Ask HN: How to split equity - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a startup in its early stages. So far its been me, and another guy for a bit now.  I may have found a third co-founder to join, and she just asked about equity.
A bit how the work is split right now.
Myself, I am the technical cofounder.  I will be doing the design, the programming, and hosting etc.  The idea for the site was also mine.
Person B is handling the business related inquiries, as well as the things related to marketing etc.  He also knows way more about the process to get funding.  His importance probably will be greater in the future.
Person C if she decides to join will be our domain expert.  She would be playing a huge role in our success. In terms of helping us get the initial content, and being a liaison with the domains community.  Her opinions also will matter a lot to the directions we take.
I just handed this task to Person B, but I would like to get an idea of what you think I should expect. <comment><USER2> Reality check... you just gave B the job of deciding how much equity he should have while you're busy doing the actual work of starting the company. That's like paying someone to pick your pocket.

If you don't know how much these people are worth, it is probably because they aren't doing work that is of any tangible value to the company yet. Sure... they'll be invaluable to the company in the future. Everyone is. But do yourself a favor and get them to articulate exactly what it is that they will do and tie a value to THOSE milestones. Then link their vesting to hitting those clearly-defined milestones. And make sure those milestones push the business forward and don't include random stuff like "define equity split".

<comment><USER3> "link their vesting to hitting those clearly-defined milestones"

Great advice here. If I bring on a business guy who claims he can land the first 10 major accounts that will be critical for the business, that's all well and good. But unless he's a proven rainmaker I wouldn't give up equity unless it's vested to hitting these key milestones.

And by the way, don't put this off as a "task" to your secondary business partner. Both of you need to sit at the table and discuss.

<comment><USER4> Question: I hadn't heard of vesting based on milestones before. Is that really a commonly used option? Since milestones are so hard to predict, and depend on lots of factors, not just the work of that one person. What would an example of a clearly defined milestone be?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This has to be one of the most frequently asked questions on HN.

It may help to consider carefully all the reasons you give equity:

* To repay effort (like, doing all the up-front coding)

* To compensate for risk (taking a job with an uncertain future)

* To compensate for financial investment in the company

* To incentivize future effort and risk-taking

* To delineate control of the company

* To access valuable tangible/intangible assets held by other people (such as a network of contacts in your problem domain, or a valuable endorsement)

Make sure you're not just thinking about equity in simple terms. You can sabotage your team by creating even superficial imbalances. You might think, "I'm doing all the coding up front, so I should get more equity because I'm valuable on day 1". Maybe that's true. But it might also be true that your partner took the same amount of risk as you, got less equity, and now also has a reason to blame you for every setback on the business side, because you delivered crappy code that prevented him from realizing his equity stake.

This is an absolutely utterly basic problem in comp package design, something that anyone who has ever hired a salesperson will tell you right off the bat. In the context of comp plans, if a conflict can happen, it will happen. Make sure your fiddley equity plan is worth the effort.

Remember, if your business is unsuccessful, 60% of 0 is 0. If your business _is_ successful, you'll have other levers to pull besides day 1 equity grants to portion out upside.

(I personally wouldn't allocate a single share based on someone's supposed ability to land funding, though. Assume you won't get funded.)

</comment><comment><USER4> It seems to me that you are the most important person in this company (because you do most of the work right now, and because of your comment that "PersonB's importance will probably be greater in the future" and "I just handed this task to person B"). If you're handing tasks to people, you're the boss.

1/3 each does NOT seem fair.

To be honest, I don't understand why you are getting person B involved at all, give them equity and treat them as a co-founder if they don't have much work to do right now (as you seem to suggest). From your description, quite honestly, it seems like you might as well have hired an intern or gotten an accountant instead of giving this person a large part of your company. "Knowing a lot about funding" is NOT a reason to make someone a cofounder.

That's my 0.02c, sorry if that sounds harsh. I just don't want another post in 12 months about how to split up with my cofounders who aren't pulling their weight.

Person C is coming in later, so should get significantly less equity.

From what I'm hearing, I would not have personB involved with the expectation that at some point in the future they'll start pulling their weight. If that is the thinking, then wait until you really, really need them, and _then_ get them involved (for a lot less equity). Person C sounds important, so make them your second cofounder.

Not knowing about the details, from all your comments it sounds like personB is not doing much. YOU found another cofounder. YOU are telling personB what to do. YOU also expect personB to start pulling their weight in the future. All this points to letting them go NOW, and asking him back later when there's a need for his expertise. One more thing: having a business co-founder who isn't doing much right now but "knows a lot about funding" may well hurt your chances to get funding instead of improving them.

Get things right at the beginning. Don't get a business co-founder just because you think you need one.

Of course, I may be wrong and there may be a lot of work for personB right now that I'm not aware of :)

<comment><USER4> Think about it like this: every day, the risk of your company is (hopefully) going down. Every line of code you write, every action you take, should help with that. So every day that passes, when someone new joins, they will get less equity because they are taking less risk. More of the work is already done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given that you had the initial idea AND you're doing the coding and design, I'd say you should probably get additional equity. (How many successful startups had 100% hacker founders? A lot. How many had 0% hacker founders? Very few.)

Of course, this is based on my entirely limited knowledge of the rest of the situation. There are many other relevant questions to ask. Take a look at some previous threads on this same topic: <http://searchyc.com/equity>

I will say, try to get equity taken care of up front, _before_ you bring people on. It will prevent conflicts of a magnitude you would never expect.

</comment><comment><USER7> This post is insightful: [http://cdixon.org/2009/08/23/dividing-equity- between-founder...](http://cdixon.org/2009/08/23/dividing-equity-between- founders).

At the early stage, people tend to overvalue past contributions, and undervalue future contributions. Equity grants should be for a person's expected value over the next four years.

</comment><comment><USER8> Since you are in the early stages, go with 1/3 each, anything else will potentially cause a lot of headaches down the road.

Having equal equity creates a healthy environment where everyone feels that they should put in as much work as they can. If the others have less equity than you, they probably won't be as motivated as you are. And even if they were, you'll likely start to question whether they are working hard enough, whether they really want the company to succeed etc. This will cause a lot of unnecessary tension.

So I think you should bite the bullet, give up some equity in exchange for better odds of succeeding.

Also, some kind of vesting may be a good idea if you don't trust you cofounders enough yet.

(I was in a somewhat similar situation like you about a year ago, went with 1/3 each and I'm still very happy with that decision.)

</comment><comment><USER9> To be honest to me it seems like you practically giving away a big chunk of your company for free. Person B doesn't seem important at all at this moment, and seems like the relationship is partly based on friendship. Was this a friend you let into your business just because you think you need a cofounder? Person C seems of utmost importance in comparison to Person B, but still seems like she's not required at the moment. I made the same mistake once when I was younger, but luckily everything got thrashed and I started again by myself involving other people only when it was really necessary.

tl;dr: Only add cofounders when you're sure your really need them, and only then assess the risk and their involvement as a measure for equity.

</comment><comment><USER10> You 40%, others 30% each...

Assuming they will be co-founders with you from the get go...

</comment><comment><USER11> Whatever % you go with, have vesting.

</comment><comment><USER12> A mentor once asked his entrepreneurship class "How do people decide what a business is worth?" People threw out Cashflows, asset value, and other thoughts. He disagreed: to Ken a business is worth only what people are willing to pay for it.

It seems you are in the same boat: they are worth what they feel is fair.

All this to say that I have never heard of a uniform method. It's all up to negotiations for your team.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why not:

51 : 24.5 : 24.5

One person in control. Without the design, programming etc. there is no company. Those whose work will benefit the company down the road should be rewarded with equity that can be cashed down the road.

</comment><comment><USER14> 1\. Write down a list of tasks that must be performed to move the company forward.

2\. Decide together how many shares each task is worth.

3\. When the task is finished, split the shares betweens the founders in a joint session.

<comment><USER4> I don't think that's good advice.

<comment><USER14> Why not?

<comment><USER4> It assumes you can decide on a list of tasks now and then just menially perform those tasks for the next few months. That's not how it works.

<comment><USER14> Ok, then don't make it tasks but measurable goals.

"We should have 100 signups." "We should have a first paying customer."

And so forth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This may help: <http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/10/employee-equity-options.html>

</comment><comment><USER15> There's no magic formula here: the objective is to estimate the contribution each of you will have to the success of the company over the next stretch of time.

Is there any immediately compelling reason why 1/3rd each isn't fair?

<comment><USER4> Because person B hasn't done much yet, and because person C is joining later than the original founder(s).

<comment><USER15> "Done much yet" and "joined later" don't really matter much, in my book-- as I said, the question is, when we look back at some future point (say, a year or two from now) and total up all of the contributions, how much value did each person provide?

Clearly, person A has contributed the most so far. That doesn't mean that the trend will continue that way.

<comment><USER16> You don't assign equity based on work that isn't done. That's asking for trouble, unless the person has a huge track record of doing the type of work you have them doing.

Vesting is _key_ here. I'm not the first to say it, but setting up key milestones and vesting based on their successful (and be sure to define "success") completion is the only way to go.

<comment><USER4> Question: I hadn't heard of vesting based on milestones before. Is that really a commonly used option? Since milestones are so hard to predict, and depend on lots of factors, not just the work of that one person..</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Facebook bans adafruit 's Ladyada… Facebook finkd « Adafruit Industries - <AUTHOR> https://blog.adafruit.com/2017/10/17/facebook-bans-adafruit-s-ladyada-facebook-finkd/ <comment><USER2> What a bizarre post...

Copying it here

\---

Facebook banned our founder Ladyada. Nothing public, just trying to log in and manage our company page. We reached out to the people including the CTO, no reply, so that's that.

[ screenshot of "content not available" fb error ]

11 years ago, Limor was doing electronics, Mark Zuckerberg was doing other things. 7 years ago, same thing.

[ screenshot of what seems to be zuck joking about ugly people [https://imgur.com/a/K9M4y](https://imgur.com/a/K9M4y) ]

2010 Zuck: "I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one? Zuck: People just submitted it. Zuck: I don't know why. Zuck: They "trust me" Zuck: Dumb f*cks"

<comment><USER3> > screenshot of what seems to be zuck joking about ugly people

I wonder if that's the case? The blog post was made on a Tuesday just after the times shown and the screenshot references being drunk. Could be coincidence, but maybe not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone else get the feeling this was potentially a drunk post? The incoherence and rambly nature make me think the poster was potentially intoxicated when posting.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a fan of Adafruit and dislike Facebook but this post is unprofessional. I understand why she would be frustrated, yet this does not seem like the appropriate way to respond.

<comment><USER5> Her response is here: [https://blog.adafruit.com/2017/10/18/facebook-update- removed...](https://blog.adafruit.com/2017/10/18/facebook-update-removed- facebook/)

The OP was written with Phillip Torrone's account

<comment><USER6> Hey, dang or someone -- can we get this set to the link? It's vastly better than what the post links.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why would Facebook ban this person? What it is a Ladyyada?

There is very frustratingly little information on this article.

<comment><USER8> Ladyada is the founder of Adafruit. Adafruit is a company that sells hobby electronics, micro controllers stuff of that nature. She has a bit of a following in that diy community from her articles and videos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It looks like they reinstated the account: [https://www.facebook.com/limorfriedadafruit](https://www.facebook.com/limorfriedadafruit)

</comment><comment><USER10> Follow up in two days, this seems like an overreaction.

Ask HN: Why does FaceBook insist on attaching business account to personal one? | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15492981](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15492981) (Oct 2017, 8 comments)

>thisone: _once I try to access anything in the dev pages, my account gets locked, I have to submit a photo, wait two days, my account is back_

</comment><comment><USER11> Agree with this being a bizarre post.

On an unrelated note, be sure to check out the unique and awesome captcha they use at the bottom of the page!

</comment><comment><USER12> When you play in someone else's yard don't be surprised if one day they ask you to leave. FB is not your property, you're a guest and they can kick you out anytime they'd like for any reason they'd like.

<comment><USER13> Facebook however is has near-monopoly status in social networks.

FB would probably rather regulate themselves than be deemed "a public good" or "necessity" and have someone else do the regulating.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. Unless Facebook can provide evidence that a person is misusing/abusing the service, I feel it's entirely reasonable for a person to _expect_ access given how prevalent it is.

Maybe they should even have an external arbitration for such situations (I don't think it's at the level of the courts _yet_).

<comment><USER12> > _expect_ access given how prevalent it is.

> Maybe they should even have an external arbitration for such situations (I > don't think it's at the level of the courts _yet_).

That expectation would be a false one. It seems like a reasonable expectation but nonetheless the user is powerless if FB decides _their_ social network is better off without you. Why on earth would they allow an external arbitrator to meddle with their property? Why give up any of that power and control?

The only reason FB needs to be reasonable is out of fear of emerging competition if you boot enough people w/o cause.

<comment><USER14> In many countries, and in many social circles, Facebook can be thought of as a relatively integral part of society. In the same way that internet access has been ruled a basic human right, I think in certain circles, Facebook is getting close enough that they can't hide behind "we don't want you" anymore, and need to acknowledge the fact that they are more like a public utility.

<comment><USER12> There is a significant difference between 'thought of' and 'are'. In reality fb is not essential to anyone's life, merely by the fact that you need a computing device connected to the internet to access it. If you have internet access you have other means to communicate with people that are not reliant on fb. There is no way in the near term that fb will be governed as a utility, and I believe doing so is more harmful than not because that will only force fb to exist in the future with government protection vs letting the market determine if a new/better/different social network can arise.

<comment><USER13> > In reality fb is not essential to anyone's life,

My past employers have in the past rejected candidates due to a FB profile (i.e., candidate had dangerous-looking pics in his/her public image).

Wouldn't you say FB as a cause for getting rejected for a job impacts one's life, non?

Of course the employer never said a thing about candidate's FB profile, just "declined to proceed".

<comment><USER12> FB can definitely have an effect on your life, but it is not essential to your life. Not an essential utility. You can be turned down for a job due to an infinite number of reasons not directly related to the work itself. I do not see how this means it should or should not be governed or self-regulated though?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The profile linked to in the blog post loads for me currently...

<comment><USER16> Her profile loads, but you'll notice you can't add her as a friend, follow her, or view any associated content like comments or likes. I think this indicates Facebook has banned the user, but I might be misinterpreting stuff caused by her privacy settings.

<comment><USER17> the more informative blog post [1] doesn't really give any evidence that she was banned -- just locked out of her account and unable to recover it. i don't even see enough evidence to conclusively blame facebook.

[1] [https://blog.adafruit.com/2017/10/18/facebook-update- removed...](https://blog.adafruit.com/2017/10/18/facebook-update-removed- facebook/)

<comment><USER3> As someone who has gone through the exact steps she showed, it's most likely because FB believes she has more than one account or they believe her account isn't real in some way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How a Norco case killed 13TB of our data - <AUTHOR> http://wsyntax.com/cs/killer-norco-case/ <comment><USER2> Specs like "6A MOSFET" don't exist in isolation. The current rating of that MOSFET is due to the on resistance(Ron), the resistance between source and drain. As current flows through the FET this resistance causes power to be dissipated as heat. The 6A number comes from how much heat the junction can handle without frying and is measured under a set of assumptions.

Usually testing is done at room temperature (25C often used) with the best possible heat-sinking and ideal Vgs. Most MOSFETs of this type actually tie the internal thermal components to the drain pins. Its intended that the PCB designer use a large copper pour for the drain pads, this copper area acts as the heatsink for the chip, transferring heat away from the junction.

In other words, the MOSFET can only handle 6A if ambient temperatures are kept at room temp (usually means fans on it or its wide open to a room), there is adequate heat-sinking provided by the PCB design, and Vgs is high (higher Vgs reduces Ron). Further its important to remember that FETs have a "run away" characteristic in that as junction temperature rises so does Ron, which creates more heat.

So, there is a lot more to the functional rating of a MOSFET than the 6A on the datasheet. In reality you would never want to nor expect that FET to hold 6A. With just a cursory look at the PCB layout and previous experience with what the ambient temperatures tend to be on back-planes of server chassis loaded with many drives, 1A would be pushing it, so I'm not at all surprised that these things blew.

Perhaps the most WTFery aspect of that PCB is the lack of any suitable capacitance near the SATA connectors. If you aren't using staggered spin up and many drives were spinning up at the same time the rail voltages can dip which in this setup causes Vgs to drop, increasing Ron at the worst possible time as mechanical drives draw a lot more current at spin up. This could trigger thermal run away.

<comment><AUTHOR> The FETs blew as soon as we turned on the case, oddly enough, and even if we had a single drive plugged in, that FET would blow by itself. This is even the case when we took the backplanes out and started testing them individually in free air in the server room, where ambient is more like 18C instead of 25.

Is the design solution to use a FET with a lower Rds at 5V Vds for smaller heat dissipation?

But more importantly, is there a standard current that most chassis are tested to? I would expect all SATA hot-swap bays would support all SATA drives on the market, since nobody ever gives power dissipation or consumption figures.

<comment><USER2> > Is the design solution to use a FET with a lower Rds at 5V Vds for smaller > heat dissipation?

Honestly - Its to not cheap out on the design and use a proper hot-swap controller.

Examples (many companies make these): [http://www.ti.com/ww/en/analog/power_management/system- prote...](http://www.ti.com/ww/en/analog/power_management/system-protection- hot-swap.html)

You can rig up something slightly better by designing a current sense circuit with feedback into the FET gate if your adventurous. In either case the goal is to limit and control inrush current during power on or disk insertion.

Based on what you've said I doubt the steady state current of the disks is the problem at all. It just sounds like the 3TB drives have a higher inrush current during power up and its either high enough or lasts long enough to blow the FET junction.

<comment><AUTHOR> The funny thing is, I'm not sure that the hot-swap circuitry is even necessary in the first place due to the connector design.

The SATA spec defines "pre-charge" voltage pins that are connected after ground, but before any of the other voltage pins are connected. The idea is that by inserting a small (10 ohm) resistor, you can limit inrush current to a tolerable value while capacitors charge and regulators start up, and then when the other pins connect a couple of milliseconds later, the drive gets the proper low-impedance power connection.

Do you know if implementing pre-charge via connector mechanics obviates hot- swap protection circuitry? Supermicro seems to have hot-swap protection on their backplanes as well, but I haven't had a chance to closely inspect it.

<comment><USER2> It can partially solve the inrush current issue. There are still timing issues, if you slam a drive in you can shorten the timing of pin contact so much that its not effective. You also gain a real benefit in that one drive failing by something major, like a straight short, won't take out your entire system as the controller will detect the current spike and cut off the drive. Most hot-swap controllers also provide additional protection against things like pin reversal, ESD and accidental shorts on insert that you can't solve with just the connector. It all comes down to how robust you want the design really, how many failure modes you wish the system to survive.

EDIT: Those connector pins aren't normally solid gold. They are deposited metal (copper or tin) with electroplating of a few microns of gold on the surface.

Another reason to control insertion spikes is that when the first power pin hits you'll get a little arc (spark). This can cause small damage to the pins in the form of small chipping of the coating and/or carbon deposits(or oxidation of some metals). This contributes to a reduction in the number of insertions cycles the connectors will survive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd honestly never heard of Norco, but that's because Supermicro tends to be awesome.

They're essentially the OEM for a lot of Intel developer stuff now, too. Over the past 10 years, they went from "yet another commodity motherboard manufacturer" up to being the big white box option. They have basically replaced Dell and HP as the go to vendor for a lot of big deployments, although Dell and HP do better financing, Dell and HP have a few higher end products, and Dell/HP have better desktop/workstation/laptop products if you want a full suite from one vendor.

<comment><USER4> You'd hear of Norco if you're on a budget, they're one of the many cut-rate brands. Supermicro charges roughly three times the price for enclosures, which do get the job done if you aren't bitten by firmware issues, but are by far not a budget brand compared to the competition out there.

I've actually considered some Norco enclosures in the past for a hobbyist project, but I had concerns over their hot swap backplanes -- mainly, a lot of reliability issues reported. Catching on fire pretty much settles it!

<comment><USER5> Besides Supermicro and Chenbro and Dell and HP and IBM and (whats left of) Sun, who else is there to buy from? There doesn't seem to be any other brands anymore.

ASUS makes server mobos, but not cases (I'm not sure who's cases they're using for barebones units), and Antec makes low end server cases, but no barebones, and Intel makes pretty horrid server mobos but use someone else's cases for barebones.

<comment><USER3> Intel's someone else's cases = Supermicro, usually.

There's Penguin (Linux/HPC), iXsystems (FreeBSD/storage),and Tyan for "server barebones."

Usually I'd just pay these guys to build something: <http://www.computerlink.net/>

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty sure iXsystems uses supermicro cases as well, they just put their branding on them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This may be a newbie question.

Article states: "... it should work fine in any metal box, right?"

But then says the _case_ had some electronics which failed. Which means it wasn't just a metal case. Anyway TIL that server cases aren't just metal boxes.

And in case somebody wants to respond, how important is vibration dampening to ensure hard disk reliability? What's the best way to damp vibrations in a consumer tower desktop case?

<comment><USER7> So 10 years and a few employers ago, we had a case of a few "haunted" server chassis. Hard drives would fail on these chassis very frequently, and when a fresh drive was swapped in, it would take many days to rebuild the RAID, if it ever rebuilt at all.

Putting the RAID set in a new machine, it would rebuild fine. But in the original machine, we swapped out the raid controller, CPU's, even the whole motherboard, and the RAID sets still would not rebuild.

Long story short, each of these "haunted" servers had a bad fan that was causing a lot of vibration within the chassis - enough physical vibration happening that the hard drives were essentially rendered inoperable.

The moral of the story is to make sure you have good vibration dampening on your fans, and to use the sensors monitoring to alert you if the fans are going bad. (Even this is not perfect, since sometimes the fan gets off-kilter but is still happily spinning at 10K RPM. The first thing we did if we got an alert for a disk failure was to replace the fans and attempt a RAID rebuild before touching the "bad" disk)

<comment><USER8> This wasn't a Sun E450 was it? We had one (of a "matched" pair) that was "haunted" as well. Drives died, Sun replaced drives. Drives died again. Sun replaced SCSI controller and drives. Drives died again. Sun replaced motherboard, SCSI controller, memory, and drives. Drives died again, and we make the (at the time) scary move to Pentium III app servers, which were inexpensive enough to triple up compared to SPARC, but even better, drives didn't die.

We swapped out the E450s for 440s for Oracle when we moved to InterNAP, and all seemed to be well.

Hearing your story, I wouldn't be surprised if we had just enough/wrong vibration in the case to make it go Tacoma Narrows on us.

<comment><USER7> These haunted servers were actually supermicro barebones chassis.

It has been a (long) while since I have seen the inside of an e450 but iirc there were a bunch of fans in trays in there. So it is certainly possible that the vibration did bad things. I still carry one of the e450 era keys on my keychain as a momento.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think it's more 5-platter 7200rpm drives vs. 3T drives, inherently (I think there may be a 4-platter 3T now). An old 5-platter 75GXP might kill it, too.

<comment><USER5> This is why I avoid 4 and 5 platter drives like the plague. They tend to overheat and die faster no matter how you try to cool them, and I'm not sure why: I'm pretty sure the drives aren't intentionally defective, and I doubt the manufacturers haven't compensated for the additional load on the spindle motor and the power bus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The enclosure isn't usually something you think about that much as long as it has the requisite number of bays. The prospect of hooking everything up only to see the magic smoke get released is terrifying.

</comment><comment><USER10> Everyone learns the cheap hardware lesson at least once.

"1% less downtime means 87 hours per year. Do you think Lenovo is 1% better than Acer?" <\- what I say when I encounter a client that hasn't learned this lesson, and insists on low end gear.

<comment><USER11> It's not clear what you mean. If we have two components, one of which is 99% available and one of which is 100% available, the second is not 1% better than the first. It is infinitely better than the first. It's well understood in reliability engineering that, at least in the long term, the cost of availability increases exponentially as the goal approaches 100%.

Buying more expensive hardware (with better per-component availability) is one approach to a full availability picture. However, it's one with significant shortcomings. At the top end, it's very expensive. Across the board, it only addresses some possible threats, and completely doesn't address others (like natural disasters). The alternate approach is redundancy. That approach is not without it's shortcomings, including increased system complexity and the problems of failure detection and failover. However, it's generally lower cost and is more robust to multiple types of threats.

This is why RAID is so successful - because it is a reliable set of techniques for building highly-reliable systems out of unreliable components. Again, it only protects against one threat (drive failure) and not others (fire), but it's proven superior to the alternative "buy a single gold-plated drive" approach.

Low-end gear isn't for everybody. Cutting corners in the wrong places is dumb. On the other hand, high-end gear only saves you in some ways, and those ways may not matter to your business. If you want high-availability or high- durability you need to know to things: how much your data is worth, and what you are protecting it from. Until you know these answers, you're going to be making poor system design decisions.

<comment><USER10> I understand the math lesson and how it costs more to add each 9 to your uptime. All that will not help you convince someone who doesn't know these things. Its the difference between a sales ptich and an engineering discussion.

Redundancy is a great tool but its not a panacea. You mentioned many of the drawbacks yourself. I see too many people building gigantic RAID arrays with consumer hitachi drives and questionable controllers. It's exceedingly easy to think you're adding redundancy when you are just creating a house of cards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We have a Norco 24-E which is not a system case, but an external drive enclosure with a SAS expander. I don't know if its the same backplane but I don't know why it wouldn't be. This article scared me because we have 24 SAS 15k rpm drives on it.

Then I checked the drive spec and saw that we are pulling 0.8A on the +5V rail and 1.2A on the +12V rail which is even more than these 3TB SATA drives without backplane issues for months.

We did have to upsize the case's PSU from the shipped 500W though as beyond 15 drives we got voltage warnings from the expander.

So I think YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER13> I set up a Norco 4224 for backup purposes and plugged in a couple of 3TB WD green drives, and have not had any issues at all. Maybe the WD green drives don't require as much current as these ones?

<comment><USER14> Thats the main point of the green drives- less power, less noise, less heat.

<comment><USER15> The main point of green drives is to make people feel better about the fact that they just bought a sloooow 5k RPM drive.

<comment><AUTHOR> We actually used to use Samsung EcoGreen drives in order to get more storage for cheaper, since our main use was backup: write once, read maybe. Unfortunately there don't exist 5400RPM 3TB drives; if they were as cheap as the 3TB Seagates, we'd buy them for sure. The 5400 rpm Ecogreens used to be the cheapest 2TB drives on the market by a large margin.

I never expected that paying more for a slower drive (but better power and less power-related issues) would actually make sense!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is terrifying to me because I have the 3U version of that exact chassis and I was just thinking about upgrading from 2TB to 4TB drives.

</comment><comment><USER17> Penny wise and pound foolish, to be sure, but does the backplane work with 2T drives? There seems to be a lack of conclusion in this post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we've had 2T drives in our cases for about a year now, with no issues. Our 2T drives are rated at 0.5A on +5/+12, while the 3T drives are rated at 0.75A, so we're suspicious of this difference.

(For what it's worth, the datasheet for the MOSFETs used are rated at 6A; it's possible the manufacturer got it mixed up with the 0.6A batch of MOSFETs. I don't have any hard evidence though, so I'd rather not post speculation.)

<comment><USER18> > 0.6A batch of MOSFETs

lold hard. transistors are not resistors. peak current is not just a variable parameter.

I suppose this was due to bad contact somewhere (socket or HD) and transistors working in linear mode for more time than they can withstand, overheating and boom...

EDIT: or may be they used a crappy hotswap controller (if they actually used one) which cannot pump enough current into gates of those mosfets.

<comment><AUTHOR> Er, I should say "tested at 0.6A" MOSFETs. If they have thin bond wires or something, it's plausible that excess current just vaporized them. If they never tested them at 6A, and skimped on the gauge...

I also saw a couple instances where the trace to the gate blew up (like, black board, no copper, looks like a burnt fuse), so it's possible that static during manufacturing killed their FETs even before they shipped. (We're pretty good about static, and if it was our fault I think maybe one drive/channel would die, not several)

<comment><USER18> > Er, I should say "tested at 0.6A" MOSFETs

yes, that would be better. in reality parameters of transistors vary. but when it is off by an order of magnitude these parts (and actually the whole batch) go to trash.

> trace to the gate blew up

if it really was trace to the _gate_ then it might be blown after mosfet itself melted. Because even really fat FETs (with high gate capacity, D-S rated to hundreds of amperes) cannot do this to copper trace.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Typeface designed for doctors - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/gallery/wnN9Z <comment><USER2> One source of this meme is the seemingly-cryptic language used in prescription scripts, which uses terms that are clear to doctors and pharmacists but not so much to laypeople.

There was at least one study on this perception: "Conclusion: This study fails to support the conventional wisdom that doctors' handwriting is worse than others'. Illegible writing is, however, an important cause of waste and hazard in medical care, but efforts to improve the safety and efficiency of written communication must approach the problem systemically—and assume that the problems are in inherent in average human writing—rather than treating doctors as if they were a special subpopulation."[0]

[http://www.bmj.com/content/313/7072/1657](http://www.bmj.com/content/313/7072/1657)</comment>


Transforming Code into Beautiful, Idiomatic Python (2013) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSGv2VnC0go <comment><USER2> Great presentation! I didn't know about izip or ChainMap.

<comment><USER3> FYI: izip is simply zip in Python 3, it's an iterator by default just like xrange -> range.</comment></comment>


'Ricochet', the Messenger That Beats Metadata, Passes Security Audit - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/ricochet-encrypted-messenger-tackles-metadata-problem-head-on <comment><USER2> Jesse Hertz, one of the authors of the audit report and presumably the lead of the project, is fantastic. But this is an extremely silly story. Random messaging apps have security audits like these all the time. What does it mean to "pass" one? I don't know, and I cofounded the team Jesse works for!

The more interesting story here is about OTF. OTF is an offshoot of Radio Free Asia and is funded directly by Congress. For the past 5 years or so, they've been funding audits of _all_ the open source crypto applications, from Signal to Cryptocat (don't use Cryptocat).

I'm surprised I don't hear nice things about OTF more often. They're doing more to improve consumer crypto security than a lot of other organizations.

<comment><USER3> Have you never been paid to 'audit' the code and/or architecture of a company's operations? It's not my forte, but I assumed some process of the sort was occurring.

Anyway, beyond OTF, do you have any opinion on Ricochet (the project theoretically under discussion), it seems to be a project with admirable goals and an interesting take (though I'm not interested in 'real-time' messaging):

[https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet](https://github.com/ricochet- im/ricochet)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll repeat what I've said previously which is I'm still hoping for an app that combines the features of Ricochet, Signal and Burner with multi platform support.

That would be my dream app.

<comment><USER5> And one that doesn't use my phone number as a user name.

<comment><USER6> And doesn't send metadata by Googles/any other corporation networks.

<comment><USER7> Who else builds networks?

<comment><USER8> I believe that it could theoretically be built as a Decentralized Application using the Ethereum platform.

Disclaimer: I own Bitcoin and Monero. I do not currently own any Ethereum, and have no vested interest in its success.

<comment><USER7> How does ethereum run without AT&T, Deuthche, NTT, Telefonica, Verizon, etc.

You're always on someone else's network.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It may pass security audit, but Tor hidden services haven't proven to be a highly secure system and the Tor Project itself wants to overhaul it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does Apple allow software that uses Tor on the App Store?

<comment><USER11> [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onion- browser/id519296448?mt...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onion- browser/id519296448?mt=8&at=10l9R4)</comment></comment>


Air France 447: Pilots not properly trained (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://abcnews.go.com/International/air-france-flight-447-investigation-pilots-properly-trained/story?id=16503005 <comment><AUTHOR> Airbus pilot analysis: [https://www.wired.com/2011/07/an-airbus-captains-take- on-the...](https://www.wired.com/2011/07/an-airbus-captains-take-on-the-air- france-disaster/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> > Captain Dubois left the cockpit for a scheduled nap.

It wasn't scheduled. It was because the captain was up all night with his mistress and got only one hour of sleep. [1]

[1] [https://nypost.com/2014/10/13/the-last-words-of-air- france-p...](https://nypost.com/2014/10/13/the-last-words-of-air-france-pilot- before-crash-fwere-dead/)</comment>


Mistakes users make in Amazon's cloud — Cloud Computing News - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/cloud/the-5-biggest-mistakes-users-make-in-amazons-cloud/

<comment><USER2> Well, that was disappointing. Almost all 5 can be combined into one point: 'not configuring your security groups and firewall rules properly'.

I was hoping it had more about using EBS vs Instance Volumes, distributing instances properly across availability zones, proper way to do backups and launch new instances etc...</comment>


"Click Here" Works Better Than Other Generic Terms - <AUTHOR> http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/09/26/click-here/

<comment><USER2> No doubt. Text is the best user interface.

Having a jazzy button doesn't help conversion rate as much as clear Call-to- action voacb. does.</comment>


Ask HN: Some of the social media startups you know of? - <AUTHOR> Can you guys comment the best/newest social media startups/companies you think worth mentioning <comment><USER2> Gab.ai, a twitter alternative founded by Andrew Torba, a YC alum.

<comment><USER3> Until I was banned for saying "build the wall" on Twitter.

<comment><USER2> Yeah that is total BS. I don't deny YCs success in business, but I wish They would leave politics culture wars to the politicians and culture warriors.

Best of luck with gab.</comment></comment></comment>


How an Uncritical Media Helped Trump's Rise - <AUTHOR> http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/donald-trump-and-the-failure-of-the-us-media-a-1082401.html <comment><USER2> Media's culpability in the rise of Trump is that they have spent the last 5-10 years squandering their reserves of trust with increasingly transparent and dishonest propaganda.

There are two important consequences. First, the most obvious is that since they've lost the trust of large segments of the audience, they have exceptionally limited their ability to influence those people no matter what. Trump won those people without a fight.

Second is talent atrophy. Since media has taken the trust of their readers for granted, ideology has replaced integrity. Image is still important, but trust is seen only as a function of ideological pandering. This means many of them have no idea what to do, even if people were inclined to believe them.

It would not have mattered one bit when the media decided to get critical. They have to rebuild trust first.</comment>


College Kids Are Living Like Kings in Vancouver's Empty Mansions - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-16/college-kids-are-living-like-kings-in-vancouver-s-empty-mansions <comment><USER2> I saw a similar article like this last month or so.

This is a more realistic article on the subject: [https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/2019/03/11/renting- luxury...](https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/2019/03/11/renting-luxury- mansion-vancouver-bc/)

Note that I've tried figuring out where to rent these rooms and reaching out but so far have remained fruitless.

<comment><USER3> When I was renting in Van, 90% of landlords hanged-up immediately after asking how many kids I have. The idea they would lease to a bunch of random doped teens is utterly ridiculous.

[E: that was before EHT]

<comment><USER4> I dunno, it seems that these days the accepted way to make money is by nickel and dimeing poor people. How are they supposed to make bank on a family w/ kids that won't constantly owe extra due to delinquent payments? Just a theory, seeing as how the poor and the financially-irresponsible seem to be the best customers of banks and creditors. Might as well be the same for renters.

<comment><USER5> Nickel and dimeing poor people and collecting delinquent payments is definitely not something that most landlords want to pursue as a business model. Morality aside, that is a very labor intensive business to be in, and relies on economies of scale to balance out those without the ability to follow through on payments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On the one hand, it looks like the policy is working and having the desired effect of reducing rent prices and sale prices. But, this is just a short term effect that brings prices closer to their underlying cost.

But, one of the bigger problems we're facing is the underlying cost of building homes. Humanity hasn't made much progress in this regard for the last 100 years: inflation adjust, homes per sq foot still sell for about the same amount. if we're going to make progress on this, we really need to look at those underlying costs and start addressing them. Jumping from one band-aid to another isn't going change things significantly in the long term.

<comment><USER7> First, 80% of the cost of housing in the Bay Area is location. Second, many houses from 100 years ago didn't have features like electricity and indoor plumbing. Third, we're not going to invent magical 3D printers that make houses out of thin-air.

<comment><USER8> Watch a planning meeting sometime. One of the typical community demands is to use onsite union carpenters vs. brining in prefab components from assembly lines elsewhere. Like so many things about Bay Area housing, we actually do have the capabilities, we're just throwing up legal roadblocks to their use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Realtors and condo marketers were for years spreading misinformation and downplaying the role that foreign capital was playing in rising land values, in hopes of keeping the good times rolling.

No one can credibly discount those impacts now.

<comment><USER10> Well they do have stats and the stats say that foreign buyers account for about 3%.

<comment><USER11> I suspect it's only those who are explicitly foreign. Many real estate deals are made through Canada-registered corporations behind which there can be anybody - Canada doesn't track real beneficiaries. The situation has become so dire, that the federal government will spend C$200mln in the next 5 years to fight money laundering in the country, and first of all - in real estate.

<comment><USER12> BC is going to start tracking this. It was just unveiled last week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> ITT, people who think

\- economic free lunches exist

\- any capital after their capital came to an area is illegitimate

\- markets don't price in risk or volatility

\- policy doesn't affect the agent on the margin, decreases costs to his marginal 'neighbors': before a 3% vacancy tax, low consumer surplus buyers could barely afford a house, after the vacancy tax there are some low- consumer-surplus buyers who can no longer afford housing, the two groups who can absorb that depressed purchasing are high-consumer-surplus buyers (read premium buyers) and buyers who had negative consumer surplus who are now low surplus buyers. The majority of that supply gets absorbed by high-consumer- surplus buyers. This is the result of pretty much every economic interventionist policy in so called progressive cities. It's the reason why those cities gentrify: only high-consumer-surplus buyers can survive the policy changes.

Play a game: a casino offers you entry but only returns 97% of your original capital. The only people who can profitably play games in the casino are the most intense and wealthy speculators (in the non pejorative).

<comment><USER14> Your description of buyers fails to reflect the fact that the high-surplus types are foreign, the rest are local.

There is an easy solution: tax foreign ownership at a significant rate.

This is even justifiable: why do foreign land-owners have the privilege to own land in Canada? We have to maintain laws, secure it, pay for externalized maintenance (the road out front to start), the water, provide the possibility for electricity even if it's not used and all the civic infrastructure.

Non-resident land ownership should be taxed at 3% of the value of the land per year, or banned outright.

There's almost no advantage in a nation selling of it's land as an export.

Another alternative would be only to allow residential 'surplus' to be sold. One trick to implement this might be to allow foreigners to buy flats, but not homes. Not a very perfect trick but it would 'kind of work': it's possible to build a lot of empty buildings in the middle of nowhere as investments. Allowing only a % of homes in an are to be foreign owned would be another opportunity.

<comment><USER13> >tax foreign ownership at a significant rate

If these "foreigners" should be taxed now, why shouldn't you be taxed also? because at some point in the past you were a "foreigner" relative to where you are now.

>We have to maintain laws, secure it, pay for externalized maintenance (the road out front to start), the water, provide ....

You're describing....property taxes, which still exist. If anything, lower population density reduces demand for those services, so their property taxes should be lower.

Listen if you hate foreigners, think there's an Asian "plague", and get behind the trope that 'foreigners are ruining my neighborhood, country, city' just say it. But before you do, you might do well to read some history such as the Chinese Exclusion Act [1] and it's racist legacy despite being legitimized at the time by "protecting American labor"

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is the 5th or 6th time this story pops up here, and it always features "The Castle".

To me that doesn't even look like a mansion, more like a pastiche, the exterior / materials look very cheap.

</comment><comment><USER16> As far as I can tell most mansions are being rented out to high income locals, not to groups of college kids.

I toured a few of these in the last couple months and the nice ones had a parade of high income couples going through who would be perfectly happy to rent a $6,000,000 house for $5000 per month.

All the ones I saw explicitly disallowed subletting/group tenancies in the rental agreements.

<comment><USER17> If you can rent a $6m mansion for $5,000 per month, you're getting a steal. In that case (and especially since this tax policy is pushing prices down further) it makes zero sense to buy.

<comment><USER16> I'm still not sure I made the right decision turning them down. On the one hand spending $5000 per month on rent feels crazy in Vancouver. On the other hand it is an incredible deal.

In the end what kept me from renting it is the likelihood of needing to move in a year or so. I prefer a bit more stability for my kids.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> $1000 is still a helluva-lot for a room imo.. Also sharing with 13 other people, sounds like a nightmare.

<comment><USER19> In Vancouver $1000 gets you a studio basement den. A duplex 1 bedroom is like $1800

From the article:

"nine-bedroom home, dubbed "The Castle" by the 14 students who share the property, is apparently owned by an Afghani pop artist, according to Boodhoo."

A 9 bedroom house - just imagine the size of that. Not a nightmare, but something like Tony Stark lifestyle.

Edit

Oh I misread - a room is $1000. In that case it's not that much of a great deal. At first I thought it was $1000 for the whole building which would put it in "super cheap pricing" territory

<comment><USER20> At least with your own apartment you don't share the kitchen or bathroom.

<comment><USER19> for a 9 room, there's probably at least 2 kitchens and 4-6 bathrooms.

From the way the picture looks, it's a whole house.

In Toronto, we have these rooming houses that are teeny tiny 24 people rooming, about 50-100 square foot each, in a space that has 1 shared kitchen and half a bathroom (a washroom with toilet + a separate unconnected closet that serves as a shower, so you can't go potty and take a shower in one space) and they charge $800-1000 per person.

<comment><USER20> Despite that you know there will always be some conflict.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > apparently owned by an Afghani pop artist

Afghani pop artists who own mansions in Vancouver is a really small category.

<comment><USER22> Interesting tangent: the correct demonyms are either Afghan or Afghanistani. Afghani is their currency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> God those houses are hideous.

<comment><USER24> They remind me of the 'McMansion Hell' page - [http://mcmansionhell.com/](http://mcmansionhell.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Now they just need to implement this tax in every city.

</comment><comment><USER26> >Sun doesn't think Vancouver's market is going to come back to its highs, especially at the top end. "Why would they come here and pay all that tax and feel like a criminal?"

Please let this happen in the SF Bay area

</comment><comment><USER20> Oh Bloomberg you make it sound like everyone is doing it. Not.

</comment><comment><USER27> Those taxes are obscene.

</comment><comment><USER28> I doubt it.</comment>


Show HN: Dayhue.com – What color is this? New color every day - <AUTHOR> http://www.dayhue.com/

<comment><USER2> Cool!

Just a note: I have double scrollbars visible!

It would be nice to see the colors of previous days as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Creator of dayhue here. Thanks! We've had some trouble with the scrollbar before, didn't realize that double scrollbars were also an issue. And showing the previous days is a great idea.</comment></comment>


North Korea warns military cleared to wage nuclear attack against US - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/04/03/north-korea-warns-military-cleared-to-wage-nuclear-attack/

<comment><USER2> Meh. If the Pentagon had even the slightest hint that Kim Jong-Un had it in him to wage a nuclear strike, he would already be dead. That he's still breathing suggests that their analysts -some of the best out there- don't think he'll do it, and that's good enough for me.</comment>


This is not how you treat an issue report - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nodesource/distributions/issues/358 <comment><AUTHOR> I know it's somehow like a gripe here, but the attitude of the maintainer really pisses me off. Dismissing and closing the issue without even looking at it? With 17 (and potentially many more) users on StackExchange indicating they're having the same issue for 3 months? Seriously? Even if you want the issue reporter to add more details, just ask and let they add it, and then try to reproduce it, before you decide to close it or not. Not to mention in this case there's frankly no more details to report. There is already ample information to try to reproduce it straightforwardly, but instead they choose to just close the issue in a blink (the reporter can't reopen an issue closed by the owner), and claim "there's no bug to report here". Wow, just wow.

Was never fond of the node ecosystem and I only needed to install Node v6 here to run another framework. But this kind of handling is really something beyond my imagination.

<comment><USER2> > the attitude of the maintainer really pisses me off.

From a perspective of somebody who is not invested in this issue you seem overly sensitive.

> Dismissing and closing the issue without even looking at it? With 17 (and > potentially many more) users on StackExchange indicating they're having the > same issue for 3 months? Seriously?

If I was a maintainer, how would I know that people post about it on StackExchange? I'm not obliged to watch every random forum to track issues.

> Even if you want the issue reporter to add more details, just ask and let > they add it, and then try to reproduce it, before you decide to close it or > not. Not to mention in this case there's frankly no more details to report.

Quite the contrary. Judging from the install script code, there were several potentially important things that were omitted in bug report for the sake of brevity. There were (probably) enough details to try to reproduce the problem, though.

> [...] they choose to just close the issue [...] and claim "there's no bug to > report here". Wow, just wow.

You see, I'm not touched on how they handled the issue. Such things happen; I've seen worse. I'm actually amazed that they produced a slightly overcomplicated wrapper around wget and apt-get, and their users in this situation apparently can't manage their way out of paper bag with regard to package system of the OS they use, despite being supposedly technically skilled.</comment></comment>


NASA Breakthrough Keeps The Singularity On Track - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5882725/the-miraculous-nasa-breakthrough-that-could-save-millions-of-lives/

<comment><AUTHOR> The human body: the next great hacking frontier. :)</comment>


Ask HN: Making a living selling software components, not SaaS? - <AUTHOR> There have been countless discussions about SaaS with tons of examples and success stories. It seems like a good way to structure new software businesses.
However, I wonder if there's anyone here who makes decent money selling software components or code "the old way".
Please share your stories.
(I'm also interested in hearing the buyer's side, so please mention useful code/software that you had bought). <comment><USER2> We have sold a JavaScript component as our sole source of revenue for about 4 years now, having started selling it 8 years ago.

We've played around in the SaaS market, in end-user apps that use the component, but we've never found anything that makes even remotely the amount we make from selling the component. A lot of people think SaaS is easier, I personally find it x10 harder.

We ended up gaining far more benefit from giving away the SaaS products as a means of marketing the component.

The thing with the component market is the revenue is far more an "amplification" of the economic environment. You're at the bottom of the food chain, you need new development projects to be started to be considered. Development projects are expensive. In late 2008, budgets were slashed, our component sales probably dropped 80%.

SaaS is much more stable revenue-wise. But on the flip-side, in 2007 when the going was good, sales just soared, it's not only downturns that you feel in the component market.

My advice would be

\- focus on building a cash buffer as soon as possible, doing so was the only reason we're still here.

\- aim for the Enterprise market, forget three figures a license sales. That level means the component is too simple, something open source will come along and kill you.

\- The component market is better for margins and good salaries. The SaaS market generally scales better. Which you choose probably depends what you want to do with the business in the medium and long term.

<comment><USER3> Can I ask what the JavaScript component is/does?

<comment><USER4> Looking at his profile: _I 'm a co-founder of JGraph. We make mxGraph and draw.io [http://www.jgraph.com/](http://www.jgraph.com/) [http://www.draw.io/](http://www.draw.io/) _

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm one of the co-founders at Binpress ([http://www.binpress.com](http://www.binpress.com)), which is marketplace for commercial open-source projects. Unlike Codecanyon, which someone else mentioned in this thread, our focus is on professional development and components that are more than simple scripts. Cocoacontrols ([https://www.cocoacontrols.com/](https://www.cocoacontrols.com/)) is another good example, with some of their commercial components doing very well.

We have several developers making SV comparable salaries from publishing on our platform (in the 100k$ range annually). I believe this can be a huge market - if you look at companies selling licenses to code or SDK binaries, there's quite a few who built very profitable businesses around it.

Very well known examples of companies selling code licenses include MySQL and Magento (through their enterprise versions), though they provide complete solutions and not components. Gravity Forms ([http://www.gravityforms.com/](http://www.gravityforms.com/)) a wordpress plug-in, is another good example - it generated millions in revenue if you trust their installation counter.

<comment><USER6> Logged in to say this.

As someone who has sold components on Binpress for the past year, and built a successful business (that i have recently sold) with the help of sales generated through their platform. I can vouch for these guys 100%. They are the best in the market for selling code/components. They have the best UI and by FAR the best support. Eran especially who really tries hard to make sure your components are presented well. This is great, especially for developers who do not necessarily know how best to present their work.

I've used a bunch of their competitors and i recommend them too, but if i was told to choose just one place to sell your code. Binpress would be it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I run product development for a toolkit company that exited to a public company in 2011.

Our .NET and Java toolkits sustain a 25 person division with healthy margins and decent growth.

The keys have been:

* make something valuable and charge enough for it so that you can offer great support. If you charge $500, you lose money if anyone calls you -- instead you should want people to call you -- so, charge enough money to make that worthwhile.

* have ways that make the engagement scale. Meaning, it's ok if an average deal is 5-10k, but if someone gets a lot of value, you should want that to scale up to 100k or more

* you can charge like a Saas for things that are not delivered like Saas, and some people prefer it. Meaning, we sell .NET assemblies (not a hosted service), but you can pay xx,000/year for it if you want unlimited deployment.

* You have two segments (broadly) -- companies that make software for themselves -- companies that sell software. They have different needs and get value in different ways -- think about segmentation to price appropriately.

You will be competing against free -- so you need to deliver value. Don't look for markets with no free alternatives. I compete against a ton of open-source very well. We're better and we have support.

</comment><comment><USER8> We sell a downloadable, self hosted CMS ([http://grabaperch.com](http://grabaperch.com)). We launched it as a side product of our consultancy business just over four years ago and by the beginning of this year we stopped taking on client work as the income from Perch has essentially replaced that of a successful consultancy, so it is possible.

We don't have recurring revenue as such, a license is a one-off purchase and includes all support, first party addons etc. However our customers tend to be web designers buying a license for each project. If we do a good job they want to use Perch for more than one project!

Growth was slow and steady, I think the toughest part was when we were 50% client work and 50% Perch, as we had customer support making it hard to get on with client projects and we really just wanted to be working on Perch!

<comment><USER9> I also sell a downloadable self hosted app that targets developers (www.duetapp.com). I would love to hear about how you market Perch. My app has been growing pretty well since it was launched 5 months ago, but it's not yet profitable enough to replace my client work. I'm in the 50/50 place you described and it's....challenging...

<comment><USER8> 5 months isn't a long time after launch for this sort of thing, it really took us most of 4 years to replace our consultancy (there are two of us, a husband and wife team).

The thing that works well for us is what people call "content marketing" these days. If you can write interesting articles and blog posts for your own blog and also for other sites, that appeal to your audience then it is likely that people will click through and have a look at your product. You don't need to write directly about your product - just to a developer audience.

The most surprising marketing success for us though has been sponsoring podcasts, specially where the hosts know and use our product and can talk personally about it. The return on investment on those has been really good.

Hope that helps in some way, I'm a member of a forum at [http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm](http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm) which is all people doing this kind of thing and talking about what they have tried so you might find that useful.

<comment><USER9> I've just started content marketing, so hopefully that will start to have an effect soon. Bootstrapped.fm looks awesome. Thanks for the suggestion :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> People making money selling software components: [http://www.componentsource.com/index.html](http://www.componentsource.com/index.html) [http://bfo.com/purchasingfaq.jsp](http://bfo.com/purchasingfaq.jsp) [http://www.chilkatsoft.com/purchase2.asp](http://www.chilkatsoft.com/purchase2.asp)

Discussion (though might be dying): [http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz](http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz)

Withholding Tax (if you are non-US, selling to US) "Components" are taxed at 5%; "desktop tools" (like compilers, editors, IDEs etc) are taxed at 0%. The tax is an admin hassle all round, so this is one plus for not selling components. (NB: this is an oversimplification, there's tax treaties, 30% tax if not under a treaty, byzantine IRS forms, tax rulings on the definition of "royalty" for components, etc).

ASIDE an idea: "Software Components as a Service". That is, it's in the cloud and paid for like a SaaS; but the service it provides is not an end-point (like an API to a business), but a transformation - the kind of thing you'd normally call a library for. e.g. text->pdf. Sounds inefficient, but you co- host with AWS/dropbox/heroku/GoogleApps etc so bandwidth is fast and free. (Alt: let _the customer_ install a copy in the cloud, but you _charge_ like a SaaS business model - an advantage for them is they can expense it monthly, not taxed like a capital purchase).

I've seen _some_ evidence of this, in the form of cloud integration services e.g. [http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/castiron- cloud...](http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/castiron-cloud- integration) (2010), but it's still mostly about integrating _end-points_ , not the bits in between.

</comment><comment><USER11> One angle is selling plugins to popular creative software. Not quite "the old way", since they are standardized components and sold somewhat more like apps are, but it's a way of selling software components. Photoshop plugins, VST plugins for audio applications, and plugins for the Unity game engine are three fairly active markets I know of.

Another strategy, though from what I can tell with declining popularity, is to write a GPL-licensed open-source library, and then sell proprietary licenses to companies who prefer those terms. Two random examples: [http://www.juce.com/documentation/commercial- licensing](http://www.juce.com/documentation/commercial-licensing) [http://www.cgal.org/license.html](http://www.cgal.org/license.html)

<comment><USER12> I wouldn't recommend making Photoshop Plugins to anyone now, unless you have some absolutely killer must-have algorithm (in which case, you'd probably still make more money by licensing it to Adobe / Google etc). That ship has largely sailed, its heyday was around 2007 or so. But if you executed well, there was definitely money to be made at the peak. (Literally, the peak of the Crossing The Chasm bell-curve.)

(Disclosure, I've been writing/selling Photoshop plugins for over a decade - but I'm mostly working on other projects nowadays.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm a developer, I remember one time I needed to have a particular piece of functionality in an app. I could have built it, but I found that someone was selling what I wanted for $3.00 on the internet, it was a no-brainer. I paid with something like gumroad, downloaded and plugged it in within a matter of minutes, vs the few hours I would have spent writing/debugging.

<comment><USER14> Odd price, $3. He could have doubled his price to $6, doubled his income, and lost no sales. Anyone who would consider buying a component online would surely not blink at the difference if it saves them a half-a-day of effort.

<comment><USER15> Maybe he doesn't want to have to provide support and thinks that $3 would be the cut off point for that? Hard to say really.

I would happily sell a bunch of scripts for a few $ on an "if it works, it works" basis. Once you start thinking about saving days of dev time it makes sense to bump it up to $100+ but then you will have to deal with emails or calls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My website [http://5000best.com/tools/](http://5000best.com/tools/) may be relevant. It lists mainly the most popular SaaS tools, but a few categories include widely used software components (non-free software only - no open source):

[http://5000best.com/tools/Modules/](http://5000best.com/tools/Modules/)

[http://5000best.com/tools/Software_Dev/](http://5000best.com/tools/Software_Dev/)

[http://5000best.com/tools/Specialized/](http://5000best.com/tools/Specialized/)

[http://5000best.com/tools/Wordpress/](http://5000best.com/tools/Wordpress/)

[http://5000best.com/tools/Joomla/](http://5000best.com/tools/Joomla/)

[http://5000best.com/tools/Drupal/](http://5000best.com/tools/Drupal/)

[http://5000best.com/tools/Magento/](http://5000best.com/tools/Magento/)

[http://5000best.com/tools/E-commerce/](http://5000best.com/tools/E-commerce/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I do not make money from software components, but when I browse [http://codecanyon.net](http://codecanyon.net), I find a few developers who seem to be doing relatively well. They basically sell more or less sophisticated scripts.

You could regard themes for WordPress as software components. Or theme frameworks such as Genesis (studiopress.com).

The really successful ones (such as Genesis) seem to bundle software components with something like subscriptions to future updates, a paid membership site, additional content like ebooks, live seminars, training, support etc. to get additional income streams and be able to upsell or cross- sell customers.

Game engines or mobile development frameworks (KendoUI, Sencha) that can be licensed also fall under selling software components. Again, the successful ones seem to offer additional resources or they sell their components in a one-year-license model, where customers have to renew the license every year. That would be more or less the same as SaaS in terms of recurring revenue and keeping customers in the loop.

</comment><comment><USER18> As a buyer, here are a couple of software I've bought-

\- vBulletin forum ([http://vbulletin.com](http://vbulletin.com)) for the base of my site \- CometChat ([http://cometchat.com](http://cometchat.com)) for adding Facebook like chat to the site \- Kayako ([http://kayako.com](http://kayako.com)) for support tickets and issues

The advantage I found with self-hosted software is that its one-time. I pay for it and I don't have to worry about a monthly billing. Similar software in SaaS model would cost me about $70-$100 per month. Eventually these costs start adding up. In one-time, I know that my investment is around $500-$800 or so. But that's all then. I can use the software for years without an issue.

</comment><comment><USER19> Do you want to hear about failures?

I tried; with Flextras ( [http://www.flextras.com](http://www.flextras.com) ). I wanted to build a set of UI Components which would extend Adobe's Flex Framework. For various reasons it was a failure; and I shut down the "commercial" portion of the company in January of this year.

At the time I launched the business; Flash was still viable and Adobe was pumping a lot of money into growing Flex--which was basically "Flash for programmers". Adobe was trying to grow the user base for Flex to a million developers and I wanted to get in early and ride the wave, so to speak. I thought there would be a market for high quality components that extended the Flex Framework and Adobe stated they wanted to focus on the tooling and infrastructure while leaving components to third parties. I thought I was in a good spot.

When I was preparing to launch Flextras, I was planning for a 70% drop in income [compared to consulting rates] and hoped it would grow from there. I ended up with a 90% drop in income; so that hurt a bit.

We launched with a single component, and the first year only had one sale, and all my energy was spent on building out our Calendar component. [which took a year and I threw everything out and restarted from scratch 3 times because I decided the API/implementation wouldn't provide enough flexibility].

I think it was in our second year released the Calendar component and an AutoComplete component. A "Spark" Version of our AutoComplete came out later to integrate w/ Flex's new component model. Then we released some mobile components. We were growing from our "first year" revenue and averaged about $10K per year before shutting down. The business was growing, but very slowly. Then Adobe had some bad PR mishaps and sales stopped overnight.

I could go on and on about problems and mistakes I made along the way.

I focused on the wrong things--I think I spent three months creating transitions on our Calendar component. Business users don't care about such things [although I got a lot of 'hey cool' during demos]. During this development time; the new version of Flex came out [a point release] which broke all of that work.

The model of selling individual components is inherently flawed. It does not present recurring revenue. I hoped to combat this by releasing a lot of products; unfortunately that didn't happen for a variety of reasons. Components took longer to build than I anticipated [especially the Calendar].

We should have had a package of some sort [one price gets everything we built]. We should have had a subscription [one yearly price gets everything we built; plus everything we will build]. My attempt to switch our business model was a colossal failure on many levels.

I covered quite a bit of the business failures in a presentation called "How to Fail Fantastically" at the 360|Stack conference ( [http://vimeopro.com/360conferences/360stack-2013/video/72773...](http://vimeopro.com/360conferences/360stack-2013/video/72773739) ).

</comment><comment><USER10> I used to. The problem was I aimed at a component that was useful _as a fixed standard_ (not always changing, upgrading etc). So, you can guess how this story ends...

I accomplished this. But it was by definition a stationary target, and competitors (in this case, open source) largely caught up. But worse, I lost interest, because I was no longer "the only/best in the world" at it.

Success: I not only made enough to live on, I made enough to invest in index funds giving a return that was _itself_ enough to live on, and "retire" (for small values of retire, i.e. a student-level lifestyle - "ramen retirement"). Business began in 2000, able to retire in 2004 or so IIRC. Have lived off the business/investments since then.

      lessons learned:

\- Automating sales (credit card etc) is a pain to setup, but is helpful for both you and customers. But for my case, about 30% of buyers still needed some contact for the sale (I'm not counting technical help). Sometimes to negotiate on specific issues, sometimes they didn't fit the sales process, maybe sometimes they just wanted reassurance that someone was there.

\- I tried to make it too much a business; if I'd stayed truer to my roots, it might have been OK. If you have an open-source version (or, at least, free), it starves off the competition, leaving them with no oxygen to get started, because no one needs it, they get no interest. And everyone's happy, which actually is very important for one's personal happiness too.

\- I actually made a lot of money selling to the enterprise; but I _hated_ it. Like, it really really got to me. In one particular sale, there was 5-6 months of negotiation, admin, international tax laws, etc. Ugh. And it all feels dishonest, pointless, and interacting with people who aren't competent because aren't interested and don't care. (the standard story of a developer dealing with business issues). So, you _can_ do it this way, if you keep going up- market. The enterprise _likes_ old stuff, that is trusted, field-tested, known etc.

\- turns out I don't _enjoy_ making a fixed standard. There's beauty in it as a business model; but for a technologist, the fun part is making it (and for me, supporting and debugging was also fun). But when it's all done, all working perfectly, it stops being fun. It's a funny old world.

\- the underlying factor is that progress marches on. It's good for the world, and it's fun to participate. But not so good for a self-sustaining business with a competitive moat (Warren Buffett likes candy, chewing gum, soft-drink, bricks, furniture etc - stuff that doesn't change fast). You have to keep investing in it - developing new features, new products, new users (analogous to the capital investment required by the cotton mills of Berkshire Hathaway, making them a terrible investment). But this is all OK, if it's fun for you. And it can be.

</comment><comment><USER20> Does this count? [http://www.mikeperham.com/2013/10/01/how-to-make-100k-in- oss...](http://www.mikeperham.com/2013/10/01/how-to-make-100k-in-oss-by- working-hard/)

</comment><comment><USER21> We made some decent money with our library however since we live in very expensive area I do some consulting as well.

If you are single and live in not so expensive place making software components could be a viable business. Just chose something that will not become obsolete in 2 or 3 years.

We are in the PDF space that is quite crowded but still much better than Flash (for example) that is becoming less and less relevant.

If I had to start today I would probably look for some security related stuff.

</comment><comment><USER22> I am running Component Owl ([http://www.componentowl.com/](http://www.componentowl.com/)) for about three years.

The original idea was to create top-notch WinForms and WPF controls (.NET visual components). However, developing single great WinForms or WPF control is pretty challenging task. One need excellent knowledge about the framework and tools. It is much more than programming and deployment. It is also about knowing dark internals of the platform you use.

For example, the greatest challenge was doing seamless Visual Studio integration. Most users didn't know how to add a component to their software. They assumed it will "just appear" in Visual Studio Toolbox window and they just click on it and start using it.

Furthermore, most of my customers haven't just bought the component. They required some adjustments and features here and there. They also needed assistance with implementing the component even though we provided thorough documentation with code samples.

Because of the above reasons, I am currently orienting more on niche components and leaving all the buttons, combos, calendars and other typical controls to big players.

</comment><comment><USER23> I have a counter-example. I built an OSX application for remotely tailing logs on servers ([http://www.remotetailapp.com/](http://www.remotetailapp.com/)). Originally I did it to scratch and itch when I was administering a bunch of servers over SSH. I added Heroku log support when I started working on a Heroku project. I had dreams that it might grow into a self-sustaining side project, but it hasn't really taken off. The key lesson that I learnt is that the technology just solves part of the problem. Just because it is downloadable software rather than SaaS doesn't mean that you don't need to put effort into marketing and sales.

</comment><comment><USER24> I've been selling a php self-hosted ad server, mySimpleAds, at [http://wwww.clippersoft.net](http://wwww.clippersoft.net) for years, which makes some side money. I recently launched a SaaS version at [http://mysimpleads.com](http://mysimpleads.com) .

For the little bit the SaaS has been up, people still seem to like the self- hosted version. So, I guess it really depends upon the product and your target customer. There's some things that some people just prefer to host on their own :-).

<comment><USER25> Do you think maybe it's a self-selected audience? Like these are the people that know and love you as a self-hosted product, and now you need to reach a different, more SaaSy crowd?

<comment><USER24> I certainly agree, while there will be some bleed over I think the segment is slightly different. I just haven't figured out how to reach them yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We sell a self hosted PHP app: [http://teampasswordmanager.com](http://teampasswordmanager.com). Sales went up this June when we released V2 (bootstrap based UI, more features). We're now adding more features and trying to keep up with requests from our users.

</comment><comment><USER14> Wordpress templates are just "components" that can't function alone if you think about it.

<comment><USER27> And don't underestimate the money that can be made with those. There are some dedicated marketplaces for those (can't remember right now their names, sorry)

<comment><USER28> Themeforest is probably the biggest marketplace for wp themes (run by Envato, the same guys behind codecanyon etc.). WooThemes, although not a marketplace, is another player doing very well selling wp themes.</comment></comment></comment>


Manage your tasks with Google - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/manage-your-tasks-with-google.html <comment><USER2> This has a clean interface and works well from my phone.

"We have more features in the pipeline..."

I hope that includes an API or an application for offline use. There are already a few Android task applications but I wasn't taken with any of them.</comment>


Ask HN: Which Tiling Window Manager do you use? - <AUTHOR> I've considering i3, xmonad, awesome, spectrewm, and any others you're willing to suggest. <comment><USER2> I wrote Zephyros[1] for Mac OS X, which is scriptable in pretty much any language, and used that for a while.

Eventually my OCD kicked in about the performance of Zephyros's server/client architecture on my laptop, so I forked it as Phoenix[2], which is only scriptable via an embedded JavaScript VM. Now I use Phoenix exclusively.

Here's my current tiling config[3] for Phoenix.

But I'm currently trying to make the transition from Mac OS X to Windows 8. So I plan to port Phoenix to Windows, and I'm naming it ZephSharp[4] (I'm terrible at naming things). It's going to be written in C#, which fortunately has ClojureCLR, so Clojure will be its scripting language instead of JavaScript (hoorah!).

[1]: [https://github.com/sdegutis/zephyros](https://github.com/sdegutis/zephyros)

[2]: [https://github.com/sdegutis/phoenix](https://github.com/sdegutis/phoenix)

[3]: [https://gist.github.com/sdegutis/7756583](https://gist.github.com/sdegutis/7756583)

[4]: [https://github.com/sdegutis/zephsharp](https://github.com/sdegutis/zephsharp) \-- Nota bene, it's not even close to working, I've only spent a few hours prototyping some basic hard-coded stuff, so beware!

</comment><comment><USER3> It doesn't quite count as a tiling window manager, but I just use compiz with the grid plugin, and it gets me everything I wanted from a tiling window manager without losing the ability to move a window around freely occasionally. That plus the cube, no window decoration (that really helps clean things up), and some convenient keyboard/mouse shortcuts makes for a really efficient desktop without the restrictions of a pure tiling window manager.

</comment><comment><USER4> I tend to like i3. But all the cool kids on arch are using herbstluft.

To me, Haskell and Lua are turn-offs so xmonad and awesome are out. I don't want to have to learn a programming language to configure my window manager. Straight up well documented C and old school configuration files are the way to go. Plus the tutorial/intro video gets you going quickly.

<comment><USER5> I've never heard of herbstluft. What makes all the cool arch kids drawn to it? (the fact I've never heard of it?)

<comment><USER6> One thing that's interestingly unixy about it is that all configuration/interaction is done via a CLI program, herbstclient, which interacts with herbstserver, rather than via config files or an embedded scripting language. So config and scripting is then typically done via a bash script, or whatever other way you prefer to call a series of herbstclient commands.

Otherwise its UI model is fairly typical for "manual" (i.e. not auto-layout) tiling WMs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Heavily use xmonad.

I have a single xmobar on my primary screen showing active workspaces, max cpu using process, max memory using process, cpu usage / throttling and network traffic.

I do a lot of work across multiple VMs (OSX on vmware, multiple Windows boxes on virtualbox). Having OSX running XCode full screen on one workspace, Windows 7 running Visual Studio full screen on another, Android Eclipse open on another workspace, and Vim open editing some back end server code on another workspace is invaluable.

        Meta-V Start Fullscreen Windows VM
        Meta-O Start Fullscreen OSX
        Meta-C Start Google Chrome
        Meta-E Start Android Eclipse
        Alt-Shift-Return Start Gnome terminal
        Alt-Shift-N Start a new Gnome terminal in the current Gnome terminal's working directory

</comment><comment><USER8> I use dwm with dmenu on arch. The configuration is in C and it's incredibly lightweight.

[1][http://suckless.org/](http://suckless.org/)

</comment><comment><USER9> As a corollary question, does anyone use Tiling Window Managers on Windows? Is the one you use good?

I've been using bug.n[1], but my experience has been subpar due to it's bugginess (namely due to applications such as various terminal applications such as cmd/Console2/cmder refusing to re-size themselves properly).

[1] [https://code.google.com/p/bugn/](https://code.google.com/p/bugn/)

</comment><comment><USER10> It depends on what you'd like I suppose. If you want highly a configurable WM then xmonad is great (I can't speak for the rest). If you want something very simple with limited configuration but which allows you to quickly use it then scrotwm.

You can find a lot of configs for xmonad/awesome/otherwm on github which you can then copy and adapt to your liking.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've tried xmonad, awesome, i3, dwm, herbsluftwm, ratpoison, etc. My favorite was dwm for a few years, then I moved up to i3 because of multi-monitor support. I see i3 as a good medium between the really minimal <2k lines tiling managers and the larger ones like awesomewm.

</comment><comment><USER12> I use bluetile, as it is a middle-ground between the default GNOME window- manager and a full tiling experience.

As things stand I'm not likely to change any-time soon, because it does work the way I'd expect it to.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you want some inspiration: [http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/top/?sort=top&t=year](http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/top/?sort=top&t=year)

</comment><comment><USER14> Awesome was my introduction to tiling WMs, then I went to xmonad for years, and I recently moved over to dwm as I realized suckless had taken over the rest of my machine so why not.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm using dwm with the flextile and systray patches.

<comment><USER16> +1 for dwm. It's <2k lines, so it's easy to modify, and it's really simple, so it's easy to get started with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I use awesome from 2008. It's doing just two thing: order windows and start console. But it's exactly what I need.

</comment><comment><USER18> dwm with pertag and systray patches, and also I've changed active window border color to red.

</comment><comment><USER19> stumpwm. It's the sequel to ratpoison, implemented in common lisp. You can hack while it's running. The multi-monitor support is top notch. [http://www.nongnu.org/stumpwm/](http://www.nongnu.org/stumpwm/)

</comment><comment><USER20> dwm.

[1] [http://dwm.suckless.org/](http://dwm.suckless.org/)

</comment><comment><USER21> SizeUp on Mac OS X.</comment>


What would you like to see in a web API's pre-launch landing page? - <AUTHOR>

I'm launching http://www.onemusicapi.com soon and hoping to build a mailing list of developers interested in using the service.
The landing page is currently sparse with little detail. What extra information would you like to  see on the page before it convinces you to hand over your email address? Likely pricing? API examples? <comment><USER2> So indication as to the type of data available, the format of the data (json/xml/yaml/etc.) would be really helpful as is some pricing if you have any estimates.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, I thought plain examples of input and output. I'm obviously a bit nervous about pricing estimates (I might need to raise them later).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> examples and pricing :)

how is this different from the echo nest? what kind of data are you extracting from wikipedia?

i'm building <http://cloudplay.fm> and would have a need for an API like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> This will be more specifically 'release' or album oriented metadata than the echonest, which is far broader in scope and whose own metadata is more track oriented.

Arguably, being album oriented goes against the trend in the world of the 99p download. But there still exist niches where album orientation is important.</comment></comment>


Steve Jobs on having great idea - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/johnmaeda/status/448798281636659200 <comment><USER2> On the plus side, 90% of the credit goes to the person with the idea.</comment>


Bringing Free COVID19 Testing and Telehealth Services to Underserved Communities - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/briannegarrett/2020/05/01/this-doctors-bringing-free-covid-19-testing-and-telehealth-services-to-underserved-communities/#726314e87e14 <comment><USER2> Great article, are there any other news stories about this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's another, there have been many of them [https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/idPHv3?now=true](https://www.reuters.com/video/watch/idPHv3?now=true)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Awesome effort.</comment>