ACM has made 'Concurrency: the Works of Leslie Lamport' free to download - eigen-vector https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/3335772 <comment><AUTHOR> Wow, nice move. I suggest anyone who considers themselves to be serious about distributed systems or operating systems take advantage of this opportunity. Leslie was hugely impactful on my early career at Sun where I ended up being the "ONC/RPC architect." One of the people who whose work I admired was Andy Birrell (who many will agree "invented" of RPC). It felt that every time I reached out to Andy on a problem that seemed complex and untenable, he would point me at one of Leslie's papers.

<comment><USER2> Oh, and he is the same Leslie Lamport who brought us LaTeX.

<comment><USER3> And the one who created TLA+, a language for describing concurrent computations.

[http://lamport.azurewebsites.net/video/videos.html](http://lamport.azurewebsites.net/video/videos.html)

<comment><USER4> I like how he formalized future state into propositional logic so you could reason about a system across time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> ACM has done more than make Leslie's book available. The Digital Library is an amazing resource. You now have no excuse for wasting time while waiting for the pandemic to resolve. Kudos to the ACM.

The notice published on the site: _To help support our community working remotely during COVID-19, we are making all work published by ACM in our Digital Library freely accessible through June 30, 2020._

<comment><USER6> sci-hub is an even more amazing resource

<comment><USER7> Yeah, it's strange to butter ACM that have been total jerks until last week, and would not have done anything if not for the pandemia (and will resume their behavior afterwards). Sci-hub on the contrary have provided a free service for years, more reliable technically and content-wise than any library service at any research institution I worked. They are the real heroes.

<comment><USER8> While I would agree in the case of other commercial publishers, at the end of the day the ACM is a nonprofit owned by its members that invests back into the community. I don't think 100 dollars a year is excessive for what it provides.

<comment><USER9> That $100 a year is a solid value to support the profession - especially if you take advantage of the Safari membership. Heck, just being able to point people, both executives and new hires, to the code of ethics has saved me several times.

But, the digital library costs extra.

<comment><USER8> My bad, 200 all in.

Your point about the code of ethics is intriguing! Do you point them to the code of ethics before or after the fact? Or to push back against someone trying to get you to do something unethical?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While I appreciate all the "that's great!", these works should always be free. The fact that ACM, IEEE, and other professional organizations hide works behind firewalls is a crime against progress, and will eventually drive them out of business.

<comment><USER11> While in theory I agree with you, in practice anyone who cares about academic papers or books either gets them from their university or knows how to get them for free. I don't think I've heard anyone ever complain about wanting to read an academic paper but being unable to do for free.

<comment><USER12> Well, let this be the first case you've heard of this. I just graduated, but while I was a student at the University of Sydney, I found that many journals (including ACM and IEEE, and even ISO) were not accessible through our university's library system. I usually just decided to not bother citing those papers and citing others.

It just so happens that the field I was working in (astrophysics) is one where many papers are published on arXiv, but my supervisor always got frustrated when I used the arXiv copy of a paper (sometimes the final edit of a paper isn't uploaded to arXiv so you might be citing something which was removed after the journal review). And for papers not on arXiv, you can sometimes manage to the paper on the author's website but that's hardly a workable system (and those are usually preprints and not the final draft). And yes, you can get papers by emailing the author if you really need a copy but that limits your ability to search through many papers as broad background reading (it seems a waste of time for M researchers to ask N authors for a copy of a paper, only to read the abstract and results).

Academic papers (which are publicly funded through grants and often produced by public institutions) should be free to the public. Those papers have already been paid for by the public.

EDIT: ISO not being available was legitimately a real blow -- I was working on a personal project that required reading the DataMatrix standard and I couldn't get access to it. Instead I had to try to piece together the protocol from the Wikipedia description and just gave up because I couldn't get it working.

<comment><USER11> Okay, so just pirate them?

<comment><USER12> Less well-known papers are difficult to pirate, but even if that wasn't true I also think that it's quite strange to argue that researchers should pirate papers rather than making the papers free to the public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is awesome, and I appreciate the pointer to a specific book!—but isn't _all_ of ACM's Digital Library free to download during until June 30?

[https://www.acm.org/articles/bulletins/2020/march/dl- access-...](https://www.acm.org/articles/bulletins/2020/march/dl-access- during-covid-19)

<comment><USER14> This is great. Do you know other similar resources that have been made available during this time?

<comment><USER13> I don't, but keeping an eye out here is probably the best way to find out; I'm pretty sure that's how I saw the announcement above.

Lots of publishers are making their textbooks temporarily available through resources like VitalSource and Redshelf, but (a) VitalSource at least is still reading DRMd material through a clumsy app (I haven't tried Redshelf); and (b) they seem more geared towards college textbooks than to scholarly works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a great book, and while you're at it you may as well check out the author/editor of the book's papers. Dahlia Malkhi has either written or advised authors of some very notable papers. Corfu, Tango[1], and FPaxos are just a few worth checking out.

0 - [http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/mahesh/papers/corfumain- final.p...](http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/mahesh/papers/corfumain-final.pdf)

1 - [http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~taozou/sosp13/tangososp.pdf](http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~taozou/sosp13/tangososp.pdf)

2 - [https://fpaxos.github.io](https://fpaxos.github.io)

</comment><comment><USER16> Along a similar vein, Springer just make "Linear Algebra Done Right" freely available as well — [https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-11080-6](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-11080-6)

<comment><USER17> Nice, how have you been made aware of this? Is there a list of freely available material at Springer?

<comment><USER16> I just happened on notice it on my timeline on Twitter. I did look around for a list from Springer, but I can't seem to find one.

<comment><USER17> Actually it seems that Springer has an open access program: [https://www.springeropen.com/books](https://www.springeropen.com/books)

There is currently around 1000 books available at [https://link.springer.com/search/page/3?facet-content- type=%...](https://link.springer.com/search/page/3?facet-content- type=%22Book%22&package=openaccess)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Took a graduate distributed systems course at UT Austin and it felt like a Leslie Lamport's greatest hits course. The best part was that all of his papers were actually really easy to understand and interpret... aside from Paxos which was easily explained by others.

<comment><USER19> I hope it was with Dr. Alvisi and various arias to open every lecture!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Are there any particular books apart from this that would be available on ACM that's good to download and read? Any suggestions?

<comment><USER21> All books on ACM are free to download till June 30th. If databases is your thing you should certainly check out "Making Databases Work The Pragmatic Wisdom of Michael Stonebraker", creator of Ingres, PostgreSQL and VoltDB and not to mention a Turning award winner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The epub link on that page sends me to an online reader, from which the 'Download' button does precisely nothing. This might be due to all the browser-armour I'm wearing, might be a Firefox thing, don't know. The PDF link works fine.

Anyway, if this is happening to anyone else, just copy the link for the epub button on the main page, and add "?download=true" to the URL (mirroring the pdf link). You will then get an epub file downloaded directly by your browser.

</comment><comment><USER23> Hey, is anyone able to mirror the ACM archives?

I mention this because, well, given the global pandemic now in effect, and given how closely intertwined the ACM is with their conferences, it seems like ACM might not be able to (financially) survive having all their conferences being canceled at once.

</comment><comment><USER24> On a similar note, does someone know of a resource which explains parallel abstractions/languages.

<comment><USER25> Goetz explains several parallel abstractions above the OS mutexes. Java also has Atomics, Streams, ForkJoin, and ThreadPool resources in their concurrency library. Probably starting to age at this point, but its a lot nicer than using locks.

<comment><USER26> Can you share the respiratory

<comment><USER27> I think by Goetz the parent meant the book by Brian Goetz -> "Java Concurrency in Practice"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Can someone point me to greatest hits on the ACM?

</comment><comment><USER29> Can anyone who's read this comment on how useful it is for learning the concepts themselves vs. historical context and Lamport's biography?

<comment><USER30> I have read most of the chapters in this book. I would say it's mostly about learning the concepts themselves and in this regard the book is extremely helpful. Additionally, each chapter has a historical context about Lamport's work and how it influenced future systems, research, etc. It's more like a related work section in a paper. But you could easily skip these parts if you're not interested in them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What a welcome contribution. If my lifetime is spent just properly internalising Lamport's work, I'd consider it a life well-lived.

</comment><comment><USER32> At his age, every time I see a headline about Lamport, my first thought is "shit, has he died!?".

Thankfully not.</comment>


Ask HN:  Soft. eng. unsatisfied at BigCo.  Quit and then look for another job? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I'm a software eng. who graduated from college last year and I, mistakingly, took a job at a BigCo which is in an industry I'm not passionate about at all.  And since I didn't have any say in what team I'd be in -- I've been assigned to a team that does 90% support work.  I've been updating my dev skills by doing side projects after work (just to learn, nothing anti-competitive or for monetary purposes).
I'm already looking for another job and since the market is quite hot, I'm receiving a lot of requests to interview and meet with companies.  This requires me to take time off work, often sporadically.  It's only a matter of time before my team begins to suspect something is off, and also I don't feel that great having to take time off work to interview with other companies (not to mention, it often requires rescheduling meetings due to obligations at work).
So, I was wondering if I should just quit and spend all my efforts on looking for a job (and doing side projects in the meantime).  How would potential employers perceive that? I know the general advice is to secure a job before you quit your current one, but I think an exception can be made in this market.
Just to add, I've had a few decent internships under my belt during college, which I believe is helping me a lot with getting that first call from potential employers. <comment><USER2> From my experience in a similar situation, employers definitely do prefer to consider candidates who are either working in a job already, or have the opportunity to attract multiple concurrent offers. Think about it like the lone attractive lady in a bar.

In terms of interviewing, if you decide to go with looking for a different job while you still have a job, try to batch together your interviews on a given vacation period, or arrange for interviews to happen at alternative times of the day. As derekja said, decent developers are rarely at risk of starving. However, the HR department usually don't have the ability to tell whether you're a decent developer or not. You will have to pass through the HR filter especially if your network isn't very well-established (which I would presume to be the case for your average college graduate). After you quit, the longer you're out of work, the less likely you'll be able to land a replacement gig before you get desperate and cycle back to the same pattern again.

So at the end of the day, I feel you need to make your decision based on how tolerable you are about the situation (related to how bad the situation progressed).

</comment><comment><USER3> I had a BigCo manager once who gave me some really good advice, that is to publicly let it be known that you are interviewing at least once a year. Now, in your case I'm not sure I'd let it generally be known how much I was interviewing, but letting people know you're looking at what's out there is usually not too bad an idea. Who knows, maybe they'll be able to do something to address your concerns?

But if not, and you just don't have any passion there, please leave. Life's too short to work on boring crap and decent developers are rarely at risk of starving.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, I have already decided to leave. That's definite. It's just a matter of how to go about doing it. Quitting immediately frees me up to interview with more folks, to pick and choose so I don't make the same mistake again.

The concern here is how potential employers look at this. Would they rather hire someone who's already working, or someone who doesn't have a job? I'd like to get some opinions from people who make hiring decisions if possible.

Thanks

<comment><USER4> Don't leave until you close on other job. As others have noted, your value plunges in the eyes of other hiring folks even though you feel you are the same person.

You also are perceived to be less in a position of strength on compensation negotiations.

And finally, since you don't have a job, there will be a little bit of a question about why you left your last job, a little bit of a non-positive aura about that.

This is just the way the interview/hiring dynamics go, whether we think it is fair or not.</comment></comment></comment>


Tips About Time Management - <AUTHOR> http://blog.earbits.com/online_radio/5-tips-about-time-management/

<comment><USER2> Good point on the balance section. I try to do the less sleep to get more things done, but then I find myself burn out a lot easier and I end up becoming anti-productive. You're right about everyone being different and needing different amounts of sleep to keep going during the day. We should pay more attention to what are bodies are telling us rather than trying to be like the person next to us.</comment>


Tectonic: a complete, modernized, self-contained TeX/LaTeX engine - <AUTHOR> https://tectonic-typesetting.github.io/en-US/ <comment><USER2> > Tectonic has been forked from the old-fashioned WEB2C implementation of TeX

TeX was written in WEB which was a literate programming version of pascal (with, I believe, some c-like pre-processor support). WEB2C is a pascal-to-C transpiler. a pascal-to-rust transpolar would be interesting.</comment>


The Great Emu War of 1932 - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_War

<comment><AUTHOR> After the withdrawal, Major Meredith compared the emus to Zulus, and commented on the striking maneuverability of the emus, even while badly wounded: "If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world...They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop."</comment>


OpenSSH introduces curve25519-sha256 key exchange - <AUTHOR> http://www.libssh.org/2013/11/03/openssh-introduces-curve25519-sha256libssh-org-key-exchange/

<comment><AUTHOR> FTA, reasons explained and some more details: [http://git.libssh.org/projects/libssh.git/tree/doc/curve2551...](http://firstname.lastname@example.com)

Backgound information on curve25519 from djb: [http://cr.yp.to/ecdh.html](http://cr.yp.to/ecdh.html)</comment>


Why I Did Not Go to Jail (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://a16z.com/2014/02/06/why-i-did-not-go-to-jail/ <comment><USER2> _> Michelle was surprised, as her previous company had run this practice for years with full approval from PricewaterhouseCoopers, its accounting firm. I said: "That's all fine and good, but I still need Jordan to review it first."_

 _Jordan came back with an answer that I did not expect: "Ben, I've gone over the law six times and there's no way that this practice is strictly within the bounds of the law. I'm not sure how PwC justified it, but I recommend against it."_

One of the foundational reasons for the spectacular implosions of both Enron and WorldCom was the behavior of their common auditor, the ginormous accounting firm Arthur Andersen ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen)). Andersen was willing to certify pretty much anything these companies wanted to do as fully legal and above-board, because these were big clients and Andersen didn't want to lose them to some other accounting firm by inconveniently insisting that they keep honest books. So they were free to rip people off in all sorts of creative ways for years, protected from close scrutiny by Andersen's seal of approval.

All of which is to say that, if you represent serious cash flow and you're tempted to push the legal envelope, you probably shouldn't expect a Big Four accountant to be the one to talk you out of it.

<comment><USER3> Quick reminder for anyone who might have missed it:

Accenture is a spinoff from Anderson Accounting.

Do with that knowledge what you will: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accenture#Emergence_of_Accentu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accenture#Emergence_of_Accenture)

<comment> AJC-Official This is a useful bit of knowledge, but to guard against people making irrational judgments about Accenture, it's important to note that (1) It was primarily Anderson's consulting divisions that went to Accenture, and (2) these large auditing firms have offices all over the US and world, and in these types of cases, it was really only a branch or two that were complicit in the fraud.

In the same way that we shouldn't condemn the employees of <INSERT TECH COMPANY> because senior leaders decided to <Censor/Abuse/Manipulate users> we shouldn't condemn otherwise ethical accountants because of the misdeeds of their colleagues - especially when they pass more stringent ethical requirements than developers.

Ironically, people couldn't differentiate the isolated incident, and AA liquidated/sold because no one wanted to do business with them. [0]

[0] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen#Demise

<comment><USER4> "Ironically, people couldn't differentiate the isolated incident, and AA liquidated/sold because no one wanted to do business with them."

"Ironically" is not the word you should be looking for, there. "Fittingly", or "Unsurprisingly", perhaps. Even if you know not all the apples in the barrel were bad, you know that it was a barrel with more than one bad apple, so you throw that barrel out.

<comment><USER5> Ironically, people often dismiss the scale of a problem by saying it was limited to a few "bad apples", when the point of the apple/barrel metaphor is that one bad apple can spoil the whole bunch, so having one bad apple in it is just as bad as every apple being rotten.

Does that one work?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here is Ben 3 years previously recommending that executives break the law to preserve their standing with each other:

"It is important to note that just about all of these kinds of policies violate the Right to Work laws in California. Specifically, if you block a hire based on this kind of policy and the employee loses their job and cannot find work, your company is liable for his wages. As a result, the business relationship with the other company must be extremely important for you to employ any kind of "hands off" policy."

[https://a16z.com/2011/02/23/is-it-ok-to-hire-people-from- you...](https://a16z.com/2011/02/23/is-it-ok-to-hire-people-from-your-friends- company/)

<comment><USER7> Violating California labor law is unlikely to land you in jail-- most of the penalties are financial.

<comment><USER8> I mean, given the tone of this post and the talk of how important it is to run everything by the counsel, "not committing a crime that literally leads to the executives being jailed" is a pretty low bar.

<comment><USER4> ...albeit a higher bar than many of his peers could clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Others mentioned that Sharlene Abrams is "Michelle" here and posted links but this link seems to be better [1].

Interestingly, this case was about backdating _executive_ options _including her own_. I can't claim any knowledge of what PWC did or didn't approve of and some casual searching hasn't found any action taken by the DOJ or the SEC against auditors in relation to SV option backdating (please correct me if I'm wrong).

A quick search found that at one point option grants needed to be reported within 2 months but the SEC changed this to 2 business days and some companies and individuals were indicted because they failed to do so. Was this after this case or before? I'm not sure on the timing.

Whatever the case, this seems pretty wilful non-compliance (and, arguably, fraud) so I'm not surprised some went to jail. I'd also be surprised if anyone thought backdating anything that affected tax and legal obligations was legal, particularly a CFO.

As for anyone who thinks those who commit this kind of fraud shouldn't go to jail, I'd say jail is about the one thing the rich are afraid of. If you have $20m then a $3m fine might suck but it's not the end of your world. A year in jail in so much worse.

[1] [http://retheauditors.com/2014/02/13/vc-horowitz- implicates-a...](http://retheauditors.com/2014/02/13/vc-horowitz-implicates- auditor-pwc-in-story-about-dodging-backdating-bullet/)

<comment><USER10> > As for anyone who thinks those who commit this kind of fraud shouldn't go to > jail, I'd say jail is about the one thing the rich are afraid of. If you > have $20m then a $3m fine might suck but it's not the end of your world. A > year in jail in so much worse.

Except the intention here obviously was not to defraud, but _to follow the law_ , which was so incomprehensible as to make even professionals fall into its traps. And it's not "the rich" going to jail here, but the professionals that are responsible for making that mistake. Maybe that professional happens to be "rich", but most people involved will walk free, as long as there's a scapegoat.

No, people shouldn't go to jail for this. These regulations shouldn't even exist. Even "socialist Europe" isn't as bad as the US in this regard.

<comment><USER8> Other than the assertions in the blog post it's not really clear why we should believe this version of events. Consider this article, which suggests the opposite: [https://web.archive.org/web/20150108121957/http://go.bloombe...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150108121957/http://go.bloomberg.com/market- now/2014/02/12/dont-worry-ben-its-a-long-way-to-san-quenti/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Abrams did not actually go to jail for backdating stock options. What she pleaded guilty to in a criminal case[1] was listing a false exercise date for her options on her tax returns. That meant more of her profits got taxed as capital gains (at a lower rate), less as ordinary income. Lowering your marginal tax rate is a silly reason to risk jail, but that's a separate question. In his post, Horowitz says, "Michelle ultimately served 3 1/2 months in jail for her part in [her old employer's] stock option practice — the same practice that we nearly implemented at Opsware." Well, sort of. Certainly the charges against Abrams were a consequence of the backdating investigation.

It's safe to guess, though, that backdating company loans to executives (something else that happened at Abrams' earlier company) and switching around exercise dates to cut his own taxes weren't practices Horowitz was planning to implement. You don't need a great general counsel to steer clear of this. Just following the instructions on TurboTax would probably do it."

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150108121957/http://go.bloombe...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150108121957/http://go.bloomberg.com/market- now/2014/02/12/dont-worry-ben-its-a-long-way-to-san-quenti/)

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20130530050608/http://www.justic...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130530050608/http://www.justice.gov/usao/can/news/2010/2010_09_16_abrams.guiltyplea.press.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't think the rule that was violated here is very complicated at all. I'll get the technical details wrong, I'm sure, but the underlying ethic of the situation is obvious:

If you issue a stock option with a strike price equal to the day's market price of an option, it's "at the money". These options are tax-favored, presumably because it doesn't have intrinsic value (until it's "in the money", when the company shares later appreciate).

What you can instead do, if you're a cheat, is to pretend you're issuing tax- favored incentive options "at the money", but backdate them so that their price at issuance is the _low_ price within some window. These options are effectively "in the money" (whatever the difference is between the low price set for the option and the current higher price is locked-in profit) when issued, have intrinsic value, and should be fully taxable, but you're falsely claiming otherwise.

<comment><USER13> _These options are effectively "in the money" (whatever the difference is between the low price set for the option and the current higher price is locked-in profit) when issued, have intrinsic value, and should be fully taxable, but you're falsely claiming otherwise._

For what it's worth, options that are not "in the money" are still worth a lot of money and have intrinsic value. I'm not making a ridiculous claim here, this is what the Black Scholes model would say for example and it's why companies don't just hand out options freely to anyone. Yet according to our tax law they do not have value and are not taxable. (This is why options exist in the first place.) So, IMO the whole thing is complicated because the tax law has a somewhat arbitrary rule for determining what options are taxable.

IANAL but it is also not required to give out strike prices that match the exact day someone is hired. You have some flex in the time period. So these rules just aren't as simple as one might hope.

<comment><USER14> An option that is not in the money has no intrinsic value by definition. It has time value.

<comment><USER13> I don't think it's accurate to say that it has no intrinsic value by definition. If you do a fundamental analysis on the options without reference to their market value, the Black Scholes formula will tell you that an option, even an option out of the money, is worth something. That is the definition of intrinsic value.

Options out of the money also clearly have a market value, for public companies at least.

<comment><USER15> Intrinsic value has a very specific meaning in the options world (different from the everyday meaning you are referring to): [https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intrinsicvalue.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intrinsicvalue.asp)

<comment><USER13> According to the first sentence in the article you link, "Intrinsic value is the perceived or calculated value of a company, including tangible and intangible factors, using fundamental analysis." That's precisely what I am talking about.

<comment><USER15> Read more than the first sentence before you double down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not sure how to feel about this.

Story seems to be that this lady went to jail from a knock-on effect of a stock option backdating scheme, which led to taxes being wrong. But many firms seemed to have done this, presumably with somewhat independent legal advice.

I'm not close enough to the details to really understand it, or even understand whether it smelled.

But I can remember a time when accountants were shopping around tax-saving schemes in the City of London, and I came across one of the sales guys. There would be all sorts of strange schemes, for instance involving the schemers "advising" P Diddy on his lyrics. Or publishing a book of their own poetry. And the explanation diagram would always fill up entire A4 pages with various sorts of entities. I'd get told the scheme was sound, approved by top lawyers, etc.

But I never participated, it just seemed too contrived to make sense. The stuff was always marketed as "you'll save tax" but everyone knows whether they're making an income, and what the rough tax rate is. So if you're paying a lot less something smells.

</comment><comment><USER17> Michelle got actual jail time for a simple, honest accounting mistake? I don't buy it. Rich, connected people don't serve time for white collar crimes in the USA unless the criminality is severe.

<comment><USER18> Right. The person in question plead guilty to criminal tax evasion, an exceedingly rare charge. Nobody gets charged with tax evasion for reasonable but incorrect interpretations of the tax code. In this case the evasion was intentional, flagrant, and large.

<comment><USER19> I still think something is missing from the story. They state the scheme was designed by outside legal counsel. Lawyers are paid to know the law. Under federal law, for it to be criminal tax evasion, the conduct has to be willful. Doing something with advice of legal counsel is almost definitely not a willful violation of the law.

<comment><USER18> The reason for this apparent paradox is that all of the key statements in this blog post are false. Just go read the US Attorney's press releases or the perpetrator's guilty plea if you want facts.

<comment><USER20> You are only getting the story as presented by the CEO, so I assume I am not getting the entire picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> (2014)

Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7191642](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7191642)

<comment><USER22> Pretty important comment in there that the person Ben is talking about didn't go to jail for this accounting strategy but rather tax fraud!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The idea of a GC reporting to a CFO is a lunacy. It is like a controller reporting to a CRO.

Edit: I am fascinated by the downvote.

The job of GC is to prevent a company from doing things that would create legal issues for the company. Both CEO and CFO have a reason to push the company to take risks, including legal risks. Neither should be able to fire the GC. Therefore GC should report to the board of directors not to the CEO and definitely not to the CFO.

The job of a controller is to oversee accounting. The top level person who is likely to engage in creative accounting is the head of sales/chief revenue officer. Controller reporting to the CRO creates an incentive of a controller to take CRO positions rather than purely accounting positions. Therefore controller should either report to CFO or CEO.

</comment><comment><USER24> Read about this form of fraud, and more, in the book "financial shenanigans" !

Quoting from this review of the book: [https://100investmentbooksayear.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/rev...](https://100investmentbooksayear.wordpress.com/2014/12/17/review- financial-shenanigans-by-howard-m-schilit/)

> Failure to proper account for stock option backdating expense, where > management secretly give themselves stock options that had already increased > in value. By not reporting the compensation expense resulting from these > "in-the-money" stock options grants, companies are overstating their > earnings. Look out for unusually "lucky" timing on the issuance of stock > options.

Edit: from the old thread, here's the SEC's statement:

[https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2009/lr20964.htm](https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2009/lr20964.htm)

> On May 31, 2007, the Commission charged Abrams and three other former senior > Mercury officers with perpetrating a fraudulent and deceptive scheme from > 1997 to 2005 to award themselves and other Mercury employees undisclosed, > secret compensation by backdating stock option grants and failing to record > hundreds of millions of dollars of compensation expense. The Commission's > complaint alleges that during this period certain of these executives, > including Abrams, backdated stock option exercises, made fraudulent > disclosures concerning Mercury's "backlog" of sales revenues to manage its > reported earnings, and structured fraudulent loans for option exercises by > overseas employees to avoid recording expenses.

Backdating options is one thing. Failure to report the additional expenses incurred by backdating options fraudulently overstates the profitability the company, harming all other investors

</comment><comment><USER5> >Michelle (note: her name has been changed)

Does this really obscure "Michelle's" identity? CFO at a major, well run enterprise company, worked at Opsware until ~2005, and later she served 3.5 months in prison. (Not sure if gender was randomized.)

That seems to be enough to figure out who it was.

Edit: Per romed's comment, Sharlene Abrams seems to fit those criteria:

Confirming the ~4 month sentence: [https://www.law360.com/articles/229277/ex- mercury-cfo-gets-4...](https://www.law360.com/articles/229277/ex-mercury-cfo- gets-4-months-for-tax-evasion)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/mercury-plea/former- mercury-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/mercury-plea/former-mercury- interactive-cfo-to-plead-guilty-idUSN0920738920100909)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18027437](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18027437)

And I also found this, which recounts the same details of the story and confirms Abrams: [https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/how-ben-horowitz- avo...](https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/06/how-ben-horowitz-avoided-an- options-backdating-scandal/)

<comment><USER25> It is not meant to permanently obscure it; only to avoid specifically naming them for Google Searches as a courtesy. It's not like "Michelle" didn't do what Ben said she did; she in fact did a lot worse.

Ben was merely extending a basic courtesy.

<comment><USER5> Fair enough, but it seems he added a lot of unnecessary detail that made her easy to identify with high confidence. The exact length of the prison sentence? The year of resignation? The title at current and previous job?

That seems like a lot of work that went at cross purposes to anonymization.

<comment><USER26> I think it is highly unlikely that more than one CFO of his company was ever jailed. At least, I sure hope not!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The general rule for startups is to innovate in product space and not in the mechanics of running (and taxing of) the business. This will put a startup at the disadvantage of FAMGA. But that is only one of many disadvantages.

The irony of this CFO example is that the innovation was ethics, run it by a lawyer, and the conventional wisdom was unethical, to backdate the options. But irony notwithstanding, the law won out.

If your inner voice says you and your C corporation might be getting away with something then you should probably run that by a lawyer. If that something involves someone else not knowing something else (the essence of _fraud_ ) you definitely should run that by a lawyer or just follow the general rule.

</comment><comment><USER28> I am disappointed so many people seem to accept the view that Michelle is in fact substantially to blame and deserves her punishment. I have the opposite view: the government is absolutely to blame, for creating an incomprehensible tax and accounting system. It is unacceptable to me, for example, that the IRS (or SEC) does not just notify people directly and immediately if they have made a mistake - honest or otherwise - on their accounting statements. It's as if a company built an unusable software system, and also somehow had the legal power to send people to jail for making mistakes while using it.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is there a legal equivalent of "code smell"?

<comment><USER30> Pretty much ethics. If there's anything that's being done or offered that wouldn't be affording to random public joe then think very hard about why it's being done.

For some things there's a good reason, for others it's reasonable to ask why a specific timeframe? Why not 5% more, or 100% more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Neat story. Definitely underscores the importance of not just blindly copying others. Just because "everyone's doing it" does. not. make. it. right.

</comment><comment><USER32> Old rule: "Measure twice. Saw once."

Another old rule: "Believe none of what you hear and half of what you see and still will believe twice too much."

I learned a similar lesson in math: Intuitive descriptions and conceptions and pictures and examples are from really good up to crucial, but they are not sufficient. Instead, make strong efforts to stay really close to carefully stated theorems and proofs.

Sure, there are books, lectures, etc. on applied math that try to make the subject easier by omitting the proofs and often even the carefully stated theorems. On further inspection and more learning, what I found was that the with the easier treatments, in practice omitting the theorems and proofs also omitted crucial discipline, care, and checking and brought in too many errors.

Sometimes have to work with such "easy" sources and work too fast, but in that case try not to bet more than can afford to lose -- in the sense of the OP, don't take a chance of going to jail.

</comment><comment><USER33> Corollary: call Jordan Breslow if you are looking for real advice, which is something rare. He has a professional web page here: [https://www.gettinglegalright.com/](https://www.gettinglegalright.com/) it seems he is the real hero.

</comment><comment><USER34> It's neat how some rap references, lip-service to integrity, and some local color about Berkeley hippies can make a multi-millionaire's story seem sympathetic, given it's about hiring a CFO who ultimately went to jail for accounting fraud.

<comment><USER35> His entire book is like that.

On the one hand, it does rub the wrong way. I'm supposed to believe this is a man of and from the street?

OTOH, it adds useful background color to his story. Probably finely studied and tuned for publication, but still useful.

You should check out the audiobook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > Michelle ultimately served 3½ months in jail ... Michelle had no intention > of breaking any laws and no idea that she'd broken any laws.

There is something desperately wrong with our legal system when a situation like that is even possible.

<comment><USER18> The blog post is a highly misleading one-sided account of a notorious white- collar crime. You should read more about it from other perspectives.

<comment><USER8> Do you have a recommendation?

<comment><USER18> [https://www.reuters.com/article/mercury-plea/former- mercury-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/mercury-plea/former-mercury- interactive-cfo-to-plead-guilty-idUSN0920738920100909)

[https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2009/lr20964.htm](https://www.sec.gov/litigation/litreleases/2009/lr20964.htm)

etc.

<comment><USER37> Kind of interesting, too, that the original article talks about the backdated options being granted to "employees", while from your links, it appears that this was very much a thing for _executives_ only.

<comment> village-idiot An executive risking jail time to help employees out does not sound that plausible, to be honest.

Now an executive risking jail time to enrich themselves? Now we're talking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> [deleted]

<comment><USER39> "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> this is four years old, the title should be updated.

<comment><USER39> Thanks, added.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Reading that legal doc made me wish there was a Genius for laws.

</comment><comment><USER42> That song is such a banger. The era of Drake's rise and Weezy at his best.

</comment><comment><USER43> The whole practice of putting non-violent people in jail is just so absurd.

<comment><USER44> Tax evasion is theft.

<comment><USER43> Whatever. The only kind of people that should actually be jailed is those who are prone to physical aggression or invasion into others' private space.

<comment><USER45> I mean, you can make a case for that. But you can also make a case that not much else seems to really deter these high net worth people from doing illegal things. What would you propose as an appropriate punishment for willfully breaking tax law?

<comment><USER46> For example, massive fines, that are larger than their net worth, so that they are forced to pay a portion of their income for a while afterwards.

But, yes, prison should not be used as a punishment, but rather to isolate people who are physically dangerous (note that this does not equal violent crime - it's possible for a person to commit a crime of violence, but not actually be a danger to society afterwards).

If we really want to have a physically punitive justice system, corporal punishment is infinitely better than years in prison: it teaches a lesson, but people can move on quickly from that - it doesn't turn their whole life upside down, and it doesn't put them in an environment where they're more likely to criminalize than rehabilitate.

But ideally, the system should be preventative only where necessary (i.e. isolate the danger), and rehabilitative otherwise.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is Deploying to Production 50x/Day a GOOD Idea? - <AUTHOR> http://www.thehackerchickblog.com/2011/02/continuous-deployment-for-continuous-learning.html <comment><USER2> Who is really doing this?</comment>


Sell Services on Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://services.amazon.com/selling-services/pricing.htm?ld=EL-www.amazon.comAS <comment><USER2> I wonder under which "in-home" service out-call escort services will masquerade as.

It's only a question of time.

When I was at Yell I wasn't that surprised to see how frequently such services would appear on our database, initially as massage and then moving on to ever stranger personal services (with the real service buried in the description or provided by a phone call later).

<comment><USER3> "Headlight Restoration"? "Door Knob Installation"? "Power Washing"?

<comment><USER4> If they sell it as plumbing the hourly rate wouldn't even be that suspicious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm curious what (if any) startups will be build around this.

For example, what if there is a service that enables you to take your Amazon ratings to another platform but not have to pay the 20% cut. You can imagine the service providers would be willing to pay for the cost of verifications where their Amazon ratings is verified and transformed to platform B where it charges only 10% or 8% cut.

Other interesting angles would be around services and tools you can create to help the service providers market themselves better, engage their customers for reviews, return for repeat business, etc. Very exciting time!

<comment><USER6> sounds like you want [http://www.erated.co/](http://www.erated.co/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If we thought Amazon's Product Search was a threat to Google, this is taking the battle to a new level entirely.

<comment><USER8> It certainly is, though with Amazon's token lack of finesse and personality. Could become something akin to Odesk for real-world services, and would likely suffer from the same maladies: low average quality, race-to-the-bottom pricing, and impersonal customer service

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> From the FAQ:

 _\- For example, if you install car audio, your services would be listed alongside car audio components._

The real benefit for some, not much for others. iPad Repair can't benefit from iPad sales

 _\- Amazon creates pre-defined scopes of work based on common customer requests which you are then able to pre-estimate and offer... Before a job begins, you can review a customer's specific scope of work and process a change order if needed._

Isn't this too complex? Also, no mention of procedure if customer does not get satisfied by the service. But anyway, it's very interesting to see Amazon trying to standardize service business. It's too complex, I want them to show me how to do it.

<comment><USER10> iPad repair certainly can benefit from listings next to iPad sales. There's an obvious case where someone has broken their iPad, goes to look for what a new one would cost rather than sending it in to Apple, sees the cheaper repair option and purchases services.

On the second point, it looks significantly simpler, particularly from Amazon's standpoint, to start the capability only using predefined service offerings. Such commoditized services can be more easily and confidently associated with products, whereas open service offering definition would be significantly harder to support (leading to a poor user experience and adoption rate).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 20% cut is a little stiff.

<comment><USER12> If you consider that the service provider pays nothing to acquire the customer and close the sale, plus Amazon brings the platform and payment processing I think it's very reasonable.

As they rightly point out in the benefits these aren't leads, they are closed sales.

<comment><USER13> > I think it's very reasonable.

It's high. They're not first to the scene. If you look at Elance, it's 8.75% for exactly the same thing including payment processing. On the high end, I've worked with agencies that charge 15% for everything. 20% is steep.

<comment><USER14> Taskrabbit takes a 20% cut as well, I'd say it's going rate for sure. Especially with Amazon backing it and the guarantee.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Might this compete with Thumbtack [1]? That's the comparable startup that comes to mind.

[1] [http://www.thumbtack.com/](http://www.thumbtack.com/)

<comment><USER16> I was also thinking redbeacon.com, although they've already exited to Home Depot so it's not so much of a concern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is amazing. They've created the arbitrage market with reputation management that we need -- it suddenly builds a platform for Cherry, Homejoy, Exec, etc..

I wish they introduced the ability to have structured bids / sell orders for things like food delivery, and even transportation service.

<comment><USER18> > I wish they introduced the ability to have structured bids / sell orders for > things like food delivery, and even transportation service.

Yes! That would be very interesting to see. If we could, sort of, commoditize a certain service (eg. transportation), and build a bid/ask order book for it (potential customers are bidders, and transportation services provide the asks).

The problem, as I see it, is defining the base unit. In order to have a unified order book, we need a base unit for this order book. What are we selling? Is "1 mile of transportation", or is it necessary to build different order books for different locations? I suspect most transportation service have a base fee _plus_ a $/mile rate. So now you have two variables, and the price of "1 mile of transportation" will depend on the quantity of miles, which makes it a non-commodity (1 ton of iron ore in the spot market will cost roughly the same as 100 tonnes).

<comment><USER16> Agreed, food / grocery delivery and transportation services would certainly be interesting, but defining the rates based on some sort of a base-cost-unit like mileage and speed of delivery would be extremely challenging to do smoothly for the end user. I think it would end up being non-satisfying for the customer and the sellers.

Besides, amazon.com has amazon fresh for the grocery delivery service needs. Why cut into their own business?

<comment><USER19> Not all consumers of food transit and delivery services are end-consumers getting groceries. Restaurants need the same services.

<comment><USER16> Sure, but restaurants have special needs relating to getting groceries. When they want "avocados" they don't just want any case of avocados. They may want a case of "locally sourced Haas 40's with 4-5 day ripening time with a USDA Grade of #2 Combination, or #2, but not #1". Not just avocados. Instead of wanting "bread" they might need an artisan bread with a gluten free recipe that's standardized to 16oz weight for their lunch sandwiches. So it's not as simple as it seems, which is why there's dozens of huge billion-dollar companies who do this such as Costco, Sysco, US Foods, Shamrocks, etc. You just shop around and stay on top of food costs. And if you're a medium-large chain you lock down trade agreements much farther up the supply chain (producer level) to very low fixed prices for 6 months at a time. So if amazon wants to try to tackle dozens of intricacies for thousands of types of perishable goods that will have variable quality in a market that is heavily regulated by the USDA, more power to them. Source: I own a restaurant on the side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Bike Chain Lubrication"??

Do people really need to call someone out to oil a chain?

<comment><USER21> I imagine that services can be grouped with other relevant services. For example: Bike Chain Installation + Bike Chain Lubrication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sadly, it does not seem to include Saas/web services

<comment><USER23> Doesn't there already exist Saas marketplaces?

<comment><USER24> Yes, and from amazon.

[https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace](https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace)

<comment><USER22> This is for aws users /tech people.

Not for common people (my idea was i.e. an accounting web service sold on amazon)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Is this really something Amazon wants to do? Yes, it's the natural evolution of Bezos' ambitions, and services are really the only category Amazon hasn't quite touched. But it's a lot harder to control people than it is books. Do they want the people who have come to expect toilet paper delivered in 2 days exactly, without fail, to associated with never-on-time plumbers?

</comment><comment><USER26> Amazon is finally becoming "the everything store"

Interesting!

</comment><comment><USER27> Services (unlike products) are typically constrained by the number of personnel available.

How does Amazon determine a company's availability when a customer books a job?

Most of these business I'd guess are probably in the 1-10 people range and probably not the most tech savvy. I can't imagine an adequate solution unless Amazon provides scheduling software and enforces adoption.

<comment><USER28> If you look at the list of services, it's basically a list that does not include any service that requires an appointment. My company does scheduling for small businesses and, in industries like auto, there's just a maximum number of appointments each day that we're allowed to book.

It looks like Amazon punted on the hard part by constraining the availability to only specific services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The 20% fee seems ridiculously high. I suppose this has to get passed on the customers, but the review system alone will probably keep people going there.

On product reviews, I know some are juiced but I still look at Amazon reviews when examining something (and try to figure out which ones appear authentic). I imagine most people take these reviews at face value and reviews are worth a lot when having a service performed. I've never been on Angie's list but it seems a bit scammy from the little exposure I have had. Amazon likely appears more trustworthy, so I grudgingly predict success for this program.

<comment><USER30> "The 20% fee seems ridiculously high."

In one sense it is high but in another it's not.

If you consider the amount of time it would take a typical contractor, say an electrician, to land a job if this comes in as more pre qualified business then the extra cost will save having to bid out and spend time on jobs that never pan out. People typically get prices from multiple sources. They don't always follow through on work that was quoted. If this type of work is "shovel ready" that's a great cost savings to the person doing the work. Not having to spend time on sales and marketing at least not as much as if they got calls from an advertisement. (Rating system means people have less doubt about using them).

<comment><USER31> I do local IT tech on the side. Usually two or three calls a week. If I can get 50% more appointments though the Amazon service without having to do word of mouth advertising locally, that is a win in my book, even if I write off 20% for Amazons insane fee.

Though I think they are trying to use their size to their advantage here. If they wanted to be really competitive 10% would be much more reasonable. 20% strongly motivates me to get new customers to work with me off the Amazon service to avoid that overhead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Would this also include software development services?

<comment><USER33> Everything on the list, and from the FAQ, looks to be like distinct pieces of non-creative skilled labor - Installations, repairs, tune-ups, etc

Software and Design is probably too broad and not concretely defined enough, for what they are targeting.

<comment><USER34> But given this seems like a next step iteration from Amazon MTurk platform, it's not that far fetched a leap to see where this could lead to. I believe we very well might soon see a similar marketplace platform for mentioned high- skill services like SEO, Design, Software Development, etc... If they can crack this problem for local services (which I think is a harder problem), extending it to other services might not be difficult and given it's Amazon they would probably go for it soon(IMHO).

<comment><USER12> I'm on it ;)

Small businesses want to buy services like they buy apps and products online. We're building that. And it is difficult.

Mail me if it sounds interesting (especially designers and developers): me at daniel sim .co.uk

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is interesting.

For the most part, it's still pretty hard to get good reviews for service businesses. It's even hard to get prices. How much does it cost to get a car painted?

My question is why would you pay online? It might turn out that for every sale that goes through amazon 3-4 clients just use this like yelp. Read review/prices and just pay the normal way.

</comment><comment><USER36> We offer something similar in Australia[1]. We try and focus on high quality services & try not to commoditize our service desks though.

Amazon has been with this for some time. Its a bit surprising that they've not launch in entirety. (Still looks like a sign up phase)

[1] [https://servicelocale.com](https://servicelocale.com)

</comment><comment><USER16> Enforcing quality-standards for services rendered sounds nightmarish for either the end user or for the service provider. It's going to be interesting to see how this pans out for amazon.com.

</comment><comment><USER37> Service as a Service?

<comment><USER38> To be honest I have been wondering how long I'd have to live to see "service as a service" come around, about as much as I've wondered the same on the invention of "Awareness Awareness Month".

Seriously: Isn't this the inevitable conclusion to "x as a service"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Great move. Finally an improvement on Amazon MTurk.

</comment><comment><USER40> The inconsistency of UI design style across different Amazon service always bothers me...

<comment><USER41> In India, they have stake in 3 e-commerce websites: Amazon.in, Junglee and Jabong. All of them look nearly the same theme wise.

Pretty interesting pie is being cooked up in India. I wonder if their 1.2 billion $ attempt to buyout Jabong would go through or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> That's like trying to gobble up a huge number of startups.

<comment><USER43> Not that kind of services.

<comment><USER44> I think he means startups like Uber ... selling services for a percentage of the fee, with an awesome mobile app.

<comment><USER43> Oh, ok. I thought they meant the "...-as-a-service" kind of startups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Does anyone have an invite code for this?

</comment><comment><USER46> [http://www.opentaiga.com/welcome/healthcare](http://www.opentaiga.com/welcome/healthcare)

It's ON.

</comment><comment><USER47> Does this include food delivery?

</comment><comment><USER48> "Love for sale"

</comment><comment><USER49> No web development?

</comment><comment><USER50> The Power of a Brand.

</comment><comment><USER51> if it's anything like their marketplace, Amazon will keep all,contact information and all of your customers will be the property of Amazon. As a business owner, this is scary, because you can get banned or dropped by Amazon at any time.

It happened this month with DVDs on Amazon. If you aren't a wholesaler or someone that sells a lot in bulk, you can no longer sell DVDs. so if you are a small seller and you build up your customer base over a view years, you now effectively have to start completely over. Still least eBay allows you to keep your customers and build an actual business.

Now with services, I'm not sure how they will enforce this. If you are meeting with the customer, you could easily just tell them to start purchasing from you directly (and avoid Amazon fees). But I suppose if Amazon saw you only getting 1-time customers, they might get suspicious.

Either way, I would steer clear of doing any business with Amazon, unless you are fine with the fact that you aren't building yourself a business. You are building up amazon's

<comment><USER30> "Either way, I would steer clear of doing any business with Amazon, unless you are fine with the fact that you aren't building yourself a business. You are building up amazon's"

The type of people that will use this (an electrician as an example) will be like lambs to the slaughter. While many of us know about the mercuriality of places like Amazon and Google (dropping projects and services when they don't pan out or when they get bored) most "normals" are not aware of the dangers of having their eggs in this type of basket. And the risk that is involved.

<comment><USER52> Electricians and plumbers are accustomed to running their own businesses, and may be more savvy than you think, and more savvy than many people here.

<comment><USER53> Any many are probably earning a good deal more money as well. The wealthiest self-employed people I know are in trades, and they make a lot more than a web developer does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> [http://www.nagaiah.com/](http://www.nagaiah.com/) is selling services since 2008

We have been collecting only positive feedback and purge the negative comments.</comment>


Ask HN: Do I need FCC approval for selling modded tablets? - <AUTHOR> I want to work on some hardware projects where I buy cheap Android tablets and build them inside other things (like furniture, adding a screen to a backpack etc) Can I just build these and sell them. Or do I need specific licenses/approval of some sort <comment><USER2> IANAL, but have done a few of these type projects. With some caveats of course, as long as you are using FCC licensed tablets (e.g. must have an FCC ID already) and are not modifying the radio or antenna then you just have to list the FCC ID of the original tablet on the outside of your packaging and follow the rules for manuals etc. This is similar to why a lot of people start with FCC licensed modules for hardware projects instead of building up their own. Also, if you co-locate any other transceiver then you will have to do FCC testing and get a new ID, although it is not that difficult or expensive to do it generally.

I had built a few kiosk marketing solutions that basically did just this and we did go through legal just to make sure we were on the up and up and it was really simple. Honestly just following some instructions from the FCC would have been good enough, but we didn't want to chance a screw up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. This is super valuable!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: The Fog of Secrecy - <AUTHOR>

I am the founder of a self-funded startup. We launched a private alpha site roughly three weeks ago, and have about a hundred accounts. We are about to start making appointments with VCs and we have a thorough business plan and presentation ready, but I don't feel like it is the right time to dispel the fog. The fog keeps us safe, but also keeps us in the dark.
I'm not looking for specific advise as much as I am interested in thoughts from more experienced founders about when an idea needs to see the light, and when it is in one's best interest to maintain the secrecy. Clearly we cant market and try to grow in the dark, but we also can't attract execs and developers either.
How do you decide when to blow cover? <comment><USER2> One of the VCs at a panel I attended in the last year or so said, "if your business plan depends on noone knowing you exist, you have a problem."

In all seriousness, the execution is way more important than the idea, and execution is a lot harder to copy than ideas are. If you're at the stage where you have a working product, you're probably at the stage where you can go public with your idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are two kinds of startup ideas: those that have basically already been done, and those that nobody else thinks can or should be done. In either case, maintaining secrecy is only detrimental. If you believe in your team and your idea, let the world know as soon as you have something usable so they can tell you what they like and don't like about your product. That's how you'll end up making a kickass offering.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've read from others and experienced personally that being more open about your startup is more useful. By being out there, you have the opportunity to be first, make current/potential competition re-evaluate their business, and building a loyalty and user-base takes time so get started fast. Merely, being out there, you might have opportunities come after you instead of what you're doing now (i.e. seeking them).

</comment><comment><USER5> If you think that someone can steal your idea and do it better than you can, it should tell you something.

(In other words, the ideas are almost never as valuable as the execution.)</comment>


History of Programming Languages - <AUTHOR> http://oreilly.com/news/graphics/prog_lang_poster.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the original source: <http://www.levenez.com/lang/lang.pdf>

Also...

Unix history: <http://www.levenez.com/unix/unix.pdf>

Windows history: <http://www.levenez.com/windows/windows.pdf>

<comment><USER2> Trying to find the ones that have no in-arrows. I see: FORTRAN, B-0, Lisp, APL, SNOBOL, JOSS, ISWIM, Forth, sh, Prolog, sed, ML, B (not the predecessor of C, some other B, 1981), and Tcl. Did I miss any?

<comment><USER3> Sather, Icon, BASIC

<comment><USER2> No, all of those have in-arrows: Sather 0.1 has one from Eiffel 2, Icon has one from SL5, and BASIC has one from FORTRAN II and one from ALGOL 60.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A bit humorous almost that some of our most cutting edge scientific research is still done in Fortran in some fields despite being over 50 years old :P

<comment><USER5> Yeah, here at NC State just about all the engineers besides the CSCs and ECEs have to learn FORTRAN as well. Granted, it's FORTRAN 95 as opposed to the 50-year-old variant, but looking at my roommate's homework assignments, the language definitely shows its age.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but your nuke friends doing internships at Progress Energy are liable to see some variant of FORTRAN in their work!</comment></comment></comment>


Do You Like What I Do for a Living? - <AUTHOR> https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/ <comment><USER2> It hurts my eyes. A better choice of fonts and layout might make it readable. And the writing could do with significant improvement.

<comment><AUTHOR> The author wasn't asking about the presentation or writing style.</comment></comment>


Pearl Boy WebGL Demo - <AUTHOR> http://gooengine.com/demofiles/pearl-boy/index.html <comment><USER2> This was showcased along many other great WebGL demos a month ago: [http://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/webgl-...](http://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/webgl- breaking-into-the-real-world/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome graphics and low time-to-crate: <http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/39.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> This actually worked great om my BlackBerry Z10. I had no idea it supported WebGL, thought it was going to be a write up along with the demo i could read but was pretty surprised when the demo kicked in.

Graphics look great and everything feels smooth, hope they make a game out of it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for all the nice compliments and thanks for pointers on where we need to improve things ! :-)

Consider signing up for the alpha, we hope we can let in another round of users soon !

<comment><USER6> Do you prevent default action in keyboard and click handlers? In Opera and Firefox I can sometimes see focus outline and text selection flashing, probably activated by my 1-key keyboard shortcuts.

<comment><USER5> Good question. I looked at the code and it appears we preventDefault for mouseup and mousedown but not for keyup and keydown. I will ask around why that's the case. Can you give me an example keyboard shortcut where this is happening ?

<comment><USER6> W and S in Opera select paragraphs (if you enable advanced shortcuts like I did). In Firefox I'm able to drag and select whole canvas (entire screen flashes light blue).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> this was on the frontpage already a while ago, cant find the HN discussion link but this was the linked content: [http://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/webgl-...](http://metaphysicaldeveloper.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/webgl- breaking-into-the-real-world/)

Its looks nice and all, but these kind of WebGL demos arent all that impressive anymore now that we have seen things like the unreal engine running in the browser. <http://www.unrealengine.com/html5/>

There isnt really alot you cannot do with WebGL today. If i showed you this as a compiled C++ demo, most probably wouldnt be impressed.

<comment><AUTHOR> But i find the loading time of unreal engine very slow, their is more to happen

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not great if your keyboard is in Dvorak :-)

<comment><USER9> Yup, this is a real problem with game input on the Web platform right now. You can't get geographic keycodes, only virtual keycodes. I haven't stumbled on any specification / API proposal to fix this. Anybody know if browser vendors have something in the works?

<comment><USER10> Until then an option to choose Dvorak for the user and manual remapping of the keys would work for apps that want to support those keyboards.

<comment><USER9> Yeah but then you need to support AZERTY (French), QWERTZ (Central Europe) and lots of other layouts too if you want to cover most people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think this is my favorite WebGL demo of all time: <http://madebyevan.com/webgl-water/>

<comment><USER12> In case anyone else has this problem: I had to disable AdBlock for it to recognise mouse clicks/movement.

<comment><USER13> Thanks. Also, I had to turn off Firefox Quick Find in Advanced -> General -> "Search for text when I start typing"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is the first WebGL demo I've seen on HN (or anywhere else, but I don't exactly go looking for them) that not only works, but works very well, in Chromium on Ubuntu.

Granted, I'm on 11.10, so perhaps my browser is a bit out of date... still, though, it's kind of nice to see what all the fuss is about. The game played very smoothly for me.

<comment><USER15> I'm Chromium 25 on Ubuntu, and I get "Your browser doesn't seem to support HTML5 and WebGL. The best thing to do is upgrade to a modern browser that supports all the awesome things the web has to offer"

<comment><USER16> Some graphics cards won't work.

For me, it worked great. Until it crashed my entire browser.

<comment><USER17> On linux, the nvidia driver will happily and reliably panic my entire system when I try these things. Thank goodness I'm on different hardware now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I really enjoy seeing new WebGL games emerge. This one is very fluid and beautiful.

<comment><USER19> But it's not a game, out of curiosity, are there any good games written in WebGL(because all I see are demos)?

<comment><USER20> <http://www.runescape.com> has been rewritten entirely in WebGL, they just released the beta and are upgrading the entire game in the next month or so.

It's pretty big news, as far as I know they are the first major MMO to swap to WebGL. They were using Java and had been building on it for nearly 10 years but they found that WebGL offered better graphics performance and easier programming than it's Java equivalent so decided to switch. It is slower, probably around 10 or 15%, but offset by all the new graphical features, longer draw distances, more vivid colours, etc.

<comment><USER21> they are still using java , just checked 1 hour ago.

<comment><USER20> _"they just released the beta and are upgrading the entire game in the next month or so."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Incredibly flickery, and the camera and player character frequently clip through the terrain. Nice animations and music though.

<comment><USER5> What Browser are you using ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Extremely cool atmosphere created in this demo. In the deeper waters, I was really held in suspense, waiting for the music to turn ominous and a sea monster to eat me, but alas it didn't happen.

Minor feedback, it seemed like the instructions would disappear before I had a chance to read them...maybe just me. Quick enough to figure out though.

</comment><comment><USER24> Even though it might have been already showcased some time ago I haven't seen it yet. It's beautiful. I especially like the reflective water. Parallax effect in the diving mode is also a nice touch adding some extra depth.

Have any of you tried running it on iPhone 5? I wonder if there were any performance issues (if it worked at all!;).

<comment><USER5> There is a trick running the web browser on an iPhone with WebGL enabled using testflightapp. We hope that Apple will enable WebGL as a default soon. Basically the technology is all there...

<comment><USER25> If jailbroken, you can enable WebGL with the Enable WebGL tweak (free).

For what it's worth, it works really nicely on the iPhone 5 in Chrome with this enabled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> On both Firefox and Chrome on Mac OS X (10.6.8), the water itself flickers quite badly, despite a smooth framerate.

<comment><USER27> What versions? No problems for me. Firefox v24 and Chrome 29.0.1514.0 canary.

<comment><USER26> The current release versions of Chrome (27) and Firefox (21). Both auto- updated. Since the flicker is the same in different browsers, it may be more of an OS or graphics driver thing.

<comment><USER5> We have many guys working on the demos using MacOS. So I agree that it sounds like a driver thing. What graphics card are you using ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I hadn't seen WebGL look so pretty and fluid, if they can create a whole game like this, it might be a pretty viable platform.

The link in the upper right corner gives a Drupal PDOException error, though.

<comment><USER29> Yes, it seems the server was not expecting this kind of attention. Should be fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Butter smooth and so atmospheric graphics, especially the rowing part

<comment><USER31> I see a lot of jitter on a very fast Mac. (Safari 6.0.4).

Somebody who understands Web GL tell me -- developer's fault or browser's fault? It looks a little like numerical instability to me rather than a framerate issue per se, but I'm no 3D expert.

<http://jsbench.s3.amazonaws.com/jitter.m4v>

<comment><USER32> What's it like on Chrome? Sometimes these things can be an issue with the GC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Pretty impressive. Too bad it doesn't have collision detection yet. I love the reflection!

Another step closer...to console games on the browser.

<comment><USER34> Collision detection works on the crates underwater. Not sure why they didn't use it on the floating crates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Smooth as silk, Firefox v24 (Nightly). I'm seeing approx 60FPS with no visible CPU/GPU load. Wonderful! :D

<comment><USER35> Doesn't work on the current release of Firefox though. Webkit/Chrome really is turning into the IE of this decade :P

<comment><USER36> Yep, getting TypeError: document.body is null in console in Firefox 21.0

<comment><USER5> Damn, this should work, we do support Firefox 21 ! It's probably a regression in the demo itself and not the engine. We'll fix it asap, thanks for the tip !

<comment><USER5> Ok, try reloading the page. We use requirejs but not the domready! plugin. So there seems to be a race condition with the body loading. Sorry for that, we'll fix it asap.

<comment><USER35> I tried again now, still getting the same error.

<comment><USER35> ... but now it worked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> works nicely on Nexus 4 in chrome :)

<comment><USER38> In Chrome on my One X, it says the browser isn't supported. Works well with Firefox Aurora, though the graphics are noticeably worse than running it on a desktop browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Wow. Awesome graphics for the web!

</comment><comment><USER40> Beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER41> Doesn't load at all for me. I can load other WebGL demos on this browser, just not this one.

<comment><USER5> Sounds like you have Firefox, we currently have an issue on FF21. Please give it another go early next week.

<comment><USER41> Right. FF21 on Linux. I will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> >Your browser doesn't seem to support HTML5 and WebGL. The best thing to do is upgrade to a modern browser that supports all the awesome things the web has to offer.

I am on the latest version of Opera which I guess is not a modern browser. Perhaps turning down the condescension a notch and changing that "Upgrade" message to "Best works in Chrome" will be a good move. You're a second class citizen on HN if you use anything but Chrome.

<comment><USER43> I don't read much/any condescension in that message. Fair enough if you enjoy to use Opera, but why not have Chrome installed on your machine too so you can spin it up and view content like this when needed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Also Mozilla as these two browser are far better than Opera and IE, its good to have multiple browser installed in system for experiments and trial

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> To the complainers and criticizers here: shut up, this is great.</comment>


Senator proposes creating new crime of 'economic terrorism' aimed at protesters - <AUTHOR> http://q13fox.com/2016/11/16/republican-state-senator-proposes-creating-new-crime-of-economic-terrorism-aimed-at-protesters/ <comment><USER2> I don't care what your party affiliation is, its still embarrassing when congress members are severely ignorant of the constitution. The freedom of assembly, just like the electoral college, exists to protect the rights of minorities in the face of contrary popular opinion. The government's role should never be to sensor and ignore.</comment>


A New Incubator Model Pairs Startups With Established Companies - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/09/12/a-new-incubator-model-pairs-start-ups-with-established-companies-with-investors-in-the-middle-white-paper/

<comment><USER2> I would worry about the interaction between employees at the corporation and the hustlers and hackers at the startup. Seems like a lot of possible jocking going on if you put it into practice.</comment>


Didi is now backing Uber's fiercest rival in Southeast Asia - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/749115/days-after-buying-ubers-china-business-didi-is-backing-ubers-fiercest-rival-in-southeast-asia/ <comment><AUTHOR> Related article: [https://www.techinasia.com/grabs-2015-financial-numbers- reve...](https://www.techinasia.com/grabs-2015-financial-numbers-revealed- rivalry-uber)

Another aspect that I haven't seen discussed a whole lot yet in relation to Didi's purchase of Uber:

Didi's $1B investment in Uber gives Didi an economic interest in Uber, but perhaps most importantly it probably gives Didi investor information rights. This is a big deal when it comes to navigating the waters to compete with Uber directly or indirectly in markets outside China. Uber may also have information rights on Didi, but those may only be shareholder (eg common) rights vs investor information rights since Uber China's acquisition was a merger rather than a cash investment.

In any case, I don't think people are giving Didi enough credit for how savvy and strategic they were here. Uber seems to have been outplayed on every level by Didi when they faced off. It will be very interesting to see what happens over the coming years.</comment>


Rook – Open, Cloud Native, and Universal Distributed Storage in Alpha - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/rook/rook <comment><USER2> Worth noting that it's a project connected to Quantum ([http://www.quantum.com/](http://www.quantum.com/))

<comment><USER3> Feels like a yet another storage startup in making

Aiming up to be bought by EMC in two years or so

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From GitHub Usage looks simple. Quick question on the listed example, after creating 10MB new volume image. Later does it allow volume resize (say to 20MB) ?

</comment><comment><USER5> So, it's an independent distribution of Ceph with a focus on ease of use. Not a bad goal. I just hope they don't complicate actual Ceph developers' lives by making outlandish claims about technology they don't understand.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't suppose anyone could say how this compares to Torus when using CoreOS?

</comment><comment><USER7> Very interesting, what's the minimum amount of nodes required to operate it?

<comment><USER8> According to the link,

> It scales from a single node, to multi-PB clusters spread geographically

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Couldn't they have improved ceph? - if it's a simpler ceph they want.

</comment><comment><USER10> Alpha.

<comment><USER11> Rook may be alpha, but they didn't start from scratch:

> rookd uses an embedded version of Ceph for storing all data

> rookd embeds Etcd to store configuration and coordinate cluster-wide > management operations

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I think this is what makes this project so interesting. It keeps Ceph in the data path which has been tuned over 8+ years while leaning on the stability and advances in etcd for consistent distributed configuration.

<comment><USER12> Good. Filesystems sometimes seem easy-ish, but starting from something fairly proven is a very good idea in this space IMO.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Cheap options for simple landing page? - <AUTHOR> Can anyone recommend cheap and simple SAAS options for a landing page?
I'd like visitors to be able to enter an email address for product availability updates.
I would also like to host it on a custom domain. <comment><USER2> You can setup a landing page on Gitlab Pages with a custom domain and email capture form (and ssl, if you want) for free.

Example: [http://albanybusiness.org](http://albanybusiness.org) (all on gitlab pages with a capture form using mailerlite)

Here's how to do the setup:

Official Tutorial: [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/pages/README.html#add-a-custom- do...](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/pages/README.html#add-a-custom-domain-to- your-pages-website)

My writeup with insights, geared towards beginners: [https://medium.automizzen.com/gitlab-pages-create-host-a- sta...](https://medium.automizzen.com/gitlab-pages-create-host-a-static- website-for-free-part-1-5d2ee6359f8e#.qe0pkaivu)

I use Hugo with one of the pre-made themes. I've done this with ~7-8 sites now.

Edit: readability

<comment><USER3> I noticed you're not using SSL with the custom domain on GitLab pages. Is there some restriction or complications with doing so?

<comment><USER2> It's a little cumbersome to setup with Gitlab Pages with LetsEncrypt TLS. I was using a homegrown static site generator before switching to Hugo, so it took a few trial and errors to set it up correctly each time. The only real issue is since we can't access the Gitlab Pages server, we can't do any redirects http -> https.

My sites [https://dhruvkar.com](https://dhruvkar.com) and [https://automizzen.com](https://automizzen.com) are both hosted on Gitlab Pages and using LetsEncrypt TLS. I just didn't bother for the one mentioned above. I use a javascript http->https redirect currently, but that's not ideal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For static content : Github Pages [Free]

For email : Mailchimp [Free tier]

Edit : A quick Google search, showed that someone was nice enough to make a working example [http://landing.adrienjoly.com/](http://landing.adrienjoly.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> If you want to have more technical control over your page, I can recommend Hugo [1] - a static website generator (free). You don't have to be into HTML/CSS, because they have a handful of themes [2] you can choose from. There exists a technical cheatsheet [3] how you could set it up with GitHub Pages (free) or DigitalOcean. There could be a Hugo theme which already uses e.g. MailChimp [4] as E-Mail service.

[1] [https://gohugo.io/](https://gohugo.io/) [2] [http://themes.gohugo.io/](http://themes.gohugo.io/) [3] [http://www.robinwieruch.de/own-website-in-five- days/](http://www.robinwieruch.de/own-website-in-five-days/) [4] [https://mailchimp.com/](https://mailchimp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> You could try Carrd, the dev behind it is pretty cool and constantly adding new things. [https://carrd.co/](https://carrd.co/)

<comment><USER3> Those templates [1] are super nice and minimal. I'll have to try this one soon.

[1]: [https://carrd.co/build](https://carrd.co/build)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My recommendations currently for this sort of thing come down to two.:

Amazon Lightsail [https://amazonlightsail.com/](https://amazonlightsail.com/)

Nearly Free Speech [https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/](https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/)

There's also the s3 / Route53 / AWS Lambda solution mentioned by "ryptophan" which is inexpensive but a bit more complex.

There's also Google Cloud Platform [https://cloud.google.com/products/](https://cloud.google.com/products/) which could, especially via [https://console.cloud.google.com/launcher](https://console.cloud.google.com/launcher) give you for example click-to-launch phpList or LetsChat up through SuiteCRM or Mautic and on to Redis, Cassandra, or a whole OS.

There's really more than one axis of "simple". Do you want to manage a single app? Do you want a simple way to launch a whole cluster of servers? Do you want a full OS VPS with a single app on it to start?

</comment><comment><USER8> I've used unbounce before. currently use wufoo.com for my form designer. Currently, I host my own sites on a virtual server. I have a reseller account with [http://webecs.com/](http://webecs.com/) and I have about 10 domains I work with at a time. kill the least productive.

<comment><USER9> I've used Unbounce before too (and it was a good experience). I host things in Azure myself now, but Unbounce has a lot more features.

Squarespace looks nice too ( [https://www.squarespace.com/](https://www.squarespace.com/) ). There's an YC backed company that does something of the sort too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe:

\- $5 DigitalOcean droplet

\- WordPress

\- WordPress theme[1]

\- WP Subscribe plugin[2]

1\. [https://justfreethemes.com/themes/landing- page/](https://justfreethemes.com/themes/landing-page/)

2\. [https://en-ca.wordpress.org/plugins/wp-subscribe](https://en- ca.wordpress.org/plugins/wp-subscribe)

<comment><USER11> and how do you keep those sites malware and spam free? I have ran into problems getting my site hacked (I suspect worms) and I don't even know how it happened or how to protect my site from it happeining again

<comment><USER10> Regarding spam, if you are experiencing DDOS then CloudFlare (or alike) can be used. If you are referring to comment spam on the WordPress blog there are plugins to mitigate this[1][2].

For brute force login attacks, use recaptcha[3] or TFA[4].

Security by obscurity is not always welcomed, but I tend to change my WordPress login URL's from '/wp-admin` and never use 'admin' or 'root' as a username.

There is nothing you can do about WordPress remote execution bug's or worm attacks. If your version is affected you are going to have a bad time. Just remember to keep your WordPress installation up to date and jail your WordPress files and web processes as a regular user (ex: www-data) and database credentials as a non-root user.

Regular backups. It is fairly easy to restore a WordPress site from a backup if the site ever is hacked.

I apologize if I didn't answer your question. This is a not an easy problem and WordPress is one of the most targeted web platforms out there.

1\. [https://wordpress.org/plugins/si-captcha-for- wordpress/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/si-captcha-for-wordpress/)

2\. [https://akismet.com/](https://akismet.com/)

3\. [https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-login- recaptcha/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-login-recaptcha/)

4\. [https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpclef](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wpclef)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have always been parsimonious when it comes to digital things. Being good with tech is one good reason for this. But lately, I have come to realise that no matter how technically-able I am, doing something programmatically expends mental resources that could have been used elsewhere. Even when I consider myself decent with HTML/CSS, I would near more than a day to perfect a website, resolving quirky CSS bugs, trying to find good stock images, perfecting positioning, margins and what not.

Considering that LeadPages would only cost $25 / month, even if my landing page runs for three months, $75 is a meagre expense for the hours it'll save me in building and mantaining a simple web page, and not to say about the excellent integrations it has. More often than not, I have counted a lot on my technical skills only to repent in wasted hours and effort.

</comment><comment><USER13> A WYSIWYG open-source tool in development that does exactly this [http://launchaco.com/build/](http://launchaco.com/build/)

I think it is currently in alpha but it looks pretty good. The creator posted this on hacker news awhile ago.

<comment><USER14> Here's the relevant post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13126228](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13126228)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Have you tried Gumroad's follow form?

There is an example of its use near the middle and bottom of my blog's About page:

[http://jugad2.blogspot.in/p/about-vasudev- ram.html](http://jugad2.blogspot.in/p/about-vasudev-ram.html)

May not be too customizable, but is functional.

You can also sell your products via their site:

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

</comment><comment><USER16> Github pages is nice, night be hard to set up email entry for a less-technical user. Most of the non-technical friends I have enjoy using Unbounce.

<comment><USER17> I would second Github pages, you can set up a custom domain. The only issue is trying to set up ssl nicely, but you might not even need that. Use a simple template like the one that [http://launchaco.com/build/](http://launchaco.com/build/) provides. Then set up something like mailchimp or maybe FormSpree for a contact form.

I recently did something just like this for my new site [http://druidjono.com/](http://druidjono.com/) using a Launchaco template (no affiliation).

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Host frontend on s3, use route53 to connect domain, connect form to AWS lambda function. Should be less than $2 a month.

<comment><USER15> This is for how much bandwidth usage per month?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> [https://www.openshift.com](https://www.openshift.com) has a free tier

<comment><USER3> That seems like a generous free plan [1]. Have you noticed any gotchas?

[1]: [https://www.openshift.com/pricing/plan- comparison.html](https://www.openshift.com/pricing/plan-comparison.html)

<comment><USER19> I haven't used it for anything in production yet.

After 24 hours of inactivity it'll idle down, the next load after that is slow. The price tier up prevents the idle down, cost $0/month but requires a credit card number (?). I haven't tried it.

<comment><USER15> What language did you use it with (if you built a web app rather than a static site)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here is the great list (Launchaco is free and no signup required)

[https://medium.com/super-startups/22-tools-to-create- beautif...](https://medium.com/super-startups/22-tools-to-create-beautiful- landing-pages-for-startups-b69d4f0d0c39#.9sjjuiezr)

</comment><comment><USER21> What do the various static site hosts offer in terms of analytics?

I can always add in some javascript analytics, but with the prevalence of ad- blockers and tracker-blockers it would be nice to have to some analytics coming from server logs to help create a complete picture.

</comment><comment><USER22> Create and download your landing page here: [http://launchaco.com/build/](http://launchaco.com/build/) Host at Github Pages. Use formspree for collecting email

</comment><comment><USER23> I use instapage.com. They are the least expensive out of the landing page builder solutions with a/b testing out there.

Wix is a way cheaper option.

The cheapest option is probably wordpress. You can buy landing page theme for wordpress on themeforest.net.

Good luck.

<comment><USER24> Instapage is excellent. Fast, reliable, high quality, easy to cancel when you move on.

It's worth the extra few bucks for the time you'll save.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This will cost you pennies and take an hour or two - [https://github.com/niftylettuce/gulp-aws- splash](https://github.com/niftylettuce/gulp-aws-splash)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not sure exactly what you mean when you say "SAAS options for a landing page", but GitHub Pages has been great for me running a few simple static sites under custom domains.

</comment><comment><USER26> [http://strikingly.com](http://strikingly.com), [http://carrd.co](http://carrd.co)

</comment><comment><USER27> [http://www.launchrock.com](http://www.launchrock.com)

Drag and drop page build and no need to setup a server etc

</comment><comment><USER28> Instapage is awesome. I made djtresistance.com with it in a few minutes.

</comment><comment><USER29> Github Pages + Jekyll

</comment><comment><USER30> Wufoo is a good way to set up web forms quickly.

</comment><comment><USER31> we use webflow.com

</comment><comment><USER32> Github Pages</comment>


Motivated People Don't Need a Job Title - <AUTHOR> http://www.cachestocaches.com/2018/1/hire-motivated-people-without-job-title/ <comment><USER2> I can think of a couple of times where a job title is important.

Self-motivated people can work too much. A job title can help remind them where to stop, and can provide support to that person in arguing why to not take on more work.

Job titles provide a baseline reference for the outside world. That was a lousy description, so I'll give examples.

If you apply for a loan, they'll want to know your job title. A job title which reflects one's position and authority in a company is a proxy for both current income and expected career path; information the loan company uses to help make an offer.

If you apply for a new job, then the job titles of your previous work act as a summary of what you did, and if you did more than that then you can highlight them in the description.

(And remember, some companies may call previous places of employment to verify job title and dates employed, so having an accurate title is important.)</comment>


Uber Is Raising $1B to Crack China, Soon to Be Its Largest Market Worldwide - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/06/11/ubers-business-in-china-is-doing-a-lot-better-than-we-thought/

<comment><USER2> I usually get around on the light rail, but I'd like to buy a car soon as I enjoy wandering around the countryside at night.

Were I to become an Uber driver, would I receive a grant of stock options so that I'd get some cash out of its eventual IPO, or perhaps were I to hold on to the stock so as to leave it for the children I hope some day, I can vote at stockholder meetings?</comment>


Diego Gomez risks 8 years in prison for putting one paper in open access - <AUTHOR> https://act.eff.org/action/let-s-stand-together-to-promote-open-access-worldwide <comment><USER2> Some background to his situation: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/colombian-student- face...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/07/colombian-student-faces-prison- charges-sharing-academic-article-online)</comment>


while (1); or for (;;);? (tldr; one results in less compiler warnings) - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/885908/while-1-vs-for-is-there-a-speed-difference

<comment><USER2> I think it's time to choose a more modern language. Having to hack this is such a prehistoric notion.</comment>


Basho and Cisco take the wraps off Riak running on Mesos - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/basho-and-cisco-take-the-wraps-off-riak-running-on-mesos/

<comment><AUTHOR> Co-author of the code here, if anyone has any questions. The code: [https://github.com/basho-labs/riak-mesos](https://github.com/basho-labs/riak- mesos)</comment>