Ask HN: Successful Outsourcing for MicroISV's - <AUTHOR>

I really enjoyed Rob Walling's book "Start Small, Stay Small", and of course everyone here knows patio11.
I'm trying to follow their path with a project of my own, LiberWriter: http://www.liberwriter.com
So far, so good, I'm having a lot of fun with it, it's generating paying customers who are very happy to have someone to take care of a source of great frustration, and I have a lot of room for improvement on many fronts, including improving and automating the service itself, marketing it, etc...  So far so good!
One thing, so far, that's been difficult to follow is the book's suggestions about outsourcing stuff.  I've found a few people, and... they do get things done, but getting them to communicate is difficult, and overall I'm a bit worried that this will be the weak link in making the project scale.  I'm hiring from oDesk, people from here and there, including a few in the Philippines as per the books' recommendation.  I'm not 'scraping the bottom of the barrel' either; I tend to pick people who cost a bit more and have some html/ebook skills already.
I want at all costs to avoid simply creating myself a new job where I must be present to make things work - that's the point of creating a real business rather than just doing client work.  I don't mind 'being the business' initially, but I won't consider the project a complete success unless I get it to run mostly on its own.
I'm looking for advice on how to best accomplish some outsourcing without spending inordinate amounts of money.  In my case, the people involved will probably do both tech support and work on people's books, so they have some HTML/CSS skills.
I'm also curious about what you guys would consider normal.  I'm not paying these people full time, so I know they have other priorities, but some of them seem to do things that I am not very happy with: I hit the 'hire' button for one guy, and sent him a welcome email and heard nothing back, for instance. <comment><USER2> The short answer? You find one reliable person who you like working with, then you delegate increasing portions of the work to them.

For example, I had a pretty good working relationship with my ex-freelancer for BCC bingo card content, but let's pretend that I was serious about never spending my time on that again. What I would do is a) grab all the docs I had written about the process, b) spit them into a Google doc document with headings like How To Find A New Freelancer, How To Make a CMS Account For A Freelancer, How To Pay Freelancers, Content Guidelines, etc and c) hand that off to the young lady in the Philippines who does utility VA stuff for me. Then, I'd have her hire a new freelancer and do one week of work with them, with instructions to email me at each step for review. I'd give feedback and update the docs where required. After she was capable of doing it without needing my supervision, I'd tell her "Great, it's yours now. Make it work and send me an email once every two weeks with what you did, what you're doing next, and anything you need from me. You have my email any time if there is a problem that you need an answer to. If resolving the problem would cost less than $100, pay money to solve it and just tack it onto the next regularly scheduled email. I trust your judgement."

n.b. That $100 idea is flagrantly stolen from Tim Ferris.

As for normal: if I work with three people, I expect one or two to be Too Flakey To Use Successfully. That's just a cost of doing business. This suggests a) getting out of the talent identification business, since either I suck or it is impossible to do well and b) hanging on to good people for dear life. I sent my BCC freelancer a Christmas bonus every year and thank you notes, and got ~3 years of mutually rewarding work out of her.

Regarding customer support: I do customer support myself. _All_ of my CEO friends are trying to get me to stop, principally because they are all tired of hearing "Ooh ooh ooh guess what a customer just asked me about how I broke her blue Googles?"

If I were emotionally ready to stop, the first step would be writing a Google doc with instructions and four buckets of customer support inquiries, which represent ~80% of the emails I write. Each bucket would have a template email to go with it.

The instructions would be "Bucket the email and, if it is clearly in a bucket, reply with the template and $INSTRUCTION_FOR_MAIL_FILING. If not, leave for me to deal with by $INSTRUCTION_FOR_MAIL_FILING. If you're less than 90% sure, leave it for me."

Then we'd iterate on that. If they could handle bucketing, I'd move them up one step: here's my core principles for CS. I always want to make them happy, a refund is always an option, we never do custom dev under any circumstances. Here's four emails from customers which were not bucketed last month. Write responses to them like you think I would have written responses, then send those responses to me.

Then I'd say "OK, I like the content here, but I always start emails out with thanking the customer for emailing me. This email here said 'If you hadn't clicked' -- that phrasing is not acceptable, because it implies customer fault, and the customer is never at fault for a failure of our software to anticipate their needs. Otherwise, OK." Then I'd start them on live emails and review their progress. After that: "Congrats, you're now level 1 support. $INSTRUCTIONS_TO_FORWARD if you're totally bewildered by an email. Good luck."

As you go forward, _document your processes_. I cannot stress this enough. That way, when your current support gets married, stops responding to emails, or informs you that she has taken a job at a multinational and will no longer be freelancing, you can quickly get the new person up to speed. (Or, even better, your trusted lieutenant can quickly get the new person up to speed.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thank you very much for the excellent response. It makes me feel better on two levels, first that a lot of the ideas of how to make it work are similar to what I had in mind and have started to document, although you've gone into much more detail.

Second, I find it very interesting that you're still handling support, and something of a relief - it means I've got a lot of runway before I have to think seriously of giving that up. I'll keep working on it with the idea that if I start now, hopefully I'll be more or less prepared when I really do need to pass it on.

<comment><USER2> A _major_ portion of the reason why I can still handle support is that I made significant tech & process investments to minimize it. I only have to write a handful (5 ~ 7) emails a week for BCC most weeks. (And if I was more aggressive about templated responses -- like ironically I used to be -- that would be 2 emails a week.)

I get the feeling that some part of your business is a semi-manual process. Semi-manual processes aren't wrong, per se, but there are many more opportunities for things to go wrong manually than there are for them to go wrong with automated systems. As you find where the pain points are, automate where required.

For example, you might find yourself getting a lot of emails asking "What is the status of my order?" That's a great opportunity to make a) an automatically updated Order Status Page, heavily promoted in your "Thanks for your money" email and interface and b) an automated "Jane Smith's order is taking longer than we would like" email (which _does not have to go to you_ \-- you can put systems and processes for failure recovery in the event of first freelancer flakeout) and c) an automated "Jane Smith's order is now really freaking late and the CEO owes her an apology" email, which should probably go to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I get the feeling that some part of your business is a semi-manual process. > Semi-manual processes aren't wrong, per se, but there are many more > opportunities for things to go wrong manually than there are for them to go > wrong with automated systems. As you find where the pain points are, > automate where required.

There are some manual bits to it, yes - I don't think it's something that will ever scale up _hugely_ , but I think I can charge more for it, and automate it more and more, so I'm fairly happy.

I am documenting everything as much as I can, and then looking over it later and adding more detail, but the thing that spurred this posting was simply that all the documentation in the world won't help if you've got people who don't reply in some sort of defined time-frame. I'm not expecting immediate, but within some sort of bounds. Not having much experience with this, I just don't really know if that's all you're going to get with someone a long ways away who doesn't earn a ton of money. If there are people out there who are pretty dependable, I suppose that means I need to be a bit more brutal in trying people out and then discarding them, which isn't much fun.

<comment><USER3> >I suppose that means I need to be a bit more brutal in trying people out and then discarding them, which isn't much fun.

Remember, you don't owe a freelancer anything except what you've promised them. Pay them fairly (and quickly) for the work they've done, but don't continue to give them more work if you're not happy with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a timeous post via Bob Walsh: [http://47hats.com/2011/07/outsourcing-101-for-startup- founde...](http://47hats.com/2011/07/outsourcing-101-for-startup-founders/)

It does a good job of breaking out approaches for different skills, considering timezones etc.

One idea: "Hire one or two people from Philippines for $3/h to help you hire someone. Ask them to post your job on the different websites I cited above and to filter the good from the bad based on the criteria you give them.

I found my own Ruby on Rails developer this way and we have been working together two months and I can't be happier. It costed me $20 to get two people look for a developer for me."

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a pretty good article, and has some of what "Start Small, Stay Small" says. I guess what's tripping me up is that for something like customer support, you want to put on a really good face, not have some guy answering with poor English 36 hours later. I'm starting to wonder how that might work economically. I began trying to find people right away, figuring (correctly) that I'd want to start working on this part of the business from the get-go, because for me it's one of the most difficult parts to figure out. So far, I'm not terribly impressed, and am wondering if I just have expectations that are too high, or what.

<comment><USER4> I know what you mean. I tried outsourcing some support when my app first went live. I couldn't do it because the requests I was getting just needed me to support it, partly because many questions were (and still are) often things I need to think about to answer well.

I guess the solution there is to, over time: dumb down the support required, transfer the remaining knowledge required to the support person (policy and feature documents), accept that some things just have to be answered be us.

Shout if you find a solution to that :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since you are not looking for a developer you can expand how you look at this.

Do you live near any universities? I would suggest what you need is a grad student that has a few extra hours a week. Small commitment on both your parts, low enough cost, and easier communications for you and your clients.

You may also be able to find a stay at home parent.

In both these cases the person may not be looking for your opportunity. You will need to be creative. Go to campus and find out how to get in touch with students. Look for local parent groups. Think outside the box.

<comment><USER3> I think this is an excellent suggestion. There are probably lots of moms who are very capable of communicating in an intelligent manner and would like to work ~10-15 hours a week from home, but don't know where to find legitimate work like that (as opposed to "WORK FROM HOME AND MAKE $$$$$!!!!!").

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a portion of Episode 136 of TechZing [1] that addresses some of these issues as Justin (one of the hosts) is also trying to follow Rob's outsourcing advice for his SaaS product. Rob Walling himself also left some advice in the comments.

[1] [http://techzinglive.com/page/772/136-tz-discussion- celebrige...](http://techzinglive.com/page/772/136-tz-discussion-celebrigeek)

</comment><comment><USER7> Well, it's definitely an iterative process. Over time, you'll converge on a "management style" that works for you and for your contractors.

Here is a good starting point, though -- Derek Sivers has a really good blog post that outlines a concrete process for hiring on oDesk: <http://sivers.org/how2hire>

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good article, and has some useful stuff.

Let me add a bit more:

I've done my best to document how things should be done, step by step, and continue working on that. I don't expect these guys to just go do various things and get it right without some detailed direction.

The parts about programming aren't as relevant to me, as I handle that side of things. More than technical skills, I need people who are going to be good at getting back to my customers in a 'reasonable' period of time and not leave a bad impression on them. That, and people with some basic HTML/CSS skills to work on customers' books. That much, people do have... I guess I'm looking to figure out what's normal in terms of communication skills and turnaround time, and ... how other people deal with the huge gap between themselves, who are quite dedicated, get stuff done quickly, and have every incentive to get things just right, and 'hired guns'. There's going to be some of that gap in a normal startup where you hire people to work alongside you, but it's even bigger if you're outsourcing, and can't provide incentives like stock options, and don't even see the people in question.

In other words: as long as it's just me answering tech support requests, I'm generally very quick to turn them around, provide quick, helpful answers, and seem to be getting very positive reactions from people. I'm scared of things taking a turn for the worse when other people start answering support requests.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One suggestion I received is to simply look for people in the US, and pay them a bit more, which could work out too. Anyone gone that route, and how did you do it? People willing to work for lower wages in the US are not exactly lining up to respond to oDesk announcements, it would seem. Craigslist? Anyone else gone that route?

</comment><comment><USER8> Regarding breaking the communication barrier - if you hired someone from another side of the Earth and he is doing really a great job and you are fully satisfied with quality and price - visit him or her, air tickets are quite cheap and this will be great experience both for you and for your employee

<comment><AUTHOR> I just started LW this year, so I'm off to the left of "this" graph: <http://www.bingocardcreator.com/stats/sales-by-month>

That's not really a feasible suggestion at this point in time.

My concern is that I won't make it further right without first finding the right people.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Your Opinion on the Future of Mobile Apps? - <AUTHOR> Some context: I've been doing iOS app development for over nine years now, both doing client work and selling my own apps (with some moderate success). Earlier this year I've started working on a desktop app targeting roughly the same audience as Invision and the myriad other mobile app prototyping tools. Things are slowly progressing, and though I firmly believe in the usefulness of the tool I have in mind (provided I can pull it off successfully), I'm starting to have second thoughts about the future of the mobile app space in general.
My biggest points of concern:
- People have mostly stopped downloading apps from the App Store (games non-withstanding). Discoverability issues, inconvenience of a download, and some app fatigue are among the contributing factors, in my opinion.
- While every business needs a website, far fewer businesses need an app, since it's much harder to make people [want to] install an app compared to visiting a website.
On the other hand, progressive apps look very promising in this regard, and I sincerely hope they take off on both Android and eventually iOS, with as much native capabilities available as possible. Frankly speaking, we need to get rid of the App Store as middleman, since it's a huge bottleneck.
Also, I don't know much about the state of enterprise-only apps - I presume they are faring better then consumer apps, though not sure to what extent.
Am I being too gloomy, and prospects are actually great for mobile in the next 5 years or so, or is it a dead-end in the mid-to-long term?
I would greatly appreciate your opinions and insights on the topic.
(edits: fixed a typo; added a small clarification) <comment><USER2> i think the future is "messenger style" or chatbot apps as these avoid most of the problems of app development because the "app" is a thin shim and almost everything that matters runs on the server so you can update the product all the time without updating the "app".</comment>


Hawaii Suspends Visitors for 30 Days - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/CryptopherJones/status/1240103833671364608 <comment><AUTHOR> The Governor has called for a ban on tourists for 30 days.</comment>


What language would Google Glass apps be made in? - <AUTHOR>

I am currently introducing myself to programming and would love to build apps for a piece of hardware like that. Thanks <comment><USER2> My guess would be Java, since that's what Android apps are built from. They just had a developer event for Google Glass, but there are NDA's, so you won't get any info from anyone who attended.

</comment><comment><USER3> > What language would Google Glass apps be made in?

In principle, you could write in any language, but you need to realize that the Google Glass system has multiple aspects -- the local code, and the code that provides content from a distant server. The latter aspect has more flexibility as to language.

> I am currently introducing myself to programming and would love to build > apps for a piece of hardware like that.

Given that, it might be better to focus on grasping the basic of programming before planning any specific application of that skill in the future.</comment>


Who Was the Buddha? - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/was-the-buddha-an-awakened-prince-or-a-humble-itinerant <comment><USER2> He may not have been a literal historical prince, but to make the distinction may be to miss the point a bit.

For example if you compare the Mesopotamian creation myth, the Enuma Elish to the book of genesis you will find many correspondences at the formal level.

What I mean by that is that the overall structure of the Enuma Elish is preserved in Genesis, but with some changes. In the Mesopotamian myth, there were seven generations of gods, but in Genesis this was transmuted into seven days for one god.

You could say that Genesis is a parody of the Enuma Elish. I don't believe for an instant that the people who wrote genesis believed in the seven days and what was created on each day, it's probably allegorical.

The most important point being made in genesis is to be found not in the sequence of events, but in the differences against the backdrop of the Mesopotamian myth, the main one being that there is only one god.

Likewise, the embellished life story of the Buddha, the bit with the white elephant, and the birth in a palace, and the journey on the cart through the town with the charioteer 'Channa' all borrow elements from well known Indian motifs. The most important parts of the story are probably to be found in the 'diffs' and are not to be taken literally.

They probably weren't even taken literally at the time.

In summary, I think we are reading too much into ancient texts that were probably written in the allegorical mode.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. And the existence of Buddha himself might well be very allegorical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The religious events in India at the time of Buddha were much more complex and nuanced than most of those who concentrate on Buddha alone are aware, for example, there was also Charvaka school, apparently even less willing to accept any direct influence of gods on humans:

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

"Charvaka holds direct perception, empiricism, and conditional inference as proper sources of knowledge, embraces philosophical skepticism and rejects ritualism, and supernaturalism."

Also Jainism

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

even today with "four to five million followers worldwide."

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

"Mahavira and Gautama Buddha are generally accepted as contemporaries (circa 5th century BCE)."

"Beyond the times of the Mahāvīra and the Buddha, the two ascetic sramana (seeker) religions competed for followers as well as the merchant trade networks that sustained them.[128][414] Their mutual interaction, along with those of Hindu traditions, have been significant."

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

"Jainism and Buddhism share many features, terminology and ethical principles, but emphasize them differently.[2] Both are śramaṇa ascetic traditions that believe it is possible to attain liberation from the cycle of rebirths and deaths (samsara) through spiritual and ethical disciplines.[3] They differ in some core doctrines such as those on asceticism, Middle Way versus Anekantavada, and self versus no-self (jiva, atta, anatta)."

</comment><comment><USER5> For a similar demythologising take on the Buddha read 'A Bull of a Man' by John Powers, professor of Asian Studies and Buddhism in Australia.

"The androgynous, asexual Buddha of contemporary popular imagination stands in stark contrast to the muscular, virile, and sensual figure presented in Indian Buddhist texts. In early Buddhist literature and art, the Buddha's perfect physique and sexual prowess are important components of his legend as the world s ultimate man. He is both the scholarly, religiously inclined brahman and the warrior ruler who excels in martial arts, athletic pursuits, and sexual exploits. The Buddha effortlessly performs these dual roles, combining his society's norms for ideal manhood and creating a powerful image taken up by later followers in promoting their tradition in a hotly contested religious marketplace.

In this groundbreaking study of previously unexplored aspects of the early Buddhist tradition, John Powers skillfully adapts methodological approaches from European and North American historiography to the study of early Buddhist literature, art, and iconography, highlighting aspects of the tradition that have been surprisingly invisible in earlier scholarship. The book focuses on the figure of the Buddha and his monastic followers to show how they were constructed as paragons of masculinity, whose powerful bodies and compelling sexuality attracted women, elicited admiration from men, and convinced skeptics of their spiritual attainments."

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003MKB5ZE/ref=dbs_a_def_r...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003MKB5ZE/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i1)

</comment><comment><USER6> A side nitpick:

I find it surprising the author mentions "pre-imperial India" to mark the era when Buddha was alive. There is a couple thousand years of rich history between the life of Buddha and "pre-imperial India". I would really like the Western authors to stop using Imperialism as a bookmark, as if India had nothing else significant before.

<comment><USER7> Why are you assuming that they are referring to the British Empire? They could be referring to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurya_Empire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurya_Empire), which covered most of India not long after Buddha is said to have lived.

<comment><USER6> Oh the Maurya dynasty is exactly one part of the rich history I mentioned, that is non Imperial.

Edit: Imperialism means to extend over "foreign nations". Mauryan empire is not foreign, it is as Indian as it can get.

<comment><USER8> Imperialism does but not the adjective 'imperial' which simply implies relation to an empire. Imperial Japan has nothing to do with the British and yet it is 'imperial'.

<comment><USER6> Yes you are right about the phrase "Imperial Japan" not having any relation to the British. But "Imperial India" does.

Any reader searching this phrase online or looking up any common reference will find the British relation. Unfortunate, but that is how it is. As an Indian, I have always known that. That is why the phrase jumped at me.

Is it too much to expect an author writing such a detailed article from this region to know that?

<comment><USER8> I understand what you are saying but you've asserted as truth that the author said what you said and in a pretty accusatory tone. If you use 'Imperial India' as standalone phrase it does refer to the British rule because it is the most recent and that's what most assume you mean. But when talking about Buddha it is quite a leap to think the author would use such a pointless timeframe so the context alone is enough.

Even a paragraph later the emperor Asoka is mentioned explicitly

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds of what Gregory Schopen, professor of Buddhist Studies at UCLA and an eminent scholar of early Buddhist history once told me - that the alleged Kapilvastu area during 5th-6th century BC was most possibly a malarial swamp. And it would be hard to imagine it even being a habitable area in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm technically a Buddhist as with 90% of other Japanese people, but don't know anything about Buddhism. ("Technically" means that you're going to have a Buddhist-style burial which requires a registration by a Buddhist temple in Japan.) So let me just share a fun fact: it is widely believed that there are many Buddha relics (bones) that were originally brought from China/India and people built temples that store them, many of which still exist today throughout Japan. Actually, Kinkaku-ji (Golden Temple), one of the most famous tourist sites in Kyoto, was built for that purpose. It is believed that people stored His bone at the basis of every temple, but no one has ever confirmed it. Religion is weird.

<comment><USER3> Aren't japanese people shintoists rather than buddhists?

<comment><USER11> Buddhism was extremely popular and influential in Japan until roughly the time of the Samurai, though many factors are involved with this change. It is interesting that in Buddhist dominated Japan use of cannabis was common, even ubiquitous. This changed completely with the rise of the Samurai, leading to the strongly anti cannabis and alcohol tolerant society in Japan now.

<comment><USER12> I was under the impression that Japan's anti-cannabis culture came about as a result of American occupation and postwar industrialization (the latter, primarily, to favor synthetic rope and fabric manufacturing over Japan's native hemp industries.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The death of the Buddha's mother, Māyā, when giving birth to him serves no purpose as myth, and can therefore be accepted as fact"

The death of a mother in childbirth is an existence fraught with meaning and loss from the start of life for the child. How can this be so summarily dismissed as not contributing to the myth?

<comment><USER14> I guess it doesn't appear in the usual stories. I was also surprised he got married and had a kid about the time he wandered off to be spiritual, it seems which doesn't often seem to be mentioned.

<comment><USER15> I heard this story a few weeks ago and it made me realize a thing that I dislike in Zen Buddhism, at least the perception of Zen Buddhism I have. Isn't this way (and surely other ways) of Buddhism not also some "tainted" way of life. For me it looks very Nihilistic. Shouldn't Buddha be a good role-model - so how can he have left wife and kid? In Buddhism or at least Zen Buddhism I believe there is great emphasis on the concept of non-attachment, you should not cling on to things. You must let go of everything to find your Buddha nature. So it makes sense, that Buddha has left his family to sit under the tree. But for me this is such a denial of the human nature and thus it feels unnatural, unwise and just like other religions and sects with their doctrines and dogma. I'm a big "fan" of Robert Sapolsky and his courses of Human Biological Behavioral Evolution. Buddhism, especially Zen, gets often seen as a God-less, very logical, very humanistic religion. But there are elements, like in any cult. Dogma which would lead to the human race going extinct if everybody would follow it. I don't believe in Gods but I must admit but I am rather attracted to the (crazy :-) ) Mythology of Asatru, because it feels much more natural and in symbiosis with the human nature to me.

<comment><USER2> > So it makes sense, that Buddha has left his family to sit under the tree. > But for me this is such a denial of the human nature and thus it feels > unnatural, unwise and just like other religions and sects with their > doctrines and dogma.

The separation was a during his spiritual search. After he attained what he was looking for he reunited with his son.

Sometimes we have to go away to figure things out. After he reached his goal, the Buddha spent the next fifty years surrounded by people whom he taught and counseled.

Let me flip it for you. What about Alexander the great, or other historical figures? Shouldn't he have stayed home with his family instead of starting a senseless war and then dying in India?

How come this double standard is always trotted out against the Buddha, when all these other conquering, massacring guys get away with it?

<comment><USER14> Well the Buddha is usually brought up as a nice guy rather than the conquering, massacring type. Hence the different standards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > the modern mindfulness movement, inherited from fairly recent Burmese > innovations

I had not heard that. I had understood it to have something to do with interest in Zen, which had a revival in the West starting in the mid 1900's. But I admit I don't really know anything about it. Does someone have a reference?

<comment><USER17> Zen and Vipassana are the two major Buddhist practices which had revivals in the 20th century and gained popularity in the west.

Vipassana was originally popularized amongst westerners by S. N. Goenka[1] who was a Hindi expat in Burma, where he learned the practice. Many of his western students went on to be prominent teachers[2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._N._Goenka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._N._Goenka) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Students_of_S._N._Goe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Students_of_S._N._Goenka)

<comment><USER18> > S. N. Goenka[1] who was a Hindi expat in Burma

He was born in Mandalay, Burma and grew up there. I wouldn't call him an Indian expat in Burma, more like Burmese-Indian.

<comment><USER17> Good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if he would have scorned all this idolatry and worship. I think he would have.

<comment><USER20> I think he would have seen much contemporary Buddhist observance as entirely disconnected from his teachings. That doesn't necessarily mean he would have scorned it. There is one sutta in which a follower of a rival teacher was convinced by his teachings and wanted to follow him, and the Buddha advised him to continue respecting his former master. There are also important suttas in which he stressed that his own teachings are not "true" in an absolute sense, and religious teachings should be valued according to the extent to which they are helpful. I don't know the historical status of those suttas, but historically it doesn't seem common for first-gen carriers of the faith to retroactively exaggerate the uncertainty and doctrinal pragmatism of the founder of their religion. Many modern Buddhist teachers (notably the Dalai Lama) express great respect for the ability of other religions, including Islam and Christianity, to inspire and nurture spiritual progress in their followers. So he might look at modern Buddhists reciting nembutsu or leaving offerings at Buddha statues and say, I can't see any connection between these practices and what I tried to teach, but they seem to be helping people a little bit.

His attitude might also depend on how seriously he took rebirth, which was widely believed in his time and place and takes a central place in some of his teachings. It's a point of great controversy among contemporary Buddhists: was rebirth a part of the teachings because it was coincidentally an accepted view in the time and place where Gautama taught? Is it an inseparable part of Buddhism? Both, neither? Can you reject rebirth and still preserve the essence of Buddhism? If Gautama showed up in the present day and said, "Oh, practically nobody believes in rebirth anymore? No matter, I can teach everything I know to people who don't believe it," that would rock the world of Buddhism. But vice-versa probably wouldn't make much of a difference, and neither is going to happen anyway so we'll have to live with the controversy regardless.

<comment><USER21> " It's a point of great controversy among contemporary Buddhists:"

among contemporary _western_ Buddhists, maybe, who have a hard time wrapping their heads around the concept, (which is understandable, since Christianity - at least the mainstream versions - which was the dominant European religion for centuries has no corresponding concept).

In Buddhism as practised in Asia (Thailand, Burma,Srilanka, India, Nepal, China, Japan etc) it is not controversial at all, and is quite mainstream, with next to no "controversy" around it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Other aspects of the myth must be stripped away. The Buddha's father > Suddhodana was probably not a king. In an early story, the Buddha remembers > attaining a meditative state as a child, while sitting under a tree as his > father worked nearby. Are we to imagine that the King of the Sakyas had to > work his own fields?

Interesting. I grew up in a Theravada Buddhist family in SE Asia. What I read from the texts available to me was that the father of Buddha was at a ceremony that celebrates the start of the season of growing rice, so as a king, he joined in.

</comment><comment><USER23> This discussion has been going on for thousands of years. Considering the difficulties, and the shortness of life, one has to wonder how many of the discussers actually had the time to find liberation.

</comment><comment><USER24> > The death of the Buddha's mother, Māyā, when giving birth to him serves no > purpose as myth, and can therefore be accepted as fact

That seems dubious. One potential purpose is convenience--one less person in the picture. Another is a deliberate excise of a female character, reflecting either a fear or simple apathy toward the feminine. The Cult of the Virgin Mary in Christianity is an example of what can happen if you leave the door open for a potentially powerful feminine character.

<comment><USER25> The Buddha's step-mother actually played a central role in the establishment of Buddhism. She drove the establishment of the order of nuns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is it certain that he ever existed? Or is it like Jesus?

<comment><USER26> If you read the linked article, I think you'll find that the answer that the Buddha would have suggested for your question is silence ;-)

However, I am not well learned in the ways of Buddhism, so I shall attempt to answer your question with words. What do you mean by your question?

Do you mean: Was there a person exactly as these stories describe that did exactly what the stories describe and said exactly what the stories describe? There is no doubt at all to this answer: no, there was not. Despite my lack of education in Buddhism, I feel pretty confident that the subset of Buddhist practitioners who believe in such a thing approaches zero (I'm sure there are some, but not significant). Buddhism is a religion without dogma after all. Why else would a respected scholar on Buddhism write an article pretty much saying that the stories about Buddha are likely to be incorrect in part or in whole?

Or is your question: Was there a person who was the originator of the Buddhist religion? I think it is highly likely that the answer is "yes". I mean, it's possible that there was a group who started the religion, but it seems improbable to me. Look at any modern religion/cult. How many are started by a single person (all of them that I know about) and how many are started by a group of people (I assume that there are some, but I don't know of them)?

Or is your question: Are _any_ of the stories about the person who started the Buddhist religion true? Again, I think this is a pretty easy answer: almost certainly yes. I mean, what the heck are they saying about him? He was born. He struggled until he found enlightenment. Then he started a religion. I mean the religion exists today. That's pretty good evidence that the original leader did some stuff.

Or are you asking: Is it true that the Buddha _really_ was enlightened in the way he claimed? I can answer that one easily too: I don't know. ;-) And the really cool thing that I like about Buddhism is that I don't think it really matters all that much. You can learn about Buddhism, use the bits that are helpful to you and chuck away all the rest. Other Buddhists will pretty much think you are doing a good job -- or at least that's been my experience.

HN posting rules advise me to view your question charitably and to assume good faith. In that spirit, I hope that even if you never intended to ask any of the above questions, you can pick one or more of them and get answers that will help you. If the question was rhetorical and simply meant to belittle others who think differently than you do, then I apologise for wasting your time.

<comment><USER3> I love your answer, but I am afraid most buddhists believe that there was a historical buddha.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Recently I read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse quite an interesting book. In the book he tried to convey Knowledge is transferable, wisdom is not. Wisdom can only be gained from experience. The existence of buddha is debateable but literature has some good and relatable lessons we can learn.

<comment><USER28> I found the book to have a very Western perspective of things. I am from India and could not relate very well to it considering it has good reviews. The book also has very dark undertones to it. It has this very "Return of the prodigal son" feel to it.

<comment><USER29> I studied that book for my literature course in high school. That book is a joke. It tried to imitate the story of the buddha but twisted it to fit a western narrative. Author did himself a great disservice writing it. Would have been better off if he tried to just create something original instead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The article is correct in that Buddha being a prince is a myth. The Pali canon (Tripitaka) does not assert he lived in a palace, depending on the translation used.

It states he was born in _bhavana_ (Sn. 685) which has in the past been translated as palace but it simply means a place. When Buddha talks about his fathers abode he just refers to a house or mansion or family complex, using the word _nivasana_ (A.I 145) which did not refer specifically to a palace or royal residence (vimana or mandira). _nivasana_ was not used to refer to royal palaces until centuries after it was presumably written in the Tripitaka. Buddha also does not refer to his father as a king, but when asked he just said his dad was from Sakya clan (Sn 322,323,324).

<comment><USER31> _The article is correct in that Buddha being a prince is a myth._

The use of the word myth in connection with religion always fascinates me. The entire concept of religion generally depends on myths. recursive use of myth in myth.

Generally I have to read these sentences as _in my opinion_ because the 'factual' quality of statements regarding the ur-myths of religion is usually not quantifiable, its all contextually defined by interpretation, semantics, ontology, eschatology, history, culture...

<comment><USER30> When I say myth, I mean in the sense that it's not actually supported by the Tripitaka, which is the first complete written account of Buddha's teachings by a lineage of his original monastic order (mostly confirmed by historical evidence where it exists) to survive as written to the present day, and considered canonical Buddhist teaching.

It is most definitely quantifiable whether something is or is not written in the Tripitaka. That is why it remains important and historically significant.

<comment><USER32> One also has to bear in mind that the Tripitakha was compiled several centuries after the Buddha is said to have lived and has several divergent versions according to the ideological predilections of its editors. Also Pali was probably not the native language of the Buddha. The vernacular of the area where he lived and taught was call Magadhi. (The Jain Agamas are transmitted in a related language called Ardhamagadhi "half Magadhi") Pali was prevalent in Avanti in West India (the geographical base of Sthaviravadins) not Magadha. The Sarvastivadins used Sanskrit, and Mahasanghikas used yet another language for their version. All of them claimed to have "The Original Teachings of the Buddha."

So I think attempts to find "fundamental" Buddhism are ultimately futile.

<comment><USER33> I believe that some scholars actually believe that Pali is an artificial language, a mixture between different dialects that was intelligible to people from different regions.

There is no question that there are some later additions. There are even some contradictions. But by comparing different passages and comparing with the Chinese Agamas, we can get a pretty good idea of what the Buddha actually thought.

<comment><USER32> Yes I have read that Pali could have been a trade language.

Interestingly this method of textual comparison has also proven useful in tracing the history of the "Hindu" Samkhya school; one of whose early works, lost in Sanskrit, is preserved in the Chinese (Mahayana) Buddhist canon.

<comment><USER34> I'm interested in the Sankhyans! Any reference?

<comment><USER32> Sorry for the late reply but as an introduction I suggest "Encyclopedia of Indian Philosopies Volume IV: Samkhya A Dualistic Tradition in Indian Philosophy" Gerald James Larson & Ramshankar Bhattacharya (editors), Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass, 1987.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> His name was Gautama Adicca.

</comment><comment><USER36> You can ask Klaus Kenneth who Buddha was :-)

</comment><comment> lota-putty It doesn't really matters where he came from. We spend too much time thinking about who/where/when instead why/how. Perhaps a flare of royalty adds weight to the narrative.

For the first time in his life he contrived a new perspective on `what is life` on his own & went on his own way. He was stubborn, righteous & what not.

This thread is as irrelevant as my post. Humans always have/will blow things out of proportions when they praise/critic someone they like/dislike.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm confused why the article doesn't consider the initial question of whether the historical Buddha existed at all. Given the amount of ink that has been spilled over the existence or otherwise of the historical Jesus, and the even spottier historical sources about Buddha (we can't even nail him down to a specific century), isn't this question worthy of consideration?

<comment><USER38> I'm really far from an expert on this, but I've read quite a lot on the subject and my understanding is that there is considerably more historical evidence for Gautama-the-Buddha being a single real person than for Jesus Christ, that "we can't even nail him down to a specific century" notwithstanding. In the case of Jesus the timing isn't much of a question because of the well-accounted for political events of the time, whereas perhaps India at the time lacked sufficiently standard date-keeping system for us to synchronize the writings now.

But as I understand it the Buddha is mentioned in a lot of completely independent contemporaneous texts whereas Jesus is basically only mentioned only in the Bible. In itself that doesn't prove anything... the Buddha was active as a spiritual leader for many decades, and Jesus only for 3 years, and maybe the wider society around Jesus was just much more interested in political events whereas Indian society as a whole at the time of Buddha was exploring more spiritual and philosophical dimensions. But I've always had the impression that there are proportionally more history scholars who question the existence of Jesus as a single real person than that of the Buddha.

<comment><USER37> Yeah, that's the kind of thing that should have been in the article.</comment></comment></comment>


Amnesia - <AUTHOR> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/12/10.html

<comment><USER2> I only noticed it on the second glance, but that's Hacker News on the Dell laptop screen.

<comment><USER3> If you look to the left side of the header image, those guys all have reddit bobblehead dolls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's a couple interesting things here.

One is the obvious debate about timesheets, which most comments (so far) seem to focus on. Personally, I'm of Joel's school of thought on this one--my ex- co-founder insisted upon twisting FogBugz into a time-tracking tool, with all of the negative results that Joel predicts.

But for me, the more interesting point is Joel's apparent uncomfortability with his role as a pundit-- recently he's attacked Gladwell's use of anecdotes (while pointing out his own culpability in this department), and now he adds another entry to his ongoing file on what a clueless boss he sometimes is. Is this self-examination somehow related to his relationship with Atwood?

<comment><USER5> Joel didn't like Gladwell's anecdotes because Gladwell tries to turn them into science that can be repeated when that's not usually the case.

Joel's anecdotes are for your entertainment. He never implies that you should do it his way or that there's some greater meaning to whatever he's writing about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That poor guy. I sympathize; I've also had that experience of "I'd never say THAT!" and then someone shows me the quote.

</comment><comment><USER7> Ha, it was video footage by Lerone Wilson that gave him away.

If I may, I'll plug the "Aardvark'd: 12 Weeks With Geeks" documentary that Joel sells. It was much better than I expected.

</comment><comment><USER8> anyone know of anything (web, software-based, whatever), that does timesheets really, ridiculously, well?

I feel like this space is underexploited- and I can't figure out if it's because every company's requirements are so different, that it become hard to create a good product, or if there's really no target market segment for this.

any thoughts?

<comment><USER9> Joel is absolutely right.

If you ask people to enter their time, they will lie. Sometimes not on purpose, but they will lie nonetheless. And, they'll eat up 10-30 minutes trying to remember what they did and enter it in in a human-readable way. And they'll piss away some time/focus shifting from productive stuff to time-entry stuff and back throughout the day.

Of course, for time/materials folks-- lying is GOOD. It almost always means that you bill for more hours than you spend on behalf of the client. If you bill for an hour of time, you almost certainly aren't subtracting the 7 minutes you spend emailing your girlfriend and the three minutes you spent twittering about the bowl of oatmeal you had.

But I truly think that one of the most important things a person or business can do is understand how people spend time (and how that changes over time).

(note: I run RescueTime, which passively records how people spend time/attention. I also ran a time/materials consulting biz for 8ish years and constantly was nagging geeks to enter their billable time. Yuck!)

<comment><USER10> I've seen just one performance measurement system that works really. It must be done in a shop that does Test First development and maintains a comprehensive unit test suite. The shop must also use "story points" or something similar. To measure a programmer's performance:

        1) Review a random sample of their unit tests
        2) Count the number of passing unit tests that they write
        3) Count the number of story points they complete

It's harder to game this system. If you write lots of trivial, worthless tests, then (1) suffers and you don't complete more of (3). Also, story points originate with the user, so it's harder to game those.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> since when did joel redesign his permalink pages? nice stuff.

<comment><USER12> _"... since when did joel redesign his permalink pages? ..."_

if you go back a bit they still look the same ~ <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000077.html> & <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/11/26.html> I do like the evolutionary design, but older articles miss out. The particular post reads like a fluffy advertisement without much substance. Luckily you can listen to the excellent StackOverflow podcasts ~ <http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2008/12/podcast-32/>

<comment><USER11> those two links dont look the same like this article. this post has a big header and drop shadow around the body

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Joel, who suggested making daily reports in Excel with time spent and time estimated in hours for every task? Looks like his amnesia stretches further than he thinks )

<comment><USER14> Yes - to keep track of the project and (over time) to factor in the programmer's error rate in estimating completion times.

No - not to measure programmer's time and attendance.

One is about project management - the other is about the dreaded "Human Resources" and that should not be encouraged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is that the new Inspiron mini on the left, or his main screen that huge it's dwarfing a regular size laptop?

<comment><USER16> I think it's a 15inch laptop so it's not huge. But, just compare the screen to the books, keyboard, or mouse, it's freaking huge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Delegation of responsibilities is difficult to do and even harder to stick with, but the rewards are worth it.

</comment><comment><USER18> I read this article last night, then promptly took his "stop listening to me" advice. Unsubscribed from his RSS feed. See ya, Joel!</comment>


Why valedictorians rarely become millionaires, author says - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2017/05/26/why-valedictorians-rarely-become-millionaires-author-says.html <comment><USER2> If you look at the people that become billionaires you'll see that they are the ones that break the rules just enough so they don't end up in jail or become social outcasts. They are not the great rule followers. Great students can have a nice life but will never become the ones that fight their way out of social norms to create world changing products.

They are followers that need to become leaders and get out of that shell. They have the self discipline but need a way to stop being ruled by others.

<comment><USER3> World changing products often don't come from just billionaires, they come from all over. Billionaires just tend to be the ones that are good at monetizing them. Others are good at doing other things with them. How many valedictorians won a Nobel, Pulitzer, etc.?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Its interesting to me because I'm conflicted to how to raise my children. There are a lot tiger moms around and you have to be confident that pushing kids academically might not be the best thing to do.

My touchstone is my super academic cousin who has always topped their class in ivy league universities and who is also one of the most screwed up and unhappy people I know.

So any article that says top grades aren't the best thing to strive for is worth reading. Self selecting I'm sure but a good counter balance to what is out there.

<comment><USER2> Our school systems have been built with the idea of creating great workers and citizens not necessarily leaders so it's not surprising valedictorians are rarely millionaires. Kids are rewarded for following the rules and not causing waves. By definition changes come from those that don't like the rules and make their own. That doesn't define a valedictorian.

I don't have any kids but I've always thought that sending kids to a school that uses the Montessori system would be my first choice for my kids. The way I understand it they focus on teaching kids to be more reliant on their abilities rather than going to someone to get things done. It gives kids the confidence to tackle problems where they don't have a defined path to an answer. They learn problem solving tools to reach their goals.

I think this is a better way for kids to reach their goals in life as opposed to always relying on someone to help them.

By the way, Jeff Bezos was a Montessori student.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Bezos was valedictorian: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos)

<comment><USER5> By itself, that's not in contradiction with it being a rare event.</comment></comment>


Cisco Entering Tablet Market with Android-Based Device - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2010/06/cisco-entering-tablet-market.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29 <comment><USER2> Does "aimed at the enterprise" == overpriced ?

</comment><comment><USER3> comes with a command line so you can configure your router :-)</comment>


Ask HN: Can one just assemble pieces of electronics and sell them as a kit? - <AUTHOR> Do you need any license for this? Does it need FCC approval? It's a basic electronics kits with some LED lights, an Arduino and some wires + battery. <comment><USER2> In theory almost certainly yes...but if you are serious talk to a lawyer familiar with these matters. [1]

The hard part of the theory is selling. The hard part of that is identifying potential buyers and talking to them and being rejected by many, most, or all of them. The potential for rejection makes that harder than buying the components and then trying to sell them. On the other hand, buying the components and trying to sell them is the most direct route to _learning_ what is feasible and what isn't. It is also the _only_ way to get direct experience in the process.

Good luck.

[1]: or not. But consider that "it's not worth talking to a lawyer about this idea" can be a useful filter for the importance of ideas.

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe so, the Arduino is already FCC approved. It doesn't need a separate approval for each retailer. Same for the LEDs etc. If you are making changes to the hardware the FCC has documentation on what is permissible for not needing a re-certification.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can do what you like, but if the kit is intended to spy on people by sound or video or if it transmits energy through the air, as radio or WiFi signals it needs to conform to the FCC regulations and other laws that might forbid spying etc. If the kit uses AC power or dangerous high voltages and it causes a death - be prepared for possible jail time...</comment>


Man Vs. Machine On Wall Street - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/22/supercomputers-biology-quants-biz-wall-cx_mh_1124quants_print.html <comment><USER2> The Financial market is not a complex calculation. It is a derivative of human emotion and psychology. In the end humans will try to manipulate the computers. The best investors such as buffet and soros are not math whizes. They take qualitative and quantitive approach to their investment.

Sounds like a major fail to me.

<comment><USER3> Tell that to Jim Simons, math PHD and multi billionaire founder of Renaissance Technologies- a hedge fund based entirely on computer trading. There is certainly room in finance for quants.

<comment><USER4> Probably lucky outliers.

Any data mining driven approach that shows good returns is arbitraged out of existence almost immediately, unless it's niche and thus unscalable to a larger fund. All the blackbox systems end up doing pretty much the same thing and getting low returns. The markets are simply too dynamic for a pure data and algorithms system to work. One needs to use theory to win, and the guy picking the theories in the program is exactly the same thing as a manager in the first place.

The only way to get rich from a naive blackbox is to twist the risk knob up to 11, which always goes badly eventually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With automation, markets become exploitable.</comment>


MacOS 10.12.6 Source - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.apple.com/release/macos-10126.html <comment><USER2> Hey, this is Cliff aka InSaneDarwin from PureDarwin Project we have a vm that is coming along nicely if anyone has seen our home page([http://www.puredarwin.org](http://www.puredarwin.org)). We are looking for some help with our own ACPI/Platform Expert and so I/OKit Drivers if you guys are looking for some fun come join us.

<comment><USER3> If I understand correctly, this should be able to run on any Intel platform, so it's not bound to Apple-labelled hardware, right?

I'm asking because publishing cross-platform mobile apps is currently a hassle, as the iOS one can only be done from MacOS, which itself only runs on Apple hardware. As a consequence, I have an old Macbook lying around and dust it off everytime I make a release. A VM running anywhere would come a long way.

Also, I'm aware of hackintosh VMs, but it's a hassle to set up (and yeah, borderline legal, but I'm on borderline patience with all that inconvenience by now).

<comment><USER4> This is not macOS. According to the screenshot of the latest build, it doesn't look like it even boots all the way to a shell. It is unlikely to ever help you with mobile app publishing.

<comment><USER5> From the FAQs:

"PureDarwin can run on VMware as well as real Intel-based hardware. We are successfully running a web server, have built hundreds of software packages with MacPorts running on PureDarwin, including ssh, apache2, tightvnc, Xfce, and others."

I personally haven't run it, but I think it's pretty usable if it can do the things mentioned above.

<comment><USER6> If I would need to run Apache, SSH, VNC - why would I go this difficult road? I can install Debian, Ubuntu or Centos, with desktop if I need it, and much more support online. What does PureDarwin offer that Linux doesn't?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't follow Apple open source, so I have a lot of questions: What parts of MacOS are open source, and which are not? How is it licensed? Why is this on their website rather than GitHub?

<comment><USER8> As Apple is not developing this software in the public, it would not make sense to put it on GitHub or any other code hosting site. The usual approach is that Apple throws bits over the wall where you can pick them up months after the end-user release. And even these code drops will be thoroughly cleaned before, so that for example kernel sources do not contain any trace of support for ARM or anything else related to the iPhone – all of that is strictly closed source.

Software they take in from BSD, other open source projects, or some common Linux tools might also get patched. However, such patches are never actively submitted back to the projects, but only published on this website.

The sources published for macOS on this website are mostly licensed any variant of the BSD/MIT licenses, or the Apple Public Source License, or the GPLv2. Apple avoids the GPLv3 for legal reasons due to its patent clause. That is why they often ship only the most recent GPLv2 release and ignore all later updates, for example GNU make 3.81 or bash 3.2. There might also be some other licenses in the mix, such as the Artistic License for Perl and related software.

<comment><USER9> > _Apple avoids the GPLv3 for legal reasons due to its patent clause._

The patent clause is bad, but the anti-TiVoization clause is actually worse. According to that, if Apple accidentally ships any GPLv3 on iOS then they'll have to release their root signing keys to the world, which would be disastrous (it would destroy the security model of the OS).

<comment><USER10> Nope, GPLv3 doesn't break any security model other than security by obscurity. Android could very well use GPLv3 and have no consequence on its security model. As long as the bootloader is open-able, the Tivo-ization rule of GPLv3 is respected. If Apple uses GPLv3, it will piss them off quite a lot, but it won't impact their security at all.

<comment><USER9> Of course it will. The iOS security model fundamentally depends on everything from the bootloader up being codesigned. Releasing the root signing keys completely destroys this. Nothing on the system can be trusted anymore if that happens.

Edit: Well, I guess the secure enclave can be trusted. But nothing else can be.

<comment><USER11> It can still require signed code. I just want to swap Apple's key for mine. As the owner of the device, by definition, I am the sole arbiter on what is considered trustworthy. Executing only programs that I have personally approved (and thus carry my signature) is the perfect implementation of that policy.

Now, I might be lazy or busy and delegate that responsibility to Apple or some other third party. There may be mismatches between my preferred policy and what is enforced by my proxy, but it might still work reasonably well overall. We humans do it all the time. No reason the CEO has to make every single decision themselves.

When the stakes are high and I don't want to risk that nuances of my set policy get lost in translation or when it's about things that are totally outside my proxy's area of expertise, I'd prefer to make the decision myself.

With iDevices, I can't. There's only the delegate model and the only available proxy to choose from is Apple.

PS: Releasing secret signing keys to the whole world is an obviously bogus suggestion. Please stop beating up this strawman.

<comment><USER9> It's not a strawman. It's what would have to happen according to the GPLv3. The fact that you could design a system that allows for user-replaceable keys doesn't change the fact that iOS is not that system, and that if GPLv3 code gets into iOS then, according to the terms of that license, owners of _existing devices_ would need to be allowed to replace the code. And the only way to do that is to release the root signing keys. You can't say "well they could design a future device to allow this", because that hypothetical future device isn't what we have today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> OpenSSL098-64.50.6

 _sigh_

What do we have to do to get Apple to actually update OpenSSL? It's beyond ridiculous. They're shipping the OS with a version of OpenSSL that is completely unsupported, and doesn't support newer security features.

<comment><USER13> I believe Apple has adopted the BoringSSL fork that Google started. I bet this code is there for legacy reasons.

<comment><USER14> Apple wrote their own SSL/TLS stack a while ago; they haven't used OpenSSL for quite a while: [https://developer.apple.com/security/](https://developer.apple.com/security/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A little disappointed to see that they're still shipping Ruby 2.0; a version shipped 4 years ago. I would hope that they would update this soon to keep up to date with the language and security patches

<comment><USER16> Never expect Apple to ship anything recent. Anything outside of their own "core system" that depends on 3rd party packages is likely to be 2, 3, 8 years out of date. Software like brew and macports aren't only popular for "extra" software; they're popular for replacing bundled software that is severely out- of-date. Last time I started from scratch, that included updating git and php from versions so old that it was laughable. Let us be thankful that these alternatives exist.

<comment><USER17> Just to be clear, though, this isn't because Apple isn't interested in updating things. It's specifically because much of that software moved to GPLv3, and Apple won't include any software with that license. (The internal documentation is very clear about that haha.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sure would be nice if they could upgrade bash to 4.x

<comment><USER19> If I remember correctly it's because newer versions of Bash use GPLv3 which Apple doesn't want to have to deal with.

<comment><USER20> Need a BSD or MIT licensed bash work-alike, but that is not a fun project to undertake.

<comment><USER21> Why not drop bash completely and make zsh the default shell? Apple has been shipping zsh for a very long time already...

<comment><USER22> IIRC csh was the default pre OS 10.2 days.

I previously thought zsh fit the Apple ethos and aesthetic the best with its nice completions and clean(er) syntax.

Now I wish they'd start shipping fish as it provides such a nice experience out of the box, and is gplv2

<comment><USER23> fish should be the default shell on macOS, possibly with a cool custom theme. then again it might turn off some of the hardcore bearded UNIX people who use it.

<comment><USER24> Fish is not 100% bash compatible so that would break scripts everywhere

<comment><USER25> Only scripts that are sourced by the active shell

Edit: to clarify, any shell script that is executed will define its own shell to execute with (the #! line).

There _may_ be some issues if scripts have declared their shell as /bin/sh but they use bashisms, and then /bin/sh isn't provided by bash anymore, but honestly that's not necessarily related.

The discussion here is about changing the default login shell for interactive user accounts to fish.

If they did this though, it would be nice if they would use dash for /bin/sh, but I'm not sure how that's licenced - possibly gpl3 too?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> What is the WTF project?

<comment><USER27> Webkit's Web Template Framework [https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/tree/master/Source/WTF/wtf](https://github.com/WebKit/webkit/tree/master/Source/WTF/wtf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> why don't they ship python3?

<comment><USER29> Personally, this is why I would prefer that UNIX vendors/distributions not include advanced languages like Python, Perl, Lua, and Ruby. It seems like it ends up causing more issues than it solves.

<comment><USER30> > this is why...

The version difference?

That's quite easy to work around. Just name your python 3 binary "python3".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> uucp?

</comment><comment><USER32> Apple done lost their minds!

I remember when Darwin was binary ISOs, and then it just became source code and you had to hunt all over the Internet for ISOs as Apple didn't make them anymore and then anyone that did you suspect of putting a trojan in the binary.

I assume this MacOS Source is the parts of MacOS that go back into BSD Unix that Apple promises to share with the free and open source communities?

Anyone tried compiling the source code yet to see if it works and can be made into a binary ISO file?

<comment><USER33> [http://www.puredarwin.org/](http://www.puredarwin.org/)

<comment><USER22> As someone who heavily tinkered with opendarwin, its great to see this still has a heartbeat :)

Would be nice to get a base docker image going instead of using VM though...might add this to the side project list!

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h I don't think that would work; Darwin includes the XNU kernel, so it wouldn't make sense to run it in Docker, which is containers under a Linux kernel. A VM _is_ the right solution here.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Really secure your SSHD and piss off the NSA - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cloud9ers/secure-sshd-salt <comment><AUTHOR> Salt recipe author here .. Feel free to ask anything or throw comments ...etc. I hope this is helpful to some of you.

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what this. Is it some utility that eats plain data and spits out encrypted files?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is salt stack recipe that auto-configures your sshd using in a super secure setup. It basically only enables strong encryption key algorithms, ciphers and message authentication codes. And rebuilds secure machine keys.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Which bubble? (Or how and why is HN news?) - <AUTHOR>

I became interested in HN's reaction to the stock markets' adjustments of the past week. I ran a site search for Hacker News on Google [1] and found absolutely no mention of the terms "Dow Jones" or "stock market". Results were solely in the "what will I get for my startup's huge success" category.<p>I don't believe the larger markets are irrelevant to start ups. What do ya'll think?<p>[1] [http://techbio.org/hns-reaction-to-market-fluctuation.jpg] <comment><USER2> The fluctuations of the stock markets are extensively covered in the mainstream media. According to HN guidelines (see link at the bottom of the page):

 _" If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic."_

So a post on HN such as "Dow down 530 points" (or even "Apple down 3%") would probably get flagged by a lot of people.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the reply on guidelines. If I were to submit an article outlining the mismatch between startup employee interests in their equity vs. equity markets in general it could fly. Got it.</comment></comment>


Tiingo – Pay-what-you-want "high-end" financial tools - <AUTHOR> https://www.tiingo.com/ <comment><USER3> I have very mixed feelings about this.

This seems like a very weird pricing strategy on the one hand and a very weird charitable strategy on the other.

Frankly, the last thing poor people need is free access to high-end stock trading tools so they can piss away their money on losers and transaction fees.

This seems about the same as offering poor people free rides to the gas station so they can buy a lottery ticket. I mean, you're giving them a free ride, but to what end?

<comment><USER4> People are already pissing away their 401k thinking they can strike it rich and beat the market because they successfully backtested against some tick data on 50 symbols, paid some offshorer a few hundred dollars to implement their trading algorithm against IB or in NinjaTrader on a high margin and no limit orders. Trust me, people have been trying to 'beat the market' competing against the Renaissances and PIMCOs for ages.

E-trade arguably does just as much damage, letting an average end user (who often lacks the industry experience of both the financial industry as well as the company in which they choose to invest) throw their money into anything. A VC once said he knew the Web 1.0 boom was over when his cabbie told him to invest in Cisco.

I, for one, think that the Bloomberg reign -of-terror can't end soon enough. They're as bad as Elsevier in monopolizing information. Information can be used properly or improperly in any context[1]. You want to see some real damage? Give that demographic access to Q/KDB+ and let them underwrite a 20x inter-day margin with their mortgages.

[1]Go to any o-chem forum and you'll see tons of graduate students talking about research chemical drug synthesis techniques, precursor availability, ways around DEA watched-chemical lists, etc. It's vaguely masked in their own lexicon, but it's plain as day.

Edit: By throwing away ones 401k, I meant "cashing out their 401k and effectively gambling on a handful of stocks". Low-load / no-load 401k's and (Roth) IRAs are way safer prospective investments often with useful tax benefits. I keep my 401k with Vanguard and they explicitly say "Very few Vanguard funds charge fees when you buy and sell shares. The fees are designed to help those funds cover higher transaction costs and protect long-term investors by discouraging short-term, speculative trading." which is a mentality that most people should adopt. [https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual- funds/fees](https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/fees)

<comment><USER5> > I, for one, think that the Bloomberg reign -of-terror can't end soon enough. > They're as bad as Elsevier in monopolizing information.

I don't understand this opinion, and want to.

Bloomberg work with 3rd party data that's licensed not only to them, but multiple other platforms too. Elsevier monopolise sources so they're the only publisher.

A lot of data on Bloomberg is public, just organised in a really familiar (to Bloomberg users) UI.

Getting into detail: A lot of data in markets is simply inaccessible on any platform (hidden orders, etc), and some data services try to discover this, but that's not like an academic journal monopolising papers.

<comment><USER6> > A lot of data on Bloomberg is public, just organised in a really familiar > (to Bloomberg users) UI.

Besides HistData I have never been able to find even high granularity intraday FX data. Price data is non trivial to find

<comment><USER7> Fine-grained trade data is almost always charged. Exchanges charge their clients to get data directly, and they charge multiples as much to those clients like Bloomberg who wish to redistribute the same data. This is not really surprising--exchanges are run for profit and the data are valuable.

Plus, successful traders have an interest in keeping the barrier to entry as high as possible--if you're making a few million a year not only can you afford to pay $5k for the data, you might prefer it cost $50k.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I admire the intentions and the hard work behind this however...

The issue I have with pay-what-you-want or low revenue business models is they're unsustainable.

Either declare something a passion/charity project and make it complete free (but perhaps open to receiving donations) to properly set users' expectations or monetize it.

I takes a lot of time to develop and maintain complex technology like trading tools.

I don't know what the founder's background is. However, if he makes good money from other sources, after the initial euphoria of sharing his tools with the world goes away, he'll have stay motivated doing the grunt work to maintain it. And pay out of pocket for expenses and the value of his own time a PWYC pricing model likely won't cover.

Making money (and a profit) isn't evil or bad, it's necessary both to see if your market (and audience) deems your product worth developing and to keep yourself motivated (and compensated fairly enough) to work on something.

A lot of companies have shut down due to lack of funds (or the ability of makers to go without making much money). It's risky for an user to try a product with a tenuous future, come to base their work flow on it only for it to be closed down down the road. Especially with something like trading.

<comment><USER9> Hi there Abundance,

To address this concern outright: in the next couple weeks I was (and still am) planning to make a minimum payment of a $1/month. Without divulging too much into why, the company can be wildly profitable at such a price and my breakeven is very low.

My background has been specializing in structuring data, scalable computing, and also building trading software and trading models/algos.

I'm in the middle of a raise and so far all the investors, when seeing how I was able to pull this all off, are onboard with the pricing model and are eager to get started working together.

I can't divulge too much further publicly quite yet- but not only is this pricing model feasible, but has gotten the approval of the small group I've demonstrated it to.

Like I said, expect a $1/month minimum going forward in the next couple weeks. Also, I've been doing this almost 2 years now, full-time and without a paycheck, and the euphoria hasn't wore off :)

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the clarification.

Having investors changes the equation quite a bit. Depending on how much they've put in, that should give you a good runway to be able to experiment with the pricing model. Wish you the best of luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's the data source for the fundamental data and how reliable is it (considering it is free)?

<comment><USER9> A good friend of mine, Vincent from Sharadar sources the data. It is not free for me-

I'm a huge data integrity nut, a spillover from when I used to trade quantitatively. I run my own data cleaning algos and I've found Sharadar's data to be far cleaner than sources like bloomberg.

A lot of people assume BBG's (bloomberg) data is impeccable, but I had an entire database of mistakes I found in Bloomberg that I had to correct. Any quant trader will tell you this. In the middle of the day, Bloomberg would swap the 2nd and 3rd continuous futures contract. It drove me nuts when it happened and was a motivation behind Tiingo.

There is this false sense that financial data needs to be expensive. No - <USER2> me the public data is a commodity and that's the way the world of financial data is moving. Vince shares this idea with me and encourages me to be more open with my data. I will be offering an API pilot program in the coming week as I develop my own API for the data I source myself.

Vince's company is: [http://sharadar.com/](http://sharadar.com/)

And is available via the Quandl API [http://www.quandl.com](http://www.quandl.com)

Also, not only does Tiingo source its own dividend data, but it shows its work. if you go to [https://www.tiingo.com/d/t](https://www.tiingo.com/d/t) and hover over the binoculars you will see the values highlighted.

I do this to fight the idea of perceived value when it comes to financial data. Nobody else will give you this level of detail for dividend data. I started doing this because I found my existing dividend vendor data riddled with errors. That's how nutty I am about data.

<comment><USER5> Share the same passion about data.

I regularly (at least once a week, sometimes multiple times per day) BBM'd the Bloomberg helpdesk with notifications that their data was wrong. This varied across many of our needs, but even simple stuff like money supply / macro stats was often just wrong. How had no one spotted this before? We ended up just using Datastream terminal for macro data.

Killer feature is Excel plugins. Do you have plans for this?

Edit: Just tried Quandl didn't know about this before. What a fantastic tool.

<comment><USER9> It's crazy isn't it? The worst mistake BBG made for me was the futures contract there, where the WTI 2nd and 3rd contract swapped places when open interest/volume hadn't shifted! it switched back 30 minutes later??? That was crazy to me because how many people rely on cl2/cl3 when making decisions??

I do but frankly I can't put a specific timeline on it quite yet. The pilot API program will start next week and I'll be starting with JSON objects. Once that moves forward I'll start exploring Excel add-ins.

Quandl.com has an excel add-in already and I may just start plugging in my data into them after I feel comfortable beta testing under the pilot program.

<comment><USER11> My addin works with quandl too, but avoids using any VBA or GUI. All the HTTP GETs are done on a background thread in C#, the result being your quandl downloads can be far more automated than with quandl's own addin.

[https://github.com/SpreadServe/SSAddin](https://github.com/SpreadServe/SSAddin)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is super cool. I've played with Bloomberg terminals a few times at hackathons & job fairs, and this has a very similar feel.

</comment><comment><USER13> Isn't tingo.com going to send you a cease and desist at some point? Seems like you need a new name.

<comment><USER14> Trademarks are industry-specific. I don't see how people would sign up for this thinking it was for a travel site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> On pay-what-you-want pricing, can you deduct that from income if you're a business? Might be better to have business pricing, personal pricing, and demo/free pricing, and just rely on an honor system for people to select which bucket applies to them. But if you only expect people to pay a small amount, then I doubt tax deductions are much of a concern.

</comment><comment><USER16> For these fields: [http://imgur.com/EPCL65s](http://imgur.com/EPCL65s)

Having a link to those numbers as supporting backup would be convenient, such as the 10-K.

I think it is nice to have a quick confirmation, as well as reading other information that the quote provides (footnotes, prospectus, 8-K)

</comment><comment><USER17> Quite like this idea. Whilst this kind of information maybe dangerous, I like the fact that anyone can access it

<comment><USER18> I was just lamenting that I could never afford Bloomberg's terminal, and then I found this, and now I'm signed up. Thanks! I am not looking to trade, but merely to educate myself, and I am just learning how to manage real time data or time series. Perfect. @intenscia - what information is 'dangerous'? Just curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Given the pay what you want, pricing how will you prevent hedge funds and such from utilizing your data?

</comment><comment><USER20> "high end" and "pay what you want" don't ordinarily go together.

<comment><USER9> Yep, which makes this all the more fun :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to monitor Twitter etc. for people having the problem you solve? - <AUTHOR>

For our company I am looking for the best way to monitor places such as Twitter for people actually having the problem we solve.<p>I want to point people our way when they actually are having the problem we wolve (i.e. when they are talking about it) but haven't found a good way to do it yet. <comment><USER2> Have you tried something like this? <http://www.tweetalarm.com/> It e-mails you alerts when your keyword is mentioned. Then you go to Twitter and talk to them. If too many are coming in for you to handle this way, you'll want something like HootSuite (shows the search activity on your dashboard) or Desk.com (brings the search activity in as new support/sales tickets.)

If you don't know what keywords to use, you need to talk to more customers and listen to the words they use.

If there is no word or phrase to describe the problem your customers have, then you should start writing and blogging about the problem and give it a name.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this.

We know what people call the probkem we solve and are actually already shaping the discussion quite a bit over here in Switzerland but now aim to increase our reach.

I have never been a big fan of Apps such as Tweetdeck or Hootsuite but might just have to go with them. I have to say though that the desk.com integration sounds intriguing. We are a Uservoice customer but this really looks very neat and helpful

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What you have is the usual business marketing problem.

How do I find people that need my product?

The answer is simple.

You can market at large and use big media advertising (TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazines, Adwords).

Or you can contact people that seem to fit your standard customer description directly through email or snail mail.

Of the two options, the one that works best is the second one. Selling directly to people costs less money, is measurable by how many direct sales were done as a result, allows you to build a personal relationship with the customer, and is easier to do. Plus you can do it yourself.

How you approach this depends on what your company does.

Also, monitoring Twitter like this is just a waste of time. You will be seen as a spammer. Twitter is a social network. People go there to socialize. Think of it as if you went into a party and started pitching people your products. Not a good idea. The best you can do in twitter is to try and create a following by posting things that interest them. Then, if by chance, they need something like your product, they might get in contact with you. Twitter puts the power on the prospects and not on the marketer. This is why it is a waste of time.

Shoot me an email (is in my profile). I may be able to steer you in the right direction.

</comment><comment><USER4> What you really need is the people in your network, talking about the same.

      Not a very good strategy, to ruffle the ones outside your network. But I have found them even more receptive to just plain surveys than a whipped up solution.

key notes - only offer a solution if, you know that solves them completely.

Tracking a conversation with Symbian app, Gravity with local cache controls is best. It even controls your discussion in the :group. Including favourites, retweets..

Would love to try others, what are your expectations? Combining them as a twitter application is another positive for Gravity from <http://twitter.com/janole>

</comment><comment><USER5> You may check this blog post by @maxklein [http://maxkle.in/the-cheapest-way- to-discover-if-a-startup-i...](http://maxkle.in/the-cheapest-way-to-discover- if-a-startup-idea-will-make-money)

</comment><comment><USER6> In my opinion, this would've been a good strategy 3-4 years back. But now people are bombarded with tweets and messages they don't care about. So you're not likely to get a good conversion rate with this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where would you go instead?

<comment><USER6> That's a hard question. I'm big on search, because people are more actively looking for a solution. Posting a question on Twitter is more passive. Setting up Google alerts on forums and blogs would be a wiser investment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I don't see them as mutually exclusive and actually, we are currently measuring what return on (time) investment the different sources have. Thanks for your insights.

To clarify, my intention was not to post a question on Twitter and see what happens but to react to people that actually talk / complain / ask for help with something that we can help with i.e. someone talks about wanting pictures with their contacts and we can help.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: What would you like to know well? (Excluding the stuff you already know) - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> I've had a similar conversation multiple times with several different friends - though usually around skills instead of knowledge. The desired skills always seem to boil down to trades like auto repair, masonry, or carpentry. Presumably because I spend so much time in-doors, in front of a computer, creating "things" in the abstract, instead of creating something tangible with my hands.

</comment><comment><USER3> Macroeconomics, German, Italian, wine making, sailing, playing a guitar, auto repair. I feel like I've scratched the surface on most of these and wish I had time to dig deeper. But I also have this constant feeling that what I supposedly _do_ know well isn't enough and must improve.

</comment><comment><USER4> The secret to contentment.</comment>


PPK: State of the Browsers - IE edition - <AUTHOR> http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/06/state_of_the_br_1.html

<comment><USER2> I thought the "Two Corporate Browsers" observation was especially interesting.

He basically says that companies will eventually need to install a second browser for employees so they can use IE6 for internal apps and something else for external pages that no longer work in IE6. And because it's tough (not impossible though) to get two versions of IE running at the same time, that second browser will likely be a non-IE browser.

That seems like something MS might want to fix (and probably will).</comment>


JPMorgan Weighs Shifting Thousands of Jobs Out of New York Area - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-28/jpmorgan-weighs-shifting-thousands-of-jobs-out-of-new-york-area <comment><USER2> This is very interesting. Besides the impact to the NYC economy, it's signals a high level of confidence that a recession is imminent.

does anyone have a non-paywalled version of this article?</comment>


Ask HN: How to self-censor our news - <AUTHOR> Given the COVID-19 situation, my fiance and I will be working from home for the forseable (minus a few days here and there). We are informed of current affairs and recognise that we must play our part despite not being at risk physically. However, our mental health will likely be suffering - mainly thanks to the constant news updates and habits of checking it that we've formed, and the fact that we won't have an office full of people and meetings scheduled to keep us focussed on actual work.<p>What's the cleanest way to block a list of websites of our choosing from our home wifi? I don't want to tunnel all our traffic through a VPS or anything as there will be a lot, and I understand that it won't help when I'm using work's VPN. Perhaps setting up a DNS server on an instance and getting DHCP to tell the clients to use it? We're using MacBooks and iPhones mainly. <comment><USER2> It's simple. Just stop going to the sites. I stopped fb years ago and since the last election stopped reading/going to news sites (nytimes, FT etc). Somebody wisely said fast news is not news. And I tried that and it works brilliantly. I read or check economist once a week and that tells me what's going on. You could do the same with weekend edition of various papers to. It's great. It automatically removes the crap and you are still informed of the large things you need to know. And if there is anything that is truly urgent that you need to know it I have seen it will surface and get to you automatically through employer, friends, Neighbour's etc. try it for a couple weeks and you won't regret it. Plus you have nothing to lose. You can always go back to your old ways.

<comment><USER3> >It's simple. Just stop going to the sites.

That's true for me too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> >Pi-Hole...

That's a good suggestion. I set up a Pi-Hole just to try it out and it works pretty good right out of the box.

You probably have a feature in your cable modem to block sites.

As far as "News" goes, I have AP, Reuters, and HN bookmarked and I scan them in the morning with my cup of coffee and when taking a break. None of those have much hyperbole screaming at you.

I'll offer that you make it a point to spend your web time exploring and learning.

I guess what I'm offering is you can block sites with a Pi-Hole but you may need to think about how you use the internet and focus on more positive ways to use it with the time you'll have hunkering down.

I've been working from home for over 25 years now. Most of them on web apps. I almost never go to CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, etc. I spend my own time on the web learning and exploring things I'm curious about. Last week I learned how to change the sump pump in the crawl space below my house :D

</comment><comment><USER4> Pi-Hole is a DNS resolver that blocks whole domains and sub-domains.

You just need a raspberry pi.

<comment><USER5> I run my pi-hole instances on Arch Linux thanks to the folks who maintain the packages in AUR. One of my instances is indeed a Raspberry Pi (2B+) but the other is an older Intel NUC (with a number of other services running). RPi is probably one of the cheapest options, though.</comment></comment>