you can hardly ever trust anyone not to carve you up if there is anything to be gained by it.

I once heard of a doctor working for an NGO in a major Indian city (I think it was Calcutta), who talked about how it was virtually impossible for a white person to make a friend there, because everyone he met was just trying to use him to gain status/money in some fashion.

<comment><USER59> I agree completely. Why does the US have so much crime? Because there's no safety net. (The War on Drugs also contributes in a major way.) This ends up being foolish, because we pay more to keep people in prison (over $30,000 per year) than we would by providing them with education and training. We have the resources to get rid of poverty, but we're spending what we have in phenomenally stupid ways.

<comment><USER61> You have two separate arguments twisted into one.

1) Getting rid of the war on drugs would be a good thing. As it would save money and not cause as much crime (drug war causes crime).

2) You can spend money on education and training to reduce poverty.

Please keep your arguments separate rather than using one issue as a support for another. That 30K per prisoner could be spent on any number of things, or simply not collected from the public at all.

Personally, I agree with 1. That would be fantastic, and I think that there is a political ball rolling slowly towards that.

The second, well, we do spend a lot on education and training. I am not so sure that it does much more than make education more expensive.

<comment><USER62> _(drug war causes crime)_

I phrase this as "the drug war is a collection of laws that are not required for the proper functioning of society."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> yes</comment>


Show HN: The AirBnB of Advertising: YouMarket.Me - <AUTHOR> http://youmarket.me/ Looking for beta testers; if interested sign up and please share with your cronies. It's free. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I think you may have something here. I can see it being a place to swap display ad space in local areas.</comment>


Node.js is Human - <AUTHOR> http://jondavidjohn.com/nodejs-is-human/ <comment><USER2> The real surprise of Node.js for me has been this point:

> In Node, everything runs in parallel except your code.

Guaranteed single-threaded execution of _my_ code combined with a great concurrency story has been a revelation. I can do all kinds of stuff that would just be flat-out stupid in a multithreading language (like naïve performance monitoring and caching using global variables) and it's easy. I ask myself, "do I have a race condition?" then I look at the code, make sure there's no asynchronous callback between my global read and my global write, and say, "Nope! Ship it!"

Really, it's been a pleasure.

(Before anyone accuses me of ivory-tower-itis, this opinion is based on the production-grade, money-generating HTTP server, CMS, and site I wrote in Node.js: [http://www.letscodejavascript.com](http://www.letscodejavascript.com) . And yes, the callback pyramid of doom sucks, I'm not saying it doesn't.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Monadic composition of futures for nonblocking servers is the way to go, but in javascript? With no for comprehension syntax? With no ability to express the asynchronous nature of your code via the type system using Future[T]?

Node.js does some amazing things, but it builds on very unsound soil, namely javascript.

Edit: to end on a positive note, Scala is doing some great things with nonblocking systems. Check out the play framework, finagle, Future and Promise types in the core library, etc. It's not quite Haskell, but it has the advantage of running on the JVM with easy Java interop.

<comment><USER4> I'd love to read more about Future[T] and how that type works. Got any more reading on it?

<comment><USER3> There's a nice overview here: [http://docs.scala- lang.org/overviews/core/futures.html](http://docs.scala- lang.org/overviews/core/futures.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> By that logic, anything that abstracts parallelism away is "human". Actors are human. akka.io is human. Erlang is "human"... but the latter two are actually some weird meta-human because they provide true parallelism.

One could as well propose a counter-theory: Node.js is _not_ (or rather anti-) human, because it takes away the joy of solving complex parallelism-related issues and thus limits a human's intellectual development.

(Oh and your last word contains a typo: "excersize")

<comment><USER6> typos: excreeting, benifit (singular), disatisfaction, concurency, transfering, asyncronous (in an article about parallelism, oops!), everytime, asyncronous (again), benifits (plural), philisophically, asyncronous (yet again), and finally excersize

<comment><AUTHOR> yay, thanks for the spellcheck... I'll make sure to do that next time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I agree with some of the technical things that he is saying (though he's several years late to this conversation), but saying things like,

 _" This provides 90% of the benifits [sic] of parallelism for the common use case without presenting the developer with additional complexity."_

is disingenuous. Where does your "90%" come from? Just say, "a lot of benefits" or "many benefits".

Moving onto the question of analogizing human thought as non-blocking versus threaded is tortured and distracting from any main point someone might make.

It is a lot easier for human beings to write code in nodeJS without f*ing themselves over, but that isn't necessarily the case because people understand any better what's happening underneath the covers (do really understand what epoll, select, or kqueue are actually doing at the kernel level?). It's because node's paradigm simply prevents you from being stupid with IO.

You can still be stupid with node though. Back to the "90%" claim, quite a bit of parallelism is used to make computation faster. Node can sometimes still provide some game when computation is a bottleneck. However, since you have to serialize and de-serialize in and out of v8 when you need to thread if you're doing a lot of large computations with large data-structures then node sucks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Point taken on the 90%, updated the post.

I don't think anyone is saying node is aways awesome and never sucks, I am just pointing out that it solves one of the most common problems with network/web applications. Which you also point out, (the platform) "being stupid with I/O".

<comment><USER7> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are lots of non-blocking architectures that have been around since before node, not "because of it".

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, nothing is new under the sun, but it's hard to argue that node has not brought it mainstream, where others have not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> tldr; Node.js' super light-weight cooperative-multitasking[1] allows IO optimizations only humans understand.

I agree with this whole-heartedly, but it does put the limitation on the human, and not on the computer, which is actually the opposite direction we want to go. I don't think we're there yet, so in the meantime, node.js is fantastic for when you need/want to hyper-optimize your critical code path for response time.

One thing I would add is that node.js makes job-queueing, background-task handling, side-effect inducing trivial since it makes networked IO / SOA trivial. In other words, having a separate process deal with anything not necessary for returning a response is almost effortless, allowing your responses to always take the minimum time necessary, freeing your client to continue.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking#Cooperati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_multitasking#Cooperative_multitasking)

</comment><comment><USER10> I will reply to a completely content-free post with another, mildly less content-free post.

[http://widgetsandshit.com/teddziuba/2011/10/node-js-is- cance...](http://widgetsandshit.com/teddziuba/2011/10/node-js-is-cancer.html)

There. Galactic equilibrium re-established.

</comment><comment><USER11> its success</comment>


When Cervantes was captured by pirates - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160421-when-cervantes-was-captured-by-pirates <comment><USER2> I am Turkish and almost-native Spanish speaker who read Cervantes from original. Both Ottoman history and Cervantes' memories state that algerian pirates were treating good to captured people because the only thing they were expecting was the money they get from the family.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting application of trauma/grief/persecution literary analysis to a leading European figure of the Western canon, as opposed to its more familiar role in literature of groups oppressed by Europeans.

</comment><comment><USER4> The article starts talking about Cervantes but the journalist, she ends up talking about herself.</comment>


Ask HN: are these warning signs in a cofounder, or am I paranoid? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a fairly regular poster here but using an anonymous account because this feels too intimate (or maybe stupid?) to post under my own name...
I'm starting a new company to productize some code that I've been working on for a while. I've got a small seed investment negotiated but not yet in the bank, and I've also been talking with a potential cofounder.
This guy is someone I've known personally for a long time but we've never worked together. Initially I was happy that he'd be coming along for the ride, he's easy to get along with and understands the technical stuff, but now I'm getting second thoughts. Here's what irks me:
* He's hard to reach. He can go several days without returning my calls.
* He's still applying for another job. I get the impression that the startup is just his plan B because he's not ready to make the decision until he's got a 'yes' or 'no' from the potential job.
- He thinks we can get a better seed investment somewhere else and wants to turn down the offer I got. He doesn't have any experience in getting funding, though.
I once did a startup with three other founders that failed because it turned out that I was the only one doing technical work, the others were basically PowerPoint idea jockeys. I guess that's why I'm feeling particularly insecure about hooking up with a cofounder again...
My intuition about cofounders failed once, so am I walking into the same trap? Or am I just paranoid? <comment><USER2> From my experience of multiple partnerships in multiple start-ups, regular, constant communication is one of the key components to success.

In startups, the work isn't just about keystrokes, and it's not just about sales, it's about solving problems, quickly. From what you've said, it doesn't look like this is a fit.

It's a marriage once you're in it. Cast a wide net, be picky, get out there and date for awhile. Hate to be cliche, but there are plenty of fish.

Find someone who will fight as hard for it as you will, who will fight hard to earn and maintain your respect, and will communicate with you.

Don't be his start-up booty call.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice. The dating/marriage analogy seems surprisingly fitting. I definitely wouldn't be rushing into a relationship with such doubts...

I'm not in a desperate position either. There's no reason why I can't get started on my own and look for a cofounder while at it. It's more important that I get out there and start conversations with customers, and the seed money will enable that. This whole cofounder question is of secondary importance.

I guess the popular notion that being a single founder is something to be avoided had got to me without thinking it through.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The facts of what you have posted indicate that your intuition is fine. It's your level of trust in those intuitions that's suspect.

If the seed funding offered is what you need and the terms are good enough, then there's no reason to keep shopping. If you don't need it, or the terms are bad, then it's another matter.

Lastly, many people will say "no" without coming out and just saying it. Valuing a long term friendship might be a reason. Letting yourself get strung out won't benefit either of you. Keep moving forward, maybe your friend will be more available later. Timing is part of execution.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> These things are never easy.

I personally think concerns (1) and (2) are of issue but concern (3), of feeling you guys can get a better seed investment, shouldn't be a concern.

For concern (1), it's one thing to be generally hard to reach, it's another to not answer calls. Being a cofounder requires an immense amount of reliability, if you're having doubts about his already that could lead to significant trust issues.

Talk to him about it. Approach it in a friendly way. Being confounders, you're going to have to have a lot of these tough conversations. I'd recommend reading the book "Critical conversations" that gives a great number of examples of how to deal with these situations.

[http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking- Stakes-e...](http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Conversations-Talking-Stakes- ebook/dp/B005K0AYH4/)

All the best man, hope things work out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent recommendation, thanks a lot!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hard to say with the data points you've indicated. Why is it that you want this person as co-founder in the first place. The reasons you indicate are likeable, understands technical stuff, someone you've known for a while. Your concerns are he is real or perceived lack of commitment. Own views about fund raising which are untested etc.

I suggest sit down with him and have a "heart to heart" Better have a slightly difficult conversation early on than a much more difficult conversation later on. Impress on him that you have experience in fund raising and from the outside it always looks easy but its only when you go through the gauntlet that you realize what it is.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER6> I've had good cofounders and bad cofounders so below are my take but as always, take everything with a grain of salt.

When you work with people who truly hustle and are putting in their time to get things done, it is VERY noticeable. Anything short of this, is also very noticeable in its own way.

I've met significantly more people who are less engaged than I have people who are on point and pushing things forward. Once you've worked with both types of people, you generally get a feel for the difference and what you are truly looking for.

Without knowing anything else, I can personally say that if I were in your shoes, I would not be happy working with said person moving forward. The biggest red flag is the inability to reach a person. That is never okay in my book.

</comment><comment><USER7> Do you need a co-founder? The biggest concern for me would be the contact. Also, if you don't have a similar idea of commitment, it will go sour quickly.

You should go with your gut.

</comment><comment><USER8> IMHO he's not fully into.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you cannot reach your co-founder by call, he should not be your co-founder. I have made the experience that people who once prove that they are unreliable, remain unreliable. I also made the experience that people who you really believe are your friends, may see you as a riding horse or tool. When the time comes that you realize that by getting fooled heartlessly, this will shock you, because loosing trust in a friend is one of the most shocking experiences in live. When you've read this far, you should definitely NOT hesitate and do an overly early reaction, my experience is also that things often change the complete meaning, when you don't share positions and feelings. I'm fair but hard, you can be whatever you want, but do not be naive or a tool. Stay smart and sweet-tempered =)</comment>


Using AI to trace leaking pipes - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21741134-saving-millions-litres-using-ai-trace-leaking-pipes <comment><USER2> I have reached my "economist limit". Can't read TFA. Why post these walled websites when there is so much AI drivel on other sites as well?

<comment><USER3> Either delete your browser's cookies for the economist website or simply clear your browser's cache, then reload the page you want to read. Redo this each time you reach your "economist limit".</comment></comment>


Spain builds submarine 70 tons too heavy by putting a decimal in the wrong place - <AUTHOR> http://o.canada.com/2013/06/06/spain-builds-submarine-70-tons-too-heavy/

<comment><USER2> In the aerospace business there is a guy known as the Mass Properties Engineer who gets to rule the project with an iron fist. He is responsible for knowing the estimated, calculated or measured weight of every part on the spacecraft from concept through to launch. It's not a very fun job, but it's very important. Some people actually made careers out of it. You simply cannot get this stuff wrong and not pay dearly for it later. There are reviews, arguments, dealings, and handwringing over all of this.

Now, I have no idea if the Spanish sub business runs anything like that, but it surprises me that it apparently doesn't or didn't in this case. It's not like you just let some engineer in the corner calculate the weight and then go build it. This is a systemic fuckup, not a shifted decimal point.

<comment><USER3> My electrical engineering professors were constantly trying to ingrain in us the tendency to estimate the solutions to problems long before solving them. Why? because if you know the ball park solution you'll be able to catch gross errors before they happen. Thus you will be less likely to pull a Homer Simpson at the power plant or end up transmitting too much power from your antenna. I'm thankful to be in an industry where catastrophic failure does not have such harmful results.

<comment><USER4> Without more details it's hard to say what exactly went wrong, but it is not at all clear that a ballpark estimate would be of any help here: The submarine weighs 2200 tons, and they think it's 70 tons too heavy.

<comment><USER5> On the one hand, you are right. Preventing things like this (a 3% budget overrun) in large projects is very, very difficult.

On the other hand, if this really is a single off by ten error, this was not a death by a thousand cuts, but someone must have reported that his 80 ton part only weighed 8 tons. That must have been noticeable, even if it got reported for a 'part' where nobody has a natural feel for its weight (for example, what do living quarters, with kitchen, supplies, and water for the showers weigh?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Other explanation, more in line with the reality of Spanish reality.

[http://www.thelocal.es/20130520/530-million-bill-for- spains-...](http://www.thelocal.es/20130520/530-million-bill-for-spains- sinking-submarines#.UZvndKvSNk0)

> The president of the Navantia board has defended the work of the company's > Cartagena shipyard and complained of "meddling" by unqualified people.

> He explained that it had been reported as far back as 2005 that the > development process was not being properly followed and that there was a lot > of necessary improvisation due to the addition of new elements at the > request of the Ministry of Defence.

</comment><comment><USER7> > "Apparently somebody in the calculations made a mistake in the very > beginning and nobody paid attention to review the calculations," he said.

Supporting the old software engineering folklore that the earlier a bug is introduced (and the later it is found) the harder and more expensive it is to fix.

<comment><USER8> > Supporting the old software engineering folklore that the earlier a bug is > introduced (and the later it is found) the harder and more expensive it is > to fix.

I wouldn't call it folklore as there are numerous studies supporting it.

EDIT: I decided to crack open Code Complete for anyone who is interested [1].

[1] "Researchers at Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Hughes Aircraft, TRW and other organizations have found that purging an error by the beginning of construction allows rework to be done 10 to 100 times less expensively than when it's done in the last part of the process, during system test or after release (Fagan 1976; Humphrey, Snyder, and Willis 1991; Willis et al. 1998; Grady 1999; Shull et al. 2002; Boehm and Turner 2004)".

<comment><USER9> The studies supporting it have apparently been somewhat hard to confirm, a lot of the source material used by McConnell seems to be from secondary sources and self-referential. [1] is a detailed blog post where the author tries to track down the original sources:

[1] [http://blog.securemacprogramming.com/2012/09/an-apology- to-r...](http://blog.securemacprogramming.com/2012/09/an-apology-to-readers- of-test-driven-ios-development&#x2F);

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the headline I thought that somehow they had attached 70 tons more weight onto the thing than they wanted (e.g. accidentally made the hull too thick or something).

But from reading the article, it seems it's actually they just miscalculated the final weight based on the specs. Their miscalculation had it coming in 70 tons under its actual weight (which is 2200 tons). So the sub was built to spec, it's just the buoyancy calculations were wrong.

</comment><comment><USER11> > And a former Spanish official says the problem can be traced to a > miscalculation — someone apparently put a decimal point in the wrong place

Sloppy reporting. Spain uses a decimal comma.

<comment><USER12> With the advent of computers and programming languages that only use decimal points, I wonder how long countries will hold out and continue using decimal commas.

I would not be in the slightest surprised to see that engineering would standardize 100% on decimal points (even if the public used commas), just like how in the US engineering (except houses) uses metric, even though the public uses imperial.

(Also, presumably he spoke in Spanish, so translating decimal comma to decimal point in English is not sloppy reporting - it's good translation.)

<comment><USER13> > US engineering (except houses) uses metric, even though the public uses > imperial.

I don't know that I'd make this claim, in general. Everything from bikes to American cars can still be found with imperial nuts and bolts. Even the robotics work I did in school was mostly in imperial units due to the greater availability of, for example, 1/4" 6061 Aluminum stock.

People will stick to whatever system is most convenient for most tasks. It makes it difficult to escape local minima.

<comment><USER14> We've been "fully metric" here in Australia since the early '70's - I still find it amusing when seeing things like the building industries "standard sizing", where everything comes in 900mm increments and lumber all comes in sizes like "50 by 100mm nominal". Everything is still built out of 3, 6, and 12 foot two-by-fours and 3 by 6 foot 1/2 ply sheet - all labeled with metric dimensions of varying clarity.

<comment><USER15> Same with the Mexican Coke bottles that we get in some US stores (Mexican Coke is made with real sugar). It is a 12 ounce bottle, labeled as 355 ml.

<comment><USER16> We get 355ml cans here in New Zealand - I had no idea it related to anything at all. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The other key figure is that the entire submarine weighs 2,200 tons.

The sub was 3% too heavy and it will cost $14 million to fix, big woop, worse happens 1,000 times per day all around the world.

<comment><USER18> $14 million to find a solution, not to actually put that solution in place. A delay of two years in the $2.7B project will cost at least an order of magnitude more than $14M.

<comment><USER17> Even if it costs hundreds of millions of dollars, big woop.

How much have we spent on F-35 research, trillions? And those things don't even work in space.

<comment> D-Coder Or under water!

<comment><USER17> Not really practical for an aircraft to operate underwater, but someday operating in space might not be inconceivable. My point was that for trillions of dollars, the aircraft better do some cool shit. Yes, crash avoidance is awesome, but not trillions awesome.

The sea is arguably more valuable than space in terms of military value, an underwater vehicle is practically invisible and can deliver massive amounts of firepower to any region in the world. Not to mention the secret mission capabilities of submarines such as tapping undersea fiber and special forces delivery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> the article doesn't go on to explain more on how this could have happened, I would assume they run some tests on the specs, or some kind of simulations (I am obviously not an expert in making submarines) but considering they are so expensive, wow, amazing. Someone put a decimal in the wrong place and nobody noticed , what are the odds of that happening!

<comment><USER20> It's not as unlikely as you'd think.

Even in the U.S. we used to routinely have to put in slop factors to account for contractors that would routinely deliver gear in excess of spec. It wasn't until the most recent SSN class that they were able to finally hold the line against the contractors and sub-contractors... but at least the design itself would have weighed what was expected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As I've come to believe its always a communication (or generally human) problem rather than technical. Yet another blunder in line with the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Gimli Glider.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is there such a thing as submarine unit testing?

<comment><USER23> You can't exactly unit test the buoyancy - the hull is the only part that floats on its own[1], all the other crap you put in would sink. The two need to balance when you combine them, but there's no way to test that at the unit level.

[1] Ok technically a few other parts like air tanks would float.

<comment><USER24> But you don't have to unit test a radio throwing it to the water. Just sending messages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Good thing they found the problem before the sub's first voyage underwater.</comment>


President Donald Trump's call this week for a separate U.S. "space force" - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-had-spurned-space-force-prompting-trumps-decree-1529679336 <comment><AUTHOR> I cannot help but think about Star Troopers: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers).</comment>


Boring, complex and important: a recipe for the web's dire future - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.co.uk/article/w3c-eff-open-standards-web-cory-doctorow <comment><USER2> Would be good to use the headline 'Boring, complex and important: a recipe for the web's dire future' instead, or maybe something like 'More by Cory Doctorow on why the EFF resigned from the W3C.'

<comment><AUTHOR> Done.</comment></comment>


Your OpenSSL CSR command is out of date - <AUTHOR> https://certsimple.com/blog/openssl-csr-command

<comment><USER3> Correct me if I'm wrong, but -sha256 during CSR creation is meaningless in regards to the Chrome issue as Chrome will never see the hash that was used then creating the CSR.

All Chrome cares about is the signature used by the CA.

Now of course a CA could (and should) complain about sha-1 signed CSR, but this has nothing to do with the Chrome sha-1 deprecation.

<comment><USER4> Is that correct? I setup a certificate for www.healthlabs.com last week, and we found that we don't get the EV (browser green bar) on Chrome browser in ChromeOS. No other browser is complaining, and I've been scratching my head why. It would make sense if Chrome is complaining about the CA and not us, unfortunately it's not a point that I can argue with customers

<comment><USER5> One of the 2 intermediate CA on your cert path is signed with SHA-1:

        VeriSign Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority - <USER2>

In addition, in my Chrome for Linux browser (Version 41.0.2272.101 (64-bit)), that cert's parent cert is:

        Class 3 Public Primary Certification Authority

And that's a 1024 bit RSA key.

So my chrome's validation path includes a signature by a 1024 bits RSA key using SHA-1 as a trust step. No EV for you. Had the G5 cert been in my trust store (might be on your platform) then all the signatures would have been from 2048-bits RSA keys with SHA-256 and all A-OK.

<comment><USER6> I think this is because of a bug in older versions of NSS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Author here. This is a long but, but here's the gist:

\- sha256 is required for Chrome 42+ (mid April 2015) not to show warnings.

\- 2048 bit RSA is the new OpenSSL default and is required for EV certificates.

\- The 'subject' (the thing being attested to by the CA) you actually get in your certificate may have a lot more detail than the subject line in your CSR.

\- If you're using EV, and have at least www and non-www, the CN will never be used - your CA will put all the server names inside the SAN fields. Anything else won't work with current browsers.

<comment><USER7> Trying it out on my Windows machine, it gives me the PowerShell command to create a certificate. Is there some way to specify that I want an OpenSSL command?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi there - just a quick update to say you can now click 'Windows | Unix and Linux' underneath the command to flip between powershell & certreq / bash & openssl

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm confused by the blurring of sha-2 on the CSR with the hash function used for the cert. The hash used in the CSR signature has nothing to do with the hash used to sign the certificate. I don't know of any CA that requires a sha-2 CSR to emit a sha-2 cert; does CertSimple?

I agree it would be cryptographically correct, and I bet there's a nasty vulnerability in there that'll be exposed the day SHA-1 is broken---but that day isn't today.

</comment><comment><USER9> In the '-nodes' section, it mentions not having a password on the private key.

Can someone suggest a "secure, automated mechanism of providing the private key passphrase" as they recommend, if you wanted to use a password on it?

<comment><USER10> Best practice would be to use an HSM to store the key. It provides the usability benefits of an unencrypted private key with strong guarantees about the security of that key.

It's worth noting that the security benefits of encrypting the private key are limited in most cases. Whenever the server restarts, the private key is decrypted and stored in memory, so an attacker who can exploit your web server would be able to access it anyway. Some attackers might not be able to access memory (e.g. exploits in a web application), but in that case you should be able to use standard file permissions to protect the key.

Encrypting the key would have more benefit if you are planning to store it in places other than the server it is used on, and/or transfer it across a network. In that case, it's probably best to carefully consider your threat model and security requirements, rather than solely relying on the default encryption provided by OpenSSL. For example - do you have the discipline do use a strong, unique passphrase on that key? If not, encrypting the key doesn't provide much protection against a determined attacker. Is stretching performed to slow down a brute force attacker? And so on...

<comment><AUTHOR> +1. I believe HSMs may even be required for CAs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ryan-c In practice, some CAs do require certain things in the CSR subject even though they create their own subject when they sign. I've seen the country required, for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's correct - the point of the article was to illustrate that the CA is likely to add things, not that you can omit the basics - hence the minimal example including Country, Location, etc.</comment></comment>


The Persistently Stupid Idea - <AUTHOR> http://blog.figuringshitout.com/the-persistently-stupid-idea/

<comment><USER2> Nice article- But it is missing an obvious possibility: Smart ideas that sound stupid on the surface.

Building a "giant iPod Touch" might fall in this category. (Jury still out)

</comment><comment><USER3> >> #9. Method And Device For Recognition of a Collision With a Pedestrian (pop the hood)

> Sounds like a pretty smart system to us. With that in mind, here's a little > suggestion for the inventors: When you guys roll out the next version of > this thing, maybe it'd be better if it actually PREVENTED the collision.

The point of this system is to mitigate harm to the pedestrian after the point at which a collision was _impossible_ to avoid (which is easy to detect). It sounds like avoiding the collision is great idea, but a system that can do that can _cause_ harm. The idea with the hood popping is that it can _only_ help.

FWIW, this was designed for is for BMWs whose hoods pop in the appropriate direction.</comment>


You Can Thank The CIA For The Return Of Polio - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140508/17465027174/you-can-thank-cia-return-polio-even-though-media-conveniently-ignores-this.shtml <comment><USER2> I was talking to my mom about this, she was recently in an area of Pakistan where people live under Taliban rule. She was talking to several women and they openly confirmed to her that they are too afraid of the Taliban to give their children a polio vaccination. It could be possible to provide vaccinations in a sort of black market environment, but it carries a high risk of retaliation for anyone who does so.

During our conversation it was mentioned that the CIA shouldn't have used polio vaccinations as a cover for gathering intel. I don't know why the CIA thought compromising polio eradication was a safe idea.

From what I've heard Bill Gates is doing his best to help eradicate polio from Pakistan. With corruption prevalent in the country he has few people to depend on but I've heard he's contacted the right people.

<comment><USER3> "I don't know why the CIA thought compromising polio eradication was a safe idea."

I seriously doubt this was considered at all. Results.</comment></comment>


Speakker - Crossbrowser HTML5 Audio Player - <AUTHOR> http://blogfreakz.com/html5/crossbrowser-html5-audio-player/ <comment><USER2> External links tended to lag, but overall, not bad. One thing bugs me, though -- why did they use a power button symbol instead of a play symbol?

</comment><comment><USER3> Okay, a "power button" for "play button" - are you serious? If the developer who made this is here please change this. A power button to play is not proper, nor is it innovation. UX standards are already in place for a "play icon" to be where you put the "on icon", please fix.

Also, overall performance was very spotty on Safari 5.0.4 with a fast computer.

<comment><USER4> Check out SoundManager 2. It's awesome. <http://www.schillmania.com/projects/soundmanager2/>

<comment><USER3> Oh wow, that's pretty cool. I like the 360° player.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Direct: <http://www.speakker.com/>

Direct demo: <http://www.speakker.com/demo/>

Anyone have experience with this in comparison to jPlayer or MediaElement.js?</comment>


Apple Says iOS, OS X and "Key Web Services" Not Affected by Heartbleed - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2014/04/10/apple-says-ios-osx-and-key-web-services-not-affected-by-heartbleed-security-flaw/

<comment><USER2> Oddly enough, I've had a lot of trouble getting my AppleTV to connect to iTunes services for the last 24h or so. I wonder if there might be some vulnerabilities being patched.

</comment><comment><USER3> Article is not very informative. If they don't use OpenSSL what do they use?

<comment><USER4> SecureTransport [https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/securi...](https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/security/Reference/secureTransportRef/Reference/reference.html)

Remember "Goto fail?"

<comment><USER5> Yes, they are developing their own SSL library, so "Goto fail" didn't affect OpenSSL, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Sites that use OpenSSL will display a small "lock" icon in the top left-hand corner of your Web browser's address bar (though not all sites showing this lock use OpenSSL);"

This sentence physically hurt to read. I seriously hope that Google Translate wrote this.

<comment><USER7> I stopped reading at that line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Apple takes security very seriously. IOS and OS X never incorporated the vulnerable software and key Web-based services were not affected,"

This makes it sound like they knew about the vulnerabilities, which they didn't...

<comment><USER6> That was exactly their implication. "We don't go for that open source crap" is a motto of theirs. Usually it's just obnoxious. This time, they just happened to blindly fall on the right side of the line.

<comment><USER9> Er, you realise that Apple's own OpenSSL substitute is open source? And that they both use and release lots of open source software?

Are you thinking of Microsoft circa 2000, or something?</comment></comment></comment>


U.S. Considers Combating Somali Militants' Twitter Use - brown9-2 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/world/africa/us-considers-combating-shabab-militants-twitter-use.html?_r=1&hp

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a fine line between blocking the twitter usage of a Somali militant and blocking the twitter usage of a peaceful American dissident.</comment>


Show HN: Bekli, where the graph comes to life - <AUTHOR> I'm really pleased with the way I display user results here. I'd love feedback on how you think I might be able to use this.
http://www.bekli.it
Wait - context. I've been working on a flash-card site for java developers on and off for a while, the latest iteration is above.
I'm unsure if companies actually want people who know the language anymore though. It seems they all want someone who can solve algorithms and then pay them a ludicrous amount of money to surf stackoverflow and read documents all day.
Any thoughts on my display of data, or if there are companies that want knowledge over algorithms? <comment><USER2> I... am not sure what to say. Anybody can learn a language, especially if they already know any, relatively quickly. Teaching someone to think about how to solve problems is much, _much_ harder.

I'd take someone who can think over someone who knows any given language _any_ day of the week. Even in my _preferred_ languages I still look up documentation and "how-tos", and that's not likely to ever change.

I don't care if someone knows everything in the JLS or is Java Certified. I _do_ care if they can solve problems at a reasonable pace.

</comment><comment><USER3> Haven't tried the site, but have a couple of points: * Why no https? * Link broken: [http://www.bekli.it/whoWeAre](http://www.bekli.it/whoWeAre) * I don't like the overall design, it looks like it looks like too empty or simple (I'm also talking about the "take a quiz screenshot") - but I'm not a designer at all.

Well done shipping :)</comment>