A FreeBSD 10 Desktop How-To - <AUTHOR> https://cooltrainer.org/a-freebsd-desktop-howto/ <comment><USER2> Uff, that was a trip down the memory lane. That article strongly reminded me of what Linux was like - some 10-15 years ago. Nothing preconfigured, everything had to be set up by hand using config files, sometimes using magic incantations from the shell.

I do get that some people prefer things this way (I used too when I was a student and had plenty of time to spend on tinkering - heck I have installed Slackware from floppies in 1995) and it certainly lets you understand what is going on your machine in minute detail, but a desktop machine is a tool for the most people - they need to get work done, and don't want to have to mess with the OS to get even basic stuff like networking or desktop running.

I think I will stay with my Mageia on my machines ...

<comment><USER3> Don't be ridiculous, Linux [1] is not better at this. Maybe out of the box experience is a bit nicer, but it's not generally just usable after that. Want a properly working network? Guess what - network manager is the problem, you have to disable it and configure network interfaces manually with config files and everything. Or want vim as a default editor - good luck with config files, "update-alternatives" shell magic is the only way to change it. Want to disable avahi, mlocate and other annoying stuff? Dig deep into configs and .overrides and magic chmods (hud-service). Locales are of course incorrect by default too. And it's not even close to everything, far from it. That's why I have like a 500 line shell script to automate configuration after installation.

The only way to make it better is to recognize the problem and make a new distribution with a decent well thought out package and configuration manager.

[1] I'm talking about desktop Ubuntu of course.

<comment><USER4> That's what Linux on desktop is always about. First contact, and it all looks fine. But then, you want a certain application installed and use it or whatever and things start getting haywire (from user experience perspective). Within half an hour of fresh install you're on some obscure old and closed topics on forums or IRC begging for help, etc. Once it works it's great, but that's how it is.

I use MacOS on my laptop, Windows 8.1 on main workstation and Fedora 24 / XFCE on another workstation daily. Each and every OS has some things I wish the other OS would have and i can't decide which one is 'the best'. There's no such thing.

I'd say the closest thing to an ideal situation (for me) would be a Fedora OS with MacOS-like opaqueness to configurations and upgrade, Adobe, Games, and Office applications from Windows (they work better on Windows) and preview (spacebar and app) from MacOS in it. At that point I wouldn't even care if, at its core, it would be Linux or BSD or NT.

<comment><USER5> Chrome OS will get close to this once it gets Android app support.

Microsoft supports Office apps for Android as a first-class port.

Chrome OS is "opaque"...there are very few knobs to turn.

Games will be covered as long as you mean mobile games.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a big user of FreeBSD on the server (in production) and came across a link to this a while back in a forum post and decided to run through it just to see how accurate it is (there are a _LOT_ of out-of-date FreeBSD "how-to" articles out there. "n00bs" are often referred at this one and, if you follow it, you will generally end up with a working system.

There are a few things that could be improved, however.

I would recommend not blindly copying the sysctl values provided. Many of them were already set _higher_ by default on my test system. By copy/pasting the suggested values, I was actually lowering the values (maxfiles, shared memory settings, etc.).

Another big one was device permissions. For a single-user machine, they're probably okay. If another person will ever have access to your machine, however, you're probably granting them _way_ too many permissions.

In short, if you're just wanting to bring up a FreeBSD desktop to play around with, this will probably get you there. You might also consider PC-BSD [0], which takes of all the hard work for you.

Once you're up and running, head over to the FreeBSD Forums if you encounter any issues.

Welcome to FreeBSD!

[0]: [http://pcbsd.org](http://pcbsd.org)

[1]: [https://forums.freebsd.org/](https://forums.freebsd.org/)

<comment><USER7> Are there similar guides for those of us wanting to try a dual-boot setup between PC-/FreeBSD and Windows? I remember not finding any straightforward guides more than a year ago when I decided to move away from Windows. I'm on a Linux distro now, but if I can find a suitable guide, I will try it (probably on a VM first).

<comment><USER8> I don't know. But it shouldn't be too hard. Just install FBSD after windows, and find some instructions for booting windows from boot0/booteasy, the freebsd bootloader, or take the easy way out and get grub2 from the package repository, and follow the instructions for setting that up, followed by the instructions for dual booting windows and linux, with any obvious modifications.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> FreeBSD is _amazing_ , but it suffers from one big problem: the number of people using it is so small that many things that are easy to accomplish on Linux and other operating systems prove incredibly inconvenient or impossible on FreeBSD because no one has bothered to do them before.

This is best explained with an example. Say you want to install TensorFlow with CUDA 7.5 and cuDNN v4 support, which is necessary for training large neural nets.

Here's how you do it on, say, Ubuntu:

      sudo pip3 install --upgrade [Official TensorFlow URL]

And here's a blog post with a long list of instructions, explanations, and caveats for doing the same thing on FreeBSD:

      https://ecc-comp.blogspot.com/2016/06/tensorflow-on-freebsd.html

Except that on FreeBSD apparently no one has posted instructions for getting CUDA or cuDNN to work with TensorFlow, so you're in for a world of "fun" trying to figure out how to do that on your own.

<comment><USER10> Isn't the problem that that CUDA for FreeBSD does not exist in the first place?

<comment><USER11> Nvidia can't be bothered to port it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Compared to Linux distributions for me the most interesting difference of FreeBSD isn't the license or somewhat exclusive features like dtrace/ZFS. It is the release model which separates the "stable/LTS" base and the rolling 3rd party software.

In (for example) Debian stable I have a very reliable system but any annoying bugs in end user software will remain for the next several years. But going to a rolling release distro could result in unexpected troubleshooting sessions while I actually had to be productive instead.

So there are drawbacks of going to a full rolling or a full stable distro and imho the FreeBSD model is the best balance between both extremes. Why isn't there a Linux distro like this?

<comment><USER13> openSUSE is IMO relatively close to that, due to their superior packaging system (it's best one I know).

So if you use normal release (not tumbleweed) you are fixed to the package versions when suse was released, but you can go to OBS[1] where you can obtain latest version of software. Their 3sat dependency solver makes sure that dependencies are resolved correctly. Another interesting thing is that they group package upgrades into patches, with description and other details. You can for example issue zypper patch --have <cve> and instead everything that resolved specific vulnerability. I also love zypper ps showing which processes need to be restarted after the upgrade.

[1] [http://software.opensuse.org](http://software.opensuse.org) which is like github for packages (it supports other distros as well) most packages are there in latest versions.

<comment><USER14> The wonderful thing about OBS is you can branch a package, make modifications to your personal version, and add that new repo as a source for zypper to pull from, incredibly easily. PPA's and Launchpad are orders of magnitude more complicated to do the same task.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Author here. There will be an update to this page soon that talks about FreeBSD 11, dual booting, laptops (Mac EFI weirdness, lagg for lan/wlan failover), updates to some out of date sections like the fonts and manually configuring X. To its credit the reason it's out of date is that I haven't had to think about my computer at all since 10.0 aside from updating my packages and freebsd-update-ing to new point releases twice a year.

<comment><USER16> This is a great resource. I've pointed many people to it in the last couple of years.

Thank you for putting it all together, and I look forward to your updates!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I for one am grateful to NVidia for providing a FreeBSD driver to this day. Their dedication to providing support for UNIX systems is admirable.

<comment><USER18> I was curious to know what FreeBSD versions NVidia supports, and I cannot believe it's 7.3 to 10-CURRENT. This makes me believe they will quickly follow up with 11-CURRENT. This is very cool in terms of FreeBSD's kernel API.

[http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/FreeBSD-x86/367.44/REA...](http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/FreeBSD-x86/367.44/README/minimumrequirements.html)

We know that the likes of Pixar or LANL use NVidia on Linux, for them to take Linux seriously, but is there information who the important FreeBSD and Solaris customers are? Is it The Weather Channel's FreeBSD IntelliStar system that motivates NVidia to support it? And what about Solaris?

I mean, I want to believe NVidia supports FreeBSD and Solaris because they already support X11, but these are three different kernel drivers. With a business like NVidia, which isn't supporting open source graphics stacks like AMD or Intel are, I have to ask myself what the commercial motivators are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As an ex-Unix kernel developer, I always thought FreeBSD and OpenBSD were just more comfortable environments for me than Linux. However, the desktop experience, and especially getting X to work well with my hardware (multiple monitors and graphics cards for example) eventually won me over and I simply try to find a Linux distro that supports my hardware best.

I agree with qwertyulop924 who points out its nice being able to understand the system's configuration. Now though, I'm with johnchristopher, manually configuring Xorg is where I reach my limit and just want it to be magically done for me.

<comment><USER20> I haven't needed to configure X on OpenBSD at least five years now. The X server does that automatically, just like on Linux. For the record, I haven't needed to on FreeBSD either, but I've run that much more sporadically, so take that with a grain of salt.

My impression was that Xorg has obviated the need for manual configuration in all but the most extreme cases. Multiple monitors are easy with xrandr, but I'm not sure how multiple graphics cards will work.

<comment><USER19> Yes, I've heard that things are much better now. I switched my desktops, not servers, to Linux years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My two cents: this is all nice and fun if your purpose when using a computer is learning about computers, but you don't do any _actual_ work.

When you stop "messing" and need to do actual work, you are going to really appreciate a system with sane defaults (graphic environment working out of the box, drivers pre-installed, plug&play and audio stuff that just work) that can work predictably.

Of course, no system is immune to stupidity: yes, even on Ubuntu you must be aware of what are you doing and what consequences it will have.

For me, avoiding third-parties repository and going from LTS to LTS solves 95% of the problems, and in exchange I have a stable desktop machine that works all the day, everyday.

I have been messing around with Slackware, FreeBSD, Gentoo and NetBSD in the past and I am now a happy Xubuntu (and ubuntu-server) user.

</comment><comment><USER22> I never got far with FreeBSD on the desktop because every time I thought I would give it a try I ended up just thinking Linux is easier to use and my Mac is already basically the same thing but pre-configured, so it's a pretty expensive hobby unless you have a lot time or just really like playing with the details of your operating system. I agree there are philosophical reasons you might prefer FreeBSD to other operating systems. Anyway, my favorite part of that blog post is this:

# Handle Unicode on removable media libiconv_load="YES" libmchain_load="YES" cd9660_iconv_load="YES" msdosfs_iconv_load="YES"

<comment><USER23> "Linux is easier to use" heh. Well I mean Ubuntu is easy to use, sure. Until you want to change things, then it gets in your way.

Every time I try Linux, nothing makes sense to me. Why is there a weird, unfriendly `ip` command instead of `ifconfig`. Why is systemd doing the "* Waiting for some bullshit … [∞ seconds]" thing on shutdown instead of killing everything. Why does the bootloader (which is now part of the systemd project, of course) use EFI variables instead of just putting itself at /EFI/BOOT/BOOTX64.EFI. Why is there so much crap exposed as mounted filesystems. Why is there no separation between the base system and user packages (/usr/local).

Modern GNU/systemd/Linux just doesn't feel right.

<comment><USER24> Killing everything on shutdown doesn't seem like a good idea. Programs should be able to shut down cleanly.

<comment><USER25> Your data isn't safe unless every program can handle being randomly killed. The power can always go out.

Now, once all your programs can be immediately killed, why would you ever not want to do that?

<comment><USER24> Isn't it better to neatly close up remote connections instead of leaving them hanging to time out? I'm thinking of web servers and database clients.

<comment><USER25> The kernel should close all your TCP connections properly when you die, so it should all be good. Mostly you need to autosave files every so often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > GNOME 3, available on Linux since 3.0 in the spring of 2011, is finally > available in the official FreeBSD tree as of November 2014. The three and a > half year delay is thanks to the upstream GNOME project's years-long fight > against any operating system that doesn't have a penguin for a mascot. It > took several years and a vastly waning userbase, then suddenly they care > about portability again. Sure, okay. Either way, it's here and you can > install it from x11/gnome3.

Well thats interesting...

<comment><USER8> Gnome3 is in a fight againt anybody who doesn't just want to look at the pretty colors. It really doesn't do anything right.

<comment><USER18> And even if you don't use GNOME3, Gtk3 is now required by Firefox, including Firefox gtk3 bugs, which will be fixed in Firefox. Most importantly the many regressions of Gtk3 itself. Gtk3 was a good refactoring to support Wayland and HiDPI, but it's not stable or fast yet for everyone, like Gtk2 has been. I accept the fact when gtk devs argue that gtk2 has many architectural bugs, but day to day as a user I don't notice them, and I very much prefer the old file dialog, for instance.

Gtk3 may be faster in theory due to GPU acceleration as a possibility, but when Gtk 3.20 for a split second shows a black rectangle for each new dialog while it's opening, I have a hard time taking their gpu acceleration argument seriously.

I tried building Firefox 48 with gtk2, but it crashed in the file dialog, while the gtk3 build is slower and introduces gui regressions (yes, I've reported the gtk3 bugs). Right now I cannot move past Firefox ESR with gtk2, and I hope I can still use Firefox next year.

What I'm saying is that GNOME3's stack (especially Gtk3) doesn't seem to work outside GNOME3 as compatibly as Gtk2 does, and it may be what's intended, if past communication from the GNOME dev team is any indication.

<comment><USER27> It made me so sad when Firefox switched over to GTK3, and now I'm stuck with their foolish attempt at improving the file browser. For whatever reason by default it tries (and fails) to open a network connection, and they broke the ability to navigate through the filesystem using just the keyboard.

<comment><USER18> > foolish attempt at improving the file browser.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1267863](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1267863)

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=635044](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=635044)

I predict that someone will get fed up enough to revive the Firefox Qt port, since Qt doesn't break as much between releases, and it doesn't conflict with Mozilla's plans to drop GTK2 support. The memory overhead of Qt is absorbed within a modern browser's memory needs.

<comment><USER27> An up-to-date QT FireFox port would make me so happy :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a great intro, it seems it hasn't been updated in a couple of years (last history update is 12/26/14 (or 26/12/14 :-)) but it shows pretty clearly all the steps to turn your FreeBSD install into a desktop environment hosting OS.

Now I just want a company/org that will in conjunction with a decent machine setup. Basically I want Sun Microsystems back where they have some great hardware engineers put together a desktop system, and great software engineers that can put together a well integrated and desktop environment.

</comment><comment><USER18> And if you want to use an external usb disk that's shared with FreeBSD, you can use [https://www.freshports.org/sysutils/fusefs- lkl/](https://www.freshports.org/sysutils/fusefs-lkl/) to fuse-mount with the original linux kernel filesystem code. Once lkl is updated to 4.7 or 4.8, ext4's encryption support should allow a shared, external usb drive that work with Linux and FreeBSD, but I don't know if lkl will also support the keyring on FreeBSD.

</comment><comment><USER8> I don't love magic - arch is on my desk, but I do love videogames, so as much as I thing the BSDs are Really Cool, they're not going on my desktop until they can run steam reliably through the emulation layer (and maybe not even then: I remember the days of WINE).

Now a laptop or ARM chip, on the other hand...

<comment><USER18> [https://github.com/SteamOnFreeBSD/SteamOnFreeBSD](https://github.com/SteamOnFreeBSD/SteamOnFreeBSD)

<comment><USER8> Yeah, but how well can I trust that all my games will work? I don't know. I might boot it off a second disk or something, to check...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If you want to enjoy the benefits of a FreeBSD desktop without all the hassle of making it to just work, take PC-BSD for a spin.

[http://pcbsd.org](http://pcbsd.org)

</comment><comment><USER30> Awesome, thanks for posting. Been a while since I wanted to try any BSD but never got my hands around it. Might just put in into VM and play around. Just like I started with Linux.

</comment><comment><USER31> There is Gentoo/FreeBSD project[1] too, to provide portage tree on top of FreeBSD system.

[1] [https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_FreeBSD](https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_FreeBSD)

</comment><comment><USER32> I can't wait to see this guys face when he finds out that Jordan Hubbard wants to implement something very much like systemd in a future version of freebsd.

<comment><USER8> Not OP, but it depends. If they take the good bits (simple unit files, process monitoring), and ignore the bad bits (trying to do everyone else's job, sinister plans for world domination, no fun at parties), than I'd be cool with it.

heck, just stick process monitoring into the rc.d model. You'll get the Best of systemd. Especially if you don't take the Rest of systemd.

<comment><USER33> Sometimes I run end user-ish stuff under /usr/ports/sysutils/py-supervisor and sometimes under the rc system.

The features of supervisord are very nice, the simple config, the password protected web interface for semi-sysadmin users to access and restart their memory leaking Java processes. Basically what you list as killer features.

On the other hand its not ready for prime time as a /bin/init replacement, I don't NEED the features they're just nice, and the only thing more annoying than having to learn all the peculiarities and bugs and workarounds and syntax of one init system, is having to learn two init systems.

I can imagine a world where freebsd base uses rc and "Everything in ports and pkg-ng uses supervisord". I'm not sure if I like it or dislike it, but it is at least imaginable.

In my infinite spare time I was writing a compiler that translates supervisord.conf files into shell RC files. Most of the time its pretty simple.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, that's what I mean. I'd be pretty happy if FreeBSD picked up s6, or something else in the daemontools family, if it really wants to go in that direction.

Frankly, even SMF would be better. For all its faults, its still got a good idea of its place: It's an init system, no more, no less.

Here is a list of things I would be concerned about my init system doing: _anything other than being a good init system._ By coincedence, that's exactly what systemd does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I would love to trial on a Macbook Pro 15 Retina that I've got available, anyone has experience with this sort of hardware setup?

<comment><USER35> Don't run natively, it's almost impossible. Try Virtual Box or VMWare

<comment><USER23> It's not impossible! It won't support the built-in Wi-Fi (because Apple still uses goddamn Broadcom), but Intel graphics work great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I've been running FreeBSD servers for several years now and have previously tried to use FreeBSD on the desktop as well. Recently, I bought a laptop and put FreeBSD 11.0 with a graphical desktop on it. This is my one and only laptop I use currently. The laptop is a Lenovo ThinkPad T520 with 8GB RAM and a 120GB SSD in place of the original spinning disk and four gigs of RAM. The T520 was released in 2011.

It works pretty nicely, except that the battery discharges from 100% down to where the laptop shuts down in just 1 hour (pretty much on the second), and also, suspend doesn't work of course. I also have not found out how to get the Fn-buttons to work for screen brightness and such. Also, audio over Bluetooth does not appear to be supported in FreeBSD 11.0, so I can't use my wireless headphones.

Things that _do_ work include:

\- The fingerprint reader, thanks to security/fprintd and the security/fprint_demo tool.

\- Webcam using cuse4bsd compiled from upstream source and multimedia/pwcview. The cuse4bsd in the ports collection does not work with my camera. pwcview supports up to vga (640x480) resolution and 30 fps, and this works using my camera. Not sure what the real max resolution and frame rate of the webcam is supposed to be but this is good enough for me.

\- Hardware accelerated 3d graphics using the proprietary binary driver by Nvidia.

\- The most important GUI applications I need all work, including but not limited to; rxvt-unicode, Mozilla Firefox, Chromium, LibreOffice Writer, Blender, Inkscape and VirtualBox.

\- External monitors connected to the DisplayPort.

\- Built-in WiFi.

\- The SD-card reader.

\- Speakers, as well as the audio jack. Using audio/pavucontrol, I can play from multiple sources to different destinations at the same time.

There are some parts of the hardware that I have not yet tested, including the built-in 3G modem, because I do not currently have a subscription with a data plan. (My cell phone is not a smart phone, I use an iPod touch on WiFi instead and get _almost_ the same experience I would with an iPhone.) I have also not yet tested audio over DisplayPort as far as I can remember.

Currently, Blender can not be found in the binary packages provided by FreeBSD, even though it is in the ports tree, but that's no biggie since I'm building all the packages myself using Poudriere anyway, because I have some options which I want set differently from what they are set to for the packages in the official repositories.

I intend to figure out how to get suspend working and how to get acceptable battery life eventually. I think most of the bits of what is needed have already been written, and it's mostly a matter of finding out where these things are and how to enable them.

In order to have an environment that I can easily modify and recreate, I forked the FreeBSD source tree and ports tree on GitHub, and I made an additional repository detailing my configuration.

Here is a screenshot I took of my laptop yesterday: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eriknstr/ThinkPad- FreeBSD-...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/eriknstr/ThinkPad-FreeBSD- setup/screenshots-2016-08-26/screenshot.png)

<comment><USER37> I would recommend OpenBSD for laptops. I'm not sure why, but my machine under FreeBSD had similar power issues and enabling apmd did nothing to resolve them.

I installed OpenBSD because someone said it supports think pads better and they were absolutely right, my machine is cool, quiet and the battery lasts ages. OpenBSD also requires X11 to be installed for ports to work, so maybe it is designed more for desktop use?

For reference I'm using a Lenovo Thinkpad x201s

<comment><USER38> But will the FreeBSD Nvidia driver work in OpenBSD?

<comment><USER23> No.

They make their driver for Solaris though :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> the screen shots look amazing but I'm so involved with ubuntu at this point. should I really try FreeBSD because I really gain something ubuntu doesn't offer me?

<comment><USER40> For some people the problem is that Ubuntu offers _too much_. For some it offers _the wrong thing_ (systemd craze, for a start). Actually, if you're being involved with Ubuntu in a good way, learning things, trying out new concepts, I would say stay with the course. But try *BSD by all means, some time in the future :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Thanks, It Was Helpful

</comment><comment><USER42> Someday I might go back to FreeBSD.

The time I have spent doing things like

       apt-get remove unity* libqt5*

to rip off all the bloatware and reduce everything back to just gdm + gnome- shell + gnome-terminal + emacs-gtk3 + chrome with pdf viewer + hangouts is comparable with bootstrapping all this from FreeBSD ports (unfortunately without hangouts).

Notice, by the way, how easy and intuitive plain text configs done right are.

Each time I see systemd processes in some ps output I feel nothing but despair and disgust.

</comment><comment><USER43> Pretty ridiculous how much work this is, when you can also go to a shop buy a pc with windows or a mac and everything works directly after booting the machine.

<comment><USER44> If you bought a computer with an os preinstalled, of course everything works on first boot. I haven't seen a lot of computers for sale with FreeBSD preinstalled though.

<comment><USER45> The last time I bought a computer with an OS preinstalled [a couple months ago], it threw all sorts of popups at me, flashed command prompts at me, doing all sorts of nasty stuff while stealing focus from the programs I was trying to use. And it couldn't find or install any OS updates. Hours and hours of scanning, and nothing would happen. Hours and hours spent googling, trying to manually install updates that supposedly fix the problem but cannot be installed...

I wouldn't say everything worked.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your passive income in 2020? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> My startup. It's not yet generating enough to pay _all_ the bills, but it's growing.

It's passive income in the sense that if I didn't "come in to the office" for a month, my revenue would, in all likelihood, remain the same or increase.

The entire process from on-boarding customers to them putting money in our bank account is done by computers.

[https://siftrics.com/](https://siftrics.com/)

<comment><USER3> Just checked your website, amazing product. Good luck!

<comment><USER2> Thanks man! The hardest part is getting the word out.

<comment><USER4> This is a really nice product you've got there! I actually have another related issue: as an English-speaking immigrant living in a non-English- speaking European country, I get a lot of bills and invoices in the local language. It would be really cool for someone like me to have a translation layer on top of this. I don't know if an individual like me would go past your free plan though.

<comment><USER2> Hi! Thanks for the comment.

1\. You make a good point about languages. In fact, it seems a lot of my users are European or Latin American, so this would suit a good portion of the user base. I'll certainly look into adding better language support.

2\. The free plan is 5,000 kB which equates to 30-100 documents (not many, I admit) assuming your PDFs are 50-150 kB. However, it is worth noting that the paid price is prorated to groups of 100 kB, each group costing only $0.01. So every document you upload outside the free plan would cost $0.005-$0.015 per month, assuming the same document sizes as I mentioned before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Skincare for men ([https://www.mendskin.co](https://www.mendskin.co)). I commented in a similar thread 6 months or so ago, and it's been solid. First started as D2C, but that proved to be a terrible decision. D2C is effectively dead. Now working with online retailers and my own online store. Wasn't profitable last year, but so far this year looks good because of our partners.

One of our partners is selling our stuff for what seems to be 85% off... idk why, but if you wanna give our products a shot, check them out here (there's no way I can personally offer a better deal lol): [https://fashionsta.com/brands/men-d-skin- co.html](https://fashionsta.com/brands/men-d-skin-co.html)

<comment><USER6> Can you describe what the process of working with online retailers is like? Do you have to price it knowing the retailer will take a cut? What is outreach like? How often do they respond? Any knowledge would be helpful :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From [https://AutoSpotting.org](https://AutoSpotting.org), a software that I wrote a few years ago and I still maintain and work on occasionally I earn about $450 monthly.

I also have a bunch of shares and funds that increased by some $4000 over the last year.

</comment><comment><USER8> 3458 shares of VTSAX. Can't get any more passive than index funds.</comment>


"LinkedIn will become the MySpace of hiring" - <AUTHOR> http://venturevillage.eu/geeklist-reuben-katz

<comment><USER2> I deleted my <http://geekli.st> account after the way they treated Shanley Kane (<http://storify.com/charlesarthur/oh-hai-sexism>).

Even though they issued an apology and a clear PR exercise of devoting months to 'Women in Tech' it couldn't change the attitude displayed by Christian Sanz and Reuben Katz.

Will I regret my decision to delete my account? Maybe. Thankfully there are other alternatives out there like <http://coderwall.com>.

<comment><USER3> Thanks Vertis, we've done much since then to help make the tech industry a better place for women including this successful event in Paris <http://railsgirls.com/paris> and [http://geekli.st/gklst/we-are-creating-a- women-in-technology...](http://geekli.st/gklst/we-are-creating-a-women-in- technology-committee-on-gklst-feel-free-to-request-to-join) and sponsorship of many great events like: [http://geekli.st/estelle/the-attendees-for-confident- coding-...](http://geekli.st/estelle/the-attendees-for-confident-coding- javascript-for-the-web-are-about-90-female)

<comment><USER2> There was the sexist aspect and then there was an aspect of just attacking/disrespecting someone on twitter.

I care very little for the PR actions you've taken to rescue the geekli.st image, and more about the lessons you both learned.

Did you both apologise to Shanley in private? Because it matters more to me what you do when people aren't watching.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's promo material for Geeklist it seems.

Tried signing in with twitter but they want too many privileges:

This application will be able to: Read Tweets from your timeline. See who you follow, and follow new people. Update your profile. Post Tweets for you.

<comment><USER5> I have dedicated Facebook and Twitter accounts for the sole purpose of third party authentication.

<https://twitter.com/#!/LoganLoginski> :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> No it won't - I've yet to receive an interesting offer through LinkedIn. In fact, it's nothing but recruiter drivel. Any interesting offers have always come via my inbox..

<comment><USER2> Agreed. The only real value I find in LinkedIn is keeping in contact with old colleagues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Once again Hacker New has removed an article about us from the front page as it was gaining up votes and a vibrant stream of comments starting up. Silencing startups in the press is not the way, could it be because there is a YC company trying to copy/compete with us? Nice. Done.

<comment><USER7> I had this comment page open in its own tab, and was surprised to check and see that, in fact, the article had abruptly vanished from the front page. Interesting, and even a bit concerning. Around here, you never know how much of an article's success/failure is due to popularity or human intervention.

<comment><USER8> At this point it's top of page 3. Normally when mods kill it, it just disappears. I suspect in this case the overt marketing and reubenelli's whiny, entitled tone are encouraging people to flag it. It's only at 8 points, so I doubt it takes too many flags to drive it down the stack.

edit: also, geekli.st is busted on chrome; very few of the images on the front page are loading (works fine in Firefox).

<comment><USER3> anthony, could you screenshot the 'busted in chrome' issue and send to us at firstname.lastname@example.com? Should be working smoothly! Whatever the reason, it was one of europes leading writers on tech who interviewed and did the article. i suppose if someone writes a positive article it's overt marketing. Thanks for being on geeklist and let us know if you find more bugs! cheers!

<comment><USER8> Sent.

Well, it looks like a standard PR puff piece to me - I'm not sure (from that article plus looking at geekli.st) exactly what the draw is, other than publishing stuff on the web? I can do that on my own site.

Plus your design kinda sucks, usability-wise - massive fonts, huge whitespace and line spacing mean that I can see the cards from my secret moonbase lair. I also have to scroll, even on a 1920x1080 monitor, and squint, because your colors are like, #999 on #EEE.

You also need to figure out a way to get people to fill in details about their cards, or kill the extra info part. Every card says "I did 'X', details: <no info> with: <no contributors>". (That's not a bug in Chrome, I just checked in Firefox too). So if you can't get one of the founding technical guys from Skype to brag a bit more ([http://geekli.st/taavet/helped-grow-skype-from- zero-to-first...](http://geekli.st/taavet/helped-grow-skype-from-zero-to- first-few-hundred-million-users)), what's going on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article smells like geekli.st promotion; any other linkedin alternatives?

And where have the 2011 side-line syndicates gone? The StackOverflow careers and the one that turned up on thedailywtf.com etc? Are they relevant?

<comment><USER10> Personally I think that this could be the perfect niche for Google+ as the Facebook for grown-ups and a career networking tool. Especially now they've started hooking up author attribution into search results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> But MySpace got superceeded by everything else, so maybe this is right. The whole password snafu is still lingering a bad taste in many mouths.

Eventualy we will just have CV brokers :|</comment>


How to make Textmate rock. - <AUTHOR> http://al3x.net/2008/12/03/how-i-use-textmate.html

<comment><USER2> I used TextMate and I was pretty good at it. I switched to VIM. I'm a terrible VIM-er but I'm already faster and more productive. I am not saying you should switch...I'm just saying you should switch.</comment>


The Terms Behind the Unicorn Valuations - <AUTHOR> http://www.fenwick.com/publications/pages/the-terms-behind-the-unicorn-valuations.aspx <comment><USER2> Suppose pre-financing, the company is worth $5M, and no matter how bad things go, it'll never fall below $1M. (due to patents, brand name recognition, the VC's ability to arrange an acqui-hire, or whatever)

If you invest $1M with a 2x liquidation preference, the valuation doesn't matter. You're guaranteed $1M back no matter what. If it's a home run, you still get the upside.

When you get a 2x liquidation preference, you can afford to invest at a much higher valuation than the "real" valuation of $5M, because your downside is limited, and you get a greater share of any upside (especially if you got participating preferred). Even on a fire sale for $2M, you still got a 100% return on your investment. Instead of selling $1M of common shares at a valuation of $5M, they can raise $1M of 2x preferred at a valuation of $10M-$20M+.

A lot of these valuations are funny money, because the headline doesn't mention the preferences given to the investment. If they were selling common shares, it'd be a much lower valuation.

<comment><USER3> In the article posted, participating liquidation preferences (like you mention) seem extremely rare.

<comment><USER2> Even with 2x straight preference, valuations don't matter much, provided the residual value of the company on failure is close to the amount you're investing.

<comment><USER4> 2x preference is way off market these days. Most financings are 1x non- participating. The linked study says they saw multiple preference in 3% of the unicorn deals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Recovering startup lawyer here....

The terms they are pointing out here are basically the same as you'd find in any equity financing post seed round. Seems strange to flag such common terms as evidence that there's something strange about these high-valuation financings.

<comment><USER5> +1 - I would say this reports deviates almost zero from any priced round I've done. All get 1X liq. pref, usually not-participating.

In fact, the only times I've seen participating or more than 1X preference is during a down-round or for a struggling company, aka. the opposite of a unicorn.

Weird.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. The likely source for these data are the companies' corporate charters. These are all available to the public at the Delaware Secretary of State's office.

You can tell because they only discuss terms that go in the charter. Other things like registration rights go in separate contracts between the company and its outside investors.

<comment><USER7> Do you know if there is any trend towards Delaware-incorporated startups including the "blank check preferred" provisions in their charter (DGCL Section 151). This would allow the Board to create new preferred shares by resolution, as opposed to placing the terms directly in the publicly-filed charter.

I am not too familiar with the industry, but if the trend is indeed to include such blank check preferred provisions, access to these terms would not be publicly available, and Fenwick may simply be drawing on its first-hand experience.

<comment><USER4> It's really uncommon to authorize blank check preferred. That's an interesting idea to keep things confidential, but the major stockholders will care more about maintaining the power over the authorization of new shares.

Blank check preferred is only really used, as far as I have heard, as a takeover defense for public companies worried about hostile takeovers, and even there I don't think it's that common anymore.

<comment><USER6> Right, that's been my experience as well (seeing mostly financings of companies in the southeast US).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can anyone point to a deal where liquidation prefs are exercised? Because any buyer would have to be crazy to let those stay in place. (If you're buying for a price that the liquidation kicks in, then it's not a giant success and there are usually a dearth of options for the investors so they'd rather cave on the liquidation prefs than no deal.)

It used to be that they were terms for throwaway during acquisition, but perhaps things have changed.

<comment><USER9> I don't think this has ever been a throwaway term during an acquisition in cases where the investors proceeds were higher under their liquidation preference rights than they would have been under their pro rata stockholder rights.

Thinking back over all such deals I worked on as a startup attorney, I can't think of a single one where the liquidation preferences were not asserted by the preferred stockholders (i.e., investors).

The selling owners generally view it as a buyer's problem to figure out retention, which is usually accomplished by the buyer making equity grants to the team that vest over time following the acquisition.

Sellers sometimes have a similar incentive issue -- i.e., they need to incentivize a team whose equity will be worthless in an acquisition. This is often accomplished by some form of "management incentive plan" which can have all sorts of structures. But the gist is typically to set aside some of the acquisition proceeds for distribution to key employees or management.

<comment><USER5> My experience is in line with yours - investors always assert liq pref when they can, have never seen them give much on it. I've seen preferred throw common a few cents on the share, but usually it's zero.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So the preferred investors still get 100% of their investment even if the valuation goes down 90%? If that's the case, these valuations are completely fictitious.

No surprise there. I always assumed someone had come up with a new way to manipulate perceived value. Back in the dot com bubble they did that via extremely thin floats in IPOs.

<comment><USER11> According to the article, only 30% of deals had _any_ specific downside protection.

That means that for the most part, the investors are betting that the company is actually worth at least what they are investing in it at.

<comment><USER12> Not sure what you mean, seniority is downside protection. To quote the article:

"Acquisition Protection Terms

Liquidation protection over common stock – 100%

Senior liquidation protection over other series of preferred stock - 19%"

<comment><USER11> I was being sloppy, but am referring to the following sentence in the article.

 _Approximately 30% of unicorn investors had significant protection against a down round IPO._

So you're right. If the company goes bankrupt, unicorn investors are going to be first in line to get their money back. This matters, and does help get funding at higher valuation.

But it is not nearly as inflationary as terms that say that the investor still gets paid on a successful exit that is merely not as good as hoped. And the latter is the kind of term that could cause the valuation placed in the company to be totally disconnected from the value that the investor thinks the company should be worth.

<comment><USER13> There are many kinds of exit. IPO is only one, and is not the most common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Another way to value these Unicorns is to look at common stock sold on the secondary markets which has no preference attached. Based on the deal flow I see, I am guessing Pinterest could sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of common at 8 or 9 billion in valuation. I think a new preferred round would be in the low teens billions for them. So some discount but not a huge one.

</comment><comment><USER15> So now that even my high school friends are on the lookout for these big IPOs, they might not happen so fast, because the companies will have to really bring in the revenues to justify those valuations before going to market? The reason valuations jumped so high is because the 'unicorns' and the rest of the SaaS sector have gotten so much better at capturing value. Obviously that's not a bubble scenario. However, there will need to be an adjustment period where these companies are hitting their targets, or they face to loose some value immediately after the IPOs. Does that make sense? Is that bad at all?

</comment><comment><USER16> pg head scratcher:

"Yes, investors with preferred stock usually get their money back first. Sometimes they get a multiple, but that's considered overreaching nowadays and the more promising startups never have to agree to that. I suppose that is implicitly a target valuation in a sense. But no one views it as a target, because it only matters if things go badly."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6896833](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6896833)

<comment><USER15> Exactly. Most of these companies are in great shape. But there will be a few where investors with preferred stock will pull out, resulting in stifled growth and agility. For highly competitive and Thielesque-monopoly situations that might spell defeat, resulting in loss of faith from common stock holders as well. Lots of value will be lost in one place, but that's more a result of scale, not artificial inflation. Moreover, it will not signal a bubble burst for the rest of the industry. I wish it could even promote less speculative behavior.</comment></comment>


Diversity makes you Brighter - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/09/opinion/diversity-makes-you-brighter.html <comment><AUTHOR> "In homogeneous groups, whether in the United States or in Asia, the opposite happened. When surrounded by others of the same ethnicity or race, participants were more likely to copy others, in the wrong direction. Mistakes spread as participants seemingly put undue trust in others' answers, mindlessly imitating them. In the diverse groups, across ethnicities and locales, participants were more likely to distinguish between wrong and accurate answers. Diversity brought cognitive friction that enhanced deliberation"</comment>


Why I Play Video Games - <AUTHOR> http://jackmcdade.com/blog/why-i-play-video-games <comment><USER2> There are a lot of things that make videogames special with respect to all sorts of stress relief and recreational activities. I think games are special in ways exercise is not, and we should really appreciate why.

Games are uniquely a tremendous exercise of the mind and body. When compared to a laboratory game designed without violence, Medal of Honor improved the vision of congenitally-handicapped children while the laboratory game did not. The author of the study speculated that the violence in Medal of Honor put kids into more of a neuro-plastic mood, while its emphasis on hand-eye coordination exercised the brain, the eyes and the hands in a way that improved senses.[0]

The game trains your strategic and tactical planning and it helps you socialize through teamwork, but that wasn't tested. Suffice it to say, the same features cannot be said to exist in yoga, television, or cooking.

Games are also universal. Girls and boys, young and old, physically fit and physically infirm, poor and rich: pretty much everyone can enjoy a game.[1] It is a form of entertainment that is capable of demanding zero to full emotional, financial and intellectual engagement.

Compare to sports, where we can barely figure out how to have men compete fairly against women. Or playing music, where an instrument represents a minimum investment that immediately makes it inaccessible to many kids. As the most successful games favor a viral, free, multiplayer and social design, games have evolved in a Darwinian way to be as accessible and entertaining as possible.

I don't think it's bad to exercise or to be outside. I just don't think it's substitutable, and I think it's trivializing just how different Civilization is from canoeing. Without a doubt we ought to do both, but you can't learn diplomacy from an oar.

[0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/science/how-video-games- co...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/science/how-video-games-could- improve-our-vision.html?pagewanted=all)

[1] [http://www.theesa.com/facts/gameplayer.asp](http://www.theesa.com/facts/gameplayer.asp)

<comment><USER3> "Games are also universal. Girls and boys, young and old, physically fit and physically infirm, poor and rich: pretty much everyone can enjoy a game.[1] It is a form of entertainment that is capable of demanding zero to full emotional, financial and intellectual engagement."

Really well put. My wife and I play FPS's as a way to chill out at night. Despite being violent, fast paced and the lobbies are typically full of boys, my wife loves it. As a result we purchased a 1ms response monitor, Scuf controller and new Billion (Broadcom chipset) fiber-ready modem so that we could play more competitively (financial-intellectual-engagement).

Anecdotally, we've both noticed our reflexes to real-world things such as driving, traversing busy sidewalks, making quick decisions, catching objects etc has improved. I guess when the difference between dead or alive is seeing something, forming a strategy of engagement, and pressing a combination of buttons while manoeuvering - all in the space of a second - helps you process unforeseen events a little quicker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are many good things to say about video games (after many studies about positive effects on brain development), but I've come to realize that there is also a huge downside: games satisfy your yearning for accomplishments and there seems to be a finite amount of that (one could say that they give you a cheap, false sense of accomplishment, even though what people achieve in games are often real accomplishments). So by achieving much in games, you will have less "hunger" left to pursue achievements elsewhere and this will potentially affect careers, relationships, self-development.

<comment><USER5> I have been stressing this to everyone I work with who have kids somewhat younger than myself for over a year now (I'm 24) when I realized how many of my friends ruined their lives playing video games. I have played a lot of video games since I was 3 years old and I still do every day, but I made a conscience effort to not let it affect me too much (although my grades in college could have been better). My brother, on the other hand, has been so obsessed with World of Warcraft that at the age of 22 he works part time at a department store without even a high school degree because he stopped caring about anything else in his life. Another of my friends spent 4 years coasting in college never choosing a major until he finally dropped out and now has $28k in debt with nothing to show for it but his own World of Warcraft characters.

Playing video games is good for you in moderation (it is what led me into a career in software), but I always try to stress to parents how easy it is for kids to get lost in the feeling of achievement. My brother is always talking about how he has "the most gold of anyone on the server" as though he is set for life but even now when my parents and I constantly try to remind him that his life isn't that great he is so far gone that there is no hope. Why be successful in real life when it is so easy to be "successful" in a fantasy world?

<comment><USER6> I played video games since 1976 with typing in code from books and magazines. Some programs were on tape and took 30 minutes to load.

In the late 1990's I wrote for websites strategies and even won several tournaments and won hundreds in cash and some perks. I even attended the first World Cybergames as a MVP.

In that time 1993 - 2003, I went to college, went to 7 semesters got a 3.95685 gpa (I could scream still why I got a B+ in my last class). I also started a non-profit organization gave almost 100,000 pounds of food to poor children in Florida. Started a record studio in 2000 and helped start two bands' careers that ended with them touring the world and landing on MTV. I ended up thousands poorer but it was a good experience and learned I am not the personality type to sit behind a mixing board and computer.

My Rules)

1) If someone asks me to do something in real life that I am doing on the computer, real life wins and I do it. So anyone says let's play basketball I play basketball.

2) I worked out 6 days a week for 20 minutes to 1.5 hours.

3) I volunteered about 5-10 hours a week.

4) I read about 2-3 books a month (Altered between fiction and non-fiction)

5) I did not watch tv or movies (instead of doing passive entertainment I always want to do active entertainment)

All of these went out the door when I got married in 2003. My wife HATES video games :) So now I play very sparingly. I started playing board games and those = video games to her. So I love my wife, kids and life so I choose not to annoy her with playing video games. I feel like I am less accomplished without games. I felt that they propelled me to always be an active person mentally. I missed them but I am guessing I will not be a active video game player in the future. Video games benefited my life.

<comment><USER7> I think the following separates you from the average games player and makes your story (interesting as it is) out of place:

> In the late 1990's I wrote for websites strategies and even won several > tournaments and won hundreds in cash and some perks. I even attended the > first World Cybergames as a MVP.

That's a productive career and time well spent; it is a fact that not everybody can have that outcome. (This reminds me of all the guys at school obsessing over football; the effect under discussion is not limited to computer games.)

For the average game player, time spent playing games is time not spent working towards some other achievement. This is precisely why I pretty much stopped playing games years ago and focus on spending my free time on other goals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some basic exercise routines would probably have the same beneficial effects and a bunch of added ones as well. You can't replace video games with exercise altogether (2 hours is a pretty long workout), but making it part of your "unwind" routine would benefit you greatly.

<comment><USER9> Exactly, especially if your job has you sitting in front of a computer for most of the day.

Getting rid of my TV, unsubscribing from mailing lists and limiting the time I spend on reddit/facebook/hn/etc to 10 minutes a day was one of the best decisions I've made in a while.

<comment><USER10> > limiting the time I spend on reddit/facebook/hn/etc to 10 minutes a day

For anyone who struggles with limiting the time -- not necessarily for lack of self control, but simply losing track of the time spent, [this plugin for Chrome]([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankej...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/stayfocusd/laankejkbhbdhmipfmgcngdelahlfoji?hl=en)) is a life saver!

I set it for exactly 10 minutes on sites, and once I cross that threshold, it redirects whatever page you're currently browsing to one that simply says "Shouldn't you be working?".

[This xkcd comic]([http://xkcd.com/386/](http://xkcd.com/386/)) unfortunately describes my personality to a tee. I've spent literally _hours_ in a single day simply arguing with people on reddit over trivial things that don't matter. Having the abrupt redirect to a page that tells me to question how I'm spending my time is just the kick I needed to realize that, yeah, I _should_ be doing something else other than arguing with strangers on the internet.

<comment><USER9> Yeah I also use stayfocused. 10 minutes is just enough to skim my facebook feed and check if there's anything interesting here on hn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> People are going to say that there's nothing about this that's specific to video games, which I guess is the point, right? You can work yourself to death if you want, but every piece of research I've read says that recreation -- up to a certain point, of course -- is going to be a long-term investment in your productivity.

My new post-work ritual is going for a nice run or lift and then ruining all of that physical activity with a beer/cocktail. On the upside, I'm getting more fit than I've ever been; on the downside, there are significantly less explosions along the Puget Sound than there are in Pandaria or Ivalice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely true. Video games do it for me (I also hit the gym a few times a week, watch tv, play board games, etc), but they're certainly not a silver bullet. They just happen to intersect many points of entertainment and self- involvement, which makes them pretty ideal for clearing your head and winding down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article could just well be titled "Why I have a hobby/life".

Gaming, for better or for worse, represents a very low-barrier-to-entry sort of activity, where in fact good design intentionally structures games in a way to provide a gratifying learning curve and risk/reward. Yet I feel at some point in time we need to consider opportunity cost and externalities:

-Assuming that I have finite time and I derive similar amounts of joy playing video games and tabletop games, do I spend time grouping with old college roomies on Halo and shoot aliens, or do I try to coordinate a time with 4 other busy professionals, drive across town, grab some snacks, and roleplay some Call of Cthulhu on a weekly basis? Or maybe I hang out with some buddies at TechShop and we build a robot that uses facial recognition to launch whiskey shots at people?

-If I wanted to enjoy a narrative, do I allocate three hours, send an FB blast for movie buddies, and spend $15 sitting in a dark room with others watching a common story, or do I allocate 20-30 hours over a few days to experience the story of GTA V? Or do I pick up a book and spend a day to let my imagination take me to Westeros or Battle School?

-If I wanted to enjoy some music, do I play some Guitar Hero and press some controller buttons? Or join a structured choir? Or pick up some social dancing (a co-op music game with a social externality, essentially)?

I think gaming is FANTASTIC as an efficient way to get quick jollies, with a low barrier to entry as well as high skill requirement for advanced levels; MOBAs such as League of Legends or shooters such as Call of Duty come to mind for "gaming as a skill". However, I do think other activities such as swimming, cooking, biking, amongst others, provide different externalities. And for some people these things are just better in the long run.

PS -- I've had a long history of gaming since the NES came out and love it. It's just that personally I find it harder to manage and regulate my gaming consumption (attention span and time are the main caps) vs other activities, and I also feel that I've had less to show for as a gamer of twenty years (did the semipro Starcraft thing for a bit but not much more) than as a concert violinist of ten, or salsa dancer for five; so on and so forth.

That being said, the analytical mindset of optimizing resources given victory conditions in games probably was the main reason how I ended up being a data scientist. I feel strongly that a positive way to direct our "fun" towards something productive is powerful for individuals and beautiful for a society... but that's a later step in our happiness, and for a different conversation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great reply! I definitely agree with you all across the board. Video games do represent an interesting location on the Venn diagram of hobbies, in that they can have great storytelling, character development, action, immersion, and emotional involvement, as well as be just plain fun.

I'm also a big board game geek and will probably blog about that in the future. I have bi-weekly game nights at my place and really into the new(ish) wave of Living Card Games like Netrunner: Android. I really love the social aspect, kicking back for a few hours with beers and buds. And then they leave and I fire up my PS3 :)

Or you know. Spend time with my wife and kids. Usually that.

<comment><USER13> Would love to hear your thoughts on Netrunner: Android! Been thinking about getting into it but a bit unsure if it's something my significant other can get into as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a _really_ cool game with some really interesting mechanics. What other games does your SO enjoy? Feel free to email jack {at} jackmcdade.com.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to play video games a ton growing up (most of the ones mentioned in the article). I have tried picking up modern games as an adult, but don't get quite the same thrill/zone as I did as a kid. I haven't felt immersed. I get that feeling now from rock climbing, cycling and skiing. I think it's because after spending all day working on programming, staring at a screen and working through challenges seems too much like work.

<comment><USER15> I find playing certain old games I grew up with and have lots of mastery and muscle memory around unwind me very quickly.

Lots of modern games, puzzle platformers etc. just make me feel stressful.

(I also find watching retrogaming videos and longplay videos on youtube is almost as good of an unwinder)

<comment><USER16> Indeed. I think this has a lot to do with 'fluff'. More modern games have a lot of fluff to make the difficulty increase less abrupt and, of course, because we demand it.

There are a few games, even relatively new ones, that don't have much 'fluff'. They're often considered very difficult, but because they're so lean and well- designed, they don't generally feel unfair.

These games remind me of what I used to play growing up, and they often offer much more satisfaction in a shorter time-span.

A good, new-ish example of this is Ninja Gaiden for the Xbox, which at times feels overwhelmingly difficult, and yet after playing for a while you notice improvement. It rarely feels truly unfair, and I find it more enjoyable than 'fluffier' games.

Other examples would be games like Ikaruga, F-Zero.

<comment><USER15> I find I like to load up Axelay in an emulator and play a few levels. It has an amazing balance of playability and difficulty once you get how it works and is a very relaxing game to play through.

Strangely, I also love playing a few levels of Elevator Action. Something about jumping around and plugging bad guys from that little side arm is very satisfying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Killer story lines, character development, a few hours of play a day... I recommend Portal. It's short, but it kicks ass. Not many games have I considered playing through a second time immediately after the first.

<comment><AUTHOR> Portal and Portal 2 are both great games! Loved em both in every way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Altough many user have already addressed most of the good and the bad of videogames, I feel like I must share my mind.

Videogames are an integral part of my life. They are my main hobby. I play them, I design them and I develop them. They are my main medium and form of art.

I like them for exploring new worlds. To have a safe place to interact with stuff, poke them and see what they do. To experience larger than life stories. And sometimes some tiny really intimate ones.

It's escapism, I know. But I usually escape to places where it would be impossible for me to go, or to be people I will never be.

To end this, I'll leave you with my favourite gaming add, the one that really sums up what I feel about this beautiful, expansive and still young medium: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bqq38WZctA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Bqq38WZctA)

</comment><comment><USER19> I think "I started playing video games and now feel fantastic and am more productive" could be generalized to "I allowed myself to unwind after my daily routine and now I feel fantastic and more productive"

Anecdotally, I've recently started playing TF2 again after work instead of exclusively working on a side-project, and I'll be damned if I haven't slept better in months and have had more creativity and stamina to put toward my projects after work. For me, the takeaway from Jack's post was to just make sure you're giving your brain enough time to recharge. and think about other things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, you're definitely right. Video games are almost a short-cut to unwinding, but they're certainly not a silver bullet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Holy crap! The author and I are on the exact same page. I reached crazy levels of burnout over a year ago, and I found out that the only thing that could take my mind off of my work was fast paced shooters, namely UT99. Little did I know, becoming an integral part of the old UT99 community (see globalunreal.com) has actually improved my ability to code tenfold while giving me some pretty invaluable team-building/management experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Dude are you kidding me, people are still playing UT99?? That was MY GAME back in the day! I was ranked in the top 25 and my buddy was #2 waaaaay back. I even got pretty hardcore into mapping and got a stage or two into regular rotation on a few servers.

Now I'm going to have to get my old gaming machine back out. Damn you sir. Damn you.

:)

<comment><USER21> I actually play UT99. There are some of the mods that bring some very interesting game play.

Gaming certainly helps my reflects and keeps my mind sharp.

<comment><USER16> It probably doesn't have many players anymore, but my favorite mod was Thievery UT. I've played some rounds that were, no hyperbole, the most fun I've ever had playing games.

One of the guys involved was actually working on Splinter Cell and I'm pretty sure much of what we were experimenting with has, in some ways, influenced that game. And two of the guys ended up doing games full-time for Valve after working on Alien Swarm, and now Left 4 Dead. If only they'd do a new version of Thievery! Back to their roots...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I watched season 1 of house of cards on netflix. I noticed kevin spacey's character plated halo late at night to unwind. Realized it would probably work for me too, so I bought the new metal gear game on xbox the other day. So far it's working.

<comment><USER23> I suspect that it was a paid product placement and it seems to have worked on you although it wasn't HALO or an Xbox itself that you bought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> You don't have kids, do you?

I have not played anything but short streaks of casual games since the infancy of my first, maybe with the exception of 2011/12 winter break, when I snatched a $0 deal on Broken Sword reissued for iPad and played for several days in a row, which was very recreational indeed.

<comment><USER25> You just convinced me to never have kids.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh? Why's that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> You shouldn't need escapism to be functional. You were burned out, that's what should be avoided. Like gambling, video games provide a reward loop that keep people coming back to them, and it only gets worse.

It's odd that people in general want to stop watching television and enjoy life more, but get involved with video games, which is just as mind numbing as television.

I also find it very odd that in a website such as Hacker News, where hackers praise themselves as smart and productive people get carried away by playing games, which hardly generates anything.

Such as the studies that showed that by playing chess, you get better at chess, playing video games will make you better at one thing, playing video games. There are some side gains, but they are negligible. One would benefit a lot more from other activities.

<comment><USER16> Well, what about _fun_? Both for games and television I'd argue that they're fine in moderation, and that it depends on _what_ particular game or film/show.

The Wire? Awesome _and_ very educational. Planescape Torment (or other RPG's)? Better, in some ways, than a great book.

Also, chess is a game too, so really just a subset of 'games'. I don't really see what you're trying to point out with that comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> you're probably resetting your brain's systems and reassuring your brain that, yes, there are systems with a logical flow from action to consequence to success and reward! Probably not a bad way to avoid burnout.

<comment><AUTHOR> I also think that video games give you small victories and and sense of achievement, and failure can be undone. It's a good (albeit unrealistic) type of positive reinforcement that keeps me from getting too hard on myself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This article really hit home for me, as I had a similar experience this year: burnout after high-stress software dev (after which I didn't even want to look at code), followed by getting back into gaming, then suddenly finding renewed motivation for (and enjoyment of) programming.

How do I limit my game-time to 1 hour daily? Easy, I set the Family Timer on my Xbox. I know the password, so I can extend it, but at least it's a conscious decision. I'd highly recommend this approach to anyone who wants to try out gaming but is afraid of it sucking away too much time.

</comment><comment><USER29> The point about having an outlet to destress is a really good one; its something I struggle with (feeling guilty about "wasting time" even though I know some amount of relaxation is necessary to stay productive).

Tangentially related, the author's product looks awesome too. I'm probably going to need to make some websites for my parents businesses soon and I'd like something that I can maintain happily with emacs but that they can post to and modify from their browser; this thing looks like it might just be the ticket.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the biggest thing I came to grips with, which really has nothing to do with video games. You need to balance work with the rest of your life. Family is important. Faith (to me) is important. Friends, fitness, and food are all important (and all start with "F").

Video games worked as a tool to help me disconnect from a brain that was lying to me, telling me that I should be working. That I should be billing. That I should be devoting even more time into my work. When in fact, the opposite was true. Less of me, more of everything else, and everything began to work out.

And relating to your tangent, let me know if you have questions about Statamic just shout {at} jackmcdade.com. That sounds like a perfect use case for it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Why did he pick one up from craigslist? People are overpricing them so much. I found new ones on amazon for the same price.

<comment><AUTHOR> $250 for a PS3, 4 controllers, and 25 games wasn't a bundle I found on Amazon :)

<comment><USER31> Superb deal. But consider having PS+ one year subscription. Totally worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've been getting so many recommendations for games I had to update the post. Thanks for the great feedback, I'm glad my post resonated with so many of you!

[http://jackmcdade.dev/blog/why-i-play-video- games#update](http://jackmcdade.dev/blog/why-i-play-video-games#update)

</comment><comment><USER32> Jack, you need to finish Bioshock, one of the best story-lines in a game I've ever played.

My top 3 games:

Red Dead Redemption

Deus Ex (the very first one)

Bioshock

I also think this is why I find myself enjoying good TV so much more now that I'm full-timing my startup. I can just sit, relax, and totally focus on something else for an hour a night.

<comment><AUTHOR> I plan to :) I got a little bit caught up in the older-school graphic style, big chunky HUDs and whatnot, but I think I'm really only a few hours from the end. I plan to finish it real soon.

I also watch tv with my wife regularly. I'm a fan of many, many good shows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Sounds like he just needed some stress-relief, rather than video-games specifically...

<comment><AUTHOR> I really think video games are a sweet spot in the stress-relief category. Reading (I'm an avid reader) didn't cut it, watching movies or tv, running, weight lifting... none of them relax me like gaming. Well, maybe drinking, but that's a different story :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> A bit of self-promotion here. If you're into games, and like hearing two guys rant about them, you should check out my gaming podcast: www.chips-and- bits.com and tell me how terrible it is. Feedback welcome, of course.

Hi, Jack.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well hey there Kenny! I'm definitely gonna check out your podcast. I see Joel and Ellie there on the homepage so I definitely need to see what that's all about.</comment></comment>


The Joy of Taking Things Apart - <AUTHOR> https://trmm.net/Taking_things_apart

<comment><USER2> As the operator of a related site[1], I've learned that it is also a great way to learn tips and tricks for the engineering and industrial design of products. For example, I'be learned to consider in-board strain relief for cables[2] and spray-on ground shielding[3] from taking things apart. Unfortunately it is difficult to get people to take apart physical things and share what they have learned.

1\. [https://www.takeitapart.com](https://www.takeitapart.com)

2\. [https://www.takeitapart.com/guide/51#step-4](https://www.takeitapart.com/guide/51#step-4)

3\. [https://www.takeitapart.com/guide/25#step-11](https://www.takeitapart.com/guide/25#step-11)

<comment><USER3> By the way, is there anything special about that STM32 programmer, or is it just a neat ST-LINK/V2 clone? Ever since the original ST firmware leaked, everyone seems to be building them.

<comment><USER2> It's been around for a couple years and it does seem to be based on the ST- Link v2. Not sure if it will work with other tools that can program via an ST- Link v2. I liked it because it worked well with their compiler[1] (itself a decent product with good libraries).

1\. [http://www.mikroe.com/mikroc/arm/](http://www.mikroe.com/mikroc/arm/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great intro to the hacker mindset! The problem is that it doesn't pay the bills, and is a metabolically expensive activity (the brain has to be in work mode). This makes it too costly for a lot of people :(</comment>


Bitcoin Development Visualized - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVGEbtIBxIE

<comment><AUTHOR> I know posting Youtube videos to HN is somewhat dubious, but this is really the spiffiest programming visualization hack I've ever seen. The most tasteful, too.

The author says it was created with [http://code.google.com/p/gource](http://code.google.com/p/gource)

Maybe it's just Gource that's spiffy, though.</comment>


Question for the Ivy Leaguers - <AUTHOR>

Hello,<p>I'm sure there are a lot of people here on HN who have graduated from or are attending an Ivy League school. I was curious about how the classes are different from other schools (or if you don't know, what is it that makes the schools so elite? How do you feel about the education that you received?) I am really curious. What sets the education apart? <comment><USER2> I think there's more to it than social milieu as other commenters have suggested.

One way to look at it would be to think about a university as a series of (populations of students, professors, alumni networks, recruiters, athletes, extracurricular options, etc) that can be thought of in terms of their means not their maxima.

It is probably true that you can get as good (or nearly as good, or perhaps even better) an education from a good state school as from an ivy, but the "average" student, class, social outing, etc. is not going to be great. You will have to be in the top decile of students in terms of work and effort, identify and select the top decile of professors, etc. to get a top-notch education. From a social point of view, if you want to associate yourself with interesting, smart people and engage with interesting social activities, you will have to identify and seek those out from among everything else. (Whereas, the average social behavior might be frats and football culture.) These things are not always easy to do when there are sources of friction in the mix -- everything from popular classes that fill up to human nature are going to get in the way here.

At an ivy or comparable elite school, the average class you pick, the average dudes on the hall you clown around with, the average group of people in any given extracurricular population, these are all going to be strong, and i would assert as roughly equivalent to a top 5 or 10% orientation at more average schools.

And, of course, if you've got the brains/talent/work ethic to be top 5% at an elite university, you can have a world-class outcome.

I do think that non-ivy elites are absolutely equivalent to ivies though (e.g. Stanford), at least at a general level; it gets down to school-by-school comparisons on specific dimensions after that, e.g. if you want a world-class education in literature and the arts vs physics and math.

(edit: minor, for grammar)

<comment><USER3> > From a social point of view, if you want to associate yourself with > interesting, smart people and engage with interesting social activities, you > will have to identify and seek those out from among everything else.

Other than less desirable job opportunities, this was the worst part about going to a school that isn't top ranked. Most of my classmates and people in my social circles were there to go through the motions and weren't interested in anything academic. Although I enjoyed college, the whole experience really made me regret not taking high school seriously.

<comment><USER2> This is a very insightful comment.

It's hard to imagine most high-school seniors having the sophistication to make good choices here without the guidance of sophisticated parents or supporters, let alone imagine younger students making them early enough to have good options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Its not just about the classes and education. Its about the resume.

The Ivy League doesn't teach you anything you can't get at another school, but it makes it easier to get your next job which is what college is all about.

Ivy League schools do tend to offer slightly better than average educations partially because of their funding. The alumni are successful, and tend to give a lot of money back to the schools which offsets some of the cost for the undergrads. When my wife was attending undergrad, for example, she filled out the FASA paperwork, and then they paired her up with an alumni who just wrote a check to cover the portion of the cost that would otherwise be a student loan. If you are interested in any kind of research science, the Ivy League schools do tend to have well funded research programs also.

I am married to a Princeton grad, but I went to USMA myself. My school was similar in some ways, but its in a different sports league, and offers less undergraduate research options.

<comment><USER5> Does having a piece of paper from stanford stand out more than a piece of paper from somewhere else?

I'm from australia, we don't really care where you got the piece of paper, just that you did your time and even then you could probably argue your way into an interview without it.

We value education sure but we don't really have the whole ivy league elitism thing going on. I don't think there is even much of a deal to do with alumni.

Economies of scale I guess.

<comment><USER6> Most of the extra signaling value comes from the competitive admissions.

(Which I think as much as anything means they have a great pool of applicants to choose from, meaning they would have to do something pretty radical to screw it up)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I really enjoyed reading all of the replies! Thank you all for the input.

To be a little more specific, I want to know if the classes themselves were significantly more effective in transferring knowledge to students. Do the classes at Ivy Leagues have a measurable superiority to classes of other colleges (as in, do the students learn more because the classes are way better, or do the students learn more simply because they are smarter, more hard-working, more interested and engaged than the average student)? Why do the Ivy Leagues have classes if it does not seem to be the main value added? It looks to me that Ivy Leagues are great because they figured out a way to attract all the smartest people to a central place. Is it really the Ivy League that transforms people, or would highly motivated people turn out the way they are regardless of the formal classes that seem to go hand-in-hand with the concept of "education?"

<comment><USER7> I went to graduate school at a state school and at an Ivy League school, and my twin went to an Ivy League school for college while I went to a prestigious non-Ivy League school. So I will try to answer your questions based on my experience. YMMV.

No, I did not find that the classes were significantly more effective in transferring knowledge in either type of school. My impression was this: depending on the school, the class may be more "ambitious", i.e., may cover a little bit more material. However, many times the material is basically the same, especially in the introductory classes.

The main pedagogical effects of going to a prestigious school is: (1) Your classmates tend to be stronger students. They tend to be a little smarter, harder-working, more interested and engaged. Yet you can find the same type of people in less-prestigious schools, although there are fewer, percentage-wise. (2) Your professors tend to have accomplished more in their field of study. However, this often does not translate to having better classes than other schools. You could have lots of crappily-taught classes even if you're attending the most prestigious school in the world if that school (or a department within that school) does not care that much about educating its students. (3) You might have a little more variety in the interesting things you could learn in upper-level or graduate-level courses. (These things tend to be very department-specific, rather than school-specific.)

Off-topic observation: MOOCs are democratizing education nowadays. Ten years ago, say, if I wanted to take a thorough, competent class on database query languages, I would have to pray my institution, or another, sister institution, offered a class in that topic. Nowadays, I can go to Stanford's Class2Go website. I don't need to spend any time (a) applying to Stanford, (b) pray that I get admitted, (c) if admitted move to Palo Alto, (d) wait for that class to be taught, and (e) focus on that class while taking four other classes. Today I can stay where I am and take that class at any time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Did you find yourself enjoying the Ivy League environment (being around other high achievers) more? Has being at an Ivy League changed your world view? Which one did you like more?

I don't know if MOOCs will take off (in terms of being reliable for hiring). Just an unjustified gut feeling. Maybe they already have. I know they offer "certificates" that you can pay for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For small departments, your experience can vary strongly from the school in general.

I went to UC Irvine in physics, which both has an extremely high teacher:student ratio (42 teachers, graduating class of 18 students) and abundant funding. While the university is known for its research, having that kind of ratio can have a drastic effect on your education. My favorite class ever had only five students in it. It was an upper division math class.

Just my two cents - look at the departments you're interested in. It can make a much bigger difference than the schools, especially in terms of research.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that teacher to student ratio sounds seems like it would make for a great educational utopia! That's crazy and I have never heard of such a thing! :)

I asked this question more so for potential-start-up research purposes. I have already graduated from college, though I did think about getting a graduate degree, but I am not so sure I want to do that anymore. I concluded that it would be more effective for me personally to study on my own (if I were to pursue computer science). Classes sort of make me lose motivation. It feels so forced much of the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Quality of education varies with the professor, as always, and what you get depends on how hard you work.

The Ivy League - and other high-prestige schools like Stanford - are primarily useful for the connections you make and the status they convey to others. On many people, knowing that you went to [prestigious school here] has a "these are not the droids you're looking for" effect that comes in handy all over the place, even in areas totally unrelated to your education.

<comment><USER10> While quality of education varies with the professor, I would argue that it also varies with the student...possibly even more so.

Let's assume Instructor A teaches Introduction to Nordic Studies at a non- selective university. Two of the factors that control the design of that course (there are many, I'm just isolating two) would be: -the instructor -the students

In ideal conditions, the course iteratively develops into some dynamic equilibrium where aggregate student learning is optimal (yes, I realize this is fantasy). Replace those non-selective students with students from a highly- selective university, while keeping the same instructor. Imagine how different the course might develop.

From a learning standpoint, if you are a student that is talented enough to be admitted to a highly-selective university, the latter course would likely result in you learning more. In reality, there are a lot of other factors that impact the growth and development of any individual student, but all things being equal, if you are a smarty, you will probably learn more in a class with other smarties.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I learn enough coding to run simple online sites? - <AUTHOR>

I'm really interested in learning to code little sites, apps, creating small simple stuff that may generate small amounts of money.
I have a lot of time on my hands, I always see really great and simple sites that generate small amounts of income. I'd be more than happy with this but I have no idea on where to start with the coding.
How much experience do I need? How do I learn? Where do I get started? What questions should I be asking?
What languages should I be learning? Where?
There's a lot of unknown unknowns in this category, so if HN can help it would be great. <comment><USER2> Websites are composed of two parts the frontend and the backend. There are various tools to make each part easier.

The front end is composed of html, css, and javascript. As far as the html and css go, you can get started very quickly with a framework called css blueprint ( <http://www.blueprintcss.org/> ). You probably don't need javascript for very basic sites.

The backend is composed of a programming language and often times a framework. I'd recommend Google App engine + python. Google supports a number of frameworks, but I recommend going through the tutorial found here: <http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/gettingstarted/>

Let me know if you have any questions. It'd also be useful to know what type of experience you have.

</comment><comment><USER3> The best thing to do is to start along the path (as there's no magic bullet):

1\. Pick a language (python, ruby, php; if you know someone that programs well with one of these choose that language)

2\. Learn to program with that language (if you chose python, here's a good free book to get you going: <http://learnpythonthehardway.org/index>)

3\. Don't gloss over steps in whatever book you've chosen. Actually get the scripts running on your computer.

4\. If you're getting an error or something doesn't make sense, search <http://stackoverflow.com/>

5\. Once you feel comfortable writing scripts, buy yourself a cheap shared hosting service (I've used Dreamhost but there are others. If you know someone who programs choose what they are using.)

6\. Download putty and/or use a web based ftp client. Interact with your server, get comfortable writing scripts in whatever language you chose.

7\. Choose a framework (look here for candidates: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_f...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_web_application_frameworks)).

8\. Get the framework installed on your server and do the tutorial and get whatever toy app they specify up and running.

-> somewhere in there it would also be useful/necessary to dabble with HTML, CSS, SQL (w3schools is a reasonable enough place to start)

Now you're good to go ... build, build, build.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't mean to throw you off, but you might be confusing 'simple stuff' with 'common stuff'. Things that you see in all and every application might require a bit of knowledge/learning (authentication, user accounts, design/css, database, hosting).

However - these things aren't rocket science.

Depending on the desired product (site, app, ...) - the choice of means and tools could differ.

Some here has suggested a CMS - and perhaps it's a good starting point. Many CMSs would allow you to get things up and running, and incrementally experiment with code. I'd suggest a wordpress as it's one of the less-bloated CMSs to understand.

One advice is to be courageous. Experiment and repeat.

Drop me a line, perhaps I could answer few of your questions.

</comment><comment><USER5> If this is just so that you can generate a small income on the side, I suggest you take a look at some CMS packages. Basically, they allow you to create a site without needing to know any programming. Here are a few good, simple to use CMS's: Umbraco, Movable Type, TYPO3, Plone, Radiant, Symphony. And there are many more to choose from.

If you are really interested in learning how to code however, I second the other suggestions made in the thread. Figure out what you want to build and build it using Google and other web-based tutorials.

<comment><USER2> I would add wordpress to your CMS list. It's more than just a blogging platform and has a ton of plugins and themes available.

It might even be possible to build what the OP is looking to build in wordpress using themes + plugins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always found the best way is to set out to build something, and then Google all the various little bits along the way.

Scratch out your rough website design on paper and figure out the important components. Do you need to handle user logins? Scrape data? Display funny pictures of cats?

Take each core function and google around for similar examples, look at sites like miniajax.com and so on for sample code and go from there.

</comment><comment><USER7> Go through the Django tutorial, and then try making something!

If you don't have anywhere to host it, you can use Google App Engine for free hosting.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just do it.

That is probably the best advice you can get: start. If you want to learn how to program, pick a popular language (PHP, Python, Ruby, &tc.), and duckduckgo "<language> tutorials." All you need from there is determination.</comment>


Making the most of JavaScript's "future" today with Babel - <AUTHOR> https://strongloop.com/strongblog/javascript-babel-future/

<comment><USER2> I didn't realize babel had a registration wrapper.. that's a lot handier than having to precompile or using a different runner.

</comment><comment><USER3> How does Babel compare to Traceur from Google?

</comment><comment><USER4> io.js is great, but there are some definite advantages to compiling down to es5.</comment>


One shot of ketamine could reduce problem drinking - <AUTHOR> https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2019/nov/one-shot-ketamine-could-reduce-problem-drinking <comment><AUTHOR> On a side note, there have been some pretty interesting posts about ketamine on HN in the past: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=ketamine&sort=byPopularity&type=story)</comment>


Ask HN: Do you get paid in Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies? - <AUTHOR> If yes, what's the reason behind it? <comment><USER2> I work with a very talented developer who lives in Venezuela. I pay him in bitcoin because that is literally the cheapest and fastest way to get him paid.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't get paid in BTC. I don't think the tax office in my country would accept payments made in BTC.

</comment><comment><USER4> I do if that cryptocurrencies are as easy as concrete currency.</comment>


Despite Your Skepticism, Lasers Are Being Used By The Military - <AUTHOR> http://www.futureofgadgets.com/futureblogger/show/1338-despite-your-skepticism-lasers-are-being-used-by-the-military

<comment><USER2> Installed on a single Humvee does not equal "being used". Lasers are being _demoed_ by the military, just as they have been for years, and just as they will be for as long as the R&D money holds out.

 _There's no ammunition concerns, just power, and despite being totally un- serviceable in the field, the lack of moving parts makes the possibility of breaking very slim._

This is so hilarious it makes my sides hurt.

First, there's the phrase "just power". As if you could run a military laser on a pair of AA batteries. As if the _N_ kilowatt portable generator, the gigantic battery pack, the capacitor bank, and/or the long extension cord trailing behind you aren't pretty big handicaps to your movement and your logistics, just as ammunition is.

"Lack of moving parts?" Sounds like someone doesn't understand lasers. For one thing, although lasers are the most efficient converters of electricity to light in the world, their wall plug efficiency is still only of order 50%. That means that for every joule you pump into the enemy, you're generating a joule of waste heat. This works, because the heat is more concentrated at the far end than it is at your end. But you still need a high-performance cooling system. And your cooling system contains... moving parts! Coolant! Pumps! Heat exchangers! All of which can break down, and which tend to weigh a lot.

The other problem is that you only _think_ the laser has no moving parts. But I assure you that deep inside the sealed packages, deep inside the crystals where the action is, atoms are moving. Metals are migrating. Defects are migrating. Meanwhile, on the outside, dust motes are fusing themselves to your lenses. So there's only so many shots you're going to get out of your laser before it dies _forever_ and needs to be replaced. Particularly if you're running it at high power, which keeps it under a high temperature.</comment>


How  to Get Your Employees to Be More Curious - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/5-ways-get-your-employees-more-curious-tim-brown?trk=prof-post <comment><USER2> Perhaps more emphasis could be placed on selecting for "curiosity" as a positive trait in the hiring process.

Instead of, say, "5+ years of MongoDB".</comment>


Show HN: A minimalist event driven framework for python. - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/iogf/untwisted <comment><USER2> Looks like it's Python 2 only. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Planning to get it with py3 soon.</comment></comment>