Filecoin – Data storage network and crypto-currency based on Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://filecoin.io/#1 <comment><USER2> If the price lowers, I'm going to want to use it to store files instead of my hard drive at home, right? Can you share links with other people to fetch files?

If the price gets higher, I'll want to buy more hard drives for more people to pay me to use my space. Is that how this works, or am I misreading?

If it works like that, it's pure genius. You'd be able to get a lot of use out of it without ever converting it. This is a weird thought, but: could filecoin prop up the value of bitcoin, because the only way to convert filecoin to and from hard currency would be through bitcoin?

edit: Could I boot from this? Could my phone boot from this?

edit2: I'm assuming that the race to claim the proof reward will encourage low latency retrievals. Would I be able to tune my client in order to choose my own balance between latency and security, for example only rewarding quick responders but paying them highly to encourage a more low latency mix? Would that open this new cloud disk space market to quant trading strategies?

edit3: If latency matters, then network topology matters. Different places on the network would be more lucrative than others.

edit4: I'm seeing a workflow where I buy a hard drive, partition it into a local partition and a filecoin partition, then open it up to the network. After a few days, my filecoin partition is full, and I've generated a lot of filecoin. I use that filecoin to start copying files into a mounted virtual filecoin filesystem. I can rsync between local filesystems and filecoin filesystems.

I could actually delegate all of that activity to a single fileserver at the edge of my home network, and have all of my home computers mount files from that (and phones and home automation could call home to it too.)

<comment><USER3> I guess the important aspects are:

\- Filecoin is not a filesystem. The whitepaper doesn't even talk about the technical implementations of storage. Filecoin focusses on "how to retribute peers" more than "how to store data".

\- Filecoin is supposed to be used on the network

\- Filecoin is supposed to be used in a cluster of mutually distrusting peers, who by the power of the oldest and most effficient incentive ever (aka money) can come to an agreement that is beneficial to everyone.

Given these, I wouldn't advise you replace your hard drives with it, not even your home computers; high latency should be expected. OTOH, Filecoin is the way to go if you want to backup your whole TBs of data without paying thousands of dollars each month.

Note: I only speak from a very quick glance at the whitepaper. When I see something like that I always rush to the technical explanations, and I was a little bit sad that it only talked about the coin aspect...

<comment><AUTHOR> Rakoo, perhaps you'll be interested in Filecoin's sister protocol, IPFS: [http://static.benet.ai/t/ipfs.pdf](http://static.benet.ai/t/ipfs.pdf)

You can think of it as Git + BitTorrent + Web as a file system. A talk describing it will be up soon.

Oh, and:

> The whitepaper doesn't even talk about the technical implementations of > storage.

It does talk about the storage of pieces. Not at a file system level, but at piece storing + distribution.

<comment><USER3> Coincidentally, I just looked at ipfs, and am now waiting for the talk :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty interesting from a economic standpoint. The USD price for file space would likely hover around the same price of something like S3. If the price paid by the user is too high, they are better of using S3 for storage. If the price paid to the user is too high, it creates an arbitrage situation in which someone can simply use S3 to host Filecoin data. This should theoretically provide more stability to the price of Filecoin in comparison to other virtual currencies which is simultaneously the biggest strength and weakness of most of these things.

<comment><USER5> Filecoin providers may feasibly beat S3 on price in USD if (i) they're betting on the protocol because up-front losses may be more than compensated for in investment returns on Filecoin or (ii) the alternate for them is making no money on unused disk space.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that the investment possibilities for Filecoin might be limited since it will be tied to a real world service unlike most other digital currencies. People are free to speculate how much Bitcoins are worth because there is no company out there saying "Bitcoin are worth X". Filecoin will basically be saying "Filecoins are worth X GB per hour". The way to combat this issue is to tie the price to some other currency (e.g. X USD or Bitcoin per GB per hour paid in Filecoin), but it would be tough to convince other people to use your currency if you aren't even confident enough in it to price your own products using it.

For your second point, we need to keep in mind the _free_ space might be empty but it is not free as in beer. Using the disk will cost extra electricity and CPU cycles. Plus we shouldn't forget that disks are still the most common piece of hardware to fail inside a computer. Increasing usage of that disk increases the risk of failure.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Filecoin will basically be saying "Filecoins are worth X GB per hour".

The pricing is left fluid precisely to avoid this. The price can change over time. 1 Filecoin / N time today. 0.1 / N tomorrow.

> Using the disk will cost extra electricity and CPU cycles.

Similar to how mining works today, but more useful. Filecoin today still wastes some CPU. But, we've got more surprises coming soon ;)

<comment><USER4> >The pricing is left fluid precisely to avoid this. The price can change over time. 1 Filecoin / N time today. 0.1 / N tomorrow.

That makes sense from an economic perspective but how does that work from a customer service perspective? Is the price pegged to a different currency? How would a user be able to predict the cost of the service if the price is not pegged to anything?

<comment><USER6> How can you predict the value of a dollar? It's not pegged to anything either.

Although in fact the decline of the value of the dollar is relatively predictable because of the Federal Reserve's policy goal of keeping inflation relatively low and the law of large numbers as applied to the generation of the real rate of inflation.

At my local deli a dollar used to buy a bagel with the works; and now buys less than half of a plain bagel. That's over the course of 20 years. Any unit of exchange is valued anew in each transaction; the persistence and trends in value exist mostly due to social pressure and the cost of bargaining. I don't make offers and counter offers on each bagel I buy; I just look at the sign and accept the price or leave without a bagel.

<comment><USER7> > Although in fact the decline of the value of the dollar is relatively > predictable because of the Federal Reserve's policy goal of keeping > inflation relatively low and the law of large numbers as applied to the > generation of the real rate of inflation.

That's a crucial point. If the Fed didn't pledge to keep inflation under control, the dollar wouldn't be such a great store of value or medium of exchange. It's the stability promised by central banks that allow you to "predict the value of a dollar" in the immediate future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is an amazing business model. If they can make it user-friendly (big if) they'll essentially be offering a more cost-effective, more robust alternative to Dropbox.

This appears to be truly disintermediated (P2P) secure file sharing?

<comment><USER9> Cheaper and more robust isn't really what Dropbox has been competing on.Great UX, feature set, support, and general marketing is what will make the difference.

<comment><USER10> Of these I think UX is the most significant. UX is where the proprietary walled gardens and centralized services always win.

Good UX is unbelievably, grindingly hard. If you want to make a product with a good user interface and overall experience, 90% of the work is going to take you about 25% of the time and the remaining 10% is going to take you 75% of the time. Most hackers decide a product is done when it works, but in reality they're not even half way there.

Apple is probably the overall king of UX. If you look at their process and their culture, they _obsess and obsess_ over tiny little details that are irrelevant to core functionality as understood from a purely technical point of view.

Closed silos have a clear revenue model. That enables them to invest in pushing product quality and user experience the rest of the way, past where hackers and enthusiasts would take it and into the realm of polished usability that real customer bases demand.

Who's going to pay entire teams of designers to obsess over the filecoin.io client's "experience"?

<comment><USER11> That's why the next bitcoin or filecoin like payment system should reward people who contribute to open source / free software.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why the next? ;) We're definitely thinking about this. One dream I have is to move Open Source out of the "Tragedy of the Commons" example list.

<comment><USER11> Is it possible to help on this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, all that will be open source. Sign up on the Filecoin mailing list to keep in touch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Maybe I've missed something, but how does Filecoin handle redundancy, and how does Filecoin handle delegation?

The devs seem to hope that by making the rare pieces valuable, they will somehow avoid having low redundancy. But what happens when everyone joins a large pool like Ghash.io, and every file has only a single point of failure?

I would not trust my data to Filecoin, it seems too easy for files to get permanently lost. There are no guarantees that every file piece will be managed by at least N nodes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great questions :) -- this borders into future announcements, so sadly I'll have to defer to the answer on this paper, which you summarize well here. (Not asking you to believe, only to wait a bit longer.) Also, this answer is actually not bad: information on the distribution of pieces will become widely available so users can tune rewards accordingly. Storage pools also have a ceiling: after backing up the entire piece set, it's better for them to compete than to keep growing.

<comment><USER12> After backing up the entire piece set, the requirement per-node for joining the pool declines - say 100GB each instead of 500GB each. Or perhaps you have a setup where the pool master takes care of storing all the data and the workers all do POW. Then it's up to the pool to tune prices so that workers can profit as much as possible.

You might end up with multiple competing pools, but it puts the barrier-to- entry of being a new pool at a high price. Everyone will mine for the cheapest pool, and the 1 pool that can provide all the storage at the lowest cost is the 1 pool that will control all of the data on the network.

It seems like a fragile solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> In equilibrium, people will still compete to avoid sharing the reward with others if they can avoid it. You don't need a full pool to have high expected reward. Anyway, stay tuned ;) (+ for getting rid of PoW altogether).

<comment><USER13> Maybe you could also expand to also allow poeple to mine by running a distributed search engine. So they can basicly decide wether they offer simple storage or storage + processing power + low lattency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is this associated with [http://filecoin.org/](http://filecoin.org/) (febuary 23th, 2014)?

</comment><comment><USER15> How to create new crypto-currency:

\- Pick something to base you currency on. Bit-, Name-, and File- are taken, but some might be left.

\- First letter, two stripes, here's a logo!

\- Publish a whitepaper. You must use LaTeX to typeset it.

\- No names or credit anywhere. Stay anonymous.

Joking aside, this looks like something I will try. Have a spare 1TB connected to fast internet, and assume many others have as well.

<comment><USER16> The Whois lookup of filecoin.io gives the name "Juan Batiz-Benet", so this isn't very anonymous.

<comment><AUTHOR> nope, it isn't ;)

<comment><USER17> So why isn't your name on the paper? (not judging, just curious)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This was discussed in #bitcoin-wizards recently:

[http://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/wizards/2014-07-17.ht...](http://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/wizards/2014-07-17.html)

<comment><USER19> So it sounds like the incentive model is kind of fundamentally broken. Is it correct to say that miners are incentivized to A) store trash data in a way that lets them mine with zero actual storage backing it up and B) consolidate their storage into the same hard drive, until there exists only a single copy of the data on the entire network?

<comment><USER18> Yes. Their counter argument to (A) that the trash data will cost more to store than the user gets for retrieving it (though this isn't true if the attack is successful and results in them being the only miner/retrieval server), and (B) they don't seem to consider a problem.

There are other issues— e.g. arbitrary data can be censored and the only harm is lost mining revenue proportional to the censored data. (e.g. you could censor 0.1% of all data, and probably make every file unreadable (just by censoring the first word of it) but only be unable to answer 0.1% of the file queries).

I don't really see the point— having a file storage service that you can pay for with cryptocurrency make sense, but integrating it in this manner seems to serve no technical purpose other than to fuel investment speculation and otherwise just makes the system worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there a way to host a file for 1 month, 2 month, 1 year.... by paying more/less (and maybe increasing the storage time by additional payments). That would be the right model that could translate to S3 storage with the same price. Without a time component, storage prices have strange meanings.

<comment><USER20> Is the thinking behind infinite storage that the price of storage decreases exponentially so the cost of keeping a file forever is limited?

</comment></comment><comment> jude- I'm surprised the whitepaper didn't cite PermaCoin [1], which addresses the same problem with proofs-of-retrievability and uses the BitCoin blockchain for storage. Would the authors like to comment on how their work differs?

[1] [http://cs.umd.edu/~amiller/permacoin.pdf](http://cs.umd.edu/~amiller/permacoin.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, yeah. I found out about permacoin (which is great!) after designing this construction. Turns out that permacoin and filecoin are really compatible, and complementary. amiller and I will be talking about it in the near future. (btw, permacoin's non-outsourceability is a great contribution! it should also be added to regular bitcoin)

And, to answer your question, I didn't cite permacoin here because I would have to address a whole range of things like how they overlap/differ/which one is good for what parts. Perhaps I should've, but I think it's best left to a future paper (hinted at in the discussion). Stay tuned! :)

<comment><USER21> I hope you can take more hints from permacoin. There is an important economical point in permacoin's whitepaper:

"The expected reward per unit of work is approximately constant, even for very small investments of computational effort. This prevents large participants from monopolizing the system and driving out ordinary participants."

Maybe I don't have a deep understanding how filecoin works, but as far as I know if you don't have the storage capacity which can even reach the current difficulty then you have an expected reward of 0. Maybe it's a non-issue and the difficulty will never reach let's say 10MB, but if it reaches 1TB then it will be really hard to hop in the mining business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Filecoin uses what they call "proof-of-retrievability".

The thing about proof-of-work is that it is a proof. Assuming that sha256d is unpredictable, you will on average have use a certain amount of energy to find a low hash value.

With proof-of-retrieval, the name itself is lying. There is no way to prove that a piece of data went from one person to another. It should be called invoking-trust-in-retrieval-and-proof-of-having-the-file.

Along with that, because hashes have the property of being irreversible, blocks can be hashed and the winner cannot change the block without doing work again.

Because of these properties, filecoin must use PoW (which their whitepaper states they do).

According to their whitepaper, you must first construct the proof of ownership in the file, then you perform the PoW with that seed.

This leads to huge economies of scale because the startup cost of mining at equilibrium will include storing an abundance of files (probably all of them).

<comment><USER23> > There is no way to prove that a piece of data went from one person to > another.

Actually, you can prove that a piece of data went from one person to another, but others in the network must also have a copy. I was thinking a few months back about applying a similar idea to Bit-Torrent / P2P sharing. It was possible to prove that the file was sent given that all nodes had a copy of the file; so the idea is more feasible for file sharing than it is personal file storage.

<comment><USER22> What you are referring to isn't a proof, it is invoking trust in a set of people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There's also [http://storj.io/](http://storj.io/) and they are crowdfunding the project over the decentralized financial exchange counterparty like swarm :-)

<comment><USER25> They raised 450 BTC within a day, seems they have a following. Hopefully one of them will get this up and running soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is neat. I did some work on a data storage platform through a bittorrent tracker/community back in 2010. There was no concept of a currency instead relying on the tracker to prioritize downloads since nobody would have any incentive to download any particular file. The more you stored, the more you could store.

It's neat to see this concept popping up now, [http://storj.io/](http://storj.io/) is another platform that popped up recently.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this one also vulnerable to people creating fake nodes that "store files" for each other to earn coins for doing nothing?

<comment><USER27> The authors address Sybil attacks in the paper. Essentially, there is a PoW style consensus using hashes of files+metadata (as opposed to bitcoin which is hashes of nothing + metadata)

<comment><USER28> whats to stop the node replying with the hash of the file saying "yes the file is here" when in reality no file is there

<comment><USER29> Haven't read the paper, but could you ask for a hash of a random offset+byte count of the file?

<comment><USER19> That only works on direct person-to-person systems, not decentralized systems where the entire network has to reach consensus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ok, I see some similarities to other projects here. Let's introduce one additional layer of abstraction that we call "resources-coin". Disk space is not the only limited resource that can be shared using an economic system; CPU cycles (not for hashing, but doing actual work), network bandwidth, storage space (like this project) are all things that have some value that one can be rewarded for. I bet there are many more ways.

The difference with traditional bitcoin is that, we're not talking about an absolutely limited resource here. While bitcoin will stop growing at a certain point, no matter what happens, storage space on earth will always grow. So will the overall bandwidth, overall computational power etc.

And that is why these things are not going to work on the long term. You cannot build a currency based on reward.

<comment><USER31> These things will work, they just won't be good for "store of value" like bitcoin. Supply of disk space, bandwidth etc keeps growing, but the demand for those resources grows as well. Hard to predict the ratio of supply to demand, and therefore the price, but I think they could work very well in the long term. Not as a universal payment currency, but rather as a token (with fluctuating price) for some particular type of service.

I see the future of "resource coins" as being efficient mechanisms for p2p resource distribution. Conventionally, a customer would use their credit card to pay some cloud hosting company. The conventional hosting company is a business which operates as a privately managed bureaucracy. A P2P coin operates as standard protocol acting as a meta-company, aka a DAC/DAO - Digital Autonomous Company/Organization.

In a conventional business, a private bureaucracy manages a resource uses it to provide a service (bandwidth, disk space, and CPU as managed by a hosting company). P2P coins replace that centrally-operated middle man with a decentralized algorithm and account database. Bitcoin is like a meta-company which operates a distributed ledger internet payments. Why stop at payments? If its efficient, we should *coin all the things.

<comment><USER30> "I see the future of "resource coins" as being efficient mechanisms for p2p resource distribution." \-- Agree. This is totally valid and can definitely work; it's kind of a special purpose currency or intermediate currency then. Just a way to measure the value of a service, like storing stuff.

I'm still not convinced that you could actually use that revenue as a value in itself, like, storing it for later use. To be fair, I did not read the paper. If you would get existing coins for sharing a resource, that could work ... if you only rely on the mining process to earn value, it won't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Unrelated to Filecoin, this brought to mind a question about the Bitcoin blockchain I've been pondering recently.

Since users can put small arbitrary byte data in a transaction that gets included in the block chain (AFAIK), isn't it possible that an attacker could insert illicit / illegal data that everyone using Bitcoin replicates?

Copyrighted materials, sensitive personal information such as SSNs, and moreover, child pornograpy immediately come to mind as things that could forever be persisted.

If this is possible, wouldn't that make everyone using the bitcoin blockchain criminally liable for storing and/or transmitting that information? (In the US and similar jurisdictions.)

I assume lightweight clients that only store a hash would be unaffected. But still, this seems like a serious issue.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's been known for a while that people can upload illegal bits into blockchains. Don't think transaction steganography would hold up in court though. You could do similar things with DNS records, etc.

File storage services though have the added concern that they're specifically designed to distribute files. Filecoin addresses this by (a) encouraging everyone to pre-encrypt before adding, and (b) creating a fluid market based on incentives. Nodes aren't _required_ to store every file, only strongly incentivized to do so. Nodes are free to follow strong counter incentives (say, a well-known list of "illegal hashes" published by authorities).

In reality, the way many courts handle things like this is to target the entry points: the websites advertising which are the illegal hashes and how to get them. (e.g. the piratebay instead of bittorrent inc.)

<comment><USER33> Make encryption at source compulsory (since the data is uploaded through your software) and no need to tell the user about it. rather advertise it as a feature.

<comment><USER34> I agree, this would be the best action for both the user and host. I'd add a check on the host to make sure the data looks random as well to protect against rouge or malfunctioning clients that attempts to store plain text. Encryption must be mandatory and enforced, this will prevent so much pain for all parties.

<comment><USER18> 'looks random' is a pretty bad idea. It will bogusly fire on random files and won't prevent people from just standardizing on a key of 0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Unfortunately https not working, because they are using github pages. They should really put up a https site especially considering they are a crypto project and are soliciting email addresses. At least a TOR hidden service or a namecoined https site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ack! Great point. We'll upgrade to https soon. Wish github supported https in pages :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> What I think would be a limited factor is the bandwidth: You need at least 35 megabit per second for streaming full HD video+sound ... While most people are stuck on 5 Mbit Internet or 50 GB/month quota.

</comment><comment><USER37> All that is old is new again:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnet_(peer-to- peer_network)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnet_\(peer-to-peer_network\))

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm hugely optimistic about the market for "proof-of-application" cryptocurrency since it's also the next step in "race to the bottom" \- make use of the spare resources of all our commodity electronics and eliminate a centralized authority simultaneously. We've had plenty of peer-to-peer systems, but the incentives are mostly wrong to make them scale up past the niches of the black market and political radicals.

</comment><comment><USER39> I always wanted proof of work to be computation power which is saved up over time, which can be spent as computation bursts on a network, or sold. Perhaps using pnacl binaries to to the computations.

Rather than waste CPU power on mindless hashing, you could accomplish real computation tasks.

This is pretty cool too though.

<comment><USER40> "Proof of Non-Work" would be a very interesting concept, although I can't think of a way to do it. (In a sense, Proof of Work is an expensive method to accomplish Proof of Non-Work.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Very interesting. Are files expected to be stored forever, even if they're never requested?

<comment><USER42> Yes. Filecoin uses proof-of-retrievability i.e. you prove that you can access arbitrary parts of a file without needing to always provide the whole file.

<comment><USER41> Hmm. Does this mean that the cost of storing new data over time will grow, to support the larger and larger amount of existing data that needs to be stored?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> That's a beautiful thing, I was thinking about building a system like that, but without the cryptocurrency thing, it's genial.

Reading the whitepaper one thing isn't clear: will the pieces of data be encrypted before sending them to the network?

</comment><comment><USER44> Users pay to Put data into the network. Are there any ongoing payments for storage? I don't see any way to delete data either. If the network promises permanent free storage after a one time fee, it's sure to fail eventually.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the payment effectively buys storage for a certain amount of time. Read the discussion on Rewards here: [http://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf](http://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf)

<comment><USER44> "Transaction issuers must pay for all rewards up-front" Will there be a way to make ongoing payments for data retention? With a proper API this could be used for secure distributed backup, that would be a killer use and something I would gladly pay "miners" for.

<comment><USER45> The way I understand it, Get'ing the data also publishes it to existing miners, so they can start storing it if it's a piece with a high reward value. The TTL is decreased by the Get operation, though. By understanding how valuable your data is you can choose a time to Put it again (while reward/TTL > market rate) with a new reward attached. Obviously that reward/TTL should be higher than the last one to buy you a bunch of safe Gets again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> How is bandwidth handled / incentivized? Is this intended for long term storage (few retrievals), or for files that are accessed frequently?

<comment><AUTHOR> more for long term storage. see ipfs for short term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> How different is it from Storjcoin ?

<comment><USER28> Both smell like a scam, "coincidentally" today storj started fundraising by getting people to send them bitcoins for useless storjcoins they created, the worst part is people falling for such a scam, then again there's a fool born every minute which is a business model a lot of companies rely on.

In this case and in storjcoin case the actors behind it all remain anonymous

<comment><AUTHOR> I can understand why -- with all the scams out there -- that would be one reaction. But note that Filecoin makes important technical contributions on top of the Bitcoin protocol. You can read the paper here: [http://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf](http://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf)

FWIW, we aren't really anonymous. Neither in the storj case (you can find who they are in their website), nor in the Filecoin case. (hi!)

<comment><USER28> Apologies for being skeptical, your whitepaper does seem to be more indepth unlike the Storj scam which will probably unravel soon

If this filecoin does take off and does what is being promised I will personally add hundreds of terrabytes of storage from our storage servers.

But seeing what Storj are doing I am extremely sceptical so please understand where I am coming from.

<comment><AUTHOR> Understood! Stay tuned :) We're working hard to upgrade internet infrastructure with the nice properties cryptocurrencies can give us.

And, by the way, see [http://static.benet.ai/t/ipfs.pdf](http://static.benet.ai/t/ipfs.pdf) \-- [https://github.com/jbenet/ipfs](https://github.com/jbenet/ipfs) \-- Filecoin's sister protocol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Will your reward depend on the volume you dedicated to store other people's files?

</comment><comment><USER49> What about being liable for storing illegal files someone uploads to your filebox?

<comment><USER50> 49310 83597 02850 19002 75777 67239 07649 57284 90777 21502 08632 08075 01840 97926 27885 09765 88645 57802 01366 00732 86795 44734 11283 17353 67831 20155 75359 81978 54505 48115 71939 34587 73300 38009 93261 95058 76452 50238 20408 11018 98850 42615 17657 99417 04250 88903 70291 19015 87003 04794 32826 07382 14695 41570 33022 79875 57681 89560 16240 30064 11151 69008 72879 83819 42582 71674 56477 48166 84347 92846 45809 29131 53186 00700 10043 35318 93631 93439 12948 60445 03709 91980 04770 94629 21558 18071 11691 53031 87628 84778 78354 15759 32891 09329 54473 50881 88246 54950 60005 01900 62747 05305 38116 42782 94267 47485 34965 25745 36815 11706 55028 19055 52656 22135 31463 10421 00866 28679 71144 46706 36692 19825 86158 11125 15556 50481 34207 68673 23407 65505 48591 08269 56266 69306 62367 99702 10481 23965 62518 00681 83236 53959 34839 56753 57557 53246 19023 48106 47009 87753 02795 61868 92925 38069 33052 04238 14996 99454 56945 77413 83356 89906 00587 08321 81270 48611 33682 02651 59051 66351 87402 90181 97693 93767 78529 28722 10955 04129 25792 57381 86605 84501 50552 50274 99477 18831 29310 45769 80909 15304 61335 94190 30258 81320 59322 77444 38525 50466 77902 45186 97062 62778 88919 79580 42306 57506 15669 83469 56177 97879 65920 16440 51939 96071 69811 12615 19561 02762 83233 98257 91423 32172 69614 43744 38105 64855 29348 87634 92103 09887 02878 74532 33132 53212 26786 33283 70279 25099 74996 94887 75936 91591 76445 88032 71838 47402 35933 02037 48885 06755 70658 79194 61134 19323 07814 85443 64543 75113 20709 86063 90746 41756 41216 35042 38800 29678 08558 67037 03875 09410 76982 11837 65499 20520 43682 55854 64228 85024 29963 32268 53691 24648 55000 75591 66402 47292 40716 45072 53196 74499 95294 48434 74190 21077 29606 82055 81309 23626 83798 79519 66199 79828 55258 87161 09613 65617 80745 66159 24886 60889 81645 68541 72136 29208 46656 27913 14784 66791 55096 51543 10113 53858 62081 96875 83688 35955 77893 91454 53935 68199 60988 08540 47659 07358 97289 89834 25047 12891 84162 65878 96821 85380 87956 27903 99786 29449 39760 54675 34821 25675 01215 17082 73710 76462 70712 46753 21024 83678 15940 00875 05452 54353 7.

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

Now what?

<comment><USER51> Well the implications are a bit more life changing when users decide to store child pornography on your HDD, it's a good question.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> datacoin anyone?

</comment><comment><USER53> MaidSafe is doing similar kind of thing. I think they have much better plan and idea [http://maidsafe.net/](http://maidsafe.net/) [http://www.safecoin.io/](http://www.safecoin.io/)

</comment><comment><USER54> Does "Renting disk space" not sound extremely sketchy to anyone else?

<comment><AUTHOR> Does "Renting your spare room" (airbnb) or "Renting your car" (uber) sound sketchy? It's all about how the protocol works and the security guarantees on top. Users should store pre-encrypted files. (except for public goods, like wikipedia)</comment></comment>


Cross browser testing made easy - <AUTHOR> https://www.equafy.com

<comment><USER2> A lot more coming soon, stay tuned!</comment>


Slaveowners Got Reparations - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/opinion/when-slaveowners-got-reparations.html <comment><USER2> Pretty socialist.

In Russia sefdom was abolished for 23 milion people in 1860 with compensation for the landowners paid not by the state but by taxing ex-sefs.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom)</comment>


Ask HN: What are effective ways to market a side project? - <AUTHOR>

It's easy to see how projects like threewords.me will spread virally, but what about SaaS services that don't have social components? How do you get the word out? Conversion is poor from local blogs, and Techcrunch is not likely to cover you unless you're funded.<p>What have you all tried? What's worked? <comment><USER2> Organic search, particularly scalable content generation: my bread and butter. This has worked fantastically well, including when I was just working on side projects, and requires no gatekeeper approval. It is also free to get started working on, and plays to many of the strengths of technical founders.

AdWords: other people execute better than me on this, but my AdWords has been routinely profitable for the last few years. I recommend a small budget while trying to find a mix that works, then blowing it up.

Facebook ads: like setting money on fire.

Facebook viral mechanisms: apparently not a great fit with my product, and ways I can see to improve this would make it difficult for me to look in the mirror.

<comment><USER3> Would you elaborate on what you mean by scalable content generation? How is this different from writing content or landing pages directly, how does it become scalable? I find the content bit hard with my own side-project because I'm having to learn to be a great writer on the side of my side project (not a bad thing)!

<comment><USER2> That's usually the interesting question for a project. That said, the general sketch of making landing or content page generation scalable is figuring out all the work it takes you personally to make one unit of content and then automating, eliminating, or outsourcing all of it.

I talk about this a lot on my blog. In my example, the content is bingo games on pages dedicated to any teaching activity you can think of. It scales because the bingo card, images, and PDF can be 100% automated, and the actual captivity can be written by someone much cheaper than me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of my very favorite methods is creating plugin/add-on integration for various platforms/software. People who use the platform/software will tell other people that they can use your service with it. It also gives you license to promote yourself in the appropriate directories/forums.

</comment><comment><USER5> My stab at this (its still so alpha it hurts), try <http://www.startupbeanbags.com> \- the idea is practical promotion for start ups via the medium of beanbags :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't understand what this is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Vinicius Vacanti listed some helpful tips in a recent blog post, "How To Get Your First 1,000 Users:" [http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/02/08/how-to-get- your-first-...](http://viniciusvacanti.com/2011/02/08/how-to-get-your- first-1000-users/)</comment>


Netflix uses FreeBSD 9.0 - <AUTHOR> https://signup.netflix.com/openconnect/software <comment> vezzy-fnord Yet you can't actually _use_ Netflix on FreeBSD.

<comment><USER2> This is where you usually see some silly comment like "Because the majority of users cannot use a command line and will never use FreeBSD."

Of course that majority will also never be given a choice.

Sony PlayStation users are using FreeBSD. I doubt they will complain.

Imagine, for the purposes of a thought experiment, a majority of users would be receptive to using FreeBSD. Imagine that instead of staring at a screen that says "Buffering...", the user could transfer files to the her home computer with something as simple as:

tnftp -o /home/netflix/nextmovieinqueue.mp4 ftp://netflixftpserverlocatedatisp.netflix.com/requestedmovie.mp4

And when the download completes, the user could serve the video to the devices that are connected to her WiFi router:

tcpserver -vRHDl0 192.168.2.0 80 bozohttpd -snX /home/netflix

And then she accesses the file as she would any video on the www, by pointing her web browser/http client at [http://192.168.2.0/nextmovieinqueue.mp4](http://192.168.2.0/nextmovieinqueue.mp4)

In this imaginary scenario, how could "DRM" be implemented without forcing the customer to use a particular OS, browser or video player, or some other closed source program?

Could it be done?

<comment> vezzy-fnord Except that's just a fantasy scenario and not how Netflix actually works or would work on FreeBSD.

The problem is there is no port of Silverlight with the necessary DRM. The latter is unethical in the context of free software.

However, from what I've read, Netflix intend on switching fully to HTML5 in the near future. This will make their platform OS-agnostic, while still benefiting from things like Encrypted Media Extensions (EME).

<comment><USER3> How is an open source browser like Firefox supposed to implement _Encrypted Media Extensions_ without leaking the keys to anyone who decides to grab the source code?

<comment><USER4> In the same way Firefox implements Silverlight today: It's still a binary plugin that talks to the OS for some "secure path", but it's only the decryption in the closed path, instead of the entire playback experience. I don't think HTML5/EME will get Linux/BSD et al users watching Netflix any more than they were before.

Though breaking EME is probably more interesting for a certain class of developer than implementing all of Silverlight with DRM is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From June 2012, more information at: [http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- stable/2012-June/...](http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd- stable/2012-June/068129.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> And on the other end of the spectrum, they require you have Microsoft Silverlight available to your browser.

<comment><USER7> Thankfully, there are easily installable Wine ports so it isn't really a problem.

Netflix does not seem interested in enforcing their "Linux (/*BSD) ban"[1], I can even use a desktop recorder to rip straight from Netflix if I wanted which essentially makes it a "take what you want" service.

[1] [http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/netflix-no-plans-to- suppo...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/02/netflix-no-plans-to-support- linux)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> When are people gonna shake the false impression that *BSD are outdated and their flavor of Debuntu is far superior?

<comment><USER9> When people also acknowledge that Gentoo is effectively the best of both worlds?

<comment><USER10> Actually, Arch[1] is the best of both worlds.

1.[https://www.archlinux.org](https://www.archlinux.org)

Comparison to others: [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Compared_to_Other_...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Compared_to_Other_Distributions)

<comment><USER9> Arch is closer to Fedora than Gentoo or BSD.

Gentoo still uses a BSD Ports-like system called Portage. You can still have a sync'd directory of Ebuilds, which correspond to FreeBSD Makefiles, only you have the added benefit of USE flags, compilation options, and even binary packages.

You can run Portage on FreeBSD.

Gentoo still uses, by default, OpenRC, which is a BSD-like init system that also handles dependencies. It is compatible with other FreeBSD and NetBSD scripts as well.

You can run OpenRC on FreeBSD and NetBSD.

Arch, on the other hand, has Fedora's systemd, which is completely incompatible with any of the BSD's thanks to its use of cgroups, which are a Linux kernel only feature, and the developers of systemd have dismissed, openly, the BSDs as outdated and unimportant.

Arch also uses binary packages for most of its packages, which is closer to rpm/dpkg than it is to Portage/ports.

The AUR is a limited system designed for pulling in alternative and source packages. It lacks USE flags and compile-time and runtime end user control. The AUR is mostly managed by the community, and many AUR packages have a lower quality than the base pacman available packages. The less popular a particular AUR package, the less people will be involved in it, and the lower quality it will be.

On the flipside, the BSDs have impeccable quality packages. They're not configurable without tweaking stuff manually, but the defaults are rock solid.

Gentoo's core Portage tree packages are managed by official developers who are assigned duties. And like the AUR, the community is able to apply any number of "overlays" on top of the Portage tree, giving the community direct ease of modification of not only community packages, but core ones as well.

So, how is Arch the "best of BSD and Linux" when it has absolutely nothing to do with BSD?

<comment><USER11> > So, how is Arch the "best of BSD and Linux" when it has absolutely nothing > to do with BSD?

You're being a little biased here.

Systemd has been default since 2012, yet Archlinux started in 2002. Before systemd, the default system (initscripts[0]) was very much BSD-like by design. Not anymore, that's true.

Regarding packages, you don't _have_ to use binary packages; you can very well use the ABS [1], which AFAIK really is what ports are about:

\- You get a tree where you can download recipes. They're called PKGBUILD in Arch, ebuild in Gentoo, but essentially do the same thing. Take a look at nginx's PKGBUILD [2], and you will recognize a logic similar to the corresponding ebuild [3], yet far simpler (because less configurable, I hear you coming)

\- You have a set of tools to create a fake root, calculate dependencies, build the package according to global properties (there are compile flags [4], but I have no idea how they compares to the famous USE flags) and install the package.

\- Pre-built packages are just packages that were built by the Archlinux team with sensible defaults and have proven to be stable enough (by Arch's standards), so I as a user don't have to bother re-compiling. But the process behind is completely done with PKGBUILDs.

The AUR is "just" a staging zone where packages get to be tested by the community at large. When it's popular enough and a Trusted User commits to maintaining the package, the PKGBUILD can be part of the [extra] repository, where all packages are automatically built and proposed to arch users... but still, with the same build process.

To me, Arch sits between Gentoo/*BSD and "higher-level" distros: it keeps the process as close as possible to upstream applications by providing a minimal framework to install and update them, so that users can get understand how gluing packages together works, and what they have to do to have a functional system that does what they want, and not spend time on understanding how the packages work inside. Arch is more about understanding and using the system as a whole, than understanding every brick.

[0] [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Initscripts](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Initscripts) [1] [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ABS#What_is_the_Arch_Bu...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ABS#What_is_the_Arch_Build_System.3F) [2] [https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/tree/t...](https://projects.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/tree/trunk/PKGBUILD?h=packages/nginx) [3] [http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi- bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/www-...](http://sources.gentoo.org/cgi- bin/viewvc.cgi/gentoo-x86/www- servers/nginx/nginx-1.4.4.ebuild?revision=1.1&view=markup) [4] [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Makepkg#Architecture.2C...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Makepkg#Architecture.2C_compile_flags)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ummm, it's a DRM, not technical issue. The DRM is imposed upon them by content creators. In theory, FreeBSD could get a moonlight port, then try to license the keys used for the DRM, but unfortunately, this is likely a deal breaker for Netflix. Also the FreeBSD project has to do the work, Netflix can't, since they can negotiate a contract on behalf of FreeBSD.

<comment><USER13> Moonlight is open source. Netflix could port the DRM if they wanted to; FreeBSD would not need to do it. by my read of the CC license they'd have to contribute that back to the project, but I'd guess they could then negotiate the licensing of the keys; keys are not code so I don't see any more problem with that than using your own keys in e.g. GnuPG.

So few people use *BSD as a desktop that the demand for it is not going to make it happen, however.

<comment><USER14> > Netflix could port the DRM if they wanted to

I'm pretty sure the DRM used in the Netflix silverlight player is Microsoft's "PlayReady", so no... Netflix can't port it if they want.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> At vBSDCon Scott Long announced they'd been tracking -CURRENT for over a month, so assume they're already on 10-STABLE in a lot of places.

Some good details on the OCA [http://people.freebsd.org/~scottl/Netflix- BSDCan-20130515.pd...](http://people.freebsd.org/~scottl/Netflix- BSDCan-20130515.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm confused, doesn't Netflix use AWS for all their servers? AFAIK you can't run FreeBSD on EC2 without significant challenges.

<comment><USER17> There are a few AMIs available: [http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-on- ec2/](http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-on-ec2/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The first time I've scrolled through the title I've read: _Netflix uses NetBSD_ and I thought _that 's strange_. When I had to re-read the title and realized it was using _FreeBSD_ I wasn't that surprised.

FreeBSD is a natural choice if you want stability, even over Linux. I enjoy their update scheme although the lack of an official 'pkg' repository gives in to my nerves.

So, why is this news, is beyond me...

ps. I see a lot of people complaining that they use an open platform (FreeBSD in this case) to create a _closed product_. If I'm not mistaken (I'm not a US citizen and Netflix doesn't work in my country) it's a media-content rental service. So what exactly is the open source alternative, www.PirateFlixbay.org? :-)

<comment><USER2> "... and I thought that's strange."

Why? I believe the leader of their core group works for Netflix.

<comment><USER18> Because is the unpopular choice. I almost never came across someone using NetBSD, except myself 10 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> [s]I may have misinterpreted this, but to me it seems as though all this provides is two things: 1) Netflix get some technology for free from which they can profit and 2) Netflix get to boast about using free/open software.

I think instead of a page thanking FreeBSD for software, Netflix, alongside many other large companies who use free software, could make more of an effort to actually contribute to the software proportionally to their use of it.[/s]

I apologise, clearly I had misinterpreted it and was wrong!

<comment><USER20> Netflix does contribute quite a bit:

[https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors](https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors)

Or search for "Sponsored by: Netflix" in the commit messages.

<comment><USER21> I thought it funny that NetBSD is a donor to the FreeBSD foundation.

<comment><USER22> It is pragmatic. NetBSD will grab keys bits from FreeBSD, and will want to periodically merge changes. If they don't commit their changes "upstream"... but really more "sidestream", they will have to re-merge their local changes each time too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > GNU has a concept of freedom that it tries to protect via the GPL. Licenses > like the BSD or MIT do not.

BSD and MIT are trying to protect their own concept of freedom.

</comment><comment><USER24> That's interesting. Only about a year and a half ago when there was the leap second fun that disrupted so many people they were running on CentOS 5 (and so weren't affected): [https://twitter.com/adrianco/status/219238574552387586](https://twitter.com/adrianco/status/219238574552387586)

<comment><USER25> The Centos part is the control layer that runs on AWS that people talk about mostly. The BSD part is the actual video streaming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There was a good talk about this at EuroBSDcon but the video does not seem to be available or the slides. Running the Netflix Video CDN on FreeBSD and Handling 30% of all US Internet Traffic by Alistair Crooks.

</comment><comment><USER26> I am curious on what kind of software they are running with nginx on freeBSD or is all the video content just raw video files that their client software directs to?

</comment><comment><USER27> And they were sponsors at EuroBSD conference this year too.

</comment><comment><USER28> Juniper routers, the most used routing equipment after cisco, runs on FreeBSD. So everything on the internet effectively uses FreeBSD.

The same goes for VxWorks, and IOS (the cisco one).

<comment><USER29> The company that owns VxWorks, Wind River System, did involve in BSD circa 2000, and the most can be said is early VxWorks did share some lineage with BSD Unix, but ever since VxWorks has been switched to WIND kernel, I doubt we can really put these two OSes in the same group.

<comment><USER30> Now owned by Intel.</comment></comment></comment>


Massachusetts House Votes to Pass Noncompete Reform Bill - <AUTHOR> http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2016/06/29/mass-house-of-representatives-vote-on-noncompete-reform/ <comment><USER2> That is a pretty huge step. I hope they are successful getting it passed and through the court system. In my opinion, non-compete clauses post employment are simply another form of wage theft.</comment>


So, Why is Twitter Really Not Using Cassandra to Store Tweets? - <AUTHOR> http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/7/11/so-why-is-twitter-really-not-using-cassandra-to-store-tweets.html

<comment><USER2> Answer: this person doesn't know.

<comment><USER3> You spoiled it

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Kinda funny that people are still admiringly quoting Joel's criticism of Netscape for going with the big rewrite, now that that rewrite has turned into Firefox.

<comment><USER5> Technically, I think Firefox is the rewrite of the rewrite.

<comment><USER6> So it's doubly wrong?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> You know how you think you're 90% done with a project, and there's a ton of little details, so that in reality, you're actually a long way out? That's where Cassandra is at.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the author was just looking for an excuse to post that flowchart.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think there problem is that they are already riding on the edge in terms of service stability and availability, trying to conduct a large scale migration now would probably just add to this. I don't think they can really afford extended downtime now just when they're beginning to implement their monetisation strategy.

</comment><comment><USER10> summary: if it works, don't fix it.

<comment><USER11> Unless if you have to go back and keep on fixing it again and again and again and again... until one day, the cost of fixing (please also include the cost of re-testing) can't be justified any longer.

Anyhow, that's why software should be developed in modules/components.</comment></comment>


Amazon has suspended video boss Roy Price - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2017/10/12/16467462/amazon-roy-price-suspended-rose-mcgowan-isa-hackett <comment><USER2> Amazon sure does enjoy cutting Prices.</comment>


Introducing Google Nose - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFbYadm_mrw

<comment><USER2> I liked the part about centibytes (or is that scentibytes?).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> April fool :)</comment>


Manbang: The Netflix of North Korea Is Here - <AUTHOR> http://www.thememo.com/2016/08/22/north-korea-manbang-netflix-streaming-propaganda-of-is-here/ <comment><USER2> Manbang!!

The article says in Korean that means 'everywhere' or 'every direction' but it's still hilarious.</comment>


Google releases bug info in Windows 8.1 on schedule, two days before fix release - <AUTHOR> http://au.pcmag.com/operating-systems-and-platforms/27538/news/microsoft-slams-google-for-spilling-beans-on-windo

<comment><USER2> Synopsis: Google disclosed a bug with security implications to Microsoft. As per their policy, they released information to the public 90 days later. Microsoft wanted to wait a couple more days, and is now trying to paint Google as the bad guys for disclosing the flaw.

Two things bother me about this situation.

First, why did it take Microsoft more than 90 days to patch the bug? Especially since it potentially affects the security of their users. Do they actually care about their users?

Second, why are so many people getting on Google's case here (such as in the comments of the article)? Google notified Microsoft of the problem, and followed their own policy of disclosing the information to the public after 90 days. That seems like ample time for Microsoft to fix the issue. Also, Google sticking to their guns here is better for Microsoft users: maybe Microsoft will patch the next bug sooner.

After reading the article again, it states that Microsoft wanted to wait until a normal "patch Tuesday." If this bug has security implications, though, why would they wait for a normal release?</comment>


How a Company Scammed Silicon Valley and How It Got Caught - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/books/review/bad-blood-john-carreyrou.html <comment><USER2> I'd argue that it was largely dumb money that was scammed. Not Silicon Valley. Those so-called marquee investors named in the article were not even VCs. In fact you see a lot of this in enormous funding rounds. You didn't see the premier firms in there like Sequoia, Khosla, Founders Fund, a16z, Benchmark, ... DFJ was the only notable firm there and it looks like they came in early with Draper seeding it when it was still idea-phase.

There are a million ways you could be screwed by an entrepreneur so due diligence is really about finding the 3-5 questions that will make or break a business. In the case of Theranos, the whole idea relied on an assumption that you could massively reduce the amount of blood needed to do an analysis. So that's where your due diligence starts. But after 20 minutes of desk research you'll find that small blood samples intrinsically heterogenous for many tests. VCs are trained and paid to ask the right questions. This was dumb money plain and simple.

<comment><USER3> >I'd argue that it was largely dumb money that was scammed. Not Silicon Valley.

Bubbles have normal air in them. Economic bubbles include plenty of normal economic activity that has not much to do with the fact that it's a bubble.

I would make the case that calling SV and "dumb VC money" one in the same is perfectly appropriate in the context of an article written for a general audience.

<comment><USER4> > I would make the case that calling SV and "dumb VC money" one in the same is > perfectly appropriate in the context of an article written for a general > audience

Please do make that case, because its _much easier_ to make the case that it's deliberately misleading to get clicks and make a headline than actually informative or accurate.

The general audience is quite capable of understanding "dumb rich people" vs "experienced venture capitalists".

<comment><USER5> "How did they get scammed?"

"Because they're dumb rich people."

"How do you know they're dumb rich people?"

"Because they got scammed."

<comment><USER2> No but thanks for putting words in my mouth. They were dumb because they clearly didn't even bother to do basic due diligence. The fact that there were no other marquee VCs in on a $10b valuation should have raised some flags. It did not. And they weren't taking a $100k punt. These were investments of tens of millions of dollars so you think that there would have been some basic technical due diligence. This is what I call dumb money.

When a VC sees a huge valuation and the only other investors on the captable beyond the Seed/A rounds are celebrities, pension funds, SWFs, family offices and hedge funds they say: "we're worried that this is the next theranos"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My company recently interviewed a Theranos veteran - this person was a scientist working on a small part of the analytical pipeline. Apparently there were many, many smart people working at Theranos (including the candidate) who had no idea the company was a scam. This was in part due to intense secrecy and very rigid information silos within the company.

There's probably a lesson to be learned there, of course - one too many "need to know basis" explanations and it's time to start asking some hard questions.

<comment><USER7> By that metric Apple could be a scam.

<comment><USER8> The difference is that it is trivial to determine whether they're selling something that works, which would be the thing to hide in the event of fraud.

Or the fraud is purely financial, in which case it wouldn't be obvious to an engineer anyway because that level of siloing is normal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Interesting that the review is by Roger Lowenstein:

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

I just finished his book on Buffett, which I wish I'd read 20 years ago.

<comment><USER10> Why do you wish you'd read it 20 years ago?

<comment><USER11> Probably so that he'd have enjoyed the gains of investing in Berkshire Hathaway?

<comment><USER9> I would still own Google, Amazon, and Apple today. I would have always kept those stocks.

Find today's equivalent then hold for 20 years.

<comment><USER12> But would these outweigh your losses to other (nowadays unknown) stock?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "There is a larger moral here: The people in the trenches know best."

It seems obvious, and yet it is a truth so many leaders fail to grasp. Keeping a finger on the pulse of employee attitudes is a great way to nip issues in the bud before they become systemic.

Although I guess that doesn't really help if the leader is the issue.

<comment><USER14> The problem is that the grunt employees know where the bodies are buried. There's usually a body or two buried somewhere -- if you kept the pulse of grunt employees, you'd never invest in anything.

<comment><USER15> I'd expect that's only true for a particularly risk-averse investor.

If there's a metaphorical body buried in almost every company, then that's just risk, and knowing what it is would actually be better for an investor than not knowing.

Why would it be a dealbreaker?

<comment><USER14> At Theranos at least, they could have been very literal bodies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Based on Carreyrou's dogged reporting, not even Enron lied so freely.

The rest of the article was more or less just copying every other article about the subject, but this line is just beautiful.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think Murdoch did a great job by letting the editors decide what to publish. There is something that company boards can learn from editors ;)

</comment><comment><USER18> Even that photo looks staged. All those technicians standing there looking at machines like they are trying to monitor something.

<comment><USER19> Those are all machining stations where CNC parts (likely for the instruments) would be cut. The guy in the front has a boring day ahead of him, watching the chip conveyor delivering waste material into the dumpster.

<comment><USER18> So Theranos actually got CNC machines in-house? Most companies would outsource it one of the dozens of CNC shops in the bay area (or elsewhere is large enough volume.)

<comment><USER20> They published a video of the manufacturing that showed those CNC machines, injection molding, and robotic assembly.

It's a lot faster to iterate if you have in-house machining and molding; you can get parts made or modified in <day vs weeks with an outside shop. You can also work closer with the machinists to iron out challenges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Slant article of a topic that has been slaughtered to death by people with more industry knowledge than the author

<comment><USER22> The article is a review of the book written by the journalist that first broke the Theranos story (John Carreyrou).

<comment><USER21> Whoops! Slanted review

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> VCs Hate Her: This CEO got hundreds of millions with this one weird trick!

</comment><comment><USER24> > marquee investors including Robert Kraft, Betsy DeVos

Is this a joke? or was that intentional?</comment>


Closet Archive: A stuffed history of the closet, where the "past becomes space." - <AUTHOR> https://placesjournal.org/article/closet-archive/ <comment><USER2> I was reminded of Bachelard's _Poetics of Space._ [http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/6/the-poetics- of...](http://www.harvarddesignmagazine.org/issues/6/the-poetics-of-space-by- gaston-bachelard)</comment>


Housing Plans in California & New York face resistance from construction unions - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/construction-unions-stymie-low-income-housing-plans-in-california-new-york-1472376601 <comment><USER2> Unions shot themselves in the foot here. Some of the new construction projects would have been run by union shops. Now, they won't happen at all. Net result: fewer union jobs than there could have been.

At some point, the unions will need to realize that stuff is going to get done with or without them. They can be part of the process, or not. If they are part of the process, they get some jobs out of it. This should have been a no- brainer.

<comment><USER3> Also, support for unions is waning. Here in Philadelphia, union support is at an all time low. They were rendered toothless in recent elections for the first time ever, and a series of bad press (arson, assault, and destruction of property by union members) and continued ties to organized crime have worn thin sympathies.

I also imagine that in difficult economies like ours, the "right" to a job or work over someone else is not looked at favorably when so many are un/under- employed.

At this point, unions seem to be the only ones around here that still support unions around here.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Also, support for unions is waning. Here in Philadelphia, union support is at an all time low. They were rendered toothless in recent elections for the first time ever, and a series of bad press (arson, assault, and destruction of property by union members) and continued ties to organized crime have worn thin sympathies._

For good reason. They prevent accountability among police: [http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/14/police-unions-produce- rule...](http://reason.com/blog/2014/08/14/police-unions-produce-rules-that- protect).

They also prevent educational innovation: [https://www.amazon.com/Special- Interest-Teachers-Americas-Sc...](https://www.amazon.com/Special-Interest- Teachers-Americas-Schools/dp/0815721293) and pr event urban schools from even functioning.

As the topic article points out, construction unions are attacking the housing supply.

Should it be a surprise that anyone who pays attention is unhappy with unions?

<comment><USER4> Maybe its because the public looks down upon unions that the middle class is slowly sliding into destitution? [1] [2]

I'm definitely not a fan of unions, but besides the movement to push minimum wage up to $15/hr across the country, I don't see any organized groups continuing to push the salary threshold at which overtime pay is required, reducing the number of hours in a work week (which is f___ing insane we're still working ~40 hours a week with how much productivity has grown since the 60's), and so forth.

Either unions or political activists must fight for these labor protections; pick your poison.

[1] [http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american- middl...](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/09/the-american-middle-class- is-losing-ground/)

[2] [http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2015/12/09/459087477/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2015/12/09/459087477/the-tipping-point-most-americans-no-longer-are- middle-class)

<comment><USER5> The 40 hour work week isn't a productivity related number... It's a cultural construction born from early 20th century union political efforts.

For instance in Denmark, the work week is typically 32 hours and has been this way for decades... Works fine for them... Not sure how well it would work in a culture like America where working as hard as possible is considered a good thing... Regardless of how stupidly obvious it is that this screws up work life balance, individual stress levels and by extension individual health, in the country with the most fucked up health care system in the western world...

<comment><USER6> 37, not 32.

[http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/compara...](http://www.eurofound.europa.eu/observatories/eurwork/comparative- information/national-contributions/denmark/working-time-in-the-european-union- denmark)

There are particularly many part-time workers in Denmark, and flexibility of labour market is high (including close to zero protection from layoffs), and this has resulted in Danes working fewer hours per worker than other Western nations (1490 hours per year per employee on the average) but on the other hand the labour marker participation rate is very high, so Danes work more hours per capita than any Western nation.

<comment><USER7> When I interned for the Federal Government in Canada my wages were for 37.5 hours per week (7.5 hours per day, 30 min unpaid lunch was the implied structure).

<comment><USER6> It's the same 37.5 hours with all office jobs where I live, Finland. Blue- collar jobs are 8 hours per day (1 hour unpaid lunch implied), they then accumulate more holiday days so that the annual working time is roughly the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't know anything about the California controversy and I certainly don't think union workers should mandated on new construction in NYC, but I was glad that tax deal died in Albany. It was a terrible program.

Under it billions of dollars of tax revenue over decades which otherwise would have been owed by extremely wealthy people often on their third or fourth home was forgiven and in exchange a few hundred affordable apartments in some of the most expensive neighborhood were handed out to lucky lottery winners. It was about the least efficient affordable housing program imaginable.

A much much better idea would have been to collect the full owed property taxes on the new buildings for billionaires going up in Manhattan and use the money to do more good for many more people. Mostly in the outer boros where the dollar goes further.

<comment><USER9> It would depend on how well that money was managed. If history is any guide, I suspect not well.

<comment><USER10> It's hard for me to imagine the government being simultaneously too incompetent to spend tax money sensibly but competent enough to direct an effective lottery based affordable housing program.

If you suppose that the government can't spend taxes wisely, then you seemingly must also suppose that any alternative affordable housing program would be run into the ground by the same incompetents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This one instance might be so (unions are imperfect human endeavors), but this article comes across as thinly-veiled MSM/establishment strawman/false equivocation via the pernicious, irrational, data-free worldview which completely ignores the net positive force unions had in the bloody struggle for worker pay and working conditions in the 19th and 20th centuries.

See also: "Inequality for All" and "Where to Invade Next?"

<comment><USER12> "helped in the past" != "helpful now"

Burning coal has been a tremendous help to society, but that doesn't mean we should continue to do it when we find better alternatives for each of its use cases.

Can you name some of the advancements unions have brought to employees in the US over the last 10-20 years? Does that outweigh their anti competitive nature that has led to companies moving manufacturing out of unionized areas entirely?

<comment><USER13> Off the top of my head, try being a non-union Electrician, Plumber, etc. in San Francisco for a day.

At the end of that day, you will drop to your knees, and thank god for those lefty unions. At the end of a few years, you just might be able to afford a house.

Actually San Francisco has a lot of union jobs, and they arn't moving to China.

Personally, I think people in tech will look back, and wish they had some Union protection. It's the one profession I'm shocked hasen't completely moved overseas.

What's the better alternative? America is better now because got rid of a lot of unions? Yes--a lot of products are made where your boss can get maximum ROI. They are made overseas for a lot of reasons, including lax laws concerning every aspect of that widget. Employee health/happiness/economic viability--who cares. Enviornment--who cares. Ability to pay taxes--who cares. Who cares as long as it's cheaper. Sometimes the cheapest is not the best for society as a whole?

<comment><USER14> As far as the union jobs you described, its not actually possible to outsource manual on-site performed labor to overseas. Is that really an accomplishment of unions?

<comment><USER15> Very possible to import immigrants, illegally or through visas, to labor for below market rates.

<comment><USER16> If they're willing to labor for those rates, they are "market" by definition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _" In California last week, legislators and interest groups declared dead a measure pushed by Gov. Jerry Brown to allow certain apartments with some low- income units to sidestep the state's environmental review process. "_

It sounds like unions objected to using "low income housing" as an excuse to "sidestep the state's environmental review process." I would also.

Environmental review shouldn't be an excuse to engage in NIMYBism but environmental review is important to prevent projects that are environmentally destructive.

It sounds like every interest group involved here is using "low incoming housing" to ram through the "reforms" they're after.

<comment><USER2> That's a mischaracterization. The law Jerry Brown proposed dealt with "as-of- right" zoning, i.e. if a parcel of land has been zoned for housing, and someone wants to build housing on it, they can do so without the NIMBY neighbors holding up the project indefinitely with frivolous lawsuits and "environmental" reviews. Unfortunately, Brown attached a low-income housing restriction onto it, but it was definitely a step in the right direction.

Real environmental review, by qualified people, happens when the land is zoned in the first place. Most "environmental review" lawsuits are not about the environment at all. The real environmental experts already had their say, or else the land wouldn't have been zoned. Most of these lawsuits seek a new review, often for bullshit reasons, and are filed by NIMBYs to bully the developers into giving up on developing the land by piling on years and millions of dollars of litigation. If that fails, they fall back on "quality of life" and noise complaints.

<comment><USER18> That's not how it works, especially in hot markets. Zoning is not absolute and the current process allows for all kinds of variances and exceptions.

The Pen Factory project is an excellent example. Local NIMBYs defeated a really neat project that even included low income housing. The original developer said "screw it" and sold the property to a developer that is now doing a by the books and within exact letter of zoning project that will result in a lot of office space and no mitigations for extra traffic or anything. No reviews will stop it.

The environmental reviews cannot be used as an effective NIMBY weapon is the developer is using original zoning. Instead, most project I have seen in LA push boundaries for profitability, often resulting in legal fights with locals.

Source: [http://urbanize.la/post/construction-underway-santa- monicas-...](http://urbanize.la/post/construction-underway-santa-monicas-pen- factory)

<comment><USER2> In the San Francisco area, new environmental reviews can, and have been, used as an effective weapon against development.

The point of Jerry Brown's law was to make zoning absolute, and to bypass variances and exceptions which generally accomplish nothing except to allow NIMBYs to bring frivolous lawsuits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Impossible to read without subscribing. Incognito doesnt work. Clicking on google search link doesnt work.

<comment><USER20> Clicking the Google search link is working for me. Did you install some privacy proxy that may be screwing with referrer headers?

Or is there some new requirement they're checking?

<comment><USER21> The Google search link fails around 20% of the time for me, without any browser/plugin/config changes on my side. So it could be just that WSJ is randomizing things.

<comment><USER19> Yes. The exact same search that went to the paywall earlier now displays the full article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If they continue to be uncooperative, just show them this:

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

I'd suggest this will improve our (i.e. demand-side) negotiation chances.</comment>


Amazon Robotics - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazonrobotics.com <comment><USER2> They seem to have renamed Kiva Systems, which Amazon bought for $775M in 2012, to Amazon Robotics. Relevant article - [http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20150426-kiva-systems- to-...](http://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20150426-kiva-systems-to-be- renamed-amazon-robotics/)

For those who don't know, Kiva Systems builds robotics systems for warehouses.

<comment><USER3> An interesting interview with the founder of Kiva on NPR's "From Scratch" \- [http://www.npr.org/2014/01/09/261095138/mick-mountz- founder-...](http://www.npr.org/2014/01/09/261095138/mick-mountz-founder-of- kiva-systems)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's something distasteful about this site. Like using footage of all the pick-and-pack employees to sell you on helping to build the robots that will eliminate their jobs en masse.

<comment><USER5> I understand your perspective. However, to take two broader views

a) Assuming as a reader of hn you are somehow involved in software development. You're putting someone out of a job somewhere. Software & Robotics are automation of processes. Take your project for example [https://www.improvely.com/](https://www.improvely.com/) What took two marketing people to crunch numbers now takes one. Now look at your project from that persons perspective.

b) This is happening and while it will be painful for those not trained/aware. It might be a very good thing [https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_mcafee_are_droids_taking_ou...](https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_mcafee_are_droids_taking_our_jobs?language=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They sure have a lot of job openings.

<comment><USER7> Link for everyone: [https://www.amazonrobotics.com/#/careers#open](https://www.amazonrobotics.com/#/careers#open)</comment></comment>


Looking for a Ride to SXSW? Get on the Startup Bus - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/looking_for_a_ride_to_sxsw_get_on_the_startup_bus.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4d40b2edca4ab741%2C0 <comment><USER2> Elias Bizannes (organizer of the Startup Bus) is awesome and I'm sure it will be a lot of fun + productive.

Don't forget if you are going to fly instead a number of us are taking the "Nerd Bird" flights on SouthWest, which will be geek-leaning fun time.

[https://spreadsheets2.google.com/ccc?hl=en&key=t05WrwwlA...](https://spreadsheets2.google.com/ccc?hl=en&key=t05WrwwlAppoLBM-8SF8uLA&hl=en#gid=1)

<comment><USER3> Aww hell, and I already booked my flight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This things was a blast last year -- and produced not only amazing business/product stuff, but also an interesting 'alumni' that is even stronger today. Highly recommended!

</comment><comment><USER5> I have a few invites. Let me know if you need one.

<comment><USER6> I'd love one if you can spare it. Just hoping the plans for a Chicago bus actually come true!

<comment><AUTHOR> If you can get the Chicago tech community excited and supportive, that will help the case. We'll make the final decision based on where the most participants and sponsors come from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds fun. Wish I was going to SXSW!

<comment><USER5> I was on the bus last year and couldn't afford the SxSW admission. It was still one of the best things I've ever done and many things I did and learned in the last year were enabled more or less directly by the StartupBu</comment></comment>


Finding a meaningful wearable experience - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@JCrossNeumann/watch-wear-a0acedb6f6e7

<comment><USER2> If the current trend of very large phones continues, the "it's easier than getting your phone out your pocket" feature might actually be enough of a pull for an entire class of wearables.

I've recently got a Nexus 6, and I have a bit of a love/hate thing going with the size. It requires two hands for practical use and (although still fits comfortably in my pockets) does take noticeably more effort for quick glances than my previous iPhone 4. But when I have to use it for anything more meaningful I'm glad for the decent screen size.

A companion device may be a welcome addition here.

<comment><USER3> I would be surprised as I like may others stopped wearing a watch once I got used to having a phone in my pocket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Bit long winded considering the only advantage (I can see) that a watch gives over a phone is the length of time it takes to get a phone out of your pocket.</comment>


Is PRISM Precipitating A Bitcoin Sell-Off? - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/11/is-prism-precipitating-a-bitcoin-sell-off/

<comment><USER2> Wouldn't bitcoin go _up_?

<comment><USER3> Experiment is the arbiter of truth.

I'd guessed it would go up too, but if the reality of monitoring trumps cryptography, perhaps the currency has less value now to enough people to lower the price.

If you think it will go up, you can buy while they're cheap...</comment></comment>


Did your college educate students on popular languages or current events? - <AUTHOR> Last night, two fellow alumni and I sat down to talk with some of our professors from our university that we had graduated from two years ago. Unfortunately, I was not particularly savvy in my knowledge of the different communities surrounding various languages when I started my career, and went into the comparatively corporate .NET framework for my first job, and later second.  While there appears to be relatively little flexible work for mid level .NET programmers, there is an abundance for front-end and Rails.  Now I find myself in the unenviable position of trying to switch specialities while trying to find more flexible work, due to outside circumstances.  I was curious what, if any, education other developers received at school about the shape of the modern programming communities surrounding popular frameworks and languages?  Some ideas we came up with were a seminar as part of an engineering course, or write-ups of current events in the industry. <comment><USER2> I must say I don't think I agree with the prevailing premise that college or university should prepare you for a particular job or task. What college and university is for, in my opinion, is to turn you into a human being capable of critical thought, analysis, independent learning, interpersonal and communication skills and working with other people.

These are all building blocks you can later leverage to do anything you want with after you graduate.

Similarly, computer science degrees are not to learn any particular language/technology you can later turn around and make money off of. Computer science degrees educate you on the fundamentals of how computers function from the ground up and provide you with the CONCEPTUAL building blocks for how to build software or maybe even create your own programming languages.

Also, I would argue, you would be wasting your time and money going to college/university in order to learn programming. All you need is a book or the web. Not even one of these General Assembly type camps/places are necessary.

If you however want to be come a top notch software/hardware engineer, college/university is important.

</comment><comment><USER3> Having graduated in 2003, I can say I was not prepared for what was happening in the real world. We were taught C++, but not MFC and not GCC, either of which would have provided a grounding for a real world job.

I am a .NET programmer as well. I have considered switching over to other platforms and still do consider it, but in the meantime I have turned my .NET career, which was stagnant in 2010/2011, into something interesting by using new approaches, new architectures, and learning as much as possible about choosing the right tools for the job. By seeking out these choices, I have opened up other ways of working which allow me to work remotely and with a flexible schedule and with non-MS technologies such as Kafka, Cassandra, Redis, etc.

If you are having trouble finding a way into the OSS world, don't give up on .NET. Instead, double down on it by applying new and emerging patterns and techniques that you pick up from learning other languages.

</comment><comment><USER4> Most of my intro classes were in Java. Some classes were in Python, and others were free to choose depending on the project.

I think it helps a lot to be well versed in a c-family / type language (C, Java, C#...) and a a dynamic language like Ruby or Python.

While I was pursuing my undergrad, I had internships where I used Java, Python, VB, C#, Ruby, and JavaScript.

I don't think that a college should be responsible for teaching students the popular/hip languages. There are clubs and special topic courses for those that are interested.

My college had a mobile development club, a web dev club, artificial intelligence club, etc. Bleeding edge frameworks, languages, and other technologies were usually the point of discussion.

I do wish however that the CS curriculum included at least one course on functional and declarative programming.

</comment><comment> ju-st If I search for "Rails" jobs in my vicinity I get 6 results. If I search for ".NET" indeed finds 316 jobs. 376 jobs for javascript and 1044 for "Java". But I'm not sure about that flexible work you're searching. Even the largest companies here allow you the work from home (partially) or reduce your hours per week.

<comment><AUTHOR> In my case, I'm looking for fully remote part-time work. I've found comparatively numerous examples of this type of work for Rails and front-end, and very few for .net or Java. In reference to the original question though, how did you come to understand these programming communities? Was it through submission to open source projects, forums, or work?

<comment><USER4> Keep in mind that the skills required for the remote jobs differ largely due to culture. Most large corporations that use .NET or Java do not allow remote work. Smaller shops, which tend to use open source software are more relaxed when it comes to remote work.</comment></comment></comment>


Replacing Regular Expressions in an Xcode project - <AUTHOR> http://roadfiresoftware.com/2013/12/replacing-regular-expressions-in-an-xcode-project/

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure why it took me so long to find the Replace Regex feature in Xcode...but it's really powerful and useful.</comment>


Ask HN: Tool for handling a beta tester group? - <AUTHOR>

I have a small group of beta testers (50-100) that I currently communicate with by sending BCC messages. Can anyone recommend a better tool for this? I wouldn't mind beta testers being able to communicate with the list, instead of me just blasting announcements and releases out.<p>I thought about Google Groups, but you can't send attachments to a Google Group as far as I can tell. So, I would have to link the beta download from one of my servers - this wouldn't be that bad, but it would be another step for each email. <comment><USER2> I haven't tested it out personally, but Prefinery might fit the bill: <http://www.prefinery.com/>

I think their free plan accommodates 50 testers.

You could also set up a private forum which would allow you to post new versions and allow beta testers to leave and discuss feedback.

</comment><comment><USER3> I created my forums on wikidot <http://www.geetasks.com/forum/c-91340/discussions> and that's were Beta testers discuss stuff.

I also plan to use Mailchimp to send out announcement about the next Beta being released, because many Beta testers are not reading the forums all the time. I have negative experience with BCC - it seems that many spam filters just kill those messages.

I wish someone had created an integrated Beta management service and I would gladly pay for it. Something that allows people to sign up (with instructions on how to submit device ID for ad-hoc builds), unsubscribe, get notified by email or RSS or twitter or whatever, a forum where people could discuss things, list of new features, list of released features, list of planned features, that kind of thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> When I was running xp-dev.com's beta, I used a collection of hand rolled scripts and mailman <http://www.list.org/>.

Personally, that did sorta work for me. I had about 1000 beta users, and did not care too much about conversion ratios (downloads, CTR, new user signups, etc). I just wanted to get the word out when something changed.

But, had I wanted to be more scientific, something like Mailchimp should do the trick.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you're ever going to grow your beta testing ops, then CenterCode is definitely a good option: <http://www.centercode.com/> TiVo uses it for betas...actually, I'm not sure if I can tell you that under NDA :P

For smaller stuff, I'll also recommend Mailchimp for basic mailings. They're here in Atlanta and those guys rock. A killer product from a killer company.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have simply setup a closed forum using phpBB and it works pretty well in my case. I can see who logged in, who contributed and forums are something that people are pretty familiar with.

I also like the idea of building a real beta-test community for my products because I found out that there are some people who are really, really good at finding bugs and problems.

</comment><comment><USER7> Are you sure about the no-attachments thing?

[http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...](http://groups.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=56641)

You could also use the group's "Files" section to upload files for group users.

</comment><comment><USER8> What's wrong with setting up a mailing list?

</comment><comment><USER9> user voice seems to be a popular choice - <http://uservoice.com/>

<comment><USER3> One big problem with UserVoice is that it requires creating an account before a user can comment.

This is really, really dumb. A few large sites on the internet have problem of too many comments and too much spam, but most startups have a problem of too few comments and users barely being able to bring themselves to post anything, much less create an account. Solving your spam problem by shooing away your users is not a winning strategy in user engagement.

<comment><USER10> "UserVoice requires creating an account." Are you sure this isn't an admin setting?

<comment><USER3> Status:declined

[http://feedback.uservoice.com/pages/1-general/suggestions/28...](http://feedback.uservoice.com/pages/1-general/suggestions/28268-allow- anonymous-comments?ref=title)

<comment><USER10> "It seems strange that the system will allow anonymous voting, but not anonymous comments. Allowing the admin to enable anonymous commenting would be very helpful." Yep. Maybe uservoice should listen to its own users..

<comment><USER11> We're working on that. I just updated the status on it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


I chose Facebook over Uber on 1/18/2019, which grossed me $92k. - <AUTHOR> http://huntermonk.com/2019/11/06/one-decision-92k.html <comment><USER2> Imagine working for Facebook in 2019 without feeling bad about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think most people should understand by now, these massive option grants are basically playing roulette with a huge chunk of your remuneration package. It's meant to align your interests with the company but let's face it - no one starting at facebook today will have any meaningful impact on the share price as an individual. Instead it's a great way of companies making their employees take significant risk.

When I graduated I could have worked at 3 generally similar companies, the lowest salary offer was £27k, the highest was £35k, all had significant RSU packages (nothing like crazy US numbers). In the 5 years following my graduation, 1 company got bought by Intel providing a 50% pop for the share price, 1 company got bought by Softbank providing a 50% pop for the share price, 1 got eviscerated by Apple and practically destroyed the share price. There was no meaningful way of knowing which way any of those would go. As a graduate I had no real chance of impacting the shareprice of those events. Yet for some reason between 0-30% of my renumeration was determined by it!

</comment><comment><USER4> the story of how one person accepts the offer that pays more in equity, salary and bonus, and make more money than the other. such an economic genius

<comment><USER5> right. what was the moral lesson of this story? that I should flip coins for profit or that the FAANGs are prone to hiring millennials who don't share the same shame as my generation in discussing their financials so openly?

<comment><AUTHOR> No moral lesson here - I suppose my point is that you rarely get to have such a clear-cut comparison of what would've happened if you took the other path at the fork in the road.

I can see where it comes off as gloating, though. Do you think I should modify this to focus more on the fork aspect? (genuine question)

<comment><USER5> it's hard to make a story about you making money compelling unless you have something to share that can help others get there too. there's not too much of that here (and i'm not sure there could be in this case)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good point - I added a small conclusion which possibly helps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This feels like a weird, socially awkward humblebrag

<comment><USER7> The reality was it wasn't even a coin flip. They based things on pie in the sky estimates - treating them as factual evidence. If you're going to believe a recruiter on futures of stock options (not even RSUs) you're mad. Beyond that Facebook, at the time of consideration, was still a massive behemoth financially compared to Uber who had yet to publicly show an earnings report. I wrote this up right before Uber went public, but it was clear this stock was going to sink vs swim. They have nothing but debt, very little R&D that has long term viability any of the FAANGs couldn't just buy up as collateral, and have been throwing darts at how to monetize into the black since becoming commonplace. Had Uber had a few shreds of conservative approach to what they're doing I'd be far more behind them. But I was out at one of their research facilities on the east coast a couple of years ago and I couldn't believe the sheer amount of unknown and money (they didn't have) being dumped into autonomous at the time. Fast forward _years_ and they still have no operational product. They're not Apple or Google with wads of cash to burn. The goal with going IPO was to accelerate the end product that makes them profitable, which they have yet to deliver.

Personally I don't think there was any choice that would have made sense other than Facebook to net you the most guaranteed cash. Cambridge was never going to sink FB, at least not in any timeframe that would have impacted your vesting schedule. You got in at the perfect time. Timing is everything, and the takeaway is make decisions on the known, not a recruiter floating numbers they don't remotely understand and are incented to make sound amazing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice, thanks for sharing. It wasn't clear to me whether you cashed in your options. Is there still the chance you could lose that gain if the stock went down?

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem! I appreciate your support.

I've sold my stock as soon as it's vested. I'm already overexposed to Facebook.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> He actually didn't gross $92k. That's not only unrealized stock options, it also assumes he'd stay in Facebook for next 3 years. He actually grossed 1/4th of that, given he stays in Facebook till end of first year.

<comment><AUTHOR> Facebook vests quarterly - there actually isn't a one year cliff. In the last picture, salary + signing bonus + (4 * Quarterly RSU) + expected year end bonus gives you the total pay for the first year.

<comment><USER9> I stand corrected. Thanks for explaining.

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how much he spends on housing.

<comment><AUTHOR> From February until October 5th, I lived at [NEMA]([https://www.rentnema.com/](https://www.rentnema.com/)) downtown in SF. I was in a 450 sqft. apartment, and it was $3270/month. I absolutely hated it. NEMA was fine, but SF is not for me.

On October 5th, I just moved down to Menlo Park next to FB. I'm in a 3BR 1BA which is $1850/month. It's much better here.

<comment><USER10> Still not great. It hardly makes sense to pull $300k/yr just to pay it all out to a landlord.

<comment><USER11> At $300k/year, your weekly paycheck is roughly $3300 after withholdings...I'd hardly say that all your cash is going to your landlord.

<comment><USER7> They're not getting paid $300k a year. They're getting paid $160k a year and the delta is made up in RSU. I'm not sure how FB transacts on stocks for you but depending how they deal with the taxes involved OP could be off by a large factor in the net calculation. Also not sure how FB vests stock, but if it's traditional OP still hasn't vested anything (1 year cliff).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not traditional actually. We vest quarterly, and I've sold my stock as soon as I've received it (two vest days so far). My third vesting is November 15th.

The last picture gives you my estimated total comp for the year, $343k. It will be something close to that unless $FB has a major change between now and next vesting date in February 2020.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Are those equity numbers annualized or for the entire 4 year vesting period ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are for four years - I'll edit the text to explain that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> tl;dr I lucked into cash while doing the bidding of one of the US's top ten evil oligarchs.

</comment><comment><USER14> What is your savings rate?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just checked Wealthfront and it says my rate is 44%. I'm working on increasing it to ~60%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Obscene.</comment>