Ask HN: What are some examples of successful single-person businesses? - <AUTHOR> I've heard success stories of people making millions from adsense or from creating software products. It's made me think who has been the most successful at building a company as a sole proprietor.<p>I guess we should discount companies that have single ownership but outsource all the work. <comment><USER2> Careful with your terminology. "Successful" has different meanings for different people.

By _my_ definition, for example, I run the most successful single-person business that I'm aware of. But it doesn't make millions, so it might not meet your definition at all.

My goal was to replace my day job with a software business that required as close to zero attention as possible, so that I could have time to spend on the things that actually matter to me.

The business brings in the equivalent of a nice Senior Developer salary, which is not what most people think of when they imagine a successful Startup. But it lets me work with a bunch of cool tech when I want to, and, more importantly, is automated to the point where Customer Service involves a quick 30 second - 10 minute email sweep over morning coffee. For me, that's a lot more valuable than a few more million dollars in the bank.

The cool thing about running your own business is that you get to decide on your own definition of success.

EDIT: I wrote a bit about how I got into this position, in case anybody is interested. It's not actually all that hard to do:

[http://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/guy-on-the-beach- with-...](http://www.expatsoftware.com/Articles/guy-on-the-beach-with-a- laptop.html)

<comment><USER3> You're a solid writer. I really liked the blog post.

Your definition of success happens to align with mine. I have "enough" right now, and I'd be really happy to work less and maintain my current income level - I just haven't yet been able to pull away from the corporate life. Eventually.

Anyway, had to ask, the one gap seems to be health insurance. I know you mentioned a cheap major medical policy, but what are folks doing to cover their families a little more comprehensively? At least in the US, this is the one big thing that makes it really hard to leave corporate life. I'm fortunate enough to have dual citizenship with a european country, so we could "just" relocate there, but ideally we'd do this while staying resident in the US. I still haven't solved the insurance issue.

<comment><USER4> I'd encourage you to price out plans on your state's health insurance marketplace (every state has one thanks to the ACA).

You may find that the coverage you want is less expensive than you'd expect. For example, when I put in information for a family of 4 in California, "Gold" plans were between $850 and $1050 per month (and less if you qualify for a subsidy).

<comment><USER3> I did, it's about $1350/mo here for a family of 3. Deductible is still $2k on a gold plan. While that's not as bad as I thought, that sort of thing has to be a barrier to people with families considering taking a risk and doing a startup. Imagine if we had universal healthcare in this country...

<comment><USER5> We have universal healthcare in France and France isn't exactly buzzing with innovation. There is innovation, but there is more innovation happening at the Palo Alto Starbucks than in practically the entirety of France.

<comment><USER3> I'm not suggesting universal health care drives innovation. I'm suggesting that introducing it to an already innovative culture would serve as a multiplier of some kind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Builtwith.com (one employee/founder and a part-time blogger) does an estimated $12M a year [1] assuming a 'few thousand' = 2000 paying customers.

" _the Basic at $299 per month for customers that want lists of sites mainly for the purpose of lead generation; Pro at $495 per month, suited more for users that work in an industry using a lot of A /B testing and comparison-type data; and Enterprise at $995 per month, which covers all bases and allows sales teams with multiple people to all use the platform at once. Brewer says that in terms of paying users on the platform there is a 'few thousand' and the split is about 40 percent Basic, 40 percent Pro and 20 percent Enterprise._"

Similar thread a while ago [2]

1: [http://www.startupdaily.net/2015/09/builtwith-is-perhaps- one...](http://www.startupdaily.net/2015/09/builtwith-is-perhaps-one-of- australias-most-profitable-online-companies-and-has-zero-staff/)

2: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12065355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12065355)

Edit: specificity and formatting

<comment><USER7> It's incredulous that a person can single-handedly run a product as complex as that. Builtwith isn't a low-maintenance CRUD app, it's a beast. It crawls >100M websites, searches for thousands of signals, monitors their usage, finds lead information, and serves them to thousands of customers. The signals need to be constantly updated; crawler needs to handle tons of edge cases; and not to forget, you need to deal with people's issues. I am in utter disbelief one person can do everything, even if I account for being an automation freak.

<comment><USER8> What if the actual development was outsourced?

My company does the same, it doesn't have a single employee, I outsource everything to different teams I have close relation. It just works, I do the business development and technical specifications, rest is handled by external teams.

<comment><USER9> Well if its outsourced is it really a single person company?

<comment><USER10> Is 100% of the equity owned by one person? Then I would say yes.

Just because I hire somebody to clean my office, doesn't mean it's not a one- person company.

<comment><USER11> 100% ownership does not imply no employees.

Also, there's a difference between hiring software engineers, who will be engaging in activities related to your core business, and hiring someone to clean.

If the owner does not, or is not able to build and maintain their software, some will consider this to not be a single person business (regardless of how the extra help is contracted).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> At some point scale will require you to hire, at least a few people, if you're really successful. But two examples that I can think of are Markus Frind (Plenty of Fish) and Markus Persson (Minecraft).

\---

Markus Frind is probably the biggest. He spent 5 years (2003-2008) working on Plenty of Fish, and at that point it was bringing in about $5M/yr and had 3 employees.

When the site sold in 2015 for $575 million it was 70 employees, but he still owned 100% of the company.

\---

Markus Persson would be another possible option, for the first $10-20M that Minecraft brought in he was the only person (aside from a contracted musician). And then for a while after that, it was him and his friend who was hired to manage the business side so he could focus on the programming work.

<comment><USER13> Hmm, so if I apply some deep learning training techniques it seems like the takeaway from this is: Change your first name to Markus.

<comment><USER14> Correct. Because as we know correlation = causation.

<comment><USER15> Highly relevant chart, and subsequent proof, for this: [http://i.imgur.com/3B0pt3M.png](http://i.imgur.com/3B0pt3M.png)

<comment><USER16> You may also like this huge collection of spurious correlations [http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious- correlations](http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I built and run StoreSlider[1]. It made ~$700,000 in 2016, mainly in affiliate revenue from eBay. Costs are essentially hosting (between two and five $10 Linodes, depending on load).

Took me some effort to built, but it's on autopilot now.

[1] [https://www.storeslider.com](https://www.storeslider.com)

<comment><USER18> Sorry for questioning the legitimacy of your revenue claim, but according to Similarweb your site gets less than 5000 visitors a month. [1] Alexa's estimates seem similar, putting the global rank at 6.5 mio. [2] Wouldn't you need millions of yearly visitors for that kind of revenue? I know those traffic estimations aren't perfect, but this seems off by a lot. Am i missing something?

[1] [https://www.similarweb.com/website/storeslider.com](https://www.similarweb.com/website/storeslider.com) [2] [http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/storeslider.com](http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/storeslider.com)

<comment><USER17> I block all bots and crawlers except Googlebot and Bingbot (the others bring no users but can hit the servers hard), so I'd treat Alexa etc with a pinch of salt.

Nonetheless, the figures I gave are for 2016. Since then, there has indeed been a fall in all numbers, largely because a site like this will always be overly reliant on Google and, for whatever reason, Google favours the site less this year than it did the year before.

At its peak, the site had approximately 53,000 daily visitors.

<comment><USER19> What tech do you use for the site?

<comment><USER17> Lumen (from Laravel) with Nginx on Linode.

PHP 7.1 has given a huge boost in terms of the performance you can get from a cheap VPS.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Your problem will be definitional. The Rock earned ~ $65mm last year. Is he a 'one man company'? I guarantee he's billing through a services entity...

1: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2016/08/25/the-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2016/08/25/the- worlds-highest-paid-actors-2016-the-rock-leads-with-knockout-64-5-million- year/#e68e91475a91)

<comment><USER21> Celebrities will almost never work alone. They will have PAs, body guards, drivers, etc who all work full time for them. Even the minor celebrities will have agents who work for them - albeit not exclusively. But someone on the scale of the Rock definitely wouldn't be operating his business alone.

<comment><USER22> > work alone

He (alone?) does the actual "work" that brings in the bread. The other people could be considered contractors. I mean, a single SaaS app developer still doens't "work alone" when you consider that she might be buying services like hosting and/or payment processing.

It's hard to really find the line between alone and not.

<comment><USER21> I don't really agree with that logic because you could then argue that anyone working for a company who isn't a developer (eg the finance department, sales team, customer support team and even upper management) aren't part of the company either.

To further blur things, in my examples for a celebrity, agents still contribute to bringing in the actual work yet (as you defined) yet they literally are an external service one would pay for. And what about the script writing? Directors, studio editors, cameramen and sound technicians? They are all creating the product too - without which The Rock wouldn't be in business.

I think if there is one thing we can agree on, it's that even the most fiercely independent of people still depend on the work of others. Nobody can work entirely in isolation. Or at least without themselves living in isolation. But that's really more a philosophical tangent rather than an answer to the question originally posted to HN :)

<comment><USER22> the metric I'd use is whether one party is fungible. I argue that you can't replace the rock and still get the same product/show. but you can replace the agents and finance team etc.

I like philosophical arguments! ^_^

<comment><USER21> TV shows and movie franchises often replace cast. Sometimes with the new actor / actress playing an existing character.

* Sometimes it's done out of necessity so the changes are glossed over (Dumbledore changed characters due to Richard Harris sadly passing away, or when actors/actresses get fired from soap operas),

* sometimes it's made a feature (eg Doctor Who regenerations)

* and sometimes they'll just introduce a new leading character to replace the old one (eg the crime comedy "Death in Paradise" which has had 3 different leading inspectors as the previous actors have left the show).

Few people, if indeed anyone, are irreplaceable in their careers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Isn't Tarsnap[1], by Colin Percival a great example of this? I'm surprised it wasn't the first thing mentioned since he's reasonably active on HN.

1: [https://www.tarsnap.com/about.html](https://www.tarsnap.com/about.html)

<comment><USER24> I'd be surprised if he made millions from this service.

<comment><USER25> You shouldn't. Tarsnap is a decade old; a million dollars over ten years is not a lot of money by the standards of tech salaries.

<comment><USER24> I assumed that OP's "making millions" referred to a yearly-ish timeframe, not the entire existence of a business.

<comment><USER25> Ah, got it. Right, Tarsnap is under a million dollars per year.

<comment><USER26> Never mind that, your company is still awesome, and with Tarsnap now running on Windows (10) thanks to the 'Windows Subsystem for Linux' I'm sure it will do a lot better in the coming years.

<comment><USER25> Oh, I'm not worried about that... I don't think $1M/year is a sharp line dividing "success" from "failure". I decided a decade ago that my criteria for success were:

1\. Staying in Canada,

2\. Doing work which I found interesting and meaningful, and

3\. Earning more money than Google offered me,

and I'm hitting all three.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> How do you define successful single-person? I've been running a one person consultancy for 12 years now, had to retrain quite a bit over the years, sometimes it was so busy that I outsourced pieces of work. It's been good enough that I have a house and no mortgage attached to it, all while spending almost enough time with my family - much more recently. This is what I wanted and I consider that a success in maintaining a work/life balance, working from home and having a good life in general. It's not quite 'fu' money yet, as I still ahve to work for a living, but I working towards that goal. I know a few good people that agree with this point of view - Basecamp/37 signals folks etc.

<comment><USER28> That's a very relevant question. I guess inherent in the question is 'FU money' as the only criterion?

I started Airwindows about ten years ago specifically because friends of mine were getting jerked around by a large-ish audio DSP plugin company, and intentionally targeted a then absurdly cheap pricepoint. Ran it for ten years, and transitioned to a Patreon model when my payment processor went out of business, always DRM-free, always scorning concerns of 'piracy', the purpose always being democratization of tools. It's still working, I've got a decent amount of influence in my industry sector, and I'm seeing hardware-based startups taking a similar approach.

My current plans are to extend outwards into an additional website/identity dedicated to being interdisciplinary, and be the primary resource for this new model: the idea is that as we move beyond money as a primary metric, interconnectivity and significance become central to what 'wealth' is in the future. So long as subsistence is assured and the flow of money/gifting is enough to keep developing creatively, the important thing becomes 'how authoritative' you can be, and though this has traditionally expressed itself through money directly it could also be expressed in terms of 'FU relevance' or the ability to steer the zeitgeist.

If I manage that (not saying I'm fully there, but I'm probably at least halfway), does that count as successful if my choices intentionally ignore the accumulating of money? I'm convinced money is increasingly irrelevant to real significance, especially as we move towards general AI. If we haven't better optimized purposefulness by the time we reach AI escape velocity, we'll have a serious problem.

<comment><USER29> Money can be relevant if, say, having some reserves at the right time makes the difference between gaining access to the technology or being left out. It's all utterly hypothetical of course.

<comment><USER28> Money is only abstracted influence. What if you managed to get enough direct influence that you could get access to the technology without ever having to work through a money stage?

Happens every day on YouTube, in a sense. Think 'unboxing videos' or perhaps 'endorsement deals' is a better analogy. If you can get enough social influence, you can work with technology/capabilities far outside your normal 'money' conditions, because your importance is being weighted directly. You pay taxes on such gifts because the government rightly sees this as compensation, but it didn't go through a money/abstraction stage. If you were collaborating on some creative work using but not owning tools of extraordinary value, you probably wouldn't even be taxed on it, but both sides still benefit: you don't retain the tools but you produce work on them in which you have an ownership stake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I built and run Instapainting.com by myself. As of the date of this comment it is still only one employee (me). [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/instapainting](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/instapainting)

Things like customer support is outsourced to other startups, and of course the artists on the platform don't work for me, but could be if the company was structured differently (it's structured as a marketplace).

<comment><USER31> How did you outsource customer support to other startups? And can I ask which startup?

<comment><USER30> We use [http://www.hioperator.com](http://www.hioperator.com).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Now that I am no longer a single employee business (again) I can admit that I ran Mark II of my company on my own doing everything without outsourcing (sales, customer support, development, sysops, UI/UX, website design, copywriting, manuals, SEO, advertising, accounting, etc) making much more than seven figures in profit for quite a few years.

It probably wasn't the wisest idea to stay solo for so long, but the freedom of not having employees made me very reluctant to hire anyone again. The only reason I chose to hire is that the business' growth forced me make the decision to either turn away customers or hire staff. The people I have are great, but I do miss the days of doing everything myself without having to explain why something is important.

<comment><USER33> >much more than seven figures

Is it the same as saying eight figures or nine figures?

<comment><USER32> It is the same as me not wanting to post exactly what I have earned in a public forum :)

For the purpose of this thread it really is not that important how much money I have made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> [http://NomadList.com](http://NomadList.com)

Bootstrapped social networking site doing multiple 5-figures/month.

<comment><USER35> What's the business model? Job postings on [https://remoteok.io](https://remoteok.io)?

<comment><USER34> You can click the link :)

It's a paid membership community - [https://join.nomadlist.com/](https://join.nomadlist.com/)

<comment><USER35> I had clicked, in fact I knew the site already, but I thought it was only a directory of cities ranked by several metrics. Nice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Sidekiq by Mike Perham [http://sidekiq.org/](http://sidekiq.org/)

Over 1MM annual revenue [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sidekiq](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/sidekiq)

<comment><USER37> hmmm... It is OSS though. Not sure we can consider it as a single person company.

<comment><USER38> Not completely. However is commits or line changes mean anything, you can see at [https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/mperham/sidekiq/graphs/contributors) that 1 person did approx 90%+ of the work on the code itself.

<comment><USER37> And why was I down voted? Really, I did not even express a strong opinion. I kind of expressed a doubt. This is really strange. I may not know something and I may have doubt. I believe a community like HN is a good place to express them and get corrected. I am shocked to see that this is not really welcomed here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> There's pinboard, maciej still runs it solo, I think.

<comment><USER40> Yes I do. It makes about $200K a year.

My measure of success isn't the money (though I love money), but the independence and freedom it gives me.

<comment><USER41> Just want to say, keep up with the activism, but please post more on your blog! I miss the dry wit.

<comment><USER42> Pro tip: he has a Twitter account in the same vein.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Stardew Valley: [http://stardewvalley.net/](http://stardewvalley.net/)

<comment><USER44> The creator did an AMA on reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/4b8s7v/im_co...](https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/4b8s7v/im_concernedape_developer_of_stardew_valley_ask/d175u5n/)

I thought it was pretty inspirational that he managed to keep at it for 4 years solo even when his grandma and himself started to doubt that he would ever ship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Problem is, "big for one person" is not big enough to be news, relative to all the companies. Once they get big enough for many to hear about them, they _have_ to grown, to handle it. e.g. Notch (Minecraft)

Secondly, the best way to make solid, reliable money is to have a niche, without competition. So, you keep your mouth shut.

You'll probably most likely notice them in small, industry-oriented niches. Or... _after_ they grow larter than one-person.

To give an answer: [https://balsamiq.com/products/mockups/](https://balsamiq.com/products/mockups/)

<comment><USER46> Somewhere there is an awesome Video about balsamiq where the founder Talks about how he tried everything he could to remain a single-person operation but failed to do that due to support requests

<comment><USER47> [http://conversionaid.com/podcast/peldi-guilizzoni- balsamiq/](http://conversionaid.com/podcast/peldi-guilizzoni-balsamiq/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> The Flappy Bird creator said he made $50k per day from in app ads. But he pulled the game after a short while. Said because he felt guilty for making people play all day. Would love to know the whole story behind this.

<comment><USER49> I remembered that he was threatened with a legal action by Nintendo for using Super Mario pipe sprites, but it may be only a rumor.

<comment><USER50> That's not unlikely considering how aggressive Nintendo can be when it comes to protecting their IP.

<comment><USER51> He was found to not have infringed on their IP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> According to porn industry insiders, xvideos is run by a married couple. They are very secretive, but they definitely do millions in revenue annually.

<comment><USER53> Do you have a source for this? Is all their revenue from ads?

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Sublime Text was for a long time a single-person business.

</comment><comment><USER55> We can find few of them here [https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses](https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses)

</comment><comment><USER56> We (two python developers) have started a SaaS SEO checker service [1] in February 2017 (took 4 month to develop from 0) and already have paying customers on our business plan. I completely agree with the definition of successful business when you have ability to do what you want when you want. I already have a couple of other websites generating revenue from advertising and all this allowed me to quit daily job 2 years ago. So definitely there are a lot of examples of successful single- (two-) person businesses out there.

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

<comment><USER57> Looks great! How did you find your first customers? Cold contacting?

<comment><USER56> Thank you :) Actually the only source of traffic to our website is organic search and our first clients came from google. We do not consider cold messaging as this is the same as spam. Frankly speaking we expected more traffic and clients but it turned out that SEO niche is very crowded though our solution is quite different from all others. We are developers and are not very good at marketing. Tried adwords but with no luck. So the website is now left on autopilot and with the hope to organic growth.

<comment><USER58> Don't underestimate the value of this type of promotions. I'm sure quite a few people have used your service because of this post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> If Satoshi Nakamoto is still alive and still has access to the coins he mined but never sold, they're already worth billions and the work has changed the world.

<comment><USER60> But if he moved even a single millibitcoin out of his wallet I think the market might react with panic in fear that he would sell a lot of coins at once, and so the fear of the value plummeting might cause it to do just that.

So even if he is alive, could he ever reap the benefits of those coins?

Hopefully he mined with different wallets so that he's been able to sell smaller amounts of coins without anyone knowing that it was him.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Not entirely single person, but I run Musi [1] with one partner. We have monthly revenues in the mid six figures with 2-3k a month in expenses.

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

<comment><USER62> How did you get your app to take off? I built a music app and it was just insufferable trying to get users that didn't uninstall the app 1 hour later. It was disappointing to because personally I thought the UI was really nice.

<comment><USER61> Got in the game super early (nearly 5 years ago) when the space wasn't nearly as saturated. That and getting really lucky with ASO

<comment><USER62> Where did you learn ASO? Is there a noob 101 guide somewhere online?

<comment><USER61> Trial and error. I didn't really read anything but instead just tried to put myself in the shoes of a customer. It came down to me realizing that the features and info that I felt were important as developer were possibly not so important for a user.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I'm surprised no one has mentioned improvely.com by Dan Grossman.

I think it makes around $40K to $50K per month. Over the last few years, I've seen it grow from around $10K to $50K. That slow steady SaaS growth is pretty inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER64> Daring Fireball by Jon Gruber ([https://daringfireball.net](https://daringfireball.net)).

</comment><comment><USER65> The most successful one-man business is not in software. I know of a successful mediator. He charges $18000 to $20000 per day and has always been booked for the last 20 years.

[http://www.wqsadr.com/randallwwulfffeescheduleandpolicies.ht...](http://www.wqsadr.com/randallwwulfffeescheduleandpolicies.html)

<comment><USER66> Wow.. I just want to seat in a mediation done by him to see WTF he does that cost so much.

<comment><USER65> He helps resolved complex litigation issues out of court. Litigation can take 1 to 2 years in the court and cost millions of dollars. In a 1-day session, he can resolve 95% of these cases and help both parties come to an amicable agreement. People's lives and time are no longer wasted in long drawn out court battles.

Just a side note, most mediators are former lawyers. After many years of practice, they seek a better way to resolve conflicts. The pay isn't bad either.

One more thing. Randy is actually one of the best mediators in the world. After the 9/11 attacks in New York, Randy was called in to mediate and arbitrate the case with the insurance companies and tenants. After 2 years, they were able to come to an agreement and the resulting funds allowed for the area to be rebuilt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> I know some affiliate marketers who make $2M+ without any employees.

Apparently, ranking well for certain keywords (mostly web hosting and website builders) can be very, very lucrative.

<comment><USER68> Why you're not putting the list here (people you know)?

<comment><USER67> Mostly because some of them are (or have been) clients and friends, and they like to keep their income and tactics secret.

But they're easy enough to find. Just Google lucrative keywords like "best hosting" and you'll see them

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> [https://insomnia.rest/](https://insomnia.rest/)

Guy quit his job a year or two ago to develop this full-time and seems to be doing pretty well for himself. I use the client all the time as a developer.

<comment><USER70> Last I heard (a month or two ago) he was making a pittance (like ~1-2k/month or so).

Sad considering how sweet the app is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> If I recall correctly, IMDB used to be a one-man show for a long time, up to and even after getting acquired by Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER72> Here are a couple of awesome examples: Affiliate Marketer [https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/](https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/) Patt is awesome, he actually shares his monthly income and expense statements. Started solo and now he hired a bunch of people.

Nathan Barry ([http://nathanbarry.com/](http://nathanbarry.com/)) the guy who started convertKit [https://convertkit.com/](https://convertkit.com/)

</comment><comment><USER73> [https://ipinfo.io](https://ipinfo.io) \- single person business that does over 250 million API requests a day, and generates good revenue.

<comment><USER74> is this yours? I use it regularly to do ASN lookups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Google > quora > 10 year old article > [https://www.inc.com/magazine/20080901/the-other-number- ones....](https://www.inc.com/magazine/20080901/the-other-number-ones.html)

But they have staff.

Large single-person startups? [https://smallbiztrends.com/2014/07/successful- one-person-sta...](https://smallbiztrends.com/2014/07/successful-one-person- startups.html)

</comment><comment><USER76> I know a guy who does arbitrage of porn traffic and he makes $2M a month, already saved up $20M.

<comment><USER77> How does that work? Never heard of traffic arbitrage before.

<comment><USER76> Essentially it is, build doorways that attract targeted traffic in some categories, and sell that traffic to porn sites... sounds simple, very hard to do profitably and requires both decades of experience, being extremely smart, and some luck.

("don't try to repeat this trick at home" disclaimer goes here)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Working by example may work. And analysing many successful examples may also yield some insight. But make sure to get the full picture: look also at those who fail. They might have tried the very same methods to most degrees. Don't fall for the survivorship bias :) It might be other factors which are truely important than those which seem the obvious ones.

</comment><comment><USER79> Please first define success. You should think about your own values in order to know what is success for you.

I personally know people that made millions from creating software products and companies. But I do know nobody that did(or does it) it alone.

In fact, I "made millions" myself whatever that means starting with software(a million dollars is way less than 10 years ago because of inflation so it is not that much, specially if you life in a expensive place), but I made a hell lot of work and found colleagues along the way.

IMHO you should never focus on money. Money is just a tool for exchanging value. You should focus on creating value, even if at first it gives you little money. Because of innovation dilemma most things that create real value give you very little money first( Do you know how much money the Apple Store did the first year?)

In my opinion your priority should be finding a social circle that will help and understand you. If you have a business that means entrepreneurs. They will understand and support you like no one else. HN is virtual, you need real people around.

For me success is the ability to be free in my life, made my own decisions in my business, I could write on HN, or go climb a mountain when people is working, or travel a new country, or the ability to only invest on business that are ethical for me.

If earning more money means not being free, I will decline the offer, in fact I decline offers every single day. Why should I do it? To become a 80 years old billionaire? To have everybody know me so I have to live isolated against paparazzis or criminals wanting to kidnap my children because they know I am rich?

But your values could be different. Your priorities could be to show off, exert power over other people, of go meet interesting people, or have extreme experiences or send your children to elite schools, whatever is success for you.

<comment><USER80> Inflation over the past 10 years has not been significant. $1,000,000 of purchasing power in the US today is roughly equivalent to $1,179,000 in 2007.

<comment><USER81> Isn't "purchasing power" by definition after taking inflation into account?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> my business:) 1.5m annual revenue, 10-15k mobthly profit, built from zero, very proud of it.

<comment><USER6> Nice, what's the business?

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> I suppose there is very little public information about such companies because they have no obligations of sharing it.

</comment><comment><USER84> This guy uses an AI to write books for Amazon. Note that article is from 2012.

[https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143382-programmer- create...](https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/143382-programmer- creates-800000-books-algorithmically-starts-selling-them-on-amazon)

<comment><USER85> AI! They used to call it a spam bot.

<comment><USER86> spam or not, the process is _very_ interesting

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkS5PkHQphY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkS5PkHQphY)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> Domainers: I've known many on person companies that made tons off parking domains. Seems like this model has run its course.

Farming has done well for my wife, she run her business and feeds a bunch of folks. Find her at the Oakland Grandlake on saturday and Marin civic center on Sunday. She sells plants :)

</comment><comment><USER88> As for me, I develop [https://thestartupway.website/](https://thestartupway.website/) only by myself but I really cannot tell you if it's a successful business. I have a job of a software engineer and when my friends ask me to make a landing page for them I just use my tool and take a small money from them. It's just for fun for me and it's great that it helps somebody with their needs. So, for me, it's a little success )

</comment><comment><USER89> I don't think there are any that ever remain a one-person company in practice - even for my own projects I've always needed to outsource or farm-out tasks that aren't a valuable use of my time - e.g. website design or handling customer support. I'm sure there are plenty of de-jure sole-proprietor ships - but I doubt any of them of truly work alone.

<comment><USER40> I've worked solo for nine years. I think there's a bunch of us out there.

Also, customer support is a very valuable use of your time :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> Why discount outsourcing? The book "The E-Myth" argues that you absolutely should outsource everything but your core competency. (And "The 4-hour work week" would argue you should outsource that too)

Does outsourcing somehow diminish success?

<comment><USER91> If you're starting from nothing, you may not have the budget to outsource everything...or even anything. Admittedly, with services like Fiverr, Mechanical Turk, various code outsourcing sites, and whatever else, the price of outsourcing is pretty low. But, I've found the odds of getting good work are pretty low. I wouldn't want to have to rely on it. And, costs skyrocket on development when you have to have it done more than once by shitty developers (there are great developers on all of those sites...but, being able to assess them is not a skill that is in most non-developers tool chest).

But, I think that's kind of semantics. Is a "one-person company" not a one- person company anymore if they hire an accountant to do their taxes? I doubt anyone would argue it's now a two-person company. Likewise, if you get a lawyer to help with a contract or something, it's still a one-person shop by most people's measure.

I suspect OP just wanted to rule out folks who were coming into it already wielding significant capital. That's a major limiting factor for a lot of people who might want to build an outsourced company.

I get the feeling OP wants to have some inspiration that doesn't require a team and doesn't require significant capital; probably because OP doesn't have access to either. There are lots of places in the world where that would be true even for someone with talent and ambition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> There are additional resources listed here:

[http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/small- operations.h...](http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/p/small- operations.html)

</comment><comment><USER93> Nomadlist.com from levels.io

</comment><comment><USER94> Salvatore Sanfilippo: Sole creator and maintainer of Redis

Mike Perham: Sole Developer of SideKiq ( Background tasks processing with Redis) and Inspector (Application infrastructure monitoring, reimagined)

<comment><USER95> Redis is not a business, it is an open-source project. RedisLabs is a business who hired Salvatore to work as part of their team, before he quit that is.

<comment><USER94> doesn't it include "making millions from adsense or from creating software products" ? I think Yes

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> [https://www.bottomlinehq.com](https://www.bottomlinehq.com) Single founder/employee, 6-digit revenue, no outside funding.

</comment><comment><USER97> Plenty of Fish? Exited for billions while still a solo operator

<comment><USER98> He was not solo at the end but for a long time he was. I think right before he went PPC he started to hire people. Also where do you get the billions from?

<comment><USER99> When he sold he had plenty of employees but still owned everything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> [https://wowbrary.org/](https://wowbrary.org/)

nonprofit to connect people with their local library's catalog

run by one person for 10+ years

</comment><comment><USER101> I made millions from Adsense, not in USD though :)

<comment><USER102> Vietnamese dong?

<comment><USER101> Pakistani Rupee!

<comment><USER103> That's still a lot of money! Well done!

<comment><USER101> Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> Top affiliate marketers in the health, wealth, personal development and dating niche make $m per year, some in the 10's of $m.

</comment><comment><USER39> CDBaby?

<comment><USER105> +1 for CDBaby created by Derek Sivers. You can find his interviews discussing the creation of CDBaby at sivers.org His interviews with Tim Ferris are great.

<comment><USER106> I think I read that he sold in for something in the range of 20 million. His business model for CDBaby was interesting. I interacted with him via email for a bit when he was starting his recent or current venture, Wood Egg, which was a project to create a series of startup ecosystem guides (books) for many countries in South / East / South East Asia, written mainly by people familiar with or from those countries. Interesting idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER107> Bitcoin? That is, if Satoshi is a single person

</comment><comment><USER108> Craigslist is pretty close to a single person operation and it's been pretty successful.

I know it's an outlier.

</comment><comment><USER109> I sell twitter and Instagram followers for 5 years. I made 15000 usd in average ( before tax).

<comment><USER110> curious what your site is? do you have any email I could reach out?

<comment><USER109> sorry bro, I can not say it. By the way, I think people think this is a gray business so I am not proud of it. I do it just for my living expense. Iam studying iOS app development since I don't want to do gray zone business. just post question here if you have, I will try to answer.

<comment><USER110> Is your site similar to sogro.co and socialenvy? is that 15K/month or year?

<comment><USER109> I think it is not similar. I think followers that I buy and sell are fake. It is 15,000 usd per month, but they included twitter, instagram, facebook, youtube, etc... services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> Distrokid

</comment><comment><USER112> plenty of fish comes to mind, not sure if it's around anymore, but this was a free dating platform

</comment><comment><USER113> Stock Trading: no customers, no employees and no investors, check my profile for details on how to start. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER114> PewDiePie

</comment><comment><USER115> please don't. we have enough people monetizing junk on the internet. you're trying to skip the most important step.

</comment><comment><USER116> Agar.io.

</comment><comment><USER117> Minecraft.

<comment><USER117> Also consider RimWorld (has a contractor now).

</comment></comment><comment><USER118> Slot

</comment><comment><USER119> Ugmonk

</comment><comment><USER120> Dentistry.

</comment><comment><USER121> 4chan

</comment><comment><USER122> Well, they all have the same number of employees.

</comment><comment><USER123> Tinder is a highly successful single person business vs. the Ashley Madison strategy of focusing on couples.

<comment><USER124> You should start selling jokes and then tell us how you made your millions

<comment><USER123> Well in your hypothetical it would be pretty obvious... selling jokes of course</comment></comment></comment>


What the Celebrities on The Apprentice Could Learn from Being Agile - <AUTHOR> http://www.planningforfailure.com/post/518338752/what-the-celebrities-on-the-apprentice-could-learn-from

<comment><USER2> I enjoyed this article. I must watch the actual episiode later.</comment>


Startup Quote: Scott Belsky, founder, Behance - <AUTHOR> http://startupquote.com/post/4002736227

<comment><AUTHOR> The young and the ambitious share a common risk: appearing naive.

\- Scott Belsky (@scottbelsky)

<http://startupquote.com/post/4002736227></comment>


Ask HN: A way to manage many unique email addresses? - <AUTHOR> Is there a service or tool(s) that could help me manage many unique email addresses that can all be forwarded to one master address?
My goal would be for any online service I use to have a unique email address, and for me to be able to log into one mailbox to see/manage the email received from these proxy addresses.
The ultimate goal being increased sandboxing of services and PII that may be leaking between them.
Thank you. <comment><USER2> Appending a plus sign and any suffix to a gmail address solves this to some extent. Many unique addresses all accessible from one gmail login, and can be classified into separate folders using filters.

One minor inconvenience I've encountered is that a few services have buggy email validation which prevent such addresses.

[1]: [https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get- mo...](https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-more-from- your.html)

<comment><USER3> More popular it gets, sooner people will remove everything after the plus for mailing purpose. Actually, that's quite strange my "spammers" aren't doing it yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Catch-all is quite known for that. But the problem starts when you need to respond to some emails using such alias. You then need to setup account for sending which for me is quite inconvenient. Also in case of gmail the alias accounts "leak" the original login in some email headers.

</comment><comment><USER4> [https://www.spamgourmet.com/](https://www.spamgourmet.com/) allows you to create any number of unique addresses which then forward mail to your regular mail account

</comment><comment><USER5> If you want to pay a company to do this, you could use Fastmail.com.

You can use your own domain, and set up many aliases (there is a limit though). You can also use firstname.lastname@example.com (but you can also do this with other email providers such as Gmail)...

They also have a long list of their own domains (maybe 20-40, I can't remember) that you can use.

Or you could set up your own server with a catch all email address. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-all](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch- all)

</comment><comment><USER6> I currently do exactly what you describe, for the purpose that you describe, with fastmail. This feature is called aliases on their system.

I also used to do be able to do it with migadu when I was hosting with them.

The aliases are routed with a longest-prefix-match sort of algorithm, so you can blacklist specific addresses that have gotten spammy by aliasing them to some inexistent address.

</comment><comment><USER7> I use this on a private domain and server. By default it creates a temporary email, but you could modify it to keep them forever.

[https://github.com/jenkstom/fakemail](https://github.com/jenkstom/fakemail)

</comment><comment><USER8> Protonmail has the catch-all feature. [https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/catch- all/](https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/catch-all/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I assume you have a fakedomain.com, with a * that forwards to your own main email.

If so I'd use a deterministic algo. Examples:

1) (kind of) irreversible: md5(service-domain)

2) easily reversible (for you): aes(service-domain) with a known key

Make sure you don't have pii in your fakedomain.com.

</comment><comment><USER10> A few email provides can do something similar. I believe it's called Catch- all: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch- all](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-all)

</comment><comment><USER11> FastMail has this feature. You don't need a service.</comment>


Ask HN: How to rip videos from sites like CNN.com? - <AUTHOR> So, my brother is a film maker and I am a computer scientist and we had an idea the other day to make a documentary film about the 2012 US Presidential Election and the role that big business plays in it. Who knows if we will actually complete this. Right now it is just an idea.
What is the best way to rip videos from "streaming only" sites like CNN.com? An example of some footage I'd like to get is:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/09/07/republican.debate/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
I examined the page with a HTTP Debugger and also viewed source code but could not seem to find the original source URL of the video. I was wondering if it is possible to find the URL of the video somehow and if it is, how?
Thank in advance for any insight you may provide! :-)
Also, it has just crossed my mind that this type of question might not be acceptable here, since you're not really "supposed" to download videos from streaming only sites. If this type of question is not acceptable please politely let me know.
EDIT: I intend to proceed only after obtaining the copyright owners permission. <comment><USER2> Using Firefox Web Console it's possible to obtain all the fetched URLs. The one containing the video was: [http://ht.cdn.turner.com/cnn/big//us/2011/09/07/bts-msnbc- pe...](http://ht.cdn.turner.com/cnn/big//us/2011/09/07/bts-msnbc-perry-romney- socsec.msnbc_640x360_dl.flv)

I don't have a generic way of extracting this information from any site, but looking at those network sources that are used is always a good place to start. Using extensions such as Flashblock will let you control when you're going to start downloading, and there will be fewer URLs to look through.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh hell yes. This method works perfectly :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not a lawyer but...

Colbert and John Stewart do it all the time and I doubt they ask for permission for every single little clip. It would count as 'fair use'.

<http://www.orbitdownloader.com/>

Use Orbit Downloader, it rips everything, I've been using it for a year or two now, it's amazing. Open up Grab++ within Orbit, reload the page and the video will show up in Grab++, select it, hit download and it's yours.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmmm very interesting. First of all thanks for posting that, it works perfectly as well, using the Grab++ tool.

The method that Skalman posted using the Firefox Web Console works perfectly as well, although in the CNN video that I posted above, that method seems to download a .flv file, whereas your method seems to be downloading a .mov file. Interesting....

EDIT: Both the .flv and the .mov seem to be the same file. They are both exactly 11,840,167 bytes, so that leads me to believe that they are the same file. It is interesting however that your method and Skalman's method download the same exact file just with a different file extension. I wonder why this is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For a documentary film you're going to need copyright clearances, so you should start at the licensing office of CNN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will have to look into that. Thanks for the response. Does anybody know how to rip videos from various websites, though? I feel like it is definitely possible. I use a program called JDownloader which can rip videos from Youtube, MegaUpload, and various other "streaming only" sites. Somehow the program is able to extract the URL of the video file(s) and download them directly. This program however does not support any of the news sites (including CNN).

At this point I am mostly curious about the theory. I am curious how a hacker would go about finding the URL and download the files themselves. I looked at Youtube source code and examined it with a HTTP debugger and can't seem to figure out the URL of where the video is stored but I know it is possible because the JDownloader program does it. I am sure that I, along with many here, would be able to benefit from knowing how to download from various "streaming only" video websites.

<comment><USER4> I think HN is not a good place for this question, then. Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think you ought to make it clear that you intend to proceed only after obtaining the copyright owners permission. Might stop people from flagging it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I agree with your suggestion and have made an edit to my post.</comment></comment>


Key question in Oracle-Google suit: Can you copyright an API? - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstrategy/196173/oracle-wants-copyright-claims-remain-google-suit

<comment><USER2> Didn't we find the answer to this question when Compaq beat off IBM's lawsuit over clone PC BIOSes? Compaq showed they kept the API of the PC, but engineered a completely different se of code behind it.</comment>


CBS SF Bay Area: BART Says Releasing Crime Videos May Create Racial Bias - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFcNtn9vW-Y <comment><USER2> Let me make the following point. It seems to me that law enforcement should be able to utilize all statistics, facts, and research, just as a business person or stock trader would. These aggregate details are important, and throwing them out for fear of labels, or social justice backlash is counterproductive to keeping citizens safe.

<comment><USER3> I don't see anyone saying that law enforcement doesn't utilize all the stats. The issue in this case is releasing all information and video to the public.</comment></comment>


Why Are Some Developers So Allergic to IDEs? (discussion) - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/waterlink/why-are-some-developers-so-allergic-to-ides-24hl <comment><USER2> I prefer not to use mouse at all while coding which I just can't do with IDE. Vim, cscope, ctags provide me all the powerful utilities that I need for faster navigation and editing. Most of the times refactoring needs multiple source files to be looked at and edited simultaneously. In these cases, I split vim in different (even up to 4) screens which enables quick cut-N-paste operations across different files.

<comment><AUTHOR> I use IDE (IntelliJ) and I almost never use the mouse. Knowing all the shortcuts and using the "Find action" (CMD/CTRL+SHIFT+A) and "Find everything" (SHIFT+SHIFT) tools help a lot. These tools also allow you to discover shortcuts for things you didn't know.

The no-mouse challenge for a few hours makes you more proficient at using IDE without a mouse, and only keyboard.

Also, complex refactorings are so much faster in IDE, and I do refactor every 2-5 minutes as part of my TDD workflow, so IDE really makes me much more productive as I would otherwise be.

<comment><USER2> I will try it out. More than anything it seems inertia and being comfortable in one's environment are the reasons for not switching to IDE.</comment></comment></comment>


How Happier treats its interns - <AUTHOR> http://blog.happier.com/2013/08/09/life-as-intern/

<comment><USER2> It's great to see a positive working experience on HN. There's lots of "why I quit" and "help, I'm drowning" experiences, but this one has made me a lot ... Happier?

Good job, and thank you. I'm downloading your app now.</comment>


7 Ways I've Almost Killed FreshBooks - <AUTHOR> http://www.freshbooks.com/blog/2008/08/27/7-ways-ive-almost-killed-freshbooks/

<comment><USER2> It's crazy how many of this type of post are showing up everywhere. In the past couple weeks I've seen 4-5 posts on what founders did wrong or right with their companies.

It must be nice to be past all that and looking back on it to glean the lessons. Can't wait to get there.

<comment><USER3> It's a personal entrepreneur's list of what to do (or not) and I find them useful.

Taken as a whole, it's cliff notes for entrepreneurial hackers.

<comment><USER4> Cliff notes are useless for college-level classes. Does your analogy hold in the real world of entrepreneurship?

<comment><USER3> Yes. Having "front lines" advice and anecdotes from actually building a startup are helpful even if they are only tidbits (i.e. cliff notes) of information.

Founders at Work is a great example of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The one about thinking that they needed to move really fast reminds me of one of my favorite quotes, recounted in "The Dip" by Seth Godin:

"We knew that Google was going to get better every single day as we worked on it, and we knew that sooner or later, everyone was going to try it. So our feeling was that the later you tried it, the better it was for us because we'd made a better impression with better technology. So we were never in a big hurry to get you to use it today. Tomorrow would be better."

~Sergey Brin (cofounder Google)

That's a crazy mentality to have, and stands in such stark contrast to most of the frantic behavior of startups today.

Take your time and build a great product.

</comment><comment><USER6> _but slow burning fires burn the hottest_

But if it burns to slow (ie if your product does not generate the minimum amount of buzz to keep it alive) it will die. Entrepreneurs should make the difference between a slow burning fire and a slowly dying fire.

EDIT:

 _Thinking we had to spend more than we did_

Too much resources handicaps more than not having enough. Give 3 coders a few thousand and they create Omnisio, which sells for millions. Give coders 15 millions and Omnisio will show up half as good and one year too late.

 _Placing my faith in consultants_

Dude. I am not even going to talk about this one. Nowadays everybody claims to be a consultant.</comment>


How (badly) broken is the web? - <AUTHOR> https://no-kill-switch.ghost.io/how-badly-broken-is-the-web/ <comment><USER2> > Internet became a garbage dump of humanity

I really like it, I am one of those filthy ones.

> anonymity, poor trace-ability (of source), inability to confirm attribution, > etc.

I don't think this is a problem and it cheapens the arguments in #2 and #3. Still an important fact to be able to weight information. But even so I don't think the quality of information is that much worse than comparable "official" sources and that more people are informed to a degree never seen before.

> What will likely happen [...] is [...] "sub-Internets".

On this one I agree and think it is a problem. This will mainly happen due to the subjective content classification of several platforms that try to contain certain content and in doing so will create the basis for further content control by third parties such as companies and countries. A grave mistake.

> re-invented concept of on-line identity

I disagree profoundly, since this would increase ambitions identified as problems in #2 and #3. This will most likely supress voices that aren't a problem. If you think there are too many problematic voices, you should work on yourself, since that is entirely your problem. Real criminal activity on the net are foremost identity theft and phishing. Both issues are reinforced by the ideas around better identification of users. And let us be honest, that is the ambition proposed.

Compared to "conventional" crime, internet crime is actually pretty low since there is a high barrier for entry.

</comment><comment><USER3> >It's time for a radical thesis - the Internet (in its current form) is irreversibly broken. Because of its scale & growth rate - it effectively eliminates all options of realistic governance (at least centralized / regulated - the ones we know at this point).

This isn't a radical thesis. It's become _de rigueur_ to complain about how irreparably, irredeemably broken the internet is. Javascript is a cancer. Normies and corporations have ruined the web's quirky technocratic charm and rendered it a lifeless, homogeneous mass of standard templates and best practices. Nazis, psychopaths and charlatans have an unparalleled capacity to spread their lies and hate. And _worst of all,_ pitchfork-wielding, pearl- clutching mobs of SJW moralists are trying to stop them! We seem to get a thread about it every week.

A truly radical thesis would ascribe any positive value to the modern web at all. That would cause SV to drop their monocles into their Monster energy drinks in shock. Youtube is more valuable to the world as a repository of information and culture than the Library of Alexandria, but people would burn it down in an instant simply to spite the ads. Social media has provided most profoundly democratizing paradigm shift in mass communication since the telephone or possibly even email, but people write it off as nothing but idiots sharing memes in a Skinner Box. The internet _has_ brought people together in uncountable positive ways, we're just trapped in our own identity bubbles and it's no longer possible to see the forest for the trees.

The web isn't broken, it just isn't perfect. But it's still a lot better than people seem to give it credit for. I know the author only wrote this... barely even an article... just to push Tim Berners-Lee's Solid but to me the argument for completely abandoning the web and starting over just isn't that strong.</comment>


Rails Templater: Generate Rails 3 apps the way you like them - <AUTHOR> http://adventuresincoding.com/2011/01/rails-templater---agnostic-at-last

<comment><USER2> This looks like a great tool for starting up a project. It would be nice to have it run the same thing again without going through all of the menus.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am thinking of adding a YAML configuration option to accept your predefined preferences to address this.</comment></comment>


Taking PHP Seriously - <AUTHOR> https://slack.engineering/taking-php-seriously-cf7a60065329#.x285iquji <comment><USER2> > The Case Against PHP

Apart from prevailing wisdom and the popularity of Ruby, Go and Node.js the Slack team make a detailed, reasoned explanation of why they picked this tool.

It was a surprise to me that the back-end of Slack would run on PHP.</comment>


GIMP Windows Installers move from Sourceforge to ftp.gimp.org - <AUTHOR> http://www.gimp.org/? <comment><USER2> The link in the article sums up the "what happened to Sourceforge" pretty well: [http://www.gluster.org/2013/08/how-far-the-once-mighty- sourc...](http://www.gluster.org/2013/08/how-far-the-once-mighty-sourceforge- has-fallen/)

The OSS project I maintained for several years was always in the top 10 downloaded lists on Sourceforge, but I got frustrated with how things were going and eventually moved the code to Github and hosted a simple website on my own.

Honestly, I can't think of a reason why an OSS project would choose Sourceforge in this day and age.

<comment><USER3> That article gets a lot of things very wrong as I pointed out when it was posted on HN last time (you'll see my comment at the top): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6262347](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6262347)

Github is an option for some folks but not for us. We need solid file hosting with lots of bandwidth (pushing well over 50TB a month at SF) that will be sticking around next month and next year. In my comment linked above, I mention that Github ditched binary downloads (they did last year). In the ensuing discussion, it was pointed out that Github added the feature back in this year as 'Releases'. It remains to be seen if the feature will stick around, though, and I wouldn't put my all my eggs in that basket. When Github discontinued binary downloads last year, users were offered no alternative. So, it's not inconceivable that Github would pull the binary hosting feature again in the future as they stabilize their product offerings. SourceForge has been serving our binaries for 7 years now.

<comment><USER4> You should then consider a better host. SourceForge is clearly a scamware host now; maybe ever since Dice.com took over. And to be honest, just seeing a file hosted on SourceForge casts doubts on the quality of the app.

\- Most users just click OK for installers, it is like the EULA

\- I am yet to see a toolbar that does anything useful to anybody; other than make their system slower and buggy. I hold a very low opinion of people (like Ask.com) who bundle things with the clear knowledge that most people are unknowingly installing their app/toolbar. Much worse than spammers.

With your extensive experience with user behavior, it is interesting that you see this differently.

<comment><USER5> (I shall ignore the toolbar installation matter; that has been discussed at length in the linked thread and there is little value in continuing that here.)

> _You should then consider a better host._

Very well then; step one: identify a better host where PortableApps.com can get over 50TB per month for free. I'm not aware of any other than SourceForge which would do such a thing and John does not have the money to spend on commercial rates for such bandwidth. (Incidentally, donations are always welcome at PortableApps.com, because the rest of the infrastructure does still cost money, and quite a considerable amount.)

<comment><USER4> I get that. But somebody must be paying for 50TB, right? It is paid for by users who inadvertently installed bundled *-ware.

Edit: I am not saying portableapps.com is at fault here for using this free facility. SourceForge is, for their business model.

<comment><USER3> No, it is not. It is mostly paid for by ads on the website. There are only a handful of SourceForge projects trying out this new, 100% optional, offer- based installer. PortableApps.com is not one of them. Bundling 3rd party offers is not permitted within PortableApps.com Format apps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The state of affairs really is unfortunate. I think we can all attest to SourceForge having played a wonderful roll in the open software industry at one point. But how can anybody, no matter how loyal, support what it has become?

Define your company values early.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is also a problem with FileZilla. Sourceforge pushing adware? I never thought I would see the day - totally absurd!

[https://forum.filezilla- project.org/viewtopic.php?t=30240](https://forum.filezilla- project.org/viewtopic.php?t=30240)

<comment><USER8> Some people here seem to be seriously confused by anti-SF FUD.

These ad-ware loaded installers are _not_ the default. You have to explicitly opt-in. It provides SF and projects hosted there (a kinda shady) _optional_ way to make money.

The FileZilla installer contains ad-ware because the FileZilla developers chose to add it. It is their attempt to make money. I use SF too but none of my projects come with ad-ware installers.

One should point out that bundling ad-ware is a common way developers of free (as in beer) software make money in the Windows world.. so SF has not cooked up some nefarious new scheme here.

<comment><USER9> There, fixed that typo for you:

        One should point out that bundling ad-ware is a common
        way *morally bankrupt money grabbing* developers of
        free (as in beer) software ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Amazon Route 53 has a feature called _Latency Based Routing_ , which you can use to distribute traffic to your own mirrors. With AWS, Rackspace and other similar cheap hosting, I see no reason for a SourceForge.

By the way, SourceForge, Freecode (aka Freshmeat) and Slashdot were all acquired by Dice.com in September 2012.

<comment><USER5> The GIMP uses an awful lot of bandwidth monthly, well into the terabytes monthly, I believe. PortableApps.com is another project and one which I know much more about due to my involvement; it goes through over 50TB per month and with something like S3 that is already well over $5,000 per month at a minimum. No reason for SourceForge?

<comment><USER11> $ 5000 seems way too much.

50 TB of traffic would cost something like $ 200 (if all downloads were from the US or Europe) to $ 450 (if all of were from South America) according to this page: [https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/?navclick=true#pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/?navclick=true#pricing)

That's still a lot of money, of course.

<comment><USER12> Can you recheck your maths? It is $0.08/GB (to Internet in the US 10-50TB volume price) not $0.0008/GB

1000 GB == 1TB

$0.08 * 50 * 1000 = $4,000

Or have I missed something?

<comment><USER13> According to [1] there were 1,425,722 downloads of gimp-2.8.6-setup.exe from SourceForge last month.

According to [2] that file is 90.1 megabytes

So that one file used 122.5 TB of bandwidth in that month.

Assume for the purposes of argument this is 100% from the US and follows the cloudfront pricing outlined at [3], and per-request costs are trivial.

      (10 terabytes) * (0.120 US$ per gigabyte)
      + (40 terabytes) * (0.080 US$ per gigabyte)
      + ((122.5-50) terabytes) * (0.060 US$ per gigabyte) in US$
      = 8960 US$ [4]

So, for that single file, about US$ 9000 a month.

It gets more expensive if people download from other countries, and 22% of downloads were for different files not included in the download count for the most popular file, which I used above. It would be trivial to top $12,000 a month in cloudfront fees.

[1] [http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp- win/files/GIMP%20%2B%20...](http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp- win/files/GIMP%20%2B%20GTK%2B%20%28stable%20release%29/GIMP%202.8.6/gimp-2.8.6-setup.exe/stats/timeline?dates=2013-10-01+to+2013-11-09) [2] [http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp- win/files/GIMP%20%2B%20...](http://sourceforge.net/projects/gimp- win/files/GIMP%20%2B%20GTK%2B%20%28stable%20release%29/GIMP%202.8.6/) [3] [https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/#pricing](https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/#pricing) [4] [https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=(10+terabytes)+*+(0.120+US...](https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=\(10+terabytes\)+*+\(0.120+US%24+per+gigabyte\)+%2B+\(40+terabytes\)+*+\(0.080+US%24+per+gigabyte\)+%2B+\(\(122.5-50\)+terabytes\)+*+\(0.060+US%24+per+gigabyte\)+in+US%24)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> SF didn't have a good sustenance plan. If they had a way to charge users directly (instead of bombarding them with ads), they could have continued to provide good service to open-source projects.

As a user, it is a good idea to research the sustenance plan of a service before using it.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's a shame that a company which spearheaded free availability to open source code has sunken to the point of encouraging proprietary installers and adware laden applications.

</comment><comment><USER16> If GitHub were to clone some of SFnet's features (full-featured web hosting, forum), I bet my behind on a mass SFnet exodus.

</comment><comment><USER17> Downloading on Sourceforge hasn't been a pleasant experience for a long time, and we have to live with that because it's free. But now an installer? I have to say it's crazy.

<comment><USER5> Again—that is _opt-in only_ on the part of project maintainers. It is _not_ mandatory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just realized my Windows laptop is still at Gimp 2.6 and while at www.gimp.org let's take this as an opportunity to update to 2.8 series:

 _Not Found

The requested URL /pub/gimp/v2.8/windows/gimp-2.8.8-setup.exe was not found on this server._

Bad timing for me apparently.

</comment><comment><USER19> It is unbelievable what SourceForge, once amazing, became of.

<comment><USER20> Is 'unbelievable' even remotely the right word?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Bintray is a another service that hosts binaries for open source projects. Seems nice:

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

</comment><comment><USER22> But where are the torrents? The ftp-site seems horribly congested.

<comment><USER23> It looks like there are several torrents out there, but an 'official' one would be nice to have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> All good things come to an end.</comment>


How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary - <AUTHOR> http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.html#id2792906

<comment><USER2> "You should go home if you are thinking suicidal thoughts. You should take a break or go home if you think homicidal thoughts for more than a few seconds. You should send someone home if they show serious mental malfunctioning or signs of mental illness beyond mild depression. If you are tempted to be dishonest or deceptive in a way that you normally are not due to fatigue, you should take a break. Don't use cocaine or amphetamines to combat fatigue. Don't abuse caffeine."

Godda love those big companies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pdf version here: <http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.pdf>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> short?

<comment><USER5> Adjectives such as "short" only make sense used relatively. For example, Napoleon Bonaparte is of average height relative to early 19th-century France, and short relative to 21st century France.

Similarly, with 63 pages worth of text, compared to the average web page, this link is extremely long, but, compared to the average programming-related book, this link is extremely short.

<comment><USER6> I think Napoleon was short for his time. At least, contemporaries spoke of him as short.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. I checked Wikipedia again, and apparently the issue of Napoleon's height is in dispute.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Bonaparte#Napoleon.27s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon_Bonaparte#Napoleon.27s_height)

"Many historians have recently argued that, contrary to popular belief, Napoleon was not short as often depicted in popular culture. Although historians disagree on Napoleon's precise height, it has been suggested that he was actually slightly taller than the average early 19th-century Frenchman.[27] Some historians claim the French emperor's height was recorded as 5 ft. 2 in French units, corresponding to 1.68 meters or 5 ft. 6 in Imperial units."

<comment><USER7> I remember reading that the officials he was surrounded with were mostly taller than he was, so he looked short relative to tall people.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Vexlio for macOS now available - <AUTHOR> https://vexlio.com/announcing-vexlio-for-mac <comment><AUTHOR> Hello again HN,

Creator here. I'm very pleased to announce the release of Vexlio for macOS! We had great discussion and feedback from the HN community with the initial release ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14553551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14553551)), so I hope you are as excited as I am for macOS availability. Happy to answer any questions!

</comment><comment><USER2> Is it possible to attach id's and other custom attributes to shapes and have them preserved when exporting to SVG ? This would make the output a lot easier to use in downstream applications.

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, there's no mechanism to do that. However, I'm intrigued -- can you explain more about the use case you're thinking of?

<comment><USER2> We use SVG diagrams as the basis of numerous displays in our system. From basic navigation controls (we draw a 'curated' subset of a complex hierarchy) to some relatively static dashboards. We often want to enrich those diagrams to add basic interactivity (do something when particular section is clicked, modify the style of elements based upon an external property etc). This job s made far simpler if we can add additional data to the nodes in the diagram itself. Visio sort of supports it through custom properties but they are clunky to use and parse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> At first glance (on a phone too) this seems like a competitor for OmniGraffle. Can someone confirm that's a fair comparison?

</comment><comment><USER4> And bought :)

Now Linux please! This would be a killer app

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :-)! I'll be keeping people posted on a Linux version.

<comment><USER4> How are the LaTeX equations rendered ? Can we use full local LaTeX ? Can we customize the preamble ? Can we use custom fonts?

<comment><AUTHOR> Vexlio comes with a minimal LaTeX bundle that is used to render the equations. The input you give in the edit window is automatically placed between $ signs to enter math mode. Currently the preamble is not customizable but you are not the only person to request this.

Right now there is no "official" way to use a local LaTeX installation, although that may become possible in the future. An untested workaround might be to symlink the "tex.install" directory in the Vexlio.app bundle to your local LaTeX installation. Please note I have not ever tested this and things may break.

PS: Any other questions in case I don't see them on this thread can be directed to the email address in my HN profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Site is unavailable for now :/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, it seems to be working on my end -- hopefully the issue clears up for you.

<comment><USER5> OK, thanks for the feedback

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great app, really usable!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks -- I'm glad you like it!</comment></comment>


Is globalization bad for the global poor? - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2016/9/29/13096580/globalization-poverty-experiment-blattman-dercon <comment><USER2> It doesn't seem to have worked out too well for the poor so far.

<comment><USER3> Really? I'm not a huge fan of globalization, but it's hard to deny that it has raised the standard of living for the global poor. Look at China now vs China 40 years ago. They "globalized" by allowing more developed countries to exploit their cheap labor, and they're much richer now than they were.

<comment><USER4> But they had a very controlled, strategic form of globalization, placing strict limits on foreign corporations. It bears little resemblance to the "open your markets and hope for the best" approach of much of the west.</comment></comment></comment>


Astrophysicists propose new twist on Big Bang - <AUTHOR> https://uwaterloo.ca/stories/waterloo-astrophysicists-propose-new-twist-big-bang?utm_source=social_organic&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=sciam_infographic <comment><USER2> >The researchers emphasize that this idea, though it may sound absurd, is grounded firmly in the mathematics describing space and time. Specifically they've used the tools of holography to "turn the big bang into a cosmic mirage."

embedding into higher dimension spaces (or in general - into more "richer" structures) is a convenient mathematical tool and it works nice ... in mathematics. To work in physics that higher dimension space must really exist. Otherwsie, for all we know, out Universe can be just a 3d surface of a 4d nut that a small 4d squirrel puppy is about to bite into.

<comment><USER3> Ignorant question here, but is it not the case that the normal laws of physics don't apply at big bang time?

Do we expect the laws of mathematics to still apply?

Does anyone really have any clue about this stuff?

<comment><USER4> It's always been my understanding that the normal laws of physics don't work at big bang time as well. One thing I've wondered about is how people are so adamantly confident in the theory of the Big Bang in light of this. Is it simply because they don't like the alternatives, because they've never been heard an alternative, or is there a better reason?

<comment><USER5> NASA uses Newtonian mechanics to send spacecraft to the outer planets and beyond. Everybody knows that Newtonian mechanics stop being accurate in certain conditions, but that does not prevent it being an incredibly useful model outside those conditions.

The best experimentally-verified cosmological models we have point to the fact that the Universe was in a hot and dense state a few microseconds after a specific point of time about 13.7 billion years ago. Extrapolating those few microseconds back in time we get an unphysical result from our current models, but that simply means those models are inaccurate if applied to the beginning of time.

Contrary to the popular belief, The Big Bang model simply does not concern itself with what happened at the exact moment of Big Bang; what it does is describe the evolution of the Universe _after that_ , and does it well.

<comment><USER3> >Contrary to the popular belief, The Big Bang model simply does not concern itself with what happened at the exact moment of Big Bang; what it does is describe the evolution of the Universe after that, and does it well.

That sounds as much of a cop out as the answers religious people give.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Original paper title: Out of the White Hole: A Holographic Origin for the Big Bang

Arxive page (w/abstract): [http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.1487](http://arxiv.org/abs/1309.1487)

Direct link to paper: [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.1487v2](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1309.1487v2)

</comment><comment><USER7> This isn't a particularly new twist. The idea of our universe coming from a black hole has been around for quite some time, as this 1998 article discusses:

[http://martinelli.org/rexpansion/bhole.htm](http://martinelli.org/rexpansion/bhole.htm)

      "if we run time forwards, we can kind of visualize the beginning of
       our universe as a very rapid collapse (the inverse of "Inflation").
       A similar kind of event happens when a star (hot, spherical,
       massive, dense...) becomes so dense and massive it collapses in on
       itself and forms that mysterious black hole.  Here's an interesting
       question to explore... "Did our universe begin as a star that
       underwent a gravitational collapse?"  I.e., do we live in a black
       hole?"

Perhaps the novelty is a formal theory around the idea?

</comment><comment><USER8> This tends to confirm Lee Smolin's embryo-theory of cosmological natural selection.

Source : [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_natural_selectio...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_natural_selection#Cosmological_natural_selection)

Cosmological natural selection Smolin's hypothesis of cosmological natural selection, also called the fecund universes theory, suggests that a process analogous to biological natural selection applies at the grandest of scales. Smolin published the idea in 1992 and summarized it in a book aimed at a lay audience called The Life of the Cosmos.

The theory surmises that a collapsing[clarification needed] black hole causes the emergence of a new universe on the "other side", whose fundamental constant parameters (masses of elementary particles, Planck constant, elementary charge, and so forth) may differ slightly from those of the universe where the black hole collapsed. Each universe thus gives rise to as many new universes as it has black holes. The theory contains the evolutionary ideas of "reproduction" and "mutation" of universes, and so is formally analogous to models of population biology.

The resulting population of universes can be represented as a distribution of a landscape of parameters where the height of the landscape is proportional to the numbers of black holes that a universe with those parameters will have. Applying reasoning borrowed from the study of fitness landscapes in population biology, one can conclude that the population is dominated by universes whose parameters drive the production of black holes to a local peak in the landscape. This was the first use of the notion of a landscape of parameters in physics.

Leonard Susskind, who later promoted a similar string theory landscape, stated:

"I'm not sure why Smolin's idea didn't attract much attention. I actually think it deserved far more than it got."

<comment><USER9> It seems like the proposed cosmological natural selection is fundamentally different from biological natural selection in the sense that there is no actual pruning. That is to say that given a universe all of its children will survive and reproduce based solely on their laws of physics, independent of what all the other universes do. This would mean that all possible universes which could be reached through this mechanism will be reached, wheras in evolution as it happens on Earth, most of the potential organisms never exist because there ancestor got out-competed at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> OK,

The thing about this popular article is it seems to imply that the universe coming out of a black hole is different from it coming out from any kind of singularity.

Well, reading the real article, it seems this popular article got things garbled. The main problem they seem raise with the big bang is that it is a "naked" singularity - there's no barrier between the world and the singular point. So what they are doing is looking at a higher dimensional black hole and finding a non-naked singularity that would generate approximately the same effects as the big bang. There is still a singularity at work here, it is simply that the singularity is not directly spewing matter out. "No naked singularities" is a general principle I recall from scanning general relativity articles.

</comment><comment><USER11> So how did this 4d universe come about? :D

</comment><comment><USER12> I think this idea is almost certainly false, and it has it's genesis from a mostly discredited psuedo-physics theory called the holographic universe[1]. But at least there is a testable prediction! In my opinion, the fact that they offer a testable prediction merits a more thorough consideration of the claims.

First of all, it has been well understood for multiple decades that the General Relativity(GR) breaks down, and is no longer true, at mass/energy scales that are present inside of a black hole. This is known because physical quantities must be finite, but GR predicts the strength of a gravitational field inside of a black hole is infinite. If string theory is true (and I don't believe it is), then this would be a valid situation to apply it to, since we know that there is unknown physics at play inside of a black hole.

Furthermore, the standard big bang cosmology is based on the idea that the beginning of time is a "black hole in time", in the sense that as t->0, the strength of the gravitational field diverges to infinity. Thus, it has been well known for decades that GR is not a valid physical theory at very short time scales after the beginning of time (this would be the epoch of inflation[3]).

It is perhaps not apparent to the casual observer that this paper is based on a very bizarre sect within string theory, known as the "Holographic Universe", which according to Wikipedia "suggests that the entire universe can be seen as a two-dimensional information structure "painted" on the cosmological horizon". This is just a bunch of fancy words designed to blow smoke in your eyes, and the entire theory is sort of a joke as far as most physicists I know are concerned.

There are actually a number of strange cults within string theory, another one that is good for a laugh is the Anthropic Princple[4]. This theory claims that even though the 11 dimensional D-Brane that is folded into a Calubi-Yau manifold upon which string theory is based predicts trillions of possible universes, the universe we live in exists because it is the only possible one we could live in:

"the conditions happen to be just right for the existence of (intelligent) life on the earth at the present time. For if they were not just right, then we should not have found ourselves to be here now, but somewhere else, at some other appropriate time."

This kind of nonsense is why I left research in theoretical physics to purse computer science and programming, which truly is the cutting edge of science. There is a lot of valuable physics research going on in material science departments(for example), but the string theory department needs to constantly justify their funding by making extremely bold claims such as "what we perceive as the Big Bang could be the three-dimensional "mirage" of a collapsing star in a universe profoundly different than our own".

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-brane](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-brane)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_(cosmology)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_\(cosmology\))

[4] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle)

<comment><USER13> As far as I know, none of what you say is as cut-and-dried as you make it seem.

The Anthropic Principle is a common sense explanation to why our universe has a paradoxically perfect ("fine-tuned" by 120 orders of magnitude off what we would expect) cosmological constant that is just right for life and the universe to exist. It's somewhat horrifying, but I haven't seen a better explanation for fine-tuning. [1]

The holographic principle does not seem to be supported by a "very bizarre sect". In fact, it seems to be one of the better explanations for the black hole information paradox. [2]

Nima Arkani-Hamed dedicated a significant portion of his Messenger Lectures [3] (same lectures where Feynman delivered his famous series) to the principles that you dismiss out of hand as laughable above.

I'm a little depressed that the top comment is computer science > theoretical physics. Theoretical physics predicts quantum scale behavior to 11-digit accuracy. It's no joke.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant#Quantum_f...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant#Quantum_field_theory) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox) [3] [http://www.cornell.edu/video/nima-arkani-hamed-quantum- mecha...](http://www.cornell.edu/video/nima-arkani-hamed-quantum-mechanics- and-spacetime)</comment></comment>


Where else can I find smart people online?(Discussion) - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> 4chan :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Will look into. I just want help with brainstorming ideas for an inter university collaborative project.</comment></comment>


MIT hacked by Lulzsec? - <AUTHOR> http://pastebin.com/30rp0ptw

<comment><USER2> Seems like there should already be bots that automate this type of attack on any ?id= endpoint.

<comment><AUTHOR> ...also seems to be a different bunch - their twitter is twitter.com/ProjectLULZ and not twitter.com/LulzSec

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> An MIT site, most likely not created by anyone at MIT though:

username: test email: email@example.com passsord: testtest rest: firstname.lastname@example.com@tankdesign.com00

<http://tankdesign.com>

<comment><USER4> Not to excuse the obvious SQL injection vulnerability, but it looks like that is more of design firm than a web development firm. I'm guessing that they don't have the strongest developers (but then again, I would've thought Sony would've had better developers, so what do I know?).</comment></comment>


Ten million Raspberry Pis - <AUTHOR> https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/ten-millionth-raspberry-pi-new-kit/ <comment><USER2> I found quite a good use for mine. I'm sure I could achieve it with something like DD-WRT, but it was fun:

Installed Debian on a Pi 3 Model B. Put the device in a case[0].

Installed dnsmasq[1] to manage local DHCP/DNS. Forwards to Google DNS. Also have everything running on a local search domain, along with some reservations.

Installed OpenVPN along with a dynamic DNS daemon[2] so I can VPN into my home network from anywhere. Good for setting up things for download while at work for example.

[0] [http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/development-board- enclosures/9...](http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/development-board- enclosures/9098132/)

[1] [http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html](http://www.thekelleys.org.uk/dnsmasq/doc.html)

[1] [http://freedns.afraid.org](http://freedns.afraid.org)

<comment><USER3> I similarly use a Pi 3 as a X2Go/NX gateway box for remote access to office machines from home.

I'm hesitant on using it as a network gateway as I'm not sure the LAN port would be fast enough (just an impression, never actually got around to checking that) and would need a second LAN port (at least) to do the job properly.

Am considering using one as a MQTT server as part of a home automation infrastructure. Could even use the on board wi-fi as a separate, carefully firewalled network for the various devices I might prefer not to have on the main network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how many of them are just collecting dust in peoples' desk drawers.

We ordered two of the original ones for our office to play around with them, but only now, after 4½ years, I finally managed to find use for one as music player, after I decided I was too lazy to plug/unplug the speakers from my laptop.

<comment><USER5> I have an original Pi 1. When I first got it it was also collecting dust. Now it's on our boat, monitoring power, watching the bilge pumps, and uploading AIS traffic to marine traffic and aishub. And when sailing it pumps out instrument data to a smartwatch.

What it does is up to you, you are only limited by your imagination.

<comment><USER6> I recently acquired an old sailboat and have a couple of 1st gen Pis looking for a job- would be very interested in reading more about your system!

<comment><USER5> There is a project out there called freeboard-server it turns out boats NMEA data into html and json. Another project, kplex, multiplexes the boat data, NMEA, into something usable.

Most of this was done while we were on sabbatical. And we didn't have a lot of Internet access. But I'll try and compile my project into something presentable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of my clients has just started using them as the smarts in its range of industrial tank controllers. I've persuaded them to open source one of the smaller hardware designs to put back to the community so there's another few hundred pi's that will be sold over the next few years. ([http://rodyne.com/?p=754](http://rodyne.com/?p=754))

With the right power supply and watchdog controls and tons of information how to use them they are quite suitable for many non-critical automation tasks.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have a couple of them. I've loved playing around with them. I'm currently using one as a controller for a camera system at my house.

</comment><comment><USER9> £99+VAT is overpriced. Similar items can be bought for 60 USD (or even less), shipping included (buying at Amazon and/or eBay).

<comment><USER10> "This is an unashamedly premium product", says the webpage. The Pi was originally designed with re-using existing peripherals, and will be used that way most of the time, but there's still _demand_ for a premium starter kit.

<comment><USER11> That's still twisting words. There's nothing "premium" here, it's just a kit. People should spend 50 bucks on a 2nd hand Core2Duo ThinkPad and some mcu for GPIO, they'll learn as much for less.

<comment><USER12> I agree. The eBay hand-me-down market is strong for high-performance gear in this range. I've also seen FPGA kits and SGI Altix servers at similar price. Nothing wrong with new products at various price points but lets not kid ourselves on their relative value.

<comment><USER10> I think people are too keen to dismiss the Pi's hardware without realising that that's not where the Pi foundation puts most of its efforts and staff: it's the educational materials that are the focus and the hardware is a means to deliver them.

In other words, if you can make use of an FPGA or an SGI you're not the primary target market. Even if more Pi have gone to hobbyists than children, the children are still the primary target market. It's an attempt to make educational technology that kids actually like.

<comment><USER12> I can easily put a Windows or Linux desktop on a hand-me-down with tons of learning potential. Likewise, things like Scratch language and OLPC were well- designed for kids to pick up with ease. RPi and its ecosystem are pretty complicated compared to most child-oriented products. So, how is it actually doing in the child market? Im curious.

Esp vs something like Lego Mindstorms.

<comment><USER10> Scratch on the Pi is quite popular.

The OLPC was in some ways the anti-inspiration for the Pi foundation, who wanted to learn from its failure. Lego Mindstorms are pretty good but much more expensive.

Again, more important than the actual hardware is the collateral, e.g. [http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/by- subject/computing/ra...](http://www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/by- subject/computing/raspberry-pi/) (OCR are one of the exam boards), which meets the bureaucratic criteria for use in schools and is targeted at teachers who may themselves not be very computer literate and need handholding.

The use of a standard platform rather than hand-me-downs avoids tripping up over incompatibility issues. Also, you can't bulk order hand-me-downs as easily. Whereas you can order a box of Pi devices and pre-installed SD cards and the whole thing works _with almost no setup_. Remember, you can't assume anyone in the school knows Linux.

<comment><USER12> I didn't realize they ported Scratch, factored in OLPC, and weighing OCR. Latter is especially smart as cash-strapped schools or states might find it desirable so long as it has necessary learning materials and software for instructors with it. I agree on compatibility benefit. I didnt realize they had put this much effort into the chilren angle.

Well, thanks for telling me! You got any links showing good progress or case studies in educational use where replication is doable without ultra-talented teachers?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>